The New Exploiters

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wow, the more things change the more you vote for kleptocrats who do this to you.

This article was originally written in 1997, edited in 2004, looking over it recently I thought it might make sense to look at how it has held up and where it has failed. — Agent 81

In any Economy classes arise who have a greater capacity for exploiting said economy than the rest of Society.

During the great trading & exploration economies of the 15th & 16th centuries the class which amassed most of the new money to be had was the class of merchants; during the Industrial Revolution the Merchant Class was superseded by (obviously) the Industrialists, much as the Merchants had superseded the Old Nobility.

Barring cataclysmic social destruction the same pattern is borne out over numerous eras, describable in the following simple manner: a class that has economic prominence becomes stultified & moribund, the changeability of this world leads to new economic conditions which the old class is intellectually inept to handle, a new class thus arises to take advantage of these new economic conditions. . .

so far we describe nothing new to any student of world history, but now our model shall differ markedly; the old economic class is not destroyed (unless through a revolution & reign of terror) rather the old class will subdivide into the following categories:

1. those members of the old class who themselves are capable of taking advantage of the new economy who thus rise to even greater wealth & prominence;
2. those members of the old class who invest their old money in the new money ventures wisely & are thus made wealthier;
3. those who invest unwisely & are destroyed by it.
4. those members of the old class who continue in the economic patterns that first made them wealthy & are able to maintain a standard of wealth which, although great, appears small in comparison to the new fortunes being amassed;
5. those members of the old class whose ventures are taken over by the new class;
6. finally, those members of the old class who diminish in wealth & power gradually & fade from the scenes of their former dominance.:

Thus the nobility either vanished before, or vanished into, the rising mercantile classes, or in some rare instances held their own level as the world rose around them.

Thus the Merchants were subsumed or made adjunct to the Industrialists.

Thus the Industrialists now are to be vanquished by the Informationalists.

I guess thes term “informationalist” would never have been successful although I do like it more than “digital elite” or “data driven elites”

I vaguely remember the itch to write this not just to predict what was coming, but also most writing on the subject always assumes that people from the old class never succeed in the new economic disposition, which is just obviously ridiculous.

PRECEPT I: When we speak of a Class being superseded we mean that risk for making money as a member of said class shall rise in conjunction with a lessening of profits to be made; furthermore, that a class which is twice removed from the present economic paradigm shall have risk raised & profits lessened by the same degree it is removed, until such a point that the removal of class from present paradigm is so great that, although all of the class has not dissipated, to consider new members of said class as likely to arise verges on absurdity.

Though it may be gauche to mention it, the nobility of Europe is descended from members of the Pirate-Class; now if members of the Pirate-Class were to operate today the only fields which still welcome piratical methods are either criminal or third world revolutionary both of which have the unfortunate high risk of death or imprisonment, it should be evident that only third world pirates who use the first world as their site of plunder can hope to reach the profits of the mediocre pirates of yesteryear (comparatively, that is); members of the Colombian drug cartel may have equivalent profits to those of the Borgias but not if one measures by societal standards — the Cartels hold far less of accumulated wealth than Cesar ever did.

Piratical methods may also be used in conjunction with other methods by first world capitalists running third world divisions of some international corporation, but these divisions are not the fast track they were once thought to be, they are not extremely profitable & their profit is mainly from conjunction of either merchant, industrial, or informational methods. A method of profit once created is never really lost, it is always added to the bag of tools an entrepreneur has at their disposal.

The true acid test of the nobility’s undoing lies in the comic antics of Britain’s Royals & pondering the spectacle of modern capitalists buying themselves titles of nobility to all sorts of out of the way little dominions, there is something distinctly fustian in business cards that read Duke of Such&Such, indeed most such titles are purchased for $50 through mail order clearinghouses by middle income corporate drones who need some harmless outlet for their neurotic fantasies.

The noble class is now just another slightly profitable product for the merchant class to push

PRECEPT II: When a new paradigm is in the offing a pre-paradigm scramble takes place, with almost everyone attempting to cut themselves a slice of the pie, whether they are qualified to operate the knife or not.

When this pre-paradigm scramble occurs there should be an increase in the typology of enterprise which is the emergent economy s preeminent enterprise, or to be more exact a grasping by many business to define themselves as this still hazily defined type.

If the emergent economy is indeed Information Based then the classes which shall emerge as being capable of exploiting the information resources need to be defined; these definitive classes are as follows —

The Class which generates Information: from reading Degrees of Order it may be either Tooled , ie: of such an analytical structure that anyone be able to use said information to reach the same conclusions as others; or Cultured in which numerous interpretations & conclusions are possible.

The Class which is Information: as is observed in the Business Plan for I.G. inc. there are those who generate content & those who are content, meaning that some people (such as newscasters, some actors, media personalities) are more notable for simply being than for anything they do. A person can be content by being used by some content generator in the manufacturing of content — for example: a book on serial killers uses a serial killer for content, but the author is the traditional content creator. With the technological possibility of digitally storing actors we may soon have another example of people who can be both content & content creator — the mind boggles considering the possible implications of a virtual Ed McMahon! Content that doubles itself. . . A person can be content by combining with the content generated by another in a minimal way, lacking personal insight, as in the Newscaster whose job it is to look thoughtful at thoughtful reports & happy at human interest stories.

The Class which packages Information: Many members of this class date back as far as the Mercantile Class or otherwise use Mercantilist methods in their Business. Specifically, Newspapers & Magazine & Book Publishers have a very Mercantile structure — they often distribute their information without generating said information — most Newspapers draw news from wire services, most magazines & Book Publishers from Freelance Writers. Their historical development has required these methods, although such methods are not the only ones possible.

The Class that applies Information: Generally speaking the use of Cultural Information, the use of Cultural Information; criticism, movies based on books, cultural references by politicians, etc. require the generation of more information. Not so the application of Tooled Information, since the application of a mathematical formula or software program achieves a result precoded in the process. Much is made of the exportation of American Information Applications to other countries, often a rosy scenario is envisioned where members of the Information Applying Class travels to some Informationally backward economy to help in the applying of some proprietary American Information. Most large Information Applying Corporations are actually the last extreme of the Industrialist Class, companies such as IBM predate the Information Economy. They represent the Industrialization of Information, not the Informationalization of all that has gone before.

PRECEPT III Those who generate Tooled Information are currently artificially prevented from drawing equitable profit from their work through antiquated & ethically compromised legal restrictions.I speak of course of the non-copyrightable & non-patentable nature of mathematical theorems.

It has been known since the Mid-Nineteenth Century that non-euclidean mathematics was possible & that such mathematics could be constructed so as to give a view of reality as comprehensible as that of Euclid (if not more so) yet our legal system still holds the fallacious belief that mathematics somehow concretely mirrors reality.

Any mathematics is an abstract hierarchy of ideas, & as such is a representation of reality; being tooled, mathematics is a representation that one can be trained to use in such a way that all who are proficient in it will reach the same conclusions. Mathematics is not per se true about anything but itself, it is an artifiical construction & those who aid in its construction should draw value from it commensurate with the adoption of new mathematical methods by international corporations & governments.

Even if the legal system’s definition were correct & a mathematical theorem something discovered rather than invented then the analogous situation would be of the discoverer of some new gene, or resource, who, if not in the employ of a corporation may draw all benefit from their discovery. It would be advantageous that Mathematicians & theoretical physicists be allowed to profit from their discoveries since this would lead to an efficient dismantling of most multinationals which are the entities that currently hamper a non-catastrophic segue from the Industrial to the Informational Economy. It should be noted that historically governments which protect the old economic class at the expense of the new rising class either breed revolution & civil war, or send their country into a ruinous spiral.

PRECEPT IV: Since the Class which packages Information & the Class which applies Information have actually achieved economic power as adjuncts to former classes (the Mercantile & Industrial) we can assume that the greatest visible shakeup in structure & power will occur among these.

Remember our description of how superseded classes subdivide? Since the Informational Field is the one which will gain prominence in the Informational Economy. The applicatory & packaging classes are already established but in structures more suitable for vanished paradigms. Most managers of these entities realize this, whether intuitively or analytically, & are currently attempting to somehow change structure in ways that will take advantage of this emergent economy. The law of averages indicates that many of these ventures fail, common sense dictates that they fail from an incorrect understanding of what the new economy requires.

Some large Industrial economy corporations have already changed their operative procedures & it is tempting to think they have escaped destruction, indeed it would be difficult to see any danger to a corporation with the breadth & power of G.E. — but there have been paragons of past dominance that their contemporaries thought invulnerable who have vanished nonetheless.

But G.E. is in no way an Informational Power & so will be disregarded for the present*. Many chains of causality approach their terminus: the tendency of Democratic peoples to aggregate in subsocieties — or I should say a tendency of all peoples to do so which is freed from political inhibition in Democracies — & the tendency to assume one’s opinions & wants more important than social norms which causes said subsocieties to develop not only along Political & Economic levels but along Cultural as well.

Once a group is established holding certain beliefs or principles it becomes possible to analyze other qualities or quantities pertinent to said group & to market towards these qualities even if they are not the pre-eminent qualities for which the society is founded; the human need to have material existence defined by an overarcing abstract, in the last thirty years of our Capitalist Anti-Intellect Pro-Body society meaning has been subsumed by the object spurring on a product driven economy, however most of Human history can be seen to revolve around objects that are subservient to meaning — this leads to the conclusion that the past thirty years are the anomalous extent of a paradigm that will soon collapse; & the cross-generation of memes which hold that economic power is enhanced by decentralization, memes that integrate with a Democracy s tendency to fall apart into smaller groups, making all forms of monolithic organization seem slightly antiquated.

PRECEPT V: These causal chains bound the likely future form of business in an Informational Economy. The last few years saw numerous non-informational firms establishing web-sites dedicated to their product lines, the most interesting thing was their own self-hypnotising Utopian delusions.

Somehow these companies thought that their products contained some messianic component, & the purchase & consumption of these products would lead to the salvation of their customers.

Customers were noticeably unimpressed.

The Informational Giants will resemble Martha Stewart Inc., a lifestyle vision to which products accrete, but they will be lifestyles presented within some loose narrative, like a favorite morning news & Talk Show in which the clothes, food, technological toys the hosts use can be clicked on to get info & how to purchase.

In publishing the example of role-playing company TSR is instructive, by creating an abstract world they are able to sell products dedicated to that world.

An Informational economy leads to structures of Informational Complexity, slogans & catchphrases become trite & meaningless, people increasingly want articles comparing products. . .it will not be enough to say Americans want good food fast, at reasonable prices when what they want is intellectual complexity — an abstract system that they can use to critique & experience reality through, to which their food is an adjunct. Coffee- houses, ethnic restaurants, & specific lifestyle eateries all represent this trend.

The House of Blues restaurants or other theme eateries show the directions of the Informational economy, in such places one can feel part of something that is greater than the food, in a fast food restaurant one feels as much a product as the food one eats. Fast food chains to compete in the next forty years will likely be forced to choose meaning specific decor. This is only the first step, however, there is something indecent & laughably obtuse about places that appropriate their meaning specific decor from some work of imagination without possessing any intrinsic connection. Obviously, the wealthier companies will be those that can create their own intellectual/design/imaginative underpinnings & promote them to some level of popularity.

Nike will one day be more important than G.E

PRECEPT VI This leads to the ascendancy of the cultural content creating class over others.Although there is a great deal of proprietary cultural content out there, we must remember that culture is Janus-faced with both an extremely short shelf life & paradoxically the opportunity to become eternal . Obviously it is the short shelf life aspect that makes it a market necessity for the continual creation of new cultural material. Material with the highest popularity is that with the simplest content, ie, SpiceGirls, or that which most closely approximates the world of myth & fable, ie, Disney; that which appeals to basic physical or emotional drives — pornography, action films, etc. But as Democratic Culture is Niche driven there are, as I have already clarified, particular areas of more complex drives or memetic structures open to market exploitation. As the means of production fall more into the hands of the Cultural class, & often greater control of the means of distribution, it should only be a matter of time before such content achieves thematic brand-name stature *See TEXT Textual Explorations of an Experiential Aesthetic. A bootsrap of the future might be a literary polymath & a couple design artists brainstorming their own little spin on reality, copyrighting & trademarking same out the yin/yang, & then, should their invention catch the popular imagination — going on to reap the rewards thereof.

PRECEPT VII What of technicians, engineers, etc? What is their position in the new information Economy? The prevailing opinion seems to be that these occupations will continue to spiral upward in wages, why I m not sure unless it s the shortsighted human tendency to extrapolate the last decade immeasurably far into the future. Generally, when a society experiences a shortage in an occupation said occupation increases so swiftly in value that the next generation, anticipating economic security, produce a glut on the market. The argument for increasing wages in these fields is that the longer one’s education is the higher one’s wages will be, since a return on one s investment is required. I ‘m sure that the average High School teacher will appreciate this argument. The increase of Skills centers & training programs argue that the the schooling in these technical fields can be brought down to 1 year approximately. Although it should be noted that economic benefits aside the tendency of Americans has been to increasingly head for soft forms of knowledge, could it be that the group instinct has sensed something that contradicts the rational predictions?

The analogy that comes to mind is the need for navigators in the 16th century, these skilled workers were so much in demand that some commanded higher wages than the captains, including at times, percentages of profits from expeditions. Yet when the demands for the technical skills of navigators were brought back into sync with the supply, wages decreased back below those of captain. The increasing technological influence on the field made the navigator s use of tooled thought increasingly peripheral.

What does a trained navigator earn now? [A trained navigator earns a very comfortable middle class salary, a ship’s captain earns slightly more. Both occupations are nice middle class ones but not liable to enrich the person greatly] Any tooled process can be replaced by either analog or digital means, or at least made mainly dependent on mechanisms which the employee must only be trained to monitor. It took several centuries for mechanisms to replace the need for highly skilled navigators, but as informational experts never tire of reminding us the speed by which information replicates is constantly increasing.

PRECEPT VIII: Any occupation which uses tooled thought can be at least partially replaced by technology, hence these tooled occupations will decrease in value. However the aspects which cannot be replicated will still be dependent on human operatives, the value of these services will still be ruled by market forces.

Computer programming, troubleshooting & the like are a good case in point. Perhaps as the services such knowledge workers provide become more & more available online or on disks they will become more like locksmiths, operators of licensed establishments were one can go purchase specialized tools to fix the problem & every now & then require the locksmith themself to come onsite & fix the problem manually.

When the necessity for people to write code manifested on a wide basis, those who met the need often had very little training in the field but only natural aptitude — wages were not yet at their peak because the need for these employees was not yet keenly felt — these early code jockies managed to create the need for their services & consequently rose to great heights in an emergent industry, Mitch Kapor is a good example. The great number of programmers at this time were creatively inclined, it would be inductively valid to assume their creative & intellectually adventurous propensities had led them to this field. But once the need for programmers & other computer specialists was established the field began attracting individuals whose only propensity was for making a decent wage, without the creative abilities of their predecessors.

Once wages peak in a field they soon decrease, this has happened in the case of the rank & file programmers. As far as programming is concerned most companies do not need people to write whole programs for them, they need people who can program within the context of the operating system they use — & that infrequently. Due to the pioneering zeal of the first & second generation geeks the current generation doesn t have to put a great deal of thought into what they do, they just need to be familiar with the tropes of their particular language & how others have solved their problems. The programming field is currently taking the first hesitant steps towards a code storehouse in which segments of code may be accessed & cobbled together to create new programs without the programmer worrying overly much about writing any new code. When that happens the value of programmers will decline precipitously.

This article was originally written by Agent 81.

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