Thought for the day: Life is nature's way of delaying death.

Facebook: making sure you never lose touch with people you don't like.

Internal admin is not "industry".

Flying on a wing and a prayer may sometimes be necessary. Taking off on the same is another matter entirely.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Perpetual Motion: a celebration of modern economics

And it would come to pass that one day, efficiency reigned. Everything and everyone would be the same for ever. Everybody would wear the same clothes, eat the same calorie-controlled diet and work for the same company. There would be one company. Everybody would have seven hobbies. There would be only seven hobbies to have. They would be job descriptions. Everybody would share the same modes of transport and travel the same distance every month. Vacations were part of peoples' occupations, as were redundancies. Hardship and wealth had become optimised as agents of progress. Progress had been driven by necessity. Stability had been the goal and stability had been attained. There would be no more need for change, only growth. Only a few individuals would grow. They would harvest any excess without impediment. This had been proven to be necessary.

Everybody worked all the time. Everybody would serve and everybody would be served equal amounts of everything. There would be no inequality and everybody would treat everybody else identically. There would be no prejudice or discrimination.

Everyone would use the same money and the same bank. There would be one bank. They would use the same shop for everything.  There would be one shop. All branches would be located by strict demographic measurements and proven management techniques and sized accordingly. They would stock exactly the same produce at exactly the same prices. Each outlet would employ the same amount of women and men. All purchases were driven by compulsion. There would be no need for enforcement of anything, ever. Everybody would know their place.

All purchases would be completed with the one card which would never be declined. It could not be overused. There would be only one card and it would cover everything. There would be no other means of transaction and all transactions would be statutory. Each had equivalence with each other. None existed in isolation any more. There would be no gratuities or inducements. There would be no liabilities. Nobody would lose currency and nobody would gain. Everything was distributed equitably. Investment was a societal function and was channelled by telephone.

Everything would be a transaction, including water supply. Everybody would pay the same amount of tax. By direct debit. There would be no discounts and no surcharges as there was no scope for either reward nor penalty. Everybody would have the same assets. Nobody would have anything left at the end of the month and everybody would always be one month behind. Nobody would know.

Everybody would have the same furniture and watch the same television programmes, which would always be on. Everybody would go out once a month.

Everyone would be citizens of the same country. There would be no country as there was no other. Symbolic nation states could be traded, enriched or bankrupted, according to the stipulations of those whose task it was to run everything. Everybody would absorb and dispense the same amount of currency at set times as a part of a compulsory regimen of daily devotion which by now would have replaced all religion and ideology. Every deed would become a measurable transaction, one instantly recoverable from any computer or mobile device anywhere at any time by anybody. There would be one process which determined all others. All calls would be free and might be monitored for quality control.

There would be no unhappiness as dis-satisfaction would be logically impossible. Feeling anything at all would contradict the process. There would be no dissent as there was nothing to question. Everybody would agree all the time. There would be no means of expressing emotion. Everybody would have the same emotions to the same degree. They would experience the same joys and the same disappointments and the same amount of satisfaction and frustration, sensations which would be determined electronically and induced via devices, which would be voluntarily carried by everybody all the time, thus eliminating any need for enforcement. This had been a boost to some. Drugs would be used to balance peoples' moods. Drugs would be used a lot. So would bacteria and exploding metal and bits of paper and sounds and pictures.

All media had been analysed to a standstill, its every single-celled nuance isolated and exploited at will. All news would be editorially neutral. Everything would be news and equally important. Fiction and music would be written by machines, some of which would have pre-determined faults. Love would come in a download.

There would be no art as the idea was meaningless. Everybody would believe and disbelieve the same things. There would be no need for books. There would be billions of books. People would be employed to write. People would be employed not to write. Some would be employed to run and jump. Some would be employed to pretend or to kill.

There would be no pollution as it, too, would be regulated to neutrality by science. All consumption and all waste would be equalised and synchronised. Each would go to the toilet four times a day, except Americans, who would visit the bathroom. Facilities would be accessed by swiping the card, all debits and credits duly recorded.

Climate science would predict all weather accurately all the time. All precautions would be taken and all mishap mitigated. Everybody would be safe. There would be no disasters. There would be events. Every conceivable measurement had by now been made and documented on spreadsheets using standard scientific units. Everything would be pH and carbon neutral.

There would be no politics. There would be nothing to discuss. There was no more to prove. Machines dictated everything. All activity would be designed for the single purpose of obtaining materials necessary to remain engaged with a society now so finely understood and analysed it had become a single machine. Everything that happened would be a one-dimensional unit, incapable of existence as a single entity for so much as a theoretical pico-second without rupturing the fabric of existence. Catastrophe would assuredly occur should the force be denied its will.

There would be no individual status as there would be no scale of variation by which to calibrate. Maintenance would become process. Everybody would work in maintenance. Training would be given.

All interpersonal relationship would be controlled. Everybody would tell everybody everything all the time. All waking activity would be recorded and time stamped in audio and video and networked. Corroboration would no longer be an issue. File retrieval saw to this.

Nobody would have inhibitions. There would be no restrictions. Sex was a commodity. Obstacles and impediments were programmed occurences. All would be fully and compulsorily subscribed to a social network that evolved into a monster in a matter of minutes  some time in the recent past nobody can quite remember. Everything would be connected via a computer network which made everything equidistant, including other people.

Personal perspective would be redundant. The system had assumed control not long before without any meaningful resistance. There would be one server to which everybody would pay the same amount at the same time every month and receive the same instructions and information. There would be no quality. Everything would have equal purpose in its own function within an indivisible dynamic which had been finally defined by scientists. Everything was now fully understood and explained. There would be no research as there would be no need, but there would still be scientists. Science would replace law and accountancy would replace science. There would be one law and one authority. Everybody would have one hundred and thirty-seven friends.

Everybody would receive the same healthcare and would live exactly the same length of time as all physiological processes were now understood. Agriculture would be optimised as all mechanical processes were now controllable to molecular level. Individual nutritional requirements would be determined precisely as all biographical and genetic data had been precisely correlated. Birth variations had never been fully suppressed, but compensatory treatment now existed for all physiologies and anatomies. Pathologies were induced and managed. A range of chemicals would see to this.

Legislation would be unnecessary as deviation from any norms was technically impossible without the perpetrator being instantly and terminally dispensed with as a member of the nest by digital default. Faults would occur by decree, as would compensation.

Wars would continue as before. They were economically necessary and had become a societal function. Fear of supposedly external enemies had kept the herd in distinct and by and large manageable constituencies for centuries and bloody conflict seemed to keep it all ticking over nicely. This arrangement worked in tandem with the controlling qualities of escalating personal indebtedness, which would be compulsory and inescapable. The economy depended on it.

All things would be equal and all would be proportionately rewarded according to the calculations of mathemiticians working for an unimpeachable elite who brook no scrutiny. And it would be called life by the The Will and Grace of the Markets.