My New Year’s resolution is to be more reliable than the New York Times, not simply on par with its mea culpas. But more importantly, I want to live a life worthy of the transparent universe, a world in which every human error will be transcribed, imprinted, and preserved on a Justice Department chip.
It was Yoshie Furuhashi who got me thinking about the transparent universe. Her exquisite treatment of Wal-Mart included a tiny detail about dust-sized inventory chips that will be scattered over everything in the Wal-Mart distribution chain. At first the little bugs will be readable from close range, but later on, who knows? We may be able to scan them from satellite. Thanks to these dust-chips of inventory and our new satellite capabilities, we will soon be able to report planetary inventory. Every roll of toilet paper, yes, and every kilo of hash will be scrupulously reported from planting time to final flush.
So what are we going to do with Wal-Mart’s inventoried planet? Why, of course, we are going to do just what Karl Marx said to do. We’re going to democratize it and put it to work for the workers. After the revolution, there won’t be any room for Fox News on cable, because the bandwidth will be taken over by really important information, like where is the toilet paper kept, where is it being made, and which way does it travel across the Pacific Ocean, east or west?
Then we’re going to have a digital channel for income inventory, where you can see how much everybody in the world gets paid this week. Everyone who is underpaid will be linked to an employer who will then be called into the Justice Department for an explanation. Like I said, no error will be forgotten. And everyone who is overpaid (bad news for North America) will be balanced by computerized assessment, linked preferably to someone belonging to a class of people that the violator has explicitly disparaged. Ann Coulter’s capital gains, for example, will be transferred to Islamic schools. My excess earnings will go to ex-Fox pensioners such as Ann Coulter, etc.
It was A. Philip Randolph, the great radical leader of train porters and civil rights, who said that income transparency would solve the problem of democracy overnight (I read it somewhere at the Schomburg). So please stay tuned for channel Cayman-Geneva, where the holdings of all numbered accounts will finally be revealed. No more Kudlow and Cramer BS about how to be Bull-headed all the time, we’re going to have a financial channel that actually shows you where the money is, including Kudlow’s and Cramer’s.
Tracking all the kilos of pot, heroin, hash, and cocaine will also usher in a great age of freedom when it is seen who really gets most of the good stuff and all of the money. This information will also be kept on chips at the Justice Department to control for hoarding and profiteering. Bust the trusts, not the people, that’s what the newly-minted DEA badges will say. According to my NORML newsletter this week, the combined law enforcement authorities of the USA busted three quarters of a million people for pot last year. That’s 750,000 people kicked around by the state for what? Believe me, when the narco-trade goes public, that nonsense will stop.
What else? Land. Real Estate holdings. Donald Trump, you’re fired. All your luxury-schmuxury condos will be given out on the basis of who puts in the most hours for the shittiest pay. Hot, hot water, sleep-number beds, and remote-control fireplaces given out to every gal working the counter at Rite-Aid. But if you can handle the task, Donald, you could be hired for that, too. And, of course, you’d have a claim on all the excess income that I earn from say, my profits at CounterPunch.
Finally, these inventoried motion detectors are going to be good news for the sexual revolution. That sound you hear is all the hypocrisy of starched Christianity going pop. Look who’s doing it with whom. My word. And all these years, we let them guilt whip us? No more. You just know the masturbation channel is going to be a total mess.
Workers of the world, hang in there. The difference between those who point and those who get pointed at is rapidly approaching a curve. The rest of you, have a Happy New Year anyway.
DISCLAIMER: Any reference to workers revolution is intended for entertainment purposes only, and is not to be confused with inciting jihad. Apologies also to Donald Trump for naming him in the same breath with Ann Coulter. No similarities in character are intended to be imputed from such proximities of prose. The difference between the two of you is huge. Finally, to Keith Stroup, this was supposed to be a kind of thank you note for your work, but somehow I wandered off topic. Mea culpa, Keith. Enjoy.
GREG MOSES is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. His chapter on civil rights under Clinton and Bush appears in Dime’s Worth of Difference, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. He can be reached at: gmosesx@prodigy.net