Darwinian Robotics
The combination of robotics and social darwinism as foisted upon the American people by the likes of Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell; and Donald Trump is now a reality that cannot be ignored. The Article in Huffington Post yesterday by Brian Ross carries the scare inducing title; “Trump And Republicans Expect You To Die, Joe Public” is a harbinger of things and thoughts to come at an increasing pace.
The tagline, There is no republican ruse that works around it; Make healthcare unaffordable and people die, is clearly signaling a process that is inevitable in a world that is overcrowded by a species that has enormous capacity for creativity and uses the tools of thought to make nature conform to whatever turns a buck. So much is made of education as the ticket to prosperity for the masses of Americans and others around the World, but there is little basis for belief in the prospects for millions or billions of people who cannot rise enough from poverty to take advantage of opportunities to learn life sustaining and effective economic skills in our digital age.
The demagogic appeal to global masses by despots is legion. That it has arrived in America not across our shores by from within is overshadowed by artful resort to lies as argument. We have elected a President and Congress that will oversee the appointment of Supreme Court Justices and make the social Darwinistic philosophy of Ayn Rand take its place across the World. Putin has been afforded the title of the most powerful person in the World. He may well be that if he is manipulating the majority of American thought.
I have been a critic of religions and the dogmas that are foisted off to control the psyche of the global multitudes. God Bless America rings at the end of every political speech. America may be damned to “greatness” by a political philosophy that is unwilling to recognize the worth and dignity of everyone. The trouble is that religious dogma supports a position where everyone is simply too many for the planet to support in the lifestyle of the rich and famous. We have had an opportunity over a half century to control population and we have not done so guided by religious dogma.
There is in America a small and fortunate cohort believing in their inherent right to live in luxury is the result of some personal capacity loosely called intelligence. They have mastered the STEM disciplines and combined that with business success. They enable the Arts through philanthropy. For them education is what they have experienced as success for themselves and their offspring. Their systems of education are nicely suited to select out the successful and dismiss to failure those who don’t or can’t make it with the demands of formal education.
Providing work is not what the elite of society do. Taking profit from the work of others is what the elite do. The biggest house on the hill may seem to have been won through utility, charity and philanthropy but the wealthy can hire whatever and whoever is needed to meet the needs of the elite among us. To say that they are The Job Creators is simply another dogma, albeit not a particularly religious one, that is unacknowledged and morally mistaken.
Trump has successfully appealed to the masses of workers with promises of expanded employment and healthcare (access) for all. The state of the globe is almost completely outside of his thinking and perhaps his capacity to think. The march of a growth economy has slowed and he intends to make it greatly expand. Economic growth in the United States of 3-5% may be possible over some short time horizon, but continuing to ignore the impacts of such growth on the degradation of air, water and soil will eventually result in decay and decline of civil society. Through that decline there may well be, perhaps inevitably be, a steady and massive death rate. Those with great wealth will continue to conceive and give birth to fewer and fewer offspring while they build more and better robots to serve their demands for material comfort and convenience.
In the meantime, in between time, the decline in civil society will accelerate and chaotic, anarchism will demand a law and order agenda from governments. Militarized police and perhaps even intervention of the military directly in quelling domestic violence and inconvenient non violent protesting will further exacerbate questions of who really deserves the benefits of new medical technology. Healthcare will increasingly become a tool to segregate and isolate the haves from the have nots of society.
Militarizing the police and smashing the masses as they protest and get out of line has been routine for despots. The elite among us don’t like to be inconvenienced. Blocking a freeway and preventing an ambulance from getting to an emergency room is too much for American’s sense of order. Now we just envision and sense the potential troubles ahead. Reconsidering will emerge after legislative and judicial decisions begin to impact the masses of humanity. Yet politics alone will not change fundamentals that will ultimately or inevitably govern social outcomes. There is perhaps, a need to rethink social justice. Is the notion of equality wrong or wrongheaded.? Thinking that democracy is even possible in an overcrowded world is fraught. The makers of robots will make sure of that.
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