The unbearable lightness of techies’ view of Elon Musk’s rising political power

The new de facto shadow president to be elected in 2024 will be either the old elite Mark Zuckerberg or the new elite Elon Musk

ESSAY – NOT VOTING ADVICE OR SUPPORT

“The history of mankind is the graveyard of aristocracy….In fact….it is always an oligarchy that rules”…A monopoly capitalist society will always be an oligarchy of the few at the expense of the many and any semblance of elections will always be between factions. of oligarchs and no grassroots movement” despite the media portrayal to the contrary (paraphrased). – sociologist Vilfredo Pareto

“The windmill gives you a society with the feudal lord; the steam mill gives you a society with the industrial capitalist” (and by extension to this day, automation brings about social depopulation through mass injections by doctors or through unnecessary warfare by drones).

–Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847).

In the novel The unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera the main characters embrace the heaviness of life and love and die happily while those who live superficially suffer from the “unbearable lightness of being”. Nowadays it means that some people can skip college and go straight into computer programming or a related high-paying, white-collar job.

It’s the phrase that came to mind as I listened to an interview with a progressive high-tech professional named “Meta Prime” by online podcaster Pete Quinones, who describes himself as a working-class Catholic blogger. Quinones posed the question:How should we feel about the rising political power of Elon Musk, who is challenging the established high-tech elites of Silicon Valley (Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft)?

Both Quinones and Meta Prime share their implicit religious belief in the technological advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) that is necessary to implement a total surveillance system. AI is necessary for a mass surveillance system that interfaces with commercial clients. Meta Prime is concerned that proposed legislation in California will prevent Musk from deploying “cool stuff.” Neither Quinones nor Meta Prime are concerned about the loss of privacy that AI and its connection to mass surveillance will bring.

Quinones says: “Technology is moving forward no matter what.” Quinones calls those who reject artificial intelligence (automation) “Luddites” and “Amish.” The only question Quinones poses is who will be the leaders of this “new techno-order”? Quinones wonders if it will be an L. Ron Hubbard Scientology type or an occult Masonic secret society Aleister Crowley type? Or will the Soviet totalitarian model win? Quinones says there is a battle going on between two cliques of oligarch-elite, neither of whom is opposed to AI or mass surveillance systems.

What both Quinones and Meta Prime do not know is their optimistic belief in a high-tech, high-surveillance society as a future workers’ paradise with all the trappings and mythic persuasiveness of quasi-Marxism. For Marxism promised that technology and materialism would produce equal outcomes for all, yet such a utopia has never been realized in human history. Quinones rejects ideology of any kind, but does not acknowledge his own advocacy of technocratic progressive ideology, despite the fact that there is no evidence that an artificial intelligence system (mass surveillance system) would likely end in anything other than a totalitarian police state.

Independent voters have no choice between the left and the right, both of whom want to build artificial intelligence (automated trading) systems that are necessary to create a mass surveillance system. There is also no meaningful discussion of how to build parallel banking, medical, food, and political structures that are not connected to AI or anything digital (a throwback to the savings and loan banks and check withdrawals of the 1950s). This is what the obscure term “singularity” means – a single totalitarian and involuntary banking, money, medical (and a non-Christian or fake Christian civil religion) social control system. This would be a digitized, cashless system where everything would be monitored.

Quinones says there is a Silicon Valley mafia war going on between Mark Zuckerberg’s establishment cabal, who speculated may have arranged Trump’s assassination. Zuckerberg has not supported Trump or Harris, but is on record as opposing Elon Musk’s rise to power. Whichever high-tech cabal wins the presidential election, Quinones and Meta Prime say the establishment cabal will not relinquish its dominance of political power without more mafia-style warfare, assassinations and Hollywood-choreographed mass spectacles.

As the quote at the top of this article by sociologist Vilfredo Pareto indicates, in a capitalist oligarchic form of government like the US, elections are almost never a reflection of the voters’ preferences, but a struggle between cliques within the ruling elites. Such financial elites can never allow fair elections because they are too invested in their monopoly companies and the stock market. This runs counter to the idea that capitalism promotes democracy.

Clearly, with the Biden administration, there is another person or committee making presidential decisions, not the senile actor Biden or the incompetent Harris. We are now getting a glimpse of who this faction of unelected oligarchic shadow presidential decision-makers are. The 2024 presidential election is a contest between de facto shadow presidents of the old elite Mark Zuckerberg or the new elite Elon Musk, not Trump versus Harris. Don’t expect the unbearable lightness of social media influencer Quinones or the nameless Meta Prime (whoever he is) to tell us this, or to offer resistance or alternatives to the rollout of an automated police state.

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