So, disclosure: I did not write this. I saw this, or variations of it, posted on various forums in the 2010s. The author's name was always different, yet, it was clearly the same person who was making these comments.
My take is there is a lot of truth in the comments. I'm not sure what the precise agenda of the author was, considering this was being posted in the comments section of various forums. But you may (or not) enjoy the read. I will split the comments into multiple posts.
Cheers
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By "Stephen Morris"
It's not "Goodbye to the West" but "Goodbye to the Modern Era" as Elitist politicians (like those who write for Project Syndicate) pursue their relentless campaign for the "refeudalisation" of society.
It's easy to forget that the Modern Era with its Modern Era values of egalitarianism, democratisation and national self-determination is . . . well . . . MODERN. It hasn’t been around for very long.
It is easy to forget that when viewed with proper perspective, human history up until the time of the Modern Era was a story of aggressively narcissistic, machiavellian psychopaths competing (sometimes collaborating) to attain positions of power, then using that power to dominate and brutalise their fellow human beings. We know from the historical record that these rulers showed no remorse in wasting the lives of thousands - even millions - of people they regarded as “their” Subjects.
That is the norm. That is the “base case” for human behaviour.
In that behaviour, psychopathic rulers were abetted by “sycophants” - typically timid, less dominant males - who sought to promote their own survival and reproductive prospects by allying themselves with the dominant males. Articulate sycophants often provided the “theology” of elite rule, constructing elaborate justifications for the privilege of their patrons.
Significantly, in times past the ability of such elites to dominate and brutalise others was limited by the capacity of individual human beings to kill each other, and therefore by the need to recruit and reward a circle of allies (a “praetorian guard”) which could carry out such enforcement.
Now, if that long-standing behaviour seemed to change in the Modern Era it was not because the psychopaths woke up one morning and said, “Oh my God!! Is that the time!? Is it the Modern Era already? Quick. We’d better start enacting social reforms!”
Human psychology has not evolved. Evolution operates over a much longer time frame. The psychopaths (and their sycophant supporters) have not gone away.
All that happened in the Modern Era was a temporary change in the environment: the demands of the industrial economy meant that it was expedient – for a time – for the rulers to make limited concessions to their Subjects.
The industrial state required the training of large numbers of Subjects to operate the complex – but not fully automated – machinery of industrial production. Having had so much invested in their training, Subjects acquired value and their bargaining power relative to their rulers improved. In the extreme, they could withdraw their labour and quickly impose greater costs on the owners of capital than they themselves suffered.
Under such conditions, the optimal strategy for rulers (and only after they had tried violent suppression and found it ineffective!) was to make certain limited concession to their Subjects. Thus we had the quintessential ideals of the Modern Era, culminating in the 20th century:
a) egalitarianism, the ideal that all people are entitled to the same basic opportunities irrespective of their ancestry;
b) democratisation, the ideal that Subjects are entitled to have some say in how they are governed; and
c) national self-determination, the ideal that self-identifying communities are allowed to choose for themselves how they will govern themselves.
If there was one ideal that characterised the 20th century it was surely that of national self-determination: from the first shots fired by Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo in July 1914, through Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, through the post World War II era of decolonisation, through the collapse of the Soviet Empire, and right back to Sarajevo and the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Given the opportunity, like-minded communities like to govern themselves.
But none of these concessions meant that the psychopaths had gone away. And there was never anything to say that the conditions of industrial production would last forever.
What we are witnessing now is an elite response to the post-industrial world of AI and robotics.
No longer are large numbers of Subjects required to run complex but not fully automated machinery. Now it is small numbers of very highly trained technicians required to manage the robotic workforce. Small in number, they can easily be bought off. Better still, they can effectively be reduced to the status of indentured workers through the weapon of crippling student debt. They dare not rebel for fear of their debts being called in.
As for the rest of humanity, they are now redundant or soon will be. Their rulers no longer need them. And those the earlier concessions are - as the saying goes - “inoperative”.
To be sure, the masses may get employment of a kind, especially in providing personal services. But it will be employment in the “Uber Economy”, the “Gig Economy”, of savage competition between workers with all economic rent flowing to the owners of the monopolistic market platforms.
And the New Elite are responding precisely as one would expect an aggressively narcissistic, self-serving elite to respond. They are relentlessly winding back any concessions hitherto made, while their sycophant economic theologians are busy justifying it all as being for the “Greater Good”.
Inequality is quickly returning to its historical norm, as Piketty has documented. Piketty’s U-shaped graphs show inequality of wealth in the most developed countries declining into the mid 20th century then rising steadily again. It’s the past century that was the anomaly. We are returning to a “feudal” state in which property is owned by the magnates and almost everyone else is reduced to the status of dependent serf.
Where conventional property has proved insufficient, they’ve invented novel forms of “intellectual property” to expand the scope of private ownership.
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As for democratisation, in most countries it never developed beyond “elective” government dominated by elite parties. Moneyed interests and pressure groups found it a trivial exercise to subvert that. Campaign bribery and the revolving door of jobs-for-the-boys ensure that the interests of politicians and senior bureaucrats remain aligned with those of the elite.
This past year has seen an outbreak of rebellion, but it’s unlikely to last.
In the wake of Brexit and the Trump rebellion, there is now open talk in elite circles on whether it is appropriate to allow “obviously ignorant” people to vote on critical issues. “They’re not college educated, you know.”
There is now open talk on whether those who “receive more in government benefits than they pay in tax” should be allowed to vote at all. Significantly, there is no suggestion that those monopolists who receive more in economic rent than they pay in tax, or those lobbyists who receive more in government contracts than they pay in tax, or those too-big-to-fail bankers who receive more in bail-outs than they pay in tax, should be similarly disenfranchised.
Remember that the universal adult franchise is modern. In most countries it’s barely a century old. There is nothing to say that the Elite won’t campaign to remove it again. Or effectively subvert it by making it difficult for lesser mortals to enrol. Or re-jig the electoral system to ensure that minor parties have no hope of election.
Even minor parties and “outsiders” who do get elected prove to be a disappointment. Never forget that those attracted to politics are inevitably those who yearn to exercise power.
For example, following the 2010 election, the Liberal Democrats were given a once-in-a-century opportunity to reform Britain’s voting system and introduce proportional representation. Nick Clegg threw it all away in return for the chance to be Deputy Prime Minister for five years.
In the US, those who threw in their lot with the supposed "outsider" Donald Trump (out of sheer desperation for an alternative) may not have long to wait before suffering the pangs of disappointment.
In any event, the Elite are entrenching their gains by taking ever more critical decisions out of the hands of elective government altogether: the privatisation of strategic monopolies, essential services and critical databases means that elected politicians are forced negotiate with private magnates on terms dictated by the private magnates.
And finally there is national self-determination which has been eroded by the growth of undemocratic, opaque and unaccountable “neo-empires” like the EU, and so-called “trade” agreements which have less to do with trade and more to do with signing away sovereign powers to unaccountable committees of elite business interests.
Organisations like the EU may be created with the best of intentions, but no sooner do they come into existence than an “iron law of megalomania” takes hold. They begin to attract those self-same narcissistic, machiavellian individuals who are drawn to the prospect of exercising dominion over millions of other human beings.
As with any empire, the Subjects soon end up suffering in the pursuit of some “greater good”. Witness the economically counter-productive brutality inflicted on Greece. Witness the “Lost Generation” of unemployed European youth sacrificed to the Eurozone fantasy.
Now, like Elites throughout history the post-modern Elite seek to weave a cloak of virtue to conceal the nakedness of their self-interest. Their theologians devise all manner of mellifluous apologia.
Elite theologians love to talk in honeyed terms about the “end of borders”, but do not be deceived. They don’t really intend to abolish ALL borders. They simply want to replace “national borders” (over which the mass of ordinary citizens might have had some control) with “private borders”: elite private property.
The Elite do not intend to rub shoulders with the plebs. They retreat to their private mansions, their private country estates, their private campuses, their private gated communities, all surrounded by private borders marked with “KEEP OUT. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted!” signs.
The Elite do not intend to stand, crushed cheek-to-sweaty-cheek with the prols on inadequate and overcrowded public transport. Not at all. They whizz from their private mansions to their private offices on roads which have been tolled (or “road-priced”) out of the reach of the masses. It’s like the Zil Lanes of old Soviet Moscow but nowadays it’s justified by deference to that Great God, “Efficiency”.
And from behind their private borders the Elite sermonise piously on the supposed intolerance of those outside! Hypocrites blind to their own hypocrisy.
On all fronts the trend is the same: the alienation of public rights - over which the citizens used to have some say - to elite private interests.
And if all of that sound depressing, it may be only the beginning.
Unless there is some spectacular change, at some point the Elite may decide that the continued existence of masses of redundant and increasingly disgruntled human beings is a threat to their own security.
In the past year we have seen the Chinese unveil lethal weaponised robotic “security guards” with rudimentary artificial intelligence that can be used to control “anti-social” elements. In the US we saw the first remote execution of a suspected gunman by a police robot.
If this does not send a chill down your spine, you’ve not been paying attention. The technology of robotic “pacification” is indifferent to Good and Bad. Not only do the Elite not need workers. They no longer require humans for their Praetorian Guard.
Now, some might be inclined to dismiss this as “conspiracy theory”. But here’s the thing: there is no conspiracy. There’s nothing underhand going on. There are no secrets. All this is happening in plain sight. One merely needs to look about and then remember that human psychology has not evolved.
There has always existed within the human population a small proportion of individuals who are not like the rest of us. They are aggressively narcissistic, machiavellian, possibly psychopathic, with a strong appetite for attaining power and dominating others. They may not always be apparent. One of the defining characteristics of psychopathy is “superficial charm”. The psychopath knows more about you than you know about yourself. He or she knows exactly which buttons to press to gain your confidence, your trust, even your admiration.
Had it been possible to establish genuine Democracy with the right of recall, veto, initiative and referendum there might have been some hope for the rest of the human race, some hope of effectively controlling these people. That is why elite theologians universally abhor genuine Democracy in favour of the corrupt system of “elective” government: elective government which perversely attracts the most undesirable narcissists.
Elective government provides no safeguards. It will prove no barrier to containing the psychopaths once the cost of pacification falls as a result of robotics.
You don’t need to be Einstein to see how this game must play itself out.
For most people it’s not going to be a happy ending.
