JUNE 2013
WIKILEAKS, MANNING, SNOWDEN.
Two years
ago I wrote about a new cultural force which I called DATAISM.
I wrote
"Dataism" is the new economic paradigm. Dataism is an economic
system based where those who have the power to collect,
organise,
analyse, generate and
deliver
data are the wealthy.
That
is
what
Twitter,
Facebook and Google
do.
It is a cultural progression. First
was control of land by sword. We called it Feudalism. Then
came control of gold which came to be called
Capitalism. Military
power could not control wealth generation, which is why commercial
nations prevailed over feudal nations. The
new
wealth
is
data
flows
and
those that liberate data flows will prevail over commercial
nations. It is the next step to a laissez faire economy.
One of the driving forces of the new revolution is high level abuse of
data
control.
Those names at the top? They are the Christopher Columbus's, the
Einsteins of
Dataism. They hope to stop state control of data. Snowden
is on
record as wanting to stop the institutionalised collection of private
data.
Vain hope. The NSA and Homeland have already taken the bit
between their
teeth. They are obtaining data from various private sources,
including large internet companies. Like J.E.Hoover is reputed to
have done, they may well already
control the presidency and various other members of government.
While NSA or HS (or somebody within those agencies) might not already
control
various government personages, it is a catastrophe waiting to
happen.
We can see the forces of those bureaucracys moving against this
dissemination of information with all the power they can muster.
I can see only one sure solution. Absolute liberation of
information. Privacy must disappear. All public webcams
should be online to everybody, all the time. And (ultimately) all
government records. (Yes, including taxes.)
Some time ago I read a comment in the letters page of "The
Australian". Someone had written words to the effect:
I
am
not
particularly
worried
about privacy. It is those who have
large amounts of illicit wealth who are most concerned.
Of course errant wives/husbands might find it difficult to be
errant. But less crime would be a positive. And most forms
of corruption would become impracticable.
I am planning to do my part. I hope to mount a webcam focused on
the street outside my home. I further plan to put the output of
that webcam online. Watch this space.
25th June.
This matter has gone through an astounding and alarming
transformation. The USA apparently felt that it could persuade
the Chinese to hand Snowden back, but the Chinese baulked and he moved
to Russia. This leaves us with two likely narratives.
- ~40% probability. The US believes all the
damage is done, and just wants to see Snowden punished. Being
confined in an Airport in Russia is probably about as great a
punishment as happened to Assange, who is confined in a small embassy
in London. So everything is just noise, signifying nothing.
The US has made an example by having the miscreants punished by
confinement, and avoids the embarrassment of a trial.
- ~50% probability. Snowden has got really
damaging data and must be neutralised at all costs. We can guess
at the nature of that information from the disparaging tone of official
US pronouncements juxtaposed with the information provided on rt.com. "rt.com"
("Russian Television") suggests the existence of evidence of
misbehaviour by senior people in the US government. If that is
the case, then Snowden is a crucial link in the "chain of evidence".
It will be interesting to see how much pressure can be brought to
bear. If Snowden is killed or repatriated, then it
was probably narrative (2). If Snowden survives
(in Russia) then we wonder at the price paid to muzzle him, or maybe
there was nothing to tell. If he goes to Ecuador, then it will be
interesting to see whether the US renews it's trade deal in the coming
months.
MISBEHAVING GOVERNMENTS.
To me, representative "democracy" is like a bad joke.
And the two party system is the worst version of representative
democracy. Let me try to
explain.
A close analysis shows that there are always two parties. The
governed and the governors.
So in a "democracy" you think we have the power to choose the
governors? That is where the
bad joke really starts. We don't get to choose laws. We get
to
choose between two parties (or in more enlightened places, like Italy
or Israel or Switzerland, between multiple parties). So you might
like 51% of
what party "A" offers, but don't like the other 49%. Not
good. You might like abortion on demand, and also the right to
carry a gun. At least the odds of getting both simultaneously
must improve with multiple political parties.
And once you have chosen you are stuck with your choice until the next
election. In more enlightened places like Switzerland, in
approximately
half of the states in the USA, even in Venezuela, people have "recall
elections"
or "citizen's legislative powers" aka "propositions" in
California. The best places
also have a quite short time between elections. In the US there
are Federal "half" elections every two years. In Australia we do
3 years, except in NSW where we have 4. (That was a big mistake,
but we weren't asked. Because we do not have a state
constitution. (well hardly)). So it was just thrust upon
us. I suppose it could be worse. In the UK it is five
years, and in some places, it is seven years.
And the really nasty thing is, local (municipal) councils in Australia
have no
independent existence. Municipal councils are effectively
departments of the state
government, where the Mayor is locally chosen. Our state
governments could (and have) dissolved local
government councils at whim.
So what is happening? In Oz we have a two party system.
Local councils in NSW are mostly dominated by independents. The
math
is quite simple. Larger councils will favour the election of the
two major parties as councillors at the expense of the
independents. That is
what happened in Queensland, when about 160 councils became about
60. Guess what our NSW state government is planning. Except
even
more savage. Five councils in eastern Sydney are to become one.
Right now they are holding a pretend investigation. Just like
when they
stopped dual roles in elected government. Elected members of
state government were prohibited from being Aldermen or Mayors of local
government. I wrote about that one at the time. Under the
heading "regulatory
capture".
What we the people of Australia need is the power to directly
legislate, or at least
to recall our government if it starts legislating in it's own (I.e. the
politician's) interest
instead of ours. It is easy to see how, with the best intentions
in the world, our political leaders could become total dictators.
What we need in Australia is a more direct democracy, not a
periodically
elected dictatorship!
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