We are
often counselled to “be positive”, I try, BUT, when one sees stupid it is
incumbent upon one to speak up. I quake while observing the anti-west
nihilistic, presentism, cancel culture folks tearing down the very society that
has provided them with the best standard of living in human history. The past
75 years have seen the largest increase in human living standards in history,
in the West and the entire globe. It reminds me of a limerick imparted to me by
a mentor when I was about 8 years old – Jean Jean built a machine, Joe Joe made
it go, Art Art blew a fart and the whole damn thing came apart. It seems there
has been a willingness to apathetically let Art flatulate while Western
civilization burns – an epic blue bomb, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, a foul
mushroom is forming over Mother Earth. The reformation that is being imposed on
Western civilization is taking us away from prosperity and freedom, to,
potentially at least, reduced living standards and tyranny.
Ranger
tells me he’s about five years out on the world peace thing, so I’m turning my
attention to showing people the magic of the market when left unfettered by
regulations unrelated to human health, regulations that posit societal
well-being ostensibly while having as their motivation supply
management. The unfettered pursuit by the individual, while
exercising themself as an autonomous agent, in pursuit of their best life, is
the dream of a true liberal – hard to find a true liberal anymore.
Controllers,
those who want to centralize power, degrade societal functioning to generate a
state of dependence among the citizens. Emancipators support people to a place
of self-reliance. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the Bill
of Rights are the foundational documents that should be serving the model of
the emancipators. Sadly, these documents are being ignored in many instances or
undermined in other ways. There are many ways we can effect transcendence
through economic policy and ways to support people to self-reliance. The
challenge is that the people who need to be supported to independence have no
effective lobby, save the one that seeks to give them subsistence at the
expense of the opportunity to be a viable actor in society.
What does
have an effective lobby are the various industrial complexes, military,
medical, educational, media, technology etc.., their capacity to effectively
control government is stifling the rise of the economically challenged and the
middle class, it is in fact, degrading living standards. It is also stifling
creative destruction, disruption and other elements that give vitality to the
economy. Worse perhaps is the damage to the environment – think planned
obsolescence, that has a refrigerator last five years instead of 30 like they used to - in the main a product
of collusion between manufacturing groups. The market is the solution to the
distribution of goods and services, the solution to preserving the market and
its democratizing effect is smart regulation rather than regulation that is
effectively supply management. We want vitality in the economy, to achieve it,
we need easy entry to the market, broader access to capital, the reduction of barriers to
entry, a cultural shift starting with the education system to elevate the entrepreneurial
spirit and a rebirth of the can-do spirit.
Technology – Promise and Peril
There are other challenges facing us in the future, the
biggest I think is the new technologies. The new technologies are having the
effect of highly concentrating participation in the market and the workplace
generally. By way of example, Elon Musk, predicts that in the next 25 years, the
majority of the menial tasks in society and many of the more sophisticated will
be performed by robots leaving a girth of human capital with very little to do.
This, in combination with other technologies like AI, is requiring us, perhaps,
to somehow change the paradigm of society and the paradigm of our existence. It
may be the case that we reconceive how we receive income. Elon Musk posits that
technology will provide goods so effectively that more than a mere minimum income
people will simply ask for what they want. If this transpires, it leaves
humanity purely in the intellectual space and their physicality being directed
toward recreation.
The side effect of these technological eventualities is the
concentration of power and influence. Further, there is a large movement in the
technological space to get out of the grips of government to in fact become
governments themselves in some cases. As these various technological streams
converge the power of very few concentrates and the power of the citizen
diminishes. There can be benevolence in those with concentrated power and
concentrated power can be nimble and very effective. Unfortunately, benevolence
is never guaranteed and at times the benevolent descend into malevolence.
Technology has been transformative in my life, I'm writing
this letter by talking into a microphone on my computer rather than typing, I
have the entire world's knowledge at my fingertips through AI, I can know
anything anytime anywhere. So, I'm optimistic that technology has the capacity
to better our lives but that is strongly tempered by the dark that lives in the
hearts of some people. The Enlightenment was a movement of freedom and
emancipation, it spawned The United States and the unprecedented growth in
democracy lifting the yoke of tyranny off of millions of people. The spirit of
emancipation that was exhibited by Abraham Lincoln is hardly being paid
attention to, in some quarters it's mocked. A disrespect for the tenants of
emancipation and freedom, in tandem with the confluence of these very powerful
technologies has embedded in it the potential for the kind of tyranny never
witnessed in human history.
This type of tyranny has already begun to rise its ugly
head, there are countries, and they are numerous, who aspired to control every
element of every citizen's life. They do this now in some countries with
AI-driven surveillance and complete control of the citizenry's use of money
through the mandatory use of electronic funds. When you do something, the state
doesn't like, they shut off your money it's that simple that's tyranny of a
kind we've never seen before. When you combine this absolute control of the
citizenry, with a utilitarian non spiritually grounded governance, where the
sanctity of life is diminished or perhaps forgotten altogether a rather
terrifying prospect looms on the horizon.
I want my grandchildren to enjoy what my father and his
contemporaries fought so long and hard for and gave so much for, and resulting in
the post-war period being the most prosperous and free in human history. Thomas
Jefferson and John Philpot Curran, both believed that "The condition upon
which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance, which condition if he
breaks, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of
his guilt." I share their view, so I spend many sleepless nights working on the
problem of these powerful technologies being turned into the tools of tyranny.
There are few things that I'm sure of, but one thing I am
sure of is, if you disempower individuals and you consolidate power, tyranny is
always around the corner. So, job one to protect ourselves against the
eventuality of tyranny is to work in every way possible to maintain and enhance
the power of the individual and to retard the merger of the state and
industrial complexes. The merger of state and industrial complexes in
combination with the consolidation of power inherent in these modern technologies
is a threat to us all and it must be challenged. It serves to remember that the
collapse of a governance system is a series of cascading failures, and it
happens quickly, you go to bed, you drift off to sleep, and the rattle of
hobnail boots wakes you, that's how fast it can happen. So look lively.
