4IR - The Securitisation of Behavioural Compliance
According to sociology, post-industrial society is the stage of social development where the service sector of the economy generates more wealth than the manufacturing sector. Most ‘developed’ countries today find themselves at this stage of development. Ignoring the elephant in the room - the massive expropriation of labour and resource wealth from developing countries - globalisation and automation have thus far led to a decline in demand for manual labour and an increased demand for professional services across most of the developed world.
In this stage of economic development, knowledge becomes a valued form of capital, which has given rise to new fields of research such as information science, behavioural economics, cybernetics and game theory. But with artificial intelligence and robotics having largely displaced industrial labour, how long can it be before the professional class also finds itself redundant? What happens to the experts when the machines begin to take over executive roles as well? Will they be put out to pasture like the labouring classes before them? Will we go from blue-collar to white-collar to no-collar?
If neoliberalism was the ruling class’ response to post-Fordism; a way to continue to extract surplus value when industrial production is no longer the economic driving force, then the Fourth Industrial Revolution/Great Reset can be seen as the the ruling class’ answer to the debasement of human capital which follows from this transition.
How do you manage surplus labour in the age of information? One possibility is to securitise behaviour analytics. We already see this applied in the corporate world, where investment opportunities are being tied to ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) scores in areas such as ‘gender equality’ and ‘carbon footprint’. The next step is to apply this logic to individuals, such that access to services could be granted based on strict compliance with specific goals or pathways. With the present ability of big tech to capture every skerrick of data about our daily lives, from what we had for breakfast to when we went to the toilet; with blockchain technology capable of maintaining a permanent, tamper proof record of this data, and with AI able to make predictions about our lives with a high degree of accuracy, all that’s missing is a platform to tie the three together. Enter the digital health passport, also known as a ‘digital wallet’. By way of example we have Commonpass, a Rockefeller initiative, ‘coincidentally’ set up well before the ‘pandemic’.
The writing has long been on the wall for those paying attention. Perhaps the warning signs for the most recent crisis are easier to see in hindsight (Lockstep, Event 201, Crimson Contagion) – but when the very same parties who predicted a novel coronavirus pandemic are now running simulations in preparation for a cyber attack on the global financial system (see the World Economic Forum’s most recent Cyber Polygon event) – we can easily predict what they are planning next. For those who still need it spelled out, the answer is a credit collapse which will be blamed on a cyber attack by a state actor, which will then lead to a total overhaul of the global banking and finance system.
The solution being proposed in advance is to combine the diplomatic and national security arms of government with central banks and stock markets. A textbook definition of fascism, but who needs details, right? Besides, the private sector already controls government through lobbying, essentially writing laws for government to sign off on, so why not formalise the arrangement? All that’s needed is the pretext to justify it, then voila, A global financial ‘reset’. New digital currencies rolled out by central banks, accessed via a digital wallet which also functions as your permanent record, determining which services you have access to.
Now before you go saying this all sounds like wild conspiracy (it isn’t), let’s step back and take a look at the picture so far. The purpose of the virus and its new ‘game changing variants’ is to sell the vaccines. To everyone, every year, twice a year, for life. The purpose of the vaccines is to sell the health passports, ostensibly to control the spread of the virus, but in fact to capture our data, monitor our behaviour and reward us or punish us accordingly.
Now for the crucially important part. The purpose of the ‘vaccine passports’ is not to imprison all of humanity in a digital Panopticon for the sheer sadistic pleasure of it. We are dealing with psychopaths, not sadists. The need for digital wallets is purely utilitarian. It opens the door to a world of new investment opportunities – essentially turning us into human poker chips for hedge funds to gamble with. With essential services delivered under performance based contracts, they will be betting on outcomes or ‘futures’ - literally ours. For example, what is the chance that person A will end up with diabetes if they eat a doughnut for breakfast every day? What is the chance person B ends up in prison because of a bad report card they got in the fifth grade?
The most cynical aspect of all of this is that the permanent enslavement of humanity is really just a bi-product; a means to an end. Psychopaths aren’t intrinsically evil you see. The truth is they lack any sense of morality at all. This is not some diabolical conspiracy cooked up by satanists and peadophiles, at least not specifically. The digital Panopticon serves a very specific and important purpose - the continued extraction of surplus value from a largely unproductive labour force.
It’s also the endgame of the neoliberal project. The final privatisation. The final enclosure. Don’t believe me? Look at Chile, where citizens now need to apply to the police for a permit to leave their house in two hour blocks, twice a week. Chile is where neoliberalism started and it’s no coincidence it is also being used as the proving ground for the new medical-fascist model.
This is the end of a long historical process, which is why we are hearing so much about the need for a "new social contract". What is really meant by this is the restructuring of the welfare state. Granting access to services based on predictive analytics and return for investment will of course lead to a world of unimaginable human misery, but not without creating unprecedented value for stakeholders.