Privium at Schiphol?
is that right or left?
1 Like
Unified, but quite heterogenous in some ways, as well as multinational and cosmopolitan – at least the sense I’ve gotten from friends/colleagues/travel shows/etc.
The question is, is autocratic techno-dictatorship ever acceptable, even if it works much better for more people than a “freer” system that ends up with people not having basic needs met? I don’t have my own mind made up on this, frankly.
Only if you like to conform, and do actually conform. If you don’t conform, you’re either out or in trouble.
And the autocratic techno-dictators do get the ability to change what constitutes ‘conform’ according to their whim.
1 Like
All true. However, there are “whims” of a so-called “representative democracy” as well, as we can see in the USA right now. Abortion? Yeah, maybe not. Gay marriage? Yeah, maybe not. Who knows? Every few years it’s a pendulum, and nothing productive really gets done. Autocratic techno-dictatorship has a certain appeal, if it’s inclusive enough and functional enough. I don’t think the USA provides evidence that a broken democracy is a better option?
1 Like
Singapore has racial quotas on public housing and 80% of the population live in public housing. This makes things like minority representation in parliament difficult, however it helps create the appearance of unity and homogenity.
Well, no broken system, even democracy, is likely to come out as a better system.
I’m not implacably opposed to considering that ATD may be better in pragmatic terms. I was just pointing out some sacrifices/restrictions it entails.
1 Like
TBH I think it’s a legitimate debate, and as a pluralist at heart, I kind of wish we could opt-in to different types of systems more easily, ones that are perhaps not bound as tightly to geographic coordinates for birth/residency. Edelman’s Jump 225 trilogy of near-future sci-fi novels paints an interesting picture of this (I guess Snow Crash paints another version, maybe more realistic, alas).
1 Like
7 Likes
They will still, of course, still need to carry a passport to get on a plane at the other end - so apart from the technofetishism typical of these authoritarian states (see also the whole of the Gulf) - what does this achieve?
2 Likes
I wonder if it is more about the Permanent Residents who dont hold Singapore passports.
Sort of depends on whether the enlightened technocrats who rule Singapore can solve a problem like income inequality, or whether sweeping such problems under the rug is built into the system.
2 Likes
And I should clarify, I was speaking more hypothetically/rhetorically, than about Singapore in particular. Singapore is just one of those examples of a place that seems to resemble this notion in practice more than a lot of other places, so it sort of stimulates my thinking about this in broader terms.
Frankly, I would definitely support autocratic techno-dictatorship…
… assuming I’m in charge, of course! 
Consider, for a moment, that an enlightened government needs to understand the current conditions of the state it administers. You could have an absolute genius in charge, but her rule is limited by the quality of information she receives. A democracy provides a more accurate picture of reality, without the distortions of half baked idealism and abstraction.
I suppose that a surveillance socitey can for a time approximate the breath of information that a democracy can provide, but for how long?
1 Like
Breath ID is next.
The answer to that question almost certainly depends on whether or not said government is meeting your basic needs or not. And the answer is a whole different ball-o-wax if their polices change and the suddenly are not meeting the needs of the many any longer.
2 Likes
Isn’t a counter-example, though, all of the truly heinous things that have been done by and in the name of “democracies?” Hitler was democratically elected, yada yada.
Tbh I am really of the mind that systems don’t matter much. We keep trying to engineer better systems to help make us better people, when I really think we need to be engineering ourselves to be better people, so we can have functional systems.
In that scenario, a revolution is the only answer, it would seem. At least then people would know what they’d have to do, if the system failed to stop working. I consider our current system in the USA, a “democracy” that’s so degraded, it’s really not, as potentially worse in some ways. It kinda-sorta looks like it still is a democracy on paper, just enough for almost nobody to really think revolution is something that could or should ever happen here – despite the genesis of our country. I wonder if our scenario in some ways is more dangerous long-term – our species doesn’t have another 100 years to muddle through the collapse of civil society, else we’ll see the collapse of much much more than that.
I think my mind would go in different directions when it comes to thinking through these things, if the planet weren’t inside a century of being nearly uninhabitable for a huge portion of its human and non-human population. There’s no luxury – we either evolve around climate change, or it’s Mad Max, and then it’s local warlords calling the shots. I’d much rather be living in Brave New World than Mad Max, frankly.
1 Like
Dolf was not elected. He was appointed Chancellor by President von Hinderberg even though the Nazis lacked a parliamentary majority. (cite) Like Dubya and Tramp, he’s an example of a loser who ‘won’.
2 Likes
