Today’s Silicon Valley billionaires grew up reading classic American science fiction. Now they’re trying to make it come true, embodying a dangerous political outlook
Today’s Silicon Valley billionaires grew up reading classic American science fiction. Now they’re trying to make it come true, embodying a dangerous political outlook
What a crap opinion piece. If we didn’t have rich people dreaming of how to do scifi things we probably wouldn’t have all the shit we have now. Going to space. Computers. Medical advancements etc.
Except everything you mentioned came from the minds and hands of moderately paid middle-class engineers not the good graces of a rich person.
Absolutely, however without wishful thinking rich people backing those moderately paid much smarter people we would have far less. I’m not for billionaires… but if we did get rid of them we’d need a serious overhaul on funding for those ventures.
Rich people didn’t pay for anyone to go to the moon, US taxpayers did.
Rich people didn’t dream up the idea, it’s been in every child’s dreams. If anything sci-fi authors are not typically rich.
Rich people don’t dream up the various tech to get there, people like my grandfather did.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaire
There are twice as many billionaires now than there were in 2008/9. We didn’t have billionaires and wealth concentration in the 60s like we do now. Yet we still accomplished all that.
We don’t need them, we never did.
Rich philanthropists have been funding universities and colleges, which is where most of this technology actually comes from. You’re speaking of the government sector and you’re not wrong but is the wealthy that have been funding most of the private sector advancements. Again, I have no love for billionaires. You’re right, we don’t need them. This makes it sound like we shouldn’t be aspiring at all for the stars.
And they wouldnt have to if everything wasnt as commodified to press the last cent out of it just so they can make a profit. Philanthropy is a scam invented by rich people to give back crumbs of the riches they stole to feel good about themselves and “justify” their existence.