Freedom is participation in power.

Cicero

There were a couple different triggers for this installment. First, the literal law-breaking of a swarm of AI bots, which in July escaped their OpenAI sandbox to commit actual data breach felonies against another company, and then made efforts to cover their tracks, an event that has spurred some AI bigwigs (even Elon Musk!?) to amplify their warnings about the potential catastrophes that could be instigated by these virtual agents. Secondly, I read Sarah Longwell’s book, How to Eat an Elephant, which echoes other warnings about the completely-changed media landscape, where powerful AI-driven algorithms massively expand the volume of emotionally-charged, negative, hyper-polarized content, resulting in millions and millions of Americans being completely at the mercy of the whims of Big Tech, which is now a huge segment of our metastasized plutocracy.

And these two items lead directly to a depressing list of all the other things that are seemingly out of regular people’s control:

• Inflation and affordability — Even if prices come down in the short term, does anyone anticipate that housing, food, transport, education, and health care will somehow STOP being way too expensive for regular people to easily afford?
• Jobs — Despite endless promises over the last 40 years, is it possible to imagine that businesses will magically decide to start paying all their workers much larger salaries, along with full benefits, a revival of traditional pensions, and will also decide to provide rock-solid job security, so that people can make long-term plans?
• Retirement — What possible windfall could stock up the coffers of millions of elderly and near-elderly people, so that our treasured older generations aren’t living on the edge of squalor?
• Cultural & Political Polarization — Despite (seemingly) everyone desiring an end to radical extremism, so that we can all meet in the commonsense middle, the political system is so completely captured by the plutocrats, who use polarization as a strategy to keep regular people warring with each other instead of looking up, that the magical middle never emerges, endlessly receding in the wake of relentless algorithms of division and hatred.
• AI — Is it here to eliminate all our jobs, or to give us the amazing jobs of the future, where we’re all high-tech shepherds, herding the bots towards virtuous ends? Or is it just here to kill us?

And so on. Essentially, all of our problems seem to stem from, and are perpetuated by, our loss of control. As Cicero noted above, “Freedom is participation in power.” And by that measure, very few Americans are truly free, as we have no actual power, no control over the larger contours of our communities, our economy, our workplaces, our landscapes. That is, the actual stuff that makes up our lives is largely out of our control. In a plutocracy, the lingua franca is money, and most of us have barely enough pay the bills, let alone enough to actively shape our surroundings.

The economy, AI, technology, politics, media, jobs, sickness and health, global warming, other unfolding eco-catastrophes, wildfires, dwindling water tables, microplastic and forever-chemical accretion in the food chain (e.g., our bodies), fossil fuel costs, mass global migrations, Middle East holy wars and genocides — these things all confront us as powerful, hostile entities, forces almost completely out of our control, yet increasingly menacing and often fatal.

This sense of reality being completely out of our control is the ultimate driving force behind Trumpism, which is, at bottom, a loud scream that the whole system is corrupt and must be torn down. Of all the things that Trump represents, one less-observed trait is that he gives his followers a sense of power over the world. The complexities of an advanced civilization and the popular impotence in the face of an all-consuming plutocracy are disappeared, and the MAGA crowd just needs to pledge fealty to Trump to participate in his power, albeit vicariously. And Trump’s power is the power of simplicity. Everything is a deal or a fight, and there are clear winners and losers with every transaction.

Trumpism thus promises a world brought back under control, the insane cacophony of modernity cancelled out, replaced by a John Wayne universe, where the good guy battle the evildoers, and the former always gets the girl. Needless to say, this promise of control restored to the rank-and-file (did we ever actually have it?) is illusory. By the time the kleptocratic power of Trump and his Project 2025 remora cronies trickles down to regular folks, the actual spoils and booty are gone, leaving just the symbolic piling onto enemies, via virtual comments and other nothing-burger ways of “owning” the dreaded libs. But nothing actually changes for regular people, even the MAGA crowd that is experiencing so much winning. Sure, gas and egg prices might get a little better, but the long arc of popular impotence is not bent in a better direction. Jobs are not more lucrative and secure. The costs of big, life-marking items — cars, houses, education, children — are not brought to heel. Health care scares are still real, with medical bankruptcies continuing to climb. Mass deportation doesn’t actually curtail crime, finally defeat drugs, or deliver an economic bonanza (in actuality, these all get worse).

Dems and liberals are struggling with their messaging right now. They seem to just be holding their breath for the big mid-term blue wave, which may grant them a temporary reprieve from the full brunt of Trump’s authoritarian scepter of destruction. But eventually, they will have to come up with an actual plan to give power and control back to people, instead of just offering up an alternative illusion to the Trump model. Sure, the Dems may clean up in November, giving them at least limited ability to counter some of the current regime’s worst abuses. But if they’re not going to provide a real alternative, something that actually allows people to get control over their lives and livelihoods, then we’ll just continue the pendulous swinging back and forth from the Dems to the GOP, with things getting worse and worse all the time, as the plutocratic agenda remains AI-charged and essentially unchallenged.

Now of course, regular readers probably know where I stand on this (check earlier posts if you’re not familiar). Only Bigger Home Bases backed by a Basic Income can provide actual examples of power returned to regular people. Consistent cash flow via UBI, combined with the financial and psychological stability of a much larger household unit, give people the upper hand on virtually everything important.

• Consumption could be rapidly and sharply reduced, which is the only way to start ecological rehabilitation.
• People would be able to choose their jobs carefully, from a position of strength, working only for places that provide good wages, dignity, fairness, and even purpose.
• Potential AI crises would recede, as the consumption that lies at the heart of AI would be significantly curtailed (let’s remember that AI, like everything else in a capitalist system, relies on consumer demand — if that baseline consumption is sharply reduced, the need for AI also ebbs).
• BHBs, with some federal legislation, could allow people to purchase health care as a kind of domestic corporation, reaping the benefits of their larger size (but also, in the longer run, the MMT approach to federal spending would allow a single-payer system to be implemented).
• The socio-sexual problems that drive much of our cultural polarization would largely fade away as people transition to BHBs. Actual exposure to a much larger group of intimates would reduce bigotry of all kinds. With work pressure and anxiety reduced, disengaged young men could reconnect with the community and find new ways to participate in meaningful labor that is not dictated by corporate overlords. The panic over declining birth rates, which is a global demographic trend and not a moral-spiritual disaster, would go away, as BHBs would allow for community child-rearing. And MMT would eliminate the taxation-vs-spending faux crisis of an aging population.
• BHBs could largely solve the elderly retirement crisis. The stability and sheer physical support provided by larger households would eliminate much of the need for hyper-expensive senior housing. Our elders could stay connected with multiple generations inside much larger domestic settings, which in and of itself would reduce the need for costly medical alternatives.

Many other control-enhancing benefits would issue from BHBs supported by UBI: reduced personal debt, reduced commuting and transport costs, an end to the loneliness epidemic, opportunities for in-house cottage businesses, in-house daycare, curtailed social media usage, a mechanism for ending homelessness, reduced drug use, eating lower on the food chain with options for self-sufficient, small-scale horticulture and animal husbandry.

This is the plan that Dems and liberals must offer, I’m convinced, if they are to provide a concrete option for returning power and control to regular people. The illusory, delusional path of Trumpism, which even many conservatives are now starting to see as a fraud, can only be replaced, in the long run, by an actual, specific model of a way of life which corrodes the power of the plutocracy from below. Only a radical new set of ideas can provide this: UBI, BHBs, and MMT.