EP005: Technological Tools of Wealth, Power and Control — The Role of Tech Culture and Elitism in Fostering Inequality

The first step to tackling a systemic problem is to become aware of its mechanisms of action as well as its influence on you. Today’s episode is a discussion with Ron Williams on the nature of the rigged system we’re living in.

 

We touch on how the system traces its modern roots to tech, the way it operates to generate wealth for an increasing few, its inherently discriminatory nature as well as some ways forward.

 

Dive into Part 1 of this series that will explore the rare opportunity we currently face to redesign our society to work for everyone, revolutionizing the world as we build it.

 

Key Takeaways

 

[:16] Tony welcomes listeners and explains today’s episode in the context of the broader multi-part episode series in the works.

 

Where my dollars at? [2:31] The Silent Generation, Boomers, and Gen Xers hold the bulk of wealth by way of a lifetime of work, and Millennials who are now pushing 40, hold the reins of some of the largest tech companies.

 

Because of tech and social media, it’s the first time in history that all these generations have a forum to clash, to be aware of, and outraged at each other.

 

The people and entities who created and leverage these tools have become very powerful and currently continue to operate in a way that secures their profit and survival at the detriment of everything and everyone else. They are often referred to as the 1 and 99%.

 

Side note: It’s not even the 1 and the 99%, it’s the 99.9996 vs the 0.0004. When people think of success, the image they’ve been fed is not the millionaire, not even the multi-millionaire, it’s the billionaire. But they’ll statistically never get it.

 

How do they make money?

From conquer to plunder [9:46] To make money, these large corporations require us to remain engaged. Tony touches on the nature of social media algorithms and how they are designed to generate polarized emotional reactions and pull us ever further into the infinite scroll…

 

Ron, having sat on many, can attest that in those large corporate boards they actually are aware that fear and outrage generate more engagement than kittens. Their decision-making process includes these facts when they refine the algorithms to generate more engagement. They are complicit in fostering divisiveness to generate outrage and further engagement to garner more profit.

 

It’s what you like [17:12] Ads don’t care about what you don’t like. At the exception of Reddit, social media platforms only ever allow you to amplify, effectively removing the ability to reduce the signal on something and identify bad content. 

 

The ante to tech is has become exorbitant

The VC discrimination problem [21:00] Tech and venture capital supported tech are a high-risk high reward business; the whole system starts with investors betting that some of their investments will generate returns and that some may yet generate super-returns: unicorns.

 

Discrimination starts earlier however: if your idea doesn’t have the billion-dollar potential right out of the gate, you will get no funding.

 

A lifestyle business is called that because it isn’t deemed successful enough for you to have sacrificed your life at its altar. What does it say of our world when a 100 million dollars/year company is considered no more than a lifestyle — a kind of humanitarian pursuit?

 

Power is hard to resist

The power discrimination problem [27:03] All this concentrated money also enables people to gravitate ever closer to political power. Facebook got Trump elected and Twitter empowered him massively by ignoring their own TOS which they ruthlessly applied to everyone else.

 

Twitter re