Billionaires Fearing "The Event"

The future belongs to us all, because all of us, in our own ways, are building it together. Or: the future belongs to some of us, because a lot of us don't do anything noteworthy toward building that future. Or: I don't care either way, because the future is something for me to bet on.

_{source: Wikimedia Commons}

For me, the future belongs to us all; all of us are contributing to shape our future, at least as long as we're still able to talk about the society as a collective, and not merely as a collection of individuals who's only task in life is taking care of themselves. But I fear the latter is how most of my fellow westerners reckon things work, and decades of extreme individualism and liberalism has spawned some of the most insanely rich individuals on the planet; the mere existence of these billionaires, is in my opinion one of the strongest indicators of how badly we suffer as a society, as humankind even, under the effects of these extremely liberal and individualist decades.

Individualism, as well as liberalism, places the individual at the center of all things, the individual, not the collective, is the benchmark, the fundamental indivisible component of society, and the basic unit of analysis for all implications of social life. Paired with the ideology of capitalism this translates effortlessly in a worldview, not of societies, but of individual agents who's only task in life is taking care of themselves, maximizing their own happiness. And in capitalism that happiness is inextricably tied to material wealth.

We live in an age where society has become the enemy, something to be feared instead of embraced. We're taught that we have to work hard for our place under the sun and that we're in constant competition with each other for that perfect spot. And when we've finally got it, we quickly do everything in our might to not lose it. This is best illustrated, again, by the ones on top of the individualism pyramid, the billionaires, and how they see the future. Writer, columnist and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff was invited to give a talk about his views on the digital future, and upon seeing the amount of money he would be payed he immediately accepted.

_{Life Inc. Dispatch 02: Insulation Equation}

As he describes it, he was waiting in the "green room" to go on stage, but was surprised to see five hedge-fund billionaires enter the room and sit around the table with him: they were the audience. These billionaires first asked some general investment advice type questions, where even blockchain and Ethereum are mentioned briefly. But soon the questions were about survival... About how would they survive after "The Event." Rushkoff talking about this bizarre event:

"The question that I ended up spending the entire hour on with them was 'How do I maintain authority over my security staff after The Event?' ... Do you understand what they're thinking? Because their money isn't going to be worth anything, all the motorcycle gangs are gonna be coming to their compound and try to break in... How do you maintain control over the security guards if you can't pay them? [...] That was the big question; could we train robots to be security guards... in time, to protect our compounds after The Event?"

Rushkoff calls it the "insulation equation", where rich people manage their lifes by thinking: "how much money do I have to earn to insulate myself from the reality I am creating while I earn that money." He advocates the opposite mindset, where successful individuals ask themselves "how nice and engaging do I have to be to create a reality I don't have to insulate myself from." On another occasion he gave the example of sending a kid to private school; if you're in a position to make that choice, it's a logical one as public schooling is in a horrible state. The alternative would be to take the extra time and money it takes to send your kid to private school, and invest it in the public school. In short, rich people should be part of that tide that lifts all boats.

The future should belong to us all, but since we've been living by the ideology of individualism and have gradually destroyed whatever used to be called "common good", like those public schools, we're about to have "The Event." Well, at least we are relatively safe, my crypto brothers and sisters; the day when the billionaires' money is worthless, ours will be worth billions. That won't do anything to stop the mayhem, panic and social dislocation though. Here's the full talk by Rushkoff; I don't know about you, but I'm slightly worried about the prospect of billionaires starting to cover their asses for the next financial meltdown...

_{Douglas Rushkoff: Team Human}

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