Ep 402 - A Feeding Frenzy at the End of the World with Brett Scott

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Are the tech oligarchs a new kind of power, or just another face of an old one? Well, if you think big oil or big finance represent the greatest threat to civilization, think again. Steve invites friend of the pod Brett Scott, writer, campaigner and self-described neo-Luddite, to unravel the jockeying among the capitalist class. Steve begins by mentioning The Nerd Reich, a book by Gil Durant, which argues that Silicon Valley billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are pushing to replace bourgeois democratic government with corporate authoritarianism. The book itself isn't the point of this discussion; it's a springboard into what technology becomes under concentrated ownership, and whether the mask has finally slipped. Brett is the author of Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets. He sees the tech owners as the latest faction of the capitalist class to seize a political organ. It's old news to say that the state under capitalism serves the interests of property against unions and socialist movements. What is new is the open display of power by tech oligarchs. Trump barely hides his service to the data center builders. Listeners to this podcast already know how we feel about the "great man" version of history. Ditto the "bad man". If you remove one bad man, another is waiting. Brett argues that Thiel, Musk and even Epstein are products and mediums of the system, more puppeted than puppeteering, like a weather system moving through billions of people. Brett also reads the elite fixation on Mars, immortality and network states as escape fantasies, a feeding frenzy at the end of the world. (It's as if they're worried about an apocalypse while they're in the process of creating it.) The engine, Brett says, is chronic insecurity. Workers, firms and countries are all told they will be left behind in the AI race, and he breaks down the racing metaphor into leaders, followers and laggards. He adds that progress resets to zero, because every new gadget becomes a baseline requirement for survival. Technology makes our lives faster, not easier. Many of us – families, workers, students – continually face debt and obsolescence. Brett addresses security as a political question. At the international level, he ties anti-communist roll-back, from Southern Africa to Chile, to the effort to reintroduce insecurity. The takeaway? Technology will never save us while an elite few own the assets.

Brett Scott is a writer, campaigner and self-described neo-Luddite, author of Cloudmoney and a longtime advocate for protecting cash. Find his work on the ASOMO (Altered States of Monetary Consciousness) on Substack and his YouTube channel on monetary history and technology. Substack: https://www.asomo.co/ YouTube: youtube.com/@BrettScott X: @Suitpossum