Saturday, June 8, 2019

It might be emergent order but in hindsight it might appear to be a devious plan

Quite a hodgepodge of ideas and issues in China's Scary Social Credit System Made in USA by Google and Facebook by Roger L. Simon. There are many statements which at least require more nuance than allowed and some which I flat out disagree with.

One fundamental issue is true, we are only beginning to understand the reach and depth of intrusive technology in free countries and in totalitarian - how it is used, who benefits, at what costs, to whom, all remain undetermined. We are at a risk inflection point and we don't know if the curve goes up or if it falls down.

What really intrigued was the idea sparked by the headline.

One point I have referenced a number of times over the years is the insidious or accidental support that the Soviet Union provided to intellectual groups in the West. Support which has, Gramsci-like, paid dividends far out of proportion to the USSR's investment but long after the communist state has been confined to the dustbin of history.

Gramsci's idea was that since unions were not able to bring about the communist revolutions anticipated, perhaps an alternate strategy might be to conquer the capitalists by stealth and on the flanks. Instead of attacking the capitalist system head on, take over the cultural institutions of the targeted country - the churches, the universities, the arts, etc.

Gramsci's ideas had influence but I am not sure how systematically they were implemented. Certainly from the 1920s on, money flowed from the Soviet Union to marginal parties in the west, to sympathetic academicians, artists, etc. The Frankfurt School, The Deconstructionists, the Postmodernists, the Critical Theorists, their origin stories are all tainted with money and support from the USSR playing a very long game.

So long that the Soviet Communists are long in the ground just as the strategy, if strategy it even was, is paying the greatest dividends in polarization and divide within the US.

The very freedom that is the beating heart of Western culture was the vector that put us at risk. We are tolerant of new ideas and alternate perspectives. We are open. That openness was exploited for strategic ends we did not even consider.

Simon's article and headline make me wonder if something very similar might be happening in reverse.

We like new ideas and are receptive to them - the Soviets exploited the core of our strength.

Totalitarian states (communist in all their varieties supplemented with dictators/oligarchs) like control over their populations - our commercial companies have exploited that desire for control by enabling them to put an unprecedented stranglehold on their own people.

None of it done with great, or perhaps any deliberation.

But you have to wonder. Totalitarian systems are inherently destructive. They always fail eventually. What might make them fail faster? Perhaps enabling them to exert even greater power over their own people.

I doubt anyone is thinking this way. I doubt it is on purpose. And it may not play out that way. But I have grave concerns about the stability of the Chinese state. They have achieved great things by allowing the market to work to an extent. But just when they needed to be granting people a little more freedom to reach the next level of productivity, they are reversing course and clamping down. And western technology companies are helping them become more repressive.

All most likely a mass of messy coincidences and emergent order, but a fascinating parallel between what is happening now with communist totalitarian states and their Achille's heel (need for centralized power) and what happened earlier in the West with its openness to new ideas.

No comments:

Post a Comment