Eric Arthur Blair would have recognized Burrhus Frederic Skinner, immediately—as Big Brother. Blair, under the pseudonym George Orwell, wrote 1984 in 1948, the same year B. F. Skinner wrote Walden Two. In the waning days of WWII, B. F. Skinner proclaimed, “What a shame that [vets returning from the war] would abandon their crusading spirit and come back only to fall into the old lockstep American life—getting a job, marrying, renting an apartment, making a down payment on a car, having a child or two”. [1] Skinner set out to overcome this hiccup in Marx’s Fourth Stage of History.
He created the “Skinner Box”, a device intended to persuade pigeons that there is indeed a free lunch. Skinner believed that our notion of free-will was whimsy. So, if Skinner could isolate the appropriate ingredients for motivating everyone to join in the crusade, he would be able to achieve what Marx, Engels, and Lenin could not.
Operant Conditioning offers two tools: reinforcers and punishers. Skinner found reinforcers to be whiz-bang winners, especially if the timing of the reinforcement is varied, as in gambling, fishing, or trolling bars for a soul-mate. (Skinner must have had a good laugh when inducing pigeons to peck themselves to death without ever achieving nirvana.) On the other hand, the punishers were not quite so synergistic. The fly in the ointment was the over-the-top efforts of the subjects to avoid damnation while still enjoying the sin. The fly was never filliped, and Skinner never achieved his utopian dream.
Yet, Skinner’s work was not for naught, as his insights offer a perspective on how societies achieve cooperation. The origin of selfishness is the easier behavior to understand: All one needs to do is observe one’s bundle of joy. It is collegiality that has proven to be the object of contention. We know from our more observant forebears that tribal leaders, kings, shamanic practitioners, parliamentarians, czars—autocrats—relied on punishers to achieve the proper behavior from subjects. Even John Adams’ “government of laws, not men” relies conclusively on threat to bring about the desired harmony.
The election of 1800 was instructive for aspiring public servants: The loser, John Adams, after a caustic campaign against his (once and future) friend Thomas Jefferson, did not resort to arms to save the nation from the usurper. For those who believe in the divine-right theory of kingliness, this came as a shock. What were bona-fide tyrants to do? The answer may lie in governance-by-data.
Niva Elkin-Koren and Michal S. Gal discussed “Governance-by-Data” in a 2019 issue of The University of Chicago Law Review. [2]
Big data has become an important resource not only for commerce but also for governance. Governance-by-data seeks to take advantage of the bulk of data collected by private firms to make law enforcement more efficient. [3]
The authors were primarily concerned over whether government would have “proper” access to data collected in the private sector—specifically, whether “personalized law” is up to the task.
Personalized law seeks to take advantage of technological advances in data collection and data science…in order to tailor legal norms to individuals. For instance, rather than setting a single speed limit that applies to all drivers, speed limits might be personally tailored to individual drivers based on their experience, driving history, or real-time road conditions…. Such tailored norms could be embedded in the digital infrastructure (such as autonomous cars, smart parking facilities, and roads) and could be individually applied in real time by enabling parking, issuing a ticket, or even remotely disabling a car following a warning. [4]
One does not need to possess an extravagant imagination to develop a conspiracy theory out of this discussion. Better to let Google’s Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen inspire us.
Some governments will consider it too risky to have thousands of anonymous, untraceable and unverified citizens—”hidden people”; they’ll want to know who is associated with each online account, and will require verification, at a state level, in order to exert control over the virtual world. Your online identity in the future is unlikely to be a simple Facebook page; instead it will be a constellation of profiles, from every online activity, that will be verified and perhaps even regulated by the government. Imagine all of your accounts—Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Google+, Netflix, New York Times subscription—linked to an “official profile”. [5]
China’s “Social Credit System” is scheduled to be rolled out soon, but I can’t imagine the Left has not taken notice.
The new domestic “War on Terror,” kicked off by the riot on Jan. 6, has prompted several web giants to unveil predecessors to what effectively could become a soft social credit system by the end of this decade.
Last week, PayPal announced a partnership with the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center to “investigate” the role of “white supremacists” and propagators of “anti-government” rhetoric…. At the same time, Facebook and Microsoft are working with several other web giants and the United Nations on a database to block potential extremist content. [6]
And now we have a preview of how “governance-by-data” will work, through PM Trudeau’s War on Truckers.
How many federal agencies exist? Forbes asked that question in 2017.
No one can even say with certainty anymore how many federal agencies exist; yet they make most of the law now rather than our elected Congress. And their drive to protect turf is quite high.
There is ‘no authoritative list of government agencies.”
If no one knows definitively how many agencies, components and commissions exist by whose decrees we must abide, that means we similarly do not know how many employees (let alone contractors) work for the government.
Even when we isolate a given agency, it may be hard to tell exactly what is and is not a binding rule or regulation. Since the federal government is so extensive, issuing a formal rule may not even be necessary to achieve bureaucratic ends since agencies can issue “guidance” instead. [7]
The tyranny of the Soviet Union was meted out through its bureaus, its prerogatives charmingly displayed through the officiousness of its apparatchiki—and replicated with a vengeance by the CDC in the last two years.
If capitalism is to be restored, it can come only through the House of Representatives.
All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives….
{Article I, Section 7, Clause 1, The Constitution of the United States}
The Left has shown us the way: defund the ABC agencies. This can happen, but only if we elect Representatives who sign a contract pledging to defund the hundreds of agencies that impair our ability to live our lives as the Bill of Rights intended.
President Trump was set to make a “Comprehensive Plan for Reorganizing the Executive Branch” part of his fiscal year 2019 federal budget proposal. [7] But The Swamp won: The Swamp drained him—and us.
[1] Skinner, B. F. (1979). The Shaping of a Behaviorist. New York, Knopf, p. 292.
[2] Elkin-Koren, N., & Gal, M. S. (2019). “The Chilling Effect of Governance-by-Data on Data Markets”. The University of Chicago Law Review, 86(2), 403–432.
[3] ibid., p. 403
[4] ibid., p. 405
[5] Schmidt, E. & Cohen, J. (2013, 2014) The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Businesses, and our Lives. New York, Vintage Books, p. 33.
[6] Tate, K. (8/3/2021). “Coming soon: America’s own social credit system” The Hill.
[7] Crews, C. W., Jr. (7/5/2017). “How Many Federal Agencies Exist? We Can’t Drain the Swamp Until We Know”. Forbes.