The Future Of Socialism Is Made Of Silicon

There is a dangerous hubris implicit in conservative political philosophy that eventually, free markets and conservative values will win out. It's easy to fall into that trap, because there is a huge amount of empirical evidence that free markets and restricted government are far better at generating wealth and protecting liberty than anything else. History is filled with the failures of socialist countries, and today we can see in real time how they inevitably devolve into rabid dictatorships fanatically fixated on their own survival at the expense of the people. And not just socialism...look at any Islamic country, and you will see authoritarian governments that have no interest in personal freedom, and are perfectly willing to conduct wholesale imprisonment or slaughter of their populations to preserve their positions. The death and destruction they wreak upon the world is unprecedented, and there is no reason to assume that they will moderate willingly.

So of course conservatives assume that the arc of history will move in freedom's direction...who would choose otherwise? Isn't the desire for freedom and liberty innate? Doesn't everyone want the bounty of free markets, personal freedom, and benign and small government?

Maybe! Or maybe not, but the advent of the comprehensive surveillance state driven by technology has made it far more difficult to create a resistance to those authoritarian structures. The GDR, otherwise known as East Germany, was a miasma of surveillance and informants and dungeons, and they did it with pen and paper and analog telephones. Poland and Romania weren't too far behind, yet these countries, along with their ruler the USSR fell quickly, driven by popular uprisings organized by word of mouth, printed pamphlets, and phone calls that overwhelmed the snooping state's ability to observe it.

But today's technology allows these states to surveil their subjects with granularity that was impossible just a few years ago. AI can listen to every phone call made, and flag troubling words and suspicious connections. Cameras are ubiquitous now, so organic demonstrations can be identified in a matter of moments, and the security apparatus can respond with overwhelming force. Facial recognition is unbelievably sophisticated, and those data centers being built all over the world aren't just storing cat videos...they are storing all-encompassing records on every single person on earth.

Well...except in the United States, because we wouldn't do that....right? Except we do it already, with Flock cameras and license plate readers and FISA and the NSA and a host of surveillance systems that we probably don't even notice.

Will technology doom freedom? No, not necessarily, but it is an incredibly powerful tool that every government on earth is busily weaponizing against the very things that we hold dear:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

posted by CBD at 12:00 PM

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