A Cataclysmic System of Privilege and Power
The modern world seems cruel, broken, and inexplicable because it's organized by uncaring machines operated by privileged elites unconcerned with our fates
This is a time of strange things. A moment of seemingly-inexplicable events, head-scratching decisions by governments, politicians, and businesses. In some cases, the greed compelling the course of history is recognizable. The self-interest undeniable. But the course that it takes, the way that it moves and operates, and the havoc it causes, still leaves us feeling both shocked and repelled.
In the case of Wall Street investment firms suddenly snatching up family homes in bulk and shifting them to rental properties, the impetus is understandable if not disgusting. There’s incredible profit to be made through landlording, one of the oldest exploitative tricks in the books. That’s for sure. But the method in which this is occurring, in such massive quantities, and with such blatancy and disregard for the public, who now face incredible odds at ever owning their own homes, climbing out of debt or poverty, and securing something resembling the promised American dream.
The strategy makes sense. It’s logical. Rational, even. Housing, as a commodity, is required. There’s a market for this type of thing. And it figures, in a system designed to prioritize self-interest and profit, that some enterprising individuals would take these chances. They’ve done it before, obviously. But the way this is taking place seems strange. Inhuman. The run on single-family homes is like a gold rush, full of all the manic energy and resulting in wanton suffering. The mind reels when it tries to understand how other humans could do something like this. How, in a sprint of greed, they could almost entirely wipe out one of the most fundamental aspects of this culture.
And that’s the rub. Humans are doing this to other humans, for certain, but that’s not how this happened. It’s not how this is unfolding. The repulsion is because our economy has been hooked up to machines using artificial intelligence programmed to grow the wealth of a powerful, elite class of people at literally any cost. They are carrying out the will of a long-lasting aristocratic class and the work of white, patriarchal supremacy.
These machines don’t worry about you or your life or your community or the fate of the nation. They have one job and one job alone. And it doesn’t matter who gets hurt in the process. The destruction you are watching in your life, in your towns, in your families, the frustration you feel trying to get everything from customer service to a better future for yourself, your loved ones, and your family, is a byproduct of this plundering, cruel joke of a system and the machines tasked with carrying it out with crushing efficiency.
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I spent my early years watching my hometown destroyed. The story is familiar and undoubtedly shared by many. A bustling small-town with a vibrant population, its own culture, businesses. Wal-Mart arrives in the 1980’s and things shift. The businesses dry up. The population erodes. Now, with the town shrinking, the remaining people ravaged by deaths of despair, Opioid addiction having haunted and decimated, conspiracy theories and radicalization taking hold, and the pandemic taking a massive, massive toll, it stands a shell of itself. A reminder that we have passed from one era to another.
Wal-Mart was an easy explanation for me and kept me from drifting into the conspiratorial realms. I could see how the arrival of the corporation doomed the town. It made rational sense and blotted out stories about evil cabals and satanic plots. My anger toward Wal-Mart for what it did to my town, my family, and my community grew and grew and grew over time until the very sight of one of their stories literally sickened me. But even Wal-Mart and the neoliberal destruction it represented was an easier target for blame than the network of exploitation we’re talking about here.
It is invisible. It courses literally through the air. A network of commands and inputs and feedback loops that we could never possibly understand even if one of its designers attempted to explain it to us. We feel it. And we most definitely feel its consequences. In 2008, a simple algorithm created to search for value in the housing market nearly destroyed the entirety of Western Capitalism, a meltdown that felt like a mythical event that came from nowhere and left us decimated and our futures reduced in potential.
The truth is, the rise of artificial intelligence coincided with the adoption of unethical and ultra-exploitative neoliberal globalism, and was wielded as the ultimate tool of unrestrained capitalism. As this new technology was and remains incredibly expensive, it was a resource dedicated to the already-wealthy and already-powerful, meaning it carried on the process of accrued resources gotten by white supremacy and the remaining legacy of colonization, slavery, and the exploitation and genocide of indigenous people. The programs were tuned to their interest, set to work in the background of modern life, and functioned explicitly to carry out the continued consolidation of wealth, power, and resources without so much as a thought to the consequences.
Towns like mine, and not to mention the United States of America in general, were brutalized with incredible speed. Corporations and investment firms followed the advice of their machines without so much as a solitary thought for what would happen to the people behind the numbers. Those Wal-Marts were dispatched accordingly to leech wealth from vulnerable peoples and then the algorithm withdrew them or denied them other businesses. Quickly, and rather strangely, communities that had once thrived became deserts without anyone to explain to them what had happened.
Well, anyone besides demagogues like Donald Trump and extremists desperate to make money off the fear and anger and radicalize the people for their own purposes.
Neoliberalism is insidious for a variety of reasons, including its penchant for authoritarianism, its disregard for human beings, and the speed with which it carries out its cruelty. But one of the most frightening aspects is its ability to coax populations into a deep sleep while it works. In the United States of the 1990’s, it felt like history had ended, like maybe the wars hot and cold of the 20th century had finally left us alone, that relative prosperity would continue and we could just get about living our lives while the technocratic elite steered the ship for us.
Now, in these last few years, we have snapped awake. The process that led to that brief moment of prosperity has turned against us, has hollowed out our towns and all but destroyed the vaunted Middle Class. It went around the world, fixed other populations into subservience, absolutely wrecked our environment, destroyed the very nature of reality, and now, as we stand among its fires, we realize it is both destroying our lives and creating a spate of crises, including a rise of authoritarianism, the eradication of democracy, and a future of bold and endless exploitation.
We see it in our politics, where our leaders promise us they can fix this mess and stand powerless, thwarted by politicians bought and sold by the same forces operating the machines. In this long and bloody pandemic, we feel it in the inability for anyone to do anything to stop it coupled with the unwillingness of so many to believe in it or join in the fight because corporations-pretending-to-be-news-networks and grifters sensing an opportunity to make a buck have convinced them otherwise. We see it in our store shelves, which are bare and now resemble the shelves of my hometown as they’ve periodically been over the past few decades whenever a machine decided whether we starved was irrelevant to the bottom line of the corporate masters it served.
The good news is that the bewilderment and terror we feel can be productive. The problem, all along, has been diagnosable. We know why and how this is happening now. We don’t have to chase shadows, harbor conspiracy theories that are intentionally designed to confuse us and keep us from those responsible. It is daunting because our system is fundamentally intertwined with these forces now. This is what moves our economy and, like being tied to a bomb, we are subject to miseries if it manages to explode. To disarm that bomb, to move ourselves off this automated self-destruction and repair what we have lost, will take incredible courage. We will have to work together in ways we have been taught are not possible, not reasonable, not safe.
But we can do it.
And we must do it.
