A single human is weak. Many humans together are strong. This shocking insight has been known by humans since before our species could speak.
1.
Many of our most important advancements have been technologies that allowed humans to more effectively coordinate–to leverage greater collective effort on a shared goal. The very first such advancement (debatable if it’s a “technology”) of course being speech itself. Every technology that made communications easier – writing, printing, mass literacy, telegraph/telephone, radio, internet – has increased the ability of humans to coordinate to create things and solve problems.
By working together and coordinating our efforts, humans can specialize to an astounding degree. No one alive can make a pencil (video). In our modern civilization, every person relies on the specialization of others. 12 years ago, Charles Stross estimated 100 million – 1 billion people required just to keep our civilization going. This has undoubtably increased since then.
2.
Many basic tools of civilization are assumed to be commonly accessible by all. Paper manufacturers do not interrogate the publishers they sell paper to in order to ensure the publisher will only print things the paper manufacturer approves of. Nor do the ink manufaturers, or the shipping companies that transport these materials. Telephone companies do not test their customer’s political allegence before granting them access to phone networks. Copper miners don’t give ideological tests to copper mills, nor do mills query the beliefs of copper buyers.
In fact, when such tests are imposed, they are widely recognized as hostile acts, which are often taken to punish a country or organization without resorting to direct warfare.
Denying someone use of basic coordination technology due to their politics is no different from denying them the use of basic resources like paper, ink, and shipping. Or copper and telephone lines. Or water pipes and electrical lines. These are all things that are used to make civilization possible, and withholding their use is a direct attack.
3.
Sometimes political groups see perfectly good tools of coordination being used freely by everyone in society, and they don’t like it.
Patreon, PayPal, GoFundMe allow the vast, unwashed masses to financially support anyone they wish, regardless of how anti-establishment they might be. This should not be allowed.
YouTube, Spotify, Twitter, Amazon allows the vast, uneducated hordes to listen to opinions that are downright harmful to the official narrative. This also should not be allowed.
The capture and denial of coordination tools is well under way, and it is nakedly hostile to certain political beliefs. Perhaps one is OK with direct attacks on opposing political tribes in the USA. I know a number of people who have openly said they seek the destruction and subjugation of those who aren’t sufficiently like them, politically. These people obviously have no problem with stripping any and every tool they can from “the other side.”
Demanding that everyone publicly conform with certain beliefs as a requirement for existing in a civilization is ideological puritanism. To warn someone that they cannot make use of market and network infrastructure if they don’t (publically) buy into the offical narrative is totalitarianism. It is vile, and everyone with any love or respect for freedom should abhor it.
One Response to “Capture of Tools, to Crush Your Enemies”
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I remember thinking similarly back when Cloudflare (?) terminated their services for Stormfront (?). That’s a much harder example to defend but I do remember wondering about the moral/ethical, and practical, limits of that kind of thing. I would think that, in the past, trying to deny similarly odious people or groups access to, e.g. paper or ink, would have been impractical to coordinate. I’d imagine that might still be much more impractical than denying them access to Internet services.
This also reminds me of the idea of ‘seizing the means of production’ – it seems pretty reasonable to me that paper, pencils, and human minds, are all pretty important elements in the set of “means of production”!