
It could be worse - Futurebot
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/10/it-could-be-worse.html
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It's funny to me how many people still fear the early 20th century version of
fascism: jack-booted thugs, death camps, fire hoses, wars.

That's old school. It still survives in a few backward places like North Korea
but it's now obsolete. It's not something we need to fear.

The new fascism is kind and gentle. It doesn't arrest you, beat you,
electrocute you, draft you into the army, or kill you. Instead it surveils
you, models you, and gently nudges you into doing the Right Thing as
determined by a benevolent class of philosopher kings.

The new fascism only wants good things. It wants lower unemployment, higher
GDP, better education, health, welfare, less crime, cleaner cities. Who
doesn't want those things? Who wants more filth and violence? Who wants people
to be unemployed? Only bad people oppose the new fascism, and who wants to be
a bad person?

Interesting times indeed. Plato would be proud. Of course all this is well-
trodden territory in sci-fi and fantasy. Fiction is full of gleaming utopias
with a dark secret. But that's fiction, right, and fiction isn't reality. Who
says we can't really engineer a perfect utopia?

Prepare yourselves folks. Prepare for the absolute tyranny of the good,
enforced with a smile and a gentle nudge in the right direction.

