Sunday, February 12, 2023

The Solar Powered Megalopolis that Big Oil Built

Once capitalism becomes world government without borders, all kinds of "disruptive innovations" will be loosed upon a melting world, sort of like this one in the Middle Eastern desert, where dystopian sci-fi, unrestrained greed, and 10th Century social codes get mixed into a toxic brew and served up by Prince Bone Saw as a futuristic past captured in a trillion-dollar bubble, and where both irony and hypocrisy have been permanently banished or summarily beheaded.

This “civilizational revolution” now underway will form the backbone of NEOM, a futuristic city-state roughly the size of Belgium near the border of Jordan and Egypt that will, at an estimated cost of $500 billion, include a floating, semi-automated port and innovation hub; a year-round ski resort (in the desert); and a man-made freshwater lake (also in the desert). The Guardian reported in 2020 that an artificial moon, glow-in-the dark beaches, robotic butlers, holographic teachers, and something akin to Jurassic Park were also being considered. In any case, it promises to be surveilled by a corps of drones and facial recognition software held accountable only to the Saudi security state and its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. If this sounds like some kind of dystopian nightmare-cum-PR-project, that’s because NEOM is both of those things.

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