Supervillain State

If any single nation state today has completely dropped the pretense of a social contract, North Korea counts. The fact it's a got state-sponsored organized crime syndicate or two is just the tip of the iceberg.

End of the Show

While news worldwide is constantly depressing, careers in supervillainy are poised to rise. For as systems fail, there will always be those who benefit from the chaos. From politicians advocating martial law to terrorists to criminal masterminds, there's always those who seek power. The problem is, in their rush to control the world, they may have destroyed that which they sought to preserve.

Gates of Tomorrow, Problems of Yesterday

"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule." -Friedrich Nietzsche

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Sometimes, stupidity is a non-survival trait. From Darwin Awards to idiotic politicians to would be neofeudal overlords, stupidity and incompetence seem to rule the roost. This is not due to the individuals necessarily being stupid, not at all. There are very good professionals and clever people employed by governments, universities, and corporations. The problem is, the institutions they work for either ignore, misinterpret, or perform the wrong responses.

For example, climate change is reported to pose a grave threat to human civilization. The "brilliant" response? Send intelligence agencies and cops after environmental protestors, despite the fact it would make more long term strategic, economic, and political sense to encourage a shift to relocalized food, utility, and power sources. Now, such a movement would cost money, but given the titanic costs of maintaining a failing infrastructure, tax loopholes for fossil fuel exploitation, and accounting tricks to rig the stock market, it pails in comparison. Politicians expertly cater themselves to short term interests at almost a  complete and total ignorance of the long term.

This may be the tragic result of human awareness, which focuses mainly on immediate gratification. As the Boomer generation used to living beyond its means shuffles off this mortal coil, they're leaving a political, legal, economic, and environmental trainwreck behind them.

Each generation likes blaming their own youth for their own problems, but also uses every dirty trick to maintain their dominance. If immortality were made practical and cheap for the masses, one wonders if a gerontocracy run by Boomers would be a fusion of 1984's surveillance state and Brave New World's mindless hedonism. Tomorrow's problems have their roots today, all because of lacking the urge to be a good ancestor.*

*=Not necessarily an ancestor in the sense of having a family, but being an ancestor in the sense of leaving a positive contribution to the world for the future.

Death Throes of the Dinosaurs

"The bigger they are, the harder they fall."

All around the world, larger institutions are fumbling and stuttering to keep pace with forces beyond their control. The problem with this is such groups often resort to brutality, instead of conventional rule of law mechanisms (or even a convincing show trial). There comes a point of diminishing returns, however, when the vampire cannot find enough blood to sustain itself.

Take, for instance, cable TV. Despite a few decent shows, many networks prefer selling conventional subscriptions instead of experimenting with online streaming. They often abused patent and intellectual property laws to squash competition. Despite this, their efforts merely delay the inevitable. If they were smart, they'd shift their focus to streaming, but corporations, like government bureaucracies, take years to readjust.

From erroneous links and takedowns, to companies censoring their own sites from search engines, even the apex predator of the globalized era start showing their age. Swarms of activists, fans, citizen journalists, bloggers, and others increasingly observe the dysfunction, and can join in on some activity. This is not a 'right' nor 'left' activity, but merely the application of open-source insurgency or 4th generation warfare principles to the socio-economic plane (or simpler terms, 'swarm attacks'). Such swarms are comprised of members who may not be the smartest nor the most capable, but they are capable of observing and copying what works.

The future, even with energy shortages and decaying infrastructure, still allows for much to be salvaged. It is possible to put almost anything online, even without power or advanced infrastructure. Despite this, corporations and governments still chase diminishing returns.  Such a system is potent, but so were the dinosaurs. In contrast, certain insects have not changed significantly in millions of years. Swarm logic is a proven principle in nature and economics alike.