Is the politics of job creation mistaken?

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Rejecting both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump's promises of returning jobs to America's shores, writer Jason Farrell argued at The Radical Relay in March the globalization and automation causing jobs to disappear are too powerful to stop.

Saying both of these politicians are advocating a populist view that is unfortunately "terrible, backward, and misinformed", Farrell wrote they seem to believe America can rewind itself to 1955 with "millions of unskilled laborers with profitable production jobs".

It isn't that the goal of trying to restore purpose and work to those millions who are without either in the United States is bad, however. It is simply that present developments in economics and technology are making the goal far harder to achieve than these politicians will admit. As Farrell writes:

You can’t magically make unskilled labor “worth more” by mandating a $15 wage or pressuring companies to return their labor force to the U.S. Even if those jobs came back, they’d be automated within a few years to save costs and maintain productivity. 

Bernie fans, it’s important that you understand that companies aren’t evil for doing this. To survive in a globalized marketplace they have to compete with companies from around the world with lower labor costs. Everyone has to adjust. 

Trump fans, it’s important you understand that China is not evil for using those jobs to lift their population out of unfathomable poverty. As China’s own productivity and standard of living improve, many of those jobs will likely to be turned over to automation as well.

Unemployment is a crisis separate from economic growth and competition, and an attempt to repair it by mandating higher wages and trying to cut off relations with other productive economies such as China would potentially "plunge us back into a recession and boomerang back against the people you’re trying to help".

In sum, campaign rhetoric aimed at unemployed or low-paid workers contains not a solution to America's economic woes.

Not all is gloomy, however. Farrell also writes that, with the progress towards automation and competition at a truly global level, the right path would be to implement "creative ways to make education and job training more affordable".

Veterans' political views aren't special: The BlogDiscussing the undue favor shown to veterans in US politica... https://t.co/z8Sdrd5uJJ

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) April 29, 2016

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US wants a terror attack to justify spying

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In a chilling leaked email, a top US government lawyer hopes for a terrorist attack to justify spying on Americans.

If we are to go by what Bill Maher and other pro-government propagandists in the media tell us, the US state's spying on millions of Americans is about protecting against terrorist attacks. Evidence cited against this consists of the basic fact that the digital surveillance against Americans has not stopped any terrorist attacks.

Perhaps better still is the evidence that the US government uses terrorism to justify the spying, to the point of wanting terrorist attacks to happen.

Lawyer Robert S. Litt wrote, "the legislative environment is very hostile today … [but] it could turn in the event of a terrorist attack or criminal event where strong encryption can be shown to have hindered law enforcement." A government official also called for dead children as a way of persuading the public to accept tyranny to protect them:

People are still not persuaded this is a problem. People think we have not made the case. We do not have the perfect example where you have the dead child or a terrorist act to point to, and that’s what people seem to claim you have to have.

C4SS (Center for a Stateless Society) writer Jason Farrell sees this quest for an impervious "national security" state as a threat to the actual security of American citizens, concluding as follows:

The leak underscores the problems associated with secret laws, secret courts, secret spying programs and the failure of the democratic process to secure privacy rights. The competitive nature of domestic spying programs could compel states to further erode privacy rights within their own borders in the pursuit of “national security.” What sort of security that leaves us with remains to be seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjEEM1XCfTk

When Glen Greenwald was in the above (linked) interview with Bill Maher, Maher described US whistleblower Edward Snowden as "batshit" for thinking the US government spies on American citizens for any reason other than to keep them safe. Reality shows otherwise.

It's a human right to be #Anonymous + use #encryption. @Jason_M_Farrell @c4ssdotorg http://t.co/BJnoAm9H8g pic.twitter.com/XPzepgs2SS

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) September 20, 2015

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Encryption, anonymity as human rights

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In May of 2015, a UN report asserted that secure encryption and anonymity on the Internet are human rights.

From the UN report:

Encryption and anonymity, today’s leading vehicles for online security, provide individuals with a means to protect their privacy, empowering them to browse, read, develop and share opinions and information without interference and enabling journalists, civil society organizations, members of ethnic or religious groups, those persecuted because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, activists, scholars, artists and others to exercise the rights to freedom of opinion and expression. 

The US regime has vowed and sought to implement a so-called "golden key" that will allow it to break through all encryption, contrary to the UN's above recognition of encryption as a human right. As of Edward Snowden's revelations in 2013, they were making significant gains against such protection, but they had not yet succeeded.

Dan Froomkin at The Intercept had written on the month of the report's release:

Encryption is not the refuge of scoundrels, as Obama administration law-enforcement officials loudly proclaim – it is an essential tool needed to protect the right of freedom of opinion and expression in the digital age, a new United Nations report concludes.

More recently, at the Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) in September, Jason Farrell concluded, "Governments do not have a right to see every communication on the web", and dismissed the so-called national security arguments of the White House. He wrote that "Even if the battle against terrorism, drug cartels, hackers, spies or other criminals becomes more difficult, “going dark” remains the right of all human beings."

A "golden key" to thwart encryption will not just allow the US regime to aggressively monitor and follow its own citizens without any legal justification, but will allow repressive regimes all over the world to do the same once they get access to US government information. Therefore, what the US is doing has become an example of what Martin Luther King Jr called 'an injustice anywhere being a threat to justice everywhere', potentially allowing the entrenchment of dictatorships all over the world.

However, the US's development of the ultimate tools of dictatorship and the repression of opposition should not be surprising. In all international conflicts, the US has proven repeatedly that it is on the side of armed coups and repressive dictatorships, using their territory to extra-judicially torture and murder its opponents over decades.

US regime should stop killing kids if it doesn't want to be attacked by #terrorism: @cnels43 http://t.co/ofFfWfQxcl pic.twitter.com/YLRaeSk0Ec

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) September 16, 2015

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Can Snowden heal a broken democracy?

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Current democratic efforts to watch and rein in US government surveillance targeting American citizens wouldn't be possible without Edward Snowden's brave extralegal actions.

C4SS (Center for a Stateless Society) writer Jason Farrell argues that despite the White House's recent repetition of its claims that Snowden undermined US national security, "The reality is Snowden’s leaks revealed that the growth of state power cannot be constrained—even by normal legal means—without assistance from extra-legal measures."

In sum, relying on the current institutions of the US state is insufficient to maintain a functional democracy and the actions of whistleblowers who break the law are now necessary for any appearance of democracy. The development of the deep state - the de facto authorities whose power is embodied in unaccountable security forces and corporate sponsors rather than elected officials - is causing the architecture of democracy to crumble. Technology is largely to blame for democracy becoming almost impossible to practice, according to Farrell, who argues we are faced with "advances in technologies that, in the possession of states, give them enormous power to spy on their citizens without detection".

According to Farrell, effective safeguards on the technological capabilities of states are needed to limit regimes' access to the means to monitor all citizens and reduce democracy into a farce. Until these safeguards are apparent, extralegal actions such as Snowden's heroism and other whistleblowing will continue to be necessary deeds to produce even the slightest appearance of democratic accountability.

Further, any lack of transparency and reliance of a regime on secrecy to protect itself should be interpreted as an admission of guilt on the part of the regime until transparency is forced on it by whistleblowers' actions.

#SNOWDEN movie likely to challenge Americans who saw the whistleblower as a traitor http://t.co/IBVKCtL4Ob pic.twitter.com/U1PbLfGlcr

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) August 2, 2015

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The future of cyber disobedience

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Beyond "left vs right" politics, the new political battle sets individuals against institutions. The very nature of modern technology has decided this, with the awesome new power it has granted to individual and institution alike making new grave injustices and single-handed acts of heroic liberation equally possible.

That was the prediction made at the Center for a Stateless Society by blogger Jason Farrell, author of The Radical Relay blog. Of particular interest to him was the claim that transparency activists such as Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Glen Greenwald came from seemingly diverse ideologies and backgrounds but all had the same anti-establishment agenda.

Although charting each of their relationships with libertarianism, Farrell argues that ideological labels are of less importance in the current context of "individual versus institution", than they were in the past:

Ideologies exist to explain and map out solutions to complex social and economic problems that arise from time to time. This is of little concern to the civil disobedient, whose high-stakes action is laser focused on the remediation of a singular grave injustice.

The prediction that acts aimed at remedying grave injustices will shape the politics of the future is shared by many, ranging from the "cypherpunk" culture from which Julian Assange emerged to more marginal communities of futurists. One of our books, Catalyst: A Techno-Liberation Thesis (Harry J. Bentham, 2013), lays out the radical thesis that the act of leaking information is revolutionary in a sense that goes far beyond the purpose of any single party or movement.

Further, Catalyst makes the prediction that future individuals will find ever more advanced technologies in their lone hands, making them able to do something no activist could ever do before: make entire nationally-liberating and institution-destroying technologies available to disenfranchised and oppressed sectors of the world population. This phenomenon is termed "hard leaks" in the book, referencing the fact that previously heavily guarded sensitive technologies will be released indiscriminately into the hands of the world's abused and vulnerable, just as sensitive information has been.

Such "leaked" technologies, escaping the clutches of corporations and states in the future, could open a new resistance front to challenge global wealth disparities. It would be especially easy for determined individuals to accomplish this act, especially if their targets encompassed vaccines, self-replicating nano-robots, or synthetic organisms generating the gifts of unlimited fuel, environmental cleanup agents or other unlimited resources. Hence, according to the thesis, the challenge of "democratization" posed by technology against corporate and state power will gradually evolve beyond simply an information battle to a physical battle for the future of the world's resources and intellect.

Reinforcing Jason Farrell's own theses, the Catalyst thesis predicts that the modern liberal state is already disrupted and destined to be overthrown by the socioeconomic liberation heralded by the accumulation and adoption of new personal technologies.

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