The Price of Everything, The Value of Nothing...

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What is the difference between data and information? The difference between price and value? The difference between perception and knowledge? Context and framing is what, and the Masters Of The Universe™ just don't get it. Just don't get it. The very definition of psychopathy itself. Action without empathy or understanding of consequence. A fundamental inability to place oneself within the world of society alongside others, mindful of their and others' own humanity.

Data are the atomic, numery fragments that, given context, allow us the information with which to frame the world. Price is the arbitrary, token monetary value ascribed to a good or service, which, divorced from societal context gives no indication of the true value of those goods or services. Perception is the perfunctory operation of sense, purely animal and instinctive; knowledge is perception mediated by memory and experience, filtered by intellect.

Yanis Varoufakis' latest polemic: "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism" - out tomorrow in the UK - sets out a thesis that I have been banging on about for ages, now: that, essentially, capitalists are the worst possible custodians of capitalism. They have shit in their own nest so often, that they have broken the very thing they espouse. Marx predicted the overthrow of capital by the dictatorship of the proletariat via revolution. He couldn't have predicted capitalism would destroy itself: however, as Varoufakis says, what has replaced it is far, far worse...

The current, financially expedient rolling-back on climate, infrastructure and economic issues points firmly to the Mammon that has been at the centre of politics in this country at least since the Tories came into power thirteen years ago. There is now a wilful and cynical disregard for consequence in the service of greed for money. A worshipfulness toward money in and of itself over every other consideration, that brings to mind the Disney cartoon, Scrooge McDuck. Society and the economy is in thrall to dullards and criminals who care not for the future of their children and grandchildren, let alone society as a whole.

Comments

  1. Anonymous28 September 2023 at 14:52

    It's MUCH worse than that Kel: Profit making has been injected into the very fabric of our public services and NOT the service of the people, as it should be! This has a VERY negative effect on the folk that are operating these services in that THEY are always looking to make a "quick buck" which distorts the very fabric of ACTUAL government and not the warbling stupidities of "sound bite" government; ANOTHER waste of time and "effort"!
    More if Gareth Sion doesn't hijack our conversation!:)
    ATB
    Joe

    ReplyDelete

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