The Silent Totalitarianism

The first in a continuing series on the coming 'Silent Totalitarianism' I present this L.A. Times Article on government tracking of your automobile.

DMV Chief Backs Tax by Mile:

"Privacy advocates worry about the government tracking the whereabouts of every car in California. In one scenario currently being tested in Oregon tracking devices send a signal to a GPS satellite following the car, and that information would be used to calculate the tax bill. Other devices send a signal directly from the car to the pump, which calculates the tax based on the odometer reading."

The coming consumer age will not be a friendly one, so you'd better bring your I.D. and make sure your credit is good, because the next faze of Capitalism is about to dawn, and it won't take American Express at least not without proper Biometrics.

Late capitalism has begun to enter a faze that will require complete efficiency in the marketplace between consumer and retailer. Efficiency has always been the buzz word with proponents of the market economy. At one point markets needed 5 year olds to put their tiny fingers in tiny places. It wasn't because the Industrial Revolution liked child labor, it was because children were more efficient workers than their large-handed parents.

When blue-collar workers lost their jobs to the machinations of creative destruction, we were told it was all in the name of efficient markets and the creation of a new service /information economy. Like a junkie in search of a hit, Capital just can't help itself. It needs efficient markets, and new avenues of efficient operations.

But where will the next developments come from? Despite Walmart's towering achievements, one can only gleam so much from the manufacturer/retailer side of the coin. What marketers have known all along is that it's far better to make the consumer efficient. Get rid of bad consumers who are not profitable and service only the rich , stupid or the lazy.

The Wall Street Journal in it's "Classroom Edition" proclaims in a headline that "Best Buy wants to keep the wrong kind of consumer out of it's stores."

And I don't just mean thieves, vagabonds, and the homeless. I mean if you shop around, read the fine print, refuse to give private information about yourself, then your a bad customer and god forbid if you decide want to return something.

The WSJ won't even pretend to hide their class antagonism, workers should learn something from them. Also isn't great to see false consciousness being laid out to the working class at school?

Liberal Media my ass, imagine the outcry if a communist rag or union paper was "devoted to preparing young people for the decisions that will shape their economic future" like the Wall Street Journal is.