No subject

[rich]

long interview with filmaker Adam Curtis. worth a read

some excerpts. apologies for font

https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/12/06/the-antidote-to-civilisational-collapse

rich

There is a sense of everything being slightly unreal; that you fight a war
that seems to cost you nothing and it has no consequences at home; that
money seems to grow on trees; that goods come from China and don’t seem to
cost you anything; that phones make you feel liberated but that maybe
they’re manipulating you but you’re not quite sure. It’s all slightly odd
and slightly corrupt.

They’re constantly playing back to you the ghosts of your own behaviour. We
live in a modern ghost story. We are haunted by our past behaviour played
back to us through the machines in its comparison to millions of other
people’s behaviour. We are guided and nudged and shaped by that. It’s
benign in a way and it’s an alternative to the old kind of politics. But it
locks us into a static world because it’s always looking to the past. It
can never imagine something new. It can’t imagine a future that hasn’t
already existed. And it’s led to a sense of atrophy and repetition. It’s
“Groundhog Day”. And because it doesn’t allow mass politics to challenge
power, it has allowed corruption to carry on without it really being
challenged properly.
The problem I have with a lot of investigative journalism, is that they
always say: “There should be more investigative journalism” and I think,
“When you tell me that a lot of rich people aren't paying tax, I’m shocked
but I’m not surprised because I know that. I don’t want to read another
article that tells me that”. What I want is an article that tells me why,
when I’m told that, nothing happens and nothing changes. And no one has
ever explained that to me.

When China put all its money into dollars, it allowed America to fight the
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with no real financial consequences in their
own country. It was the first time in history that they had ever managed to
do that. It’s fascinating. Have you noticed that one of the strangest
things in our time is that since 2001, we’ve known that there’s this
terrible war going on in Afghanistan, we’ve known that there’s this
terrible war going on in Iraq, but it just doesn’t seem to have any
consequences here—unlike the Vietnam War, where they had to borrow so much
money and raise so much in taxes that it caused a financial crisis, which
led to Nixon letting money go free, which is where we are now. There’s none
of that. Meanwhile, goods come from China and cost nothing.

Things change and people like me like things changing. Let’s take your
example. Yes, that is probably what globalisation began as, but look at
what it has become. I have this theory that what globalisation has now
degraded to is a giant scam that allows very big corporations to pay no
tax. That’s its real function—while the sense of moral purpose has dropped
away. It’s a system that has become corroded.