Note: You may have to deal with unexpected spelling differences. How you deal with them presents you with a chance to measure yourself. It represents what was said of Nietzsche: someone I once had the privilege to play, in a live stage performance in the year 2000, primarily for the world `Nietzsche Konference”. “It could be said that the job of the philosopher is to unsettle our fixed certainties and challenge our Konviktions.”
In my previous blog I was exploring an idea that is being bandied about kurrently, regarding the [so-called} “Retreat of Liberalism”. This means that I am investigating further why the spirit of liberalism [whatever it is] is running out of relevance for so many people.
In the process the word “Revelation” sneaked unexpektedly into my range of thought this past week. I was looking for a synonym for “suddenly”, a word I despise using and always go in search for more interesting options, notwithstanding that some things are simply: ‘suddenly’, like the neighbour’s tree crashing into my garden in a ferocious storm three nights ago, and along with “unexpektedly”. So Revelations was, surprisingly, an option for a choice.
So this had me thinking about Revelations, the word. The word it self… not the denotative idea that it relates to a chapter in a book, otherwise described as a collage of apocryphal histories. ‘The Revelation” was a future that, according to many, has already arrived.
Somehow I automatically associated the word Revelation with this particular closing chapter and such ideas as apocalypse, prophecy and illumination… Perhaps for a reason that follows shortly… So it was odd to find the word connotatively associated with words like: truth, suddenly, discovery, inexpectation, and disclosure… in addition to prediction.
It also confirmed for me that the issue affecting Liberalism… also fell into the category of revelation.
So such a truth in ‘revelatory’ [sic] format was that liberals, it would seem, have become alienated from their kore society, through an obsession with ‘others’ and being ‘nice’ to them. And hence it seems, have learned/chosen to despise those now called the “left behind”. They are also not able to see why; because they are, like others of other ideological pursuasion, in a memic cage around which they tramp frantically.
The more specifically, standard view of the word “Revelation”, as the key word referencing the future, was forcefully introduced to me on an historical [for me] occasion, many dekades back, when, in the company of some others: we were harangued at gunpoint, for a number of hours, by a man calling himself a ‘Krusader for Truth’.
And “Revelations” [the book of one, John the Divine] was the subject of that hostage period declamation. That and some THEY type fellows who were participating in what has now become an almost stereotypical, devious ‘conspiracy to take over the world thing’; enslave people, or do something more elusively presented: and forcefully tested: to check that we were listening.
Chiefly we [who were being harangued] were impressed with some idea that he [the Krusader] was ‘chosen’ and would soon ‘vanish’ in some kind of alleged “Rapturous awakening” with destiny… And we in the room presumably would be left in the shit
Fortunately violence was/still is such a normal part of our lives that calmness prevailed. One should always avoid arguing with a man holding a gun in his hand… Especially when everyone else in the room has got a few of their own, available: at a hand’s breadth distance from their bodies… [It was the old days remember].
So the fellow eventually, ran out of rant and buggered off… and we finished drinking the beer he’d interrupted.
I fictionalized a more satisfactory version of that small event in my life, and gave the nub of the scene as a back-story to one of my favorite characters in the Buffalo Hunters: which you can obtain at Amazon.com.http://amzn.to/2FSOgwq
[Hint there are about forty books on Amazon with that title. Only one looks like mine … a different kind of ‘buffalo’: It is an Urban Thriller.]
Nonetheless; over the years that followed, I travelled on business to many, many parts; far away and usually by the end of my time there, which was invariably three to five days, I had caught up my notes and run out of stuff to read. Mobiles weren’t invented yet; and an airplane usually had to be caught at about 3 am. … And I didn’t need to be caught out napping, for a flight from some vanishing point to another.
So there was often a book called Gideon, always lying somewhere in most of the rooms, I inhabited briefly… And there was always this crazy chapter: Revelations that I would read, against the background of that memorable afternoon. Never made much sense to be honest but it was always puzzling enough, to keep me awake until the call that the taxi had arrived for the airport. I could also never really pin down all his ranting references.
Nonetheless after my own personal apocalypse a quarter century or so ago; what I call a ‘Zen Konspiracy’ took hold of me; and became my personal Revelation: discovery and truth.
I gradually decided that had to write to write about those who remained, in that “Krusader’s” world of the unchosen. That krusader chappie ranted about being part of the chosen that would vaporize somehow: and be rescued from what had to come. Apparently only enough people to fill a handful of football stadia were to be “chosen”… The rest of us were left behind.
Based on some odd things that are associated with that experience, I decided that the UNCHOSEN’…. That is All of us, who read this … assuming [I write fiction remember] that the prophesied apocalypse has actually begun…. were the ‘Nicer’ people… And I would describe the world in which they would live, when the other lot vanished one day…. And in hope there was no prophesied apocalypse… in the same way that 2012 came and went I would simply evaluate the world that is emerging.
And so I invented my own trigger for the apocalypse… What I called the “Nuclear triple double tap” that produced an harmonic dissonance in the Planet’s rhythm, that I called the Ringing… In other words: where the planet lost its tune and went into dischord. So much for Revelations… What was of course more interesting were the other meanings that I serendipitously encountered.
For instance another more recent “Revelation” for me this week, was the idea that a group of Pomeranian [UK] Cabinet Ministers could, at command of their leader Theresa May, speed-read on steroids, like mad.
They apparently demonstrated that skill by receiving, reading, digesting and formulating comment, on a 585 page document that was to be the separation agreement to achieve the idea called BREXIT. [Note that while each page may only have had one word on it, most legal documents have at least 300… Meaning: as much as 175,000 words]
Apparently to limit leakages to the ‘norty’ press, the cabinet were allegedly handed this 585 odd page copy of the proposal, some three minutes before going into a five-hour cabinet harangue on the subject…
The realization that a coherent explanation of the withdrawal agreement [in the 585 pages] could be grasped in less than 3 minutes; and was accepted by all offical kommentators on all channels as realistic, was revelationary [sic].
The time apparently allocated, 3 minutes, was also dramatically Revelationary in another way. For much of my life in the country where I live it was common cause that a person could be tried, found guilty, sentenced and sent away for life… for what was called a “pass” offence, in approximately three minutes. That idea was considered so justifiably heinous that the world united to help rid us of our bad government. We’re busy again right now again dealing with another bit of bad government. That one can decide the legal future of a country, in roughly the same time was to say the least, a mind blowing thought. Presumably the Pom Parliament will not be so easily gulled… at least two Cabinet members demonstrated a measure of resilience.
Another interpretive view of ‘revelation’ was the idea of discovery. In The Jonker Memorandum, [the podcast series associated with this web site,] listeners would remember that the ‘End of the World’ hypothesis, forming the back-story, to the main story, began with a sequence of underground nuclear detonations, that kolektively were referred to [by me] as a “Nuclear triple double tap”. 1998 was the year that I chose for a sequence of events [that actually occurred] during that year, in order, to “end the world” in a fictional sense.
I did this solely so that I could justify introducing Universal Basic Income into the world and working out how it could be paid for … And knowing now [i.e. what I didn’t ‘know’ then] that the payment source already exists; and has been unilaterally discounted to zero without thought or konsideration … That was another version of Revelation recently… Discovery again.
Disclosure: [Another version of revelation] I always understood that it was standard for writers embarked on futuristic fiction to describe how people in the future lived on “Credits”… But the teenage children with whom I exchanged classroom views on matters involving accounting, business and economics for the past quarter century, would challenge me with: What does ‘credit’ mean? How does it happen? and further: WHY WHY WHY… as was their responsibility.
All as ways of avoiding the really hard stuff like remembering what was in the textbook… Not my curriculum preferred/ determined stuff: unless you are explaining Adam Smith’s idea of “Economic Rent”… So you got UBI and as soon as my personal Revelation this year relevant to the vexing issue of how it should be paid for arrived, I shared it with you all on BLOGS: Invisible friend, Kolonisation of the Mind, And Exchange Value. [I did it quickly in case the evildoers, whoever they might be, returned to stop the rot.]
It is my konsideration that eventually the idea presented being so logical and so “THERE” and “AHA!!!” it will be shared by a million or more people. The momentum will bring it about by organic Revelation. Not to mention that as a free market proselytizer by choice: I don’t see this solution as being necessarily State sponsored… where Mr Luce’s faultline has its home. But for that you will have to follow the stories.
Notwithstanding this cluster of variables on the theme ‘Revelation’; there was another, far more scary discovery ‘revelation’, associated with the more traditional ‘prediction type ‘revelation’. Wikipedia [a source, subject to normal caveats and possible ‘fake news’ info] informs me that as many as 53% of all major Hiroshima and bigger scale seismic events over the past 2500 years have occurred since 1998. Not a Revelation I relish.
For the record as at last December the total number recorded that fitted the criteria [6 or more on the Richter scale] over some 2500 years was, as at start 1998: 413. In other words about 11 every decade… less than 2 per year, on a gently escalating upward curve. Since 1998 however; there had, by last December, been 414. More specifically, roughly 20 per year
And they keep happening.
Now I accept that I am arriving at this conclusion from a possibly slightly inaccurate source, to the extent that we count some, and not others, from the past; that either were not measured and/or unknown. But of the known’s: 53 % and rising is an uncool Revelation in the empirical discovery category. [Nonetheless: until it becomes official, I shall continue to practice the writing of fiction: by definition imaginary… Ergo: some random bloggist’s rambling on a favored theme is simply self-serving and not of any relevance… perhaps… In my fictional world things get bad for places on the coast… And I don’t live near a coast.]
So to summarize: a smattering of Revelationary empirics and how do they relate to the liberal idea:
My first revelationary experience relevant to liberalism [whatever it is supposed to be] came via the indefatigable Mr. T. who as we know is President of the Firmian Union. Like the rest of the world I watched his 90-minute session with the media on the morning after his Republican Party lost the House of Representatives. How would he react? Was the pressing question…. Would he bluster and prevaricate or what?
One of the ‘implacable rules’ of my classroom over many decades was/is the dictum that there is no such thing as failure, only opportunities to recharge and get it right. Pres T…. took the road sometimes travelled; and once he had heaped praise on his winners and disparaged, brutally in the case of one vanishing rep, the losers; especially those who had been his enemies, he presented the prospect of an amazing bargain deal: that could be just what the people need. In fact he was almost “liberal”.
In response we listened to a quorum of the best that the broadly unsympathetik media could offer. They who questioned Mr.T were, for the most part, dancing with such frenzy on their kollektive memes, it was its own revelation. No one actually demonstrated that they even marginally grasped the significance of what he offered; they were so intent on digging up their own bones… they simply discounted it and heard NO thing.
I was deliciously surprised by his approach… and instantly grasped its significance to one who plays the “Long game”. And the nature of the risk that he spelled out. We have routinely viewed ideologues at work where we live. Liberals, assuming any of those kolektion of press corps persons would be called Liberals [whatever they weren’t] demonstrated a response so ideologically defined it completely cancelled the name… Liberal. As ‘Bones” would have put it they were operating on “Outmoded preconceptions”. They were unable to grasp the inherent pragmatism; and lost the moment to share in the idea that ‘the people’… whom Liberals apparently adore… Do not have to come second.
A reinforcing but ultimately equally convincing revelation regarding what has become the ‘Achilles heel’ of this [so-called] Liberalism ethic, came from a different source. An English journalist called Edmund Luce has published a heavily praised book, setting out the case for “the Retreat from Liberalism” [Abacus edition: Retreat from Liberalism]. And up to page 196 it was a solid and thoroughly absorbing read, with some stunningly memorable observations.
And then the wheels came off in one line… and revealed his passion, as just a ‘nicer’ form of ideological dékolleté. He also revealed implicitly why a contemporary version of Liberalism is running on empty. In the next few paragraphs we shall explore why.
The ‘Rent Seekers’, or Rentier class, as economist Steve Keen korektly kalls the parasitic elements, that feed on the globalised casino market economy… The only game in town really. These ‘Rentiers’ have, through their greed and indulgence, sucked the relevance from the lives of the ordinary folk left behind.
Their orgy of self-enrichment over the past few decades has been good, for the rent konfirmers [they who got rich]; and their friends. However the entire system is pretty well running on empty. This is a reason for the growing global economic slowdown that no one wants to discuss. Simply the businesses of the world are running out of kustomers… More and more reports of robot takeovers are being noted even as I write this.
I hear right now a local Trades Union group called NEHAWU making a radio appeal for its members to have their jobs guaranteed after some form of automation is introduced into their world. The AM Live phone-in host, a well-known local “liberal” journalist and radio kommentator, simply acknowledged the kall and refused to diskuss the worker’s kolektive terror… simply moved on the next kaller.
The “gig” economy sucks and is grossly overrated and for many is already a place of desperation. A point interestingly and lucidly made be the same Mr. Luce: who simply has missed how the dots should join up
For this ‘service based’ system to be sustained: it is necessary to keep nourishing the base. Watering the garden, as it were. Too great a disparity between top and middle to lower … is fundamentally bad for sales… and will be the core trigger for the next almost pending recession, which may well persist for longer than considered normal given the massive impetus fuelled by the era of Quantitative Easing [QE]: and assuming we resist large scale warfare.
Enter UBI
[Universal Basic Income]. What Mr. Luce and thus most so-called Liberals
[whatever they are] missed was that QE was no more than UBI for the “Betters”
[if I may use a slang feudal term]
And thus UBI is not some concession for the working poor… and the universal ‘Dalits’ of society, as such a worthy liberal thought defender as young Edmund Luce, piously intones on page 196 to top paragraph page 197. Then to kompound his broad indifference to ‘our’ working poor he kontinues with the sentence: “We must think more radically than that…”
What kan be a more radical notion than that DATA provides the foundation for the complete transformation of society in a way that only such writers as Heinlein, Asimov and Herbert grasped?
They did not spell it out though. Similarly our author, then changes the subject: leaving us with his ‘inexpektation’… An unfulfilled stillborn revelation; revealing that like all other kommentators currently: he has missed the Revolution it went past so fast. No wonder Liberalism is in retreat… Are they in fact: Left Behind?.
After all, I recently heard Christine Lagarde of the IMF having to point out to a serried group of ‘experts’, on a Bloomberg interview, that they needed to remember that the Fintech variation, that has come to dominate financial activity world–wide today is not yet eight years old… The financial services industry itself, goes back at least five thousand years… And in its present ‘market capitalist’ format, about five hundred years… Until the past few decades their contribution tho GDP was fairly nominal. Now it supercedes many other more traditional sources,. And that is
[partially] a result of an eight year old industry FINTECh.
Where I live people call traffic lights: “Robots”, a meme that has survived for the century or so when the first one in the country was heralded in headlines the “Arrival of the ROBOTS”… thanks to Karel Capek’s play RossumsUniversalRobots: a hit of that era in our turf. Luce produces a similar old meme as reflexive response to the helping hand conceptualized through UBI… and as I’ve pointed out, carelessly ignores Quantitative Easing… That for the benefit of those who may be confused was a process whereby, in simple terms, TWENTY odd TRILLION US [Firmian] dollars of imaginary money was given to the “BIG” people so they wouldn’t crash due to their bad lending practices. Interest rates basically ZERO. Robots for traffic lights is in every way an outmoded preconception,or more simply, a bad habit. Believing that basic pay would be bad for worker morale takes outmoded to a new dimension.
So. No. Universal Basic Income is not a handout for the poor… As Salinas piously observed 2500 years ago: “The best thing for the poor is that they were never born…” No. UBI is totally production based AND IS EARNED.
It is simply not Accounted for, like in the income statement of the receivers. And WHY ISN’T IT? Should be the question. There is plenty of whining I note regarding the “curious distortion” that the new techno revolution has produced so little additional productivity… Naturally, when many billions of billions of Bytes a year of data are produced at zero value: and are therefore not accounted for… By definition the creators of data… people: are going to become poorer… They/we are in a formal sense slave workers: something that is supposed to be illegal. Our world has almost instantly become a DATA driven world.
So #DATA must share RENT.
It is rather their/our universal share of the bounty that has resulted from the previously unobtainable access, to all planetary knowledge… at the touch of a finger… and the bundling of all of that information into so-called DATA… something else like fintech that formalized and demokratized a previously inackcessible resource that was the exclusive territory of multiple circles of diminishing “Innies”. This DATA that has, a moment ago really [Specifically, since the past 10% of my life began] transformed the daily running of our lives, is the bounty: to nourish the planet’s progress to the next level of transformation.
Not doing this will fuel the growing rage represented by the shift to right and left of centre parties
[assuming such an anomalous pair of descriptions have any form of currency anymore and aren’t simply a pair of obsolete memes] For we are now in an age when the difference is between those people who are okay and keeping up: and those… the majority… left behind. The ElBies.
[May include me… I feel deeply left behind]
SHIFT SCENE:
‘That is an idea above your pay station Sir.” She said.
“ There are Data givers and Data takers he replied.” If you are ‘online’, and your data is accessible then a percentage of the value generated is due to the givers.
Hurrah.
SHIFT ENDS
Takeaway.
You have just read/heard brief exchange from my new cluster of novellas
[Part four of the Azanian Quartet] I shall present snippets of these in a new marketing thrust for Nicholas Jakari… in the New Year
[2019].
NOTE: [Should you be puzzled by this idea ABOUT THE REVENUE SOURCE FOR UBI: please refer to my blog: Kolonisation of the Mind: nicholasjakari.com]
So it has been a time of Revelation: at many levels. Stressful, with major upsets and some glorious highs; and the gift of a life explored: a wonderful gift for a Stanislavskian writer. Time to reflect on each character and where in me they come from.
Eventually the freedom to choose, to appropriate data rents in an equitable manner, may be replaced by the further inequities of present, increasingly, perhaps inevitably, kurrupt practices; as the realization dawns that the world, in our historical understanding of that word: is undergoing a strangely destructive change…. And a good plan may involve taking to the hills: quite literally.
I look forward to sharing more of them with you in a new cluster of stories.
Cheers
!NiK[‘18]
Note: You may have to deal with unexpected spelling differences. How you deal with them presents you with a chance to measure yourself. It represents what was said of Nietzsche: someone I once had the privilege to play, in a live stage performance in the year 2000, primarily for the world `Nietzsche Konference”. “It could be said that the job of the philosopher is to unsettle our fixed certainties and challenge our Konviktions.”
In my previous blog I was exploring an idea that is being bandied about kurrently, regarding the [so-called} “Retreat of Liberalism”. This means that I am investigating further why the spirit of liberalism [whatever it is] is running out of relevance for so many people.
In the process the word “Revelation” sneaked unexpektedly into my range of thought this past week. I was looking for a synonym for “suddenly”, a word I despise using and always go in search for more interesting options, notwithstanding that some things are simply: ‘suddenly’, like the neighbour’s tree crashing into my garden in a ferocious storm three nights ago, and along with “unexpektedly”. So Revelations was, surprisingly, an option for a choice.
So this had me thinking about Revelations, the word. The word it self… not the denotative idea that it relates to a chapter in a book, otherwise described as a collage of apocryphal histories. ‘The Revelation” was a future that, according to many, has already arrived.
Somehow I automatically associated the word Revelation with this particular closing chapter and such ideas as apocalypse, prophecy and illumination… Perhaps for a reason that follows shortly… So it was odd to find the word connotatively associated with words like: truth, suddenly, discovery, inexpectation, and disclosure… in addition to prediction.
It also confirmed for me that the issue affecting Liberalism… also fell into the category of revelation.
So such a truth in ‘revelatory’ [sic] format was that liberals, it would seem, have become alienated from their kore society, through an obsession with ‘others’ and being ‘nice’ to them. And hence it seems, have learned/chosen to despise those now called the “left behind”. They are also not able to see why; because they are, like others of other ideological pursuasion, in a memic cage around which they tramp frantically.
The more specifically, standard view of the word “Revelation”, as the key word referencing the future, was forcefully introduced to me on an historical [for me] occasion, many dekades back, when, in the company of some others: we were harangued at gunpoint, for a number of hours, by a man calling himself a ‘Krusader for Truth’.
And “Revelations” [the book of one, John the Divine] was the subject of that hostage period declamation. That and some THEY type fellows who were participating in what has now become an almost stereotypical, devious ‘conspiracy to take over the world thing’; enslave people, or do something more elusively presented: and forcefully tested: to check that we were listening.
Chiefly we [who were being harangued] were impressed with some idea that he [the Krusader] was ‘chosen’ and would soon ‘vanish’ in some kind of alleged “Rapturous awakening” with destiny… And we in the room presumably would be left in the shit
Fortunately violence was/still is such a normal part of our lives that calmness prevailed. One should always avoid arguing with a man holding a gun in his hand… Especially when everyone else in the room has got a few of their own, available: at a hand’s breadth distance from their bodies… [It was the old days remember].
So the fellow eventually, ran out of rant and buggered off… and we finished drinking the beer he’d interrupted.
I fictionalized a more satisfactory version of that small event in my life, and gave the nub of the scene as a back-story to one of my favorite characters in the Buffalo Hunters: which you can obtain at Amazon.com.http://amzn.to/2FSOgwq
[Hint there are about forty books on Amazon with that title. Only one looks like mine … a different kind of ‘buffalo’: It is an Urban Thriller.]
Nonetheless; over the years that followed, I travelled on business to many, many parts; far away and usually by the end of my time there, which was invariably three to five days, I had caught up my notes and run out of stuff to read. Mobiles weren’t invented yet; and an airplane usually had to be caught at about 3 am. … And I didn’t need to be caught out napping, for a flight from some vanishing point to another.
So there was often a book called Gideon, always lying somewhere in most of the rooms, I inhabited briefly… And there was always this crazy chapter: Revelations that I would read, against the background of that memorable afternoon. Never made much sense to be honest but it was always puzzling enough, to keep me awake until the call that the taxi had arrived for the airport. I could also never really pin down all his ranting references.
Nonetheless after my own personal apocalypse a quarter century or so ago; what I call a ‘Zen Konspiracy’ took hold of me; and became my personal Revelation: discovery and truth.
I gradually decided that had to write to write about those who remained, in that “Krusader’s” world of the unchosen. That krusader chappie ranted about being part of the chosen that would vaporize somehow: and be rescued from what had to come. Apparently only enough people to fill a handful of football stadia were to be “chosen”… The rest of us were left behind.
Based on some odd things that are associated with that experience, I decided that the UNCHOSEN’…. That is All of us, who read this … assuming [I write fiction remember] that the prophesied apocalypse has actually begun…. were the ‘Nicer’ people… And I would describe the world in which they would live, when the other lot vanished one day…. And in hope there was no prophesied apocalypse… in the same way that 2012 came and went I would simply evaluate the world that is emerging.
And so I invented my own trigger for the apocalypse… What I called the “Nuclear triple double tap” that produced an harmonic dissonance in the Planet’s rhythm, that I called the Ringing… In other words: where the planet lost its tune and went into dischord. So much for Revelations… What was of course more interesting were the other meanings that I serendipitously encountered.
For instance another more recent “Revelation” for me this week, was the idea that a group of Pomeranian [UK] Cabinet Ministers could, at command of their leader Theresa May, speed-read on steroids, like mad.
They apparently demonstrated that skill by receiving, reading, digesting and formulating comment, on a 585 page document that was to be the separation agreement to achieve the idea called BREXIT. [Note that while each page may only have had one word on it, most legal documents have at least 300… Meaning: as much as 175,000 words]
Apparently to limit leakages to the ‘norty’ press, the cabinet were allegedly handed this 585 odd page copy of the proposal, some three minutes before going into a five-hour cabinet harangue on the subject…
The realization that a coherent explanation of the withdrawal agreement [in the 585 pages] could be grasped in less than 3 minutes; and was accepted by all offical kommentators on all channels as realistic, was revelationary [sic].
The time apparently allocated, 3 minutes, was also dramatically Revelationary in another way. For much of my life in the country where I live it was common cause that a person could be tried, found guilty, sentenced and sent away for life… for what was called a “pass” offence, in approximately three minutes. That idea was considered so justifiably heinous that the world united to help rid us of our bad government. We’re busy again right now again dealing with another bit of bad government. That one can decide the legal future of a country, in roughly the same time was to say the least, a mind blowing thought. Presumably the Pom Parliament will not be so easily gulled… at least two Cabinet members demonstrated a measure of resilience.
Another interpretive view of ‘revelation’ was the idea of discovery. In The Jonker Memorandum, [the podcast series associated with this web site,] listeners would remember that the ‘End of the World’ hypothesis, forming the back-story, to the main story, began with a sequence of underground nuclear detonations, that kolektively were referred to [by me] as a “Nuclear triple double tap”. 1998 was the year that I chose for a sequence of events [that actually occurred] during that year, in order, to “end the world” in a fictional sense.
I did this solely so that I could justify introducing Universal Basic Income into the world and working out how it could be paid for … And knowing now [i.e. what I didn’t ‘know’ then] that the payment source already exists; and has been unilaterally discounted to zero without thought or konsideration … That was another version of Revelation recently… Discovery again.
Disclosure: [Another version of revelation] I always understood that it was standard for writers embarked on futuristic fiction to describe how people in the future lived on “Credits”… But the teenage children with whom I exchanged classroom views on matters involving accounting, business and economics for the past quarter century, would challenge me with: What does ‘credit’ mean? How does it happen? and further: WHY WHY WHY… as was their responsibility.
All as ways of avoiding the really hard stuff like remembering what was in the textbook… Not my curriculum preferred/ determined stuff: unless you are explaining Adam Smith’s idea of “Economic Rent”… So you got UBI and as soon as my personal Revelation this year relevant to the vexing issue of how it should be paid for arrived, I shared it with you all on BLOGS: Invisible friend, Kolonisation of the Mind, And Exchange Value. [I did it quickly in case the evildoers, whoever they might be, returned to stop the rot.]
It is my konsideration that eventually the idea presented being so logical and so “THERE” and “AHA!!!” it will be shared by a million or more people. The momentum will bring it about by organic Revelation. Not to mention that as a free market proselytizer by choice: I don’t see this solution as being necessarily State sponsored… where Mr Luce’s faultline has its home. But for that you will have to follow the stories.
Notwithstanding this cluster of variables on the theme ‘Revelation’; there was another, far more scary discovery ‘revelation’, associated with the more traditional ‘prediction type ‘revelation’. Wikipedia [a source, subject to normal caveats and possible ‘fake news’ info] informs me that as many as 53% of all major Hiroshima and bigger scale seismic events over the past 2500 years have occurred since 1998. Not a Revelation I relish.
For the record as at last December the total number recorded that fitted the criteria [6 or more on the Richter scale] over some 2500 years was, as at start 1998: 413. In other words about 11 every decade… less than 2 per year, on a gently escalating upward curve. Since 1998 however; there had, by last December, been 414. More specifically, roughly 20 per year
And they keep happening.
Now I accept that I am arriving at this conclusion from a possibly slightly inaccurate source, to the extent that we count some, and not others, from the past; that either were not measured and/or unknown. But of the known’s: 53 % and rising is an uncool Revelation in the empirical discovery category. [Nonetheless: until it becomes official, I shall continue to practice the writing of fiction: by definition imaginary… Ergo: some random bloggist’s rambling on a favored theme is simply self-serving and not of any relevance… perhaps… In my fictional world things get bad for places on the coast… And I don’t live near a coast.]
So to summarize: a smattering of Revelationary empirics and how do they relate to the liberal idea:
My first revelationary experience relevant to liberalism [whatever it is supposed to be] came via the indefatigable Mr. T. who as we know is President of the Firmian Union. Like the rest of the world I watched his 90-minute session with the media on the morning after his Republican Party lost the House of Representatives. How would he react? Was the pressing question…. Would he bluster and prevaricate or what?
One of the ‘implacable rules’ of my classroom over many decades was/is the dictum that there is no such thing as failure, only opportunities to recharge and get it right. Pres T…. took the road sometimes travelled; and once he had heaped praise on his winners and disparaged, brutally in the case of one vanishing rep, the losers; especially those who had been his enemies, he presented the prospect of an amazing bargain deal: that could be just what the people need. In fact he was almost “liberal”.
In response we listened to a quorum of the best that the broadly unsympathetik media could offer. They who questioned Mr.T were, for the most part, dancing with such frenzy on their kollektive memes, it was its own revelation. No one actually demonstrated that they even marginally grasped the significance of what he offered; they were so intent on digging up their own bones… they simply discounted it and heard NO thing.
I was deliciously surprised by his approach… and instantly grasped its significance to one who plays the “Long game”. And the nature of the risk that he spelled out. We have routinely viewed ideologues at work where we live. Liberals, assuming any of those kolektion of press corps persons would be called Liberals [whatever they weren’t] demonstrated a response so ideologically defined it completely cancelled the name… Liberal. As ‘Bones” would have put it they were operating on “Outmoded preconceptions”. They were unable to grasp the inherent pragmatism; and lost the moment to share in the idea that ‘the people’… whom Liberals apparently adore… Do not have to come second.
A reinforcing but ultimately equally convincing revelation regarding what has become the ‘Achilles heel’ of this [so-called] Liberalism ethic, came from a different source. An English journalist called Edmund Luce has published a heavily praised book, setting out the case for “the Retreat from Liberalism” [Abacus edition: Retreat from Liberalism]. And up to page 196 it was a solid and thoroughly absorbing read, with some stunningly memorable observations.
And then the wheels came off in one line… and revealed his passion, as just a ‘nicer’ form of ideological dékolleté. He also revealed implicitly why a contemporary version of Liberalism is running on empty. In the next few paragraphs we shall explore why.
The ‘Rent Seekers’, or Rentier class, as economist Steve Keen korektly kalls the parasitic elements, that feed on the globalised casino market economy… The only game in town really. These ‘Rentiers’ have, through their greed and indulgence, sucked the relevance from the lives of the ordinary folk left behind.
Their orgy of self-enrichment over the past few decades has been good, for the rent konfirmers [they who got rich]; and their friends. However the entire system is pretty well running on empty. This is a reason for the growing global economic slowdown that no one wants to discuss. Simply the businesses of the world are running out of kustomers… More and more reports of robot takeovers are being noted even as I write this.
I hear right now a local Trades Union group called NEHAWU making a radio appeal for its members to have their jobs guaranteed after some form of automation is introduced into their world. The AM Live phone-in host, a well-known local “liberal” journalist and radio kommentator, simply acknowledged the kall and refused to diskuss the worker’s kolektive terror… simply moved on the next kaller.
The “gig” economy sucks and is grossly overrated and for many is already a place of desperation. A point interestingly and lucidly made be the same Mr. Luce: who simply has missed how the dots should join up
For this ‘service based’ system to be sustained: it is necessary to keep nourishing the base. Watering the garden, as it were. Too great a disparity between top and middle to lower … is fundamentally bad for sales… and will be the core trigger for the next almost pending recession, which may well persist for longer than considered normal given the massive impetus fuelled by the era of Quantitative Easing [QE]: and assuming we resist large scale warfare.
Enter UBI [Universal Basic Income]. What Mr. Luce and thus most so-called Liberals [whatever they are] missed was that QE was no more than UBI for the “Betters” [if I may use a slang feudal term]
And thus UBI is not some concession for the working poor… and the universal ‘Dalits’ of society, as such a worthy liberal thought defender as young Edmund Luce, piously intones on page 196 to top paragraph page 197. Then to kompound his broad indifference to ‘our’ working poor he kontinues with the sentence: “We must think more radically than that…”
What kan be a more radical notion than that DATA provides the foundation for the complete transformation of society in a way that only such writers as Heinlein, Asimov and Herbert grasped?
They did not spell it out though. Similarly our author, then changes the subject: leaving us with his ‘inexpektation’… An unfulfilled stillborn revelation; revealing that like all other kommentators currently: he has missed the Revolution it went past so fast. No wonder Liberalism is in retreat… Are they in fact: Left Behind?.
After all, I recently heard Christine Lagarde of the IMF having to point out to a serried group of ‘experts’, on a Bloomberg interview, that they needed to remember that the Fintech variation, that has come to dominate financial activity world–wide today is not yet eight years old… The financial services industry itself, goes back at least five thousand years… And in its present ‘market capitalist’ format, about five hundred years… Until the past few decades their contribution tho GDP was fairly nominal. Now it supercedes many other more traditional sources,. And that is [partially] a result of an eight year old industry FINTECh.
Where I live people call traffic lights: “Robots”, a meme that has survived for the century or so when the first one in the country was heralded in headlines the “Arrival of the ROBOTS”… thanks to Karel Capek’s play RossumsUniversalRobots: a hit of that era in our turf. Luce produces a similar old meme as reflexive response to the helping hand conceptualized through UBI… and as I’ve pointed out, carelessly ignores Quantitative Easing… That for the benefit of those who may be confused was a process whereby, in simple terms, TWENTY odd TRILLION US [Firmian] dollars of imaginary money was given to the “BIG” people so they wouldn’t crash due to their bad lending practices. Interest rates basically ZERO. Robots for traffic lights is in every way an outmoded preconception,or more simply, a bad habit. Believing that basic pay would be bad for worker morale takes outmoded to a new dimension.
So. No. Universal Basic Income is not a handout for the poor… As Salinas piously observed 2500 years ago: “The best thing for the poor is that they were never born…” No. UBI is totally production based AND IS EARNED.
It is simply not Accounted for, like in the income statement of the receivers. And WHY ISN’T IT? Should be the question. There is plenty of whining I note regarding the “curious distortion” that the new techno revolution has produced so little additional productivity… Naturally, when many billions of billions of Bytes a year of data are produced at zero value: and are therefore not accounted for… By definition the creators of data… people: are going to become poorer… They/we are in a formal sense slave workers: something that is supposed to be illegal. Our world has almost instantly become a DATA driven world.
So #DATA must share RENT.
It is rather their/our universal share of the bounty that has resulted from the previously unobtainable access, to all planetary knowledge… at the touch of a finger… and the bundling of all of that information into so-called DATA… something else like fintech that formalized and demokratized a previously inackcessible resource that was the exclusive territory of multiple circles of diminishing “Innies”. This DATA that has, a moment ago really [Specifically, since the past 10% of my life began] transformed the daily running of our lives, is the bounty: to nourish the planet’s progress to the next level of transformation.
Not doing this will fuel the growing rage represented by the shift to right and left of centre parties [assuming such an anomalous pair of descriptions have any form of currency anymore and aren’t simply a pair of obsolete memes] For we are now in an age when the difference is between those people who are okay and keeping up: and those… the majority… left behind. The ElBies. [May include me… I feel deeply left behind]
SHIFT SCENE:
‘That is an idea above your pay station Sir.” She said.
“ There are Data givers and Data takers he replied.” If you are ‘online’, and your data is accessible then a percentage of the value generated is due to the givers.
Hurrah.
SHIFT ENDS
Takeaway.
You have just read/heard brief exchange from my new cluster of novellas [Part four of the Azanian Quartet] I shall present snippets of these in a new marketing thrust for Nicholas Jakari… in the New Year [2019].
NOTE: [Should you be puzzled by this idea ABOUT THE REVENUE SOURCE FOR UBI: please refer to my blog: Kolonisation of the Mind: nicholasjakari.com]
So it has been a time of Revelation: at many levels. Stressful, with major upsets and some glorious highs; and the gift of a life explored: a wonderful gift for a Stanislavskian writer. Time to reflect on each character and where in me they come from.
Eventually the freedom to choose, to appropriate data rents in an equitable manner, may be replaced by the further inequities of present, increasingly, perhaps inevitably, kurrupt practices; as the realization dawns that the world, in our historical understanding of that word: is undergoing a strangely destructive change…. And a good plan may involve taking to the hills: quite literally.
I look forward to sharing more of them with you in a new cluster of stories.
Cheers
!NiK[‘18]
