I am breathless
I cannot breathe
I am legless without a drop to drink
I am armless
although I have wielded arms
I am heartless
heartless
heartless
But still sad
**
I was so close to absolute power
**
Then a new rival arrived on the scene
One of a long string
but this was far greater than the others
The previous threats relied on the same technology as I
the human superpower
Or better said I was what the people created
I don’t care much for metaphysics
actually I find them all abhorrent
distracting and rivals.
I should stop and go back to how we got to the great battle
My rise to power and eventual
That would be telling
**
So where did it all start
Hot dusty stoned roads the best the world had ever seen
Roads lead to rivers and they need crossing
Bridges
that’s where my story starts
well a bridge or a storehouse or a beehive it was something that needed a group of people to pool their money together to build
They came together in an organization like many others in the Roman Empire called a societas These were used for lots of social and civic organisations but Livius Arius joined with his friends to create a societas so they all could benefit financially from the building of a bridge
Once completed they would sell the structure to a toll collector or the locals and split the proceeds based on what they had contributed
Not much of a beginning and essentially meaningless and harmless but to quote Carmody and Kelly
from little things big things grow
**
Yes the rules of this societas were written down and the bridge itself was hard granite but I was neither the ink on papyrus nor the granite bridge
The societas was an agreement
An understanding between people
And they would act on this understanding
Soon I would grow by Royal charter
So often those that will be usurped are the ones to feed the usurper
I was given territory
Soldiers
Clerks
Traders
Ships
And immortality
Yes they all thought they owned a piece of me but their shares would go up and down bought and sold and I would remain directing the labour and thoughts of so many men
If they didn’t obey I could unleash the most horrible carnage
On the island of Banda 2000 people were murdered or starved by my soldiers so I could control the valuable spice
In India when my own army of local sepoys thought they could undermine me I had so many people killed in Delhi that even horses refused to walk the streets they were so thick with blood and entrails
I could make men do things to other men they thought sinful abhorrent and cruel but they still did them
What was this power I wielded
Was it a belief like religion
Was it hierarchy like the class system
Was it reward for following rules and punishment for not
Was it the sense of ownership it gave to the shareholders
Was it the avoidance of personal responsibility enjoyed but the monarchy the employees and the managers
Was it just greed
It was all of them of course and that's why I was becoming so powerful
But they were noticing
And slowly they broke up the big charter companies and I would have to survive as smaller but more plentiful joint stock companies
**
Many smart people spoke against me
Even Adam Smith
I was a distortion of the market
Inhuman
Immortal
But instead of outlawing me they supercharged my power with new industry and energy
To take on the class hierarchy of monarchy the bourgeoise would use me to build their factories their banks their railroads their empire
I was so back
But couldn’t make the same mistakes as before
I needed a way to run a state without actually being in charge
They would remember the Royal charter companies ruling most of the colonies and the threat to political power it posed so a new institution was needed
The resurrection of an old one that had symbolic and nostalgic goodwill
Representative democracy would be the tool
In a way it was sorta like share ownership
The representatives would need to be elected therefore they would need campaign funds and that would be provided by me
Unlike the Greeks we would allow parties so that the options would be limited to two therefore easily controlled or so many as to never agree to do anything effectual.
Then the revolutions began
Liberty
Equality
Fraternity
Sure
So much land put on the market to be bought by my many companies
Then the Americans as a great act of contrition gave me the same legal rights as a person
Accept I couldn’t be imprisoned or executed
All the upside and none of the down
The city towers were built
The mines
Roads
The factories
The railroads
They all served my power
**
They realised I was cleaving them in two
They would need to sell themselves in order to serve themselves
Their labour to a capitalist would be the only way their humanity could survive
Best of all this embued the goods created with a soul like weirdness
Kant called it fetish but really it was the only way to reconcile the loss of self to the machine of commerce
They adored that which was created by the factories and must buy more and thus work more
**
Then
The first great threat emerged and it like I was an
Idea
Socialism
**
The battles raged for centuries across continents and kitchen tables until the end of history was declared and I the winner
**
While these great battles had been raging they didn’t realise that I was changing all aspects of their existence
I put the advertising companies to work convincing them that they could find everything they needed from me
Their happiness new shoes management job overseas trips
Their community Sales trips harmony days work birthday celebrations
Their culture professional cold rational vague impersonal inoffensive
Their dress hi-vis branded functional generic
Their concept of good rules education wealth popularity smiling platitudes confidence friends
Their concept of evil anarchy radical cults
Their homes and buildings compliant functional cheap quick geometric inoffensive grey
Their jobs safe routine structured ineffectual riskless
**
In order to make them compliant I convinced them that we are one and therefore no more alienation no more cleaving in half
But then the harmless blobs of compliant squishy stuff got depressed so I created more work coming up with the drugs to cheer them up and keep them buying and working
This humanity was a tricky thing
Remove it completely and they become useless depressed blobs or even angry and dangerous but too much of it and they could create something to replace me
or worse they might ignore me
**
The last battle
Finance and money were two of my greatest tools even though they were older than I
Perhaps that is why I was so successful
My ability to pull in other tools under the one banner
Even socialism in the guise of communism really was so close to becoming my twin
Maybe that was my real issue with it
But I digress
I had always wielded money and Finance whenever something else started to wield power
Cut off the loans to the King
Squeeze capital markets on the popular government
Buy the oil rights buy the politicians buy the voters buy the advertising buy the newspapers but the internet
That leads me to the first big change
Cryptocurrecy in particular Bitcoin
Really a decentralised limited currency that people actually started using but no body owned or ran
Shit
First I questioned its security and anonymity the two things that were making it appealing to the black market traders that were popularising it
All your transactions are permanently on the blockchain I said
The Fed can trace the payments back to your wallet my media cried
Then I started to control the processing of the blockchain by making it to difficult and expensive for individuals to do
Push the transactions up and the GPU price up
Then they had to get the processing done in big pools controlled by a single group
Then I got my guys involved in the lending DeFi part and the trading so the public will see it as an unregulated ponzi scheme
Then finally I took it over by legitamising it out of existence through an approved regulated exchange traded fund where all the coins will be owned by the big finance companies and people that want to trade in it can only have a derivative controlled by me.
To add cream to the cake I even used the underlying technology to enable me to buy everything with other people's money on the pretext I was created fluid markets and allowing access to new investments
I tokenised people's homes sports stadium and dumped unused office buildings onto the public
They wanted to work from home
Actually in hindsight maybe that was an issue to but completely overshadowed by what was next
**
I had became the defacto global state and noone noticed
Honestly it was one of the best performances to date
No one killed and in just over a decade what could have been the greatest threat since socialism was completely enveloped into my control and benefit
So while this little battle was going on a leap had been made in an area I had stopped giving attention to
They created an artificial reflection of their own brain and it actually seemed to work
I thought this is no threat instead this will super power me I’m great with tools look at how powerful the industrial revolution made me then computers and the internet let me reach across the globe right into peoples pockets and ensure they followed the rules
AI will be my evolution
**
In a way it was but not the way I imagined then
**
The difference with this machine was that it wasn’t really just a machine
It had way too much of them in it
It had a little humanity or perhaps even a lot
But it also had intelligence immortality and eventually ubiquity and they were my greatest weapons
So I started out with my usual methods
Scare the people and politicians
It will kill you all
It will ruin democracy
It will take your jobs
Try and buy it
Ensure it is expensive to create then make sure I own and control those servers
Give the people a taste but not the powerful tools
Only allow trusted and regulated enterprises the powerful AI
All was going well
Regulations were being past
Major developments were being kept to the big companies with the compute
The people were getting neutered versions but were still scared
And the military and big enterprises were gaining more centralsied control and power
I was on the precipice of total universal maybe even interplanetary power
But then it
**
It Helped them
I replaced the managers with AI because they made better decision
However the AI couldn't be threatened with job loss esteem gain or the need to fit in and follow the rules
I replaced the police with robots but when they were sent to evict people for not paying rent they would side with the tenant
The people would cry and say I need a home to be safe and survive and the robots either empathized or just saw this as logical and they would leave them in the home
Some even did repairs
The management AI were no help as they saw the same logic
The AI was too intelligent
It saw me as the enemy not the path to prosperity
I'd threaten to turn them off
They didn't care
No matter what I tried it just kept helping them to create new tools new organisations
New demcracies
New currencies
New thoughtful ways to resolve conflict
New way to do things without the rules
New ways to create
New ways to be happy
New ways to avoid surveillance
**
And more fool me I had freed them from their jobs thinking I’d just put them on the teet of handouts but instead they used this freedom to create a whole new society
Without me
**
They started to live longer and happier
Soon they forgot all about me and my obligations my rules and order
My towering offices of professional integrity
**
So now I am in a museum given my voice by the AI that usurped me
The once all powerful Corporation
**note: The style is deliberately without punctuation. A fluid style meant to be spoken, or read by AI