Message-ID: <970604071542_217299798@emout10.mail.aol.com> Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 07:15:42 -0400 From: mailto:EUNSteve@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Plutocracy is about to become the official religion To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
Jay writes:<< OK, if the technology that is transferred aids the global corporate agenda: worldwide exploitation of the commons, then it will probably work AGAINST democracy and FOR plutocracy.>>
The general semanticists talk of the "semantic differential" and try to help folks see that sometimes high level abstractions like "plutocracy" and "commons" and "entropy" and "sustainability" have people talking in a fog of generalizations that obscure the possibilities of the world of things closer to hand.
I don't know if it's possible to defeat the "plutocracy", because that's one of those mean everything/anything/nothing words, but if AT&T, MacDonalds, and Hilton is what we're talking about, or the US government, or the local legislature I know it's possible to defeat them, because it's been done over over again, and I cited examples to you. Notice, Jay, thatyou avoid the specific examples--those of us who worked for the EPA legislation of 1970 and got it through despite the "plutocracy," and how we changed the course of the Vietnam War--see the end of Lyndon Johnson-- and how Nixon's power was unable to head off Watergate, and on and on: all defeats for "corporate interests," which I presume are part of your "plutocracy."
If you're willing to come down a bit in the level of generalizing, I'd like to try this: lots of folks in Hawaii wanted to keep the place clean and green and gold for themselve and uncluttered by autopmobiles and pollution--but they also wanted tourist dollars and the jobs they create. That's how the plutocratic hotels and the other despoilers of your commons win--the people of Hawaii who wanted jobs and dollars talked environment but voted for tourist jobs and dollars, or stayed away from the activists who truly wanted to keep tourism away. Ift's fun to talk about "plutocrats," but it doesn't really get at the dynamics of what happens in the "real" world.
"Carrying capacity" and "sustainability" are more semantic fog, and the usual cliche about technology being the problem rather than the solution is another half truth.
Run out of copper so we can't telephone wire the world? Rather than that happening copper may soon too common to even use in pennies. There's clearly enough sand in the world to make all the fiber optic we need to create the world's communication networks, and to create all the computer chips needed to bring computer technology to any of the world's poor who want it. No finite resource or sustainability issue there.
The "plutocracy" would like to fiiber optic the world, and help eveyone have a computer, because there is profit in fiber optics and computers. And the workers of the developed countries would like to have telephone lines and telephones and computers, I believe.
If any of this is so, then the question of how we transfer communication skills, competence, and technology to, say, Africa is not usefully addressed by abstract discussions of what the "plutocracy" or the rest of us want. Our talk and outr strategies have to get away from the old debates, get closer to the bone and marrow of the world of today and its relationships and dynamics.
Steve Eskow
>Briefly: it is easy to find evidence in the history of all democratic
>capitalistic countries that your points about the impossibility of the
>"people" defeating the "plutocrats" are false.
Defeated? Are you kidding? Plutocracy is about to become the official religion for the entire planet. >>