State of Dystopia: January 2021

You are reading a State of Dystopia post. These entries deal with current events that put us on the cyberpunk dystopia timeline. Read them now to see the future we’re going towards. Or read them in the future to figure out where things went wrong.

Okay, a bit of a late entry here, with February more than halfway over. As always though, I’d like to insist that it’s good to stop and reflect in a crazy 24/7 news cycle.

2021’s opening month had plenty of tumult, but it also had more good things than the last few months. All thing’s considered though, don’t fret much, because we’re still on track for that dystopian cyberpunk future.

Note: I’ve left the DC riot out of this list, as well as the response to it. That’s because I’ve already written two blog posts about the nuance of it, and I’d rather give the space to other events.

Without further ado:

January’s dystopian developments:

• US sees greatest single-year drop in life expectancy in 40 years. Largely thanks to Covid-19, of course. Sadly, 2020’s lowered life expectancy just continues a years-long trend of declining life expectancy.
  • The last few years’ life expectancy declines are largely due to ‘deaths of despair.’ Unfortunately, even as Covid ebbs, we may be left with a resurgence in those deaths of despair. A report released this month found June 2019-June 2020 had the largest number of fatal overdoses ever recorded in a single year in the US.
• The emergence of some troublesome variants. I’d rather not over-emphasize this, because half of the internet is already freaking out about it, but it feels obligatory to mention. This won’t end civilization, but it does dampen hopes of an easier way out of Covid.
• Global ice loss accelerating at record rate. According to the paper, the rate of ice loss is now “in line with the worst-case scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” which means some serious sea level rise and the risk of ice loss feedback loops.
• 2020 functionally tied for the hottest year on record. NASA and a science group of the European Commission said 2020 was tied with 2016 for the hottest year on record. Some other groups (like National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) said it came in second. But as one NASA scientist put it, the one-year record isn’t what matters—what matters is that the last 7 years have also been the warmest 7 years on record.
  • Plus, the US saw record climate damages in 2020, at $95 billion. That’s a fairly sizable jump from 2019’s $40 billion.
• Lloyd Austin gets his waiver and Senate confirmation. The U.S. has a longstanding norm intended to maintain civilian control over the military: the Secretary of Defense is not supposed to have served in the armed forces less than 7 years before their appointment. A waiver from Congress is needed. That norm was broken once in 1950, and again in 2017 by Trump. It has now been broken again.
  • Perhaps even more alarming, Austin is a board member of Raytheon, the world’s 3^rd largest arms maker and largest producer of guided missiles.
  • But as Biden said in The Atlantic, Austin is black, and his “lived experience” is needed, so this is actually a sign of progress.
• Our new Treasury Secretary’s high speaking fees. To be fair, Janet Yellen’s predecessor (Mnuchin) was an executive at Goldman Sachs and ran a hedge fund. So she’s the lesser of two oligarchs. But I must confess—Yellen earning $7 million in two years just for speaking at banks and tech companies does not fill me with comfort.
• Instacart fires its unionized workers. Last year, 10 workers in Illinois successfully formed Instacart’s first and only union. In January of this year, Instacart conducted a round of mass layoffs. While firing 2,000 of it’s 10,000 grocery store workers, Instacart made sure to also fire all of those 10 unionized workers. Back to square one.
• Amazon’s tries to suppress a union vote. Nearly 6,000 workers at a major warehouse in Alabama are currently voting on whether or not to form Amazon’s first union. Despite the National Labor Relations Board allowing the vote to take place by mail (due to local Covid rates), Amazon formally requested the vote be conducted in-person, arguing that mail-in ballots would increase the risk of fraud.
  • Amazon has also texted the warehouse workers with anti-union messaging, plastered the place with anti-union banners, and launched a website to ‘inform’ workers about the dangers of unionizing.
• A very hollow “victory” for Assange. You can despise him, but the WikiLeak founder’s extradition case is among the most consequential press freedom cases in decades. The UK judge ruled Assange could not be extradited. Which sounds good, but…
  • That was solely on the grounds that Assange would be at risk of suicide in a US prison due to his severe psychological deterioration.
  • The judge agreed with the charges brought by the US and rejected Assange’s defense: in other words, Assange’s actions in exposing US war crimes were not journalism.
  • The Trump administration’s decision to prosecute Assange was the first time a media figure has been charged for publishing classified administration. Leakers have been prosecuted, but journalists publish classified material all the time. The Obama administration explicitly refused to prosecute Assange in this way out of fears it would permanently damage press freedom.
  • The Biden administration is now picking up where the Trump administration left off, and is insisting on extradition by appealing the judge’s decision.

Spotlight: Nevada wants a cyberpunk future now

I’m cheating a little, because though it was first revealed to the public in January, coverage really broke out in February. Forgive me, but I couldn’t wait another month:

Nevada is currently considering a bill that would allow tech companies to create their own local governments. The bill is being pushed not by some fringe libertarians, but Nevada’s Democratic governor. Of course, there’s no guarantee it will ever become reality. But that this is being seriously advocated by the state’s highest authority is disturbing.

Few things are more cyberpunk than this plan:

• The plan would establish “Innovation Zones,” large tracts of land specifically available only to companies that make or work with “innovative technology.” So, tech companies only.
• Such tech companies would need to be big: at least $250 million on hand and plans to invest upwards of $1 billion in their zone.
• Companies would initially operate under the supervision of existing counties. They would then phase out the county by taking up its duties, and become independent governments.
• The companies would have the same authority as normal counties: they could impose taxes, form school districts, and even run the courts. Though it’s not mentioned in reporting, one presumes the corporations could run their own police departments.
• Funnily enough, the plan is being pitched as an alternative to tax breaks. It’s no longer sufficient for states and cities to race to the bottom in offering the best financial incentives for companies: now they need to cede the authority of the state itself.

The not-so-bad and the …good?

In the last few of these monthly round-up posts, this section has featured 2-3 items. Like I said, January had a few more good (or good-ish) things than usual. 

• Private space exploration’s start continues. From Virgin Orbit having its first successful launch; to Blue Origin having another successful capsule launch; to SpaceX announcing it would take an all-civilian crew to space by the end of this year…January 2021 certainly saw the seeds of the future of space exploration. It’s mixed news.
  • The good: Space exploration is cool. There should be more of it.
  • The bad: Welcome to the future, in which the Earth is dying and megacorps monopolize the resources outside of it.
• Former governor of Michigan to be charged. High tech, and low life. What lowers living conditions more than letting a city get poisoned by lead in the service of austerity and privatization? The charging of ex-Gov Snyder and other officials is not sufficient justice for the people of Flint, and it may not even materialize in anything more than a slap on the wrist. But at least for now, it’s a nice sight you don’t see every day.
• New START treaty renewed. The New START treaty is the last remaining nuclear arms control pact between the U.S. and Russia, which together hold 90% of the world’s nukes. Despite how old-fashioned it may seem to care about this, the world is probably as at-risk of nuclear war as it was during the Cold War.
• Some reprieve on Yemen. With about 80% of the population kept perpetually reliant on handouts, Yemen is the world’s worst human rights crisis. The United States has been fully complicit in keeping it that way for years, by supporting the war waged against it by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. At the end of January, the Biden administration halted arm sales to Saudi Arabia, and in early February, announced it would stop support for “offensive operations” in Yemen. This action won’t feed a starved nation, but at least the bombs won’t come as easily.
  • The Biden administration will always find a way to curb your enthusiasm though, and observers are suspicious of loopholes. Take this with a grain of salt.
• WhatsApp exodus. It has yet to be seen whether this will endure, and it’s hard to imagine WhatsApp’s popularity taking a lasting hit. But at least in the moment, it’s nice to see consumers reject an app solely on the basis of their privacy policy, and move to more privacy-conscious alternatives.
• A brief moment of resistance to Wall St. It was short-lived and there is no indication it will lead to a lasting movement, but at least the GameStop revolt challenged power directly. When was the last time you can remember a protest action costing a Wall St firm literally billions of dollars within a matter of days? And aside from taking a simple pleasure in the GameStop frenzy itself, there’s cause for optimism: the genie’s out of the bottle, and maybe we can repeat this with coherence later down the line.

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Good reads from January

• Jacobin: Why the Minimum Wage Won Where Biden Couldn’t.
  • A good reminder that you don’t need to limit your hopes of left-wing economic policy to places where Democrats have power.
• Quillette: Stop Sensationalizing the Threat of Right-Wing Political Violence.
  • I know, Quillette. But author Zaid Jilani makes a point worth bearing in mind.
• Wired: The Ongoing Collapse of the World’s Aquifers.
  • A look into how the over-utilization of underground water causes the ground to collapse. Might sound like a random, relatively minor problem, but some researchers think it could affect over a billion people over the coming decades.
• The New Yorker: CRISPR and the Splice to Survive.
  • On the rapid evolution of gene editing and its potential ramifications in biological diversity. Or, how we might use it to save species from extinction or wipe them from the animal kingdom.

And that’s January. ‘Til next time.

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