Survival of the Richest - Douglas Rushkoff

The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind.

Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers. It was by far the largest fee I had ever been offered for a talk — about half my annual professor’s salary — all to deliver some insight on the subject of “the future of technology.”

I’ve never liked talking about the future. The Q&A sessions always end up more like parlor games, where I’m asked to opine on the latest technology buzzwords as if they were ticker symbols for potential investments: blockchain, 3D printing, CRISPR. The audiences are rarely interested in learning about these technologies or their potential impacts beyond the binary choice of whether or not to invest in them. But money talks, so I took the gig.

France’s class wars - Le Monde diplomatique

France’s class wars 

 

The working class was supposed to have been edged out of active politics, but instead France’s elites have been frightened into making concessions by this winter’s uprising of the yellow vests. Its continuing popularity suggests that it is recasting French politics.

France’s elites have not felt such fear in half a century, and it’s not the usual fear of losing an election, failing to ‘reform’ or seeing their shares slide on the stock market, but fear of insurrection, revolt, and loss of power. The street protests on 1 December 2018 caused some to feel a sudden chill. As BFM TV’s star news anchor Ruth Elkrief shuddered: ‘The most urgent thing is for people to go home.’ The channel was showing footage of yellow vest protesters determined to claim a better life for themselves.

A few days later, a journalist from the pro-business daily L’Opinion revealed on TV that ‘all the big industrial groups are going to give out bonuses, because they were really scared for a time that their heads would end up on stakes. So after that terrible Saturday when all the damage was done [1 December], the big firms called Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, the head of Medef [France’s largest employers’ federation], and told him to “drop everything! Drop it all, or else...” They felt physically threatened.’