I’m watching Altered Carbon on Netflix. I remember loving the first book but not why. Watching the show now I see some of the themes that the author was dealing with that I loved.
How the inequality of wealth and power changes people. As technology changes we need to guard against the concentration of wealth and power that the Framers of the Constitution saw as destructive. In the case of the show, the wealth and power concentration comes in the form of life extension for the richest.
In one episode, the leader of the resistance talked about how the life extension tech, “stacks,” would create “a new class of people so wealthy and powerful they answer to no one and cannot die.”
“Death was the ultimate safeguard against the darkest angels of our nature. Now the monsters among us will own everything, consume everything, control everything.”
https://www.spockosbrain.com/wp-content/uploads/ScreenCaptureProject311.mp4
The show also has a part where the son of an ultra rich, long-living “Methuselah” or “Meth” commits crimes because he wants his father’s respect. Hmmm, sound like anyone we know?
“If there was one thing the Revolutionary generation agreed on — and those guys who dress up like them at . . . → Read More: The Good Reason The Framers Had Estate Taxes
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