What Really Scares Me
Guest Editorial
by Mike L.
What really scares me is all this ID technology.
Retina scanners. Fingerprint scanners. Palm scanners. Face Scanners. ID chips
planted under the skin. And yes, these are all real. I'm not making any of it up.
Just plug a few of these words into your favorite search engine if you don't
believe me.
My body is mine. It's not an machine readable input document for some
computer. God did not create me to be an input document. Ear tags are for
cattle, sheeps and pigs. And we all know where they end up. (Some are in my
freezer right now!)
Who's pushing all this anyways?
I'm not.
My bank card and a PIN number is all I need. Actually cash is all I ever
needed. With 2% interest rates, who needs a bank anyways. A good stash with
a shotgun handy...,
A stash is always open, there is no daily cash limit, it's never out of service,
convenient location, and no transaction fees!
I don't keep much cash in the ATM accessable account anyways. It's the same
account the automatic withdrawals come out of. For everyone that gets robbed
at an ATM, there's at least two fighting with the gas,cable, water etc. company
about an automatic withdrawal that was in error. If someone needs the $128.91
in my bank account that badly, he can gladly have it. I probably won't even
report it to the police, because it is not enough to deal with cops, lawyers and
judges over.
Back to these scan maniacs. So given I need a thumb print to use my ATM,
some freak is either going to kidnap my kid, or cut my thumb off.
We've gone from getting beaten until I give my PIN number and card up, to a
loss of a thumb, and in the case of kidnapping, probably a death or two. This is
progress?
I had this discussion with a cab driver once, and he replied, "When it's too hard
for people to steal money, they just start stealing food, clothing, booze, smokes,
and whatever else they need to survive. You can't eat money anyways."
Progress?
I think the people who are driving this, are the banks and the tax people. The
government's immediate goal is to squeeze as many tax dollars out of everyone.
Or if some idiot sues you, you can be wiped out in a nanosecond. It will be
harder and harder to keep that emergency stash of cash.
The banks like it, because once all their credit records are together, and they
have detailed knowledge of your assets and liabilities, they can reject the bad
risks, and charge the iffy risks a higher rate. As well as foreclose in a
nanosecond. Higher profits for the banks.
And then there's tying health records into this data too. Here in Alberta, the
government is talking about having one great big database with everybody's
health records on it.
Let's look into the future a bit. Try getting a job if you're credit's bad, you got a
bad heart, you spent a few weeks in a mental hospital or a re-hab center.
Maybe you tried to start a business and went bankrupt. Maybe you got caught
doing something stupid when you were a teenager and have a less than spotless
criminal record. I'm sure most of you have had some scrape in the past that
you'd rather the whole world didn't know. What happens when they start
isolating MORE human genes? Let' call it the "Survivalist Gene" for a lack of a
better word. Or the "Questions Authority Gene?" Or the "Doesn't accept the
mainstream media hook, line and sinker Gene". All this data plugged into a big
network of computers. And this gene testing will be done at birth under the
guise of "early diagnoses of disease". The ID'ing will be done for "YOUR
financial security" and "Instant Access to your medical history in times of
medical emergencies".
You must've seen this TV shows like "Profiler" and "Cracker".(I watch them.)
They amass data and make big leaps about what a person is like from just a
small amount of data (evidence). Well, (for all you statistic buffs like me) what if
you had lots more data on about 10 million people?
Let's go profiling. Let's weed out the undesirables before they get a chance!
Hey, it's 95% accurate, and it saves us a ton of law enforcement and health care
money!
A little far-fetched, maybe...
See I'm not so scared of disasters. I grew up in the country, and was about 9
before we had electricity, and about 14 before we had indoor plumbing. Day
long power outages happened several times a year, winter and summer. Been
snowed in for a week many times.
What I'm scared of is this quite, slow, creeping accumulation of information
about everything we do. Where we live. Where we work. If you pay with
charge cards or bank cards, someone knows what we bought when and where.
Our health, both physical and mental, our finances, what we drive, what we
look like, our legal run-ins, who we phone, what web sites we look at and soon
our genetic dispositions. Punch a few buttons and they know where to pick you
up. If not now, in the very near future, everything will be available to the powers
in control with the touch of a button. And of course a computer generated
profile or "risk assessment", probably summed up in a few magic numbers, and
a short paragraph or two.
If knowledge is power, then somebody is sure collecting a pile of it.
Sure there will natural disasters. Storms, floods, volcanoes, new deadly
diseases, wars, famines, death, pestilence, Earthquakes, riots. (Did I leave any
of the horsemen of the Apocalypse out?) We can and should prepare for these.
(Which reminds me, I need to get a truckload of firewood before it gets much
colder.) A month of supplies seems just about right to me. But these are local
catastrophes, and through government bailouts, insurance companies and just
plain hardy folks, things will eventually get running again.
The horseman that scare me is the one that's the color of money. The one that
man has invented.
For example:
Our federal debt in Canada is 65% to 80% (depending on who you listen
to) of our GDP.
Then there's provincial, municipal and city debt's. (Don't forget Ontario
hydro and it's debt, which is larger than most provinces)
Then there is personal and household debt
Then there is the unfunded Canadian Pension Plan. Unfunded means
there is no money set aside and invested. It has to come young working
taxpayers.
How about all those aging baby-boomers that are living longer and are
going to beat the crap out of our health care system in the next 20 - 30
years.
And gee, what's going to happen when all those baby-boomers start
cashing in their stocks and mutual funds. Are the DOW, the TSE, and all
those other stock markets going to keep climbing to new heights. I
remember something from an economics class about prices going down
when supply exceeds demand.
I heard just recently on the TV, that some mutual funds have never experienced
a net yearly outflow of cash. They have always had more money coming in than
going out. I wonder what's going to happen when the baby-boomers start
drawing out their retirement money. For those of you that think all these mutual
funds were run by honest and COMPETENT people and that none of these
institutions will crash...
Another thing that scared me was a news story about, that on average, in this
one large Canadian company, the average employee was taking 4 sick days off
a year. Authur Anderson (don't get me started about them, PLEASE) was
called in to fix things. Apparently, this was cutting significantly into the
companies profits. 72% of these sick days were for parents looking after their
sick children at home under the age of six.
Now if this company can't handle a 1.6% cut in employee output, with a 10%
unemployment rate in Canada, there is something out of whack here. For god's
sake, hire a few more people, and let these mother go home and be with their
sick babies.
I guess the major theme here, is (to me) things seem wound up too tight.
Financial markets are stretched. Employees are either overworked, and
over-stressed, or not working at all. The government and big money fears this
and is inventing and implementing more and more ways to keep a lid on things.
Monitor the undesirables. Take away everyone's guns. Follow the big cash
transactions like a hawk. They don't want anyone (besides themselves) to trade
guns, money and cash and accumulate wealth and power. (Freedom fighters
have been trading drugs for weapons for many years in many countries). Train
up more police with deadlier tactics and weapons. Pump out this crap called
TV, which teaches everyone to be passive and nonaggressive. That the happy
friendly government will fix everything and make it happy. That we are not
capable of looking after ourselves. Just like children. Shut-up and behave.
Mommy and Daddy know what's best.
There won't be a global revolution. There won't be a global war. There won't
be a big loud flashing jolt. Just a slow slide into a polluted, poverty-stricken,
morally bankrupt, diseased un-educated totalitarian global village. That's what
I'm preparing for. 30 years from now, we will look around and wonder how it
got this way.
And these are some of the things that scare me.
Mike L.