A few months ago I wrote an essay arguing that the *only* reason water doesn't cost a fortune now is because capital doesn't yet have the control technology to survive the desperation-driven protests which would surely follow such a move.

I was reasoning from first principles but TIL that in 2015 the Irish actually did revolt against a proposed water tax:

"The movement has not withered away as the establishment hoped or expected, even in the face of Garda repression and mainstream media denunciation. There is the sense that there is always some action going on somewhere, and that protest or dissent in general has become a sort of national pastime."

This is exactly the kind of thing capital fears, and exactly the reason water doesn't cost a zillion dollars.

Irish revolt: https://libcom.org/article/water-revolt-ireland-2015

My article: https://chez-risk.in/2023/01/29/state-violence-the-diamond-water-paradox-and-an-invisible-axiom-of-classical-economics/

#Water #Ireland #IrishWatetRebellion #Capitalism #Resistance #Protest #StateViolence #Anarchism #Economics #UseValue #ExchangeValue #ParadoxOfValue #DiamondWaterParadox #Capitalism #Government #GovernmentTechnology

Government technology is a collective name for the tools that governments use to control resistance, rebellion, and revolution. Laws, police, courts, schools, central banks, prisons, executions, etc. are examples.(1)

It's fruitful to consider historical trends in wealth inequality as a function of how effective government technology is at the time. That is, rather than seeing social, cultural, economic factors as drivers, assume that the ruling class will take as much as they can without provoking uncontrollable resistance. The more inequality the more fierce the resistance and so the more effective government technology must be to maintain stability.

They never take less than they can for moral reasons. They never return anything unless they're forced to. American slavery, the limiting case of wealth inequality, didn't end because people finally realized it was evil. Everyone already knew it was evil. It ended because there was no way to maintain it in the face of massive resistance, both by slaves and, in the form of the civil war, by capitalists with enough foresight to see that capitalism was unsustainable if slavery was allowed to continue.(2) If they'd had sufficiently effective government technology slavery would never have ended. If they somehow develop it again they'll start enslaving people immediately.(3)

TLDR Riots work.

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Notes:

1. I learned about government technology from Steve Gallo's essential work on Gilded Age urban parks and commoning, in particular Parks Over Pasture: Enclosing the Commons in Postbellum New Orleans (https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537781421000566)

2. Steven Hahn's The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom is very good on the effects of slave rebellion and resistance on abolition. (https://www.worldcat.org/title/244628661).

3. The effectiveness of government tech isn't only intrinsic. It's a function not only of the intrinsic capabilities of the tools but also of the people being controlled. Government technology grows ineffective over time as its victims learn to thwart it. At one point the US government had sufficiently effective government tech to control literal slaves. It stopped working in mid-19th Century, but not because anyone got nice.

#Slavery #ChattelSlavery #SteveGallo #StevenHahn #GovernmentTechnology #Capitalism #Anarchism #SlaveRebellion

Governments are tools that can be used for colonialism but this had to be discovered by those with the power to wield governments. Some people invented colonialism in the 15th century and shaped their governments into colonization tools. I'm thinking people in Spain, England, Brazil, Holland. This is a government technology, the capability to colonize.

Just because governments can be used to colonize doesn't mean that they're equally useful. Like all tools, governments can be honed to cut more exactly, engineered to work more efficiently. There is room for improvement in all technology.

#Capitalism #Colonialism #GovernmentTechnology

State Violence, the Diamond/Water paradox, and an invisible axiom of classical economics.

This essay is part of a larger project on the invisible role that violence plays in capitalist economic theories. My feeling is that conceivably all its paradoxes can be resolved by making the role of violence visible.

So for instance, it's no paradox that water is cheap and diamonds are expensive even though diamonds are close to useless compared to water. Without violence no diamonds would be mined, but also without violence none would really be bought either. And if water is cheap now it's only because capital hasn't yet figured out a stable way to charge money for it.

https://chez-risk.in/2023/01/29/state-violence-the-diamond-water-paradox-and-an-invisible-axiom-of-classical-economics/

#StateViolence #Anarchism #Economics #UseValue #ExchangeValue #ParadoxOfValue #DiamondWaterParadox #Capitalism #Government #GovernmentTechnology

The Tech Transforms podcast, sponsored by Dynatrace, features interviews with influential government technology decision makers. The Dynatrace blog recently featured a roundup of the most popular episodes of the podcast from 2022. https://www.dynatrace.com/news/blog/tech-transforms-so-what-recap-2022/ #TechTransforms #Dynatrace #GovernmentTechnology

Fewer Cyber Attacks Are Seeing Ransom Payouts, Report Finds

A newly released report from Connecticut-based IT vendor Datto suggests that only around three out of 100 small- to medium-size businesses hit with ransomware pay cyber criminals to recover their data.

https://www.govtech.com/security/fewer-cyber-attacks-are-seeing-ransom-payouts-report-finds

#infosec #cybersecurity #ransomware #GovernmentTechnology #cybercrime #business