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Comment by moogly | Hacker News Reader

I'm already starting to long for the simpler times of the Cold War; it's pretty clear we're not heading for post-scarcity Star Trek or Culture, but rather technofascism into technofeudalism. Some would argue we're already there, but I say it can (and will) still get a lot worse.

Now where did I put that Mutant Chronicles rulebook...

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The only positive is that fascism is an unstable state. It will eventually collapse as it runs out of a scapegoat. Fascism doesn't solve the problems of society so someone needs to be blamed for it to have continued support. Once you have removed all the low hanging fruit people will start infighting and eventually the whole thing falls apart.

An awful lot of people die before it collapses, and even worse, a generation is corrupted.

Sure but based on the history of the last 125 years or so, that only happens after tens of millions have died and entire countries are leveled. And that was done with… 125 year old technology.

> that only happens after tens of millions have died and entire countries are leveled

That levelling, darkly, does solve the problem. Nazism ultimately turned Western Europe into an American protectorate. And under Pax Americana, it thrived. One can similarly point to Imperial Japan having laid the groundwork for the Asian miracle, at the cost of millions of lives.

Maybe fascism has a purpose: it lumps together a generation’s horrific and emotionally stunted and combusts them against an innocent population. That’s horrible. But it leaves better cinders than it came to.

(For the avoidance of doubt, I neither think fascism is good nor inevitable.)

If it devolves into a dictatorships it can stay stable for awhile. Look at Dubai, one of the richest places per capita with no real "rule of law" (only in theory) but stabilized through a ruthless theocratic dictatorship that has brought peace and prosperity in a region of the world where democracy (and indeed -- other dictatorships) has so often brought the people untold terror, violence, and suffering.

Last time one of the hard problems of fascism was that people weren't willing to do the amount of murder and surveillance required, and this time they're on the verge of murder bots that can do it instead and surveillance is already massively pervasive and penetrating.

While the then newfangled radio was a potent method of disseminating propaganda, today the tool chains for and scientific knowledge about how to efficiently 'manifacture consent', as it is sometimes called, are quite a bit more oppressive.

Sure the forces that bring down fascist states are still there, but now we also have surveillance technology that can be used to keep control of the populace.

Feel like we're doing pretty well on the Star Trek timeline, tbh. Got to get through the Eugenics Wars

I have to remind myself Star Trek TNG starts with the crew being put on trial for the crimes of humanity and the terrible fascist court they're in is from the show's vision of a more immediate future than the one we were watching on the rest of the show.

Exactly! We don't get luxury space communism until after we defeat the nascent Terran Empire... or else we end up the Terran Empire

The future was always going to be Gattaca not Star Trek.

Are there any signs in the movie Gattaca that the society is militaristic or surveils the population at all?

I don't remember any.

Me neither. The story focused more on acute classism than pure authoritarianism, although the two go well hand in hand.

If anything, it was pretty optimistic that humans would focus on exploring space instead of oppressing each other.

I mean, the lower castes in the movie seem pretty oppressed to me? Just not in the obvious "Sovietpunk" way usually used to describe oppression on the screen.

Not any more than your average janitor is today.

From a surveillance perspective, genetic testing at birth, routine DNA testing, fingerprint and retina scans are commonplace, more or less constant and routine background and identity checks even at the roadside. Although I admit I do not recall any military element to it.

The transition from Republic to Empire.

> transition from Republic to Empire

That transition happens after civic exhaustion, usually following violence. If Rome is a model, we’d expect to see tens of millions of Americans die.

It will absolutely get worse. We're still in the beginning stages. The amount of information on this plan from Peter Thiel, Vance, Curtis Yarvin, etc is abundant by now. They talk about their "vision" for a technofeudalism society openly, it's not a secret. This deal with the UK is a harbinger for what's to come around the entire globe.

This take will be controversial I'm sure and possibly bring me downvotes, but I predict folks like Gavin Newsom - who currently appear to be rising against this movement - will be joining their ranks in the long run. Thiel's platform suggests that ordinary citizens are too stupid to vote in their own best interest, they just end up stalling progress; which Thiel will then point to MAGA as evidence of this. It's an oversimplification of course, but I guarantee things will transpire along those lines to convince other powerful folk to join their cause.

> Thiel's platform suggests that ordinary citizens are too stupid to vote in their own best interest, they just end up stalling progress; which Thiel will then point to MAGA as evidence of this.

I haven’t heard this, and I hope I’m not being given enough rope to hang myself either, but this kind of makes sense. MAGA has pretty completely shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that they will not vote in their own interests, or even the interests of their county, or anyone (as far as I can tell).

Yeah you can't assume Thiel is competent either. Running a country is completely different from running a business. The most I'd be inclined is give them Mississippi for a decade or two let's see what happens.

Completely agree with that point.

I believe in Thiel's eyes, MAGA and "the left" are equally inferior groups of society. He's simply using MAGA as a vehicle to implement his plan and convince other like-minded elites to support him. If you listen to some of his interviews in podcasts, you can actually hear a bit of surprise and excitement in his voice in how rapidly he's making movements on the back of the current political environment.

MAGA is one example of the stupidity of the collective godhead.

The average US citizens' compliant wilfulness and irresponsibility with regards to the US' war crimes, yet another.

It doesn't just have to be about what Americans do to themselves. This phenomenon is just as easily observable in what Americans do to other nations.

So, if there is hope, it lies in the proles. The ones that live outside the US' borders.

Where's the Underground Resistance when you need it!?

> ordinary citizens are too stupid to vote in their own best interest

And the oligarchs have the best interest of the citizens in mind? If not, I don't understand the argument.

I don't think they care about the citizens either. That's not the point. I'm sure others have their own interpretations, but everything I gather from Thiel's books, podcasts, interviews, etc suggests that he believes he's part of a group of intellectuals that are actively working towards technological advancement for the benefit of himself and others like him. We - as ordinary citizens - are in his way. He's totally fine with "leaving us behind" so to say and that's his sell to other powerful elites: they can usher in his grand vision or rot with the rest of us.

Thiel is the US' Zhang Zhidong:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Zhidong

He could also be Shen Buhai, incarnate:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shen_Buhai

Either one of these figures could provide us clues as to how to head off Thiels' insanity.

> Thiel's platform suggests that ordinary citizens are too stupid to vote in their own best interest

What gave him that right to conclude it that way? There are plenty of us who think he’s an idiot to decide on other people’s behalf!!

I agree with your overall point of view, but is this defense contract really the best example? If the UK is sliding into technofeudalism it's not because we've only just started forking some of our defense budget over to morally dubious companies.

So I mean, yes, it's fair to describe Thiel as a technofeudalist of some sort, but this contract isn't suddenly going to upend the UK's political, social and economic systems.

Yeah I'm not excited about the future anymore. I used to have hopes America would try to usher in a better era but the opposite is happening where the shift is towards profits over people. A select few at the top who break laws is accepted while the rest are forced with even less rights. This goes beyond politics now but it is impossible for people to stop the infighting and look up who is causing all the problems.

I'm currently more worried about the government taking control over the media, tbh.

They already have. Look at the coverage of the Epstein case. One of the reporters from a major network was told to shelve it when he was arrested in 2006. Or Julian Assange: hardly covered his release at all, and never said anything about his years of detention without trial.

> Look at the coverage of the Epstein case

Incessant.

For true muzzling, it’s a honest debate about intentionally provocative political speech in the wake of Charlie Kirk. (TL; DR we learned nothing.)

Hate speech? I think the system is working as designed. You the the right to say whatever inflammatory rhetoric you want. What the 1A doesn't give you is the freedom from consequences of the hate speech. As we've seen this past week.

> the system is working as designed

The founders didn’t envision speech being policed with guns. That is absolute nonsense. The system is clearly broken.

That requires debate as to whether norms are failing to adequately police speech in an era of social media, and if the First Amendment’s idealistic vision of lawless self-regulation has failed. (Alternatively, how we can bring non-violent shame back into the envelope of norms.)

Many of the founding fathers engaged in duels. I do t think they particularly wanted violent politics but they certainly lived in a world where what you said could get you killed by a gun.

> The founders didn’t envision speech being policed with guns. That is absolute nonsense

That's an absolute strawman. No provision in our government allows the use of force to counter ideological disagreement. What a bizarre thing to say.

> That's an absolute strawman

What did you mean when you responded to a comment about what happened to Charlie Kirk by talking about “the system…working as designed”?

Were you actually old enough to remember those days? It was a lot scarier

I see no evidence that we won’t go back there. Our grandparents built an entire world order around curtailing the kind of authoritarian competition that leads to wars between major powers, and we’re already watching it break down. Do you really look at this political world as the harbinger of another 75 years free of major global conflict?

I can remember the public information ads that advised families to hide under the stairs or under a table until the nuclear attack has ended.

Well here in Estonia we already are getting bunker test drills and flyers in our mailboxes on what to do in case of a bombing / nuclear attack. Sad thing is that since we don't really have any underground places, and Estonia is as wide as the current Russian occupied line in Ukraine, we're all pretty much going to evaporate no matter what we do.

I'm old enough. My own sense is this is much worse.

I have a friend that was afraid a nuclear bomb would eventually drop. I wasn't worried a bit about that though. So perhaps perception or state of mind made a difference.

I'm old enough to remember, and I disagree. I think this is the most frightening period in my lifetime.

Having caught the end of it, it was certainly scarier at the time, when there was direct threat of imminent, unavoidable death at the whim of some other country. We’re not there yet (well, most of us).

I think what’s scary now is the trajectory we’re on and how so many people seem desperate to keep the accelerator pressed hard to the floor.

I was. It wasn't great, but it was quite static, speaking for myself only. I'm sure it could depend on where you lived at the time.

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