This article is Part 1 of a long essay that laments the perverse ideological path that delivered us to our present oh-so-"smart" cul-de-sac of doom-cycle clusterf*cks; and asks, Is it really that hopeless?

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Illusions Lost - An Elegy in Three Parts

Part 1: A World Without People

Part 2: Progress

Part 3: Growth

Requiem

Bibliogaphy

Part 1: A World Without People

In 1817 David Ricardo - that great advocate of free trade to exploit the wealth-enhancing benefits of comparative advantage - admitted the Luddites were right. Replacing paid workers with unpaid machines permanently reduces the need for human workers and renders the human population "redundant" to the owners of the machines. {David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Chapter XXXI On Machinery (1817)}

200 years later we are approaching the logical conclusion of that process. Here's what it looks like.

Machines replace people.

Machines don't "supplement" people.

People are replaced by machines.

The machines now do the things people used to do.

So what are the people going to do, now that they have been replaced by machines?

The people are going to die.

Well, that's the plan, anyway. Or the assumption. Or the hope.

"There are too many people. People are unsustainable. We need less people."

It's a "scientific fact" that a few billion people have to die off or the future will not be sustainable.

The "we" who confidently proclaim these "facts" do not identify as "the people". No, they are the technocrats - the knowing ones; the "smart" ones - who design the machines that replace the people. People are stupid. People are expendable. Technocrats are necessary. And smart.

Technocrats replace unsustainable people with sustainable "smart" machines. The technocrats are not going to die. The technocrats are building the "smart" future. The smart future needs the smart technocrats and doesn't need the stupid people.

What happens to all the unsustainable people whose work has been replaced by machines, but who still need to consume material resources - food, energy, clothes, housing - to survive as living creatures?

They are redundant.

They are unsustainable.

They die off.

Extinction.

An evolutionary extinction event in which homo sapiens - smart humans - are replaced by even smarter machines: mechanico sapiens.

Except this is not Charles Darwin's "accidental" evolution by random mutation and natural selection.

It is Herbert Spencer's Social Darwinism - eugenics; a targeted culling of the herd: deliberate social engineering that willfully sacrifices the people; renders the population redundant, superfluous, expendable.

The machines are not actually "sustainable". Indeed, the machines are the cause of the unsustainability problem.

Human workers are muscle-powered and food-fueled. Food - especially organically grown plant-based food - is a clean green renewable energy source to fuel human workers. Small-scale organic farming is knowledge-based and highly productive but labor intensive - economically smart but financially inefficient - so billions of food-fueled humans doing the work of growing food are replaced by millions of giant fossil-fueled machines doing the work of industrial-scale corporate agribusiness.

The industrial and agricultural machines are motor-powered and fossil-fueled or electric-fueled. Burning the Earth's limited supply of non-renewable fossil fuels, and digging out the Earth's limited supply of non-renewable natural resources to build the electricity-generating infrastructure and to build all the machines, is polluting the planet and consuming the Earth's non-renewable resources at an unsustainable rate.

Human labor is naturally fueled, clean, renewable, and sustainable.

Machine labor is artificially fueled, polluting, non-renewable, and unsustainable.

And the smart machines are not actually "smart".

They are hardware - built in factories; running software programs - written by techies, powered by batteries - made in other factories. When the batteries run down the machines don't die. They are recharged, resurrected from the dead, put back in service doing their gods' work.

The corporations that build and own and employ the machines don't die either. Their human owners and managers come and go, live and die. But the corporations live forever. Except the corporations are not alive. They are legal constructs - a stack of papers in a filing cabinet. The human owners and managers serve the insatiable need of the eternally lifeless legal construct: grow bigger, and profit.

The corporation has a singular mission: maximize profits. Growing bigger maximizes sales revenues. Human workers are a cost. Corporations replace paid workers with unpaid machines to minimize costs and maximize profits. It is the logic of anti-Spock. The needs of the few legal constructs outweigh the needs of the many redundant humans.

The machines (and corporations) are not alive. They are not conscious. They cannot feel, or think, or experience, or know. They do not decide for themselves what they will do - or not do. The machines are neither smart nor stupid. They are manufactured hardware running manufactured software programs. The machines do what they were made to do.

Everything they do is determined by the "smart" technocrats who built and programmed the machines. They wound up their mechanical toy and set it loose. "Look! It's moving by itself! It's alive! It's smart!" The technocrats love their little machines, their progeny, their legacy to the sustainable future.

But technocrats don't love people, because people are unsustainable and redundant. And stupid. Bunch of stupid populists.

The technocrats are the not-so-smart creator-gods who are building the not-actually-sustainable future.

The 'smart' machines are their creatures, who will populate the 'smart' future, doing their gods' work.

Non-living, non-feeling, non-thinking creatures.

Dead, soul-less, mindless automatons, mimicking "smart" behavior.

A simulacrum of life and intelligence, acted out by robots running algorithms. Robots that replace intelligent living feeling people.

Technocrats are the gods of the lifeless machines.

Ruling over a world without people.

In their sustainable "smart" future.

You can read the rest of the essay on Wordpress here. Or you can download the free ebook at Smashwords here.

Authors Bio:

I spent my working life as an independent small business owner/operator. My academic background is in philosophy and political economy. I began studying monetary systems and monetary history after the 1982 banking crash that was precipitated by the Mexican default and rendered 7 of America's 8 biggest banks, and 4 of Canada's Big 5, technically insolvent. They were quietly bailed out then as they are being loudly bailed out now. After the 2008 banking crash I started blogging about monetary system reform, in the tradition of Irving Fisher and CH Douglas who were prominent voices for reform during our last systemic collapse in the 1930s.

I also write about the wide divergence between perception and reality in matters of public opinion, and the central role of mass media propaganda in moulding perception and manufacturing consent, a role identified by Walter Lippman and perfected by Edward Bernays and Madison Avenue. Financial, industrial, and military-industrial corporatism is increasingly usurping the functions of government in America, Europe and elsewhere, replacing elected republican and democratic forms of government with unaccountable plutocracies mascarading as "free enterprise". Plutocracy is a neofeudal tyranny of lawless power, serving the interests of wealth rather than democratic justice. Responsible government with the power to legislate and enforce laws and control its own monetary system is our only bulwark against concentrated corporate power, which is why plutocrats are intent on destroying the credibility and power of elected governments leaving the new feudal masters free to abuse and plunder the masses of serfs at their leisure. The money issuing function is a most fundamental feature of government sovereignty, and America's government transferred that power to private bankers in 1913, placing the effective government of the nation in the hands of the money power. It may not be possible for the people to take back control of their government from the plutocrats. But it is some consolation to be able to read and write about the truth of what is currently happening to our once free countries.