In our deluded world one of the perks of huge wealth is power, political and corporate — and the two are bedmates. Piles of money also ~~seems~~ [seem] to rot the brain, eroding any semblance of rational thinking and common sense as the fingers of narcissism and megalomania engulf the mind and poison the soul.
I recently watched a BBC documentary entitled ‘The Tech Billionaire Takeover’. It featured a series of extremely rich, completely whacky, and very dangerous characters: playing a central role is Justin Sun, CEO of Tron, a blockchain platform where crypto can be bought and sold. Sun is in business with World Liberty Financial, the Trump family crypto business, although they seem to have fallen out and he is now suing them, and, true to form, the Trumps are suing him. And while the world burns and the people cry out, the pantomime of money goes on, and on.
Another leading figure in the documentary is Tim Draper — “The Risk Master of Silicon Valley”. A venture capitalist, he heads up Draper University — “Building the Next Generation of Superheroes”. A weird place where the ‘gods of money and success’ form the altarpiece, offering “an intensive immersive five-weeks pre-accelerator program” in Hero Training — whatever that is.
Curtis Yarvin, a key figure in shaping the ideology shared by Draper, Sun, Trump, Vance and others, was also featured.
A far-right political blogger and software engineer, in 2008, under his pen name Mencius Moldbug, Yarvin posted an online pamphlet entitled ‘Patchwork: A Political System for the 21st Century’. The basic idea of ‘Patchwork’, according to Moldbug/Yarvin, is the replacement of governments by “a global spiderweb of tens, even hundreds, of thousands of sovereign mini-countries, each governed by its own joint-stock corporation without regard to the residents’ opinions.” Micro-nations, like Liberland, which was featured in the BBC programme.
These small island territories, independently governed backwaters, exist outside international law, with no democratic structures, and are funded not through taxation — nobody pays tax in such bubbles — but through corporate donors. Democracy is jettisoned in favour of a corporate monarchy administered through blockchain, a hidden world of pulsing dashes and dots — where Sun and Co. envision elections taking place within years, not decades, or not never.
On top of their hatred of democracy and social justice, these blinded visionaries hold a dismissive approach towards the environmental emergency.
On this issue too there is broad agreement among the techno-colonialist circle — a symbiotic delusion that might be summed up by Yarvin, who regards the environmental crisis as “basically insignificant” compared to violence, which he considers the only truly significant problem facing humanity. They do not simply ignore the climate crisis; they see it as an opportunity — ‘Catastrophe as an Opportunity’.
Rising sea levels, unbearable heat, drought, floods and so on, are not regarded as disasters but rather the chance to “start society afresh” along ideological lines drawn by the new Monarchs. Non-democratic societies built by the mega-rich from the wreckage of a world ravaged by climate change and ecological collapse — caused by the very ideology of greed that such men champion.
Though not featured, Elon Musk also sits comfortably within the paradigm of extremism that was on display. He has routinely spread misinformation about climate change, including dismissing farming’s impact on the climate. His false and incendiary statements often align with fringe viewpoints that fuel division and downplay the urgency of the climate crisis, leading many to label him a climate denier.
Disbelief
All of this madness was new to me, and I spent most of the time shaking my head in disbelief. To begin with I thought I’d stumbled on a drama series, so horrific and far-fetched was the content.
I had never heard of micronations; I was aware of crypto and blockchain, but, like most people, I had no idea what they really are or how they work. I suspect I am not alone in my ignorance or confusion. Do those investing in crypto, or regulating it — is it even properly regulated? — understand it any better? I doubt it. That, I suspect, is precisely the point.
The digital despots sitting behind such systems profit from collective ignorance. The more obscure the technology, the more power they hold. They speak in jargon, promise utopia, and nobody questions them – because nobody wants to admit they do not understand, and anyway, we all have lives to live.
Where, in such a disturbing dark paradigm, do we find ‘the people’? Where is the accountability, the democratic processes, the aspirational ideals like equality, freedom and social justice?
Wealth, power, inequality, exploitation: entwined social poisons that destroy democracy, make social justice impossible, and fuel division and conflict — constitute the very foundations of the world they want to build.
Clearly these would-be monarchs are not concerned with equality, freedom or social justice — woke ideals, they may call them. On the contrary, they are open about their plans to dismantle democracy, establish private kingdoms and install dictators, oh, and replace money with crypto currencies.
All of this led me to ask myself: what kind of world is it that listens to men like these, and allows them to wield so much power?
It is a world in crisis, without doubt. By ‘world’ we mean society, and by society is meant people. There is no society separate from people; society is not an abstraction existing outside the men and women who populate it.
‘The world’ cannot be changed because it does not exist as an independent form. Rather, it is people who must change — and in changing, accept complete responsibility, both for the chaos that is all around us, and for the new world that, if we are to prosper — indeed, if we are to survive — must be built.
Only then, when we all accept total responsibility for ourselves, for our neighbour and by extension, for society, and in doing so act for the common good, the welfare of our neighbour and the natural world, only then can people like Sun, Draper and ‘The Trumps’ — divisive, cruel men — be consigned to the margins. Their ludicrous, dangerous vision of society seen clearly for what it is, and consigned to irrelevance.
