News Gloss

The privatization of truth

The age-old deception of government: hide your own crimes, and invent or highlight the crimes of your antagonists. This is used everywhere, all the time. It's a basic tool. It's also pretty easy to see through, with a bit of research.

But finding the truth has become much harder in the past century ... the economic causes of war have always existed and are always visible, but the analysis of a specific event is very difficult, because the causes are hidden inside of private companies.

Perhaps Lebanon's former PM was killed by Syrian interests, or by US interests, or by someone else. But unless you know specifically what's going on around money, profits, contracts, resources etc., it's impossible to find the immediate, true motive. And unless you can find the motive, you can't find the culprit. Any police detective will tell you the same thing.

It's the privatization of truth.

Consider how difficult it would be to make a computer simulation of the Earth, right now. Most of the environmental & cultural destruction, most of the pain and suffering, and most of the plans & data regarding these, are in private hands. We can see the effects, and to some extent the physical causes, but the specific guilty parties aren't always visible. We know the larger cause -- maximizing profit. But unless transparency is required by the majority, we'll be in the dark as we all slowly boil to death.

The available public data is not well-organized. High-detail modelling of finance, resources, development & profits, including names and deals, based on current data on the web, could be invaluable. If we point out the destruction, it would help us to justify the alternatives.

posted by Greg Bryant @ 11:17 AM