Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Tue May 30, 2023 8:13 amIt may or may not entail it, but it's happening. We have more poor, the superwealthy are getting wealthier and the middle class is getting smaller.
I think that part is predicated on some assumptions that don't bear up under scrutiny. The zero sum thing being primary.
I'm looking at trends in my home country (US) and the European country I live in. In both the poor are getting poorer and the middle class is getting smaller. Here privatization of national industries and the slow gutting of welfare and other services to children, the poor, immigrants, the sick and elderly, and increases in homelesses and so on. I see media companies being swallowed up in fewer and few corporations'. And while I can't track exactly what this will lead to I think it is a bad trend. Investigative reporting has gone down, partly due to competition from the internet's affect on traditional media, but in general, regardless of source, a dumbing down and entertainmentififcation of news. I also see worse and worse indenpendence of government oversight from the industries they are supposed to oversee. Generally these trends have being going on for decades. And they are putting a lot of power in the hands of the superwealthy. A couple of years back I read an interesting book on the changes in the way the judicial system, in the US, views the wealthy. I think we all know that rich people have the ability to get vastly better representation and this affects how they are treated in court rooms. But this book was going into changes in the way the judicial system view wealthy powerful people, per se, regardless of representation. They are viewed as 1) more vulnerable if sent to prison. You're a hedge fund manager, the judges have been more leniant for the same crimes because it would be worse for you than a plumber to find yourself in prison. They don't openly compare to the working class say, but they have started to openly call attention to the contrast argument. 2) people get off because their roles are important on a class basid 3) courts treat rich people's mitigating circumstances radically different from other classes (and also politicians with pardons do this). Equal under the law has been shifting in a bad direction.
I see how here Thatcher/Reagan attitudes are changing a much more egalitarian and supportive society to something with much larger class differences and the start of homeless for mentally healthy people and inability to get timely and effective health care.
These trends concern me very much. And, again, I see countertrends. I think it is getting harder for information to stay secret. On the other hand it is easier to marginalize information, at least in tradition media. Hard to say how that struggle will go.
The East India company is not relevant. I am not saying the world is worse than in 1750 or something. But in my lifetime I have seen shifts that make it harder for people economically in general, whereas up until my early years there was a general upward trend in general.
I am very concerned about four tech areas: surveillance, AI, nanotech and gene mod and already being used without much supervision by goverment and also the possibilities these offer centralized power, whether private or governmental. I think we are seeing a re-concentration of power in the few. We had a long countertrend in the West where power was distrbuted to more people. I see this trend going the other way now.
There's a kind of 'it'll all work out we've had technological shifts before, so any future or current technological shift will hurt some people here and help others there, so the trend will generally be upward.' I think that's a form of faith. I think current technologies offer undreamed up power to powerful private and governmental groups. The Stasi would have been peeing themselves with joy over current self- and government surveillance options now. Yes, tech can also empower regular people, but with things like combining AI and smart cities, I don't think the average person's power somehow counter power player increases in power.
I also see not the slightest bit of harm in being concerned about these things.
But I don't know what will happen. I just see a lot of things to be concerned about.
Does some of this relate to mass technological unemployment caused by bots of some sort?
