Like we all knew this was an option of where we were going but to see it actually happening is kind of surreal.
Private armies for the wealthy aren't new either: see the Pinkerton Agency.
Note that Fordlandia fell apart and the Pinkertons were outlawed when people realized what a terrible idea that was. But I guess those who don't learn their history are doomed to repeat it.
So I'm not necessarily saying that we're living out a mashup between Shadowrun and that Simpsons episode where Homer starts working for a supervillain, but I'm also not ruling it out.
Source? I agree with your ideas overall but I'm genuinely interested in this aspect.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-28/facebook-...
I think calling four full time guards a "small private army" is a little hyperbolic, but it is safe to say he is heavily protected.
This has been a thing for over a decade now. Blackwater/Xe/Academi. The guy who founded this company (and got the US kicked out of Iraq), is our Education Secretary's brother. He is being consulted to provide extra security for Trump outside of the Secret Service.
I think it is rather ironic that the new "left" love them globalization all of the sudden, even when their younger brothers were tear-gassed protesting it, just a decade ago or so protesting against it.
(More discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13682260 along with a promising book on the subject, 'The Technological Society' by Jacques Ellul suggested by Drumlin. Still waiting for it to come from Amazon)
Maybe none of this is in the interest of factory workers, but that's not what the left is about anymore, and it's not the left's fault either. The world moved on. You will never get the "old left" back. Weakening the influence of corporations will still be popular on the left, but reversing globalization and freedom of movement will hopefully never be a left-wing position again.
The factory-worker type who complains that his job moved to China, while he only buys the cheapest Chinese crap at Walmart, is not the future of the left.
What about the poor Mexican farmer who couldn't make a profit because NAFTA stripped away tariffs of import and he now has little chance except to pay a smuggler to take him up north so he can wash toilets or pick cotton away from his family. Is he the future of the left.
> I grew up in pretty "elite", mostly left-wing circles, who were heavily pro-globalization.
I think it is fair to say that "elite" left-wing circles are probably also not the future of the left either.
> The reason in a nutshell is "freedom".
When were elite's freedom ever restricted? Even in the most restrictive dictatorships elites can fly and spend the weekend in New York shopping.
> you'll be pro-freedom of movement.
That's exactly what the left has been fighting for. The PR twisting of the concept of "freedom". Elites and corporations always talk "but don't you want to be friends with everyone and hold hands and trade". What they mean is they want to be able to move without restriction and tariffs and exploit labor or resources in any country they want. The poor and disenfranchised are precisely even more restricted in the new "globalization". The more companies and elites more around, the more inequality they create and the more restriction, passport controls, visas and the poor get.
> Believing in freedom of movement,
I believe in equality of freedom. So far I haven't seen a lot of poor and disenfranchised being able to move freely. Are you saying Facebook here represents or is a proxy for them and so when it talks about globalization it means anything other than getting more clicks and users who log into it.
> but I think you're swallowing a lot of right-wing lies about what "the left" believes.
I don't listen to much to right wing lies but I don't listen to left wing ones as well. I am happy to not be in either camp. I've always been an outsider. Quite used to it. But here I am trying to even see what left even means anymore. I just made a point that in what "left" means has changed, and I think it is an interesting change.
The best thing we can do is make sure that whatever power structures we guide into place during that process serve the largest coalition possible.
I'm not sure it's even true that the left wing anti-globalization movement is actually smaller rather than better dealt with at events like the G20 and/or perhaps less reported on.
Yes, it's important to note that Hitler started out as a Socialist, at the dawn of Socialist thought. He differed with them on the idea of globalization and multiculturalism. As it turns out that's a pretty huge ideological split, and in Hitler's case, it became a violent one. He basically said: "screw you guys, I'm going to start my own Socialist Party - with blackjack, and hookers. And racial purity, global war, and genocide."
That's why you get rightwingers accusing the Left of being "Nazis" because the "Z" in the NAZI acronym stood for the German word for Socialism.
As the Nazis began to gain ground in Germany; they used propaganda tools to tell Germans what they wanted to hear: "you're a 'master race', and all others are inferior", and "We'll get rid of these foreign influences, and degenerates of other races, who are the cause of all your problems!"
At the time, REAL socialists ran counter protests, and would even riot at Nazi meetings and demonstrations, and there was a lot of civil violence over this issue. (Which is today, romanticized heavily by the far-left, anarchist, and 'antifa' movements). In their minds, WWII was a large-scale playing out of this conflict, between Soviet Socialists, and German Nazis, who lost. The result was the bombing of much of Europe (and especially Berlin) to Rubble. Millions dead.
The rise of America's free-enterprise system was seen as a repudiation of these two extremes of thought (Socialism vs Nazism). And became an extreme viewpoint all it's own. It became what the Socialists, and Nazis were rebelling against, and now we're repeating the whole thing all over again.
I think anyone who thinks they are "left wing" AND anti-globalist, is ignorant of history, and quite confused. Part of that is due to the anti-globalist propaganda, which mostly uses the argument: "these foreigners are causing all your problems - let's build a wall and get rid of them". (can't really argue for 'racial superiority'; because it's so easily disproven - very nearly nobody who thinks they're "Aryan" can actually trace their ancestry back long enough to make a case that they're not a mongrel just like the rest of us - the only way they can accept this ideology is to be in denial).
That doesn't work, because the world is a complex system. It needs to be more functional, not more centralized.
The NNTaleb view is that to be sustainable and stable, the world needs to be decentralized and antifragile. In other words: not 1 government, but 100 well designed, functional governments with small, local democratic governance.
This seems necessary since societies are changing more rapidly, dealing with more problems and crises than before that just can't be effectively solved by bloated entities (see the EU), can't adapt quickly enough to various changes (see all the places in the US without fast internet), and aren't future-oriented enough because of inertia (see Singapore as a counterexample). It also seems more realistic than the article.
Edit: I didn't expect this response to blow up, so let me address more of the article:
1) Completely disagree that technology is "part of us". Amazon isn't a part of me, just a company I shop at. The closest thing we have to "explants" are the platforms we use, like Facebook or WhatsApp. The article seems heavy on buzzwords and light on common-sense. Encrypted messaging is the best solution, to maintain freedom of communication and reduce corporations' influence. That only requires installing Signal or WhatsApp, not "creating a new world".
2) People are not "property". You are free to share what you want. Others are free, too. If you want to work (Naval-style) towards decentralized, encrypted platforms, that's a step in the right direction. Doesn't require buzzwords either.
3) It seems like the article's worldview is based in an even greater influence of technology over our lives (as if the author realized that technology isn't really part of us, but wanted to make it so). The personal cloud would be hosted by "individual organizations", but what makes you think that 1 or 2 orgs won't emerge on top, and cause the exact same problem again?
You've buried an awful lot in that sentence without justifying any of it. I could just as easily say "decentralization and local governance don't work because the world is a complex system" and sound just as correct.
The bigger the banks, the more centralized the banks, the more fragile the banking system. Same for governments. Systemic risk increases as you increase the system's complexity, and you increase its complexity when you centralize it.
The question is how we maintain decentralization even as all short-term goals push us towards monoculture, and without completely destroying the long-term benefits of large civilization (i.e., I'm not an anarcho-primitivist.) And the only answers I can think of are bizarre and science-fictional, but I suppose that doesn't mean they can't come true.
But what I find most interesting about this reply/rant, is that it - like most of left, always seems to envision a world without power. And you can't confront entrenched power, without seizing power, and using it to transform society.
The left recognizes, correctly, that the people in power - the leaders - are not angels. So the left wants them gone - wants there to be nobody in power.
The problem is that the people who are not in power also are not angels. Left to themselves, a fair number of them will find ways to harm (economically or even physically) people around them. They need someone with power to restrain them.
But then you're back to having people in power, and they're not angels...
The way I see it, left doesn't want people to have power. So it limits politician's power. And then, the financial/corporate interest seize all powers, and use it as they will.
This isn't to say that such a world is easy to imagine, or easy to bring about.
So when I see zuck going on about revolutions I have to wonder where he gets his information. Does he really think a large and growing percentage of the planet uses his website for everyday tasks? That's marketing spin. I think reality is much more humble.
1. Address book, messaging (FB & Whatsapp)
2. News
3. Buying/selling through a newish marketplace feature
4. Event organisation (events & groups)
5. Promoting business and communicating with customers (B2C and vice versa through enabling messenger feature for a page)
Yes. Because it's true. Facebook has more than a BILLION active users. Let that sink in for a minute.
I'd also submit that even if you trust Zuckerberg to be a benevolent king, he won't be king forever. He may grow bored of Facebook and move on, have an untimely accident or a poor diagnosis...these are all events that can put all things Facebook in the hands of somebody far less (presumably) benevolent.
Imagine it in the hands of a Larry Ellison. Or Martin Shkreli. Or Keith Alexander. Or Dick Cheney, if you will.
facebook needs to be torn down. It is a toxic apparatus, being used against the population.
Just saying.
And the names I listed are just examples; my point remains that one cannot predict who will hold the reins in the future. We can debate how much of a monster Zuckerberg may be, but I'm convinced that there can be somebody much worse in charge.
I think the most productive thing most of us can do in the short term is to convince everyone we know to stop using that platform.
Mark is just the last incarnation of people that scratched the social itch. If Facebook failed, we'd still have G+ or MySpace. At this point, he seems like an inevitability.
Mark Zuckerberg and others like him do what they do best, it's up to the 'masses' to develop critical thinking about their everyday actions and impacts. It's easy to blame the Emperor, much more difficult to admit our part in putting him into power.
But in reference to this quote:
>The reason we find ourselves in this mess with ubiquitous surveillance, filter bubbles, and fake news (propaganda) is precisely due to the utter and complete destruction of the public sphere by an oligopoly of private infrastructure that poses as public space.
That's going a little far, filter bubbles and propaganda have existed since forever. The public sphere was never a panacea for these problems. Certainly with facebook and social media it's changed the whole landscape, and perhaps made it worse given what happened during the last election. But returning social interactions to the public sphere isn't going to entirely fix the dissemination of fake news or suddenly pop the filter bubbles we live in.
If social media were outlawed tomorrow it might weaken filter bubbles, but a suburban upper middle class republican from Kansas is still going to be getting way different info and building a much different world view than a barista in Brooklyn would.
I'm not sure the kinds of bubbles we have aren't brand new. The bubbles used to map pretty closely to geography and political structures. The bubbles now are oriented around where our information lives, not where we physically are.
Also, I think you're overstepping with 'panacea'. I don't think anyone who believes in decentralized life thinks universal panaceas even necessarily exist. But it can still be true that central planning has displaced local living without fulfilling all the same purposes. And if so, the result could be a net negative.
It doesn't need to be entirely fixed. There's no need to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I think that the "private infrastructure posing as public space" is a real and serious problem. When all complaints of censorship/manipulation/etc on a social media site of any reasonable size is thoughtlessly brushed aside with "their site, their rules", that is a very unhealthy environment being created.
This guy wants a world like Craigslist, but Airbnb already taught us that free and p2p is easily subsumed by slick and centralized.
In BitTorrent and Usenet we've had great, free p2p media distribution for years. How does iTunes, Netflix and the rest compete? By doing all the evil, centralized, corporate stuff -- like advertising -- the pirates won't do because pirates have morals.
I hadn't read Zuck's manifesto until now. I literally laughed out loud reading it. It makes me wonder if he ever actually looks at the news feeds regular people see.
The reason I quit Facebook was precisely because its uninformed and non-inclusive. From what my wife tells me, nothing has changed. Like-minded people reinforce each other and people with conflicting viewpoints just argue.
I hope Zuck at least has good intentions with his post and he's just slightly short-sighted.
Another person who has been talking in this way is the philosopher Bernard Steigler, he uses this term 'general organology' in an attempt to rehabilitate our technological entanglements from the skeptical cul-de-sac demonstrated by the OP and supported by most recent philosophy (e.g. Adorno, Debord, although crucially not Walter Benjamin)
Although I am sure he would be equally vitriolic about FB the general overview of Steigler's thought here is a neat compliment to the POV of the OP.
http://nootechnics.org/general-organology-the-co-individuati...
I have corrupted this angle a little bit and tried to treat Facebook with kid gloves here:
https://iainmait.land/posts/20170201-transitional-object.htm...
This is Urbit.
