The Luddites' Mailbox
It's Not About "Technology;" It's About Priorities
We still get mail.
Of course, few people send letters anymore, except for the occasional holiday greeting. So what we mostly get in our old fashion mailbox is junk. Just like our email. And voicemail. And text messages.
Recently, we opted out of the local utility's program to replace everyone's electric meter with a communicating "smart meter." For an extra monthly charge, we retained a "dumb" meter that must be read manually and that does not report our power usage minute by minute. Our "dumb" meter does not allow those who are interested in accumulating such data to deduce when we are home, what we are doing and when we do it.
The widespread installation of "smart meters" will, sooner or later, usher in the new age of variable rate electricity billing. That, in turn, will make "energy" more expensive and less available for that middling class that has to be concerned about what it spends on food, shelter and the necessities of life. The communicating meters will also reinforce the monitoring of the security-surveillance state that is not "coming," but is already here.
Luddites! you laugh. Conspiracy theorists! Aha ha ha ha!
History, of course, is actually nothing except one conspiracy after another. Not all conspiracy theories are created equal, of course, and many of them are deliberate schemes of misdirection and ridicule by association. By and large, however, anyone who labels you a "conspiracy theorist" might as well say something meaningless like 'Your mother wears army boots!' Mindless retorts like this do no more than shut down conversation when someone has touched a raw nerve.
As for the Luddites, well, they got a bum rap.
As has always been true, the "winners" write history. The Luddites lost. Capital and the 19th Century industrialists won.
Luddites, in reality, were no more "anti-technology" than we are. Rather, they were like the 21st Century office workers who were emancipated by our curious lock-downs spawned by the Covid pandemic. The 21st Century remote worker discovered that working from home beats the pants out of commuting to toil in high-rise urban cubicles monitored by contemporary plantation overseers. The Luddites were more like artisans than unskilled workers, and they were able to make a modest, but semi-independent living working from home where they had a modicum of control over the means of their own production, their own domestic culture and household. Just like our own remote workers who refuse to return to the office, what the Luddites resisted was not so much 'technology' as the intentional destruction of their way of life.
That modicum of self-sufficiency and control, of course, was exactly what the industrialists sought to eradicate. The concomitant enclosure of the Commons would force those who lived socially on the land to live in densely populated cities and to work in factories. The creation of a mass-production, consumer-oriented, capital-intensive industrialization would force the "Luddites" out of their cottages and into the urban factories... where their standardized output could be closely monitored for speed, productivity, and, most importantly, high profitability relative to the cost of their labor. Just like today's cubicle-workers.
But I digress.
We were talking about the mail. Here's what came in our mail last week:
On Monday, CenturyLink - our regional telecom giant mutated from the 1984 court-ordered breakup of telecom monopolist AT&T - sent us a written notice that the equipment that currently delivers our internet service has been "retired." Consequently, we are at risk, we are told, of an imminent and permanent outage. Hmm. That sounded really ominous. To avoid a "permanent outage," we were told per the written notice, we must contact the company immediately.
Upon contacting their representatives immediately, I, of course, discovered that... the company was trying to up-sell additional (and unwanted) services at a higher price.
I listened patiently to the sales pitch and demurred. Or, rather, I told the sales rep to take a flying leap into the nearest septic tank. Virtually, if not literally.
Unlike the few sane countries that treat internet service like a public utility, in the United States the internet is a kind of public-private partnership where the public absorbs most of the costs and the private sector gets the profits. The professed intent of the 1984 break-up of AT&T was to spur consumer cost-savings and technological innovation by creating many regional "Baby Bells" to compete with each other. Now, like some type of Arnold Schwarzenegger "Terminator" that reassembles itself after destruction into yet another monster, the "Baby Bells" have morphed into regional hegemons that, once again, are consolidating, monopolizing, squashing innovation and oppressing users.
On Tuesday, we received two very personal letters from squirrely folks who say that they desperately want to buy our home sight unseen and without the cost of paying a real estate broker. Soooo, if I sell our perfectly habitable home to some anonymous house-flipper or real estate investment company, where the devil are we supposed to live? The purchase price of residential real estate rises almost as fast as real estate taxes and utilities, wiping out any advantage of selling what we've got. And where can we live better? In any event, the envelopes were addressed to "Occupant," which rather undercuts the personal approach, doesn't it? I threw the letters into my scrap-book.
Yes, I do keep multiple three ring scrapbooks of printed stories, significant news items and memorabilia. I think, in my delusion perhaps, that humankind might have a posterity. In that hypothetical future, historians might strive to reconstruct and understand from a hard-copy record what actually happened in these times rather than rely on the infinitely redactable digits of the Internet.
On Wednesday, I received confirmation that my privacy is not private. Whereas I still occasionally get solicitations to buy products that unconditionally increase the frequency and pleasure of my (apparently) rabbit-like sex life, now I also get mail - like I did on this day - asking me to "enjoy the pleasure" of living in an old-age warehouse (ahem, retirement community) where I can "enjoy a future filled with endless possibilities." Endless for whom? The geriatric rendering industry, maybe?
However.
I received in the post on this same day, a mass-mailing from an out-of-state real estate agent crooning about how wonderful life is in Arizona "where every day feels like vacation!" Now, I don't wish to offend anyone who lives the good life in Arizona because I have only visited that part of the world once or twice in my lifetime. But I understood that major parts of that state (and specifically the retirement megalopolis of Phoenix) experienced just this summer of 2023 an unprecedented record 30 plus consecutive days of high temperatures reaching or exceeding 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 degrees Celsius). Mama mia!! Which leads me to wonder whether Arizona is "where every day feels like a vacation... in Dante's Inferno?"
On Thursday, the Post Office delivered a couple of health-related postcards. One was a full-color ad with what appeared to be a Photo-Shopped image of a comely female with a come-hither demeanor. She bore an obviously intentional resemblance to a youngish looking Martha Stewart. The smiling model's cashmere sweater was alluringly pulled down over her right shoulder to reveal both the strap of her brassier (supporting her shapely bosom) and also... a black band-aide. Yes, this was a postcard advertisement from none other than Pfizer/BioNtech screaming: "This season's updated Covid-19 shots are here. I Got mine. Got yours?"
This promotion was accompanied by another postcard (also "brought to you by Pfizer") encouraging me and my family to visit a new website (run by Pfizer, naturally). The website will help me check which one (or more!!) of multiple respiratory vaccines the company is peddling that I am "eligible" to be injected with. Helpfully, Pfizer will also direct me places where I can be injected. I don't know why this reminds me of Canada's assisted suicide clinics. Booster uptake is so bad, I guess, that they have to resort to mass mailers to attract business.
Hmm. I think I'll pass. But I did add these two postcard treasures to my burgeoning four-volume scrapbook of interesting Covid events stretching all the way back to the spring of 2019, just in case our future hypothetical historians want to sort that out, too.
On Friday, we were reminded that we are coming up on Election Day. The post box contained two 'VOTE-FOR-ME' fliers, our mail-in ballots and a brochure published by the County briefly stating each of the candidates' positions on the issues. Except that the candidates seem to have almost no discernible differences on "the issues," and almost none of their issues are more than slightly relevant to us. Washington State has a ludicrous "top two" primary system which means that by the time of our general elections, we often get to elect one of two candidates from various subtle flavors of the same political party; proving, therefore, that Western-style democracy means that we are free to choose from the limited choices1 from which we are allowed to choose.
The ballots we received in the mail, furthermore, allowed us to vote for a variety of judges (state judges are elected in Washington), but all of the judicial candidates were running... unopposed. That meant that voting for (or against) them was meaning-less.
Our ballots also included yet another property tax levy to raise another breath-taking sum to build more micro-housing for homeless people living on the street ... and, perhaps not coincidentally, to boost the profits of builders and developers at public expense?
For at least a decade, Washington State has had about 9,000 homeless people squatting on the sidewalks, camping in public green space and play-fields, or living in derelict, rusting RVs parked forever on the streets. Some are from this state, but many are not. Most have some form of intractable addiction and/or mental health issues. Nevertheless, after having spent countless sums of money for the past decade, this state still has... about 9,000 homeless people living in squalid conditions on the streets.
Which begs the question: what happened to all the money previously raised and spent, and to what effect? Rather like in Ukraine.
The answer to these questions are, of course, no one knows (or isn't saying if one does know). "Homelessness" has become a self-sustaining and highly profitable business, much like the military-industrial complex. But it keeps us on our toes. We are supposed to keep digging deep because we, too, one day might end up living on the streets like this (which, we might, if the levies keep piling up and the cost of living keeps rising).
It begs the question about the upside-down way we fund things in this country. In my opinion, general tax revenue should pay for basic and essential services like a rigorous, accessible, tuition-free and thorough public education system; high-quality no cost public health services for essential care; an effective non-political judicial system that serves all equally and not primarily the ruling/ownership class; publicly owned and operated print and digital media; and meaningful social safety nets when and where appropriate. By contrast to our present way of doing things, real estate levies decided annually by public vote should be the sole means for governments to pay for war, the overthrow of foreign (and domestic) governments, and foreign aid for the oppressive or fascist regimes that our feckless leaders seem to love. Thus might priorities be righted and the war-mongers be forced to put their (own) money where their mouths are.
On Saturday, I got in the mail another memento mori. It came from a company that sells cremation burial services. They must know that I am an aging Luddite. They invited me to a complimentary dinner seminar regarding pre-paid cremation plans. Participants would need to RSVP by phone for this limited seating event. On the front of the card was a picture of a side of meat sizzling on the grill. The complimentary cremation dinner seminar was taking place at the Wedgewood Broiler.
Hmm. I wonder who they're having for dinner that night?
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Rural mail delivery, circa 1903 (B&W video link, Library of Congress, Westminster, Maryland)
Cover Photograph (Note 1): Mail boxes, Seminole oil field, Oklahoma, 1939; Lee, Russell, 1903-1986, photographer, nitrate negative, 35 mm. (lightly modified in GIMP). Public Domain. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, DC 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
The threshold problem in American politics is getting attention. The media simply will not recognize anyone not endorsed by the two principal parties. Or, as in the case of third-party candidate for President, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the coordinated media label him a crank, a lunatic or a fool. Mr. Kennedy is none of these, of course, and although I may not subscribe to everything he believes, there is and never has been anyone whose views I could endorse 100% - myself included. As for third-party candidates being cranks, lunatics or fools, I think that the mainstream parties have already demonstrated a historical superabundance of such creatures.
The second problem in American politics is just getting on the ballot. Both parties collude to ensure their exclusivity. The bar to a third-party candidate even getting listed - opinion polls and funding be damned - is extremely high, deliberately mysterious, and inevitably jiggered to exclude "unauthorized" candidates. In 1987, the Republican and Democratic parties even wrestled away and monopolized the so-called Presidential Debates from the non-partisan League of Women Voters.