Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite

Re:Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite by sgt101 on Saturday January 26, 2019 @04:34AM (#19005621)

Napoleon put an end to that, the state's monopoly on violence came to rest on it's ability to mobilise an army of it's citizenry. Napoleon's army's demolished (comprehensively) army's dragooned into the field by aristocrats, aristocrats who thought to ignore this truth came to a bad end. In China, currently, there is an interesting experiment being played out about what the limits of modern centralised power are. The last time that this experiment was run (also in China in the late 60's) the results were not good for the ruling class, or actually for anyone at all. It may be that it's possible for an elite to "stamp a foot on the faces of humanity for all eternity" but this is not completely tested so far, and I think that the early indications show that it will turn out not to be true. I believe that authorities that push it may well find themselves in the most disastrous personal situations, I think that they are smart enough to realise this and to back off.

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Re:Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite by mhuffman on Saturday January 26, 2019 @09:33AM (#19006427)

It seems that centralized power would benefit from encouraging differences and factions in its citizenry. This keeps any sort of broad mobilization limited in scope and also if force needs to be used against a mobilizing group, there is always a plurality of citizens that would not be opposed to it.

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Re:Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite by mistermann on Saturday January 26, 2019 @10:50AM (#19006757)

> It seems that centralized power would benefit from encouraging differences and factions in its citizenry.

Key word being "encouraging". A possible(!) recent example of this would be the maga hat kid. The beauty of this incident is, the initial incident is guaranteed to polarize people, but even if more truth comes out it the result is even more polarization. Can't lose strategy, provided no one notices what's going on.

I believe this is a bi-partisan issue, I imagine many similar examples could be found with the political roles switched.

An effective modern day Napolean is going to need the persuasive skills of Donald Trump combined with political beliefs from both poles (~ Trump + Bernie Sanders), but even then with the top down control (censorship) over modern means of mainstream communication it could be difficult to even get your message out there.

So far there always seems to be reason for hope though, while Bernie is getting along in the years almost out of the blue here comes this Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez girl, almost like a "far left" Donald Trump to keep things interesting.

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Re:Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite by sgt101 on Saturday January 26, 2019 @12:18PM (#19007190)

This worked in China right up till The Red Guard emerged. After that, it stopped working with about 5 million bangs. It's an unstable approach (so far), with blowback guaranteed.

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