Slouching Toward Olympus
Demigod Wannabes of the New Gilded Age
I just published a piece in the Guardian called ‘We will coup whoever we want!’: the unbearable hubris of Musk and the billionaire tech bros, about the laughable foibles of today’s gilded age, would-be supervillains. From the piece:
The visions of the feudalist are more self-interested and abstract than even the most egotistical displays of the capitalist. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, for example, was New York City’s biggest retailer’s way of thanking the city in which it operated. Yes, it was an advert, but it was also a great public service, taking place in public streets. When Bezos took his first flight in his Blue Origin space vehicle (demonstrating little more than the fact that a private individual could now afford to do what we had accomplished collectively more than 50 years ago), he acted as if the mission had public virtue. “I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all this,” he admitted. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart very much. It’s very appreciated,” he added, in the strangely passive, impersonal language of a customer service rep. The launch was like Amazon’s version of the Macy’s parade, except instead of marching down Broadway with giant balloon characters for our kids, the company’s largesse consisted of letting us bear witness to…
