Somethings in Politics Don’t Make Sense Except in the Light of Depopulation

Survivors Guide to Earth, fronted by Mathew Cooke, is an apparently well-funded campaign, which has suddenly popped up on everyone’s social media feeds decrying Trump, Israel and nation states generally. Cooke has gulped down the bait and is promoting a new New Deal, a cryptic variant of the New World Order, the Great Reset, and Build Back Better.

Perhaps he means well, but he is misguided. Here are some of the main ideological points of the program:

• We don’t need national borders. Instead everyone should live according to “universal” human values.
• Metaphorically, we all share the Earth’s labor pool in the same way we share Earth’s water supply.
• We deserve a government that cares about the economic rights of everyone.

Cooke supported Bernie Sanders’ campaign in 2016 and still seems to be in the ideological camp that believes in a big strong impossibly benign government. In his new videos, Cooke is a full-blown conspiracy theorist, which is permitted now since the partial release of the Epstein files. But he does not identify the concentration of power as the problem. Instead, he argues the opposite that different national ideologies and borders are the problem.

The impotent tools that the Survivors Guide to Earth offers are unionizing, divestment, boycott, and protest. Consider the title, the survivors’ guide; this is a guide to a future wherein a number of people have not survived because they thought they could vote their way out of this mess. Cooke is handsome and hip, an engaging speaker for the disaffected masses. But he is not the right guide.

I’m not sure we need guides at this point. It’s obvious what we need to do: plant a garden, or learn to make ethanol and biodiesel, or learn how to repair machines and electronics, or learn some other practical skill. In other words, try to survive without government.

We’re lucky; the technocrats are not quite ready to roll out their new system. The data centers are not complete, and so far, they have failed in their PR efforts to make the public want AI governance. But we won’t be able to resist technocracy unless people recognize that alternatives exist to the kinds of systems that got us here.

Voluntarism, Anarchism and Self-Organization

Socialism, capitalism, feudalism, representative democracy, and communism all end up creating centers of power that exploit the people. Voluntarist systems, which recognize the greatest degree of individual freedom, may start out chaotic but don’t remain so for long; they rapidly self-organize to create a means of exchange (currency), public infrastructure, rules for using the common finite natural resources, and the maintenance of borders.

As soon as such systems try to tackle more—education, social welfare, etc.,—they unnecessarily create levers of power that can be seized by psychopaths at some point. No matter who has been in government, our health agencies have been hellbent on making us as unhealthy as possible. Our defense agencies drive us to war and make us unsafe. Our educational systems brainwash. It’s all too Orwellian. On the bright side, it’s a lot easier to give up government assistance when it is so clearly out to kill us.

Yes, we should all value cultural programs, education, research, product safety testing, charity for the poor. But it is our job as individuals to support such programs free from government coercion and control. Think of all the time and money that is wasted trying to put the Best Leader in office when that could go directly to local welfare and cultural programs of our choice instead.

Are Borders Racist?

There will never be a global utopia constrained by universal values; corporations will compete for finite natural resources and those who kill and maim the most will win. The best we can do is decentralize power, which is not possible without separate nation states and somewhat self-contained economies.

National borders are functionally equivalent to the semi-permeable membrane of a living cell. Membranes make healthy and intelligent life possible.

Although progressives like Cooke think that it is “nationalism” that pits citizens against newcomers, the truth is that migrant workers have always served the interests of concentrated powers, large corporations and the wealthy, who want low-wage workers. Land ownership needs to be limited to citizens and land needs to be as accessible to as many citizens as possible. No hoarding.

Following Benjamin Franklin’s lead, Tereza Corragio argues in How to Dismantle an Empire that local community banks should hold mortgages on the land in the community so that the interest paid stays in the community. It’s simple pragmatic ideas like this that will save us from technocracy, not “universal” values.

Although Cooke argues, I think rightly, that the natural resources and public infrastructure belong to the people of the land, I suspect that the Uber-Banker’s plan is to pervert such ideas by “tokenizing” public infrastructure, land and other natural resources. And, via various stablecoins that are “tethered” to the national debt, the citizens will receive meager rations. The data center that manages the tokens will take a cut.

This is the new “stakeholder capitalism.” But that’s not ownership; that’s not even as good as a membership a Sam’s Club. It’s a digital prison.

Natural resources, such as minerals, oil, and precious metals, should be extracted, processed, and sold to citizens by non-profit cooperatives, over which citizens have voting rights and an interest in protecting their ecosystems. It is the for-profit corporate monopolization of natural resources and public infrastructure that leads to fascism. It’s not factories or other kinds of corporations. That’s the lesson behind the Georgist inspired board game Monopoly. Private entities do not have a right to extract the finite resources that they did not create. Libertarians who deny this end up recreating the conditions that lead to wars for oil and land.

Contrary to what Cooke argues, we need to undo the social programs (those levers of power) that were invented to treat the symptoms of the problem of corporate monopolies on natural resources and public infrastructure.

Invert the Pyramid of Power

In this view, in the US, the federal government would function merely as the Treasury and the Building and Grounds Department of the fifty states, supplying the Greenbacks to build and maintain all transportation, communication and energy supply infrastructure, ports and public buildings (courts, schools, hospitals) but making no decisions about how to run those systems, which should be run by local village/town cooperatives.

The oligarchs are taking down the system that brought them to power. They will have a narrow window of time in which to erect the new stakeholder capitalism and digital prisons. That time of chaos will also be our opportunity to build the world we want locally.

Meanwhile…

Good news: I have a new novel coming out.

I have not been producing my usual supply of anti-transhuman/technocracy essays lately because I’ve been preparing for the release of my social satire novel The Girlie Playhouse on April 7th from Heresy Press. Although it’s tempting to be distracted by the war porn, I remind myself what I’m fighting for, the kind of life I want to live when technocracy has failed, when I will have the luxury of tending to my garden and enjoying the arts and sciences.

I wrote this novel over thirty years ago, making fun of various waves of feminism in the 1990s. It’s finally okay to criticize that nonsense. It’s a funny book and humor is cathartic.

So please consider supporting my work by ordering a copy. Feed the Amazon beast or other big bookstore. Or support Oblong, the little bookshop in my village which is hosting a signing soon.

VN Alexander PhD is a philosopher of science and novelist, who has just completed a new satirical novel, The Girlie Playhouse. You can read and follow her SubStack here.

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