An evolving history of the world : the global leadership vacancy
April 18th 2022 V 0.4
The world's richest (and most driven) man: boring he ain't...
{check the wikipedia entry}
Let's set the scene with the challenges facing a would-be leader. In effect, Musk is setting out to grasp the baton of thought leadership via Twitter. This post is going to evolve, so please come back and review progress. As long as the target keeps moving, it may never reach V1.0, and it will be a major mission to try and get there...
George perfectly sums up why the present Twitter board are trying to make Elon go away... in a single sentence
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"...If I was pure evil and wanted to control global public debate in a simple, subtle but utterly pernicious way, I could do no better than invent twitter...." |
But first a word about plutocrats by one...
From a 2014 Ted Talk....
Nick Hanauer is a rich guy, an unrepentant capitalist — and he has something to say to his fellow plutocrats: Wake up! Growing inequality is about to push our societies into conditions resembling pre-revolutionary France. Hear his argument about why a dramatic increase in minimum wage could grow the middle class, deliver economic prosperity ... and prevent a revolution.
The way forward is not managing the status-quo, but innovation that solves problems and focusses on growing a thriving middle class.
When I started this piece in October 2021, I observed that the world has been a relatively stable place since WW2 with only a number of "local difficulties" in the form of regionally contained conflicts. NATO has kept Europe safe from Russian ambitions, and the sheer overwhelming nature of the US military machine kept the lid on around the globe, while China remained an enigmatic oriental conundrum that kept very much to itself behind a bamboo wall. Japan was mostly confined to the far East and Pacific during the second World War, but with few natural resources and no significant military alliances, it has not since been a global military threat, and instead focused on manufacturing and trading its way to prosperity. The same lesson was also learnt eventually by Germany, with its subtle but effective control of the European Union to provide workers and customers for its industry.
Religious rivalry in the Indian subcontinent remains unresolved, in fact religious rivalry remains unresolved just about everywhere. But with India and Pakistan both (openly) having nuclear weapons, it's a major worry. If they actually believed their religious teachings, neither has anything to fear from the afterlife themselves...
The fractured nature of Islamic factions across the middle and far East is not resolving itself, and a glance at the population figures in Islamic states suggests a long game of "overwhelm by numbers".
According to a Japanese university - https://www.waseda.jp/top/en/news/53405 - the world population of Muslims has been increasing significantly in recent times. The Muslim world population stood approximately at 1.6 billion in 2013 and is estimated to reach 2.9 billion (making up 26% of the world population) by 2050. There are currently 21 Muslim-majority Asian and African countries highly influenced by Islam. None are tolerant democracies in the western sense. Among them, countries such as Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey are expected to grow as consumer markets, 1.2 billion in terms of consumer population.
Meantime, the unchallenged supremacy of the US as the "world policeman" has dramatically declined under Obama and now Biden. In the past 20 years, the emergence of drones has confused the once unchallenged value of manned fighters and ground attack aircraft. Bombers were already overtaken by cruise and ballistic missiles from the 60s and 70s - with countries outside NATO using tech stolen by classic spying, supplemented by cyber incursions and intercepts; and also acquired more subtly by the flood of foreign students at Western universities.
It has never been simpler for the disloyal to send secret information around the world for profit or philosophy... revenge on a system they want to destroy without bothering about due democratic process.
A further subtle development has been the adoption of English as the global second language - especially in science and transport. There are more English speakers in China than England.
English speaking countries grew from the times of the British Empire, when Rhodes observed that "to be born an Englishman is to win life's lottery". Such a statement is regarded as insensitive to those cultures that do not share the Empire heritage, but it remains a realistic if uncomfortable truth. Of course, the fact that Cecil Rhodes, has been "cancelled" by woke culture, led by the Education establishment, which pays little regard to current reality in pursuit of a coercive agenda of thought control through dogma and doctrine, to establish its preferred new reality.
The British Empire also introduced (or imposed, if you must) a legal and parliamentary system that is based on Common Law, which is a topic for further discussion and analysis, along with a review of the state of democracy, as financial reality increasingly suggests that democracy is a function of affordability.
In 2022, the world is a far less certain place, with China - by sheer dint of numbers - now in possession of nearly all the industrial and military cards. Whilst the US - for all its critics - did a fair if occasionally clumsy job of promoting democracy, China doesn't make any secret of its agenda to promote its own best interests at almost any cost to human rights. China does not do democracy, which is an anathema for a society that can only function through unquestioning conformity.
China's territorial expansion includes its declared intention to re-annexe Taiwan; Hong Kong's assimilation is a done deal and serves to remind that there is no such thing as an equitable deal - where China is concerned. Its own best interests will always prevail - try and stop them! It now has footholds across Africa, and has thoroughly rattled resource-rich Australia in recent years. The lithium rich mountains of unruly Afghanistan are on the shopping list. However, Afghanistan has confounded all presumptive world powers for centuries by its ability to be fundamentally ungovernable. We shall see...
A previous essay in the series set out the state of the post Empire United Kingdom following World War II, so where does a global perspective now leave the United Kingdom? Currently, something of a shambles with the home Nations unhelpfully set against each other by Tony Blair's unhelpful gerrymandering strategy of national devolution. This most notably resulted in the emergence of a conniving demagogue in Scotland, just as the rest of the world has become far less secure and predictable, and it is more important than it has been since WW2 for the nations of the United Kingdom to avoid squabbling rivalry. The petty antagonism between Edinburgh and London is not serving any discernible useful purpose for the people of the UK.
Many conspiracies have been swirling around the idea that China has carefully and thoroughly infiltrated the US Democrat party and supporters to influence US policy. There really needs to be a forensic examination of the vulnerability of the curious US election process where there are almost no identity checks and "voting machines" that send results around the world for processing to determine the fate of not just the US but the free world. The stakes are such that we are all involved, and entitled to ask questions - and get answers. It is increasingly obvious that the best interests of the United States and free world are not being served by a president who can barely function.
The way that the media which helped to promote and install Joe Biden and his administration is now looking down at its feet in embarrassment is more than simply "unfortunate". The role of media (and money) when influencing politics around elections needs to be better defined and closely monitored.
However, the hopelessly divided political situation in the US means that half the country regards the other half as naively under the influence of a right-wing egomaniac, and that half regards the other as a coterie of communism, manipulating a senile and barely functional frontman, soon to be replaced by the rapidly unraveling Kamala Harris.
Worryingly, there is much remarkably obvious evidence to support both of these contentions. Which of course plays into the hands of America's enemies in Russia and China.
Biden's clumsy retreat from Afghanistan appears to have handed the vast Lithium resources over to China. The Biden administration does not appear to be in control while the general disruption and division of US society created by BLM and campaigns to defund police, continue to reinforce division. Including in the US military. A US retreat into introspective isolation - never mind the expansive but ultimately empty words of the administration, suits Russia and China just fine for the time being.
Remember Comrade Bezmenov's advice that the US would destroy itself from the the inside, and then consider just where the doctrine of Political Correctness has taken the US since Reagan observed in 1975 that if fascism ever arrived in the US, it would come disguised as liberalism.
Awkward.
Never underestimate the depth and subtlety of the games being played. There is no doubt that both China and Russia understand the nature of the information society better than the western marketing minds that developed the internet as a marketing machine for social media (especially), with cookies and other forms of individual tracking in the first place. Totalitarian societies (cf 1984) understand the crucial roles of propaganda and fake news. The diplomacy game has evolved, and gunboats have been replaced (supplemented) by weaponized information.
A revolution once involved insurgents taking over the national TV station and shooting the president. Now they take over the fact-checkers and key media influencers, and deplatform the President.
The move to buy Twitter by Elon Musk could be a game changer. He appears to want to re-establish the idea of freedom of expression and discussion. It's not beyond possibility that he's bidding for the vacant role as leader of the world...
Twitter and other social media has progressively closed down debate and free speech by prescriptive censorship - not all of which is obvious. The insidious "shadow ban" leaves users to go on ranting and raving, but not being penned in their echo chambers if allowing their heretic views reach a wider audience there is a danger of damage to Twitter's commercial strategy.
A US version of Russell Brand - An0maly - does a good job of analysing - remember you can speed up playback 1.5x and easily follow... he explores the topic in a unique and disarming way - he runs on a bit, but in such a way that you can be pretty confident that he is expressing honestly held views...
If Elon does close this deal, he will become a major influence broker and be a folk hero among those who are trying to strip misdirection, hypocrisy and social engineering from social media. We hope his heart is in the right place. Musk is very much a risk-taker, and a believer that market driven capitalism delivers the best results.
The way Twitter is trying to resist Musk in not commercially rational, and suggests they are far too attached to their power. Interesting times.
Fast forward to 10:03 to go to the Musk segment - although the discussion of markets that precedes it is worth the time...
And then here is the state of play on April 16th as Twitter attempts to poison the deal so Musk goes away. But no one is yet asking and discussing "what does it cost to launch an alternative and better Twitter?" The answer is not nearly as much as buying Twitter.
Musk is assured of many millions of his fans signing up on day one.
Let's hope Elon has worked that out, and is going to sell his stake to the mug private equity business that appears to planning to outbid him, and ups the price he already paid. Using that profit, Elon could then have the Twitter killer developed inside 3 months (it really is a simple software task) destroy Twitter value within 12 months.
Given that Russia/Ukraine seems to be playing out as a visceral spat between Mafia bosses - where no other country has actually got the cojones to put boots on the ground and flesh in the game, whilst being happy to see how Russia performs agaisnt a number of motivated guerillas armed with a minimal number of weapons, the new world leader's first proper job is to tackle unresolved questions around the origin and propagation of a certain virus. Whoever emerges to lead the free World needs to strip away the rumours and conspiracy.
About the only thing we do know for sure is
that it started in China and spread out from Wuhan ...the rest is yet to be
explained. All leaders seem scared to grasp this nettle in case the evidence of a Chinese conspiracy is inescapable. After all - what would anyone be able to do about it? Send them to the naughty step? Ask them to refund the 5 trillion dollars their negligence has caused?
## Work in progress
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