Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

themselves that they’ll succeed with an extreme form of class warfare, while completely ignoring the vast bulk of the world’s population.

However, these bunker strategies make no sense. “The people and things we’d [the wealthy] be leaving behind are still out there,” Rushkoff hears the rich saying. “And the more we ask them to service our bubbles, the more oppressed and angry they’re going to get, and the more bubbled we will want to be.”

In an age where most of the media fawns over every idea, tweet or fashion choice of the mega-rich, from Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos to Bill Gates, it’s worth asking why. Rushkoff has the pedigree to challenge the bullshitters. While Silicon Valley preaches progress, innovation and transformation, “usually these are just euphemisms for conquest, colonisation, domination and extraction”. Their ultimate aim is to monopolise everything – and none of us should be seduced by it.

Scribe, 224pp, $29.99