Solitudinem fecerunt consilium canis cibum*

Douglas Rushkoff, after chatting to 'five super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world', fills us in on their priorities:

they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape. Survival of the Richest, Douglas Rushkoff, 5 July

It's an unedifying picture. Would it look any different if a coalition of governments, non-governmental organisations, philanthropists, and the public backed Social Policy Bonds, aimed at solving our global problems?  It might just be that our current policymaking systems are so obviously inadequate that even those of us not wealthy enough to contemplate escape are so resigned or distracted that we remain passive when confronted by an array of potentially calamitous social and environmental problems. Perhaps a more coherent, well-financed, range of policy goals would encourage the super-rich to solve our problems rather than attempt to escape them, and enable more of the rest of us to be employed in such solutions, rather than in devising ingenious ways of advertising dog food. Possibly not, but isn't it worth a try?

*The Latin, according to Google Translate, for They make a desert and advertise dog food