Jumping off a post on here I saw yesterday, I also listened to "Last Man in Davos" by TrueAnon, and I gotta say -
Wow, did that make me depressed. Why aren't more people talking about it? I feel like the Nick Landian techno-capital singularity nightmare is just around the corner, and I feel like no one is gonna stop it.
I do think that as time goes on, and it becomes more well known, that many may start to talk about it. But for real, what do you guys think?
The worst part is the only people talking about it are right wing conspiracy nuts trying to say this is the rise of liberal communist globalism. This shit needs to be attacked from the left. Literally no normal people want to live like this.
Yes, this is exactly my thinking. I'm very scared that the concern over it will be limited to the right, and cause some sort of right-populist revolt because of the left's inaction.
A big problem with the western "left" is the contrarian attitude towards anything the right latches on to. You saw this in the UK with Labour lefties supporting remain because they associate brexit with racism, and to some extent with the mainstream left not really caring about the Epstein stuff because they don't want to look like Q weirdos.
I think if the right, especially mainstream GOP politicians start talking about Great Reset conspiracies and calling it a Communist plot by rootless (((globalists))), it will be considered antisemitic and insane to even mention it. The right will have complete hegemony over criticism and even breadtubers will start to support it for climate change reasons or something. It legit scares me. Like even right now I feel like if you brought it up at a PSL or DSA meeting you'd get weird looks and people will think you're a crank.
I'm kinda split on it. On one hand a lot of what they described seems plausible. On the other - it's very clear they have no idea how these au database thingies work, so im not really bring that part. Or if it happens it will be aot more distributed, broken and shitty than what the hosts described.
Their focus on everything being catalogued was a little over the top. But the main premise of you own nothing and your job is a few years away from being roboted isn’t far off from reality now.
Yeah, agreed. Also you don't need to catalogue everything to turn everything into tradable commodities....
This was my biggest problem with it. Anyone who's read an in depth dissection of Enron for example knows that you don't have to even attempt to have a perfect AI or even basic quantifiable understanding of something in order to commodity and trade futures on it for example.
It's about a willingness and incentive to believe.
OK, I've had a few beers and it's hot(ish) take time...
I dig True Anon, I think this new neoliberal shift is sinister and worth discussing, but this episode just hit really wide of the mark for me.
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It was terribly explained, presented, and more than any other episode I've listened to could really could have used a guest and some structure. But getting more into the argument itself...
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You absolutely do not need a database or empirical understanding of something (never mind literally everything) to turn it into a commodity, trade, or exploit it.
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As @Uncle_Hoe put well below, the threat of database, technocracy isn't being categorised, but being left out or considered insignificant.
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In a material way, how is what's proposed any different from the reality of the world we live in now at the macro level? Do we honestly think there isn't corporate backed conflicts for aquifers because they don't have enough data and an easily explained financial product, as opposed to the risk and expense not (yet) being worth the effort of physically claiming them?
This is actually the first TrueAnon episode I ever listened to because so many people on here were talking about it. I had heard good things before but it really left me underwhelmed and I kinda decided that the podcast wasn't for me at all. Any recommendations of episodes that you feel are a better example of why so many on here enjoy it?
I think most would agree that the Spider Network series are probably them at their niche, well researched hidden history best.
Obviously a lot of the coverage of the ongoing, less reported Epstein stuff.
A lot of the one-offs into a well defined topic - St Louis' bizarre occult pre-KKK anti-union history, Deutsche Bank (although the Grubstakers multipart series is better), Peter Thiel & Planitir, & even the Paris Hilton documentary one that's really about abusive 'behavior camps' that Brace has some first hand experience of.
Their 9/11 series or California wild fires episodes are good. Their episodes with guests on it are usually better and more structured.
Anything involving the Clintons, Epstein, or Gladio are all really good
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How many concurrent apocalypses (apocalypsi?) are we up to now? We got the Great Reset, we got climate disaster, we got pandemic, we got always looming threat of nuclear war, we got the ligma protocol... fuckin A.
Climate
Pandemic
Economic
Housing
Political
That said, from what I've heard, the "great reset" is just a meta-panic about what the outcome of these crises may be. It doesn't strike me as anything more than an agenda that a particular subset of capital would like to pursue, while their grasp over events is apparently slipping.
No it's more that everything will be gig-ified. You buy everything through apps for a period of use and then give it back when your done.
Then because of machine learning/AI a bunch of jobs will be lost without being replaced so a lot more people find employment through the gig gigs.
Capital is on its last legs in the west, this is a last push to keep profits as high as possible. Gotta break them before they break us.
Isn’t that the effort of ubi? No strong labor force with just enough money to squeeze by.
And led to all the civil unrest. There wasn’t protests in ever major Canadian city for months.
It may have been my post you saw and I’m still thinking about it. It’s quite crushing and I’m trying not to think about it, but it’s very difficult. What do we even do?
In a rationally organized socialist society a lot of this would be good. Need anything? Request it amd recieve it. Even a car, even heavy duty equipment, tools, whatever is all a click away and shared between everyone who needs it. You could decentrally plan an economy on this stuff.
It's scary because its capitalist and is being used to siphon wealth and life to the elite from the working class.
I have no idea. All I can hope is that as it becomes more well-known, the left will start to discuss it (and be opposed to it) more.
The only part I really disagreed with them on is an aspect of AI replacing every job ever.
This has been a thing forever and yeah, some jobs will be lost and some jobs will be thinned out but it probably won't wipe everything out.
Everyone me always uses the lawyer example, but if it's the same as what was going on a few years ago the software replaces paralegal work not lawyers.
Can you link the episode? This seems like an episode discussion thread. And I want to listen to it!
I've heard this mentioned about a dozen times can somebody please give me a TL;DR wtf this even is
I read that Twitter was banning posts about this as a "conspiracy theory" during the time it was actually going on, which is both hilarious and also at least as terrifying as anything Trump was personally responsible for.
I'm a third through the episode, and I haven't gotten to the good stuff yet, it seems. But I clicked around and found some articles on it, and it doesn't seem that bad. https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/504499-introducing-the-great-reset-world-leaders-radical-plan-to
Instead of traditional capitalism, the high-profile group said the world should adopt more socialistic policies, such as wealth taxes, additional regulations and massive Green New Deal-like government programs.
“Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed,” wrote Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, in an article published on WEF’s website. “In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”
Schwab also said that “all aspects of our societies and economies” must be “revamped,” “from education to social contracts and working conditions.”
Joining Schwab at the WEF event was Prince Charles, one of the primary proponents of the Great Reset; Gina Gopinath, the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund; António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations; and CEOs and presidents of major international corporations, such as Microsoft and BP.
Activists from groups such as Greenpeace International and a variety of academics also attended the event or have expressed their support for the Great Reset.
Although many details about the Great Reset won’t be rolled out until the World Economic Forum meets in Davos in January 2021, the general principles of the plan are clear: The world needs massive new government programs and far-reaching policies comparable to those offered by American socialists such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in their Green New Deal plan.
Or, put another way, we need a form of socialism — a word the World Economic Forum has deliberately avoided using, all while calling for countless socialist and progressive plans.
I would like to see a global carbon tax put into place, which would pay to subsidize the good things like planting trees and installing solar panels. They haven't released details, but to me it seems like this might be going in that direction.
That article is interesting. It tries to impart blame on the idea of the 'great reset' on simultaneously 'liberals', 'progressives' and the 'left' as if it's some radical idea from us for advancing towards globalism or socialism or something. I followed the source and read the weforum.org article and my take after that is that it's the opposite - it seems like the world leaders and ceos who attended that meeting, in coming to those policy conclusions, have finally grasped and validated a concept that actual left has been saying for a while - that a move to Sanders-esque policies and large structural changes like the GND would be their best bet, and infact the bare minimum they must do, to keep things from imploding in the foreseeable future.
They finally realized the current trajectory is severely unsustainable and have now accepted that the best way to keep the system from collapsing is to begrudgingly improve material conditions for people somewhat and adopt those socdem type policies and actually start giving a shit about climate change.
In that sense, the inner skeptic and pessimist in me would like a chance to respond here and say: I don't really see this as a radical step towards socialism like the writer of that hill article, so much as I see it as a last ditch effort to keep us from going socialist sooner - an attempt to make the current system a little more humane to keep it running and as bonus prevent people from rising up and demanding a new one. RIP to the accelerationists, I guess. But honestly, should this take off and should these sorts of policies be adopted widely soon, I don't really know what to expect. Would this be overall better or worse for the left in the long run?
a move to Sanders-esque policies and large structural changes like the GND would be their best bet, and in fact the bare minimum they must do, to keep things from imploding in the foreseeable future.
Seems too good to be true, but the optimist in me will be hopeful for it, again. I used to feel like this going into the Climate meetings. But those have long since been shown to be shams every time. It does seem like every country outside the US is more in line with the demsuc, Bernie style agenda. So maybe they convinced Biden to get on board with it and its good.
Whats good for the Left? I think this, if it works as the article suggests, is good for the Left. Civilizations go through cycles, because the rich get richer and the powerful use their power to stay in power. They consolidate power and wealth until its too unbalanced that there is either devastation, war or revolution. The pessimist in me says capital has too much power now to let this happen. We're beyond the event horizon falling into a black hole. They will say what they have to say to get our support, but then defang the thing of its good parts before it implements, just like the climate accords. If it works, then thats good for the Left, because we get to improve our lives and keep things going quite a bit longer before the collapse. If its a lie, then we continue on our present course.
