Because increased mining to obtain the lithium, cobalt, and rare Earth minerals used in electric vehicle production is devastating ecosystems worldwi… - Daniel Suarez

Synthetic biology was the transistor of the twenty-first century. Yet political realities in America made it increasingly unfeasible for entrepreneurs there to tinker with the building blocks of life. Every cluster of human cells was viewed as a baby in America. A quarter of the population wasn’t vaccinated. A majority of Americans didn’t believe in evolution. Social-media-powered opinions carried more influence than peer-reviewed scientific research.

Democracy requires active participation, and sooner or later someone ‘offers’ to take all the difficult decision-making away from you and your hectic life. But the darknet throws those decisions back onto you. It hard-codes democracy into the DNA of civilization. You upvote and downvote many times a day on things that directly affect your life and the lives of people around you — not just once every few years on things you haven’t got a chance in hell of affecting.

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible
government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility
to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to
befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt
politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day. — Theodore Roosevelt in 1906