https://locusmag.com/2022/03/cory-doctorow-vertically-challenged/
"Science fiction has a longstanding love-hate relationship with the tech
tycoon. The literature is full of billionaire inventors, sometimes painted as
system-bucking heroes, at other times as megalomanical supervillains.
From time to time, we even manage to portray one of these people in a way that
hews most closely to reality: ordinary mediocrities, no better than you or I,
whose success comes down to a combination of luck and a willingness to set
aside consideration of the needs of others. It’s easy to find such people atop
our increasingly steep economic pyramid, but it’s very hard to find any who’ll
admit it. There is nothing a successful person hates more than being reminded
that “meritocracy” is a self-serving myth, a circular logic that says, “The
system puts the best people in charge, and I am in charge, therefore I am the
best.”
But while the powerful remain blissfully insulated from the bursting of the
meritocratic delusion, public sentiment is increasingly turning against the
ultra-wealthy, and in the most interesting way possible. Today, the commercial
tyrant isn’t merely seen as a villain, but also as a fool – someone whose
greatness is due to an accident of history and a vacancy of morals, not the
result of a powerful genius gone awry.
It’s a distinction with a difference. If Facebook is Facebook because Mark
Zuckerberg is a once-in-a-millennium genius who did what no other could, then
our best hope is to somehow gentle the Zuck, bring him into public service,
like a caged ET that government scientists either bribe or torment into
working on behalf of the human race. That’s the constitutional monarchy model,
the model where we continue to acknowledge the divine right of kings, but bind
them to the material plane by draping the king in golden chains of office whose
ends are held by an aristocracy that keeps the monarch from getting too frisky.
But if Facebook is Facebook because Zuck got lucky, if he just combined cheap
capital with regulatory tolerance for buying out the competition and building a
legally impregnable walled garden around his users, then we don’t need Zuck or
Facebook. There’s plenty more where he came from, and all we need to do is
withdraw the privileges that regulatory forbearance granted him. That’s the
republic model, where we get rid of the king and govern ourselves."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
