Also important to remember that the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is about a billion dollars.

https://futurism.com/future-society/apocalypse-compound-fails-wealthy-residents-turn-on-each-other

Caesar Speedrun

Veni Vidi Vhoopsiedoodle

Seriously! I remember some story about how they brought out a psychologist to contemplate how to control their population. He basically said "just be friends with them" and they said "Na, what about bomb collars?".

They really think the legal protections they've enjoyed their whole life, will extend once there are no more laws. They are trying to destroy the only thing protecting them, the system.

They're building very nice bunkers for their security teams.

I am currently mid-playthough and there is one Andrew Ryan quote that caught my attention:

On the surface, the Parasite expects the doctor to heal them for free, the farmer to feed them out of charity. How little they differ from the pervert who prowls the streets, looking for a victim he can ravish for his grotesque amusement.

https://bioshock.fandom.com/wiki/Parasite_Expectations

It reminds me of a significantly more recent real life Facebook group called "Communists are just economic incels". I'd say Bioshock predicted this, but this kind of bad take was probably around for a long time.

Well, in theory the poorest members of society will work hard in exchange for money from the rich, then use that money to become rich themselves.

In practice, you either get slavery or bears.

I mean, have you heard of the bear infestation from a libertarian take-over in Vermont? Yeah, it turns out bears love the trash that libertarians were neglecting on their properties.

Not that I disagree with your overall stance, but I've always found "look how x turned out in this fictional story" to be dubious because fictional stories are written by human writers and only really prove things about what their writers believed. If that logic was sound, it could be defeated by a libertarian writing some dumbass story with a libertarian utopia (actually I kinda want to see that, just to see what kind of evil shit a libertarian would unironically think is part of a utopia, like maybe a new species that loves being slaves, women happy to defer to men, or business men seeing they are being fucked by a deal and laughing about it with the person fucking them rather than walking away or starting a war).

Not saying BioShock is wrong (haven't actually played any of them yet but they sound pretty based, at least story wise), just that fictional story arcs aren't exactly convincing to those who think otherwise.

Also, even the stories that show a lot of widespread suffering often have a few people enjoying it all at the top and people who subscribe to rightwing ideology tend to prefer to think about how great it would be being that person or how well they'd be able to manipulate that person into giving them a great life with probably just a little flattery. The person who makes the Torment Nexus from Don't Make The Torment Nexus isn't doing it because they think they can run the Torment Nexus in such a way that people won't suffer in great numbers, they are doing it because they want the power to decide who suffers under the Torment Nexus while they sip on champagne and fuck their supporters' wives and kids.

Outer Worlds

The same people who volunteered to move to the Americas.

I hope you're right that the writing on the wall is for them and not for us.

But so long as private business endeavors continue to exist, they'll just invest through a middleman.

My first thought is that that kind of location also makes invading harder. For thousands of years, armies had to acquire most of their provisions on the road because logistics are hard when you're marching thousands of people on foot, and "acquire" usually meant "steal" even on home territory.

Being invaded fucking sucks, so it's quite possible that a lot of people were willing to trade personal liberty for security.

It's really easy to think of examples of that, wow. I don't fully buy it but i can see how it could be a factor in some civs.

I thought it was because land around the river is more fertile than in the rest of the desert

You mean the place with 45 weirdos and a bunch of money laundering and tax evasion? They just import workers from real Honduras outside the "agreement of co-existence." Not gonna have the same option on Mars.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-22/honduras-prospera-libertarian-utopia-caribbean-roatan/107045960

They do and it seems to be going OK for them, not sure about how it is for the workers. Honduras did allow them to open up a second location that's manufacturing focused so it seems there's SOME benefit to the local economy? They have to pay 12% tax to Honduras on the city's earnings IIRC, but I'm not sure what the city's own tax rate is. AFAIK, low but not 0.

If you're a millionaire, you might like it there. It's like a resort with offices and coworking spaces. Compared to nice locations in the US, it's actually kinda cheap. Compared to anything in South or Central America it's very expensive, compared to at least eastern europe, it's still expensive. If I was a multimillionaire tech bro trying to become a billionaire tech bro with a startup, I'd probably go. Not so much because of the regulations but because it's a stunning location they managed to plant their colony on.