Why are so many bent on a reformation of Western society? Nihilism and apathy are the enemy.

 

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.

This is in no way to say the 75 years have been perfect. This is no way to say that we are absent from environmental challenges. This is in no way to say that all people have benefited proportionately. This is in no way to say we’ve gotten closer to world peace. This is to say that the combination of a free market, democracy and a vibrant civil society has created the best society overall. All the challenges we are facing, in the main, stem from government capture -  corporatism and special interests on steroids have moved governance away from the greater good. It would be a disaster to allow the Western economic model to disintegrate only to be replaced with authoritarianism and centralized government – something we’ve seen too much of late. What is required is tweaking rather than total reformation of the system.

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.