What the Fluck | Hacker News Reader

What the Fluck

bbc.co.uk

685 pointsdredmorbius160 comments

TLDR:

Author states we get sensational news stories, but soon forget them without seeing the big picture. The author proposes we need a new enlightenment of journalism which can report on all sensational stories and how they relate to a currently unknown bigger picture.

QUOTE:

One newspaper editor writing about the loss of the independence of the farmers a hundred years ago summed up the new system:

"The farmers farm the land, and the businessmen farm the farmers."

Maybe today we are being farmed by the new system of power. But we can't see quite how it is happening - and we need a new journalism to explain what is really going on.

REASONS FOR CURRENT SITUATION (according to Author):

* private equity (company flippers)

* giant news orgs focus on nasty sensational stories

* increased inequality (top 1% own all wealth)

* politicians helpless to make real reform

* culture of spying on everyone (PIs, NSA, paranoid husbands, investigative journalists)

* confused population wanting transparency & privacy at same time

I like this explanation, which comes from a reddit comment[1]:

"There are two kinds of journalism that get emotional reactions out of us. One has to do with exposing the 'puppet-masters' of society and their stranglehold on the way we live our lives. Clear and sustained reporting of this kind builds public resentment into effective political currents."

"The second is the kind of scandalous, sordid stories of individual misconduct which keep us occupied, but just leave us throwing our hands up wondering 'what is this world coming to?'."

"Curtis is saying that the lines between the two have become dangerously blurred, so that the latest banking scandal is reacted to as though it's a tale of private immorality that we should just shake our heads and tut about, in the same way we might about Miley Cyrus' latest exploits."

"As always, Curtis pulls his interesting trick of exploring and linking the history of the two trends through the lives of individuals, but I agree that can sometimes be confusing. It's definitely worth a read though."

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/1s8a8v/what_the_...

I think a lot of the confusion about the article is that Curtis himself doesn't claim to understand what's really going on:

"""Computers, "financial engineering" and credit, social media, algorithms that predict what you want, NSA surveillance, giant new holding corporations called Master Limited Partnerships - all of these surround us and wrap us into a complicated modern web. Some of it is wonderful, other parts of it are threatening - while even more parts are just incomprehensible."""

For him, """It is as if the scandals are part of a giant jigsaw puzzle - and what we are waiting for is someone to come along and click those pieces together to give a clear, big picture of what is happening."""

(Like others, I also found the writing style very unclear, and I'm actually kind-of a fan of his).

What I think Curtis wants us to take from the piece is the suggestion of an overarching connection (possibly even a human-designed one) between these seemingly unconnected, aforementioned aspects of our lives.

The guiding theme for the article seems to be the effort to "... find an oblique angle that offers a bit more perspective" - the life of Tamara Mellon, her father, and great-uncle of her husband, affected by aspects of current finance practices, (the alleged precursor to) social media and/or surveillance, and corporations.

If I may add my personal opinion on this interpretation of Curtis' views: Nothing new here. Orwell and Huxley already warned us from the dangers of rising mass-surveillance and huge power structures, while people are kept docile with "Light Entertainment". I don't think there's anything more described in the article, but what a fascinating description it is.

There is something new here, Orwell and Huxley dont cut it.

This is a kind of global apathy that neither Orwell nor Huxley deal with, (in my reading) Orwell explains power very well and how oppressive regimes control and guide our very lives, Huxley is about the same but from a different angle - instead of active oppression by more carrots in the form of entertainment.

But where is this apathy coming from when facts are thrown in our faces about the misuse and abuse of democracy - in Orwells world it would be like an actor taking over the TVs and announcing even in double-speak so it cant be misread "You can make a change, its not all real, the power the state has depends only on YOU and YOU can take it right now, stop it all!" and the same for Huxley. The message is clear, we dont have to be oppressed - in fact the powers area afraid of us, we are masters of our own faith.

That has happened, and yet nobody seems to give a shit. Its like neither Orwell nor Huxleys methods were really needed to drive society in certain directions. Its like the common people dont want to be in charge of their own lives, like we have nothing to live for, nothing to stand up for, nothing to accomplish.

Then the question we now have then, what is it that would make us do things, what is capable of driving and changing society? What would the common man/woman in 2013 step up and stand for? Thats the piece that is missing.

For me, Huxley hews much closer to reality - First Worlders are generally too comfortable, too preoccupied with the minutiae of getting on to really be fundamentally shaken by these ongoing revelations.

"An army marches on its stomachs" comes to mind here - it will take many more people feeling a much more literal pinch before the tide rises enough to buoy dissent past this nascent malaise. 20-30 years from now, with automation having rendered entire classes of workers obsolete, with the resultant gains having been gobbled by the same actors who have dominated global commerce these last 30+ years - I think we'll find then what the end game really looks like. I doubt very much it will be appetizing to 99.999% of us.

In my reading, Huxley depicts a society too sated and distracted to criticize the power structures they live in. The oppression is not one of force and fear, as in Orwell, but is equally demoralizing and incapacitating. Maybe even more incapacitating: in Orwell, Smith's resistance wells up from within; in Huxley, the introduction of an alien from another world is required to throw things into relief. In this sense, Curtis may be describing sort of a synthesis of the Orwellian and Huxleyan views, built on the mass media stupefaction of the populace to glamorize the roll out the surveillance state.

Maybe the internet is our version of that "alien"?

Maybe before it was aquihired.

I can speak for myself. I would very much like to change structures and reduce the power of the state. Sometimes I feel very motivated.

On the other hand, I have been struggling for years with health problems and just in general to get by financially. I suspect that I may not be alone in that.

I always think that if I become independently wealthy, then I might be able to take political action. I would have resources to release technologies that could make a difference, or to run media campaigns. And I would be able to pay lawyers.

But as it is, besides clicking on a few petitions online or some such, I don't feel like I am able to take political action. I don't have the energy for it. And to be honest, I don't know what I would do. I do not believe that voting or making efforts inside of the current system will make a significant difference. I get the impression that we need to do some experimentation with some fairly radical changes to ordinary societal structures. And those types of changes, I don't even mention specifics anymore because they are rejected immediately or not understood.

I think that we need improved belief systems and structures, rather than incremental modification or adjustments. People aren't buying those types of ideas though. So it seems like everyone is too stupid or conservative to recognize and support ideas that are radical enough to make a difference. But like I said, I don't even present those ideas anymore, because I don't have the resources to try them, and no one is listening, and there is no point in presenting an idea just to have everyone shit on it.

Go on, I'm interested. What kind of changes do you have in mind?

I think the apathy comes from a dearth of alternatives. People see that the current system is corrupt, but nobody can think of a better idea. There is a pervasive and not wholly unjustified sense that all political ideologies have failed.

For a long time libertarianism and its relatives seemed like the last idealism standing, but there is now an increasing sense of cynicism toward those ideas as well since it's clear that economic liberty just means the top 0.1% capture 99% of everything due to self-reinforcing network effects in markets.

> This is a kind of global apathy that neither Orwell nor Huxley deal with.

I think this might be the other side of the "global politically-motivated violence is decreasing near-monotonically viewed over centuries" trend.

Whoever could imagine a world power trying to engage in empire-building, in 2013? Governments just aren't scary, any longer, in that fundamental sense. And so their dual, revolutions, are also becoming increasingly rare.

>Whoever could imagine a world power trying to engage in empire-building, in 2013? Governments just aren't scary, any longer, in that fundamental sense.

why would you need a formal empire if you can make governments in different countries do your bidding? Any empire of the past had local governors/governments who would manage the daily routine of keeping flock in check and sewer flow. And current governments, especially in Western world, are doing it pretty effectively.

>And so their dual, revolutions, are also becoming increasingly rare.

people make revolution when they hit the wire and other means don't cut anymore. So if one manage to keep the population even just a small distance from the "wire", by providing minimal employment (or more precisely enough "bread and circuses"), policing without too much abuse, etc... - no revolution. Many countries have reached or coming close to this optimum, while some (i.e. Arabian Spring) hasn't mastered it yet.

> what is it that would make us do things, what is capable of driving and changing society?

The same thing that it has always been. There is nothing new here.

If you look at the populist changes to society throughout history, they are fixing problems that are literally unimaginable to modern western sensibilities.

For example, the average age upon death of a working class Londoner in the 1780s was 19. [0] Can we even imagine that? People, in huge numbers, dropping off at 19? So that's how we got labor laws.

Consider the civil rights movement. It's tempting to blur this with today's racial "tensions", but back then there were cities that would post signs threatening to shoot blacks on sight. This was common enough that there's probably one within an hour's drive of where you are right now [1].

In 1932, the year that the Nazis came to power, German unemployment was over 30% [2]. That is basically unimaginable for most countries today, and those that are in this ballpark have exactly the sort of unrest (e.g. Greece, Spain) that probably leads to social change. It's certainly way different than anything you see in the US.

The thing is, NSA spying or whatever don't really rate a mention next to any of these. Sure, it is a violation of your rights but people don't rise up for "on paper" sorts of causes.

It is easy for HN and the educated leisure class to paint everybody as "apathetic" or whatever. But out in the real world, 58% of Americans spend at least one year below the poverty line [3]. People aren't worrying about the Orwellian society because they're worrying instead about how to pay for Christmas presents for the kids.

If you really want the masses to care about whatever HN's issue of the day is, the first step is to figure out how to get the masses into the educated leisure class so that they have time to care.

[0] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2001/02/orph-f20.html

[1] http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/content.php?file=sundowntow...

[2] http://www.theholocaustexplained.org/ks3/the-nazi-rise-to-po...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States

This is it really. Who doesn't have a car that wants one? Who doesn't have a tv? Who doesn't have the Internet? Who doesn't live to a good age? And moreso in europe: who doesn't have free health care? Who doesn't get a living allowance and shelter when they're out of work? Who can't afford to fly and stay in other countries(£20 flights if you're not picky). Hell, you've even got a country debating whether or not to give every citizen a salary, for free!

The fact is that the poorest people have things that kings couldn't have a 100 years ago. You're going to have a hard time persuading people to rise up under these conditions. And really, why should they?

It's a pity the author can't start a part of this revolution by writing more clearly.

I spent about 5 minutes reading before becoming completely lost and confused - was there a central thesis and was he ever going to get to a point substantiating it, or was I just reading somebody's fantasy about an old era glamour girl using journalism as a weak front story?

I wasn't convinced he'd have the clarity of thought to put a coherent big picture together and gave up reading, coming here instead to see if somebody had managed to decipher it all. (That being said I think he has a point and it's something I've wondered about myself.)

With no disrespect to you, this is sadly the state of us hyper-readers today. We expect straight and to-the-point prose, piddly word counts and a literal/predictable assortment of ideas. And when the occasional author decides to venture outside this straitjacket, we wonder what's wrong with him/her.

Let's not forget that writing is still (I don't know how long it will remain) a creative art. And though the vast majority of it has been reduced to algorithmic, LCM commodities, surely we can allow a few artists to tell their stories the way they want to?

No, I have to agree with the parent, it was overly verbose with no up front defined and consistent thesis or hypothesis. It's hard to read what feels like the meanderings of the authors mind when the central thesis that you thought you were reading about gets quickly diverted.

I know that a lot of people shy away from large pages of print, but the imagery and format of this article is pretty inconsistent.

That said, after reading it all, I think I agree with the author but it's hard to tell.

Absolutely. He leaps from topic to topic, often with a weak link between each one.

For example:

"A hundred years ago, at a time very like ours, a small group of journalists did just that. And the person who takes you back to that time is Tamara Mellon's ex-husband - Matthew Mellon."

"At the end of the 19th century, Matthew Mellon's great great uncle - Andrew Mellon - was one of the most powerful and richest men in the world. He was part of a small group of bankers and industrialists who not only dominated America - but were using the power of money to undermine, corrupt and control politicians, judges and the whole system of democracy."

He goes from talking about hacking, spying and intrusive tabloid journalism in the modern era to the turn of the century Robber Barons, and the only link is a coincidental blood relationship between the characters that he flits between.

I feel the author has something important to say, even if it's difficult to grasp exactly what it is. He would perhaps benefit from splitting the article into several pieces (surprising to say, as so many online publications abuse this in order to artificially drive page views) in order to focus on one topic at a time, and then bringing the narrative together at the end.

"This is a website expressing my personal views – through a selection of opinionated observations and arguments."

It's Adam Curtis. This is what he does.

Exactly. I can sort of see what the parent comments mean, but having read and watched a lot of Adam's work I was able to follow along perfectly. Even read it in his voice.

His segues weren't all perfectly relevant this time, but it's just his style.

I've encountered the use of this narrative technique before, using loose and wholly inconsequential connections to link together the points of a logical argument. I'm not sure where it originated but it's defiantly more popular in GB than the US. The late 70s BBC series Connections with James Burke used this narrative technique for all of its episodes.

While this may be a part of the explanation, I don't think it's solely responsible. It's the responsibility of the writer to set up the reader with an understanding of the point of what they are reading (i.e. "tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them"). If you're going to make a long digression, it's respectful (and less counter-intuitive) to at least give the reader an inkling as to why you might be doing such a thing. Between the random cat video, the shoe photo that looks like it was nabbed from google images, and the sudden jump back to the story of Mellon's father, I genuinely started questioning the quality of what I was reading and whether I should be wasting my time.

(i.e. "tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them")

That's what many subscribe to. There are schools of thought that disagree. Some readers enjoy not knowing where the text is going; done well, it makes the payoff significantly more pleasurable.

What you said certainly does seem to be the fashion at the moment; the number of books whose first chapter is simply a dull forewarning of what each of the following chapters is going to be about certainly seems to have increased in recent years. I find it horrifically dull and generally skip that entirely. I see the same thing in presentations; it's just as dull (to me).

It's not exactly uncommon for a narrative to suddenly jump to a seemingly unrelated scene, only for the threads to weave themselves back together by the end. It's a standard literary trope. Fair enough, it is often a feature of bad writing. You should probably read this article though.

His recent post about syria was excellent as well, and more concrete than this one: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/the_baby_and_the...

I actually ended up going back and reading it and found it fascinating.

I thought I'd somehow managed to switch tabs and had to scroll back to the top to confirm that I hadn't.

> We expect straight and to-the-point prose, piddly word counts and a literal/predictable assortment of ideas.

Personally, I disagree with all three items. This isn't the first time I've seen a text delay its thesis until the end. Yet none of them imparted the sense of utter bewilderment that this article has. I doubt word count is an issue since I read plenty of books. It's not as if all I read is buzzfeed, cracked, and HN. As for ideas, I don't know how this is relevant. HN's primary criticism is directed towards the presentation, not the underlying ideas. I do think Curtis has an interesting idea, but I still think the presentation was trash.

> writing is still a creative art. (...) surely we can allow a few artists to tell their stories the way they want to?

"Creating noise" is surely appropriate for sports stadiums, but probably not for journalism. This text is clearly explanatory. It's not a novel, it's not a poem, it's an article. Its purpose is to inform.

This goal is accomplished effectively most often by building a hierarchy of abstraction. The thesis is often a single abstract opinion/judgement supported by tangibles such as examples, anecdotes, statistics, etc. Paragraphs organize text so that tangibles support a minithesis, which often supports a main thesis, which sometimes supports a chapter in a book.

The author didn't take the normal route, but did he accomplish his goal of "informing the reader" effectively? I think his paragraphs were too short to organize his ideas meaningfully. And even if his paragraphs were longer, I would have preferred that Curtis group the paragraphs into "chapters" so I could mentally index each segment for the conclusion. In short, I think he failed his goal spectacularly.

If I want writing-as-an-art I'll read Thomas Pynchon. I don't want it in an editorial.

i appreciated the narrative as a creative work and information piece. the weaving of stories was masterful and when things began harmonizing it was neat. however, this also lends itself to more of an entertainment piece which left me with some dissonance. it's structured as an entertainment journalistic piece that questions the utility/efficacy of entertainment journalism. to me then, its structure does not necessarily lend itself to a call to action as was intimated in its closing third.

>It's a pity the author can't start a part of this revolution by writing more clearly.

By clearly you mean writing short articles that you can finish in five minutes? Adam Curtis always builds his stories with historical events to conclude with a point which is relevant today. You need to be patient to appreciate some of his stuff.

Roughly 70% of the things I read on the internet are worthless reads, but I don't realize it until maybe about a third of the way through. I put up with it because the other 30% is typically pretty good at capturing my attention.

Except, when the majority of things I read are crap (and honestly, a post littered with videos typically is) I tend to come at articles with a "prove I should finish reading you" kind of attitude.

The beginning of this post wasn't very successful at capturing my attention. It would seem he has a very similar style as Venkat (though I think Venkat is a better writer) from RibbonFarm. I guess the difference is I have a general expectation that I realize he's building up to something bigger... and that conclusion might even be 3 or 4 posts from this long post. However he's earned my patience.

  prove I should finish reading you

Maybe you can persist with reading through an article when you see it being very popular on Hacker News?

When I saw people "raving" about it, I did end up going back and reading the rest...

I rather liked the way that he built up his "hook" to lead the reader on, deeper into the piece. I thought it was quite clever, and I enjoyed reading it.

Until he started talking about the history of the Yeardye family. One long digression about some specific people I have no previous reason to care about is tolerable. When he went back to them I decided to drop the article and just read comments, because the gossip/substance ratio was clearly too high.

OTOH I enjoy reading Malcolm Gladwell, and he's been shown to be kind of wrong about most stuff.

I think probably you need the context: Adam Curtis usually makes multi-part documentaries that span several hours, so his blogs have a pretty serious load on the old attention-span. That said, I've never yet been disappointed by the way he puts them together. He's very much a storyteller, but at the same time as he admits to weaving in his own opinions, he does at least do his dues as regards research. Some of the archive material he unearths is unbelievable, I swear he must just live on a camp bed in the BBC archive.

This is probably the central issue:

  I wasn't convinved he'd have the clarity of thought to put
  a coherent big picture together and gave up reading...

I found the style very entertaining, I thought the video clips were relevant and interesting as well. I think the big difference is that I decided to trust the author and take for granted that it would all make sense by the end.

I also had as much time as I wanted to read the piece, if I was more pressed for time I may have had to abandon it as well. I think it's unfair to accuse people who distrust the author as having some sort of attention problem. Perhaps they have another heuristic for deciding if a longer article is worth it and this one simply didn't meet those requirements.

Perhaps it's a parody?

Compare to something like this:

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/06/the-best-spinach-...

We've all seen and suffered through these, and the Upworthy/Buzzfeed crapstylebook dictates that the thesis be held out as long as possible.

One of the things I appreciated about the piece was that the intro is a bit scattered. You kind of wonder where Alan's going with it, then it comes together. The build as the piece develops is pretty intense.

my only gripe with the article is the meaningless title (if you are going for the cool title, at least add a descriptive subtitle) and the videos are now too standards compliant.

If you look through his other blog articles, it's something of a theme with him.

That said: I've encountered a number of otherwise good journos who can't write a headline to save their life. And many more who can't write a decent lede.

"* politicians helpless to make real reform"

s/helpless/not interested/

Wow! This may be the most brilliant, cheeky, inventive and yet incisive piece of journalism I've come across in recent times. And it's on BBC (I had to check multiple times to be sure).

This is Adam Curtis you're dealing with, check youtube for some of his other brilliant (& kinda far-out) documentaries

This is actually well overdue, Curtis is a genius whose work will appeal to a lot of people here.

It's not considered his best stuff, All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace is probably most relevant to HN and all three episodes are well worth watching.

IMO his best stuff is on the coincidence and movement of political power. Check out The Trap and The Mayfair Set. The Power of Nightmares is good too.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace is pretty incredible!

Have you seen "The Loving Trap"? http://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg

(spoiler: it's a parody of Curtis's methods)

Thanks for that jn. It really resonates with me after seeing Machines and this latest BBC article.

"Human Resources" will change your life.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/human-resources/

A documentary that starts with a slightly de-tuned low and flat piano note. Impactful.

Every great song starts with a single note...

Now go watch the darn thing.

It's a shame they don't offer torrents.

Why? Just use http://flashgot.net/ wih Firefox.

Some providers filter flash etc. Torrents allow the site to offset some of the hosting load.

Even his Manchester International Festival documentary was incredible, and that was at least a third musical collaboration...

Really great writing and seemingly the only way to get such information past the censors these days - one more thing I would have loved to see him include would be Tammany Hall (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall ) - a reminder how closely politics and mobsters / organised crimes were still interconnected not so long ago (Al Capone started his career with their protection, or Lucy Luciano to name only two)

I admit that I dismissed this article due to the title. Your comment prompted me to give it a second chance, and it's actually a pretty decent read.

Adam Curtis has a lot of interesting pieces. Take them with a shaker full of salt, though. (Especially the "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace". That one was very interesting, but also very mislead.)

How so?

He doesn't seem to be aware that computers are universal machines. So the circumnstances and ideologies of their creators do not determine computers' destiny.

The Clinton affair angle was also out of proportion.

You are in for a treat! Watch "The Trap" and "All watched over by machines of loving grace", two documentaries also by Adam Curtis.

All of his films can be watched here: http://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/

You can find them on archive.org too. He tacitly encourages people to share and distribute them.

It's on a BBC blog, anyway. It looks like they have a very small set of blogs, which is nice, but it probably didn't go through the same editorial process as standard BBC articles do.

I agree. I just skimmed it, but it appears to meander. A lot. And it's very long. It probably could have benefited from some "tough love" editing.

That's his whole thing. His films typically come in three or four 60 minute sections. He occasionally does stuff like stage live action interactive theatre versions of his documentaries in abandoned warehouses. He once did a show with Massive Attack. So when he writes articles like this, it's him being restrained.

See the following brilliantly observed parody for the reasons to take him with a pinch of salt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg

That said, he is one of my intellectual idols, however much he does enjoy gimmickry.

It's very long? Do you have the patience of a gnat? This is exactly the kind of journalism that should be championed instead of short, fact-less articles about the latest celebrity to accidentally release a sex tape.

Don't most programmers have ADD? Many engineers in general do, and I'm one of them.

E.g. why are you on HN? Is it because you're bored while something is compiling? But you know that you'll spend more time on HN (or slashdot or whatever) than it takes for the compile to finish.

And why is twitter so popular? Isn't 140 characters the antithesis of patience?

I can certainly take the time to read long articles, but I didn't know this author. So that makes him one of literally "thousands" of articles, tweets, etc competing for my time every day. That's why I generally flit thru articles.

That's part of the charm. It draws in the casual reader - perhaps one seeking some cheap sensationalism - and then quite unexpectedly becomes an expansive, relevant commentary on our time. It might be brilliant.

Would you prefer a LOLcat?

I'll also chime in here with a recommendation for anything Adam Curtis does.

His documentaries are among the best I've seen (and he has quite a few). Most are available on Youtube (or in a torrent collection, if that's your thing).

I recently watched "It Felt Like a Kiss"[1], and it's quite the piece of art. No narration, all great music.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Felt_Like_a_Kiss

Actually, as soon as I saw Curtis's name on it I stopped reading. His documentaries are egregious narratives with little relation to reality, from past experience.

I feel people who consider themselves to be "intellectuals" or more generally people who "see" the present world situation more clearly (whether it be the geopolitical, societal, or technological aspects of it) have the duty to write about it and inform others.

Perhaps this is what we have come to. Because of corporate chain-of-command issues (think Bloomberg in China) professional journalists can't speak the truth anymore, so we need citizens to do the job. As the article points out, the main thing that is missing is not the information/revelations but the synthesis of this information. What is the System? How does it work? How are they fucking us? Who is pulling the strings? What is the good fight?

From the follow up movie to Wall Street, Money Never Sleeps:

Gordon Gekko: "I've been considered a pretty smart guy and maybe I was in prison too long. But sometimes it's the only place to stay sane and look out through those bars and say, 'Is everybody out there nuts?!"

This is where we are with today's situation, only true outsiders can escape the lies and moral values of our times. I don't think that 'intellectuals' help, they are on the same kool aid. Even Nelson Mandela thought that going to war in Afghanistan was the right thing to do.

> I don't think that 'intellectuals' help...

A lot of criticism of the financial sector is dismissed with arguments like "it's more complicated than that" and "you don't understand."

So I guess by "intellectual," I meant someone who can see through the layers of complexity and find the weak spot. I think this might require more of an insider position rather than outsider.

If you want my piece on this,

Each state is defined by its monopoly on violence, that is the military power it has over that area, the police/internal violence units are for keeping the internal structure of the house intact - the class system, for the rich to keep their fortunes and define policy. Thats the setup, but the real power centre and brain of the society is the intelligence agencies, which can direct and influence the policy makers on all from military matters to internal violence.

The intelligence agencies are above the law in any society. For them the law is a piece of paper to be used any way they wish. What is most important is "teh security of the state" which means the small network of people who get the reports on all others and each other - like a mafia family keeping each other stable and in place but still moving in the same direction - more power and safety for themselves.

This spying on masses is done to seek out good recruites, and has always been done without internet. The prime directive of any intelligence agency is to control the public life, wheverever it is, online or public squares.

The lure to work for these agencies is the secrecy, standing above law, being more important than others in society, and power.

Meh, doesnt really make sense, but Im gonna iterate more on these ideas.

I stuck to HN's "preserve the headline" policy, but a subtitle might be: what Jimmy Choos, tattle sheets, Murdoch, oil and railroad barons, P.K. Dick, McClure's Magazine, hyphenated Americans, and HSBC have in common.

I've been engaged on my own threading-of-multiple-needles project over the past few months, and while Adam Curtis's line is a bit different from the one I'd draw, the common thread he does find is striking, insightful, and original.

I'd also like to hat tip Dieter Muller who'd shared this on G+:

https://plus.google.com/110168665701189567035/posts/dzr7LNLu...

I'd like to comment on the form. The content is fantastic, but the way he manages to make these individual stories into a single, coherent narrative is extremely impressive.

I love Adam Curtis' documentary, however the form always makes me slightly uneasy, I always feel like there's some sleighth of hand going on. I used to feel the same way watching James Burke's Connections where the connections were sometimes rather tenuous ... 'someone else who wore shoes was...'.

Having been on a bit of a Burke kick for the past few months (re-watching Connections, hitting The Day the Universe Changed (excellent) and Connections2 (a bit too commercial and rushed) for the first time, I agree that some of his connections ... are a bit tenuous. But he's making a point (forget now if this was in Connections or TDTUC) that progress isn't linear and doesn't happen within given categories. Things draw from all over the place, some people make it huge, many don't (the number of people in Burke's stories who either toil on in obscurity or die penniless is ... sobering).

I'd say that while he occasionally does reach a bit far, most of his junctures are at least defensible.

C2 is where this starts to run a bit thin. The episodes are 22 minutes long, rather than 54, much of the material is covered in his earlier programs (and feels a bit like a go-over / phoning-it-in), and it feels a bit more commercial overall (not nearly as bad as the crap that shows up on most modern TV, but decidedly moreso than the first series and TDTUC). I'll see how C3 turned out, at least it returns to the 52 minute format.

As for Curtis: I found his opening a bit weak and vague, but it built a bit like a Neal Stephenson novel: there's foundation being laid and an atmosphere being created which pulls together if you stick with it. No, not a fast read, but a damned good one.

"we need a new journalism to explain what is really going on."

I think I've summed it up nicely in my essay the monopoly: http://www.lettersfrompeter.com/the-monopoly/

Picks up right where he leaves off.

Interesting piece. Note that there's some empirical evidence to suggest a controlling cabal (I prefer the term "oligarchy" rather than "monopoly"):

http://planetsave.com/2011/08/28/who-runs-the-world-network-...

The next question is: is this deliberate or an emergent property. I'm inclined to suspect a bit of both. There is a desire to control, but there's also a likelihood that there will emerge some group which has control. Which then raises the question of how to reconcile this with existing economic, political, and social theory (all of which are, I suspect, badly broken and fail to take this into sufficient account).

Excellent link. I've seen it before but on second look should definitely include in the essay.

As to whether this global power structure is deliberate or emergent, I think my essay makes it quite clear that it's the former. Looking only at the link you provided, I can see how one might ask that question. But after examining the origins of the globalist power and the synchronicity of their operations, making the emergent argument gets pretty difficult.

hey man, this is exactly what the article was alluding to, it should be the top comment imo. i'll definitely be spreading it around. amazing work and easy to digest. remember though, this type of information is often suppressed.

Thank you

This is an excellent series of articles that summarize and explain several aspects of the inner working of the System.

thanks!

I have a question for you. In chapter 1 you explain why income tax was created (because interest from loans isn't flowing back into the government and government services needed to be paid). How come these services aren't being paid with the money that the gov't pulls out of the fed?

This is very well written.

It's a panoply of obfuscations, misunderstandings and mischaracterizations.

For instance, the Federal Reserve really is a federal institution.

Also, saying the Fed provided $9 trillion is a counting game. The $9 trillion comes from adding up a bunch of short term loans, the outstanding amount was never near that much.

> obfuscations, misunderstandings and mischaracterizations

I came out reading this with a very positive feeling--though I must say I already believed most of the things discussed in these articles. Could you point me to some of the obfuscations, misunderstandings, and mischaracterizations? I'd be happy if I can correct some of my misbeliefs...

Are you rejecting the whole notion of "hidden power," or the premise that the hidden power influences and controls the Federal Reserve system and other institutions like the IMF?

Well, I started with 2.

I have reservations about the amount of power available in the systems of today, and about how that power is exercised, but I'm not a big believer in a competent, intentional conspiracy underlying it.

I share your skepticism of a "competent, intentional conspiracy", but I wonder if there might be an analogous, emergent phenomenon. I also find it plausible that this (hypothetical) emergent system has been opportunistically capitalised upon, despite not being intentionally created. Does that seem unlikely to you?

Interesting article, but this part irked me:

  But there is a paradox here. Because many of those who are 
  shocked by the extraordinary extent of the secret 
  surveillance - radical journalists, cyber-revolutionaries, 
  internet libertarians - are also argueing for total 
  transparency of information."

Those that dislike secret surveillance value their privacy over total transparency of information. There is no paradox there.

Also, I thought argument was: privacy for the individual and transparency from organizations/institutions.

Yes, exactly, transparency of government, that we pay for and should be able to inspect/evaluate etc. but stay the hell out of my private life!

It's not a paradox, it's common sense.

twist: corporations are people (persons, legal sense)

I think Adam Curtis understands that the people he's talking about want (in principle) privacy for individuals and transparency for government agencies. I think he's misusing the word "paradox" just as an easy way to describe that an issue is very complicated, with two different strong desires that can easily come into conflict. It won't always be straightforward to separate out information that is in the public interest from information that should be private to an individual.

Not just arguing for, but also enabling. For example, secretive government agents could use TOR and OTR to hide things from the public.

What's interesting to me is that the robber barons owned a disproportionate percentage of the GDP as compared to the most wealthiest individuals in the developed world today. For instance, it is estimated that Rockefeller's personal fortune alone amounted to ~1.5% of the US' GDP. I wonder why this is the case. What changed and why don't we have a Rockefeller equivalent today? Is it perhaps because of greater total prosperity and increased complexity it is harder to dominate large verticals and possess such great personal wealth? Or is it something regulatory?

Rockefeller's personal fortune alone amounted to ~1.5% of the US' GDP

I'd have to dig for the references, but as I recall it was Rockefeller or Carnegie whose income (or at least that of their companies) comprised a percent or two of GDP.

In terms of wealth, Rockefeller is considered to be the wealthiest individual in modern times. From Wikipedia:

By the time of his death in 1937, estimates place his net worth in the range of US$392 billion to US$663.4 billion in adjusted dollars for the late 2000s (decade), and it is estimated that his personal fortune was equal to 1.53% of the total U.S. annual GDP in his day. When considering the real value of his wealth, Rockefeller is widely held to be the wealthiest person in history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_f...

A related reference I strongly recommend (and Ida Tarbell makes an appearance there as well) is Daniel Yergin's The Prize (both a book and PBS/BBC TV series now available on YouTube). The arc inscribed by the development of petroleum is truly staggering.

As to what changed: 100:1 EROIE energy, high-yield mineral deposits, a lack of complexity brakes (pollution, NIMBY, anti-trust, and similar rules), as well as the vast potentials available through exploiting nascent energy and mineral wealth, as well as the huge technological advances of ~1880 - 1930 had a huge amount to do with the wealth accumulated at that time. I see this as more having to do with multiple low entropy resources than regulation, thought that has had some effects. And the negative externalities were tremendous as well, from economic instabilities (the late 1800s saw tremendous busts, despite a gold-backed currency) to corruption and abuse, to pollution and discrimination.

>the late 1900s saw tremendous busts, despite a gold-backed currency

You made a typeo.

but yeah. I'm not sure why the hard-currency folks think that a commodity-backed currency will result in a more stable economy. Boom and Bust is the natural state of capitalism, and perhaps the natural state of human society, at least in times of dramatic technological change.

> I'm not sure why the hard-currency folks think that a commodity-backed currency will result in a more stable economy. Boom and Bust is the natural state of capitalism, and perhaps the natural state of human society, at least in times of dramatic technological change.

If you have a central bank constantly messing with interest rates and money supply, it distorts the market. That's why they do what they do. Whether we are better off or not I do not know, but to assert that it is irrelevant is incorrect.

I can agree that capitalism is more prone to boom and bust, but in a bust individuals will generally react accordingly in a mostly logical way. A central bank managed economy will (with the best intentions in mind I assume) often intervene in a way that promotes a continuation of the non (or negatively) beneficial economic behavior, if they didn't start it in the first place. This is where the hard money people are coming from, or at least this one.

All sorts of buried assertions in what you're saying: why are boom and bust "logical" in the first place? Do they not result from over- and under-valuing investments?

Central bank management has achieved pretty much exactly what it's been tasked with doing: price stability of the aggregate inflation measure. This is despite large variation in underlying commodities like oil. Housing went mad, but it wasn't included in the measure of inflation and far too many people were happy with asset price inflation to stop it.

(In any case, money supply is far more a function of lending than of currency issue. Hard currency does not prevent expansion or contraction of the money supply)

> why are boom and bust "logical" in the first place?

They're not, they result from humans not being logical creatures.

> price stability of the aggregate inflation measure.

Depending on how you measure.

> Housing went mad, but it wasn't included in the measure of inflation

Case in point. The largest lifetime investment of 95%+ of the population and it became a bubble/mania largely because of central bank intervention in interest rates.

> Hard currency does not prevent expansion or contraction of the money supply

That is not my understanding. If your currency must be backed by gold for example, then the money supply would grow slowly and prices would adjust accordingly. This is very different from today's practices.

>If you have a central bank constantly messing with interest rates and money supply, it distorts the market. That's why they do what they do. Whether we are better off or not I do not know, but to assert that it is irrelevant is incorrect.

Not saying it's irrelevant. I'm just saying that the historical data does not support the assertion that fiat currencies result in markets that are less stable than commodity-based currencies.

> but in a bust individuals will generally react accordingly in a mostly logical way.

It's easy to check this against, for instance, the great depression where rational economic actors drastically reduced their consumption of goods like, say, "food" or "shelter".

Despite being highly rational behavior, it was at times deleterious.

> Despite being highly rational behavior, it was at times deleterious.

Very true, but the lesson of what can happen when caution is thrown to the wind would minimize irresponsible behavior for a very long time. Contrast that with current practice which is to drop interest rates to insane levels so people can continue doing what got them into trouble in the first place.

typeo

Fixed. Thanks.

As for commdity/specie currencies, I like to point to the history of devaluation of the Roman Denarious (from 99% pure to around 4% silver) or of Adam Smith's very long exploration of devaluation of each of the three metalic standards of British currency (copper, silver, and gold -- no wonder pre-decimalised denominations were so confusing).

The Walton family are worth a combined $150 billion. That's 1% of US' GDP.

Carlos Slim is worth $50 billion, 4% of Mexico's 1.1 trillion GDP.

Maybe it's the difference of a developing vs a developed economy.

The House of Saud (15,000 members, core of which is some 200-2000, holding most of the wealth), which effectively owns Saudi Arabia, is pretty hard to pin down. The richest individuals seem to be in the $15-20 billion range. Total family wealth may exceed $1.4 trillion.

Saudi Arabia's 2011 GDP was $576 billion, putting the family's worth at as over 240% of GDP.

Since Saudi GPD is about 1% of total global GDP, this means the family's wealth is about 2% of the world's GDP.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/saudi-arabia/gdp

http://www.alearned.com/saudi-royal-family/ (I'm not convinced this source is accurate).

Anti-trust laws + a lot of other stuff that used to be kosher but is now super illegal. For instance, look up "credit mobilier". Or consider how Standard Oil used their size to control railroads and basically make it so their competitors couldn't ship at reasonable rates.

As another comment points out, Carlos Slim's net worth is something like 4% of Mexico's GDP. Carlos Slim is pretty much a monopolist though, which helps.

"What changed and why don't we have a Rockefeller equivalent today?"

We do, and quite a few of them, but through legal trickery and slight of hand they have learned how to compartmentalize, hide, and remove themselves from, their vast amounts of wealth. Through the use of corporations, trusts, estates, and other things, largely for tax purposes but also for other reasons, the kinds of people on the boards and the people behind them of The 147 (http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf) do this all the time.

My opinion is that it's something regulatory. If we truly had a free market, we would almost certainly see much larger disparities in wealth distribution.

There may well be people who control that much of GDP nowadays but it's all been squirreled away offshore. Company ownership is often hidden behind offshore shell companies so who knows what the trillions parked in the Caribbean control.

The report mentioned in the article, titled "The Rogue Element of the Private Investigation Industry and Others Unlawfully Trading in Personal Data", is actually (mostly) public, written in 2008:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/171666578/SOCA-Report-on-Private-I...

It's a fascinating read.

Nice find! Looks pretty legit too, though in today's age of elaborate forgeries and pranks one can never tell.

I tweeted the report to the author (@adamcurtisblog) - let's see what he has to say.

BBC covered it here, saying the redacted version I linked to was published by SOCA last year: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23493112

I personally see a danger in over-narration. History and journalism alike are written by people trained to be storytellers. But why should there be an overarching story? The real world is messy and rarely breaks down into simple, digestible narratives. There is no beginning, middle and end. There are no villains or heroes. There are, at best, subplots.

Trying to connect the dots is what fuels conspiracy theories - which are typically compelling because we believe deeply that somebody has to be in control somewhere, that there has to be order behind the chaos.

Perhaps there are patterns if not stories. Perhaps statistics could tell the story properly, if we had any good data (we don't).

History stories typically gloss over nuance, with the aim of producing a more manageable summary. In the local dialect, you might call them the ultimate leaky abstraction.

I don't have any solutions so mope over!

> But why should there be an overarching story?

I think that I can answer your question. Bear with me. I think the reason stems from the same place why Jesus shared his worldview through parables (for instance), and why Orwell and Huxley outsell Nietzsche and Bentham. I think that narrative is a very effective way to get a point across, and it also may be how we (as cognitive beings) are fundamentally wired. Did you ever stop to think that your life which appears to have a coherent narrative thread only appears so because you internally and involuntarily constantly construct and reconstruct this narrative thread overlaid on the messy indigestible complex fragments of your existence. Like the persistence of vision allows the discrete frames blend into continuity.

The pattern is us.

I had a similar thought. Important events are already ignored or downplayed because they don't "fit the narrative".

Also, different media outlets are fishing for different narratives. I would argue that the balkanization of news exists because we're already looking to apply narratives. It's just that different news outlets have different narratives and people listen to the narratives they think they like.

The author of the article also made a documentary titled "The Power of Nightmares". I recommend everybody with any interest in the recent history of the world watch the documentary. It's available at the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares-Episode1Bab...

Since nobody has yet posted it, for those unfamiliar with Curtis, he made the outstanding BBC documentary the Century of the Self. Link here to google, because you will probably want to choose your own website for watching it (or actually buy it as a DVD present for somebody, to encourage more excellent documentary making!) https://www.google.com/search?q=century+of+the+self

Having seen several of Adam Curtis' documentaries, it was impossible not to read this whole piece in his voice, which I found had a tremendous influence on the reading tempo.

Nowadays I am used to skimming and speed reading and jump reading and chunk reading and generally doing anything other than actually properly word by word reading a piece as an intact ordered playback...but here, for once, I could and did.

> "we need a new journalism to explain what is really going on."

I have high hopes for the Greenwald/Omidyar venture

I was just skimming the comments to see if anyone would mention Greenwald's gambit. That news honestly excited me.

And I do find it amusing how many other commenters are bothered with Curtis' unwillingness to "dumb down" his style, as that seemed to be one factor he was lamenting in his article. The lack of the spoonful of sugar should not immediately discredit the medicine's need to go down.

And for the article's core point- I still have faith in citizen journalism. It has always existed in one form or another, though it is frustrating that the ones whose soapboxes are most accepted in recent years have difficulties in exhibiting non-partisan voices. I feel that genuinely unbiased media is dependent upon the ability to resist taking sides- especially when all sides are rather dirty to begin with.

I also have high hopes for the PayPal 14

What is the PayPal 14? I'm not sure what you're getting at.

McClure's January 1903 Issue [PDF]: http://www.unz.org/Pub/McClures-1903jan

Thanks!

I loved the article, but it almost seemed like three different articles. I actually scrolled through the stuff about dramatic journalism to get to the interesting stuff, about how we are all pawns in a game we cannot see. That is the meat of the issue as far as I can see it, and until we can come together and do something in unity we will continue down this path.

Is it me, or does the BBC video player volume go all the way to 11?

Oh yeah, they do that. Yes, it's an ST reference.

We still cant comprehend the impact machines will have over future-selves. Considering big-corps are only there for profit, I don't see any reason why majority of population won't lose their source of income. One case that comes to mind is that of support jobs offshored to India/China. After looking at what these people do in their 8 hour work day, its silly to argue against such jobs going extinct. They are not learning anything new while they are at work and once machines take over, they become worthless. Why would companies like AT&T, Verizon etc would suddenly start caring about these people becoming unemployed when the only reason they contacted them was cheaper labor compared to US citizens?

To say it with the words of @BigDataBorat: 90% of data is unstructure. Furthering analysis reveal that 60% of unstructure data is cat video.

While I might appreciate the idea, I'm not sure journalism is what is needed. More like well researched books that can go a little more in depth about things. Like a Malcolm Gladwell who doesn't work for corporations.

Deleted comment

That's one of the elements of the essay I disagreed with.

To me, with power comes the need for transparency. The greater the power (wealth, government, corporate, etc.), the greater the mandate for transparency.

Your average Joe minding his own business? Not so much.

Edit: Parent post, since deleted, had commented on this passage in the article:

"But there is a paradox here. Because many of those who are shocked by the extraordinary extent of the secret surveillance - radical journalists, cyber-revolutionaries, internet libertarians - are also argueing for total transparency of information."

Good, concise, and clear model.

This is an interesting article, though I have on issue: Ida Tarbell's claims have since been discredited. Her father was put out of business by Rockefeller, and as Rockefeller hardly ever gave interviews or opened up to anyone, she was free to craft the message she wanted.

The Tarbell family history is hardly unknown, and was, if I understand, known to McClure's at the time she wrote it. It's certainly part of Yergin's The Prize (itself a largely sympathetic history of the oil industry) in both the book and video. You'll find her family's history detailed on page 86 of Yergin's work (trade paper).

Tarbell was a highly regarded journalist, she did extensive research on the Rockefellers. I'm not aware of any specific inaccuracies in her story. Just because someone has a personal tie to a story doesn't mean their reporting is in error, and unless you've got specifics regarding inaccuracies, I find your statements without basis.

Sure. The main thing is not what Rockefeller did, but what prompted his actions and the people that he was up against.

First, while describing them as simple, honest businessmen, she somehow forgot that her father and his compatriots firebombed Rockefeller's pipelines and production facilities, prompting a large part of his response. They would attempt to destroy his ability to do business, and he responded by driving them out of it.

Second, she did extensive research on the Rockefellers, it's true, though she never actually interviewed them. Rockefeller Sr., in fact, refused to go to the press and refute most of her statements, and didn't let anyone else do it for him. So, you only get one side.

I don't think it's good journalism to portray a large corporation as evil and its competition as good simply by virtue of size. She didn't actually show that the independent producers were innocent in this, merely that they lost. She then would wax poetic about the noble nature of their business ownership, and how Rockefeller was attempting to destroy and pervert that nobility.

It's kind of like how Native Americans were portrayed up till the 1970's; they were savage, and we were noble. Not really true, though much of what they were accused of doing was accurate.

Now, we know that Rockefeller would offer stock or cash for the ownership of these refineries or fields, and we also know that the stock or cash offering would almost always be far more than it was worth. Further, the railroad companies accused of colluding with Rockefeller would routinely gouge him; it's why he built pipelines in the first place.

He built a monopoly. That's true. It's also true that it drove down costs to 5% of the initial cost of Kerosene when he started. He ruthlessly crushed his competition and he definitely engaged in what are currently illegal business practices. It's just her portrayal of him as the villain and her father's compatriots as noble american heroes I take issue with.

she somehow forgot that her father and his compatriots firebombed Rockefeller's pipelines and production facilities, prompting a large part of his response

Citation needed.

http://www.amazon.com/Titan-The-Life-John-Rockefeller/dp/140...

Thanks. Doesn't immediately support your claims though I may look at the book.

This is a massive rant with some very interesting documentary. It shows very well that "democracy" is not working for quite a long time in the West, bent to the will of the wealthy.

And like every other teethless poor, the author does not even dare to suggest the way out of the trap.

Now I'm interested in seeing the whole Harry Caudill documentary. I wonder what it's called...

marcofloriano: you're hellbanned. Everything you post shows up as dead.

i didn´t find it all that great..overrated

> And our reaction is always the same - shock and horror

And more importantly, nothing significant ever happens.

It all continues and we think "it's gonna be ok", "they will do something, I mean, they have to, right?", "I mean, we're not in a sci-fi movie or anything"...

As far as I've understood, back when I was in school, this is exactly the attitude/mood/behavior/culture which gave the Nazis a chance to become what they became.

I just read the article for the kitty! (and it turned out to be a really good read)

TLDR.

(That is the most rambling, incoherent, jumbled mess I've come across in a long, long time. I read about half of it and it was a waste of time.)

I opened this earlier this morning and I'm pretty sure it was "What the Fuck", not "What the Fluck"

At the top of the comment thread,

"This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules."

Though it doesn't specifically talk about censorship, freedom of speech was pretty essential to all of these historical pieces. Ironic.

"Freedom of speech" never implied a right to have a specific third party publish your comments for you. It was always about limiting law and government.

The house rules (they're linked in the comments section) cover conduct, not, by and large, content (some exceptions for homophobic / sexist / racist commentary).

Free speech is a constraint on governments, not on private property.

I noticed that as well and assumed it was a spammed linkbait. This was a great read btw.

I literally said WHAT THE FLUCK when I got to this sentence.

> This was reported in the press - who also described how Yeardye drove Diana Dors to safety in a green cadillac owned by a bubblegum tycoon called John Hoey.

Most of this should've been condensed for less tedious reading.

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