Tech Barons

Hello! This is a draft, don't expect too much from it! I have something I want to say with it but its not quite there yet :)

The first, second, third, fourth, fifth try: then

I'm slowly building up my understanding of the world, how its developed and its history. I'm doing so messily, reading a lot of biased books and and making a lot of mistakes. At the moment I think I've developed a neat view of some things though.

Throughout history, people are given power, they can end up mis-using it. The classic cycle is that they abuse it and get worse and worse. The masses, who have more power even if they don't realise it, end off worse and worse, until eventually they have no choice. They rise up and change things. A new person is put in place with new laws and new systems. They understand the truth: that they're working for the masses, and are being allowed to hold that position by them. Therefore, they respect it. This slowly is forgotten and the cycle repeats.

At some point in this process, those in power have to validate their existence at the top, even when they shouldn't be there. This is a tough task, and normally won't work. But, through Brandolini's law of bullshit, eventually some will stick and those that stick will stay around and develop. Its memetics, ideas evolving like creatures do.

America has an especially

points to make:

meritocracies arnt real, they are lies made to validate peoples existence at the top, and their egos, and the subjegation of lower classes. This was a lie which fit so naturally in with the development of america it could physically embody it. It spread naturally through all the people in the hierachy. it also allowed a culture that valued this stuff to exist, which forced people into a world where it did matter. oil wasnt that vital but it created a world where it was.

memetic that enforces itself whilst spreading naturally.

This applies to oil very well, theres 0 skill in finding it, its luck, but it has to validate its own existence and merit does that. Even if its a hard lie to sell, its one that can be applied easily. Especially when you advertise it and have people coming to that country to see it themselves.

This is a wild argument for a number of reasons. Firstly because it acts like we arn't all deserving of pleasant lives no-matter our merit. Secondly because it assumes merit isn't a subjective thing that changes depending on time, context and culture. A highly esteemed business-worker lacks any merit outside of their business world bubble.

But either way, it worked.

America, Britain and slowly other countries, fell into the default assumption that comfort had to be earnt, those suffering had just been born like that and the people in power were the best suited to it.

Though, this did fade or maybe less fade, more evolved. Now we don't have oil barons. We have tech ceos, or as I think we should call them, tech barons.

Who knows what number we're at, but... the next try: now

My grandparents have a decent amount of money, a big house worth £1 million or so with a hot tub and a nice garden. They rent a property or two, they have more money than they really need.

They used to be so poor they would sometimes have to catch frogs and cook them.

My grandad was a phone line engineer, he slowly moved into computing, found he enjoyed it and started doing it as a hobby too. Eventually his hobby became profitable and he started making digital timers for sports. He built the worlds first digital scoreboard, he used to show me the reams and reams of hand written assembly code he would manually insert into the chips for that thing. The stack of paper literally a foot and a half tall.

From that he became relatively well off, pretty quick, he soon ended up programming big systems for local councils and phone networks. He still maintained some of them for free in his retirement until only a few years ago.

I imagine he sees himself as someone who earnt his place, started and the bottom and worked his way up.

I love him, dearly and truly, but I see it differently.

He was lucky, he got into the right field at the right time, happened to enjoy it and have the brain for it. Because of that, he shot up.

Computing is oil.

We say "data is the new oil", "ai is the new oil". I'm less sure. I think, computers were always the new oil. We've been in that boom from the get go. Now its not even new, its been happening since my Gramps rode Big Blue. Now They're are just oil. We're in the depths of the culture now. We're in the depths of the destruction mass compute requires.

I'd go as far as to say computing was worse than oil, oil required baseless claims to maintain, there's no skill to finding oil, no skill to selling or maintaining it. Not any skills that have a positive influence on the world anyway. That's a hard lie to maintain.

Computing is different, it requires a specific type of thinking. The engineers thought. There's your base, your argument. Your merit. Build an entire industry on it. Take oils lie, act as its proof and build entire landscapes on it.

Merit is an odd thing, especially our modern version that focuses on "intelligence", engineering skill and logical thinking. It values one very specific thing, one thing that gets more vague the more you look into it. One thing we now intricately tie out self-worth too.

Technology has done what it did to my Gramps to many many others, on a much bigger scale. Facebook, Netflix, Google, Amazon. They didn't intend to start what that started (outside of maybe amazon). They happened upon something useful.

The people that run those companies argue on merit, they only hire the best of the best to maintain that air. But they didn't get there on merit, they got there on luck.

We need to stop calling them tech gurus, tech bros, tech ceos. We need to name them what they are. Tech Barons. Like those before them, they got where they are through luck more than anything else, and they know no better how things should be than the rest of us. They've manipulated and built an entire culture just to validate their egos. Unlike oil barons, I don't think they even fully realise they're doing it, not the full depth of it at least. They just think its reality, truth, and they're just pushing for it.

They fell for the old lie, fit themselves into it and are propagating it. Its carrying itself memetically now.

These people shouldn't be idolised, they shouldn't be trusted. Call them barons, thats what they are. And whatever you do, dont trust them. Anyone who confidently knows how the world should work is lying. They don't optimism, they've earnt skeptisism.