r/technology • u/Logical_Welder3467 • 12d ago
Society Palantir CEO Alex Karp quietly purchased 37,000 acres of forests in Sweden—and locals found out when hunters lost leases to use the property
https://fortune.com/2026/09/30/palantir-ceo-alex-karp-purchased-37000-acres-of-forests-in-sweden-locals-hunting-banned-billionaire-landownership/2.4k
u/asdf_lord 12d ago
Is that where he's going to hide?
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u/Scary-Maximum7707 12d ago edited 2d ago
It's a bit odd because the land has seemingly little value. Low growth, forestry-wise, fell adjacent with sizeable impediments.
To my knowledge there hasn't been any information that would point to mineral deposists or such.
When asked they scoffed at the idea that they would build a datacenter or the likes.
The company seems legit in terms of it's role of forest-management, albeit the company is so new that when I checked out available info it didn't even have their tax licenses in order yet, despite having made a purchase of land in the region of 23.5 million dollars from SCA.
To me this looks like a half baked diversification effort by someone who may not have wrapped their head entirely around the projections and potential.
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u/MRSN4P 12d ago
Maybe a place for a doomsday bunker.
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u/elebrin 12d ago
It's that, or he is anticipating more climate change in the near future and wanted land closer to a pole. He likely didn't care too much where it was, with the understanding that it's a good way to park some money. And he could go hide out there if he had to, especially if it's far enough away from civilization and it wasn't being heavily utilized. Although there are locals do displace from hunting, so it likely isn't so far from civilization.
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u/hcbaron 12d ago edited 12d ago
It's definitely a Doomsday bunker, and he will definitely build life like female robots there that will pass the turing test.
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u/I_AM_A_GUY_AMA 11d ago
Hopefully he doesn't make the robots hot and then invite the dumbest programmer at his company to come and administer the turing test.
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u/BasicCrows 12d ago
I'd have that bunker a place with more relaxed weapon laws than Sweden. But I guess if you're rich you could stack up a trailer full of AK 47s without consequences, even in Sweden.
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u/GrantacusMoney 12d ago
Why would you want the local population to be armed?
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u/BasicCrows 12d ago
The local population is probably armed, but with hunting rifles. He and his goons would need more than a hunting rifle to fend off a lot of pissed Swedes with their own rifles.
If their gun laws is similar to our Norwegian ones, you can't stockpile unlimited amounts of ammo either.
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u/literated 12d ago
I feel like if you can spend 25 million bucks on 37000 acres of forest, you'll find a way to get some guns and ammo in there if you wanted to.
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u/toxicatedscientist 12d ago
At that point it would be trivial to bring in a lathe and a mill, hire a machinist…
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u/digitalscavenger 12d ago
Like Eugene in The Walking Dead was hired by The Governor to make bullets for the community.
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u/ReturnOfBane 12d ago
He and his goons would need more than a hunting rifle to fend off a lot of pissed Swedes with their own rifles.
just a bunch of drones spraying nerve agents around the perimiter
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u/RollingMeteors 12d ago
If their gun laws is similar to our Norwegian ones, you can't stockpile unlimited amounts of ammo either.
This guy could just hire a gunsmith that presses bullets as they're spent he's so fucking wealthy.
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u/NeedNameGenerator 12d ago
Bold of you to assume things like laws apply to these people.
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u/subLimb 12d ago
Did you read the original comment?
But I guess if you're rich you could stack up a trailer full of AK 47s without consequences, even in Sweden.
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u/Snoo93833 12d ago
Don't you mean it is illegal to stockpile arms? Because someone CAN stockpile arms and ammo.
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u/Schonke 12d ago
He clearly has never had to deal with a Swedish kommun and Plan- och bygglagen.
Some residents of the area should push for implementing a very strict detaljplan of the area prohibiting any sort of building and designating it an area of recreation.
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u/joe_bibidi 12d ago
I'd add in one factor:
A lot of the technofeudalists basically believe that cataclysmic global warming is now inevitable, and they have no desire to stop it at all, and if anything, they actually want it to happen. They are now obsessed with setting up kingdoms (or at least fiefdoms) in cold climate zones that they foresee as being warmer in the future. Part of why Trump is so obsessed with taking Canada and Greenland is because he has some of these technofeudalists in his ear.
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u/nomdeplume 12d ago
Except at the current rates anyone alive today will be dead by the time the climate shifts that much, and there will be a societal collapse so "owning" land will be irrelevant.
No one is going to come and raise up a past king in the new world, you tear them down because they're to blame.
I've seen the inside of zucks bunker, it's not Silo. It's little more than a box in the ground
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u/Number412 12d ago
They just want to buy everything around so we will not be able to own anything that's their goal. So you take it back from him or they will take more and more
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u/soulsteela 12d ago
Chatting about rich turds instantly activates so many bots on here.
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u/porn_is_tight 12d ago
billionaire bot farms are rampant on this site and it has gotten drastically worse over the last 5ish years. When $10 million is like buying a cup of coffee to these ghouls, paying someone to run a bot farm for them is child’s play
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u/Aethermancer 12d ago
Bots or bot influenced zombies.
I swear there's an anarcho-capitalist bat-signal whenever anyone hints that 90% of the coconuts on this island shouldn't be hoaded by one monkey
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u/wanders_climbs 12d ago
If it’s anything like the land he bought up around Aspen - water rights are the key.
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u/ottwebdev 12d ago
Sweden is what americans would call liberal/progressive across a few facets - so its pretty sad that these people are destroying the USA and then running.
Kind of like Thiel to Argentina.
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u/Frogspoison 12d ago
Keep in mind they'll get busy working on their new host country shortly afterwards.
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u/ottwebdev 12d ago
They make scifi movies about aliens who show up to take all the resources/wealth like locusts before moving on to the next.... so it seems that we're not unaware of the con.
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u/huehuehuehuehuuuu 12d ago
Yep they don’t want to bring technological progress, they want to bring serfdom back.
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u/MisterSanitation 12d ago
Kind of like… Other people who went to Argentina after they ruined their local government… The ones who did Elon salutes.
Also if I were a Swede, I’d be sabotaging the shit out of this. Don’t let these vampires feast and leech on your country and children.
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u/atempestdextre 12d ago
Nazis. The word you're looking for is Nazis. Who really do ruin everything they touch.
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u/CptJonzzon 12d ago
How do you sabotage a forest without damaging the environment?? Also we have something called allemansrätt which means we can basically treat all land that isnt right next to someones home as public land. And the land he bought is somewhat protected aswell
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u/Pseudoboss11 12d ago edited 12d ago
Reverse colonialism. Extract from your home country them leave with your ill-gotten gains to places you haven't fucked up.
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u/PatchyWhiskers 12d ago
They romanticise Sweden as having the whitest white people
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u/Lifeacrobat 12d ago edited 12d ago
There are few things that makes me more patriotic than assholes who have immigrated here, and proceeds to be racist against our non-white Swedes. It enrages me.
Edit: I'm damned proud of being born and living in a country people flee to. Just wish we had been better at welcoming everybody.
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u/hutxhy 12d ago
They're progressive but still capitalist, so eventually they'll reform away all the social and progressive gains they've made since WWII.
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u/usaaf 12d ago
They started doing that at least a few decades ago actually, you can see this in how their social democratic party has fallen from favor (used to rule virtually unopposed). Which just shows how recent information lags so much, since people still hold up the Nordic model as one to follow, even though Capitalism has been eating it alive for years now. That's without even getting into Norway, which made its money off oil.
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u/jim-james--jimothy 12d ago
The world seems to have a billionaire problem. They're invasive and bad for us.
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u/USPO-222 12d ago
Like all invasive species they lack a natural predator
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u/Cersad 12d ago
They used to have a natural predator, we called it "society", but they seem to have evolved new defenses to more effectively sequester themselves away from their predator.
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u/sudda_pappu 12d ago
There is no "society" anymore as far as they are concerned.
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u/p_k 12d ago
Their natural predator is supposed to be the government but as time went on the good retired and a wave of bad came in, driven by greed and status as it always does. Just another turn on the forever societal cycle.
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u/DejongBCN 12d ago
That's bad news.
Nothing good comes out of these people ever.
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u/KarlLenin1917 12d ago
Seriously, name one time a billionaire quietly bought up massive amounts of rural land in another country and it turned out to be good for the locals. It never ends well.
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u/rei0 12d ago
The real immigrants you should be worried about are people like Thiel, Karp, and Musk.
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u/ComfortableYellow627 12d ago
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u/RaDeus 12d ago
The fun thing I'd that he can't even put up a fence around his property, because that would be illegal.
The only area you can fence off is around your house, the so called "Hemfridszon" ~ Home Peace Zone, which can't be unreasonably large.
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u/Commando_Joe 12d ago
What's the consequence? A fine? because as we've seen with the insane Jeff Bezos fence it's not illegal, it's just an extra fee
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u/RaDeus 12d ago
I believe the municipality will tear the fence down, shit like that isn't tolerated.
We have Day-fines here in Sweden too, which would be fun to apply to Bezos.
We have a long history of curtailing noblemen in Sweden, there's a reason why rich morally-bankrupt Swedes tend to move to Switzerland after awhile.
Please consult the Law of Jante if you have further questions.
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u/NegatronThomas 12d ago
This guy is one of the biggest pieces of shit in the world. Have you ever seen him talk? You’ll want to punch him in .7 seconds
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u/GiganticCrow 12d ago
Him and his boss Thiel sound completely deranged whenever I've seen them talk
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u/tvish 12d ago
All these tech bros looking for remote places to hide when the world they created starts to eat itself.
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u/Dazzling_Mark_827 12d ago
I dont think that it will matter whos is whos when that happens
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u/hucklepig 12d ago
Perhaps but a well stocked bunker goes a long way.
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u/worldspawn00 12d ago
A well stocked and publicly known bunker is a big target...
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u/Kill3rT0fu 12d ago
These billionaires destroy America abusing the system they profit from and then flee to foreign countries
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u/jax362 12d ago
Evil villain is building his evil villain lair.
These oligarchs want to divide the world up into fiefdoms, and we are letting them.
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u/The14thWarrior 12d ago
I hope these Tech assholes destroying privacy and ushering in dystopian levels of surveillance never get the benefit themselves.
I hope they are forever ostracized by the public/world at large, and to the extent that privacy is non existent for them as well.
Like for example: now we all know this POS owns a bunch of land in Sweden.
Can’t even hide out in the country he’s ‘saving’
Definition of hypocritical POS.
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u/Sooowasthinking 12d ago
Yet another example of the billionaire class being nefarious and underhanded showing they are never to be trusted.
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u/myusrnameisthis 12d ago
Hard to keep people out of 37000 acres.
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u/Odd_Internet1122 12d ago
Especially in Sweden where people have a constitutional right to roam and camp on any Swedish territory as long as it's left undisturbed.
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u/e_spider 12d ago
I think Sweden has a right to wander (freedom to roam laws), so he legally can’t keep people out.
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u/Mmaibl1 12d ago
So I am assuming this is strictly related to the ability of hunters to kill animals on his land?
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u/cold-vein 12d ago edited 12d ago
So there's really no concept of "private forest" in the Nordic countries outside of hunting or felling trees, people can still go there and pick berries, mushrooms or just roam around, camp or whatever. It's called everymans right and its a law. Cutting down trees or hunting is prohibited unless they get permission from the landowner, which I doubt they've even had a chance to ask. Usually landowners do give permission to hunt in their forests.
But he could just as well cut down all the trees if he wanted.
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u/AbeFromanEast 12d ago
The nerd reich billionaires are buying foreign properties because they fear the understandable backlash that will follow a change in American government and a return to any regulation.
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u/jamodude 12d ago
This guy is one of the biggest threats to the whole world. He needs to be “talked” with ASAP him and Peter the antichrist…
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u/fer_sure 12d ago
See, a smart billionaire would have built his secret bunker between hunting seasons, have it fully concealed with hidden entry and exits, and then blend in with the hunters when he wants to visit.
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u/RoundMammoth2947 12d ago
An actual smart billionaire would not have built his doomsday bunker one country away from Russia.
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u/spektre 12d ago
Why not? That way he wouldn't have to run very far if actual legal consequences becomes a thing.
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u/AtomicBlastCandy 12d ago
A ton of billionaires are buying up land and building bunkers foreseeably fearing a societal collapse. My question to these rich fucks is, where are you going to get food and protect and water when there is no functioning society? Who is going to guard you from the masses? Who is going to power your electricity?
I wish they realized that they need us plebs in order to live a more comfortable life. Sure they can build a compound in Hawaii but if money is valueless how are they going to afford guards and farmers and maids?
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u/grain_delay 12d ago
It’s honestly hilarious to think about these rich fucks getting immediately killed and looted by their private security the second society breaks down
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u/1980techguy 12d ago
I bet their hope is to get to the state where their bunker can be controlled by an ai that only responds to them.
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u/ApolloAuto 12d ago
One of my most laughed at movie tropes is the ' end of the world ' ship / bunker / area whatever that all the elites have a ticket too. What the hell happens next ? You have an entire community of people who have done nothing with their hands for their whole lives. That society is going to collapse on itself within minutes.
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u/CaptainCastle1 12d ago
“I’m gonna be surrounded by a great security team!”
Until that team realizes they can just off said billionaire and live in said bunker
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u/Jackal-Noble 12d ago
No individual deserves or needs 37,000 acres
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u/americanextreme 12d ago
Yes, this is why you have your shell companies buy it. You could even have a few of them share ownership so that no one corp owns 37K acres. Alex might even perceive his problem was not using enough layers to hide information.
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u/Lopsided_Quarter_931 12d ago
Funny how these assholes keep bitching about Europe but then spend all their holidays there and buy property. Russians do the same.
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u/ThePensiveE 12d ago
Better make sure the government rescinds that before Swedish children start getting hunted by drones.
This guy is a straight up psychopath.
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u/SlightlyAngyKitty 12d ago
The peasants are no longer allowed to hunt on their Lords land
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u/turtlesinmyheart 12d ago
I blame the Swedes for selling it to him
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u/AminoKing 12d ago
We have strict limits on land usage. Just because this wanker owns it, there's nothing preventing the general public to gain access, even camp on the grounds. The immediate area around his house is a bit more secluded, but nothing like US/UK.
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u/troveofcatastrophe 12d ago
Explain to me again why citizens are paying for data centers energy uses, tax credits and “They’re not really billionaires. That moneys only on paper.”?
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u/Bergiful 12d ago edited 1d ago
It shouldn't be legal for anyone to buy this much land.
Edit beegal -> be legal
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u/Financial-Craft-1282 12d ago
Guy is a true scumbag. Like the other billionaires. How guys like this got so much money, power, and influence boggles my mind. I guess when I was a nerd in school and heard, "Don't worry, nerds rule the world" they were talking about a different kind than me.
Also google his name and "sword" if you want to laugh for awhile.
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u/t0matit0 12d ago
I was downvoted in r/mildlyinfuriating for calling this shit out, told if I just google it, he's doing this to preserve the forest.... LOL ok.
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u/parkinthepark 12d ago
The parliamentary form of the robbery is that of Acts for enclosures of Commons, in other words, decrees by which the landlords grant themselves the people’s land as private property, decrees of expropriation of the people.
-Kapital, Ch. 27
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u/Snake_Plizken 12d ago
The Swedish hunters will bury him in a swamp, when he comes for his remote secret bunker, because he screwed over their hunting rights. They made a Swedish thriller about what happens, when you mess with the hunting crowd in rural Lapland.
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u/downrealbadbutt 12d ago
I hate that billionaires are just allowed to purchase thousands of acres of forest land at throwaway prices.
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u/pioniere 12d ago
I don’t know why countries allow foreign ownership of land like this. That land should be owned by Swedes.
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u/errorsniper 12d ago
Im sorry. I really do not care at all. This should not be legal.
Billionaires just deciding one day to buy an entire forest and not allow others to use it should not be allowed.
IDFC if its for a data center, a private property, or because he wants his own forest.
Fuck off.
There is no such thing as Eco-Terrorism. Its just called self defense after a certain point.
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u/mysterious_jeffrey 12d ago
This guy is a psychopath and we’re all going to deeply regret letting people like this run wild.
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u/soda_cookie 12d ago
FWIW, 37000 acres is approximately 57 square miles, or the size of Topeka, Kansas or Augsburg, Germany.
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u/mistertickertape 12d ago
I hope Sweden is smart enough to not allow him to enter.
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u/Watsons-Butler 12d ago
This is actually a big deal - Sweden generally has a “right to roam” - you can legally camp anywhere as long as you’re far enough from a private residence and not causing problems. The very American “keep out, trespassers will be shot” stuff doesn’t fly over there.
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u/piranha_solution 12d ago
Did anybody else listen to that phone call between international child-sex trafficker Jeffery Epstein and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak where they were discussing how Palantir's software can help for their operations?
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u/Gh0st_Pirate_LeChuck 12d ago
Change the law that fines him billions when he’s not there and then block all access to it.
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u/landmesser 12d ago
So he pissed of the hunters in the small village in the north of Sweden,
to build his doomsday get away when the AI apocalypse arrives.
Svinhugg går igen!
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u/ShockedNChagrinned 12d ago
Generally, non citizens or non resident/headquartered corporations should at least have extra steps for approval when purchasing land and assets in a foreign land. Not sure why this isn't the case for all sane nations.
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u/CallmeChapybara 12d ago edited 12d ago
Every rightwing nuts speaks about imigrants taking our jobs, but not a squeak about billionaires taking our lands and homes, smh
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u/WeaponexT 12d ago
Crazy that the official stance of these assholes is that Climate Change isn't real. Yet they are all buying land in cold climate places.
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u/VagueSomething 12d ago
Considering the company Karp keeps, close friends of Epstein, this land should be monitored to make sure he isn't setting up a place to abuse kids. This man has openly expressed his disregard for human life and how equality is bad, someone like that is capable of cruelty.
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u/p_k 12d ago
For anyone who's paying attention, billionaires have been purchasing a lot of land in recent years, many of them are using that land to build bunkers for themselves.
It looks like they're all preparing for a societal collapse of some sort. If you don't own a gun (doesn't matter where you live) and a go bag, I highly recommend you get one, especially if you have a family. It might not happen in our lifetime but when signs tell you that a certain risk has increased, you need to meet that risk with increased preparation.
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u/ChocolichKing 12d ago
Peter Thiel and his cronies are buying huge swaths of land in the interest of creating their own micro-nations. From the BBC:
"Liberland isn't an outlier - it's one of several prototypes of such micronations, areas claimed as independent nations but not legally recognised as such. Prospera in Honduras, Peter Thiel's Seasteading Institute, and Tim Draper's Draper Nation, a fully digital country with Bitcoin as its currency, are all chasing the same idea."
It's not about bunkers, it's about creating their own government.
In Patchwork: A Political System for the 21st Century, Yarvin proposed fracturing large democratic nations into a global spiderweb comprising tens of thousands of mini-countries or sovereign city-states.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly8eqyj8e2o
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-dark-enlightenment-movement-big-tech-curtis-yarvin-9.7032441
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u/warmfuzzume 12d ago
Yarvin is so cartoonishly evil it’s completely insane that the vice president is on record as supporting him and this doesn’t seem to even bother people. It’s just mind boggling.
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u/AForse 12d ago
A ‘go’ bag? Where, exactly, are you going to ‘go’ to? And with what? Which gas stations are open, which place is going to accept armed refugees from another place? Where are you going to get ammunition from? Unless you happen to live on a self-sustaining plot of land, and have the necessary skills to maintain that, you’re just as fu*ked as everyone else..
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u/audieleon 12d ago
We should all also make sure we have maps of all these bunkers. If the shit hits the fan, I'll be knocking on some of these doors...
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u/lewd_robot 12d ago
They'll be sealed and guarded by autonomous turrets and drones. Why do you think they're chasing AI so hard?
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u/Boring-Tie-1501 12d ago
And who is going to maintain those drones and turrets? How are they going to replenish ammunition and parts?
People are very bad at understanding how fragile human systems are and critically interrogating tech bullshit.
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u/Samwise777 12d ago
Lol yes everyone have a gun and a go bag like you’re jason Bourne
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u/stargarnet79 12d ago
That’s right! That’s his land now get your assess off your ancestral hunting grounds. (/s) Wow, what an interesting demographic to choose to piss off!
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u/soffpotatisen 12d ago
Not speaking for other Swedes but.. I really don't want him here.