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| This image is from the cover of "The Economist", 6/29/2014 issue |
We know and accept that today there is major societal revolution in many nations where people have been severely oppressed by their governments or their religions. Consider Libya, Syria, Egypt, Algeria, Russia. The accelerant fueling this social change is the increased information and communications provided to individuals via the internet and with the proliferation of devices such as cell phones, smart phones and PCs.
What has not been quite so obvious is the same thing is happening in the free world. And its happening for the very same reasons, and by the same means. Today we see protests in nations such as Japan, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Greece, America, and the United Kingdom. These protests are aptly aimed against the oppression by our big governments and by big corporations.
The discussion that follows is from the perspective of an American and is specific to the US. But the same is happening in all across the globe.
Although many of us continue to believe just the opposite, Americans have in fact been oppressed significantly by our governments and by our economic and social systems. Not severe oppression as seen in many nations, but still oppression. Our governments and many of our corporations wield considerable power, and that takes away from the power, the rights and the property of individuals. Power such as allows undue influence in the democratic election processes. Power that permits adding pollutants to our atmosphere, or burning excessive amounts of fossil fuels - without taking responsibility for the consequences. Power such as holding vast amounts of wealth and property. Power such as allows wrongly enticing and influencing individuals (largely via advertising) to consume more when consuming less is more healthy and more sensible.
Now this is not to say that power in the hands of our governments and our corporations has not given us good returns. Many of the advanced systems we have today - transportation, computer, communication and electrical power infrastructures, highly efficient high tech agriculture and manufacturing, goods distribution networks, automobiles, personal computers - would not have happened, at least not as soon as they did, had it not been for big corporations such as Ford, Standard Oil, IBM and AT&T, and, had it not been for a number of big government's big initiatives such as putting a man on the moon, starting the internet and creating the interstate highway system. We got a lot from the big institutions as we moved through and then out of the agrarian, the industrial and the manufacturing eras and into the current service and information era. That being said, it is important to recognize that we owe nothing to the big institutions - they were simply a means to an end.
We now live in an era where the total of our raw food stocks and our industrial and manufactured goods are produced with the employ of less than 20% or our workforce. What is the rest of the workforce doing? Well, depending on your political persuasion and perspective, either 8% or 19% want jobs but can't get them. The remaining >60%, are employed in providing services - running retail operations, running education operations, transporting goods, providing medical care, providing books, movies and other entertainment, providing internet access and the stuff that's on the internet, providing and distributing government services such as military, police and income security.
So now consider this: most of America's expenditures by individuals (about 80%) and most of our jobs (also about 80%) concern providing services. In other words, 80% of today's economy is services.
This is something new. Just 100 years ago the balance was the opposite - services were only 20% of our economy. What was 20/80 is now 80/20. Today we spend most of our time and money producing and consuming intangibles (services), rather than on spending them on raw food stocks, fuels and manufactured goods.
This being the case, it only stands to reason that the old institutions of high importance, specifically big governments and big corporations, might not be as important as they once were. I would suggest that because of our switch to a service economy in combination with today's hugely expanded and highly more accessible information, big institutions are no longer essential to a nation's economic viability and social stability.
Do we need a big government and big corporations to lead us in our next steps in space travel and exploration? Do we need them for our ongoing advancements in science and in computerization? Do we need them to protect us from other nations? Do we need them to run our currencies? Do we need them to provide our health care, shelter, food and other needs as we grow old and feeble? And ask yourself this - can we trust them to be the providers of these things - are they capable with any reasonable level of competence?
Many, like myself (belatedly) have come to the realization that big government and big corporations do not provide at all like they used to. Individuals and small businesses (non-profit as well as for-profit) are taking over in areas that were once the domain of only big institutions, and the big guys are providing less to us (citizens and employees) and to our communities. Diverse examples of some of the things now done better by small businesses and individuals include: Wikipedia; 3d printing, Craig's List; small businesses providing software, data analysis and engineering and research services; entrepreneurs leading our developments in space travel. Examples of big institutions providing less than in the past include: big businesses having greatly reduced pension and health benefits to their workers; big government trimming its outlays in social services; the federal government mandating that individuals maintain their own health care insurance; and both big government and big business offering less gainful employment per capita than they have in the past.
So, it only stands to reason that individuals in America (and across the world) are rebelling against the big institutions and against the restrictions (oppression) that they impose upon us. Why should we give up our liberties to the big institutions to the same degree as we have in the past when now we receive less from them?
So, in this new world, without big institutions, how will our problems/needs/wants be efficiently resolved? A big part of the answer starts and ends with free and open information. In solving any problem , the critical steps are to 1) clearly see and recognize the problem; 2) identify the drivers; 3) implement solutions and fixes. With a free and open information society, all three of these key steps are hugely facilitated.
Consider law enforcement and justice in the case where someone robs someone else. Today we'll likely see the crime when it happens (cameras all around us, people texting and sharing details of what they see and hear), the robber can and is often quickly identified (internet information) confronted and eventually tried. And then he can be punished by depriving him of services and he can be controlled with increased monitoring. Consider a worse crime - murder or manslaughter. Someone will have to apprehend the suspect, give a trial, and then imprison the convicted. Why would a branch of big government be needed to do this? With open processing and open information trough all the steps, why couldn't this be done by a contract firm that specializes in such. Who would pay for the service? The affected community - not big government. Who would oversee that the processing, including trial and punishment, was done fairly? - with open information, anyone and everyone.
Ah, but you say, information will never be that open. My counter: our information and monitoring systems have reached the point where we are now at the end of secrecy. Today, with a bit of determined electronic searching, a small group can pull up volumes of detailed information on practically any American individual - financial records, employment, health, physical locations and activities over the past week (month, year..), friends, relatives, contacts. We have no choice - with today's computers and data networks, there is so much information, and there are so many paths for the flow of information, that it cannot be contained. It is free and open by default.
So, to sum it up, we no longer nee big government and big corporations to the degree we did in the past century. And as the information age expands (data and computing power continue to double every 18 months!) the usefulness and the value of big institutions is further shrinking. The advantages and the benefits they once provided are diminished. Many of the services they once provided can today be better sourced from individuals and small institutions. This being the case, we are now looking to take back some of the liberties that we gave up in the past as the price paid in order to support the big businesses and big government of the past.
Current day rapid societal revolution is not at all limited to the severely oppressed nations of the world. It is right now happening across America and in other capitalistic nations - Greece, Spain, Turkey, Poland, France, Italy, China. Our big institutions are diminishing in relevance, but our societies are healthier than ever (as is evidenced by our many protests and other actions directed at retiring the old and failing systems). Who would have thought?
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