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‘We will coup whoever we want!’: the unbearable hubris of Musk and the billionaire tech bros
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
311 points (96.4% liked)
politics
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Like a latter-day Icarus flying too close to the sun, disgraced crypto-god Sam Bankman-Fried crashed and burned this month, recasting Michael Lewis’s exuberant biography of the convicted fraudster – Going Infinite – into the story of a supervillain.
Reading about their apocalypse bunkers, vampiric longevity strategies, outlandish social media pronouncements, private space programmes and virtual world-building ambitions, it’s hard to remember they’re not actors in a reality series or characters from a new Avengers movie.
While plans for Peter Thiel’s 193-hectare (477-acre) “doomsday” escape, complete with spa, theatre, meditation lounge and library, were ultimately rejected on environmental grounds, he still wants to build a startup community that floats on the ocean, where so-called seasteaders can live beyond government regulation as well as whatever disasters may befall us back on the continents.
Digital businesses depend on mineral slavery in Africa, dump toxic waste in China, facilitate the undermining of democracy across the globe and spread destabilising disinformation for profit – all from the sociopathic remove afforded by remote administration.
By combining a distorted interpretation of Nietzsche with a pretty accurate one of Ayn Rand, they end up with a belief that while “God is dead”, the übermensch of the future can use pure reason to rise above traditional religious values and remake the world “in his own interests”.
The launch was like Amazon’s version of the Macy’s parade, except instead of marching down Broadway with giant balloon characters for our kids, the company’s largesse consisted of letting us bear witness to its founder’s superhuman achievement.
The original article contains 2,352 words, the summary contains 254 words. Saved 89%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!