Ah, yes, I recall the Morlocks. It's been a long time since I've read that
book. Maybe I'll have to give it another spin.
Your response is interesting.
There's considerable debate about the extent to which automation will
eliminate jobs. Some agree with you that new jobs will continue to be
created, while others, agreeing that that's how things have historically
played out, believe this time things will be different.
I believe that, in the short to medium term at least, more jobs will be
created. The action is in human/computer collaboration. That's how Erik
Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee see it in their book Race Against the
Machines. Gary Kasparov takes a similar view in his book, Deep Thinking:
Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins. A
human/computer chess collaboration can beat any human, and can beat any
computer as well.
I'm not as skeptical as you are about the likelihood of a universal basic
income. If people like Richard Nixon and Milton Friedman, no bleeding heart
liberals by any stretch, could speak favorably of it, then it's hard for
those who oppose it to mischaracterize it as another socialist
redistribution scheme to steal the hard earned wealth of the rich.
Certainly, in the short term, it won't get much traction under this
administration. But after that, we'll have to see. A lot depends on how fast
AI takes off. And social opinions can change fast. American attitudes to gay
marriage changed very quickly, for example. And there are a lot of other
countries around, some of them more forward thinking than America is right
now.
There's a new book on BARD about the subject, Give People Money: How a
Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the
World, which I haven't started yet.
I'd be curious about the computer written novel. Computers have been writing
sports and financial news for years. Martin Ford has an example in his book,
Rise of the Robots. He has a sports article written by a human and one
composed by software side by side, and I couldn't tell which was which.
There's an AI bot named Shelly created by the MIT Media Lab that supposedly
writes fairly good horror stories.
As far as jobs and the economy in the longer term, a few decades that is,
I'm with Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near. I may quibble with his date,
2045, but he has a pretty good track record, so I wouldn't place a large
amount of money against him. Hans Moravec comes to a similar date for the
arrival of greater than human intelligence. Vernor Vinge thinks it might be
sooner. If they're right though, all bets are off after that, and your point
about the irrelevance of humans is valid. At least irrelevant as far as
being the chief actor on this planet goes. There are other measures of
value, so I'm not going to say anything like humans are irrelevant in the
sense of being a waste of space or that their lives are unworthy simply
because they are no longer the smartest entities in this locale.
So I think we're in for more human employment, at least for another few
decades, before things really start to change. You talk about revolutions.
If the Singularity really is near, and we're still alive, then we'll see the
mother of all revolutions. Even if it isn't, I think things may still change
quite radically in 20 or 30 years. Either way, I think we're in for
interesting times, and I'm looking forward to seeing how things pan out as
long as I'm around.
Evan
-----Original Message-----
From: Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2018 12:10 AM
To: blind-democracy
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either
Tyranny or Revolution
Okay, let me answer the second question first because the scenario you
describe in the first question is likely to make the second one moot.
Yes, I would support a universal income. That would be a progressive
concession to wring out of the capitalists in the course of the class
struggle. There would be similarities to social security, medicaid,
medicare and other concessions that were won from them. The trouble with
forcing concessions, though, is that at the first opportunity the ones
who are making the concessions will take them back. Right now the social
programs that were won by a mass workers upsurge in the 1930s and other
social rebellion in the 1960s are being taken back. Once the rulers see
that the concessions they made when they felt a lot of pressure on them
no longer are dependent on that former situation - that is, the pressure
has eased - they take back what they have conceded in the past. So right
now it is unlikely that they will make any kind of concession like that
right in the midst of the take-back. As to the second question, I really
doubt that technology will make all jobs obsolete. So far every time
advancing technology has made jobs obsolete in the past new jobs opened
up and a lot of those new jobs were not even thought of before the old
ones became obsolete. But let's speculate. Let us suppose that all human
jobs will be taken over by advancing technology. Let's suppose that all
manufacturing and distribution becomes automated without human
intervention. Let's suppose that agriculture is completely taken over by
machines and that robots do the harvesting, the processing, the loading,
the delivery and transportation and so forth. Let's suppose that even
all intellectual labor is taken over by artificial intelligence. I heard
on a podcast recently that at least one entire novel has now been
written by an artificial intelligence. I don't know how good it is. I
would certainly try it out if it appears on BARD or Bookshare. But let's
suppose that there will be nothing for humans to do anymore except
indulge in hobbies that could be done better by machines. Frankly, this
would change everything. The reason I covered universal income first was
because I don't think it would continue under this described situation.
People would sure need it more than they ever had because if they had no
jobs they would otherwise have no income, but where would this universal
income come from? It would have to be from taxes and the people who have
no money can't pay taxes. The super rich would have to be taxed, but can
you really see them being willing to give up wealth in the form of taxes
that would be used to buy the products that the machines that they own
manufacture? It would be pointless. The whole capitalist model is that
capitalists strive to increase their already enormous amounts of wealth.
But if we just take universal income out of it then how would anyone
afford to buy any of the products available with no money? Actually, I
don't think capitalism could be sustained. It would completely collapse.
Would it be replaced by socialism? Well, what is socialism? More
specifically, what is the highest stage of socialism, communism. It is a
system under which the means of production and the sources of production
are held in common ownership by everyone and when everything is owned by
everyone the concept of ownership becomes meaningless itself and all
productive labor is performed for the benefit of everyone rather than
for the benefit of either individuals or for the benefit of an
exploiting layer of owners. If no one is engaged in productive labor
then can this be called communism? I suppose we are talking about
everyone being included in the leisure class. We could also be talking
about everyone being nothing but rats in a cage. Frankly, if all
economic activity is relegated to machines with artificial intelligence
then humans become rather irrelevant. Again, I have my doubts that this
will happen, but if it does then this will be the most profound economic
and cultural shift ever to occur in human history and economic evolution
will be so severely disrupted that it will have to start over by a
different set of rules. Because of that it is very difficult to predict
what will happen in the long run, but something does come to mind. Does
the phrase Morlock robots and Elloi people mean anything to you?
_________________________________________________________________
Isaac Asimov
“Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in
telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life
after death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved
negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?"
Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement,
and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no
matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and
more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the
evidence will have to be.”
― Isaac Asimov
On 10/24/2018 12:28 PM, Evan Reese wrote:
Okay, understood about the barrage of questions. I see how that might be a bit much.
So I will restrict myself to just one or two.
As a fellow Science Fiction fan, I think you can understand that it is a plausible argument that in the not too distant future, machines may be doing most of the work that people now do. We've already seen the beginnings of that. Autonomous vehicles are coming. People may disagree on how soon, but few doubt that they will arrive fairly soon, historically speaking. That's just one example, but autonomous vehicles could put 3 million people out of a job. How does artificial intelligence and robot workers fit into the vision you've outlined here?
Do you believe, as many people do, that a universal basic income is a good idea?
Evan
-----Original Message----- From: Roger Loran Bailey
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 11:32 PM
To: Evan Reese
Subject: Re: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny or Revolution
It is working pretty well in Cuba right now even though I do think that
the Cubans have made some regressive decisions that were not necessary.
But your questions still assume a capitalist system of property
relations. You keep asking questions about money and selling and
property and so forth. I will also say that you ask too many questions.
There was a person who passed through this list a while back named
Jason. The discussion with him was around the question of atheism. Each
and every message from him contained so many questions and points that I
simply did not have time to address all of them. The same applies in
this case too. Let me address how we get there right now, though, and
you can ask other questions again as we proceed. History shows us that
in any class society resentments build up among those who are on the
lower levels of the class structure. There are a lot of mechanisms built
in to discourage these resentments though. I think that is what Chris
Hedges meant by we buying into the outlook of the ruling class. As Marx
taught us, in every time in history the ideas of the ruling class were
the ruling ideas. Despite that, though, resentments do build up and
occasionally they explode. The explosions take on the character of mass
movements including strikes and marches and demonstrations. Those kind
of actions should be encouraged, but obviously there is no guarantee
that any of them by themselves will lead to revolution. But the class
struggle goes on and sometimes it is the working class that must make
concessions and some times it is the rulers who must make the
concessions. Ultimately, though, there are a whole lot more workers than
there are capitalists, to allude to the current class system. Eventually
the class contradictions become greater and greater and sharpen until
there is a very significant punctuation in the punctuated equilibrium
called history and revolution breaks out. There is no guarantee at all
that any revolution will bring about the next stage in human history,
but certain things can be done to encourage it and to steer it. I have
often analogized revolution to a car in which the accelerator sticks and
the breaks fail. There is going to be a crash whether you like it or
not. But if the steering wheel is still working you can ameliorate the
effects. The people who do the steering in revolutionary times would be
the revolutionary party of people who make the study and dissemination
of their politics their profession. I used to be one of those people
when I was a communist activist. The professional revolutionary party is
there to provide leadership and direction in a time of revolution. The
actual answer to your question of how we can bring about a socialist
society is complex in itself and, again, I don't have the time to put it
all in one email. But Lenin said it this way in his book, State and
Revolution. Once the workers seize state power the state will have to
continue in its repressive role for some amount of time. It will just be
a different class that is repressing the former repressive class. But
once the former class system has no chance of being restored. the
administration of people will become the administration of things. That
is, instead of controlling human and economic relations like all states
have in the past it will be used to control what and how much is
produced and to control the distribution. Because the state is the means
by which one class rules over another class by violence and the threat
of violence once it no longer has that function it will cease being a
state at all. Lenin wrote all of this in a polemic against the
anarchists who wanted to abolish the state by decree. The anarchists did
not seem to understand that if the state was abolished in one fell swoop
then the people who were advantaged by the abolished state would just
step in and reestablish the state and there would have been no point in
overthrowing it in the first place. It is also well to remember that the
struggle for communism is an open ended struggle. Let me explain that in
terms of the struggle for freedom. The anarchists and even the
right-wing libertarians are always clamoring for freedom now. But what
is freedom? Literally speaking freedom is the ability to do anything you
want to do. However, absolute freedom is not possible. It is limited by
two things. One is the limitation that nature puts on it. The struggle
for freedom against the restrictions of nature is a dialectical
relationship. For example, no matter how much you might want to teleport
yourself to a distant galaxy you can't do it. At least you can't yet nor
into the foreseeable future. The second limitation on freedom is the
ethics that the struggle for freedom implies in the first place. That
is, you may have the freedom to do anything you want to do as long as it
does not interfere in the freedom of someone else doing what he or she
wants to do. Now, you shouldn't have to do much thinking to see that
there is not a lot of things you can do that does not effect the freedom
of others. Oh, I suppose you could go off into the wilderness and live
completely by yourself and live off the land, but if you did that you
would be right back to nature restricting your freedom and surviving in
the wilderness restricts your freedom severely because you are forced
into actions that you need to take to just stay alive and you don't have
time to do the things you really want to do. So what is the solution?
The solution is to collectively struggle together for our collective
freedom and that struggle includes engaging in scientific research to
ameliorate the restrictions that nature puts on us. That collective
struggle for our collective freedom is the struggle for communism. Then
there is the question of just when will we reach the maximum in freedom.
How can we tell? Is there really a time that we can just stop struggling
for freedom? I don't think so because of the two inherent restrictions
on it. Remember that Leon Trotsky was once asked, what is your ultimate
goal. He replied that our ultimate goal is to minimize man's power over
man and to maximize man's power over nature. Where is that maximum and
minimum? I think the answer is that there is no maximum or minimum. The
struggle for communism is an eternal struggle and is open ended. Now let
me add this because you are a fellow science fiction fan. I remember a
time that there was a comrade who did not understand my attraction to
science fiction. I may have exaggerated a bit, but I told him that
reading science fiction made me a better communist. He did not
understand that at all. So I explained further. Science fiction is a
constant reminder that the way things are is not the way things have to
be. As a science fiction fan yourself I think you will understand that.
I point that out specifically because when I explained the labor theory
of value to show what is wrong with profit you answered with the
assumption that if profit was abolished there would be no attempt to
abolished the capitalist system under which it exists. Then in the
message I am replying to you continue to assume the continued existence
of capitalism even if the workers take control. I frequently call this
kind of assumption social myopia or economic myopia or political myopia
depending on the context. As a science fiction fan you should be better
able to free yourself from that kind of thinking than a lot of others
can. Remember, the way things are is not the way things have to be. Or
to put it another way, think outside the box.
_________________________________________________________________
Isaac Asimov
“Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?"
Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.”
― Isaac Asimov
On 10/23/2018 10:13 PM, Evan Reese wrote:
Okay, so has that been tried anywhere so far? If so, how has it worked out? If not, how do you think it would come about?
For instance, when the workers own the means of production, and presumably run the means of production, how do decisions get made about what to produce, how much to produce, what to invest in, and so on? Do all the workers get a vote on every decision, or do they appoint people to make those decisions on their behalf? Where does the money come from to buy the supplies to make the goods that will be sold? Are the workers supposed to pay for those supplies? For the land and the equipment to make the goods? Unless these workers are already wealthy, where is that money going to come from?
As you can see, I have a lot of questions.
Evan
-----Original Message----- From: Roger Loran Bailey
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 9:42 PM
To: Evan Reese
Subject: Re: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny or Revolution
No, I do not undermine my whole argument. In a capitalist economy for a
business to stay in business it must make a profit. But I also said
something about a capitalist economy. I said that it is an organized
system of theft. That is, not only is there something wrong with profit,
but there is something very very wrong with capitalism. I do not propose
that businesses not be allowed to make a profit and that capitalism be
left intact. That could not happen. That would be like saying that we
should do away with farming while allowing farms to continue to operate.
It just can't be done. What I propose instead is the abolition of the
whole capitalist system and replacing it with a socialist system in
which all workers can enjoy the fruits of their collective labor
collectively and democratically control the economy with the view of
establishing world communism.
_________________________________________________________________
Isaac Asimov
“Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?"
Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.”
― Isaac Asimov
On 10/23/2018 9:33 PM, Evan Reese wrote:
Well, no, actually. You undermine your own argument quite neatly, and I quote:
"Ultimately, though, you have to make a profit in order to stay in business."
So, if this is true, and there's no profit, then businesses can't stay in business, and the economy crashes. And that's why there's nothing wrong with profit.
Evan
-----Original Message----- From: Roger Loran Bailey
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 8:38 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ; Evan Reese
Subject: Re: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny or Revolution
Let me answer that question about what is wrong with profit. Suppose you
have an ideal slave. An ideal slave is a slave who does not require
shelter, food clothing or any other necessity of life. An ideal slave is
an abstraction. Slaves are forced to work. So suppose you force this
slave to add his labor to raw material that has little or no value by
itself and the slave makes a product that does have value. How do we
determine how much value the product has? We make that determination by
selling it and its value is whatever we can get out of it. In other
words, that ideal slave has transformed the valueless into the valuable
and by selling it and keeping the sale price for yourself you have
stolen one hundred percent of the value of the slave's labor. What you
have stolen is also called profit. Now, suppose we make that slave a bit
more realistic. Slaves do need some upkeep to stay alive and healthy
enough to perform labor. So out of the sale price of the product you
subtract the amount it takes to keep the slave alive and productive.
This time the slave gets something back for his labor, but the slave
owner keeps the rest of the value of his labor as profit. That is labor
value that has been stolen from the slave. Now let's look at what
happens if you are dealing with an employee in a capitalist economy
rather than a slave. You may pay your employees wages and you may even
grant them benefits. You might have other overhead involved in running
your business too. Ultimately, though, you have to make a profit in
order to stay in business. If you subtract the wages, benefits and other
expenses from the total sale price you have the amount that is profit.
That profit is still the amount of labor value that workers put into
making that product that has been stolen. That means that profit is
theft and the entire capitalist system is organized theft. So now you
have what is wrong with profit.
_________________________________________________________________
Isaac Asimov
“Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?"
Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.”
― Isaac Asimov
On 10/23/2018 4:50 PM, Evan Reese wrote:
Okay, well I faulted Chris Hedges for not giving examples, so I definitely should not follow in those footsteps. I was in a hurry though when I wrote my last response, which is something I should know to avoid doing.
So Alex Jones. I think Twitter should have kept him on. Let him rant. But that is Twitter's decision, and I would not take that right away from them. As I said before, although not as precisely as perhaps I should have, freedom of speech is the freedom to say what one wishes, it is not the freedom to force others to provide a platform for that speech. He could go to Breitbart, if they'll have him, or start his own website or podcast.
Same for Chris Hedges. He could certainly take the New York Times to court if he wished. But it is overwhelmingly likely that the court would tell him what I would tell him. That is, he has the freedom to say what he wishes, the NY Times has the freedom to publish what they wish, which also includes the right to not publish what they do not wish to publish. Freedom of speech is not a license to force others to provide a venue for one's own speech.
There's growing talk about regulating the tech giants more. They got a pass early on because the government wanted to encourage that sector of the economy. But they're big boys now and they need to be regulated more strictly than they are now. Europe is ahead of us in that area.
Government and tech companies collaborating to spy on Americans is something I care very much about, and something I am very much opposed to. But that was not part of Hedges' article, which is what I was responding to.
No big corporation is controling what I say. Are they controling what you say? If so, how?
Who has Facebook deleted on the advice of the government? Are they Russian disinformation bots? I know about those, but those don't count, and they should be deleted anyhow.
As I recall, Google initially resisted cooperating with the Chinese government on Internet censorship, but then they caved. They made the wrong choice. They should have left. Not that it would have made any difference to the citizens of China, who will be censored no matter what. But Google should not be participating in it. If you want to count Xi Jinping, and the leadership of the Chinese Comunist Party, as uber-rich, then I guess I'll have to give you that one.
Yes, we have an advertising industry. What's wrong with that? People know what advertising is. Why shouldn't businesses be able to advertise their products or services? Yes, it is often manipulative. Most people know that too, since we've grown up with it. Are you saying that people have no control over their ability to respond to advertising, that they have no wills of their own?
We have a marketplace. Not everything that it sells is needed by everyone. True, a lot of stuff is made and advertised that people don't really need. Yes, corporations sell stuff to make a profit. Again, what's wrong with that? We can argue about how much profit is reasonable, how much indicates a lack of competition, (we have a fair number of less than fully competetive markets in the U.S. right now), but making a profit in and of itself is something I have no problem with.
You should get some historical perspective. I'm telling you, our ancestors would love to substitute the problems we're discussing right now with theirs. Conversely, I wouldn't trade my life for any earlier period in history, not one.
Evan
-----Original Message----- From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 3:08 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny or Revolution
Evan,
The private companies that you're talking about are huge and powerful and they are controlling, not only how we communicate, but what we communicate, and they are working together with government agencies, sometimes to spy on us and sometimes to control what we say. We're not talking about some nice little company that employs you to answer the phone or sell shoes or something. Those tech giants were built on technology that resulted from government funded research. And they are rather ruthless. Google has agreed to all of the limits on freedom that the Chinese government demands of it in order to work in China. Facebook is agreeing to delete people because of the advice of our government and private think tanks. I mentioned the Atlanta Council previously. My memory is getting so bad these days but I think that along with NATO, Saudi Arabia may be involved with it.
As for cars being safer, I don't know enough about the subject to agree with that statement or disagree. I'm sure the advertising says that they are, but I'd have to see statistics from an objective source before I believed that it's true. But I think my point was that we have a financial system which benefits the power elites or ruling class or whatever you want to call them, when people are convinced that they need new things, different things, better things, etc. because that's how corporations earn profits and that's how CEO's and share holders make more money. Sometimes, our lives really improve. But sometimes, they just become more costly and complicated and their quality isn't actually better. The purpose of inventing all the new things is so that some people can make a huge amount of money, not to make our lives better. The purpose of advertising is to convince us that the new things are making our lives better. I was born in 1937. When I look back through all those years, it's true that some things are better now. But a whole lot of thins are not. There are many things that were better fifty years ago and those things have to do with the quality of the food we ate and the way in which people related to each other, particularly the impersonal interactions between customers and owners of, or workers in businesses. Computers may be more efficient for corporations, but they've changed customer relations for the worse. They may make medical institutions more efficient, but they've also made them cold and impersonal.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Evan Reese
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 1:42 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny or Revolution
Okay, so why did you have to come up with the examples when Hedges was either too lazy or didn't respect his readers enough to provide any?
But more importantly, freedom of speech does not give you the right to tell private corporations what speech they can or should allow, any more than it gives me the right to force you to say things you don't want to say. I can be fired by my employer for numerous reasons. That's the system we work under, and despite its flaws, nobody has come up with a better one yet. Once again, nobody has the right to force their views on others.
Cars are much more computerized than ever before, but they are also much safer. Wouldn't you agree with Ralph Nader that that is a worthy goal? How many lives is being able to repair one's car worth?
You can get a cheap flip phone that doesn't cost hundreds of dollars, and pay as you go. I doubt that many people mourn the loss of pay phones.
Evan
-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2018 12:49 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny or Revolution
Actually, I suppose that "freedom of speech" is a relative term. We can say anything that we want to say on the Blind Democracy list and Hedges can say what he wishes to say on Truthdig. However, neither he nor I can say what we wish to say on any corporate media source, a source where we might be heard by millions of people. You can talk to your family about your latest birthday party on Facebook, but the pages of voices known to have dissident views are being closed down with the counsel of organizations like the Atlanta Council (a voice for many interests including NATO), at the behest of Congress. Groups can physucakky protest only in approved locations, usually far away from the sites they wish to protest. And remember, Hedges was fired from the NY Times for making a speech of which the Times
disapproved. Michael Moore was speaking at an Oscar ceremony and when,
during the speech, he made a statement opposing the Iraq War, the mike was turned off and he was ushered off the stage. So yes, I have the freedom to write these words on an email list in October 2018 which will reach, perhaps
20 or so people, if there are that many on this list and you may choose to call that freedom of speech. But Alex Jones was removed from Twitter because his speech is considered to be extreme and he reaches a lot more people than
20 blind folks.
As for those technological inventions used for public benefit, well, yes we benefit from them, but the greatest benefit is reaped by the very wealthy and although we benefit, we are also greatly harmed. There's so much to this subject that we, or I, just can't deal with it, certainly not in an email. But what comes to mind is automobiles. Once upon a time, guys used to really love repairing their cars. They liked doing it and doing it saved them money. Now cars are manufactured with technology which is so complicated that no one can repair their own car anymore. Actually, people often don't even own their cars because in order to have a car in good condition, you need a new one every two or three years. Financially, what is most feasible is to lease a car. That means that you just keep making payments forever and ever. In that way, you can afford to have a car that runs well which is a necessity in a country which has made convenient public transportation unavailable. A long time ago, if you were away from home and had an emergency or needed information from someone, there was a pay phone nearby. It cost a dime, than a quarter. But now we are so lucky because we have been conditioned to require a small computer wherever we go in order to make contact with the rest of the world and it costs more than a dime or a quarter. There's no exception if you're poor, if you earn $7.50 an hour or are unemployed, no pay phones for you. You are still required to have a mini computer, called a smart phone, costing hundreds of dollars with a complicated pay plan. But yes, technology is wonderful.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Evan Reese
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2018 10:09 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny or Revolution
First of all, let me say I generally agree with Hedges' description of the character traits of the uber-rich. While I was reading it, I was thinking how it reminded me of many monarchs, wealthy merchants, and inheritors of wealth throughout history. But I do have a few issues with the piece.
Aristotle warned of the perils of rule by the uber-rich. So they've been around for thousands of years, and somehow humanity has managed to survive.
Not only survive, but thrive. How is that possible?
Just a few quotes here:
"... the uber-rich make war on the “freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, ..."
Hmmm, war on freedom of speech? But here we are reading an article on how pernicious they are. So they certainly haven't won, and after thousands of years of effort! Imagine!
Another quote:
"The uber-rich, as Karl Polanyi wrote, celebrate the worst kind of freedom—the freedom “to exploit one’s fellows, or the freedom to make inordinate gains without commensurable service to the community, the freedom to keep technological inventions from being used for public benefit, ..."
What technological inventions might those be? Are any specifics forthcoming?
Would it be too much work for Hedges to provide an example or two?
Apparently so.
Here we are, our residences full of technological marvels our ancestors more than a couple of generations back wouldn't even understand, but somehow the uber-rich are keeping unspecified technological inventions from us.
But here's the one that bugs me most:
"The dark pathologies of the uber-rich, lionized by mass culture and mass media, have become our own. We have ingested their poison...."
Okay, so who is this "we" he refers to? Now, I've been a native speaker of English for over 50 years, and "we" generally refers to the speaker, or the author in this case, and one or more other people. So is he refering to himself and an unspecified number of fellow ingesters of the poison of the pathologies of the uber-rich? If not, then why is he using the word "we"? He certainly doesn't speak for me, or most of the people I know. In fact, as I already said, I generally agree with his characterization of the uber-rich Of course, once again, we get a sweeping pronouncement, devoid of specifics, or any kind of evidence.
Just Hedges letting his hyperbole carry him away again.
Evan
-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2018 3:19 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny or Revolution
The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny or Revolution
Mr. Fish / Truthdig
At the age of 10 I was sent as a scholarship student to a boarding school for the uber-rich in Massachusetts. I lived among the wealthiest Americans for the next eight years. I listened to their prejudices and saw their cloying sense of entitlement. They insisted they were privileged and wealthy because they were smarter and more talented. They had a sneering disdain for those ranked below them in material and social status, even the merely rich.
Most of the uber-rich lacked the capacity for empathy and compassion. They formed elite cliques that hazed, bullied and taunted any nonconformist who defied or did not fit into their self-adulatory universe.
It was impossible to build a friendship with most of the sons of the uber-rich. Friendship for them was defined by “what’s in it for me?” They were surrounded from the moment they came out of the womb by people catering to their desires and needs. They were incapable of reaching out to others in distress—whatever petty whim or problem they had at the moment dominated their universe and took precedence over the suffering of others, even those within their own families. They knew only how to take. They could not give.
They were deformed and deeply unhappy people in the grip of an unquenchable narcissism.
It is essential to understand the pathologies of the uber-rich. They have seized total political power. These pathologies inform Donald Trump, his children, the Brett Kavanaughs, and the billionaires who run his administration. The uber-rich cannot see the world from anyone’s perspective but their own. People around them, including the women whom entitled men prey upon, are objects designed to gratify momentary lusts or be manipulated. The uber-rich are almost always amoral. Right. Wrong. Truth.
Lies. Justice. Injustice. These concepts are beyond them. Whatever benefits or pleases them is good. What does not must be destroyed.
The pathology of the uber-rich is what permits Trump and his callow son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to conspire with de facto Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman, another product of unrestrained entitlement and nepotism, to cover up the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whom I worked with in the Middle East. The uber-rich spend their lives protected by their inherited wealth, the power it wields and an army of enablers, including other members of the fraternity of the uber-rich, along with their lawyers and publicists. There are almost never any consequences for their failures, abuses, mistreatment of others and crimes. This is why the Saudi crown prince and Kushner have bonded. They are the homunculi the uber-rich routinely spawn.
The rule of the uber-rich, for this reason, is terrifying. They know no limits. They have never abided by the norms of society and never will. We pay taxes—they don’t. We work hard to get into an elite university or get a job—they don’t. We have to pay for our failures—they don’t. We are prosecuted for our crimes—they are not.
The uber-rich live in an artificial bubble, a land called Richistan, a place of Frankenmansions and private jets, cut off from our reality. Wealth, I saw, not only perpetuates itself but is used to monopolize the new opportunities for wealth creation. Social mobility for the poor and the working class is largely a myth. The uber-rich practice the ultimate form of affirmative action, catapulting white, male mediocrities like Trump, Kushner and George W. Bush into elite schools that groom the plutocracy for positions of power. The uber-rich are never forced to grow up. They are often infantilized for life, squalling for what they want and almost always getting it. And this makes them very, very dangerous.
Political theorists, from Aristotle and Karl Marx to Sheldon Wolin, have warned against the rule of the uber-rich. Once the uber-rich take over, Aristotle writes, the only options are tyranny and revolution. They do not know how to nurture or build. They know only how to feed their bottomless greed. It’s a funny thing about the uber-rich: No matter how many billions they possess, they never have enough. They are the Hungry Ghosts of Buddhism. They seek, through the accumulation of power, money and objects, an unachievable happiness. This life of endless desire often ends badly, with the uber-rich estranged from their spouses and children, bereft of genuine friends. And when they are gone, as Charles Dickens wrote in “A Christmas Carol,” most people are glad to be rid of them.
C. Wright Mills in “The Power Elite,” one of the finest studies of the pathologies of the uber-rich, wrote:
“
They exploited national resources, waged economic wars among themselves, entered into combinations, made private capital out of the public domain, and used any and every method to achieve their ends. They made agreements with railroads for rebates; they purchased newspapers and bought editors; they killed off competing and independent businesses and employed lawyers of skill and statesmen of repute to sustain their rights and secure their privileges. There is something demonic about these lords of creation; it is not merely rhetoric to call them robber barons.
Corporate capitalism, which has destroyed our democracy, has given unchecked power to the uber-rich. And once we understand the pathologies of these oligarchic elites, it is easy to chart our future. The state apparatus the uber-rich controls now exclusively serves their interests. They are deaf to the cries of the dispossessed. They empower those institutions that keep us oppressed—the security and surveillance systems of domestic control, militarized police, Homeland Security and the military—and gut or degrade those institutions or programs that blunt social, economic and political inequality, among them public education, health care, welfare, Social Security, an equitable tax system, food stamps, public transportation and infrastructure, and the courts. The uber-rich extract greater and greater sums of money from those they steadily impoverish. And when citizens object or resist, they crush or kill them.
The uber-rich care inordinately about their image. They are obsessed with looking at themselves. They are the center of their own universe. They go to great lengths and expense to create fictional personas replete with nonexistent virtues and attributes. This is why the uber-rich carry out acts of well-publicized philanthropy. Philanthropy allows the uber-rich to engage in moral fragmentation. They ignore the moral squalor of their lives, often defined by the kind of degeneracy and debauchery the uber-rich insist is the curse of the poor, to present themselves through small acts of charity as caring and beneficent. Those who puncture this image, as Khashoggi did with Salman, are especially despised. And this is why Trump, like all the uber-rich, sees a critical press as the enemy. It is why Trump’s and Kushner’s eagerness to conspire to help cover up Khashoggi’s murder is ominous. Trump’s incitements to his supporters, who see in him the omnipotence they lack and yearn to achieve, to carry out acts of violence against his critics are only a few steps removed from the crown prince’s thugs dismembering Khashoggi with a bone saw. And if you think Trump is joking when he suggests the press should be dealt with violently you understand nothing about the uber-rich.
He will do what he can get away with, even murder. He, like most of the uber-rich, is devoid of a conscience.
The more enlightened uber-rich, the East Hamptons and Upper East Side uber-rich, a realm in which Ivanka and Jared once cavorted, look at the president as gauche and vulgar. But this distinction is one of style, not substance. Donald Trump may be an embarrassment to the well-heeled Harvard and Princeton graduates at Goldman Sachs, but he serves the uber-rich as assiduously as Barack Obama and the Democratic Party do. This is why the Obamas, like the Clintons, have been inducted into the pantheon of the uber-rich. It is why Chelsea Clinton and Ivanka Trump were close friends.
They come from the same caste.
There is no force within ruling institutions that will halt the pillage by the uber-rich of the nation and the ecosystem. The uber-rich have nothing to fear from the corporate-controlled media, the elected officials they bankroll or the judicial system they have seized. The universities are pathetic corporation appendages. They silence or banish intellectual critics who upset major donors by challenging the reigning ideology of neoliberalism, which was formulated by the uber-rich to restore class power.
The uber-rich have destroyed popular movements, including labor unions, along with democratic mechanisms for reform that once allowed working people to pit power against power. The world is now their playground.
In “The Postmodern Condition” the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard painted a picture of the future neoliberal order as one in which “the temporary contract” supplants “permanent institutions in the professional, emotional, sexual, cultural, family and international domains, as well as in political affairs.” This temporal relationship to people, things, institutions and the natural world ensures collective self-annihilation. Nothing for the uber-rich has an intrinsic value. Human beings, social institutions and the natural world are commodities to exploit for personal gain until exhaustion or collapse. The common good, like the consent of the governed, is a dead concept. This temporal relationship embodies the fundamental pathology of the uber-rich.
The uber-rich, as Karl Polanyi wrote, celebrate the worst kind of freedom—the freedom “to exploit one’s fellows, or the freedom to make inordinate gains without commensurable service to the community, the freedom to keep technological inventions from being used for public benefit, or the freedom to profit from public calamities secretly engineered for private advantage.” At the same time, as Polanyi noted, the uber-rich make war on the “freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of meeting, freedom of association, freedom to choose one’s own job.”
The dark pathologies of the uber-rich, lionized by mass culture and mass media, have become our own. We have ingested their poison. We have been taught by the uber-rich to celebrate the bad freedoms and denigrate the good ones. Look at any Trump rally. Watch any reality television show. Examine the state of our planet. We will repudiate these pathologies and organize to force the uber-rich from power or they will transform us into what they already consider us to be—the help.
Chris Hedges
