For this there is ample evidence of failure in every history book.
It is not obvious that this would ensure that the powerful and the wealthy stay powerful and wealthy.
And ample evidence of success in every history book.
That’s hardly the point. It’s not about whether an individual can become God Emperor. It’s about whether or not wealth and privilege will give people access to other people’s brains without their consent.
Thats a good rebuttal. The complexity of psychological despotism would be very hard to achieve on a large enough scale that anti-authority insurgencies could be squashed.
The concept of a superdrug is out of reach, however milder drugs and supplements that make people more passive and more trusting are already on the market. Its just that nobody has bothered to use them as far as I know. The psychology and neuroscience of bonding, hate, fear, love, desire, disgust etc is becoming more and more clear. That part is a given and can’t be changed. However can these powerful tools be used to empower individuals rather than disempower them?
Tools like propaganda and advertising (which is designed to make wealthy and powerful politicians and companies even wealthier and more powerful while dis-empowering their enemies) are getting more and more sophisticated. It should become easier and easier to control the opinions and behaviors of people at the bottom of the pyramid so they service the agenda of those at the top because we keep learning more and more about how to do it.
And for every hero, there is a villain. You mention the estate tax, but I mentioned Frank Luntz and the anti-estate tax movement. You get a bunch of wealthy people to buy a political party and hire people who know how to affect the beliefs of the working class, and next thing you know those people hate the estate tax too.
In our current health reform, private insurance companies and pharma companies didn’t want to compete with reimported drugs, a public option or price negotiations via medicare for pharmaceuticals. So they used their lobbying power to block them. As a result they are shielded from competition and economic pressure while having a captive market of 30 million more people. So now these groups are even more powerful than they were before health care reform.
The efforts to defang the pharma and insurance companies (via the 2006 and 2008 elections) only manged to make them more powerful and influential. Obama literally had to get permission from the pharma industry to support reform (he told them he’d limit their losses to $8 billion a year if they didn’t resist health reform and didn’t fund the GOP in 2010).
Naturally wealthy and powerful people have always had a lot of power. But in some ways it seems the tools available to influence people are getting better and better. But will the wealthy and powerful be the only ones with the capacity to use them on a large scale, or will they be decentralized? If they are decentralized, I think the future should be ok, or at least better.
First of all, the idea that we’re going to cure aging anytime soon is just a fantasy. Aging isn’t one thing, it’s thousands of things. And every treatment for the thousand interlocked conditions called 'old age" are going to make other conditions worse. Yeah, people are going to be healthier for longer. But we’re still going to be dropping dead at 100. And a 100 year old oligarch isn’t going to pulling the levers of power, he’s going to be sitting in a nursing home surrounded by specialists. If a 100 year old oligarch seems to be pulling the levers of power (like some antiquated senators) you can rest assured that they aren’t actually making any decisions, everything is decided by their assistants and the “powerful leader” is merely signing his name to the decisions made by others.
As for the notion that elites in first world countries spend all their time keeping the masses down, well, that’s simply nonsense. The elites don’t spend one ounce of effort keeping the masses down. If a member of the lower orders gets things together and starts a successful business, or goes to school and becomes a succesful lawyer or doctor or scientist, they are welcomed just as much as any pampered scion of an elite family. Which is to say, not very much.
That’s because the primary enemies of the elites are other elites. Bill Gates doesn’t worry about some schmuck in a trailer park, or even 1 million schmucks in trailer parks. He worries about Sergey Brin and Steve Jobs. He’s too busy trying to keep Sergey Brin down to bother about keeping Joe Sixpack down.
You know, Karl Marx predicted that the logic of capitalism would lead to ever increased wealth and power for the capitalists, and ever decreased wealth and freedom for the proletarian workers, until the proletarians would be virtual slaves. At which point, having nothing to lose, the proletarians would rise up and destroy the capitalist class and their running dog lackeys.
Except, it hasn’t seemed to work out that way. So what’s different now? Better knowledge of psychology? Advertising is now a science? That’s a laugh. Do you know anyone who works in advertising? They know that showing a pretty girl next to their product leads to better sales, and that’s about it.
There are no puppetmasters running things, because society is too complex for any control of that sort. Puppetmasters can’t even predict their own actions, let alone the actions of thousands of other would-be puppetmasters, let alone the actions of hundreds of millions of consumers.
Why is Bill Gates trying to keep Brin and Jobs down? Because they threaten his power and influence. And he knows the consumers are fundamentally where his power and influence come from since 100 million people each giving you a small amount of power and influence can add up. That is why windows programs tend to be packaged together and to not be compatible with other operating systems. As a result Microsoft has been sued for anti-trust violations. You keep the public dependent, and they keep giving you influence and money.
I know people in advertising, its not as simple as you say. Its becoming more sophisticated and taking advantage of dozens of minor quirks in how our thinking and behavior works.
As far as Karl Marx, that actually did happen. By the 1960s roughly 1/3 of the world was communist. In 1848 various nations in Europe all underwent revolutions simultaneously. Virtually all wealthy, western nations have advanced systems designed to lift up the proletariat and hold down the capitalist classes. They have progressive taxes, anti-trust laws, anti-corruption laws, etc. to restrain the wealthy and powerful but we also have universal health care, education, infrastructure to lift up the proletariat.
So your argument that Marx’s vision didn’t happen isn’t true. Its just how it happened. In some nations it was a violent revolution (which tends to work out poorly), or it was a slow process of building institutions and infrastructure to suppress the capitalist class (estate taxes, income taxes, anti-trust laws, corruption laws, etc) and lift up the working class.
I don’t think there is a small group who are running everything perfectly, but there are small groups who are running some things some of the time. Politics and culture are heavily influenced by these small groups. As an example, the ‘war’ between the billionaires in the democracy alliance vs. the billionaires on the right wing (wealthy individuals, families and corporations) is an example of two groups pursuing their self interest through the masses of voters. And as time passes these people should become wealthier and more influential.
Well, no. It has been kinda two steps forward, one step back. In some periods, one step forward, ten steps back, and sit the fuck down.
Of course no one thinks in those terms. No one thinks, “I am going to do my best to block health care reform so I can keep the masses down.” They think, “I am going to block health care reform so my insurance company can continue to rake in money,” or “I’m going to block health care reform so that I don’t have to pay more taxes.”
Nor do the oligarchs block banking reform to “keep the masses down.” They do it to preserve their profits.
In either case, the effect is the same. The masses are “kept down” in the sense that they continue to be milked by insurance companies and banks.
Pretty much. If you can keep people dependent and limit their alternatives while trying to cause them as many positive experiences and nudges when they do what you want them to do and as many negative experiences and roadblocks by not doing what you want them to do, you can get what you want from them.
Insurance don’t try to ‘keep people down’ directly or out of malice. But they do try to limit people’s options to opt out, our ability to fight back against abuses, ability to regulate their behavior, ability to negotiate, ability to influence politicians, ability to buy media, etc. since those things would limit their social, political and financial capital. The end result is the same as if they had done it with direct malice.
Social, political and financial capital is finite. And they aren’t giving theirs up.
Zero sum game, ehe?
-XT
In the current economy? Less than zero.