James,
First, I want to thank you for providing me something that’s half-assed intelligible (and intelligent!). Maybe we can have an actual discussion.
Second, I’m going to say right from the get-go that I’m quite skeptical when it comes to conspiracy theories. Some call me naive because of this. I prefer to think I’m just smart enough not to believe everything I hear from strangers on the internet. That said, some of the things you say are happening in the US wouldn’t surprise me–so I’m not going to go all out and deny every bit of it–but I don’t know you from Jack or Jill. I have no idea how much of what you claim you’ve actually experienced first hand, how much of your experience is shared by other Americans, how much of it you’ve interpreted in your own biased way, how much you’re just speculating, how much you’re just blatantly inventing (but still believe it), and how much of it is a consequences of drug-induced paranoia.
There’s no way I can know.
But putting that aside, let’s see what you have to say:
Yes, the “slump” in the economy. That’s what everyone’s being told is the cause of their impoverished situation, right? Nobody’s fault. Just gotta wait it out. Well, that could be true or it could be a pre-planned and well-thought-out conspiracy. Who knows (I don’t and neither do you). But I think it’s true (is it not?) that increases in unemployment are strongly correlated with increases in crime–in other words, the people get their frustration out one way or another. It is a kind of rebellion. I think you’re right that the people can often be deceived into thinking their enemy lies elsewhere than it really does, but they don’t all sit quietly. One thing remains the same between my revolting-unemployed-class and your distracted-unemployed-class: unrest creates greater chaos, and chaos always leads to the breakdown of the system overall.
But you see that, don’t you? And if you do, there must be others who do too. It can’t be everyone who’s duped.
See, it’s things like this that make it hard for me to separate apart the facts from the paranoid delusions. Maybe if I were an American citizen, I’d be able to concur with you and say “Yep, everyone knows that. I saw it happen just the other day.” But from the outside, it doesn’t look that bad (it looks bad, but not that bad). But like I said, I wouldn’t be surprise.
You say they are practicing military action against the citizens within the cities–have you actually seen this? How do you know?
What we need is other Americans stepping forward vouching on behalf of their own hands-on experiences–ordinary citizens (the only person I’d really trust from ILP would be Faust–where’s he been at lately).
That I believe. I don’t believe it’s as bad as you make it out to be (but then again, I’m not living in the US), but it’s definitely moving in that direction.
Not long, but for them to lose control of the technology they create will more than likely result in chaos–not the intelligently organized AI take-over that you and Arminius are predicting. Losing control of technology means someone fucked up somewhere, and a fuck-up is never pre-planned. We don’t fuck up and say “Good! I fucked up in just the way I planned.” That’s why I say a fuck up on the part of those in power with respect to the technology they thought they could control would result in something unpredictable. Maybe the robots would end up stuck in an endless loop of enacting the Rocky Horror Picture Show (I don’t know, maybe the fuck-up was that some dumb intern downloaded the wrong program one day, which caused the robots to download TRHPS onto their brains and get stuck re-enacting it). I’m not saying a fuck-up couldn’t possibly result in robots gaining independence and taking over the world, but when you consider the billions of ways that AI technology can go astray, the great majority of possibilities to me seem pretty random and inane, most of which would just end with the machines breaking down and just stopping (kind of like what happens to your car when it fucks up).
Not everything that happens in history is pre-planned or a conspiracy. Some things just turn out the way they do.