Survival of the Richest

Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

Douglas Rushkoff was invited to speak to a group of the world's wealthiest people about "the future of technology." When he arrived, however, he found himself in a room answering five urgent questions from five extraordinarily powerful men. Each question was the same, really: How do I survive what's coming?

These billionaires were asking Rushkoff how to insulate themselves from the social unrest, climate change, and technological disruption that their own ventures had helped to cause. Their solutions ranged from building fortified bunkers to escaping to New Zealand to launching themselves into space — all while leaving the rest of humanity to face the consequences.

Rushkoff calls this "The Mindset" — a philosophy of individual survival and escape that drives Silicon Valley's richest innovators. But their escape plans are symptoms of a deeper delusion: the idea that technology and wealth can insulate them from the interconnected systems on which all human life depends.

In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the history of this extractive, growth-obsessed approach to business and technology — from the enclosure of the commons in the Middle Ages to the algorithmic optimization of human attention today. He argues that the real problem isn't the threat of collapse, but the worldview that makes collapse seem inevitable. And he offers a different path forward: one based on cooperation, regeneration, and the recognition that we are all in this together.