Tech billionaires are your worst enemy. There is nothing progressive in the commodification of all your time, attention and information. In fact, growing sectors of the digital economy are at the forefront of authoritarian, anti-democratic politics in the United States.
This form of politics includes Elon Musk’s determination to exclude unions from his factories, Jeff Bezos’ surveillance and abuse of workers and desire to privatize early childhood education and Mark Zuckerberg’s power to censor and destroy media outlets. Then there’s Peter Thiel, a feudalist who runs a private wing of the surveillance state which is a key part of the deportation racket.
Such policies are often sold as part of a dynamic individualist solution to all our social problems, properly termed "capitalist futurism." But social and ecological crises cannot be solved by a few hundred thousand electric cars or breaking teachers' unions. They are often caused by union-busting and privatization in the first place. Apps instead of schools and a cocktail bar on Mars are whimsical fantasies when the actual solution to climate catastrophe and social crisis is simple: mass public investment in renewable energy, infrastructure, redistribution programs and less carbon intensive forms of industrial production. We don’t need billionaires; we just need each other.
Tech isn’t a solution — it’s a meaningless word used to make production seem forward thinking. But such a worship of wealth and capital is symptomatic of a social death cult, one which sees no end to its crisis, save escalation. The differing lines of thought, from Musk-worship to anti-humanism, all uplift charismatic individuals, property and privilege. Though some types of futurists do challenge the extant political order, they usually do so as implacable foes of democracy and defenders of a social order which can only save those who can pay. Billionaires ideologically reproduce the status quo. So long as the economy is controlled by the rich, technological advance can only deepen the exploitation of natural resources and labor. There is no such thing as green capitalism, no such thing as humanistic capitalism. There is only reaction cloaked as progress.
The behavior of tech firms reveals the anti-labor, anti-human heart in capitalist futurism. Uber has never proved its business model to be sustainable, as the company rarely turns quarterly profit, but it broke the taxi industry by deliberately violating regulations until we all just gave up on enforcement. Tesla routinely fails to meet production targets and abuses its workers. Yet, its cars, running on a coal and natural gas grid, are held up as symbols of a bright future. Finding new ways of doing things worse is not revolutionary.
In the end, the worship of tech billionaires is not an issue of individual morality, or technology conflicting with humanity, or barren minimalism. The problem remains the fundamental clash between those who work and those who own. Those who own have found a language that lets them play God, and helps them claim the fruits of our labor come from individual genius. It’s important to remember how laughable, pernicious and cruel they are, or else, they may just reshape the world in their image.
Red Star: Feudalism and the futurist mindset
