On Sun, 11 Mar 2018 18:04:24 -0400 Steve Kinney <admin@pilobilus.net> wrote:
Mostly I think our ruling class just wants to finish looting everyone else's assets. I don't think that the most destructive aspects of this process represent a plan to exterminate the human species, but rather, a consequence of the ignorance, greed, and perverse incentives inherent in corporate capitalism.
Indeed. I don't think that getting rid of the serfs is an explicit objective, but rather something that might happen as an 'unintented consequence'. I'd assume the 'elites' see their tax cattle as a necessary evil of sorts. We need tax cattle in order to collect taxes. But, if we can get material resources using mostly (or only) machines, then the tax cattle becomes superfluous or even a liability.
An equal and in some respects opposite species of propaganda narrative targets the ruling class and its more senior servants assets, with the message that Super Science can and will solve /any/ material problem at any scale, laws of physics be damned, as soon as it becomes necessary to do so.
I think a more accurate variation on that theme is that 'super science' or technical means can solve many problems related to tax cattle management, aka 'government' aka 'fighting evil terrists'. The optimist (misguided) view is something along the lines of "technology can't ultimately be regulated and it empowers ordinary people" but reality is rather the opposite. As technical means become more sophisticated they end up being controlled by less and less people. And technical means amplify power imbalances. A guy with a machine gun can kill hundreds, or thousands. A guy with a nuke can kill millions, etc.
I have known some "smart" people who earnestly believe this nonsense, while dismissing the somewhat /less/ ignorant and irrational beliefs fabricated for consumption by the more ignorant among the peasantry.
:o/