The Elon Musk BS about indentured servitude on Mars, this was bothering me the other day before I read that quote and I didn’t tweet about it, but yeah I have thoughts about capitalists planning to “save humanity” by leaving earth...

The idea that it is somehow an easier feat of engineering to leave our planet and terraform another planet, than it is to fight climate change on Earth is a load of horseshit. So why is it billed that way? Why convince people that space travel is “our only hope as a species”?
When I played Horizon Zero Dawn, one thing that really, really upset me was the quest where you discover the classrooms intended to educate future humans, and there is a Faro logo on *everything*.

It’s not about saving humanity, it’s about being acknowledged as a “saviour”
You can’t save “humanity” by fleeing the Earth, leaving billions to die and the biosphere to collapse. And you can’t create a utopian society elsewhere by exporting the same sociocultural mindset and capitalist ideology that destroyed our planet, you can only delay the inevitable
It’s one big fucking vanity project entirely devoid of merit, and a society with a literal saviour is not going to be one where shit like equality is possible. Without dissenters, it’s going to be a perfect distillation of everything already wrong with our present society
If Bezos and Musk really cared about saving humanity, they dump their fortunes into reversing climate change and lobbying for regulations, but of course they aren’t, that would actually help people. All they want is a lifeboat, as if they as individuals are stand-ins for humanity
They’re spending billions on a barely feasible dream and salivating at the thought of leaving this rock for their own private Raptures, complete with indentured servitude. Like locust, they’re just content to use up everything they can and be on their merry way.
It’s a tremendous waste of ill-gotten resources. Those two could be using their resources to save billions of lives, but instead plan to replicate the capitalist exploitation killing our planet on another one, and nobody takes them to task for the fucking selfish cruelty of it
Journalists report on it with starry eyed breathlessness, as if it’s eccentric idealism—it’s not, it’s egocentrism on a massive scale. They’d rather let you die and start an empire on mars before they’d pay their taxes to improve life materially for the billions on Earth

More from Tech

On Wednesday, The New York Times published a blockbuster report on the failures of Facebook’s management team during the past three years. It's.... not flattering, to say the least. Here are six follow-up questions that merit more investigation. 1/

1) During the past year, most of the anger at Facebook has been directed at Mark Zuckerberg. The question now is whether Sheryl Sandberg, the executive charged with solving Facebook’s hardest problems, has caused a few too many of her own. 2/
https://t.co/DTsc3g0hQf


2) One of the juiciest sentences in @nytimes’ piece involves a research group called Definers Public Affairs, which Facebook hired to look into the funding of the company’s opposition. What other tech company was paying Definers to smear Apple? 3/ https://t.co/DTsc3g0hQf


3) The leadership of the Democratic Party has, generally, supported Facebook over the years. But as public opinion turns against the company, prominent Democrats have started to turn, too. What will that relationship look like now? 4/

4) According to the @nytimes, Facebook worked to paint its critics as anti-Semitic, while simultaneously working to spread the idea that George Soros was supporting its critics—a classic tactic of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. What exactly were they trying to do there? 5/
I could create an entire twitter feed of things Facebook has tried to cover up since 2015. Where do you want to start, Mark and Sheryl? https://t.co/1trgupQEH9


Ok, here. Just one of the 236 mentions of Facebook in the under read but incredibly important interim report from Parliament. ht @CommonsCMS
https://t.co/gfhHCrOLeU


Let’s do another, this one to Senate Intel. Question: “Were you or CEO Mark Zuckerberg aware of the hiring of Joseph Chancellor?"
Answer "Facebook has over 30,000 employees. Senior management does not participate in day-today hiring decisions."


Or to @CommonsCMS: Question: "When did Mark Zuckerberg know about Cambridge Analytica?"
Answer: "He did not become aware of allegations CA may not have deleted data about FB users obtained through Dr. Kogan's app until March of 2018, when
these issues were raised in the media."


If you prefer visuals, watch this short clip after @IanCLucas rightly expresses concern about a Facebook exec failing to disclose info.

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