Stick or Twist

The current obsession the world has with trying to eradicate risk from our daily lives is not a result of the pandemic. The pandemic has just taken it to another level. In fact this desire to alleviate all risk from our lives has been at the core of how society has been changing over the last 30 years at least.

At some point we transitioned from seeing structure and control as a mechanism to maintain our freedoms to a situation where we impose controls as a means of eliminating as much risk as we can from every situation possible.

At the same time modern technologies were being developed at a rate which the world has never experienced before. This meant that the tools were increasingly available to allow governments and their offshoots to impose greater and greater control. It’s hard to know which fed which but the outcome is clear.

To facilitate this trend legislation was required. Rules and regulations had to be imposed. This led to an avalanche of bureaucrats and consultants. A whole new sector of the economy was born. A significant stakeholder had been created.

This in turn fed into the media agenda who survive largely on being able to heighten our anxiety levels. Their capacity to make the 1% seem like the 99% fed into the agendas of the technology companies, the bureaucrats, the consultants and the politicians.

If you write down 10 things that you do today which you would also have been doing in 1990 and ask yourself whether it takes you longer and is it more difficult. I suspect the answer will be yes.

We should remember that it is only in the last 200 years that ordinary people have had the kind of freedoms and access to wealth beyond their daily needs that we enjoy. We are inclined to take this for granted, as though they are a given. Well they’re not.

If you ask yourself is the world a better place today as a result of the changes in how we operate over the last 30 years I suggest not. Here’s why. 

For example the process in opening a bank account where the customer is not looking for an overdraft or a loan but just a system to store and manage their money. You are first required to prove that you’re not a criminal with a view to money laundering they say. So the law abiding citizens have to adhere to the requirements imposed on banks by the legislators to deal with a handful of criminals. This will be the number one area of concern for whoever you deal with in a bank, not how can they help you as a customer. Now ask yourself has this worked? Are people more honest than in 1990? No I would contend. Would Interpol or local police agencies not be better deployed by putting their resources into targeting the criminal fraternity. It would also be more economic.

The problem is that one creates a monster when you pass this kind of one size fits all legislation. The legislators form committees to administer the legislation. To do this they have to interpret it which they do in a way that virtually rewrites the legislation because now they are much more important. Not only that but if I’m sitting on one of those committees I’m going to address a whole lot of things that the legislators either missed or didn’t cover adequately.

Then they put in place teams of people to police the legislation. These inspectors will then impose their interpretation of the understanding of the committee’s interpretation. This creates a problem for businesses and private individuals. They then need advice regarding the interpretation of the interpretation of the legislation.

Enter the lawyers and the consultants that are required to first of all insure that you are operating within the rules and then to defend you against the interpretation of the interpretation being wrong or unfairly administered. For them to do this they must form a view, so we have yet another interpretation to contend with.

The cost of these bureaucrats, inspectors, consultants, lawyers the additional staff required internally if it’s a business is then passed on to the consumer. So now ask yourself are we getting better service from in this case the bank? No. Are we paying more for nothing? Yes. Is it more difficult to get things done? Yes. So in summary we are paying more, getting less and our freedom to operate has been seriously compromised. A conversation like this will often be ultimately dismissed with a cursory remark such as “ That’s the price of progress “ and then move on in acceptance mode never seriously questioning the rational again. Another is some remark like “ you’re harking after the past “. History is littered with examples of mankind’s ability to trip itself up. Both of these reactions are a result of us taking things for granted and not being prepared to apply our mind to the circumstance, which people are fully entitled to do. Supporters of Neville Chamberlain could in hindsight vouch for this.

As all this has been going on, our freedoms have been gradually eroding. The movement of people and goods are monitored and controlled in such a way that it creates the impression of greater efficiency provided you don’t think about it too much. In reality it is eroding our freedoms and our ability to transact with each other has been greatly compromised.

Technology has facilitated an increased ability to control much more than it has facilitated the ease of getting things done. In fact I’d argue that it has made many things significantly more difficult. I’m not against technology. I just don’t believe we are using it intelligently. It has allowed those with the control agendas to flourish. It has allowed banks as an example to treat their customers appallingly from the standpoint of day to day customer service.

In fact when it comes to large organisations such as banks, phone companies, Internet providers, insurance companies, google, amazon, apple, Microsoft etc. you are called customers but in fact you are more of a subject. You’re not even a number. This is the way it works and if you don’t adhere we’ll have to exclude you. Customer service has become an outsourced service, speaking to someone from a foreign country who can’t understand you and who you can’t understand.

Another form of customer service is waiting for endless amounts of time listening to recordings and when you eventually get to speak with someone you’re lucky if they can help you 30% of the time. At the end of the call when you are really annoyed and impatient they have the temerity to ask you “ if there’s anything else they can help you with today “ as though they had just saved you from a burning building and before they left the scene they wanted to be sure you were ok. In fact if you didn’t want to kill them before you sure do now.

When you consider banking, communication services, buying a car or a house, travelling, an insurance claim, health services etc etc what exactly has been improved on for the consumer? In doing any of these things have we not just had our freedoms compromised on the alter of big data and control.

Fast forward to today and the pandemic. The same stakeholders have taken a giant step forward in exercising an unprecedented level of control over us. Now they want to impose further controls such as tracking our movements and screening our activities. People are slavishly buying into this in the same way we did with airport security. When it takes 3 hours to do something that used to take 30 minutes, is that progress? Is that freedom?

When it comes to the pandemic the contradictions in the data and the information we are being supplied with are too numerous to address here, only to state that it is getting harder to discern the truth. The politicians are afraid to do what’s right for fear of the media. The other stakeholders don’t want to on the basis that turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.

Meanwhile we the public have been silenced through fear and 30 years of indoctrination. Debates about racism and police brutality are all the rage. Those poor LBGTQ people must be feeling very left out at the moment. They don’t even get a mention these days.

If you keep having the wrong conversations you’ll keep getting the wrong result. History as much as common sense tells us that. Ordinary people need to find their voice or we are at risk of returning to a world of totalitarian regimes.

The present crisis has the capacity to facilitate fascist influences in a modern form. Socialism and communism are just theories. Fascism is what happens in reality whenever it’s been tried. Centralise as much as you can, rule from the centre, impose your will on the people where you have to and make the nonconformists disappear. Hitler and Stalin were allies with the same philosophy. In fact they had a pact not to interfere with each other. Meanwhile they were both plotting to do just that. Hitler just got there first. We human beings are dangerous when we get too much control irrespective of one’s philosophy.

In the present crisis we see governments all over the world throwing money at us which we will ultimately have to repay. What do you think will happen when they want it back? Like any good loan shark they’ll take ownership of our possessions to compensate, whether it’s our homes or our businesses.

Meanwhile the untouchable Silicon Five are egging them on knowing that when it all crystallises they will be in charge not governments. The idiot politicians seem to have no understanding of this. Jeff Bezos and Amazon are reputed to have made an extra $20 billion during this pandemic.

Then you have the elitist thinkers like George Soros and Bill Gates who fancy themselves as intellectuals and have a vision of the world which involves population control and a single government. They are obviously very clever men in their chosen field. Outside of it they are like the rest of us. Their views can only be born out of being such a great distance from the ground and possibly a desire to shape their legacy. Their money gives them the power to play god with our lives.

Much of the rioting and looting in the US and elsewhere is linked to Soros backed groups such as BLM. His desire to disrupt western democracies is well known. Gates also has his vested interests when it comes to developing vaccines or meat substitutes.

The gradual erosion of our freedoms through the imposition of control legislation has turned us into good obedient citizens. The pandemic has emphasised this with alarming clarity.

For example everybody knows that children should be in school and that they are not at any significant risk from the virus. The various stakeholders referred to above have all seesawed on this never allowing our anxiety levels to drop.

To be so focused on one of our many problems to the exclusion of all others for so long is facilitating the very sinister agenda of the elitists and the Silicon Five and also the slightly less sinister but equally dangerous politicians and their bureaucrats.

There are many things we should be taking a balanced view of just now. The corrupt and misleading data that we are being fed is merely allowing the stakeholders to keep the anxiety levels high enough to insure obedience. Meanwhile major problems are piling up. The outcome could be a loss of most of our freedoms for generations to come.

We the ordinary people must have the conversation and we must speak up if the course currently being charted is to be altered. It’s time to stick or twist.