When The Greedy Shall Solely Inherit The World

An Euro-American lover-of-money — moneyphile — named Peter Thiel wants to live forever!

While his greed for money and his desire to live forever are his personal choices — what amazes me is his greed for wanting to be a philosopher as well. (Some people need everything, don’t they?) He says something like this:

I think there are probably three main modes of approach to death…You can accept it, deny it or you can fight it.

Now, Mr. Thiel is a businessman, a merchant, a capitalist. He loves money more than anything. And he is proud of it.

This makes me want to quote Ibn-Khaldun (again):

…merchant must concern himself with buying and selling, earning money and making a profit. This requires cunning, willingness to enter into disputes, cleverness, constant quarreling, and great persistence. These are things that belong to commerce. They are qualities detrimental to and destructive of virtuousness and manliness, because it is unavoidable that actions influence the soul. Good actions influence it toward goodness and virtue. Evil and deceitful actions influence it in the opposite sense…

…These influences differ according to the different types of merchants. Those who are of a very low type and associated closely with bad traders who cheat and defraud and perjure themselves, asserting and denying statements concerning transactions and prices, are much more strongly affected by these bad character qualities. Deceitfulness becomes their main characteristic. Manliness is completelyalien to them, beyond their power to acquire. At any rate, it is unavoidable that their cunning and their willingness to enter into disputes affects their manliness (adversely). The complete absence of (any adverse effect) is very rare among them.

The character qualities of merchants are inferior to those of noblemen and rulers. This is because merchants are mostly occupied with buying and selling. This necessarily requires cunning. If a merchant always practices cunning, it becomes his dominant character quality. The quality of cunning is remote from that of manliness which is the characteristic quality of rulers and noblemen. If the character of (the merchant) then adopts the bad qualities that follow from (cunning) in low-class merchants, such as quarrelsomeness, cheating, defrauding, as well as (the inclination to) commit perjury in rejecting and accepting statements concerning prices, his character can be expected to be one of the lowest sort, for well-known reasons. It is because of the character that one acquires through the practice of commerce that political leaders avoid engaging in it. There are some merchants who are not affected by those character qualities and who are able to avoid them, because they have noble souls and are magnanimous, but they are very rare in this world.

With this, I want to define Mr. Thiel as having the following characteristics:

1. Greedy
2. Cunning
3. Cleverness 
4. Quarrelsome
5. Persistent
6. Cheating
7. Defrauding

(No wonder he wants to live forever!)

Greed Mr. Thiel…greed! Wish someone had taught you some virtue in your childhood

As these people have both the will and the resource to make life extension happen — once such technologies will actually happen — these people will be the ones who will live the longest or in the craziest scenario: they will be the one who will live forever. With people who are not greedy, cunning, clever, quarrelsome, etc. perishing.

It implies the world will be inherited by people with values such as the ones given above. (greed, cunningness, etc.)

So what about those who are not of those characteristics? I mean what about those of us who are not greedy, cunning, fraud, etc.?

But I have a more serious consideration:

1. Why do I care if Mr. Thiel and the likes live forever?
2. Why should I care?
3. Should I care?
4. If yes, how can I stop them? OR how can I help establish certain equity first?