The only way to justify the libertarian vision of laissez-faire capitalism is social Darwinism: the idea that the "winners" in market competition are the only ones who deserve to survive, and the "losers" might as well die off. If you believe in the moral equality of human beings, it follows that everyone should have a right to healthcare, housing, a living wage, and education (what MLK meant by "democratic socialism"). But if you deny human moral equality, you don't lose sleep over the fact that some people are homeless, work for starvation wages, or go bankrupt from medical debt, while others can buy private islands and $700 million megayachts. After all, who cares what happens to the losers? This sociopathic denial of interconnectedness is fundamentally at odds with what indigenous people have understood for thousands of years.
What's worse is knowing that, only a very select few truly benefit from this system (the multi-millionaires who can buy everything and everyone without barely working) while basically everyone on this planet would be better off with a new one; we already have the resources and tech to give everyone an amazing life, yet the majority of people are blinded to this fact and even defend the way things are. We (all of us) must understand asap that the only way things are gonna work (regardless of that being a socialist/communist path or a VERY well regulated market competition one) is if we, the people, are in power so that all the governmental machine works towards society's interests instead of the egotistical private ones of 0.01% of the world's population.
Absolutely! When they’ve taken so much away from the people, and they’ve nothing left to eat, what’s left? Eat the Rich. It’s not literal, it’s figurative. Oppress people enough, they will rebel and come after the rich.
As a 11 year old I wrote those exact word on my gym class t-shirt just to annoy the rich kids in my class. On the back it said "earn your worth!" just to shut them the fuck up when they started having opinions on the "eat the rich" statements.
It’s because they only ever invest in failure philanthropies that reinforce their own desires to revise the world. They could do a lot more with direct monetary transfer with people on the ground, but their own arrogance and hubris prevents them from realizing people might be better at addressing their own needs than some through the beneficence of a billionaires paternalistic contributions to vapid, idealistic NGO that have no desire to generate actual improvements in material circumstances.
They're malignant narcissists , it's not in their DNA and no one around them is interested in helping other people either . So they feed each other's ego's . The get - off on hoarding their $$ and the power and control that brings , not on being kind and generous people
I live in Silicon Valley, not by choice but because I ended up here by human trafficking. I mention that because it's relevant to how Silicon Valley's whole mentality is reducing humans to profitability calculations. Many on the outside looking in might assume the rich life is great, but my personal experience doing automotive photography for exotic car owners is that they would do anything to escape their reality. Half of them are drinking before noon at our club gatherings just to feel fine. The data behind wealthy people being miserable it becomes obvious that privilege has a price and it's the desperate escapism in tech entrepreneurs that shows you they don't have a clue how to help themselves feel happy.
I'm so sorry for what you went through. Regarding their inability to be happy, or at least be satisfied with what they have, greed is an insatiable hunger, no matter what they achieve (and plunder), it's impossible to satisfy.
If money is what defines you, you will become its slave. Unfortunately, the rest of us scramble to find other ways to differentiate ourselves. Nobody is happy to be one of the many.
Well, all of society tells you that money = happiness. When you achieve that goal and find out it is a lie, you are left hollow. You are speaking the truth. I have commingled with plenty of the ultra wealthy and they are all miserable drug addicts (the ones that don't have a chemical vice are the scariest).
Yes, but no more than any of us would be. it's human nature to believe privilege is earned, entitlement is a natural state for the genetically and intellectually superior and poverty is a moral failure of the genetically and intellectually inferior. Like lottery winners who believe they've cracked the code, "I just new I was going to win!" and losers who think, "the lottery is rigged!" Billionaires are just lottery winners who think they've cracked the code because they happened to have the right idea at just the right moment and some one held the door for them. It does something to the psyche when you join the wealth class, anyone who isn't part of it is no longer a member of the same species. The truth is just too nuanced and humiliating to absorb. Other people are not people anymore, they are just numbers. The poor are more generous when donating a portion of their income to charity. When you're rich you build a wall around yourself because if you don't you won't be rich for very long. Suddenly everyone wants a piece of your wealth for them selves. Starting with family and friends. Soon it's total strangers, and if you say "no," you're a greedy selfish bastard who won't spread the wealth around, keeping it all for yourself. It's no surprise you become a sociopath. You then build a false narrative around yourself of the self made man, financial genius and brilliant entrepreneur. You pay people to tell you how clever you are every day until you believe it yourself. Every word that comes out of your mouth is solid 24 carat gold and you crush anyone who says otherwise. Those born into wealth usually handle it better than those who got rich later in life because they learn how to handle money. But eventually in every rich family a black sheep comes along and blows the family fortune on some hair brained scheme.
"You have to be nice to those people, but where does it stop?" says it all. They don't really think about or care how what they do affects the rest of the world.
@@dthomas9230 Um, so you're twisting this into a discussion about Jan. 6? Lol. What next, Hillary's emails? The subject is about the few who rule the majority and that they know there are more of us than them, and they never forget. The pitchforks are a metaphor for an uprising of ruled over the rulers. Jan. 6 was a bunch of people defending the fragile ego of a dim-witted crook and crony of the rich who's privilege protected him and his wealth all his miserable life. There wasn't anything noble or American about Jan 6. You should read more.
Definitely feels like "stuck in Freshman/Sophomore year of college" with tech people. Those personalities and outlooks are often developed in the sort of people who go into STEM areas, and people who never continue on and get to the point where they realize that there's a lot they don't know end up like this.
Hold on, there are lot of leftists in the STEM. I'm thinking mostly of mathematicians and physicists, and scientists in general. (Perhaps the trend is different among people in tech; probably...)
@@rv706 I live in SF and for 14 months was staying in SOMA which is the Tech upstart mecca. The impression I got was Tech bro's/gals were very emotionally stunted and insular people. It was wild watching these early twenty something folks bopping around, ear buds in and stepping over homeless people, piles of junkie vomit and side stepping human feces, needles and unknowns. I really don't think what they were seeing in human disparity was computing upstairs at all. Meanwhile they're spending 2 grand a month for a bunk bed in room with 3 other people. If this is what we're destined to become I'm glad I'm old enough not to have to witness it. Beware Tech Colonization absolutely destroys culture!
@@rv706 There's a difference in STEM students. There's a subset that are social, adaptable people who are normally functioning that just happen to want to be engineers and are a little shy and/or introverted. The other subset is actual sociopaths/incels who want to force others to give them social clout via coercion using money. Instead of working on their social skills, they just make a bunch of money doing tech bro shit, and fully expect their money to solve all of their problems. Sure, you can find a sugar baby that's super hot that'll fuck you for giving her a bunch of money every week, but she'll never love you. These people literally think in binary, and don't understand the nuances of social skills, and how the reason they're picked on for being weird asses has nothing to do with being poor or rich. And then, once they get their money, they just scoff at social skills and say they don't need them anymore, not realizing that IF the end of the world happens, the only thing that will save you is your own strength of force in violence (not someone else, but your OWN ability to defend YOURSELF) or your social skills and the ability to create or be welcomed into a social circle that is collective and works together. These guys have neither of those skills. They literally think you can just pay someone off when you can't do a thing. And, right now, generally speaking, they can.
Thank you Sam. This is one of the best segments ever. Halfway through I paused, made breakfast for my elderly parents, and bought Rushkoff's audiobook. Lucky for me he does the narration. I'm crushing on him a little bit.
Why he must be a literal idiot. He just accused people who actually believe in evolution as being worshipers of scientism. Any person who uses philosophy to try to disprove science is an idiot.
"We don't have jobs in order to get work done, we have jobs in order to justify letting a person participate in the spoils of capitalism." True, but reducing the demand for products by sharing them is not what helps the workers to get a shorter work week out of this. Putting the role of board of directors into the workers hands is the only thing that could do that.
I can't understand why these billionaires would want to live in a bunker. Even in the ideal scenario, it's still a concrete box you can't leave. That sounds like utter hell to me. Even during lockdown, maybe you couldn't shop or go to a restaurant or anything, but you could go outside and see a bird or something. Get some fresh air and look for shapes in the clouds.
I read about this. They think it's already inevitable, that they don't have influence in the coming about of these events. It's yet another way how they distance themselves from the consequences of their actions and why we should do anything in our power to get rid of theirs.
This analysis is so spot on and deals with a wide range of different topics. Particularly, with our food production, we are so far removed from the sources, that we forget about the people that actually do the labor to make it get to that supermarket. I love meat, but if I had to butcher it myself, I would probably be a pescatarian.
I had a coworker from Bolivia. She told about having to buy live chickens. She couldn’t kill them, so her husband did. When they moved to the USA, she was delighted she could buy chicken from the supermarket.
@@romanski5811 Never gave it much thought. A dog is just another animal when it comes down to survival. Some people eat dog a regular basis. I don't feel it unnecessarily makes them a bad person. I personally wouldn't do it, but I'm in a privileged position here in the united states. I don't feel like it's my place to judge anyone. What's your opinion on it?
@@ALL_CAPS__ I think that people who support the killing of animals for pleasure (taste of meat), convenience (nutrient packaging) and habit (tradition) but have the means not to support it, are doing a bad thing. Ideally we make society such that everyone has the means to not support unnecessary violence toward animals and on the basis of that we can make the slaughtering of these animals and the selling of their meat illegal. Killing chimpanzees, dogs, humans or pigs etc. is wrong in my opinion and should only be done when there's no other option left or to alleviate suffering (old age, sickness etc.). But killing out of pleasure, convenience and habit should ideally never even be allowed legally. Of course, killing a pig or a human on a deserted island in order to survive, I don't have moral qualms with that, but for those people living in industrial nations and having the means to choose between options, that's when I think it becomes ethically unjustified in many cases. And of course there are some rare exceptions because of legitimate health issues, but aside from that it's definitely wrong to support unnecessary violence toward human and non-human animals.
@@janel.8921 absolutely. I have lots of friends and family from outside the US.The stories are the same when it comes to putting meat on the table, especially in a rural areas. You go to the open air market and get your live or freshly defeathered and chopped chicken. Right as you wait in many instances. We really have no conception of "farm fresh" in the US. Everyone does say the freshness of the meat has a better flavor when compared to the US. I do wanna try it, but my sheltered American ass really doesn't want to see it.
My friends brother-in-law builds custom bunker homes for the super rich. He told me straight up that if the sh*t hits the fan, he's gonna backdoor in and takeover one of them even if he has to expunge the owner and his family.
I get by on almost no money. I work a lot, helping people get what they need, and I ask for nothing. Others do the same for me. That leaves me more time to focus on real happiness. Meaningful relationships and terrestrial stewardship.
U are like saint, too bad the rest of the world need money to survive.. I don't need billions but I need money to buy good, housing, healthcare and vehicle to get to and from work that doesn't pay living wage so I feel trapped because I have health issue if I quit I lose healthcare but good for u that u get by in barely any money
The problem with these billionaires is cognitive. They want to live forever in bunkers full of riches and food, but they forget that pharaohs like Tutankhamun tried to do that and ended up becoming an object of general curiosity in a museum. It's unfair to compare these guys to Roman emperors, because even those who were psychopaths in some way were forced to take care of the population (or at least the richest part of it) under penalty of being murdered in a nasty way. The model of Big Tech owners is the feudal lord who lives in a protected castle and monopolizes a language that is not shared by others. They force everyone to work for free for them and hoard their wealth away from the hands of those they see as inferior people and condemned by God to live a miserable life. But... history didn't end well for the feudal lords either and their castles eventually became an object of general curiosity. Ultimately, billionaires know that no matter how much money they have, what nonsense they believe, and whatever they do, death whispers in their ears every night: "Tomorrow may be your last day alive." And one day they will take their last breath like everyone else. And I like to assume that their despair is greater than that of most people, because those who suffer are able to see death as a relief and not a terrible and undesirable punishment.
@@jacekmiksza505if you decide to live the examined life, it becomes so apparent. That it has to make you contemplative, and reveal something ubiquitous about our experiences.
Sam: "So, Billionaires bad?" Doug: "Yeah, I mean in some ways it does sound simplistic, but when you actually say it, 'billionaire is bad', almost by definition..they are right. *Billionaires are living at a scale that is inappropriate to the reality in which we live,* and then it engenders them into thinking about our world at scale in a way that doesn't work, so that even now, as they take over philanthropy...when you want to come up with an idea of something that's going to help people..they want to know..if this is a world-changing moonshot idea that operates at scale..or if it just saves a particular group of people..well, that didn't scale right. They could only think in _that way,_ which is sort of the danger. *We become a very brittle civilization if we think in that way, too."* MR has the bestest of best guests! Once again, Winner Winner Chicken Dinner
Or, another way to put it "inappropriate to being human". These people are TRANSHUMANISTS , they wish to lose their humanity, to not be like us; in effect, to become gods existing in a separate reality. So maybe they'll just disappear in puff of smoke one day and leave us mortals behind. Good riddance, I say.
@@nerag7459 Seriously! Honestly and sincerely even - though admittedly, their own good is only a small part of the total reason and I don't foresee them appreciating it in any hurry. Heck, politically, I'm doubtful we could manage it in their lifetimes without causing more bad feelings in the process that they'd not get over.
10:54 Wow. This is frightening and also very much reflects that the idea of "let companies regulate themselves and they'll do the right thing" is not true. They will exploit people and systems even further for profit. Past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior/actions.
This has always been the case. Both Roman and early Islamic sources account of slaves rebellions, multiple times. The earliest Western industrialized area, the fabric producing between Antwerp Be and Lille Fr, has had several strikes, as had England. Most of the time, leaders were hanged. USA and UK in the second stages of Industrial Revolution, had labourers movements, again the leaders were arrested and some of m hanged. All the time, it was because of bad working conditions and unhealthy environment, late and low payment. Then we built a decent social democratic system after the 1929 crash, only to let it be taken apart by Reagan and Thatcher era neo market capitalism. And then be surprised that the rich guys are doing it again... Actually, in them neo capitalist societies, it's not so much better then in oligarch dominated corrupt Russia, it's just you are free to utter one's issues with the system. Which then happily marches on- over you.
Douglas Rushkoff is a joy to listen to. I first was aware of him from being in Psychedelic Illuminations Magazine in the mid-90s. I read his trippy rave novel The Ecstasy Club, which I liked a lot. I read a great CNN column he wrote prior to the whole cryptocurrency thing where he was talking about how alternative currencies could be made using the model of selling or trading frequent flyer miles. He's just a brilliant guy. Probably the closest thing that we have to Timothy Leary today.
@@TheKingWhoWins The planes are gonna fly and do their polluting regardless of if they are full or not, you know? But anyway, it wasn't a serious proposal, but more of a hypothetical example of how anything that is perceived to be of value which can be exchanged could be the basis of an alternative currency. This may sound in this current era to be common knowledge, but he was saying this back before anyone heard of bitcoin or the block chain.
@@spacecase8888 thnx - I think they had a symposium there, maybe celebrating Hoffman Bicycle Day, just happened to be reading their magazine and going thru at the same time ~
Ever see the movie Outland? Pretty much a classic western but set in an off-world mining colony. Just like in terrestrial mining, workers work like dogs and have to pay back debts accrued in making the journey, buying equipment and renting housing. Pretty much The Company Store all over again.
I wish I had the skill set to write a book about this subject. It’s some thing I became aware of about 20 years ago. It was called the third alternative. The idea is that climate change was recognized as a problem more than 40 years ago. There were three alternative solutions. Number one immediately sees the use of greenhouse gases, so that the planet would heal itself. Number two, and this is the one that we actually did, increase awareness of the problem, and gradually slow down our use of fossil fuels and other greenhouse, gas producing materials. Number three. A small segment of the population will abandon planet earth in favor of going to the stars. This was the plot of the James Bond film Moonraker. There was even a red, hot chili, peppers, song scar tissue, where Anthony, the lead singer included this lyric: i’ll make it to the moon if I have to crawl. The tech brows are just a small and visible examples of this mindset/worldview. We should also be concerned with royalty - especially European royalty, and other so-called captains of industry, including the international criminal class, who, even in the United States have a mass great fortunes. Enough to afford a seat on that rocket ship. Think about the last scene in the Netflix show “ don’t look up
Global warming isn’t a real threat. Artificial weather modification and geo engineering is causing much damage by design as they are deliberately trying to reduce the population. The real issue is a possible magnetic pole shift. 😞 And there really isn’t a lot the average person can do about it if that happens.
Re the battery drill scenario: When I was a railway apprentice in the 70s I had a big shoulder brace hand drill for metal and a carpenters brace hand drill for wood. Last year After our 2nd battery drill refused to charge battery I bought 2nd hand hand drill. Perfect for most things. Its about 80 years old!
@20:00 heart-warming amidst the tragi-hilarity of it all to hear Rushkoff talk about the decrepitude of materialism from a clearly Marxist perspective. I've been on about this since as long as I can remember, after ditching freshman dorm tech-nerdism when I was 16. Don't ever be ashamed to be called a "moralist". It's a mark of respect. The atheist-materialists are telling you that you have a belief in "The Good" and in ideals beyond physical reality, and they cannot imagine such things having any "reality". They also tease you that you have no idea what you are talking about in your moralism, but that's ok, you don't have to understand a mystery to acknowledge something is mysterious and worth exploring. Fwiw, I am a physicist, have studied physics all my life, and at least afaik there is no way even in principle objective physics can "emerge" subjective phenomena, it just is not logically possible, so Rushkoff is right imho, there is something *_more_* going on with people (and possibly other animals). To ignore that and retreat to materialism is giving up on the quest for knowledge and wisdom. You don't have to subscribe to a pseudo-religion to believe this, you just need an open mind. you don't even _have_ to believe in the reality of "the human soul" you just need to be honest and admit it is a possibility, then go from there, explore.
@Achrononmaster that was beautifully said. I really want to believe that there is more to us than what we can reduce to material reality. That our brains are more like receivers of consciousness than the source of it. That there is still so much more to learn and discover about this universe, and we act with extreme hubris if we believe we have it all figured out.
'there is no way even in principle objective physics can "emerge" subjective phenomena, it just is not logically possible' What does this even mean? How would you even even define "objective" and "subjective" in this context without making this statement tautological?
I've said it to myself a few times that certain people need tp pay more attention to history -im glad that i wasn't being as hyperbolic as i thought i might have been
That really exposes why the tec sector is so big on AI. Automate their security because theyre terrified of people having any possible agency outside their control.
The Mercer-esque "shrink government to the size of a pinhead" worldview is super confusing. If I look around right now I see houses, it's a nice day outside. If I walk twenty minutes into town and look around I primarily see buildings with weird logos attached to them. If you go inside these buildings you'll see that almost everyone inside is forced to wear the same clothing, to speak in a manner that is subservient, to avoid talk and action that hasn't been sanctioned by a master [I borrow this language from Adam Smith]. Surely it's the case that reducing the size of government would cause these Behaviorist nightmares, often called multi-national corporations, to become even worse no?
This is what I've been telling people for years already. One of the most harmful things that R. Reagan accomplished was to turn the people against their own government. His campaign line, "the scariest thing in life is the government knocking at your door and asking you 'what can I do for you'" made him a superstar with people who saw government also benefitting the "others". With those simple words he succeeded of not only leading the citizens to cede control of the rudder that controls the country, government, but actually turned people against it. After you turn people against their own government, it becomes a cinch to just hand it over to the Oligarchs and corporations. And these are the ones who mostly control it now. I'm now warning that the next inevitable step for them is to *get rid of democracy* , to remove all control from the people. And religion is going to play a big part in this.
@@xelasomar4614 It is sorta like a self fulfilled prophecy. Less govt means less protections for the people but it is right wing PC'd into Freedom. Not actual freedom but just the hollow word. I have said to some, who would you rather control govt? The People or Oligarchs and Corporations. They just laugh and say less govt will stop the oligarch etc control. You just stare at them because it shows lack of historical knowledge. When govt stepped in to protect the people those very same oligarchs then sought to take control of the govt and lessen these protections to make them luke warm to ineffectual. By making less govt means less laws etc on those oligarchs and they can do what they want.
Emma, Blaming 'the history of capitalism' is glib and ignorant. Walling themselves off from the plebians has been a thing since thousands of years before capitalism. It's about aristocracy and elitism. It happens where there is no capitalism or democracy. It's about the aristocracy vs the peasants. Calling it capitalism leads those who may not understand things to get the wrong impression of exactly what capitalism is. It is an economic system, and if it is predatory these days, that's only because it has been allowed to be predatory by those who are manipulating the system for their own comfort.
The second their money becomes worthless these idiots would be abandoned and alone in the best case scenario. They're going to be killed the second anything starts
4:41 “where does it stop?” So true! I was nice to someone once, and then I realized it could get totally out of hand, so I put an end to that right away!
They don’t understand the importance of empathy and caring for others, it’s like a stunted or abused child. How this version of society has become totally disconnected from what is real. Money isn’t real,or important because it’s worthless when you’re stranded on a boat in the middle of the ocean. We need eachother.
I love how this gentleman shifted the blame for these Tech billionaires having narcissism and greed from themselves to the evil Venture Capitalist whom exploited them and the lack of a good professor to ground them.
He actually coined the term "viral" in internet slang. Has a few articles about internet/media culture that are insightful and an interview with Bo Burnham that's really interesting.
A good read on this general idea is Lucifer's Hammer, by Niven & Pournelle. It's about an asteroid strike. One character is a wealthy tech exec (IIRC) who has his own observatory on a mountaintop. He's stocked it with food, survival gear, etc. Comes the disaster, he drives up to find it's been taken over by an employee of his, along with several men with guns. They let him walk away.
That is an interesting point. Who will guard it for the billionaires? People who they will also have to feed and accommodate along with their families. How many would they have to accomodate and feed? Money would lose all value. What would stop the employees/guards from taking over the bunkers given no money was being exchanged.
So glad I found this thinker and his books. He's excellent at synthesizing and cross/inter-sectionally analyzing zeitgeists. Just what I was looking for. Bravo.
Respectfully, atheists are perfectly capable of making ethical decisions and have never committed genocide for their hope that their preferred deity is real and likes them best. Please don’t vilify folks for their religious beliefs; belief in a god is no assurance of morality.
Excellent talk but I'd like to point out that the whole "atheists are evil" thing (he didn't use those exact words but I believe that's what he was trying to say, that believing in some sort of divine energy or soul makes him a better human being) isn't true. I kinda understand that maybe the atheists he interacted with were elitist d0uch3bags but I believe there's no soul, god, divine consequences for our actions (karma) or anything supernatural, yet I still do good because those are my core values. I believe that not having a religion (or at least not growing up with a religion) actually helps you have good values, because even kids instinctively wanna help others and feel empathy, they feel when some action isn't okay and the person/victim of it isn't comfortable. Do to others what you'd like somebody else to do for you, that's very simple to understand and follow and you don't need a religion for that. Religion actually messes the whole thing up (your values) because you delegate to a divine being the ability to discern good from evil and to do good; only Jesus, God or whatever, could be good by nature. And people who grow up around religion learn to fear doing "evil" instead of putting themselves in the place of others; they aren't taught "don't do that, have you thought how that person will feel?", instead they listen to their parents say "don't do that, that's a sin and God will punish you!", which actually makes them, deep inside, feel a desire to break the rules and rebel. Idk if any of this made sense to you but I just meant to say that, no, religion or a belief in something higher isn't necessary for a person to have good values, and having those beliefs can actually **ćƙ up the person's values instead.
I'll just post what I said to someone earlier as people seem really confused/attacked by that segment. "That's a weird interpretation of that. He was saying that humans have inherent worth to make an analysis of how these people who believe in scientism think about natalism in regards to Emma's question. Think about it in that context." It really is making a mountain out of a mole hill to think about it in terms of anything beyond that. I'm a non believer too, felt weird to me at first, but I think it really was to address that. Regardless of what he personally believes. Plus arguing with a bunch of new atheists who then turned out to be Epstein pals is a fun anecdote.
There IS ENOUGH foer everyones Need, There can NEVER be enough for EVERYONES GREED❤❤❤! THERE ARE 99 OF US, for EVERY ONE of THEM... or is that math too hard for them... Thank you for your work...❤
10:56 Yes, look up the Paul Piff studies (TED / Altantic). And yes, we’re all the same in the sense that we’re all vulnerable to the same psychological influences, such as wealth and privilege. Hoarding obscene amounts of money harms us all. Billionaires are basically modern day kings.
Capitalism rewards psychopathy. It happens at all levels. 35 years ago, as a new PhD, I had the chance to sell my soul for a great salary, if only I helped the people in my lab conceal data manipulation of the results obtained from genetically modified seeds. I was told I shouldn't care, since the seeds were to be sent to a country that had nothing to do with me (India). I couldn't do it. I got blacklisted from all the biotech labs at the time, and ended up working in a government lab, earning barely 20% of the money I'd have made with that company. I'm old now, but I can sleep at night in peace, no need for drugs.
The villain in the 1979 James Bond movie, Moonraker, is perfect example: disconnect from humanity; get your stud farm up in the sky; terminate the human race!
Great discussion. I’ve watched tech developthrough many cycles, my first experience with a computer was punch cards (and I went to Grateful Dead concerts in the 80s) and today have this sense with recent AI that we are about to lose control of the tech development system. When we give tech systems the ability to create their own code and view “alignment “ as inevitable rather than as something that must be carefully and precisely developed we are going to lose something that will be next to impossible to get back.
I've read Ruskoff's first article on this topic and I really enjoyed his conversation with Bo Burnham, but this ... this is an eye opener. Wow. It's truly an all out war on the every man.
Lol, and who is going to enforce that rule? The aliens that allegedly landed in the backyard of some American family that for so.e reason didn't take pictures or videos of the event?
This reminded me of a documentary called "Park Avenue." It was based on a study of rich people, and how they do not see the world, humans, etc. in the same way as "normal" people.
This was really fascinating. Blew my mind. The reasons why it's beneficial to citizens to have proper moral anti-capitalist values as adults should be taught in secondary schools to help students' future well-being.
Idk man. Capitalism at core is exchange of currency for items. Its not bad until that point as long as people are decent human being. I dont think that eradication of capitalism fixes anything as long as the underlying causes of capitalism's main issues, greed, selfishness etc. still remain in place. Corruption will corrupt anything there is no matter what it is. Monarchy can be great as long as the king cares for people and actually serves the people rather than the other way around.
16:32 -As I listen, the evolutionary image of man emerging from primate is now replaced with an image of Novo/New man emerging from the common man we see today. A new species is arising, and the face of humanity is shifting.
The problem is that these billionaires might be right. They may be able to outrun the damage they cause. It's up to the rest of us to prove them wrong.
Uhm, we (scandinavia) literally have a personal identification that's electronic (there's an app) that identify us so we can for example access personal information, banking and make transactions. It's incredibly handy and would solve social media and other platform issues with fake accounts, online harassment and other criminal activities on these platforms. So an actual verification system exists and I'm baffled that not more countries use it.
The only way to justify the libertarian vision of laissez-faire capitalism is social Darwinism: the idea that the "winners" in market competition are the only ones who deserve to survive, and the "losers" might as well die off. If you believe in the moral equality of human beings, it follows that everyone should have a right to healthcare, housing, a living wage, and education (what MLK meant by "democratic socialism"). But if you deny human moral equality, you don't lose sleep over the fact that some people are homeless, work for starvation wages, or go bankrupt from medical debt, while others can buy private islands and $700 million megayachts. After all, who cares what happens to the losers? This sociopathic denial of interconnectedness is fundamentally at odds with what indigenous people have understood for thousands of years.
Libertarianism is economics for stupid people.
I feel like if social darwinism is the "thing", Bank robbery, kidnapping, industrial crime etc. are acceptable techniques to achieve success.
Right
It IS possible for there to be too much (economic) equality, also. Needless to say, the US is not in any danger of that happening. 😂
What's worse is knowing that, only a very select few truly benefit from this system (the multi-millionaires who can buy everything and everyone without barely working) while basically everyone on this planet would be better off with a new one; we already have the resources and tech to give everyone an amazing life, yet the majority of people are blinded to this fact and even defend the way things are.
We (all of us) must understand asap that the only way things are gonna work (regardless of that being a socialist/communist path or a VERY well regulated market competition one) is if we, the people, are in power so that all the governmental machine works towards society's interests instead of the egotistical private ones of 0.01% of the world's population.
“Eat the rich” isnt a slogan, its a warning for when they screw things up for us so much they become our food
Absolutely! When they’ve taken so much away from the people, and they’ve nothing left to eat, what’s left? Eat the Rich. It’s not literal, it’s figurative. Oppress people enough, they will rebel and come after the rich.
nothing will happen. none of you will rise up or any of that shit. It's an impotent warning at best.
fava beans & chianti, ph ph ph.
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As a 11 year old I wrote those exact word on my gym class t-shirt just to annoy the rich kids in my class.
On the back it said "earn your worth!" just to shut them the fuck up when they started having opinions on the "eat the rich" statements.
Its a shame they don't understand how rewarding helping other people is,
They're dumb smart.
It’s not to them, they lack the empathy that makes it rewarding.
Baby souls dont care about other people.
It’s because they only ever invest in failure philanthropies that reinforce their own desires to revise the world. They could do a lot more with direct monetary transfer with people on the ground, but their own arrogance and hubris prevents them from realizing people might be better at addressing their own needs than some through the beneficence of a billionaires paternalistic contributions to vapid, idealistic NGO that have no desire to generate actual improvements in material circumstances.
They're malignant narcissists , it's not in their DNA and no one around them is interested in helping other people either . So they feed each other's ego's . The get - off on hoarding their $$ and the power and control that brings , not on being kind and generous people
I live in Silicon Valley, not by choice but because I ended up here by human trafficking. I mention that because it's relevant to how Silicon Valley's whole mentality is reducing humans to profitability calculations. Many on the outside looking in might assume the rich life is great, but my personal experience doing automotive photography for exotic car owners is that they would do anything to escape their reality. Half of them are drinking before noon at our club gatherings just to feel fine. The data behind wealthy people being miserable it becomes obvious that privilege has a price and it's the desperate escapism in tech entrepreneurs that shows you they don't have a clue how to help themselves feel happy.
I'm so sorry for what you went through.
Regarding their inability to be happy, or at least be satisfied with what they have, greed is an insatiable hunger, no matter what they achieve (and plunder), it's impossible to satisfy.
If money is what defines you, you will become its slave. Unfortunately, the rest of us scramble to find other ways to differentiate ourselves. Nobody is happy to be one of the many.
Well, all of society tells you that money = happiness. When you achieve that goal and find out it is a lie, you are left hollow. You are speaking the truth. I have commingled with plenty of the ultra wealthy and they are all miserable drug addicts (the ones that don't have a chemical vice are the scariest).
Settlers The mythology of the white proletariat part 1 J Sakai
Human trafficking? I'm sorry, wtf?
So billionaires are actual sociopaths.
Also psychopaths. Guillotines are our friends.
You have to be one to acquire that much.
Nice of you to finally join us at this restaurant.
Yes, but no more than any of us would be.
it's human nature to believe privilege is earned, entitlement is a natural state for the genetically and intellectually superior and poverty is a moral failure of the genetically and intellectually inferior. Like lottery winners who believe they've cracked the code, "I just new I was going to win!" and losers who think, "the lottery is rigged!" Billionaires are just lottery winners who think they've cracked the code because they happened to have the right idea at just the right moment and some one held the door for them.
It does something to the psyche when you join the wealth class, anyone who isn't part of it is no longer a member of the same species. The truth is just too nuanced and humiliating to absorb. Other people are not people anymore, they are just numbers. The poor are more generous when donating a portion of their income to charity.
When you're rich you build a wall around yourself because if you don't you won't be rich for very long. Suddenly everyone wants a piece of your wealth for them selves. Starting with family and friends. Soon it's total strangers, and if you say "no," you're a greedy selfish bastard who won't spread the wealth around, keeping it all for yourself.
It's no surprise you become a sociopath. You then build a false narrative around yourself of the self made man, financial genius and brilliant entrepreneur. You pay people to tell you how clever you are every day until you believe it yourself. Every word that comes out of your mouth is solid 24 carat gold and you crush anyone who says otherwise.
Those born into wealth usually handle it better than those who got rich later in life because they learn how to handle money. But eventually in every rich family a black sheep comes along and blows the family fortune on some hair brained scheme.
Sadistic sociopaths
"You have to be nice to those people, but where does it stop?" says it all. They don't really think about or care how what they do affects the rest of the world.
There always worried about the pitchforks coming for them. And they should be.
@@raincadeify But, they're not worried about AR-15s. The US populous are the most armed in history.
@@dthomas9230 It's a metaphor.
@@raincadeify Jan 06 saw more than metaphors
@@dthomas9230 Um, so you're twisting this into a discussion about Jan. 6? Lol. What next, Hillary's emails? The subject is about the few who rule the majority and that they know there are more of us than them, and they never forget. The pitchforks are a metaphor for an uprising of ruled over the rulers. Jan. 6 was a bunch of people defending the fragile ego of a dim-witted crook and crony of the rich who's privilege protected him and his wealth all his miserable life. There wasn't anything noble or American about Jan 6. You should read more.
Definitely feels like "stuck in Freshman/Sophomore year of college" with tech people. Those personalities and outlooks are often developed in the sort of people who go into STEM areas, and people who never continue on and get to the point where they realize that there's a lot they don't know end up like this.
Yeah. Lots of them drop out of college. Now they argue for the eradication of humanities requirements in universities they never finished attending.
Hold on, there are lot of leftists in the STEM. I'm thinking mostly of mathematicians and physicists, and scientists in general. (Perhaps the trend is different among people in tech; probably...)
@@rv706 Yeah, the generalities are flowing rn, lol.
@@rv706 I live in SF and for 14 months was staying in SOMA which is the Tech upstart mecca. The impression I got was Tech bro's/gals were very emotionally stunted and insular people. It was wild watching these early twenty something folks bopping around, ear buds in and stepping over homeless people, piles of junkie vomit and side stepping human feces, needles and unknowns. I really don't think what they were seeing in human disparity was computing upstairs at all. Meanwhile they're spending 2 grand a month for a bunk bed in room with 3 other people. If this is what we're destined to become I'm glad I'm old enough not to have to witness it. Beware Tech Colonization absolutely destroys culture!
@@rv706 There's a difference in STEM students. There's a subset that are social, adaptable people who are normally functioning that just happen to want to be engineers and are a little shy and/or introverted. The other subset is actual sociopaths/incels who want to force others to give them social clout via coercion using money. Instead of working on their social skills, they just make a bunch of money doing tech bro shit, and fully expect their money to solve all of their problems. Sure, you can find a sugar baby that's super hot that'll fuck you for giving her a bunch of money every week, but she'll never love you. These people literally think in binary, and don't understand the nuances of social skills, and how the reason they're picked on for being weird asses has nothing to do with being poor or rich. And then, once they get their money, they just scoff at social skills and say they don't need them anymore, not realizing that IF the end of the world happens, the only thing that will save you is your own strength of force in violence (not someone else, but your OWN ability to defend YOURSELF) or your social skills and the ability to create or be welcomed into a social circle that is collective and works together. These guys have neither of those skills. They literally think you can just pay someone off when you can't do a thing. And, right now, generally speaking, they can.
Thank you Sam. This is one of the best segments ever. Halfway through I paused, made breakfast for my elderly parents, and bought Rushkoff's audiobook. Lucky for me he does the narration. I'm crushing on him a little bit.
Me too😂
Why he must be a literal idiot. He just accused people who actually believe in evolution as being worshipers of scientism. Any person who uses philosophy to try to disprove science is an idiot.
I read "Team Human" in 2019. I highly recommend. Rushkoff is a very radical thinker!
"We don't have jobs in order to get work done, we have jobs in order to justify letting a person participate in the spoils of capitalism." True, but reducing the demand for products by sharing them is not what helps the workers to get a shorter work week out of this. Putting the role of board of directors into the workers hands is the only thing that could do that.
This dude destroyed half of online culture in his opening statement.
I can't understand why these billionaires would want to live in a bunker. Even in the ideal scenario, it's still a concrete box you can't leave. That sounds like utter hell to me. Even during lockdown, maybe you couldn't shop or go to a restaurant or anything, but you could go outside and see a bird or something. Get some fresh air and look for shapes in the clouds.
More and more I am convinced that billionaires have lost any semblance of humanity, they are already robots.
They're luxury "bunkers". The bunker really just denotes a fortified structure which can be defended against us plebs.
Mhm...would rather die in the chaos of the crash of civ.
I read about this. They think it's already inevitable, that they don't have influence in the coming about of these events. It's yet another way how they distance themselves from the consequences of their actions and why we should do anything in our power to get rid of theirs.
@@utubepunk A box you can't leave is still a box you can't leave no matter how big the box is! (I'm not yelling at you, I'm just yelling generally.)
This analysis is so spot on and deals with a wide range of different topics. Particularly, with our food production, we are so far removed from the sources, that we forget about the people that actually do the labor to make it get to that supermarket.
I love meat, but if I had to butcher it myself, I would probably be a pescatarian.
I had a coworker from Bolivia. She told about having to buy live chickens. She couldn’t kill them, so her husband did. When they moved to the USA, she was delighted she could buy chicken from the supermarket.
What is your opinion on people who kill dogs for their meat? Do you think these people deserve to be part of society?
@@romanski5811 Never gave it much thought. A dog is just another animal when it comes down to survival. Some people eat dog a regular basis. I don't feel it unnecessarily makes them a bad person.
I personally wouldn't do it, but I'm in a privileged position here in the united states. I don't feel like it's my place to judge anyone.
What's your opinion on it?
@@ALL_CAPS__
I think that people who support the killing of animals for pleasure (taste of meat), convenience (nutrient packaging) and habit (tradition) but have the means not to support it, are doing a bad thing.
Ideally we make society such that everyone has the means to not support unnecessary violence toward animals and on the basis of that we can make the slaughtering of these animals and the selling of their meat illegal.
Killing chimpanzees, dogs, humans or pigs etc. is wrong in my opinion and should only be done when there's no other option left or to alleviate suffering (old age, sickness etc.). But killing out of pleasure, convenience and habit should ideally never even be allowed legally.
Of course, killing a pig or a human on a deserted island in order to survive, I don't have moral qualms with that, but for those people living in industrial nations and having the means to choose between options, that's when I think it becomes ethically unjustified in many cases.
And of course there are some rare exceptions because of legitimate health issues, but aside from that it's definitely wrong to support unnecessary violence toward human and non-human animals.
@@janel.8921 absolutely. I have lots of friends and family from outside the US.The stories are the same when it comes to putting meat on the table, especially in a rural areas. You go to the open air market and get your live or freshly defeathered and chopped chicken. Right as you wait in many instances. We really have no conception of "farm fresh" in the US.
Everyone does say the freshness of the meat has a better flavor when compared to the US. I do wanna try it, but my sheltered American ass really doesn't want to see it.
OMG yes!!! This guy is fantastic! What a great conversation.
My friends brother-in-law builds custom bunker homes for the super rich. He told me straight up that if the sh*t hits the fan, he's gonna backdoor in and takeover one of them even if he has to expunge the owner and his family.
Yikes
There's always a backdoor
So they do build them , huh?
If there's an apocalypse, common people will be desperate, and desperate people do desperate things. Z cannot be assured of safety.
I get by on almost no money. I work a lot, helping people get what they need, and I ask for nothing. Others do the same for me. That leaves me more time to focus on real happiness. Meaningful relationships and terrestrial stewardship.
✓
Wow! Amazing dude 🏆🙌
U are like saint, too bad the rest of the world need money to survive.. I don't need billions but I need money to buy good, housing, healthcare and vehicle to get to and from work that doesn't pay living wage so I feel trapped because I have health issue if I quit I lose healthcare but good for u that u get by in barely any money
Brilliant, timely discussion. And the humor was a huge bonus!
The problem with these billionaires is cognitive. They want to live forever in bunkers full of riches and food, but they forget that pharaohs like Tutankhamun tried to do that and ended up becoming an object of general curiosity in a museum. It's unfair to compare these guys to Roman emperors, because even those who were psychopaths in some way were forced to take care of the population (or at least the richest part of it) under penalty of being murdered in a nasty way. The model of Big Tech owners is the feudal lord who lives in a protected castle and monopolizes a language that is not shared by others. They force everyone to work for free for them and hoard their wealth away from the hands of those they see as inferior people and condemned by God to live a miserable life. But... history didn't end well for the feudal lords either and their castles eventually became an object of general curiosity. Ultimately, billionaires know that no matter how much money they have, what nonsense they believe, and whatever they do, death whispers in their ears every night: "Tomorrow may be your last day alive." And one day they will take their last breath like everyone else. And I like to assume that their despair is greater than that of most people, because those who suffer are able to see death as a relief and not a terrible and undesirable punishment.
That's why death is sometimes called the ultimate equalizer. Isn't it pradoxical that death - our greatest fear is at the same time our fairest judge?
@@jacekmiksza505if you decide to live the examined life, it becomes so apparent. That it has to make you contemplative, and reveal something ubiquitous about our experiences.
Well that's it, isnt it, they want to live forever, but also they're hoping like hell they can. They really haven't thought that through.
Well said
Why don't we want to be forgotten for ever?
"Lefty psychedelic socialist Anarcho-Syndicalist", good damn, this is my jam!
Sam: "So, Billionaires bad?"
Doug: "Yeah, I mean in some ways it does sound simplistic, but when you actually say it, 'billionaire is bad', almost by definition..they are right. *Billionaires are living at a scale that is inappropriate to the reality in which we live,* and then it engenders them into thinking about our world at scale in a way that doesn't work, so that even now, as they take over philanthropy...when you want to come up with an idea of something that's going to help people..they want to know..if this is a world-changing moonshot idea that operates at scale..or if it just saves a particular group of people..well, that didn't scale right. They could only think in _that way,_ which is sort of the danger. *We become a very brittle civilization if we think in that way, too."*
MR has the bestest of best guests!
Once again, Winner Winner Chicken Dinner
No one's doing it like MR out here
:) I like this guy already, entirely unsarcastic!
"...inappropriate to the reality in which we live..". One of several quotes I've copied and pasted from this clip. Excellent stuff!
Or, another way to put it "inappropriate to being human".
These people are TRANSHUMANISTS , they wish to lose their humanity, to not be like us; in effect, to become gods existing in a separate reality.
So maybe they'll just disappear in puff of smoke one day and leave us mortals behind.
Good riddance, I say.
You know there are these awful people out there, but when you’re reminded of them you realize how messed up their world is.
Then there is no better thing left to do than liberate them from their wealth. Billionaires and anything beyond shouldn't even exists.
@@07Flash11MRC We are doing them a favor really.
They should all be ruthlessly sentenced to mere comfort and safety! Like the rest of us!
@@jeffengel2607 Liberate the rich from the burden of their wealth! For their own good.
@@nerag7459 Seriously! Honestly and sincerely even - though admittedly, their own good is only a small part of the total reason and I don't foresee them appreciating it in any hurry. Heck, politically, I'm doubtful we could manage it in their lifetimes without causing more bad feelings in the process that they'd not get over.
10:54 Wow. This is frightening and also very much reflects that the idea of "let companies regulate themselves and they'll do the right thing" is not true. They will exploit people and systems even further for profit. Past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior/actions.
This has always been the case. Both Roman and early Islamic sources account of slaves rebellions, multiple times. The earliest Western industrialized area, the fabric producing between Antwerp Be and Lille Fr, has had several strikes, as had England. Most of the time, leaders were hanged.
USA and UK in the second stages of Industrial Revolution, had labourers movements, again the leaders were arrested and some of m hanged. All the time, it was because of bad working conditions and unhealthy environment, late and low payment.
Then we built a decent social democratic system after the 1929 crash, only to let it be taken apart by Reagan and Thatcher era neo market capitalism.
And then be surprised that the rich guys are doing it again...
Actually, in them neo capitalist societies, it's not so much better then in oligarch dominated corrupt Russia, it's just you are free to utter one's issues with the system. Which then happily marches on- over you.
@@reuireuiop0 Let's not forget Swift's, "A Modest Proposal"
Rushkoff is fantastic. Great segment.
Douglas Rushkoff is a joy to listen to. I first was aware of him from being in Psychedelic Illuminations Magazine in the mid-90s. I read his trippy rave novel The Ecstasy Club, which I liked a lot. I read a great CNN column he wrote prior to the whole cryptocurrency thing where he was talking about how alternative currencies could be made using the model of selling or trading frequent flyer miles. He's just a brilliant guy. Probably the closest thing that we have to Timothy Leary today.
Frequent flyer miles =
The ones who pollute the most get the most financial gain.
@@TheKingWhoWins The planes are gonna fly and do their polluting regardless of if they are full or not, you know? But anyway, it wasn't a serious proposal, but more of a hypothetical example of how anything that is perceived to be of value which can be exchanged could be the basis of an alternative currency. This may sound in this current era to be common knowledge, but he was saying this back before anyone heard of bitcoin or the block chain.
I loved that magazine! Were they out of Fullerton CA? I got NEXUS and Paranoia too ~ and Covert Action Quarterly and Multinational Moniter.
@@RawOlympia I think they were out of San Diego. Ron Piper was the publisher. James Kent was the editor.
@@spacecase8888 thnx - I think they had a symposium there, maybe celebrating Hoffman Bicycle Day, just happened to be reading their magazine and going thru at the same time ~
Wealth is the carcinogen of the soul.
For the individual, but for the collective wealth is a good thing
@@LabGoats B.S. You mean billionaires are good for the "collective' which is a lie.
Add the word " excess" before "wealth" to be more accurate.
Turns out it isn't "winners and losers", it's "losers making every one else lose too"
brilliant discussion; more please!
This guy is fun! You had me at intellectual dominatrix
. . . and externalized harm.
I like him too 😁
Douglas Rushkoff is always fantastic with his spot on interpretations of the systems that are right in front of us but are still so hard to see.
Great segment. I'm putting his book on my to-read list. Thanks, guys.
One of the wildest, and coolest actual argument for the validity of the humanities and liberal arts as a minimum education for all
F yeah. Liberal arts is nonnegotiable requirement in developing critical thinking
If the billionaires go to Mars, who will raise their food? Who will do the mining?
Robots. The answer is always robots. /s
@@MissFussbudget Yeah, we've been hearing about those for a very long time. "Metropolis" is nearly 100 years old.
Don't worry, they're going to bring some slaves from the mines they own.
Ever see the movie Outland? Pretty much a classic western but set in an off-world mining colony. Just like in terrestrial mining, workers work like dogs and have to pay back debts accrued in making the journey, buying equipment and renting housing. Pretty much The Company Store all over again.
Not me
I wish I had the skill set to write a book about this subject. It’s some thing I became aware of about 20 years ago. It was called the third alternative. The idea is that climate change was recognized as a problem more than 40 years ago. There were three alternative solutions. Number one immediately sees the use of greenhouse gases, so that the planet would heal itself. Number two, and this is the one that we actually did, increase awareness of the problem, and gradually slow down our use of fossil fuels and other greenhouse, gas producing materials. Number three. A small segment of the population will abandon planet earth in favor of going to the stars. This was the plot of the James Bond film Moonraker. There was even a red, hot chili, peppers, song scar tissue, where Anthony, the lead singer included this lyric: i’ll make it to the moon if I have to crawl. The tech brows are just a small and visible examples of this mindset/worldview. We should also be concerned with royalty - especially European royalty, and other so-called captains of industry, including the international criminal class, who, even in the United States have a mass great fortunes. Enough to afford a seat on that rocket ship. Think about the last scene in the Netflix show “ don’t look up
Global warming isn’t a real threat. Artificial weather modification and geo engineering is causing much damage by design as they are deliberately trying to reduce the population. The real issue is a possible magnetic pole shift. 😞 And there really isn’t a lot the average person can do about it if that happens.
Re the battery drill scenario:
When I was a railway apprentice in the 70s I had a big shoulder brace hand drill for metal and a carpenters brace hand drill for wood. Last year After our 2nd battery drill refused to charge battery I bought 2nd hand hand drill. Perfect for most things. Its about 80 years old!
And moreover, they're repairable.
Absolutely love this interview. This guy is great. Absolutely 💯 agree.
Let's go back to taxing wealth up to 90%. Nobody needs more than 100k a year.
Douglas Rushkoff is very interesting to listen to on this topic, definitely looking into getting this book.
Fantastic guest and discussion, Guys!
@20:00 heart-warming amidst the tragi-hilarity of it all to hear Rushkoff talk about the decrepitude of materialism from a clearly Marxist perspective. I've been on about this since as long as I can remember, after ditching freshman dorm tech-nerdism when I was 16. Don't ever be ashamed to be called a "moralist". It's a mark of respect. The atheist-materialists are telling you that you have a belief in "The Good" and in ideals beyond physical reality, and they cannot imagine such things having any "reality". They also tease you that you have no idea what you are talking about in your moralism, but that's ok, you don't have to understand a mystery to acknowledge something is mysterious and worth exploring.
Fwiw, I am a physicist, have studied physics all my life, and at least afaik there is no way even in principle objective physics can "emerge" subjective phenomena, it just is not logically possible, so Rushkoff is right imho, there is something *_more_* going on with people (and possibly other animals). To ignore that and retreat to materialism is giving up on the quest for knowledge and wisdom. You don't have to subscribe to a pseudo-religion to believe this, you just need an open mind. you don't even _have_ to believe in the reality of "the human soul" you just need to be honest and admit it is a possibility, then go from there, explore.
Can you further explain the first sentence of the last paragraph? I'm not following.
@Achrononmaster that was beautifully said. I really want to believe that there is more to us than what we can reduce to material reality. That our brains are more like receivers of consciousness than the source of it. That there is still so much more to learn and discover about this universe, and we act with extreme hubris if we believe we have it all figured out.
'there is no way even in principle objective physics can "emerge" subjective phenomena, it just is not logically possible'
What does this even mean? How would you even even define "objective" and "subjective" in this context without making this statement tautological?
Excellent and informative guest and interview! Ties a great many disperate threads in tech and wealth together into a very understandable narrative.
The movie "Don't Look Up" encapsulates the theories discussed here. Especially if you watch it through all of the end credits
The best part of that ending scene is how all those people in the colony ship are just rich old people. How it's obviously not about saving humanity
I've said it to myself a few times that certain people need tp pay more attention to history -im glad that i wasn't being as hyperbolic as i thought i might have been
This is such a good segment.
These interviews are amazing. Keep them coming I am loving it.
That really exposes why the tec sector is so big on AI.
Automate their security because theyre terrified of people having any possible agency outside their control.
And minimise the amount of employees and maximise profits naturally
The Mercer-esque "shrink government to the size of a pinhead" worldview is super confusing. If I look around right now I see houses, it's a nice day outside. If I walk twenty minutes into town and look around I primarily see buildings with weird logos attached to them. If you go inside these buildings you'll see that almost everyone inside is forced to wear the same clothing, to speak in a manner that is subservient, to avoid talk and action that hasn't been sanctioned by a master [I borrow this language from Adam Smith]. Surely it's the case that reducing the size of government would cause these Behaviorist nightmares, often called multi-national corporations, to become even worse no?
That is the point. Remove government from protecting workers from indentured servitude.
Guaranteed!
This is what I've been telling people for years already. One of the most harmful things that R. Reagan accomplished was to turn the people against their own government. His campaign line, "the scariest thing in life is the government knocking at your door and asking you 'what can I do for you'" made him a superstar with people who saw government also benefitting the "others".
With those simple words he succeeded of not only leading the citizens to cede control of the rudder that controls the country, government, but actually turned people against it.
After you turn people against their own government, it becomes a cinch to just hand it over to the Oligarchs and corporations. And these are the ones who mostly control it now.
I'm now warning that the next inevitable step for them is to *get rid of democracy* , to remove all control from the people. And religion is going to play a big part in this.
@@xelasomar4614yep v for vendetta yep.
@@xelasomar4614 It is sorta like a self fulfilled prophecy. Less govt means less protections for the people but it is right wing PC'd into Freedom. Not actual freedom but just the hollow word. I have said to some, who would you rather control govt? The People or Oligarchs and Corporations. They just laugh and say less govt will stop the oligarch etc control. You just stare at them because it shows lack of historical knowledge.
When govt stepped in to protect the people those very same oligarchs then sought to take control of the govt and lessen these protections to make them luke warm to ineffectual. By making less govt means less laws etc on those oligarchs and they can do what they want.
Emma, Blaming 'the history of capitalism' is glib and ignorant. Walling themselves off from the plebians has been a thing since thousands of years before capitalism. It's about aristocracy and elitism. It happens where there is no capitalism or democracy. It's about the aristocracy vs the peasants. Calling it capitalism leads those who may not understand things to get the wrong impression of exactly what capitalism is. It is an economic system, and if it is predatory these days, that's only because it has been allowed to be predatory by those who are manipulating the system for their own comfort.
The natural order of things, barter, etc., got called Capitalism when Marxists wanted to thrust their made up theft scheme upon the earth.
Douglas Rushkoff is my favorite guest by far.
The second their money becomes worthless these idiots would be abandoned and alone in the best case scenario. They're going to be killed the second anything starts
4:41 “where does it stop?”
So true!
I was nice to someone once, and then I realized it could get totally out of hand, so I put an end to that right away!
They don’t understand the importance of empathy and caring for others, it’s like a stunted or abused child. How this version of society has become totally disconnected from what is real. Money isn’t real,or important because it’s worthless when you’re stranded on a boat in the middle of the ocean.
We need eachother.
I love how this gentleman shifted the blame for these Tech billionaires having narcissism and greed from themselves to the evil Venture Capitalist whom exploited them and the lack of a good professor to ground them.
Calling them ghouls...beautiful. Nailed it.
4:20 Man, this is my idea for a dystopian fiction novel. The mistakes in rich people’s expectations after an apocalyptic event.
How come l I never heard of this guy before?? He's completely on point and he makes some very thoughtful and funny observations.
He actually coined the term "viral" in internet slang. Has a few articles about internet/media culture that are insightful and an interview with Bo Burnham that's really interesting.
A good read on this general idea is Lucifer's Hammer, by Niven & Pournelle. It's about an asteroid strike. One character is a wealthy tech exec (IIRC) who has his own observatory on a mountaintop. He's stocked it with food, survival gear, etc. Comes the disaster, he drives up to find it's been taken over by an employee of his, along with several men with guns. They let him walk away.
That is an interesting point. Who will guard it for the billionaires? People who they will also have to feed and accommodate along with their families. How many would they have to accomodate and feed? Money would lose all value. What would stop the employees/guards from taking over the bunkers given no money was being exchanged.
this is some of the best analysis of this subject matter online right now.
Perhaps the billionaires will be the ones who don’t survive even with or because of their wealth.
So glad I found this thinker and his books. He's excellent at synthesizing and cross/inter-sectionally analyzing zeitgeists. Just what I was looking for. Bravo.
Thanks
Thanks for this great interview
man he's such a great speaker, full of passion and style.. loved it.
Wow Sam and Emma, great video, great stuff! I heard lot of things in this video what I've known but couldn't express or articulate! Thank you!
Respectfully, atheists are perfectly capable of making ethical decisions and have never committed genocide for their hope that their preferred deity is real and likes them best. Please don’t vilify folks for their religious beliefs; belief in a god is no assurance of morality.
Excellent talk but I'd like to point out that the whole "atheists are evil" thing (he didn't use those exact words but I believe that's what he was trying to say, that believing in some sort of divine energy or soul makes him a better human being) isn't true. I kinda understand that maybe the atheists he interacted with were elitist d0uch3bags but I believe there's no soul, god, divine consequences for our actions (karma) or anything supernatural, yet I still do good because those are my core values.
I believe that not having a religion (or at least not growing up with a religion) actually helps you have good values, because even kids instinctively wanna help others and feel empathy, they feel when some action isn't okay and the person/victim of it isn't comfortable. Do to others what you'd like somebody else to do for you, that's very simple to understand and follow and you don't need a religion for that. Religion actually messes the whole thing up (your values) because you delegate to a divine being the ability to discern good from evil and to do good; only Jesus, God or whatever, could be good by nature. And people who grow up around religion learn to fear doing "evil" instead of putting themselves in the place of others; they aren't taught "don't do that, have you thought how that person will feel?", instead they listen to their parents say "don't do that, that's a sin and God will punish you!", which actually makes them, deep inside, feel a desire to break the rules and rebel.
Idk if any of this made sense to you but I just meant to say that, no, religion or a belief in something higher isn't necessary for a person to have good values, and having those beliefs can actually **ćƙ up the person's values instead.
I'll just post what I said to someone earlier as people seem really confused/attacked by that segment.
"That's a weird interpretation of that. He was saying that humans have inherent worth to make an analysis of how these people who believe in scientism think about natalism in regards to Emma's question. Think about it in that context."
It really is making a mountain out of a mole hill to think about it in terms of anything beyond that. I'm a non believer too, felt weird to me at first, but I think it really was to address that. Regardless of what he personally believes. Plus arguing with a bunch of new atheists who then turned out to be Epstein pals is a fun anecdote.
There IS ENOUGH foer everyones Need,
There can NEVER be enough for EVERYONES GREED❤❤❤!
THERE ARE 99 OF US, for EVERY ONE of THEM...
or is that math too hard for them...
Thank you for your work...❤
10:56 Yes, look up the Paul Piff studies (TED / Altantic). And yes, we’re all the same in the sense that we’re all vulnerable to the same psychological influences, such as wealth and privilege. Hoarding obscene amounts of money harms us all. Billionaires are basically modern day kings.
Capitalism rewards psychopathy. It happens at all levels. 35 years ago, as a new PhD, I had the chance to sell my soul for a great salary, if only I helped the people in my lab conceal data manipulation of the results obtained from genetically modified seeds. I was told I shouldn't care, since the seeds were to be sent to a country that had nothing to do with me (India).
I couldn't do it. I got blacklisted from all the biotech labs at the time, and ended up working in a government lab, earning barely 20% of the money I'd have made with that company. I'm old now, but I can sleep at night in peace, no need for drugs.
Yeah, science is in BIG TROUBLE. I do not see where this is NOT happening. The psycho bullies took over
I really appreciate the depth of Rushkoff’s observations.
The villain in the 1979 James Bond movie, Moonraker, is perfect example: disconnect from humanity; get your stud farm up in the sky; terminate the human race!
Eat the rich
Now now, lets calm down. You have to get the salt first
Eat them before they eat you.
Sparking up the barbi as we speak!
"It' the only thing they're good for..."
Great discussion. I’ve watched tech developthrough many cycles, my first experience with a computer was punch cards (and I went to Grateful Dead concerts in the 80s) and today have this sense with recent AI that we are about to lose control of the tech development system. When we give tech systems the ability to create their own code and view “alignment “ as inevitable rather than as something that must be carefully and precisely developed we are going to lose something that will be next to impossible to get back.
Yeah, it’s gonna be like the virus that escaped the lab. Ai will suddenly “escape” on humanity too.
Don't Look Up.
Oh wow, Erik Davis (Techgnosis) talks and verifies a great deal of this. Great interview
In a post-apocolyptic world, the most valuable commodities will be food, fuel, shelter, and bullets. And according to Walking Dead, opioids.
Antibiotics
Fallout taught me it's bottle caps
He's a fascinating individual.
It’s a shame they don’t realize how destructive and unsustainable their greed and self-centeredness is.
Eat them first. Free range and organic.
I've read Ruskoff's first article on this topic and I really enjoyed his conversation with Bo Burnham, but this ... this is an eye opener. Wow. It's truly an all out war on the every man.
Great discussion
35:55, Where can I read more about this idea that monarchs created central currency to slow the rise of the middle class?
It sounds like they are trying to come up with solutions to the same problems feudal warlords had...
It's that why some call it new-feudalism...
Great interview Douglas Rushkoff was great
Augustus wasn't a philosopher he was an emperor, Marcus Aurelius was also an emperor but a philosopher too
Humans shouldn't be allowed to go to another planet if they can't take care of the one they've got.
You ever see George Carlin's view of this? He err, really made the point.
Right????
Lol, and who is going to enforce that rule? The aliens that allegedly landed in the backyard of some American family that for so.e reason didn't take pictures or videos of the event?
Mom says no new planet until you take care of the one you already have!
Nobody gets rich without stepping on other people. Old saying but true.
Occasionally some people do like Tom & Lisa Bilyeu
This reminded me of a documentary called "Park Avenue." It was based on a study of rich people, and how they do not see the world, humans, etc. in the same way as "normal" people.
Douglas Rushkoff-pretty amazing. 2nd time I've watched this.
🎉MR killin it as usual
Thanks
This interview was my intro to The Majority Report. I think I'll follow it.😺
Rushkoff basically undercuts everyone with common sense. What a guy!
this was illuminating!
One of ❤the best episodes ever- Rushkoff is great
Great conversation. I'd love to get more of your takes on solutions after describing the dire nature of our often existential problems. Thanks.
Eat the rich?
Talk to your neighbours.
And their servers 😁
This was really fascinating. Blew my mind. The reasons why it's beneficial to citizens to have proper moral anti-capitalist values as adults should be taught in secondary schools to help students' future well-being.
Idk man. Capitalism at core is exchange of currency for items. Its not bad until that point as long as people are decent human being.
I dont think that eradication of capitalism fixes anything as long as the underlying causes of capitalism's main issues, greed, selfishness etc. still remain in place.
Corruption will corrupt anything there is no matter what it is.
Monarchy can be great as long as the king cares for people and actually serves the people rather than the other way around.
We need to send these billionaires to Mars right now. Pack them into their rockets, one way ticket.
Halfway there:
Oopsy your rocket actually is running out of fuel sorry
Don't feel like it's worth the pollution the launches would cause when Monsieur Guillotine's Magical Machine is an option.
16:32 -As I listen, the evolutionary image of man emerging from primate is now replaced with an image of Novo/New man emerging from the common man we see today. A new species is arising, and the face of humanity is shifting.
This was fantastic.
Great discussion on some fundamental topics that affect all of us and must be questioned to make humanity better
The problem is that these billionaires might be right. They may be able to outrun the damage they cause. It's up to the rest of us to prove them wrong.
Finally.......I feel a connection to your channel.
Uhm, we (scandinavia) literally have a personal identification that's electronic (there's an app) that identify us so we can for example access personal information, banking and make transactions. It's incredibly handy and would solve social media and other platform issues with fake accounts, online harassment and other criminal activities on these platforms. So an actual verification system exists and I'm baffled that not more countries use it.
No thanks. I don’t want an electronic copy of me.
love it, Douglas, the jovial indignation, caught you rapping with Jamie Wheal on this theme two years ago and remain in complete accord.