The Tech Bro Billionaire Ethos That Will Eat Us All | Douglas Rushkoff | TMR

Sam and Emma host Douglas Rushkoff, professor of Media Studies at Queens College, to discuss his recent book Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires.

Douglas Rushkoff dives right into the genesis of his study on the escapist fantasies of tech billionaires, as he was invited to speak at a wealthy tech talk, only for the discussion to run off the rails into fantasies of post-apocalyptic autocracy. Parsing through this, Professor Rushkoff looks at the inverse relationship between wealth and empathic response, and explores why the ideology of big tech seeks to separate the capitalist from the labor exploitation that creates their capital, as seen in everything from their industrial practices to Musk’s colonies on Mars. This brings Rushkoff to the topic of “Effective Altruism” as a way for Tech entrepreneurs to excuse the exploitation and discrimination that comes from their products in favor of supposed future benefits for the next stage of humanity, and why philosophical arguments (rather than material ones) ground this reactionary libertarianism. Wrapping up, Douglas, Sam, and Emma tackle the refusal of tech “disruptors” to attempt disrupting capitalism, and what we can learn from Elon Musk’s Twitter debacle.

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