Infinity Curve - Lamentations to Unseen Friends Across the Vastness of Space

EP. 76 - ON OLIGARCHIC TECHNOCRACIES

"I HAVE SPOKEN TO this point about the form of government that rules the world. I call it oligarchic technocracies or technocratic oligarchies. Take your pick, as I speak of them interchangeably, although the authoritarian oligarchs would frown upon such names. They consider themselves magnanimous, the overseers of humans who are unable to manage themselves, with the Great Debacle being proof enough of that fact."

"The oligarchies are symptoms of our larger problems, the pus and worms oozing forth from the open wounds in the flesh of society. They are contributors to our dissolution, working their way towards the final state of entropy for our species. The death knell, helping us reach the edge of the petri dish in which we evolved."

"Can I say where it began with any clarity? Social Darwinists were in existence long before Darwin was born. The first cave man given a virtual crown of weeds certainly thought himself superior to his subjects due to his physical size, prowess, and likely viciousness and guile. I doubt that first crown was granted for selfless traits like compassion and caring."

"You can't blame the oligarchs of today who are wearing the same crowns. They do so, as their caveman forebears did, because they truly perceive themselves superior. Though few will attribute good fortune to their dominant roles, luck is indeed causal attribute number one for their positions; add to that greed, deceit, and other unenviable human attributes."

"The twenty-first century has been no different, only amplified and levered by technology. It started early in the century as social dis-equities became embedded in the system through taxation laws, private ownership of once public enterprises, and the ongoing drive of business to become increasingly cost-effective."

"Technology allowed these companies to operate more efficiently and hire fewer workers, further displacing the dispossessed. Couple that with favorable tax laws, influence peddling, distorted systems of justice, and other vehicles of increasing wealth for the wealthy, and soon the largest treasure was focused among the very few across the globe."

"Indeed, this dynamic has occurred from time immemorial, and the outcome was always one where an overthrow of the ruling class was effected. Not this time, though, not by a long shot."

"The technocracy and media they influenced allowed the ruling families, the thousand or so in what was the United States and another thousand-plus elsewhere, to gain control over all machinations of creation and value. The concepts of fair and equitable distribution of wealth and gains from technology, of social concern and assistance, were subjugated to the benefit of the few."

"Of course, there were disruptions, and it didn't only happen here where we once had a burgeoning middle class. It happened globally in starker contrast, where the disparities were even more pronounced. Yet technology came to the rescue again for the few, allowing for the grievous policing and silencing of troublemakers and dissenters, anyone who was not in line with the social order of the ruling classes."

"That's one important thing the oligarchs of prior centuries didn't have. They had no science of surveillance into each person's social network, their spending habits and finances, their media consumption and belief systems. But today's oligarchs have all this and more. They have AI clouds with unrivaled predictive powers, and they can adjust their control structures to maintain power far before any unruly crowds take to the streets."

"To say 'the rich got richer and the poor got poorer' during those decades is a laughable understatement. And you can guess that they were passing these riches to their progeny, to extend their dominant and holiest of gene pools forward into the eons to come."

"Once the means of influencing human minds through the media and its content were under control of these powers, and once the ability to create a virtual monitoring state was under the auspices of the industrial-military-government complex, then the levers were further tightened and locked. No overthrows of the ruling classes are possible in these new technocracies."