Book Review: “Survival of the Richest” by Douglas Rushkoff

Survival of the Richest by Douglas Rushkoff

I have to say, I was a bit disappointed by this book.  The title and first chapter promise juicy dish on the crazy world of billionaire preppers.  I enjoy this topic because, of all the foibles of the ridiculously rich, these fantasies are the least harmful, not least because there is zero probability that their plans will work the way they want.  In fact, to the degree prepping keeps these a-holes busy and off our backs, it may even be helpful for the world.  Every second Elon thinks about screwing up Mars is a second he’s not thinking about screwing up Earth.

“It’s as if they want to build a car that goes fast enough to escape its own exhaust.”

(p. 10)

Unfortunately, only the first chapter is about these escape fantasies (and that chapter was published elsewhere).  The rest of the book is a long, grumpy rant about ‘The Mindset’ – which is similar to “thinking”.  Granted, he sees the super prepping as a prime example of the overall technosolutionist syndrome. 

To be clear, I’m not exactly disagreeing with Rushkoff, though some of his analysis is rather more absolute and confident that I would say.  For example, his analysis of solar energy technology is shallow and misleading. Worse, he doesn’t seem to recognize the difference between real, working scientists and media stars who talk about science.  Real scientists are not invited to speak to Davos, not least because they are not thoughtless technosolutionists.

Rushkoff does have some useful insights, especially about the affordances of digital network technology.  For example, I enjoyed his grumpy discussion about “going meta”, in which he finds analogies between monopolistic capitalism, colonialism, and virtual realms.

I also found his discussion of Qanon interesting.  I absolutely see his point that a lot of this stuff is addictive behavior, seriously aggravated by the addictive design of digital technology (which he calls “gamification”, though that’s not really the right use of that term. “Gamification” is a lot more than just addictive techniques.).  This insight about addiction helps us understand some otherwise inexplicable behavior.

It was a bit harder to swallow some of Rushkoff’s “both sideism”; not so much because his facts were wrong, but because he was willing to dance right up to the edge of Q-land.  I don’t like to make broad generalizations, or to infer evil motivations to what is usual just thoughtless selfishness.

The most disappointing thing is, of course, the lack of a way forward.  As near as I can tell, Rushkoff’s recommendations are to decarbonize, degrow, and basically de-everything; moving to smaller, local, circular economies.  Oh, and eschew debt.

I get it.  Of course, I get it.  This has been our theoretical prescription for half a century or more.  And, yes, I understand the principles and why they could work.

But I’m not seeing any way to get from here to there.   How are we supposed to convert a giant, continental-scale, globally interconnected industrial economy into many small, local, circular sustainable economies?  We’ve been trying to do that most of my own lifetime, and we’re no closer now than we were 50 years ago. If anyhthing we’re farther away.

I suppose Rushkoff is trying to help change our culture by writing about these ideas.  If so, that’s fine, but I doubt it will do much.  People don’t read books anymore, and even when they do, it scarcely matters.  “Culture” is dominated by self-interested digital story telling.

Sigh.  Sorry. 

Honestly, I would have been happier with an elaboration on the first chapter, showing me how utterly foolish the superrich have become.  That part is truly fun.

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1. Douglas Rushkoff, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2022.

Sunday Book Reviews