Forget Piketty or Lewis, this is the must read article of the month.Just for the record we don't do the "must read" schtick and neither as far as I can remember, does Ms Kaminska.
Not only is it a great read, it’s an essential read.
I’ve been banging on for some time now that Silicon Valley is developing a god complex and that the new “threat” isn’t going to come from some random nation state but rather a multinational corporate which has no respect for borders or state.
We are approaching the era of bond villains, all of whom — as is customary with bond villains — want to take over the world (in the name of freedom no less!) while making everyone that’s not part of their elite praetorian guard their serf.
What’s worrying is that the propaganda coming out of this movement is now getting WW3 radical as well as hypocritical.
They call government oppressive, but believe a world ruled by a darth vader style dictator is free. They believe regulation and tax is for dummies, but compliance to (equally corruptible) computer protocol and rules is visionary. They see themselves as “good” because of the deflationary effects their activity has on prices, and government “bad” because of its contrary inflationary effect. Yet they don’t see that inflationary action is needed to counteract their deflationary effects which would otherwise see power concentrated under the authority of an absolute leader that nobody can displace. They seem to want totalitarianism on the basis that darwinian evolution suggests “there can be only one”, therefore anyone who wins that game is entitled to the divine right to rule over everyone else absolutely. This despite the fact that social collaboratives can be winning strategies in darwinian evolution as well....MUCH MORE
This being the exception that proves the rule I thought I should comment.
Saying that, the piece she links to, The Baffler's "Mouthbreathing Machiavellis Dream Of A Silicon Reich" is really good.
