There’s a good argument to be made that it’s our species’ problem-solving tendencies to employ technological innovations that have got us here, and by ‘here’ I mean the predicament of ecological overshoot and all the symptom predicaments of it that you list as important. That the world is experiencing a consolidation of ‘power’, I believe, is because we are bumping up rather harshly against the biogeophysical limits that exist on a finite planet and there are those that have benefited from status quo arrangements attempting to sustain their privileges and revenue streams in a world of diminishing returns and a shrinking pie.
I think this is entirely accurate--the spokespeople cheer on as though there are no limits, say so all the time with platitudes about "innovation" and "human creativity" and the imaginary godlike powers of AI to alter the laws of physics--but meanwhile some of the powerful are looking at reality and concluding that, if they are to maintain their privileges, power, and luxurious lifestyles, they'll need to prepare to either eliminate a lot of the "useless eaters" or at least get ready to control and repress us when their continued wealth requires our extreme poverty. So they're building Cop Cities, developing armed robots and AI-guided drones, and building a panopticon to consolidate all the data they've been busy gathering on every one of us. The Muskrats collected all the info from the IRS, Social Security, likely they've got all criminal and credit histories and can get medical histories, they've already got social media posts and can trace our phone histories--where we were at any given time and who we've talked to. All the surveillance tells them who they'll need to target; the Cop Cities are for the advanced "training" that will be required to get cops to shoot into crowds that may include their own friends, and the automated killing machines are for when that doesn't work anymore. An armed drone can eliminate an enemy in a way that isn't traceable--especially when the ruling class has all the law enforcement in its pocket.
And all of this is why resistance needs to scale up NOW. The techbros are key to this--some have openly said that democracy's time has passed, that the ideal arrangement is for CEOs to run fiefdoms.
Your list of events is OK. But, to understand deeper roots of our predicament it will be neccesary to use Iceberg model (see. Scharmer Otto and Katrin Kaufer, Leading from the emerging future from ego-system to eco-system economies).
There’s a good argument to be made that it’s our species’ problem-solving tendencies to employ technological innovations that have got us here, and by ‘here’ I mean the predicament of ecological overshoot and all the symptom predicaments of it that you list as important. That the world is experiencing a consolidation of ‘power’, I believe, is because we are bumping up rather harshly against the biogeophysical limits that exist on a finite planet and there are those that have benefited from status quo arrangements attempting to sustain their privileges and revenue streams in a world of diminishing returns and a shrinking pie.
I think this is entirely accurate--the spokespeople cheer on as though there are no limits, say so all the time with platitudes about "innovation" and "human creativity" and the imaginary godlike powers of AI to alter the laws of physics--but meanwhile some of the powerful are looking at reality and concluding that, if they are to maintain their privileges, power, and luxurious lifestyles, they'll need to prepare to either eliminate a lot of the "useless eaters" or at least get ready to control and repress us when their continued wealth requires our extreme poverty. So they're building Cop Cities, developing armed robots and AI-guided drones, and building a panopticon to consolidate all the data they've been busy gathering on every one of us. The Muskrats collected all the info from the IRS, Social Security, likely they've got all criminal and credit histories and can get medical histories, they've already got social media posts and can trace our phone histories--where we were at any given time and who we've talked to. All the surveillance tells them who they'll need to target; the Cop Cities are for the advanced "training" that will be required to get cops to shoot into crowds that may include their own friends, and the automated killing machines are for when that doesn't work anymore. An armed drone can eliminate an enemy in a way that isn't traceable--especially when the ruling class has all the law enforcement in its pocket.
And all of this is why resistance needs to scale up NOW. The techbros are key to this--some have openly said that democracy's time has passed, that the ideal arrangement is for CEOs to run fiefdoms.
Exactly.
Your list of events is OK. But, to understand deeper roots of our predicament it will be neccesary to use Iceberg model (see. Scharmer Otto and Katrin Kaufer, Leading from the emerging future from ego-system to eco-system economies).