The Future Will Be A Totalitarian Government Dystopia vs. The Future Will Be A Privatized Corporate Dystopia

http://www.theonion.com/multiblogpost/the-future-will-be-a-totalitarian-government-dysto-11540

The Future Will Be A Totalitarian Government Dystopia

Timothy Geist

I am sad to say that for all our efforts in the name of freedom, the future shall be a bleak one, indeed. Such visionary authors as George Orwell and Robert Heinlein have mapped out the hellish future that awaits.

By the end of this century, the Earth will be controlled by a single unified world government–a government solely dedicated to perpetuating itself and keeping the populace under control. The first and greatest casualty of this New World Order shall be personal liberty.

Humans will live in identical, low-ceilinged, one-roomed concrete dwellings, outfitted with little more than a bed and a telescreen, arranged in endless grid patterns stretching to the horizon. Our bleary-eyed descendants 100 years hence shall shuffle between their assigned tasks in gray, one-piece coveralls. What few possessions they enjoy will be meted out by the government, and even these spare trinkets will be small and inexpensive–a plastic comb, a morsel of chocolate, a new pair of shoes when the old ones have worn to unwearability.

Citizens will be assigned to various vocational fields, the most common being propaganda, bureaucracy, and the police. Those who perform with unerring loyalty will be rewarded with slightly larger dwellings and the right to lower the volume of their telescreens.

Unremovable electronic trackers will be implanted in our brains, monitoring our whereabouts and thoughts at all times. Citizens who harbor anti-authoritarian sentiments will be swiftly seized by jackbooted secret police and either put to death–a procedure filmed and displayed via telescreen as a grim warning to other would-be dissenters–or rehabilitated into blind servitude through torture and brainwashing.

Food will be prepared by machines and served in drab public mess halls. No fruits and vegetables for future-man: Every meal will be a flavorless, grainy paste designed to provide just enough nutrition to sustain life and nothing more–any more energy and the powers that be risk rebellion.

Oh, how I dread the future. May God protect our yet-unborn children.

The Future Will Be A Privatized Corporate Dystopia

Trent Schlictmann

I beg to differ with my colleague. Having read the futuristic accounts of William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Philip K. Dick, the path our future shall take will be bleak, indeed–but in a much different way.

When the ongoing trend of corporate mergers reaches critical mass in 2030, the scant handful of corporations that remain will be too powerful to resist and will ultimately supplant all government. National borders will crumble, replaced by warring corporate armies who deploy vat-grown Yakuza assassins to take down enemy CEOs in the name of commerce.

The future will be every color but gray–not that the future will be worth living in. Giant videoscreen billboards will cover the exposed surface of every skyscraper, bombarding our consciousness with advertising for anything and everything. Looking up will expose us to giant orbiting mylar superscreens bearing more logos and slogans. A citizen will be unable to walk down the street without encountering roving clouds made up of billions of microscopic nanoprobes that form corporate logos right before their very eyes.

Which is not to imply that the average citizen will do much walking: When every inch of space is privatized, it will cost money to walk from your living room to the kitchen. The average citizen will spend nearly all of his waking hours neurally jacked into the futuristic grandchild of the Internet, roaming cyberspace rather than moving and interacting in the inelegant, inconvenient three-dimensional world.

When we do log off the CyberNet, the very walls of our apartments will teem with droning media messages. Tolerating such in-home advertising will be the only way the average citizen will be able to afford an apartment at all. Only the wealthiest will be able to afford a quiet, dark room in which to sleep. The rest of us will simply become desensitized to the 24 hours of stimuli attacking our minds.

All media will consist of some form of advertising–print, audio, video–with some actually beamed directly into our brains. The theme song to every TV show will be a product jingle. Newscasters will segue straight from war reports into soft-drink pitches without batting an eye.

To the powers that be, a citizen will be no more than a potential receptacle of consumption, only as valuable as his or her electronically catalogued personal wealth. All transactions will be conducted instantaneously by retinal scan, and credit fraud will be a crime worse than murder.

Oh, how I pity future generations.

'Incorporated' Imagines Dystopian Future Where Corporations Run The World

http://www.npr.org/2016/11/30/503902542/incorporated-imagines-dystopian-future-where-corporations-run-the-world

[…]

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

The nightmare of unchecked corporate power has long provided inspiration to writers and filmmakers from Kurt Vonnegut to Ridley Scott, who made "Alien." "Incorporated," a new TV show on cable's Syfy channel, joins that tradition. NPR TV critic Eric Deggans says the show definitely taps into fears about income inequality, global warming and corporate supremacy.

ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: The year is 2074, and TV reports are filled with news like this.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "INCORPORATED")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: In other news, the Canadian prime minister today announced the construction of a new high-security fence after 2073 became a record year for illegal immigration. It is estimated that already 12 million U.S. citizens live in Canadian territory illegally.

DEGGANS: At a time when Donald Trump has just been elected president, it takes some guts to air a TV series where Canadians are building a wall to keep illegal American immigrants out. But that's the cheeky pleasure taken by producers of "Incorporated," which imagines a future where global warming has either flooded America's cities or turned them into deserts. The timing could not be more perfect for a show like this.

Corporations run everything, more powerful than governments. America's middle class is long gone. Executives live in lush green zones - gated communities on steroids with self-driving cars and armed security. Everyone else suffers in slum-like red zones. If they're lucky, they get to work as servants for the executives.

Julia Ormond plays the ruthless head of U.S. operations for a firm called Spiga. She often takes to addressing employees with a huge, "1984"-like video screen to remind them of their obligations.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "INCORPORATED")

JULIA ORMOND: Spiga Biotech is a generous mother. It will feed you, dress you, protect you. In exchange, it only asks for hard work and loyalty.

DEGGANS: Right, that's not too ominous. The plot centers on Ben Larsen, an up-and-coming executive with a secret. He's a hacker prodigy who grew up in the red zones. He's used technology to manufacture a new identity for himself as a 1-percenter, which explains his hesitation when his wife who knows nothing about his real past delivers this news over dinner.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "INCORPORATED")

ALLISON MILLER: (As Laura Larson) The permit - it came through.

SEAN TEALE: (As Ben Larson) The permit?

MILLER: (As Laura Larson) From Spiga. I'm going to make an appointment with our OBGYN who's going to remove the IUD. Pawn the goalie.

DEGGANS: Yup, Spiga even tells employees when they can have children, and Larson worries his past will be revealed through his medical history. The plot here is a conventional one. Larsen takes the risk of exposing himself trying to rescue a long lost love - not his wife - who works in one of the corporation's executive brothels. But what really makes the show resonate is the world it creates.

In our divided times, it's a nightmare shared by voters of all stripes - a future where the middle class is erased. Corporations run the world with Orwellian efficiency, and most Americans live in the kind of poverty seen in the developing world. The special effects are impressive and lend texture. Desks are also touch-screen computers. Invisible mobile screens float in your hand, and those self-driving cars can display the news while driving to work.

[…]

French Elections: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkZir1L7fSY

Turkey referendum: Erdogan wins vote to expand presidential powers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVTFpRsZnio

The Brexit Situation is Developing Not Necessarily to the UK’s Advantage

Posted on April 18, 2017 by Yves Smith

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/04/brexit-situation-developing-not-necessarily-uks-advantage.html

We’ve been neglecting Brexit due to Trump going uber hawkish and the resulting barrage of news stories to sort through. And another reason is that the noise to signal ratio got even higher in the British media around the time Brexit became official.

Formal progress will be virtually nil till late May. The UK and EU have exchanged their opening communiques, with the EU’s a draft of the process for the negotiations, which need to be fleshed out and then approved by all the 27 remaining members of the EU, hopefully by the end of next month.

However, even with the exchange of missives and related snorting and pawing of earth, it is becoming plenty obvious that it is starting to dawn on Theresa May that she is not in a good position. Yet a fresh poll shows that popular approval for Brexit is at a five month high.

I hope readers will fill in any significant issues I have missed. Here are some of the high points from the last few weeks:

May has been retreating by inches. She’s been forced to admit that she’s lost her demand to have trade talks proceed in parallel to exit negotiations, something that the EU nixed from the Brexit vote. Among other reasons, we pointed out it was a non-starter under EU treaties. She’s also had to concede on another hardliner issue, that EU migration will continue during a “transition phase” that she insists on calling an “implementation phase,” as if the rebranding makes a difference.

Notice that this “transition phase” has more strings attached than May appears to have ‘fessed up to. The initial European Council guidelines stipulate that the UK must also adhere to EU laws, accept the jurisdiction of EU courts, and continue to pay EU fees.

Nevertheless, the Brexiteers are still firmly behind May, just as Trump’s supporters remained stalwart (at least initially) as he retreated from some of his major campaign promises.

The EU is almost completely united against the UK. This has happened even faster and more firmly than I expected, and I though I was being unduly dire. I had thought this outcome would come about regardless though how the EU was setting the order of negotiations.

The critical bit was putting the settlement of the financial exit tab first, which the UK depicts as an outrage (this despite the fact that Maggie Thatcher negotiated the UK paying lower dues than other member nations). First, this is one area where Eastern European countries, which on other topics are more predisposed towards the UK, are hardliners. Second, one of the norms of negotiation is to address the less divisive issues first so as to create some early successes and forge decent working relations between the two parties. Putting a fractious issue up front where the EU side is of one mind, and the only divergence among them is how bloody minded, will help cement relations among them to the disadvantage of the UK. 1

We had also stressed, and informed members of the commentariat had confirmed, that the UK had done a plenty to sour relations with Europe well before the Brexit vote. It constantly criticized Brussels, was difficult to work with, made too clear its belief that the English were racially superior to many of the Continentals, and whinged that it was being treated poorly when it had an extremely favorable deal. And then the UK would engage in disrespectful moves on top of that, like electing Nigel Farage to the European Parliament and making Boris Johnson Foreign Minister (I gasped out loud when I first read that).

A Guardian piece last weekend gives some fresh indicators. The opening paragraph is bad enough:

The EU is set to inflict a double humiliation on Theresa May, stripping Britain of its European agencies within weeks, while formally rejecting the prime minister’s calls for early trade talks.

The two agencies are the European Banking Authority and the European Medicines Agency. The Guardian says they not only employ roughly 1000 people in total but serve as a center for other activities.

The article continues to say that despite a charm tour by David Davies, not a single country agreed to support the UK’s pitch to negotiate trade in parallel with the exit talks.

This is despite an earlier analysis by Politico indicating that quite a few countries were “soft” on trade with respect to the UK and harder on other issues.

And the UK has no one to blame but itself. From the same article:

Senior EU sources claimed that Britain’s aggressive approach to the talks, including threats of becoming a low-tax, low-regulation state unless it was given a good deal, had backfired. “However realistic the threats were, or not, they were noticed,” one senior EU source said. “The future prosperity of the single market was challenged. That had an impact – it pushed people together.”

Another senior diplomat said initial sympathy with Britain had fallen away in many capitals, due to the approach of Theresa May’s government. “Of course, we want to protect trade with Britain, but maintaining the single market, keeping trade flowing there, is the priority, and so we will work through [the EU’s chief negotiator] Michel Barnier,” the source said. “Britain used to be pragmatic. That doesn’t seem to be the case any more, and we need to protect our interests.”

The EU is also considering other moves that are either sound negotiating measures or snubs, depending on your point of view, such as barring the UK from weekly trade policy discussions.

The UK is still in denial about its leverage with respect to trade. Brexit enthusiasts appear not to have advanced their analysis from the simple-minded “Europe runs a big trade deficit with us, therefore they have a lot to lose.” First this ignores that the EU can and will force the exit of some manufacturing from the UK, starting with Airbus parts, hitting UK exports. Second, when you adjust for the size of GDP, the UK does indeed have more to lose than the EU does.

More refined analyses confirm that high-level take. From Politico in early April:

In Berlin, officials say that, as negotiations begin, they have the upper hand. Brexit may have some limited economic impact on Germany, but the consequences for the U.K. could be far more devastating. And Berlin is sticking to its hard line that doing what it thinks is needed to keep the EU from disintegrating is far more important to its long-term interests than anything it might gain economically by bending to British pressure on trade…

German businesses leaders appear to be behind Merkel when it comes to the integrity of the European Union’s single market. “On the idea that German business might soften the German government’s stance: You can cross that off your list,” is how a German diplomat put it…

While Britain is Germany’s third-largest market for exports, Berlin is quick to point out that the British economy also depends on German companies, which currently employ almost 400,000 workers in Britain. And many of those German companies are already pivoting away from the U.K. According to numbers released by DIHK business association, almost one in every 10 German companies is planning to shift investment away from the U.K. to Germany or other EU countries.

Immigration collateral damage already starting. While the plural of anecdote is not data, there are more and more stories of immigrants departing, not just EU migrants but non-EU workers such as Philippines and India passport holders. Some of it is due to the rise in xenophobia; the other is uncertainty.

Proving the thesis is a Polish NHS worker who expressed her views was trolled so aggressively that she took a tweetstorm about her concerns down and turned her Twitter account to “protected”: