He sovereign individual: how to survive and thrive during the collapse of the welfare state. it1/8/2024 ![]() The opening pages of Survival of the Richest describe what could easily be a scene from a James Bond novel. The various Galt’s Gulches of the new century are only one manifestation of a range of hypercapitalist escape plans that threaten to leave the rest of us paying the financial, ecological, and political costs. But as Douglas Rushkoff’s new book Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires reminds us, having to stomach young Randians “going Galt” may be the least of our concerns. The Galt’s Gulch dream is a classic capitalist escape fantasy: wealthy captains of industry retreat to luxury compounds far from the inferior masses, where they propose to wait out the economic implosion that will result from their exodus. ![]() In the 2010s, a new crop of investors proposed a similar project - this time named Fort Galt - further south, outside the Chilean city of Valdivia. Among them was Jeff Berwick, who would subsequently move on to Mexico, where he helped found and run the annual libertarian Anarchopulco conference. Invoking Ayn Rand’s famed Atlantis-in-the-Rockies from her 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, the investors named the community Galt’s Gulch. IN THE EARLY 2000s, North American entrepreneurs purchased 11,000 acres of land in Chile’s Casablanca Valley with the novel idea, as they saw it, of building a sustainable, self-supporting refuge from society.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |