We Have More Hate, Fear, & Lies Because Promoting Hate, Fear & Lies Makes Money
The social-media feedback effect multiplies hate, fear and lies to the point of poisoning responsible, democratic gov’t.
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
Everything Is A System
A system is a series of procedures that are designed to accept certain inputs and generate a desired output. Everything is a system.
Machinery, businesses, the human body, institutions, organizations, and governments are all systems that are designed to deliver certain outputs in response to the receipt of certain inputs.
Conditions Affecting Systems Always Change
It is inevitable that over time, conditions affecting how a system works will change. If new, toxic inputs cause a system to yield the desired output, then there will be an increase in these undesired inputs.
If people discover that the justice system will allow then to get rich through violence instead of work then more people will pursue wealth through violence rather than work.
Effective Systems Automatically Respond To Change
To avoid this increase in violence, the justice system would want to have a built-in component that would respond to and deter this increase in violent crime, for example an automatic sentence enhancement policy for crimes committed with violence.
To avoid damaging feedback, good systems have within themselves built-in anti-feedback controls. In electronics, for example, a phase-locked loop circuit, a PLL, automatically reduces phase errors between output and input frequencies.
If every time you drink too much you throw up and feel terrible the next day, that negative feedback will tend to deter you from drinking too much.
Systems That Don’t Respond To Change Die
Systems without a built-in component that automatically counteracts negative inputs will eventually die with either a whimper or a bang. In common parlance, systems without anti-feedback components will always, eventually, go pear-shaped.
Feedback That Amplifies The Negative Effects Of Change
The quickest systems to die are the ones whose built-in components exacerbate negative inputs, systems that have pro-feedback components.
Giving people an incentive to place a microphone next to a speaker is a pro-feedback system that will quickly spin out of control.
Checks & Balances Were Intended To Deter Out-Of-Control Gov’t
The creators of the American system of government knew the excesses and dangers that governments were capable of. They understood that their system of government needed to be designed with built-in, self-actuating controls that would keep any one aspect of the government from getting out of control.
The Founders were obsessed with the idea of controlling their new government with a system of checks and balances that would automatically counteract destructive situations.
Checks & Balances Are Unable To Counteract Today’s New Technology
But the system that they created cannot automatically anticipate nor counteract the fundamental and detrimental new situations that technology has imposed on us today.
These new conditions have created pro-feedback systems in America that are amplifying negative social trends.
Our New Negative Feedback Systems
- In order to secure and increase their viewership and thus make more money, communications companies’ business models are, to a lesser or greater extent, based on making Americans ever more angry, hateful, and afraid because that sustains and increases their customers’ commitment.
- Social media has a financial motive to encourage political demagogues and enable them to continuously feed their cult-like supporters ever more extreme us-versus-them hate and lies.
- Social media companies’ business models are based on identifying interest groups to which they algorithmically feed ever more self-interested, confirmation-bias-supporting material which continuously increases the volume in their users’ social-media echo chambers and promotes lies, fear and hate
- The polarization incited by social media’s recommendation algorithms reinforces party voting that creates more safe districts where there are no consequences for extremist or obstructive politicians.
- Political party primaries are controlled by the most extreme members of each party.
- These true believers and those party members who have been radicalized by the fear, hate and anger incited by social media and communications companies cause their parties to nominate the most extreme candidates who then strive to become more extreme in order to keep their jobs in the face of even more extreme potential candidates waiting in the wings.
- A campaign-finance system that allows and encourages wealthy businesses and individuals to anonymously spend unlimited amounts on candidates and legislation designed to elect candidates and enact legislation that will even further accelerate the concentration of wealth in the hands of those contributors.
- A taxation system that supports and accelerates a rich-get-richer, the poor-get-poorer society.
- Because of Big Data and sophisticated software, virtual cartels are now essentially free to increase prices in vital sectors of the economy
The Consequences Of These New Conditions
Because of these pro-feedback systems, the bulk of the American population is becoming increasingly angry, hateful, distrustful, ignorant, violent, and poor. Today, the top 50% of the population owns 97% of all privately-held wealth. The bottom 50% of Americans own 3% of the country’s wealth.
Angry, ignorant, distrustful, violent and poor people are the meat and drink of a totalitarian movement. These people are looking for some group to blame for their unhappiness and there are plenty of ambitious demagogues who will be happy to give these voters someone to hate and blame coupled with a promise that the savior politician will “Make [___] pay” once they are in power.
What Happens When Hate, Fear & Lies Are A Profitable A Business Model
When you have a system where spreading hate, fear, and lies makes the people spreading hate, fear and lies richer and more powerful, you will get more and more hate, fear and lies.
When you have a system where spreading hate, fear and lies gets candidates elected, more candidates will strive to spread ever more hate, fear and lies.
Candidates who get elected by spreading hate, fear and lies will become ever more extreme in order to avoid losing their seats.
- Those politicians’ first step will be to enact laws that limit their opponents’ supporters ability to vote.
- The second step will be gaining control of the commissions and organizations that administer elections.
- Their third step will be gaining control of the schools to prevent children being given information that is contrary to their messages of hate, fear, and lies.
What Is The Republican Party Concentrating On Doing?
- Using false claims of voter fraud to make it more difficult for poor people and people living in big cities to vote.
- Gerrymandering election districts to prevent the election of anyone other than the Republican nominee.
- Gaining control of election offices, Secretary of State positions, school boards and curriculum committees.
It’s Working
If you think I’m exaggerating about the effect of the hate, fear and lies, reflect on the fact that in August 2023 over 50% of the members of the Republican Party people think that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and that the White House was stolen from him, and over 40% of the American people think that it would a good idea to re-elect Donald Trump as President.
Not to elect a Republican candidate as President or a conservative candidate as President, but to specifically elect Donald Trump as President.
What Could Be Done To Break This Cycle?
How might we counteract these pro-feedback systems? Here are some ideas.
- 1) Replace political party primaries with one open primary where all voters pick the top two candidates regardless of party affiliation.
- 2) Require that the identities of all campaign contributors, including contributors to PACs, be publicly disclosed. No more “dark money.”
- 3) Require social-media to turn off their recommendation engines;
- 4) Require social-media companies to confirm the actual identity of every person or organization that seeks to register as a user on their platform.
- 5) Use inheritance taxes on estates over $50 million to fund education/training for all qualified citizens so that everyone in the bottom 50% has the opportunity to work themselves up into the top 50% based on their talent and initiative rather than on their family’s ability to provide them with an expensive education.
- 6) Enact an excess-profits tax and an excess-rent tax to deter excessive profits and rents thus increasing the real wages of Americans whose income comes from a weekly paycheck rather than from rent, capital gains and dividend checks.
Adapt Or Die
When conditions change, systems either adapt or die.
We are not adapting to an environment where promoting hate, fear, and lies is a profitable business model.
We are not adapting to the massive concentration of wealth at the top and the massive increase in poverty at the bottom.
The Consequences Of Rampant Hate, Fear & Lies
These are the sorts of conditions that spawned the French Revolution, the invention of socialism and communism, the Russian Revolution, the rise of Hitler, the Second World War and, most recently, the January 6th attempt to overthrow the 2020 Presidential election.
Listen to what the MAGA people are saying and watch what they’re doing.
You think it can’t happen here. It can. It already is.
— David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
