politics – Page 8 – Toby Weston

Time’s up for the Plutocrats?

If you’ve read my books, you will know one of the themes is wealth-inequality and the future of our society. The bad guys are the Old Guard—privileged plutocrats; while the good guys are fresh young anarchist privileged plutocrats… plus a bunch of hackers, dolphins and rogue AIs.

I started writing the series in 2008 against the backdrop of what felt like a significant financial collapse and the stirrings of a grass-roots response.

The time felt ripe then. The 99%, Occupy Wall Street movement seemed to have identified the source of the problem… but then, somehow, we got distracted by political correctness and divided for a decade… I blame plutocrat-puppeted social media troll-farms sponsored by the 1%, but that’s another book…

I am not against extreme wealth. I think striving for your own Lamborghini or Private Island is a good motivator for the hyper-talented. But the people at the bottom need to live a dignified life too.

We should always try to create a world, where, if the cards were dealt differently, we would still be comfortable at the bottom. This is just smart. You never know when you or your children might fall on hard times.

I live in Switzerland, and reducing poverty is one of the stated goals of our social-security system. Switzerland is not short on Billionaires, and our tax rate is very bearable, but we do have a wealth tax and a high minimum wage. This pays for a system that ensures that even the most hard up citizens will be provided education, healthcare, food and a roof over their heads.

The choice is pretty simple:

Some pieces I have read recently that make the optimist in me hope there is a new glimmering of awareness!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/opinion/abolish-billionaires-tax.html
https://eand.co/young-people-are-giving-on-capitalism-because-capitalism-failed-young-people-70b4f0ab3de

Sci-Fi Art Feature — Joakim Ericsson

Hey there SciFi fans!

Although he was originally a classically trained painter, Joakim Ericsson has now found his calling as a concept artist. Known for his incredibly detailed pieces, his work also stands out because of his expert use of color, and mastery of perspective. He is based in Stockholm, Sweden.

Ericsson is a fantastic world-builder, which he and I have discussed in the context of Singularity’s Children; It’s quite an immense feat to think up an alternate reality, and I have a lot of respect for the kid of detailed drawings that he’s able to produce on the heel of that imagination.

Here are a few of his awe-inspiring visuals:

If you’re interested in seeing more, here’s a link to his ArtStation site!

The Unnecessariat: We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary.

A chilling read:

https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/

As Cory Doctrow says, “Human beings are the gut flora of immortal, transhuman corporations”.

Life as gut flora is not very glamorous, but need not be too bad. We are beneficial, and that gives us some measure of security—our hosts like to keep us around to stave off IBS. But when we add nothing of value to their fitness, of our hosts, the corporations, are no-longer incentivized to support us. We become unnecessary and start dying in droves.

“Here’s the thing: from where I live, the world has drifted away. We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what’s worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that. The new bright sparks, cheerfully referred to as “Young Gods” believe themselves to be the honest winners in a new invent-or-die economy, and are busily planning to escape into space or acquire superpowers, and instead of worrying about this, the talking heads on TV tell you its all a good thing- don’t worry, the recession’s over and everything’s better now, and technology is TOTES AMAZEBALLS!”

“If there’s no economic plan for the Unnecessariat, there’s certainly an abundance for plans to extract value from them. No-one has the option to just make their own way and be left alone at it. It used to be that people were uninsured and if they got seriously sick they’d declare bankruptcy and lose the farm, but now they have a (mandatory) $1k/month plan with a $5k deductible: they’ll still declare bankruptcy and lose the farm if they get sick, but in the meantime they pay a shit-ton to the shareholders of United Healthcare, or Aetna, or whoever.”

This is how it will end. #FermiParadox