Another election, another distraction… The Deep State’s new weapon… A new era of digital control… In the mailbag – “Casey and Buffett will be sipping cognac together while America burns”…
Democrats took back the House yesterday. Republicans kept hold of the Senate.
But as readers of Legacy Research co-founders Bill Bonner and Doug Casey know, these horse races between red vs. blue candidates are designed to distract you from what’s really going on.
As Bill told readers earlier this week…
Every stable society is eventually controlled by an elite. In the U.S., it is called the Deep State – a fluid collection of elected and unelected insiders. Some are “liberal.” Some are “conservative.” But all benefit from the shift of power, money, and status from the common man to themselves.
It may be a bitter pill to swallow. But the Deep State makes policy decisions in America – no matter who controls Congress, the Senate, or the White House.
It’s why the Pentagon’s budgets always go up. It’s why Wall Street always gets bailed out. And it’s why more money, power, and status continue to flow to the insiders at the expense of the outsiders.
As we’ve been warning you since we launched The Daily Cut just over two months ago, Deep State insiders now have a new weapon – digital control.
It’s something Bill has been thinking about, too…
The Info revolution – with the introduction of the internet and the proliferation of personal computers – was supposed to usher in a new age of economic growth.
But it did little or nothing to spur GDP growth, wages, or productivity. Mostly, it is a time waster… with the average person now spending five hours a day staring at his mobile phone. About half that time is spent on mindless social media sites that harvest users’ data.
But that doesn’t mean it won’t be a useful club for the feds. Au contraire. In China they’re already whacking people with it, combining the Big Data resources of the World Wide Web with the police state tactics of the Communist Party. And it’s working.
We put this on your radar back in August.
The Social Credit System is a Frankenstein’s monster of digital surveillance, artificial intelligence, Big Data, and a social network. As we told you…
Think of the Social Credit System as a giant reputation network. Every citizen is assigned a social credit score. This score goes down if you do something the government deems “antisocial.”
It’s part of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s plan to build a digital surveillance, and behavior modification, system based around the principle of “once untrustworthy, always restricted.”
A poor score comes with various punishments. The feds can ban you from taking flights… getting on trains… and staying in certain hotels.
Earlier this year, one Chinese student was even banned from attending a university he’d been accepted to because his father had a bad social credit score.
There’s even a pilot program for dog owners.
In the city of Jinan, in eastern China, the feds now dock the scores of registered dog owners who fail to pick up their dog’s poop or walk their dog without a leash.
But the system uses the carrot as well as the stick.
For instance, if you have a high enough score, you don’t have to pay a cash deposit to book a hotel. You can even see your profile boosted on dating websites.
And judging by some of the feedback we’ve been getting in our mailbag, some Daily Cut readers believe this kind of thing could never happen in the “Land of the Free.”
But consider this… If you live in the U.S., you’re used to getting perks or being punished based on your FICO credit score. That’s how China’s Social Credit System started, too.
Over the past year, Facebook has also been building out its own way of rating its users’ trustworthiness. As we told you here, it’s now assigning users a “reputation” score that’s not far off from what the Chinese government is developing.
And lawmakers in New York are drafting a bill that would allow the feds to trawl through three years of your social media history and one year of web searches before they allow you to buy a gun.
So we’re not as far away from a surveillance state as you may think… especially when you consider China has started to export its model of censorship and surveillance outside its borders.
We’ll explore that in greater detail in tomorrow’s dispatch. So look out for that in your inbox.
On Monday, we told you about a leaked document from inside Google HQ that revealed how far the company has gone in embracing online censorship.
And for a moment, we were worried the idea of Big Tech stifling alternative ideas online wasn’t resonating with you. Looks like we spoke too soon…
I’m with you 100%. We must stand up for all Americans to speak our minds without being afraid.
– Joni K.
Thank you for bringing this need to my attention. Something must be done.
– Lee K.
Here’s a crazy idea… What about a social media platform that isn’t “free” but charges a nominal maintenance fee? It could hire a few lawyers to police illegal content and allow truly free speech to compete with the sorry excuse for free speech offered by Facebook.
I’d rather pay for my “free” speech upfront than with data mining and advertising.
– John N.
But not everyone agrees…
Your Digital Bill of Rights is a perfect example of why Libertarians have made zero impact on America. The U.S. is in a culture war, yet they refuse to endorse and support President Trump; a man who is fighting the Deep State with a courage that a sissified Libertarian cannot even recognize. Instead, [Doug] Casey will run away when we lose America. Casey and [Warren] Buffett will be sipping cognac together in their safe space, watching from afar while America burns.
– Ken V.
Chris, I appreciate the candid and rigorous research into the trimming of information by the companies you’ve named. As private sector businesses, they have every right to decide what crosses their platforms. On the flip side, there is no obligation on the part of the public to use their products.
As Bill Bonner so accurately pointed out, if Legacy readers don’t want to learn your thoughts then they can stop reading your material. Likewise, if Google and Facebook users treasure freedom of thought and speech more than the “free” services offered by each company (and for which they have volunteered to use) then they can stop using the service. Even better, they can develop a new one – a better one.
– Jake S.J.
Can Google and Facebook censor as they see fit? How do you think it will all play out? Send your thoughts to [email protected].
Until tomorrow…
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Chris Lowe
November 7, 2018
Lisbon, Portugal
P.S. As we told you yesterday, there was an important decision on yesterday’s ballot that got short shrift in the mainstream press… The decision in front of voters in Missouri, Michigan, Utah, and North Dakota to legalize cannabis.
As the polls predicted, Michiganders voted to legalize pot in their state for adult recreational use. And Missourians and Utahns voted to legalize medical cannabis. The only state where legal pot laws were voted down was North Dakota.
More to come, in future updates, on what this means for the wave of cannabis legalization we’ve been telling you about…