The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Rushkoff, Douglas. Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires. W. W. Norton & Company, 2022.

Douglas Rushkoff's Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires is a nonfiction social science text that explores the tech billionaires' impact on contemporary society. Resisting notions of linearity and progress, Rushkoff does not abide by a chronological examination of his subject matter. He employs the first, second, and third person points of view, and incorporates personal, historical, and scientific allusions throughout. The following summary offers an overarching description of the topics that Rushkoff covers throughout the text.

One year, media theorist and columnist Douglas Rushkoff was invited to talk to a group of billionaires about technology's future. Rushkoff ventured off into the desert, unsure what he should be expecting. At the resort, he met with five unnamed investment bankers and technocrats who sought his help in planning their escape from The Event, or the environmental crisis. After this odd experience, Rushkoff was unsure what to make of the technocrats' concerns. He published a standalone essay on what he called The Mindset, or the technocrats' worldview about technology, humanity, and the future. From this essay, Rushkoff's Survival of the Richest project was born.

Rushkoff interrogates the principles behind The Mindset. He believes that this worldview has its origins in the Enlightenment and in empirical science. These systems of thought promote Francis Bacon's notions of domination and exploitation. As Bacon asserts in his writings, the natural world is like a woman that the wealthy monarchs and scientists should capture, wrangle, and rape. Rushkoff argues that these same philosophies background The Mindset. While purveyors of The Mindset like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos have developed potentially positive technologies, Rushkoff holds that they have only done so to benefit themselves. Their corporations, cars, and media platforms thrive off of disconnection, alienation, and the manipulation of the masses. Meanwhile, their advancements benefit them alone.

Rushkoff believes that the technocratic obsession with escapism originates from a fear of taking responsibility for the harmful technologies they have created and the havoc they have wreaked on society and the environment. Building elaborate, luxurious bunkers, establishing secret, outfitted compounds, or projecting themselves into outer space are the technocrats' ways of skirting culpability. At the same time, these behaviors prove the technocrats' disregard for humanity. Just like the scientist and writer Richard Dawkins holds that human consciousness and the human soul do not exist, technocratic believers in The Mindset see human life as disposable and the human mind as free fuel for their propulsion towards ultimate world domination. Rushkoff uses Facebook and Amazon as examples of this phenomenon. Facebook users are the labor behind the platform. Meanwhile, Amazon users are compelled away from human connection under the guise of ease and comfort.

Rushkoff argues that the only way to truly combat The Mindset is to stay aware and to resist submitting to this worldview. He also emphasizes the importance of fostering community, prioritizing human connection, and of consuming less. He holds that these are some of the best ways to resist The Mindset, because this philosophy can only survive if the populous is uninformed, alienated, and powerless.