It is clear that we are all moving, and very quickly, towards a new social order. We don’t know what it will be called. We like the name “ reconism “From the English word reckon — to count, to take into account. Since the information infrastructure and the accounting of each person’s contribution in mass collaboration will be the key elements of the new political system.”
Table of Contents
Historical experience
To understand what this system will be like, let’s once again turn to… stories Capitalists developed industry and robotics, which led to the informatization of society and pushed capitalists into the background, turning them into providers for officials. Feudal lords earned income from their land and borrowed money from proto-financiers, which allowed capital to accumulate and deprived the feudal lords of their granted privileges over the land. It became possible to buy land, and the main source of income shifted to production. The landowners themselves transformed from being in a position of power into suppliers for the capitalists. Informists (Officials) are promoting the informatization of society, which will ultimately strip them of the privileges they are trying to maintain.
The next structure is a new privileged resource.
It turns out that the new social order should strip the ruling class of its monopoly on information, while also dealing with the hypocritical principles imposed by that class. However, for example, if cash no longer exists… money. So who will own the information about the transactions?
All. Everyone will be able to view each other’s transactions. At the same time, everyone will be able to see who has viewed their transactions. It’s similar to the “My Guests” tab in LiveJournal statistics. The information will be publicly available. It can be bought and sold, but no one will have a monopoly on it.
Just as the feudal lords’ monopoly on land disappeared with capitalism (though this didn’t mean that land was free), so too will the officials’ monopoly on information disappear with reconism, but information will still come at a cost.
To deprive officials of power, society must be stripped of secrecy regarding the income and expenses of all its members. The registration of material assets, robotic tracking systems, and payment accounting systems—accessible to everyone (though not for free)—will allow us to forget forever about 90% of all criminal offenses, corruption, nepotism, and the unprofessionalism of those in responsible positions, among other issues.
But what about the right to privacy? It is automatically upheld. For example, if you want to dig into your neighbor’s affairs, you need to have a good reason or a prior agreement with them. Otherwise, if they find out that you accessed their accounting system (or the video archives from the cameras in their home) and were looking into something, your relationship could deteriorate significantly, potentially even leading to criminal liability.
Protective reaction of the ruling class
The propaganda of the ruling class refers to any system of personalization and tracking of transactions as “Big Brother.” This ranges from monitoring the purchase history of discount card holders to personalized pension plans.
Why does society panic so much about the collection and availability of personal information about individuals? Simply because, under the guise of a wonderful euphemism like “freedom,” the ruling class imposes such phobias on society. The implementation of personalized tracking cannot harm an honest person; on the contrary, it can expose everyone who is dishonest and knows from experience that the first million cannot be earned honestly. After all, no one protests against having a concierge in the building, claiming that he or she restricts freedom.
The contradiction between security and secrecy.
People value order in their homes and the absence of burglaries more than the inability to bring a lover into their apartment without their spouse’s knowledge or to set up a drug den. Moreover, most people are at least indifferent to the fact that a vigilant concierge will know almost everything about the residents, from the family composition, including distant relatives, to their income level, which can be inferred from their purchasing habits. In fact, people not only don’t mind this, but they also welcome the attentiveness and awareness of the concierge, seeing it as a guarantee of their own safety.
So, it turns out that it’s quite easy to tap into the soft underbelly of the ruling class. Those in power have never found it beneficial to disclose information about themselves. By the way, let’s note the pathological obsession of the ruling class with high, soundproof fences and tinted car windows. Moreover, to reinforce inequality, those in power reserved for themselves the monopoly right to know everything about each of the powerless, implemented through various kinds of “secret services” or “security agencies.” Whose security?
Conclusion.
Of course, full personification and tracking of transactions will lead to entirely different social relations and unleash a tremendous reserve of productive forces, which will be referred to as a revolution many years later. And perhaps it will indeed become a revolution, as the ruling class will not easily relinquish this privilege and will not readily disclose information about their income and expenses.
The summary of this part: Wikonomics will lead us to wikipolitics or rekonism, where mass collaboration in maintaining public order and ensuring all functions of power, achieved through the absence of a monopoly on information and complete documentation of any transactions, will largely render the existing ruling class of officials unnecessary.