- cross-posted to:
- chapotraphouse
- cross-posted to:
- chapotraphouse
Will and Matt talk to Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Mars Trilogy, 2312 and last year’s Ministry for the Future. They discuss reckoning with climate change, science fiction literature as an attempt to conceive of our own future’s history, and what kinds of beliefs humans might need to survive that future.
His answer to the billionaires question felt weird. He states that billionaires aren't culpable because someone else would have occupied that space, but they also are praiseworthy for the some of the actions they undertake (e.g. Musk's electric cars). I could understand him saying they systemically fill a role that's necessary under the current economic order (and therefore moral outrage is pointless because we need systemic change), but I don't get the denial of harm and the crediting of success.
Charitably, he's saying that in the very constrained set of choices billionaires have outside of "Don't be a fucking billionaire" (which might actually be impossible to do once you reach a certain level of wealth) some are making choices that are tactically better, or at least aren't actively deploying the upper atmosphere coal rolling project.
That doesn't mean they aren't morally culpable though, Musk could conceivably wake up one day having been hit in the brain by a cosmic gamma burst and start bankrolling every ML insurgency on the planet, which is the correct response to waking up as a billionaire.
Bankrolling every ML insurgency on the planet would quickly ensure your death at the hands of capitalist state.
Well yes, there aren't good billionaires because good billionaires suffer sudden existence failure.