Survival of the Richest
Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
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4.4 • 18 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
"A devastating portrait of the cultures and logics underlying big tech. Rushkoff is going to make you mad enough to fight back. A vital, lucid, and enraging read." —Naomi Klein
Five mysterious billionaires summoned Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The subject? How to survive the "Event": the societal collapse they know is coming. Rushkoff argues that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley–style certainty that they and their cohort can escape a disaster of their own making—as long as they have enough money and the right technology.
Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. Through fascinating characters—master programmers who want to remake the world as if redesigning a video game and bankers who return from Burning Man convinced incentivized capitalism will prevent environmental disasters—Rushkoff explains why those with the most power to change the world have no interest in doing so. He argues that the only way to survive the coming catastrophe is to ensure it doesn’t happen by rediscovering community, mutual aid, and human interdependency.
Anticipating the mass layoffs and institutional collapse that have recently rocked Silicon Valley, Rushkoff’s Survival of the Richest is "a necessary and timely read" (Los Angeles Review of Books) with a prophetic message about the future of tech and our human community.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Media theorist Rushkoff (Team Human) presents a fascinating and distressing account of how the very wealthy prep for doomsday. His premise is that über-rich individuals are operating with "The Mindset," or the belief that with enough wealth and resources, they can "insulate themselves from the damage they are creating" and survive an event that decimates the general population. Rushkoff introduces readers to the purveyor of multiple "residential farm communities for millionaires" designed to provide safety for the upper class in the future; the concept of "seasteading," the creation of "independent, free-floating city-states" in the ocean; and "prepper construction companies" in Texas that offer million-dollar luxury bunkers outfitted with bowling allies and pools. He also argues that supposedly innovative solutions to climate change that focus on the crisis as an opportunity for continued economic growth are only going to make the rich richer at the expense of everyone else. It's all rather intriguing, even if a couple of chapters feel somewhat tangential (one is a brief history of how the internet went from an ethos of "serving others" to a source of profits). This is an eye-popping look at some outlandish visions for the future.
Customer Reviews
It’s what you think…
Private jets to a remote island, containing a compound with impregnable bunkers, perhaps a private security force (that will likely turn on the wealthy protectorate).
Same old.
But the book does touch on the degradation of community bonds, a fact. The building of mistrust, apathy, reinforces isolationism and the severe dumbing of society.