The Insurrection Window is Closing – Exludism will win.

I have this personal theory. I don’t know if anyone out there has had the same idea. In short it is the idea that unionization, wellare, labour unions, minimal wages, etc – all those traditionally leftist things are good for society, and are a part of the free market.

In other words – supply and demand. If society becomes unlivable, draconian (low wages, no welfare) then people get fed up, organize, unionize, start voting left. The result of that is the kind of policing right wing politicians will keep whining over (tax is theft!) with all their bullshit.

My oddball pet theory then goes on, and says that ‘the system’ has evolved, politically speaking,  to placate normal people. Democracy evolved because the upper classes became so terrified of revolutions (and guillotines) that they assumes “give them something to eat, a TV and a vacation once a year and the plebs will be satisfied”.

In the 1800s and early 20th century there was a massive societal looming threat of the common people rising up and GRABBING all of society. My belief is that there are ‘purposeful rich elites’ who have immense investments, and have grown obscenely rich, for decades and probably for generations, and those people are really cautious with revolutions. They saw what happened in France and Russia, and to a lesser extent China and Germany, and they sure didn’t like it, and so they “condoned” the formation of a leftist political  tradition (with somewhat higher taxes, welfare, hippies smoking pot) and will do so as long as they benefit from it.

The mere threat that the societally less well off (people under middle class) might one day get really pissed and rise up take it all has been such a dangerous concept that it kept the rich elites from grabbing it all back. They would if they could.  In effect, the demands and threat of mass insurrection of the poor has always been a bargaining chip the underclasses could have used against the rich elites.

In that regard it has always been basic negotiating strategy.

However the trump card that allows underclasses to pose demands in this exchange is closing. In a few years the underclasses  will lose employability, significantly so, to robotic systems, automatization, virtual reality, telepresence and AI.  My estimate is that from now on, each year some 4-10% of all people of working age will lose whatever job they had, and will have to come up with something new. My idea is that retraining and new markets has always more or less kept up with that 4-10%

By 2020, the 4-10% that have to find a new job will decrease, largely because societal reserves decrease (more extensive oil plays a large part in that), and jobs simply get outsorced or replaced by machines.  I think by 2025 about 20% of people each year will be pushed out of the labor market. Unfortunately retrainability will decrease to a measly few percent by then. As a result my crude estimate is that from 2010 and onwards real unemployment rates will go up by several percent per year, from 7% now (counting subsidized jobs, a few million locked up in prisons, cooked statitics – you know the routine)  to the 20% range in the 2020s.  And most of the people losing a job then will never ever get one again. The window of mass employability is closing.

What’ll also happen is the chance the underclasses have  to revolt against this. You only have to look at trends in mass surveillance,  monitoring, crowd prediction, nonlethal weapons (pain cannons for peace sake!) and massive sprawling prison complexes. Add to that AI, robotic law enforcement and “neurological pacification techniques” and by 2030 people won’t have an option to revolt anymore. Sure, you can try and engage in terrorism, but who will you lash out against? The rich will live elsewhere, in a state very similar to unassaiable medieval castles, and any terrorism will only alienate equally poor people like you.

That is what I mean when I say that the insurrection window is about to close.  If it does you end up with a society very similar to brazilian society – a lot of completely useless, bored people, rampant narcotic abuse everywhere, extremely violent gangs and merciless law enforcement crackdowns. The poor will have food, a lot of it most likely, some kind of heavily monitored internet and gaming, blood sports, free contraceptives and some kind of modernized religious morality play. A souped of version of scientology, with more sex would be my best bet.

The rich will live in fenced-off estates, seasteds, arcologies and tropical paradises with fake plastic coral and  dubai-ese engineered paradise estates, endless shopping malls where they give away rollses and gold bars to their favored customers everyday. And those same rich will be the actual transhumanists.  By 2050 none of them will die.

The poor will be very much stuck in the deathist paradigm, however.

Try organizing armed revolt in such a society. Try getting a better income or meaningful employment. Try organizing a union. Try protesting or voting for a leftist party.

You won’t make one iota of difference. Your opportunity to protest will have been neutered, and the brief era of democracy will have drifted off into history. Society will truly be partitioned by then.

I truly hate this idea so much it gives me stomach acid. I hate what our world is becoming and I would love it if I had other options, or someone came by that convinced me to look at it in another way.