In the field of robotics, the question of recognizing robot rights has been pondered for decades, so Lemoine is not as off base as Google executives suggest. In a recent review of the literature, ethicists, computer scientists, and legal scholars posed the question of whether AI, having reached or surpassed human cognitive abilities, should be granted human rights: “If robots are progressively developing cognition, it is important to discuss whether they are entitled to justice pursuant to conventional notions of human rights,” the authors wrote in a recent Journal of Roboticspaper. If robots are capable of human-like cognition, and if they can be ethical actors, then the question of legal rights rises to the fore, the paper suggests. But the question of sentience and thus the accordance of rights is not the primary takeaway from LaMDA’s messaging. (Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. June 22, 2022.)
The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos took place from May 23rd to May 26th, 2022. This year’s theme, “History at a Turning Point: Government Policies, Corporate Strategies,” was indicative of the globalist, central-planning hubris of the WEF. The government policies administered by the WEF include deliberate inflationary schemes meant to reduce consumption, and energy policies meant to drive up oil and gas prices so as to force a “transition” toward a “net-zero” economy. The corporate strategies administered by the WEF entail “stakeholder capitalism” and its Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Index. Stakeholder capitalism and the ESG drive investment toward companies that abide by woke dictates and away from the non-compliant. They are means to establish a woke cartel that dominates all economic activity. Through the WEF’s coordination, governments and corporations also are to “collaborate” in “public-private partnerships,” all of which will vest governmental power in a corporate-state hybrid that undermines democratic processes. (Originally published on LotusEaters.com.)
The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos is perhaps the world’s most unpopular conference, and the WEF’s founder and chairman, Klaus Schwab, one of the world’s most despised figures. Often compared to “Dr. Evil,” the character Mike Meyers played in the Austin Powers series, and routinely likened to a James Bond supervillain on the internet, Schwab is seen as a messianic megalomaniac leading a nefarious cabal of world leaders and corporate heads into a future dominated by a globalist elite. (Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. May 31, 2022.)
To understand the Great Reset, then, we must recognize that the project represents the completion of a decades-long and ongoing attempt to destroy classical liberalism (the free market, free speech, and liberal democracy), American constitutionalism, and national sovereignty. The idea of resetting capitalism suggests that capitalism had previously been pure. But the Great Reset is the culmination of a much longer collectivization process and democratic socialist project, with their corresponding growth of the state. (Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. May 28, 2022. Audio version)
The best indication that the woke cartel has really gone berserk is its removal of Tesla from the S&P 500’s ESG Index. This last rebuff proves that “ESG is a scam.” (Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. May 27, 2022. Audio version.)
The recent Elon Musk takeover of Twitter has The Usual Suspects in a frenzy. Contrary to what progressives may claim, Twitter has not been the "town hall for democracy," but rather an enforcer for wokeness, political fealty, and obedience to official state dictates and narratives. (Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. April 26, 2022.)
Michael Rectenwald takes on the progressive canard of "socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor," in which the government protects the wealthy but throws everyone else to the tender mercies of rapacious capitalism. (Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. April 21, 2022.) Audio version.
The quickest way to discredit an intellectual opponent is to accuse that person of being a "conspiracy theorist." But what happens when real conspiracies occur? (Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. April 20, 2022.)
This book is both an anomaly and a monumental achievement. It represents the inaugural volume in a new science—ponerology, or the science of evil. It explains the emergence and development of macrosocial evil thoroughly and with scientific precision…Łobaczewski made the bold claim that he’d uncovered “the general laws of the origin of evil.” If true, the book was on par with Newton’s Principia in the physical sciences, while being of greater practical importance. (Originally published on the Mises Institute Wire. March 26, 2022.)
Freedom has been deemed a nonessential commodity. The US Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms have been effectively cancelled, revealed as nonbinding palimpsests to be overwritten by the “Emergencies Act” and other state-of-emergency decrees. These “sacred” documents indeed have the status of religious scriptures in a secular state—held by some to be true but inapplicable outside of privately held belief.
Wokeness is a selection mechanism for dividing the compliant from the non-compliant — for businesses in addition to individuals. Just as non-woke individuals are cancelled from civic life, so too are non-woke companies cancelled from the economy, leaving the spoils to the woke. Corporate cancellations are not merely the result of political fallout. They are being institutionalised and carried out through the stock market. Woke planners wield the ESG Index to reward the in-group and to squeeze non-woke players out of business. The ESG Index is a Chinese-style social credit score for rating corporations. Woke investment drives capital away from the noncompliant, while the ESG Index serves as an admission ticket for entry into the woke cartels. (Originally published on LotusEaters.com. February 23, 2022.)
General Motors’ 2022 Super Bowl ad “Dr. EV-il” summons viewers to ponder the issue of climate change. The ad introduces the company’s electric vehicles (EV), apparently committing it to a “net-zero” future. In the same breath, GM subtly admits that it will use what is purported to be a looming catastrophe to its advantage.
The rise of woke capitalism cannot be sufficiently explained in terms of placating coastal leftists, ingratiating left-liberal legislators, or avoiding the wrath of activists. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. February 10, 2022.)
I don't believe woke capitalism can any longer be sufficiently explained in terms of placating coastal leftists, ingratiating liberal-left legislators, or avoiding the wrath of activists. Rather, as wokeness has escalated and taken hold of corporations and states, it has become a demarcation device, a shibboleth for cartel members to identify and distinguish themselves from their non-woke competitors, who are to be starved of capital investments. (Talk delivered at the Common Sense Society Conference and Gala, January 28, 2022.)
Now woke ideology has led to the resignation of the most famous academic alive: the psychologist, best-selling author, and public intellectual Jordan Peterson, who announced in the National Post his decision to retire from his position as tenured full professor at the University of Toronto. (Originally published on the Mises Wire. January 26, 2022.)
The Great Reset combines resets in all conceivable domains of human life: economic, environmental, geopolitical, governmental, industrial, technological, social, and individual. (Presented at "The Great Reset?" Hillsdale College's Center for Constructive Alternatives. Sunday, November 7, 2021, at 4 PM. Click hereor on title.)
The Great Reset combines resets in all conceivable domains of human life: economic, environmental, geopolitical, governmental, industrial, technological, social, and individual. (Presented at "The Great Reset?" Hillsdale College's Center for Constructive Alternatives. Sunday, November 7, 2021, at 4 PM.)
