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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums'We will coup whoever we want!': the unbearable hubris of Musk and the billionaire tech bros
... Unlike their forebears, contemporary billionaires do not hope to build the biggest house in town, but the biggest colony on the moon. In contrast, however avaricious, the titans of past gilded eras still saw themselves as human members of civil society. Contemporary billionaires appear to understand civics and civilians as impediments to their progress, necessary victims of the externalities of their companies growth, sad artefacts of the civilisation they will leave behind in their inexorable colonisation of the next dimension. Unlike their forebears, they do not hope to build the biggest house in town, but the biggest underground lair in New Zealand, colony on the moon or Mars or virtual reality server in the cloud.
...
Indeed, there is an imperiousness to the way the new billionaire class disregard people and places for which it is hard to find historical precedent. Zuckerberg had to go all the way back to Augustus Caesar for a role model, and his admiration for the emperor borders on obsession. He models his haircut on Augustus; his wife joked that three people went on their honeymoon to Rome: Mark, Augustus and herself; he named his second daughter August; and he used to end Facebook meetings by proclaiming Domination!
While we should be thankful he has chosen to emulate Augustus instead of, say, Caligula, he is nonetheless aspiring toward the absolute power and hairstyle of a Roman dictator. Zuckerberg told the New Yorker through a really harsh approach, he established two hundred years of world peace, finally acknowledging that didnt come for free, and he had to do certain things. Its that sort of top down thinking that led Zuckerberg to not only establish an independent oversight board at Facebook, dubbed the Supreme Court, but to suggest that it would one day expand its scope to include companies across the industry.
At least Zuckerbergs anti-democratic measures are expressed as the decrees of a benevolent dictator. Musk exercises no such restraint. In response to the accusation that the US government organised a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia in order for Tesla to secure lithium there, Musk tweeted: We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/25/we-will-coup-whoever-we-want-the-unbearable-hubris-of-musk-and-the-billionaire-tech-bros
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'We will coup whoever we want!': the unbearable hubris of Musk and the billionaire tech bros (Original Post)
DBoon
Nov 2023
OP
intrepidity
(7,441 posts)1. Never knew that about Zuck. Finally explains his hair. nt
intrepidity
(7,441 posts)2. He nails the issue
Their words and actions suggest an approach to life, technology and business that I have come to call The Mindset a belief that with enough money, one can escape the harms created by earning money in that way.
Instead of emulating them, we should first laugh at them, and then dismiss them. Theyre like the contestants in an episode of Survivor, trying to be the last one on the island. Its perversely amusing, and sometimes hard to look away. Its the same impulse that leads many Americans to vote for Trump less because they want him for president than because he will make for better television.
But its time to turn off this show, this car accident of a tech future, and get on with reclaiming the world from this new generation of robber barons rather than continuing to fund their fantasies. These are not the demigods were looking for.
But its time to turn off this show, this car accident of a tech future, and get on with reclaiming the world from this new generation of robber barons rather than continuing to fund their fantasies. These are not the demigods were looking for.
Sure, but how???
prodigitalson
(2,506 posts)3. finally an explanation for Zuckerberg's stupid haircut
now that I know, I kinda wish I didn't