There won't be any separate peace

Last week the Oil Drum featured an article about the very wealthy making preparations for whatever catastrophe the post-peak future has in stock. Many commentators have pointed out that mercenaries understand very quickly there is more money to be had by cutting their rich but helpless employers’ throat than by defending them. The very fact than some people

Mercenaries’ dubious loyalty is, of course, the first obstacle to the building of reasonably enduring billionaires’ lifeboats. Basing one’s security on hired swords is one of history’s most popular losing bets, even if in the short run it is not necessarily a stupid one. All rulers in history have faced the same conundrum : if you can’t enforce your decisions, your power is basically worth nothing, on the other hand, if you give your enforcer too much power, he may well replace you. That’s why rulers who didn’t trust their own people, recruited their soldiers and advisors abroad or among despised minorities : because they wouldn’t have the connections to stage a coup.

Of course, in the long run it rarely works. Sooner or later, mercenaries entrench themselves within society, become a part of it and put themselves in position of kingmakers… at the very least. That’s why I write this in English and not in some variant of Breton, because the Germanic mercenaries Vortigern and his peers hired to defend themselves from their rivals (and probably their own population) integrated within the sub-roman power structure before subverting it to their advantage.

More than a bad understanding of history, however, the billionaires’ dream of buying themselves a