Fighting the Good Guys?
Mastodon can also be a cesspit
Had some bad vibes from Mastodon recently, worth writing about. People supporting UBi over a Job Guarantee, all that nonsense. (Hey, feel free to support me with comments.) However, it is still a darn sight better than the thing formerly known as Twitter. Peoples hearts are more often than not in the right place on Mastodon posts, from what I can tell (even the UBI’ers, dear Lord forgive them, they know not what they advocate for), and according to my own flawed sense of universal moral righteousness, and what gets to my notifications.
One bad one was an entity telling me Yanis Varoufakis’ techno-phobia is not as great and fearful as it should be. What a dope. Worth writing about since I am guessing many of you would agree with Yanis. Please think again, with more brain cells this time.
I had pointed out Yanis vastly over-sells the need for fear of the tech overlords. The tech oligarchs are not as powerful as he thinks, so I find his fear mongering to be a bit too doomerist. Though I gather he is an optimist, not a nihilist, so I can see where he is coming from, a sort of canary in the coal mine, giving advanced warning, perhaps?1
The exaggeration of the threat is however, regretfully, anti-worker (imho ok? If you disagree, too bad. No need to tell me about it, I won’t believe you.)
If you truly fear the tech oligarchs, you have not understood the power of the working class. We are a virtual lethal weapon of peaceful proportions. The trouble is, the average working Jane, Joe, Li, and Xi, does not yet comprehend the power they have. I think Yanis would agree. So I’d just like him to adjust his rhetoric, to switch from fear-monger mode, into empower the workers mode. You can do a bit of both. Last time I looked around, the tech firms still depend on workers, and not just their employees! For heavens sake man! Do not be so blinkered and tunnel visioned! Last time I looked around, the police officers could not make a decent bagel or pizza or pour nice espresso, nor repair the espresso machine, and will not clean the trash up since it ain’t in their job description. Capisce?
The problem is, I believe, or suspect, Yanis and his type are in the Jane McAlevey terms “Mobilizers” and they are not Organizers. Meaning, they are neoliberals in sheeps clothing. Or stuck in the New Labour mold. Similar to Corbyn, Sanders, Adern, Albanese and AOC. Yanis claims to be a socialist, but he does not demonstrate it in his actions, only in his words. He is semi-mobilizing with little effect a lot of educated black leather jacket wearing credentialed bourgeois ꘝꗍꖦꕯꕷꖾꗍꗇꕒ elites, he is not organizing workers. Too harsh? Well, you have to judge for yourself I guess. This is my take.
The mastodon reply-guy’s argument against me was that the tech companies can pull the Internet plugs from the governments should the governments start “poking the tech-lords” in the proverbial eye with regulations.
This borders on conspiracy theorist flat-earther level paranoia.
I could hardly be bothered responding, except to say that there’d be hell to pay if any tech firm pulled the Internet plugs from the government. In fact, I would love to see them try! No, seriously. Go and try it Mr Gates, Mr Pichai and Mr whoever-runs-Cisco.
Before we even got to the messy realpolitik (which will always prevent tech firms from shutting down government) a few preliminary observations:
The oligarchs already control government, so it is all a bit moot. The job today is to take back our governments. In fact just take them, since they were never under our control in the first place. This is probably a several generations long project of the working class. It’s a bit pointless to worry about tech firms controlling the Internet, since “so what?” That makes the task harder, but… again… so what? Are you just going to roll over and play dead? (I believe Yanis would be with me on this.)
In fact, having substack (thank you faceless tech firm 🤣) to rant on is a distraction. I wish they’d shut me down. Then I’d be incentivized to actually help organize actual labour. Real people. Not Mastodon clowns.
All this techno-phobia is ignoring realpolitik. We do in fact, contrary to Haggie Thatcher’s prognostications, live in a society. So integrated a society that it’d be impossible for a tech firm to shut down government. (But as I will repeat, I’d like to see them try.) Besides which, ꖀ𐝥ꗍꖡꕯꖦꕷ running your government (USA) can already manage that trick, without the help of the tech oligarchs. What good does it ever do, except get them voted out of office, or recycled into the other colour of neoliberal, or empower the fascists? (All three at various stages.)
Given the Point 1 about it all being a bit moot (the oligarchs will not shut-down their own puppies and lapdogs) — I think this means the premium on social media discourse should not be on pointing out Varoufakis is over-estimating or under-estimating the tech overlord threats, it should be on the positive proactive side of taking back control of what aught to be our government! Such power is illegitimate if it is not willed by the masses. Once “we the people” have control, we get money out of politics (MMT style) and French taunt the pants off the tech oligarchs, begging them (tongue-in-cheek) to shut down government. Why? Because we do not want to depend on their softwares and servers. You want to stress test government operations to make sure we in fact do not need their software or servers.2 (Ugly footnote there, but it had to be written.)
Ugly footnotes aside, it would never come to army deployment, I am sure. At least not in present day New Zealand. Ordinary people are enough an army to prevent tech firms shutting down the government, even if the government stupidly made itself fragile and dependent on the techno-fascist softwares and servers. (Neoliberals may have managed such fragility, but it is not permanent, it’s just policy, and so can be undone. I am 99% sure the NZ government does not depend on any techno-fascist services, only the much milder techno-oligarch software — Redmond mainly, I’d guess, Unix to a lesser extent, and the proprietary Unix crowd tend to be far less 𖧳𖧥𖢧𖨚𖦙𖥣𖢧 malware-writing ꕗꗍꔇꗇꖡꖀꖾꗍꕷ in variety, is my impression.)
It’s almost comical to me how little our government civil service and representatives know about software tech. They collectively seem to have no clue that they need not pay a dime in license fees to Redmond. (Not that they need to “find the money” but rather that the proprietary software rentiers aught not be getting any of our government’s scorepoints at all!) Yet they, sitting upon government furnitures, can still learn, they’re not soulless… yet. For similar reason, I think this is a source of a lot of needless techno-fascist fear mongering. It is largely ignorance. This is not to say the journos like the folks appearing on Gil Duran’s excellent The NerdReich are not sounding valid warnings. They are valid, and I for one pay heed. For precisely the reasons I point out, mass ignorance needs to be overcome. So with every NerdReich fear story, we do need others patiently telling people how to ween themselves off tech giant software dependency. What will you do if tomorrow you find yourself blocked from all of Google in your browser? Roll over and die? Or breathe fresh air relief and go outside and enjoy the snow or sunshine? Or remember you have relations to some things called children?
The tech firms (or any other oligarchs) seeking to shut down government will always back down, even when they are not the puppet masters controlling government, because they live off the governments scorepoints, and do not control the army. You can fantasy game it when they do not back down, and do pull the plug on government. But let them try for real I say, if I were Prime Minister I’d have no fear, I’d have the working class on my side. That tech firm would not survive one day. I’d love them to try.
It is curious how far the geeky MMT Lens thus sees. All the way up to realpolitik no less! Why Mr Mastodon reply-guy cannot comprehend this is (largely) because Mr Mastodon does not understand the monetary system. Our government does not need to get Its own scorepoints off the corporations and rich folks. It’s the other way around. Government needs to mark-down those ꕗꗇꕷꖡꗇ𐝥ꕒ’ꕷ bank accounts not to get the scorepoints back for funding, but simply because those ꕗ𖧥𖨚𖢧𖧥𖦪𖦧𖨚 are too damn rich, they are distorting democracy in workplaces, and further afield besides. The purpose of wealth tax is to restore a little democracy, or even faint hope for some democracy, not to fund the government. (I’d much rather just burn the currency at a constant policy rate — The Gesell Gasoline rate. Less bureaucracy involved, and even better effect. Vote for me! 🤣.)
But, like I say, all moot, since if I (or better, anyone less lazy than me) were Prime Minister, we’d already have won.
Terms Even an MMT Dork Can Understand
Let me put the techno-phobia fear mongering this way: it is more-or-less exactly the same as Cobryn and McDonnell having baseless ꖀꖾꕯꖀꗣꗍꖦ ꕷꖾꔇꖡꗍ fear of the City of London (the predatory fintec sector). It is the sort of fear mongering we absolutely do not need, should not have, and it shoots the working class in the head, so why are you perpetuating this fear?
As every MMT’er knows, the City of London are completely dependent upon UK government, not the other way around. They can all ꘝꕯꕷꕷ off to Mars, and the UK would be a better place for it. Likewise with the big tech companies. We do not need Google and Micro$oft. You only think you do. So stop thinking…. errrr, I mean stop thinking that!
I know the retort, “Yeah, but big government is draconian and a leviathan if they stamp out a tech oligarchs via nationalization of the industry!”
No. Don’t be a 𐝥ꗍꖡꗇ𐝥ꕒ. The leviathan is the beast we need to protect workers from exploitation. A minnow will not cut it. (But socialism or social democracy, or a little bit of it, reduces the necessary size of the leviathan.) So it’s back to the point about what is the legitimate role of government? It is to protect the powerless, not to dance to the tune of the Plutocrats, hence our current governments are illegitimate, and we’d better do something about it regardless of Internet service.
Besides, you cannot speak out both sides of your mouth like this in any case, and still have me take you seriously. Either governments are too big — and so can damn well poke the techno-fascists in the eye, or they’re not and so we’re all screwed and you can go roll over and play dead like a loser.
I am pretty sure governments are too big. But let’s exploit this. If big tech over-reaches by trying to shut down government, we should (demand our governments) nationalize their ꗇꕷꕷꗍꕷ out of business. Fire the management, install mild mannered civil servant sysadmins to run the Google/Cisco servers. Who cares if they knock off work early, enjoy the weekend, and refuse to work 28 hours 8 days a week days to furiously “innovate”? Not me.
On Point 3., I am definitely not a techno-phobe, I am a neo-luddite. You should be too! I have no fear of technology, but I do have a great fear of very ꕷꖡꖹꘝꕯꕒ over-confident people, and the techno-libertarians are at the forefront of such 🆂🅃𝑢𝓅ⓘ𝕕🅸𝑡𝕪. But there is no point to exaggerating their threat to us. We are many, they are few. We can always defeat them, even though we are also pretty ꕷꖡꖹꘝꕯꕒ , but pretty cutey-pie ꕷꖡꖹꘝꕯꕒ is a good thing to be, we’re not 𝖚𝘨𝘭𝑦 ꕷꖡꖹꘝꕯꕒ . The fear is that I’ll have to go outside and knock on doors to organize people some day. I suck at that sort of activity, I dread it. Un-used mental muscles of the extreme introvert. I write here to maybe vainly propagate via sentence-paragraph diffusion some sense into social discourse beyond which I can reach, so we never have to rally the neighbours, to stand with pitchforks at the barricades. But if we must, we must.
The immediate threat from the tech firms is a depletion of water and electricity for real people. If you are one of the clowns who think machines can be conscious, so should have rights to the server coolant waters, then I dearly would like to invite you to take your ꗇꕷꕷ to Mars. This is a real threat to real innocent people, right now. Who cares by comparison about a tech firm cutting off a cloud server for government use? Let them damn try! It’d be hilarious, and for once in a good way.
Insulation from Tech Dependencies
What if I’m being the ꕯꕮꕗꗍꖀꕯꝆꗍ and under-estimating big tech power?
We used to have government running bumbling along nice and inefficiently with paper mail and paper memos, fax & xerox machines and a thing called telephony, and documents & user manuals in file cabinets, and whatnot, but all done fairly mildly and peacefully and slowly (which is what we want, we do not want overly efficient blitz government, that’d be a nightmare of nerds and unintended consequences of blitzes) — and until recently without the help of CISCO fibres and Micro$oftwares.
In any case, CISCO are not of the absolute evil libertarian techno-ancap type, I don’t think. Plus, they damn well rely on grunt workers, so we have them by the balls, not they us. Get that into your heads Mastodon loonies. I think I am correct here with the realpolitik. Anyone disagree? Then by all means display your lunacy in the comments.
As for the Software firms? Well, for cryin’ out loud, I’ve been spouting steam about this one for decades. DO NOT USE THEIR SOFTWARE!3
Simple as that.4
Quite a few countries have migrated to GNU+Linux. We could too, it’s not hard, plus it’d shut down Parliament for weeks for the switch-over, which might be a good thing. I am not so sure about the interbank payments clearing ops at the RBNZ, but if they are still running Windows NT, then shame on them. But it is probably Unix. So the migration would be only a little mild pain, a kernel pinprick, but just pay the Linux admins a decent wage, and they’ll get it done. Pride of work accomplishment, beats other work incentives all the time, just take the wage and work hours worries off the table. No hard deadline, except self-imposed by the techies (“Hey, Stallman, how fast do you think you could get this done — with unit tests? Bet you can’t do it in 14 days! Torvalds said he could do it in 12 days.”). I wouldn’t rush them though. The more time the Tory politicians are on the golf course not voting to delete more scorepoints from my bank account, the less harm done to society. (I don’t think I am even joking now.)
As with all these things MMT, government centered, and GNU/Linux computing freedom related, they are merely ways to insulate the public sector from private corporation rape & control. Not panaceas. You cannot expect a wise and generous government to pop into existence by fiat, without fighting for one.
It’s how I prefer to view Yanis. But he is an absolute dummy on the issue of government debt. So there’s that. Like a modern physicist who still thinks Newtonian angels drag the Earth around the Sun. Hey, at least they got past Copernicus!
The government does not need their software. But they need the government’s scorepoints, since the tax collector is backed by the phreakin’ army. As much as a peaceful socialist hates to say so. The guys with the actual friggin’ guns. Last time I checked, guns and tanks did not necessarily depend upon Micro$oft software and CISO servers. But even if they did, our NZ Army guys can walk a few kilometres. The servers are a bit trickier, but could be handled too, just wave around the threat of nationalizing the server backbone operations for “national security”. “Oooo, fascism!” you say, oh just go ꘝꕯꕷꕷ off to Tory fantasy heaven. Serving the public good is not fascism, it’s the opposite.
Have people already forgotten that no one ever had an LLM available back in the olde times pre-King Donald reign? Has the rise of LLM use managed to quell war and prevent unemployment?
Most people seem to not realize, the free-libre software community is vast. Just because most normies do not run free-libre desktops, does not mean the free-libre software is bad or clunky, it is often superior. I’d say always superior, because you have the source code, and can modify it for your needs. Quite a few governments are already operating on GNU+Linux desktops, and free volunteer help is available for government officials.
"Thatcher’s prognostications, live in a society. So integrated a society that it’d be impossible for a tech firm to shut down government."
The problem isn't shutting down, the problem is rapid privatization of government function. In the US the executive government is aggressively replacing civil servants with project 2025 and tech bro loyalists while they break everything and pee on it until it smells like them. Of course, they aren't going to shut it down, even though that's their public pipe dream. Their purpose is to take control of humanity. They are repurposing the federal government to that end.
"It is to protect the powerless,"
A left-wing government does not protect the powerless so much as create reverse dominance hierarchy, where the rank and file prevent the would be powerful from rising or dominate those who get out of hand. If a government is protecting the powerless, then the government is right wing, because the community has already allowed the consolidation of economic power. At that point they are arguing how to arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The only meaningful definition of left-wing is one where the purpose of government is to prevent too much power in the first place, and that kind of government is neither large or small, but directed at the project of reverse dominance hierarchy. The more successful the reverse hierarchy, the smaller the government can be. The big government is needed to control big powerful economic entities, but suffers the problem of often becoming one or being captured.
You don't let people hoard or collect too much wealth, and you don't let companies big for the same reason. Economic consolidation is economic and political decision-making power. Large corporations is in effect a concentration of economic decision-making power in the hands of the few.
It is a mistake to believe that leviathan is anything different from oligarchy.
The EU is taking measures to migrate away from dependence on US tech firms. They have ample reason to do so if only because of the recent data center outages. There are too many trends that all pull in the same direction of decoupling. There's the geopolitics there's the obvious rising levels of incompetence and there's the extortionist spying software. Still the matter of hardware infrastructure is not a trivial one. That takes time in ways that software does not.
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Spend less time pissing about Mastodon and more mentioning that the fediverse is one platform that offers people the alternative future to tech bro tyranny. The high order bit is people have to build their alternatives; participate and build that alternate future by their participation.
Hey Bijou, have you heard of the Dead Universe Theory (DUT)? You probably have, but I just heard of it recently. It might mean that dark energy isn’t required if the universe isn’t accelerating.