"If you are a tech bro billionaire, you can delete the receding hairline your ancestry has saddled you with and replace it with a tight-knit block of follicular robo-growth, you can change your face, change public opinion en masse with the power of the misinformation you spread via your digital platform and the more moderate and considered voices you are able to algorithmically drown out, send rockets into space, buy yourself a position at the forefront of political life despite being
singularly unqualified for such a position. You can, because of all this, probably
convince yourself there is in fact nothing you cannot do.
"But here you will be incorrect. What you can’t do is ever be a reflective, compassionate human being who can grasp, with any feeling, the harm of your actions. The bubble of unreality you have constructed around yourself - the one which no longer contains anyone who tells you the truth - will be too well-insulated for that to be possible. You would probably believe you are enhancing your legacy with each additional chunk of power you purchase if you hadn’t already dismissed the concept of ‘legacy’ due to your conviction that, for yourself (although not for the minions) you can invent everlasting life. But, despite what you have convinced yourself, one day you will, just like every one else, die. In the final moments, you will be reduced to something frail and helpless. Your billions will not grant you an exemption from that. Maybe right then, in that reduced state, the last thing you will see is the true horror of what you were: the rippling evil of all the choices you could have made with your money and didn’t, and the repercussions for the planet.
“Then it will be over. Those voices - the ones with no capacity for critical thinking - who said, ‘I f**king love that dude, he really tells it like it is - I wanna be rich like him one day!’ will gradually fade. All that will remain will be the more rational and sane voice of history above your grave, announcing, ‘Here lies the most heinous piece of shit imaginable.’”
–Tom Cox
