Great video, like all of your videos! On education, I think the technostructure doesn't care at all about people's education, except maybe for a tiny elite. I can imagine a dystopian world where public schools get so bad that parents feel they need to spend $50K/year to send their kids to private school, which puts the parents deeper under the technostate control. And young adults need to take $200K in student debt to even have a hope of joining the system. And rather then teach people about this book and its ideas, the system could channel dissatisfaction towards "safer" topics like past injustices, which bathroom to use, etc.
James Burnham described much the same in The Managerial Revolution twenty-five years prior. Academia offers no challenge because it is subject to the same centralizing forces of administrative control.
Academia is a subordinate servitor in the technocratic order. Academia is similar in it service to the media sector which also generates information that serves to form public perception and attitudes. Academia produces information targeted to population segments that are higher educated and thus more inculcated and invested into the overall system of power.
The recent global medical thingamaroo was a chance for some in academia to become aware of their station. In interviews, Dr. Batacharya of Stanford expressed his genuine surprise that his academic position and expertise suddenly meant nothing. He was disallowed from expressing his expert opinions freely when those opinions were inconvenient to the power structure. Then, a bunch of his fellow academics at Stanford, none of whom could match his expertise in the topic, signed and published a letter denouncing him and his dangerous views. He who pays the piper calls the tune. Only outstanding individuals can exercise any freedom in academia, and then not much before they pull your funding, discredit you, or rub you out entirely. That's how important it is to control the narrative.
Actually this was the maine explaination the left applied back in the days. However it could not really account for and seemed rather disinterested in the genocidal dimension of violence especially by the Nazi regime. Therefore other perspectives became more prevalent from the 60s on. At the same time the post fascist states were pushing these alternative explanations as they were masking to a degree the instrumental role of the elites as a group for the creation and running of the fascist state.
I can now appreciate the true depth of meaning of the phrase “wage slave”. If all you can afford is absolute essentials then you are literally a slave to whoever you work for. Even true slaves have to be provided with those same essentials. As a wage slave, the employer is providing you with those same essentials. The current system in the West is now to have as many people as possible as wage slaves by devaluing the currencies and stopping wage increases to increase profits and dividends.
A critique of the book from your description is about transportation methods and needs of a technocratic state. Hearkening back to government contracts, mass rail way systems often need contractors to build, maintain and improve public transportation which comes at a premium price and big profits in the United States. There is also the maintenance and improvement of railways which again most likely will be fulfilled through parts made by private businesses and labor provided by private corporations. There are a couple more that come to mind, such as the role of education and academia. Education is primarily a desire for parents and people to have a better chance at life for their children and to be aware of the world. The most famous example, dating back to Confucius, who believed in a world of meritocracy despite there being no realistic things such as private businesses but rather fiefdoms. Academia is both a hero and a villain of the story, teaching certain goals to students can either better fit the technocratic structure or harm it. Academia, is another tool for those who vie for power, although soft power through cultural dominance through a very long term view of society which eventually gives hard power through control of the zeitgeist.
Wow, this really is a prophetic (or very deep understanding) of the US economic structure. You can see some of this play out in Disney lately. We certainly don't live in a free market economy...
Whatever system Galbraith was so clearly defining at its beginning seems to have reached its end. It seems especially interesting how the pandemic and telecommunications have disrupted elite centers of power (technocratic cities) or, rather, have accelerated the disruption begun with the advent of the Gig economy.
What we are dealing with now is the micro-level of analysis related to the macro level of analysis. Then, in turn, the macro level of discourse is related to the micro-level of analysis. Clive Burgess
Two books spring to mind • The Revolving Door: A Guide for Toxic Work Cultures: Traits, Impact and Interventions • Revolving Door Lobbying: Public Service, Private Influence, and the Unequal Representation of Interests Book by Herschel F. Thomas III and Timothy M. LaPira Book by Joanita Pearson
Just finished reading the book which I enjoyed but it seems to be that Galbrieth is conflating two very different meanings of the word, 'Planned'.There is a world of difference between the planning that Governments and Businesses do that rely on Economists, Management Accountants and Decision Scientists to calculate Optimal prices and Output in diverse sectors and a Centrally planned economy such as that of the Soviet Union. In the former the 'Invisible hand' of the market has considerable power in the latter it is the Central Bureaucracy.
Read the book creature from Jekyll island and history of Us money by Murray rothbard! They’re great. Like who knew fiat currency was invented first in Massachusetts in the 16 or 1700s
Enjoying these book reviews! Have you read The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt? We all had to read it in the early 1990s as we were gearing up for ISO 9001 certification. Another one was Thriving On Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution. We also read W. Edwards Deming in prep, I think it was a book he wrote in the 1980s? Kaizen, Juran, 5s, just some orher things I remeber.
Awesome review of a thought inspiring book. So thought inspiring that I was encouraged to rummage through a number of second hand book shops and managed to find a copy. I will enjoy reading it.
I did construction project management for years. (Hated every minute of it, too.) The notion that an entity with the global impact that the US has had will not need planning at all levels is a complete joke. Our state responses showed exactly the level of incompetence during Covid reaction that 70 years of Red Baiting has yielded. I appreciate the work of thought leaders like Marianna Mazzucato that has highlighted the role of the Entrepreneurial State in long term planning that will be needed.
I'm old enough to see the impact of technology on construction. I remember running into a big time general contractor with a cell phone the size of a shoe box. The good old days when we had blue prints that fit the project (hand drawn) and material showing up on the job before labor. The last few decades I saw construction "managers" absolutely swamped with multiple projects. I rarely saw a complete set of blue prints and often they had little to do with the job. My bosses would order the material the day before and 3/4's of it would show up. It seemed to me, that having a cell phone allowed every one to accept screw ups as just part of the job. I know quality suffered. I do love my cordless drill. We were buying them and bringing them to work even though the employer was suppose to supply the tools. I fear the unintended consequences of AI. I'm guessing one construction manager will be in charge of ten times as many jobs, and that job is going to suck ten times as bad. I very rarely met a happy construction manager.
In the 1999 book "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace", Lawrence Lessig anticipates the use of cloud software as an instantiation of automated law in the techno-structure. While the book has a focus on law and intellectual property; it also introduces a memetic for examining the regulating forces he anticipates will control the freedoms and behaviour of networked individuals. Four forces defined as ; Law, Social Norms, Market and Architecture; will be architected into software and networked systems and will exert greater technocratic control over our lives.
Seems a so much more accurate model simply because it acknowledged a much more complex web of significant interactions in the socioeconomic sphere. Other competing models in play then and now, seem to me.... more a means towards reductions serving sentiments, power interests, populism etcetera... The set of interactions Galbraith describes reflect a fuller and more functional understanding that modern human society is intrinsically much more complex! Though this model is pehaps limited by the period he was writing in, and doesn't map as well to present and could stand some revisions and updates, the model and approach seems like a better place to start building an understanding from.
Yeah, organized intelligence and collective intelligence might be different things, now that you point it out. Organized intelligence in more in line with John Kenneth Galbraith and the corporate era he is discussing. Collective intelligence, it seems, is more how it works in a digital age with big data. The later is more complex and chaotic.
Sounds like Fascism to me. Right in the way people like Mussolini used to think: "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato!"
I would correct the author slightly, by defining it as: Capitalism: DEPreciates toward Fascism / National Socialism (Erosion of Democracy) and... APPreciates towards Socialism / Communism (Accretion of Democracy) "Fasism is capitalism in decay." ~Lenin We shall see if this APP📲-plies! 🥁😃
The capitalist class has been telling workers for years to "Learn to Code!", and now the tools are online to basically do it for you. All bets are off.💸
Are you a slave if you don't know that you are a slave? I guess it depends on your needs and wants. If these run parallel with those of the corporation, they you are not. But if you are kept in such a state of ignorance or having limited emotional and intellectual horizons, in order to control your needs and wants, then you may be a slave. Escaping this situation then requires realizing there is something different than what the corporation has to offer, and working toward getting that different something. But if the corporation is the source of most things material, then getting something different probably means something materially less, but something meaningfully more.
I learned at the knee of Mussolini that the fusion of corporate and government power as described here is what he called Fascism. Is this not the case in the USA?
@@babyl-on9761, Try reading the comprehensive wikipedia article, and then reading under "Definitions" You can then read of the various leading experts and their works on it... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism Personally, of the books I've read, Roger Griffins book was the best. But I would not ignore Paxton either. You don't know Jack.
Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurism was born out of the Industrial Revolution in Britain and then spread across the so called "Free Trade" world (Marx) The ideology of the entrepreneur today was born out of CEO's inheritance or loans from their rich parents, their rich friends or associates, or their ideas backed by the military or the state (government). 1987 to 2024 "We are all entrepreneurs now?" Discuss In relation to the 70s and 80s "We are all leaders now?" Discuss A Paradigm Shift within my lifetime. Clive
Parts of academia have been fighting this ideological war quite rigidly. Not economists, but a big part of social sciences. However, they terribly overshot, in my opinion. Instead of creating a class of inside critics, they completely shunned everything that would have underscored their usefulness within the system, thus creating a class of educated outsiders.
Of course kg largely focuses on rd in the public sector academies as his source of innovation. Kg is an actual technocrat and I wouldn't be surprised if he were a member of the club of Rome. His wage and price controls show his collectivist fascist leanings.
Yeah, academia is many things but a solution to techno-state overreach it is not. It is an appendage of power, at best, at worst it’s sniveling Renfrew.
The US government is responsible for identifying those who are disobedient and do not follow US principles, designating them as enemies as targets bombing. Social governance is the responsibility of corporate consortiums and civil society. Such a country is not humanized at all/
You are really doing a very great work teaching some of us these Truths .
Bless you MY Sister ❤
Great video, like all of your videos!
On education, I think the technostructure doesn't care at all about people's education, except maybe for a tiny elite.
I can imagine a dystopian world where public schools get so bad that parents feel they need to spend $50K/year to send their kids to private school, which puts the parents deeper under the technostate control. And young adults need to take $200K in student debt to even have a hope of joining the system. And rather then teach people about this book and its ideas, the system could channel dissatisfaction towards "safer" topics like past injustices, which bathroom to use, etc.
very well said, god forbid we ever find ourselves in such a dystopian future 😂
James Burnham described much the same in The Managerial Revolution twenty-five years prior. Academia offers no challenge because it is subject to the same centralizing forces of administrative control.
This book, this book should be read by all
Academia is a subordinate servitor in the technocratic order. Academia is similar in it service to the media sector which also generates information that serves to form public perception and attitudes. Academia produces information targeted to population segments that are higher educated and thus more inculcated and invested into the overall system of power.
And neither serves as any useful balance to the 'technostructure' if they are bought and paid for by it.
An essential insight - had not thought of academia in that way before - thanks.
The recent global medical thingamaroo was a chance for some in academia to become aware of their station. In interviews, Dr. Batacharya of Stanford expressed his genuine surprise that his academic position and expertise suddenly meant nothing. He was disallowed from expressing his expert opinions freely when those opinions were inconvenient to the power structure.
Then, a bunch of his fellow academics at Stanford, none of whom could match his expertise in the topic, signed and published a letter denouncing him and his dangerous views.
He who pays the piper calls the tune. Only outstanding individuals can exercise any freedom in academia, and then not much before they pull your funding, discredit you, or rub you out entirely. That's how important it is to control the narrative.
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” ― Benito Mussolini
Why does it take the left so long to figure out what the right far has known for decades?
Have you figured out? Which elites control the other elites? What their true goals are? I bet you're into Qanon@@ChucksExotics
Thats a fake quote lol.
It's not, but comes from an Italian philosopher who was heavily involved with Mussolini etc.
Actually this was the maine explaination the left applied back in the days. However it could not really account for and seemed rather disinterested in the genocidal dimension of violence especially by the Nazi regime. Therefore other perspectives became more prevalent from the 60s on. At the same time the post fascist states were pushing these alternative explanations as they were masking to a degree the instrumental role of the elites as a group for the creation and running of the fascist state.
I can now appreciate the true depth of meaning of the phrase “wage slave”. If all you can afford is absolute essentials then you are literally a slave to whoever you work for. Even true slaves have to be provided with those same essentials. As a wage slave, the employer is providing you with those same essentials. The current system in the West is now to have as many people as possible as wage slaves by devaluing the currencies and stopping wage increases to increase profits and dividends.
This is a really great summary keep up the good work
this informative video went really well with some light contemporary jazz playing the the background
A critique of the book from your description is about transportation methods and needs of a technocratic state. Hearkening back to government contracts, mass rail way systems often need contractors to build, maintain and improve public transportation which comes at a premium price and big profits in the United States. There is also the maintenance and improvement of railways which again most likely will be fulfilled through parts made by private businesses and labor provided by private corporations.
There are a couple more that come to mind, such as the role of education and academia. Education is primarily a desire for parents and people to have a better chance at life for their children and to be aware of the world. The most famous example, dating back to Confucius, who believed in a world of meritocracy despite there being no realistic things such as private businesses but rather fiefdoms. Academia is both a hero and a villain of the story, teaching certain goals to students can either better fit the technocratic structure or harm it. Academia, is another tool for those who vie for power, although soft power through cultural dominance through a very long term view of society which eventually gives hard power through control of the zeitgeist.
Wow, this really is a prophetic (or very deep understanding) of the US economic structure. You can see some of this play out in Disney lately. We certainly don't live in a free market economy...
wow this was incredibly insightful and helpful to understand whats happening to the world right now, so glad i got recommended this video
I'm glad the corporate technostructure brought me to your content, thanks for so clearly laying out Galbraith's ideas!
Whatever system Galbraith was so clearly defining at its beginning seems to have reached its end. It seems especially interesting how the pandemic and telecommunications have disrupted elite centers of power (technocratic cities) or, rather, have accelerated the disruption begun with the advent of the Gig economy.
What we are dealing with now is the micro-level of analysis related to the macro level of analysis. Then, in turn, the macro level of discourse is related to the micro-level of analysis.
Clive Burgess
Two books spring to mind
• The Revolving Door: A Guide for Toxic Work Cultures: Traits, Impact and Interventions
• Revolving Door Lobbying: Public Service, Private Influence, and the Unequal Representation of Interests
Book by Herschel F. Thomas III and Timothy M. LaPira
Book by Joanita Pearson
Just finished reading the book which I enjoyed but it seems to be that Galbrieth is conflating two very different meanings of the word, 'Planned'.There is a world of difference between the planning that Governments and Businesses do that rely on Economists, Management Accountants and Decision Scientists to calculate Optimal prices and Output in diverse sectors and a Centrally planned economy such as that of the Soviet Union. In the former the 'Invisible hand' of the market has considerable power in the latter it is the Central Bureaucracy.
Thanks for your overview and eloquence.
Thanks, Ashley. I really appreciate you doing this. I"ve been following Galbraith a long time. I liked your analysis quite a bit.
I would recommend one of his last works: The economics of innocent fraud.
Read the book creature from Jekyll island and history of Us money by Murray rothbard! They’re great. Like who knew fiat currency was invented first in Massachusetts in the 16 or 1700s
Enjoying these book reviews!
Have you read The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt?
We all had to read it in the early 1990s as we were gearing up for ISO 9001 certification.
Another one was Thriving On Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution.
We also read W. Edwards Deming in prep, I think it was a book he wrote in the 1980s?
Kaizen, Juran, 5s, just some orher things I remeber.
Awesome review of a thought inspiring book. So thought inspiring that I was encouraged to rummage through a number of second hand book shops and managed to find a copy. I will enjoy reading it.
I did construction project management for years. (Hated every minute of it, too.) The notion that an entity with the global impact that the US has had will not need planning at all levels is a complete joke. Our state responses showed exactly the level of incompetence during Covid reaction that 70 years of Red Baiting has yielded.
I appreciate the work of thought leaders like Marianna Mazzucato that has highlighted the role of the Entrepreneurial State in long term planning that will be needed.
I'm old enough to see the impact of technology on construction. I remember running into a big time general contractor with a cell phone the size of a shoe box. The good old days when we had blue prints that fit the project (hand drawn) and material showing up on the job before labor.
The last few decades I saw construction "managers" absolutely swamped with multiple projects. I rarely saw a complete set of blue prints and often they had little to do with the job. My bosses would order the material the day before and 3/4's of it would show up.
It seemed to me, that having a cell phone allowed every one to accept screw ups as just part of the job. I know quality suffered.
I do love my cordless drill. We were buying them and bringing them to work even though the employer was suppose to supply the tools.
I fear the unintended consequences of AI. I'm guessing one construction manager will be in charge of ten times as many jobs, and that job is going to suck ten times as bad. I very rarely met a happy construction manager.
You're doing good thing with this channel keep it up!
In the 1999 book "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace", Lawrence Lessig anticipates the use of cloud software as an instantiation of automated law in the techno-structure.
While the book has a focus on law and intellectual property; it also introduces a memetic for examining the regulating forces he anticipates will control the freedoms and behaviour of networked individuals.
Four forces defined as ; Law, Social Norms, Market and Architecture; will be architected into software and networked systems and will exert greater technocratic control over our lives.
Seems a so much more accurate model simply because it acknowledged a much more complex web of significant interactions in the socioeconomic sphere. Other competing models in play then and now, seem to me.... more a means towards reductions serving sentiments, power interests, populism etcetera...
The set of interactions Galbraith describes reflect a fuller and more functional understanding that modern human society is intrinsically much more complex!
Though this model is pehaps limited by the period he was writing in, and doesn't map as well to present and could stand some revisions and updates, the model and approach seems like a better place to start building an understanding from.
Fascinating!
Fantastic video essay
Great review! Definitely checking the book. Very nice explanations. Good channel! Keep the good job.
Coercion plays a very important role in industrial production still today. Sweat shops, wage slaves etc
feel like I don't need to read it now. This was good.
I don't know why I watch these videos. I always get the sudden feeling we are in deep trouble.
Same.
Galbraith is a fantastic writer and thinker.
grateful for this
Do Galbraiths Culture of contentment, i read that in hs have forgot all of it, but remember it was good
I like the term Organized Intelligence more, to me it implies a direction and contracts/protocols.
Yeah, organized intelligence and collective intelligence might be different things, now that you point it out. Organized intelligence in more in line with John Kenneth Galbraith and the corporate era he is discussing. Collective intelligence, it seems, is more how it works in a digital age with big data. The later is more complex and chaotic.
Sounds like Fascism to me. Right in the way people like Mussolini used to think: "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato!"
I would correct the author slightly, by defining it as:
Capitalism:
DEPreciates toward Fascism / National Socialism (Erosion of Democracy)
and...
APPreciates towards Socialism / Communism (Accretion of Democracy)
"Fasism is capitalism in decay."
~Lenin
We shall see if this APP📲-plies! 🥁😃
The capitalist class has been telling workers for years to "Learn to Code!", and now the tools are online to basically do it for you.
All bets are off.💸
ua-cam.com/video/KwNv6urr6to/v-deo.html
How is this different from James Burnhams _The Managerial Revolution_ written 35 years earlier?
Are you a slave if you don't know that you are a slave? I guess it depends on your needs and wants. If these run parallel with those of the corporation, they you are not. But if you are kept in such a state of ignorance or having limited emotional and intellectual horizons, in order to control your needs and wants, then you may be a slave. Escaping this situation then requires realizing there is something different than what the corporation has to offer, and working toward getting that different something. But if the corporation is the source of most things material, then getting something different probably means something materially less, but something meaningfully more.
Daniel Bell also thought along these lines decades ago
I learned at the knee of Mussolini that the fusion of corporate and government power as described here is what he called Fascism. Is this not the case in the USA?
Try actually reading about these terms instead of thinking you know anything from a definition that is wrong.
@@SlickSimulacrum please provide your def
@@babyl-on9761,
Try reading the comprehensive wikipedia article, and then reading under "Definitions"
You can then read of the various leading experts and their works on it...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
Personally, of the books I've read, Roger Griffins book was the best.
But I would not ignore Paxton either.
You don't know Jack.
You have a Good definition!
@@geoattoronto ??? Again please provide the def you consider correct.
I think he was the 1st person to have said - socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor
Towards a STUDY of MANAGERIAL CAPITALISM within Social Reality S.A.R.M P.B.O.G and P.F.P.M
I think Academia is on the route of its own depreciation...
Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurism was born out of the Industrial Revolution in Britain and then spread across the so called "Free Trade" world (Marx)
The ideology of the entrepreneur today was born out of CEO's inheritance or loans from their rich parents, their rich friends or associates, or their ideas backed by the military or the state (government).
1987 to 2024
"We are all entrepreneurs now?" Discuss
In relation to the 70s and 80s
"We are all leaders now?" Discuss
A Paradigm Shift within my lifetime.
Clive
Parts of academia have been fighting this ideological war quite rigidly. Not economists, but a big part of social sciences. However, they terribly overshot, in my opinion. Instead of creating a class of inside critics, they completely shunned everything that would have underscored their usefulness within the system, thus creating a class of educated outsiders.
I get the feeling Kennedy had been reading this.
State Monopoly-Capitalism with a Liberal Democratic Ideology
•¤ Managerial Capitalism with a Managerial Ideology
The Paradigm Shift... .
I care about motivation, but not of workers or consumers. I want to social darwinize ExxonKnew KochtapusIndustries or BoeingGenocides.
Corporations on one level work in a quasi-religious manner.
Of course kg largely focuses on rd in the public sector academies as his source of innovation. Kg is an actual technocrat and I wouldn't be surprised if he were a member of the club of Rome. His wage and price controls show his collectivist fascist leanings.
Yeah, academia is many things but a solution to techno-state overreach it is not. It is an appendage of power, at best, at worst it’s sniveling Renfrew.
LOBBYISTS!
IS THIS FASCISM
The US government is responsible for identifying those who are disobedient and do not follow US principles, designating them as enemies as targets bombing. Social governance is the responsibility of corporate consortiums and civil society. Such a country is not humanized at all/