I'm already starting to long for the simpler times of the Cold War; it's pretty clear we're not heading for post-scarcity Star Trek or Culture, but rather technofascism into technofeudalism. Some would argue we're already there, but I say it can (and will) still get a lot worse.
Now where did I put that Mutant Chronicles rulebook...
The only positive is that fascism is an unstable state. It will eventually collapse as it runs out of a scapegoat. Fascism doesn't solve the problems of society so someone needs to be blamed for it to have continued support. Once you have removed all the low hanging fruit people will start infighting and eventually the whole thing falls apart.
Sure but based on the history of the last 125 years or so, that only happens after tens of millions have died and entire countries are leveled. And that was done with… 125 year old technology.
If it devolves into a dictatorships it can stay stable for awhile. Look at Dubai, one of the richest places per capita with no real "rule of law" (only in theory) but stabilized through a ruthless theocratic dictatorship that has brought peace and prosperity in a region of the world where democracy (and indeed -- other dictatorships) has so often brought the people untold terror, violence, and suffering.
> that only happens after tens of millions have died and entire countries are leveled
That levelling, darkly, does solve the problem. Nazism ultimately turned Western Europe into an American protectorate. And under Pax Americana, it thrived. One can similarly point to Imperial Japan having laid the groundwork for the Asian miracle, at the cost of millions of lives.
Maybe fascism has a purpose: it lumps together a generation’s horrific and emotionally stunted and combusts them against an innocent population. That’s horrible. But it leaves better cinders than it came to.
(For the avoidance of doubt, I neither think fascism is good nor inevitable.)
Last time one of the hard problems of fascism was that people weren't willing to do the amount of murder and surveillance required, and this time they're on the verge of murder bots that can do it instead and surveillance is already massively pervasive and penetrating.
While the then newfangled radio was a potent method of disseminating propaganda, today the tool chains for and scientific knowledge about how to efficiently 'manifacture consent', as it is sometimes called, are quite a bit more oppressive.
Sure the forces that bring down fascist states are still there, but now we also have surveillance technology that can be used to keep control of the populace.
I have to remind myself Star Trek TNG starts with the crew being put on trial for the crimes of humanity and the terrible fascist court they're in is from the show's vision of a more immediate future than the one we were watching on the rest of the show.
From a surveillance perspective, genetic testing at birth, routine DNA testing, fingerprint and retina scans are commonplace, more or less constant and routine background and identity checks even at the roadside. Although I admit I do not recall any military element to it.
I mean, the lower castes in the movie seem pretty oppressed to me? Just not in the obvious "Sovietpunk" way usually used to describe oppression on the screen.
It will absolutely get worse. We're still in the beginning stages. The amount of information on this plan from Peter Thiel, Vance, Curtis Yarvin, etc is abundant by now. They talk about their "vision" for a technofeudalism society openly, it's not a secret. This deal with the UK is a harbinger for what's to come around the entire globe.
This take will be controversial I'm sure and possibly bring me downvotes, but I predict folks like Gavin Newsom - who currently appear to be rising against this movement - will be joining their ranks in the long run. Thiel's platform suggests that ordinary citizens are too stupid to vote in their own best interest, they just end up stalling progress; which Thiel will then point to MAGA as evidence of this. It's an oversimplification of course, but I guarantee things will transpire along those lines to convince other powerful folk to join their cause.
> Thiel's platform suggests that ordinary citizens are too stupid to vote in their own best interest, they just end up stalling progress; which Thiel will then point to MAGA as evidence of this.
I haven’t heard this, and I hope I’m not being given enough rope to hang myself either, but this kind of makes sense. MAGA has pretty completely shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that they will not vote in their own interests, or even the interests of their county, or anyone (as far as I can tell).
Yeah you can't assume Thiel is competent either. Running a country is completely different from running a business. The most I'd be inclined is give them Mississippi for a decade or two let's see what happens.
I believe in Thiel's eyes, MAGA and "the left" are equally inferior groups of society. He's simply using MAGA as a vehicle to implement his plan and convince other like-minded elites to support him. If you listen to some of his interviews in podcasts, you can actually hear a bit of surprise and excitement in his voice in how rapidly he's making movements on the back of the current political environment.
I don't think they care about the citizens either. That's not the point. I'm sure others have their own interpretations, but everything I gather from Thiel's books, podcasts, interviews, etc suggests that he believes he's part of a group of intellectuals that are actively working towards technological advancement for the benefit of himself and others like him. We - as ordinary citizens - are in his way. He's totally fine with "leaving us behind" so to say and that's his sell to other powerful elites: they can usher in his grand vision or rot with the rest of us.
I agree with your overall point of view, but is this defense contract really the best example? If the UK is sliding into technofeudalism it's not because we've only just started forking some of our defense budget over to morally dubious companies.
So I mean, yes, it's fair to describe Thiel as a technofeudalist of some sort, but this contract isn't suddenly going to upend the UK's political, social and economic systems.
Yeah I'm not excited about the future anymore. I used to have hopes America would try to usher in a better era but the opposite is happening where the shift is towards profits over people. A select few at the top who break laws is accepted while the rest are forced with even less rights. This goes beyond politics now but it is impossible for people to stop the infighting and look up who is causing all the problems.
They already have. Look at the coverage of the Epstein case. One of the reporters from a major network was told to shelve it when he was arrested in 2006. Or Julian Assange: hardly covered his release at all, and never said anything about his years of detention without trial.
Hate speech? I think the system is working as designed. You the the right to say whatever inflammatory rhetoric you want. What the 1A doesn't give you is the freedom from consequences of the hate speech. As we've seen this past week.
The founders didn’t envision speech being policed with guns. That is absolute nonsense. The system is clearly broken.
That requires debate as to whether norms are failing to adequately police speech in an era of social media, and if the First Amendment’s idealistic vision of lawless self-regulation has failed. (Alternatively, how we can bring non-violent shame back into the envelope of norms.)
Many of the founding fathers engaged in duels. I do t think they particularly wanted violent politics but they certainly lived in a world where what you said could get you killed by a gun.
I see no evidence that we won’t go back there. Our grandparents built an entire world order around curtailing the kind of authoritarian competition that leads to wars between major powers, and we’re already watching it break down. Do you really look at this political world as the harbinger of another 75 years free of major global conflict?
I'm old enough. My own sense is this is much worse.
I have a friend that was afraid a nuclear bomb would eventually drop. I wasn't worried a bit about that though. So perhaps perception or state of mind made a difference.
Well here in Estonia we already are getting bunker test drills and flyers in our mailboxes on what to do in case of a bombing / nuclear attack. Sad thing is that since we don't really have any underground places, and Estonia is as wide as the current Russian occupied line in Ukraine, we're all pretty much going to evaporate no matter what we do.
Having caught the end of it, it was certainly scarier at the time, when there was direct threat of imminent, unavoidable death at the whim of some other country. We’re not there yet (well, most of us).
I think what’s scary now is the trajectory we’re on and how so many people seem desperate to keep the accelerator pressed hard to the floor.
Now where did I put that Mutant Chronicles rulebook...