Friday, September 19, 2008
Next Stop Utopia
"I fear the government has passed the point of no return," financial historian Ron Chernow told the New York Times. "We have the irony of a free-market administration doing things that the most liberal Democratic administration would never have been doing in its wildest dreams."
"Nothing will be like it was before," said James Allroy, a broker who was brooding over his chai latte at a Starbucks on Wall Street. "The world as we know it is going down."
“SPIEGEL ONLINE - Druckversion - US Financial Crisis: 'The Wo…As We Know It Is Going Down' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International”
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I apologize because I hadn't seen the possibilities.
Some time ago I wrote a novel called UTOPIA [http://utopia.karleklund.net] that described a global civilization in which the greatest sin was waste and was based on Norbert Weiner's notion that when computers and robots were mature nobody would be ALLOWED to work unless they did something better than a robot or computer. The "Working Class" were the elite (but couldn't show off) and the "Leisure Class" were those who couldn't make it into the Working Class and had to find ways to amuse themselves.
But I finessed the transition between our world and that one because I couldn't imagine how that could happen. But Bush is going to go down in history as having provided the precedent for that world. In order to save the red necks of Wall Street, the US government is going to end up owning most of the corporations in the US, and other governments are going to do the same, until we have a globally Fascist infrastructure that will be based on democracy by revolution. Because the infrastructure will be so complex and easily sabotaged, the global government will have to do things in such a way that most of the people are satisfied most of the time--and that should be the way things work. Gilbert and Sullivan, in "Utopia, Ltd." described it as "despotism tempered by dynamite" in which the despot was followed by a couple of dynamiters who would blow him up if the citizens got unhappy.
And only an idiot like Bush could do this. No intelligent liberal would think he could get away with it. I am amazed at the subtle ingenuity of human evolution. It makes me proud just to watch it work.
"Nothing will be like it was before," said James Allroy, a broker who was brooding over his chai latte at a Starbucks on Wall Street. "The world as we know it is going down."
“SPIEGEL ONLINE - Druckversion - US Financial Crisis: 'The Wo…As We Know It Is Going Down' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International”
......................
I apologize because I hadn't seen the possibilities.
Some time ago I wrote a novel called UTOPIA [http://utopia.karleklund.net] that described a global civilization in which the greatest sin was waste and was based on Norbert Weiner's notion that when computers and robots were mature nobody would be ALLOWED to work unless they did something better than a robot or computer. The "Working Class" were the elite (but couldn't show off) and the "Leisure Class" were those who couldn't make it into the Working Class and had to find ways to amuse themselves.
But I finessed the transition between our world and that one because I couldn't imagine how that could happen. But Bush is going to go down in history as having provided the precedent for that world. In order to save the red necks of Wall Street, the US government is going to end up owning most of the corporations in the US, and other governments are going to do the same, until we have a globally Fascist infrastructure that will be based on democracy by revolution. Because the infrastructure will be so complex and easily sabotaged, the global government will have to do things in such a way that most of the people are satisfied most of the time--and that should be the way things work. Gilbert and Sullivan, in "Utopia, Ltd." described it as "despotism tempered by dynamite" in which the despot was followed by a couple of dynamiters who would blow him up if the citizens got unhappy.
And only an idiot like Bush could do this. No intelligent liberal would think he could get away with it. I am amazed at the subtle ingenuity of human evolution. It makes me proud just to watch it work.
# posted by Karl Eklund @ 11:44 PM 
