No.497[Reply]
I read his manifesto, and then I read Ellul, since Kaczynski's writing was just Ellul filtered through a schizophrenic midwit.
Ellul's argument was that technological advancement would be so advantageous to authoritarian regimes, that it would cause them to start outproducing more liberal countries economically, and ultimately militarily. He predicted that consequently all governments would become more authoritarian to try to take the greatest advantage of technology.
Governments try to take in more data. In doing so, they become more authoritarian by nature (as they create a separation between the inner and outer circles). At the same time as they do this, they become less effective - they mistake data for knowledge, and knowledge for power. Data becomes a fetish, and the basis for governance slips away. The last stage is some form of state collapse. Soviet Union is a decent example of this happening.
The opposite form is building durable and distributed systems of governance that lean on the good culture of the greater populace and welcome their aid in governing. Self-governance, as it were, where data on the governed is entirely besides the point when you can just ask instead and get a more useful reflection on affairs.
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No.498
Of course Kaczynski was wrong, the midwit jumped to a bunch of strong conclusions without even bothering to study classical political economy.
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No.499
>>498>without even bothering to study classical political economy.The sad part
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No.500
>mkultra fed experiment made fed document that's today worshipped by malthusian feds
how could this happen?
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No.501
>>497You have to let go of the liberal vs authoritarian lens. It makes no sense, it confuses too many things to enable a coherent worldview. If governments use authority to regulate for more consumer protections and better conditions for labor, people will get more freedom. If governments deregulate monopolies people usually end up with a lot less freedom. But that doesn't really fit into your lib-v-auth spectrum. You have to analyse conflicting interest groups instead.
However you have an interesting hypothesis about increased data collection being inversely proportional to effective governance. That is worth investigating.
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No.502
>>501His analysis of the modern left-winger's psychology made a lot of sense.