Hey, remember "Occupy?" (Must I?): Sensation Machines, by Adam Wilson

 I have gotten better about putting down bad books, but I still have room for improvement.  This book irritated me, and so I shall grumble, yet here is the meta-irritation, if I may conjure a hyphenation.  What can keep me reading an artistically mediocre book is style.  In the same way that slick guitar solos can convince me to listen to music that is otherwise uninspired or cliche, a writer with style can keep me reading even if the plot, characters and world are ultimately uninspired.  Some writers just have a way with the word, and I admire them, I wish that I could write like them, I know that I cannot, and I read their books even when I recognize that all I am reading is stylized inanity.  I suck.  Then there are books like Sensation Machines, by Adam Wilson.  What is truly frustrating is that Adam Wilson can write.  The man has style.  In musical jargon, we would say that he has "chops."  One of the main characters in the book has an unfortunate fascination with rap, and I do not know what the terminology would be since I have neither knowledge nor interest in rap, but in jazz or bluegrass or any of the forms that do interest me, we would say, "chops."  Adam Wilson has chops.  Writers can keep me reading dull and uninspired books when they have chops.  Consider John Scalzi.  Not all of his books are up to his highest standards.  His best book, in my opinion, was Redshirts, but even his worst books still have style, and he is going the direction of the genre, which has some unfortunate implications, but the man still has chops.  So I read.  What happens, though, when chops are used in service of something that is not just dull, but fundamentally bad, driven into the ground by toxically misinformed politics?  I had to stop reading N.K. Jemisin, once my favorite author, because she went so far overboard on toxic identity politics, letting her hatred turn her into an eldritch beast that could be, and indeed, has been her own villain, remembering her role in the Isabel Fall debacle.  N.K. Jemisin was overcome by hatred, and she is unreadable, as a caricature of leftist-rage-turned-racist-vitriol.  Which brings me to Adam Wilson.  Sensation Machines was published in 2020, as a near-future tale to take place now-ish.  It had been on my stack, why?, and again, I picked it up semi-randomly and continued mostly out of macabre fascination with just how badly it reads at around the time it was supposed to happen.  In some sense, I am happy that I bothered to finish, just to find out how illogical the underlying plot-mystery was.  Oy.(The characters are Jewish too.)

Here's the deal.  In... the future!... which is now, but not, because as difficult as it is to write near-future science fiction, it is harder if you are blinded by extremist ideology that you do not recognize as extremist, long ago debunked and repeatedly debunked, but anyway, in the future/now, it is what it is, always is, and has been for 150 years, and always shall be-- "late stage capitalism."

(This is coming across as scornful, after yesterday's post on Diogenes and Seneca.  Hmm.)

What, you may ask, is "late stage capitalism?"  It is not actually a thing.  It is an empty term, signaling the speaker/writer's ideology, like "neoliberalism."  Neoliberalism is not a thing, either, but it sounds erudite, doesn't it?  It is not.  It is an empty term.

Anyway, remember how Marx predicted the end of capitalism a century and a half ago?  And it keeps not happening?  Yeah, the "vanguard" inspired by that psychopath, created the worst mass casualties in history, by far, because Marx was the worst monster in history, no contest, but the USSR collapsed, China introduced privatization without economic competition, making it neither fish nor fowl, and capitalism keeps on chugging, producing prosperity, but those still devoted to the worst person in all of history are forever calling everything "late-stage capitalism," because the end of capitalism is right around the corner, it has been for a century and a half, and it always will be.

I wrote about Malthusianism recently, but this is a particularly egregious example of the same fallacy.

Anyway, in 2008, we had something that happens on very rare occasions, and far less frequently in capitalist systems than in pre-capitalist systems, and the communist systems that these people advocate, which was a financial crisis.  Amid the crisis, a bunch of kids went to some parks, sat around some drum circles, and told themselves some fairy tales about basic economics.

"Occupy Wall Street" was among the silliest protest movements in history, and predictably, it went nowhere and accomplished nothing.  Instead, the economy did what capitalist economies do.  It recovered.  What would have happened without TARP, the stimulus bill, and so forth?  Could we have written or implemented them differently?  Reasonable questions, all, but you can go check the economic data.  GDP, unemployment, whatever.  Granted, the stock market crash was un-fun, but anyone properly allocated given age and retirement time horizon was fine.  Allocation matters, and recoveries happen.  (The S&P closed at 4890.97 last Friday.  Hell, yeah.)

And so, "Occupy Wall Street" faded into the mists of history, like a one-hit-wonder band that you liked as a teenager and would be embarrassed to admit to having liked today.

Of course, you may be vindicated by history.  At the time, I... kind of liked that hair metal band, Extreme (fuck off), because the 12-string guitar on "Whole Hearted" sounded cool, OK?  To reiterate:  off is the direction in which you can fuck.  See that "off" there?  Fuck that direction.  Fuck it, good and hard.

Anyway, now they're a thing again because the guitarist, Nuno Bettencourt, played a guitar solo that made every guitarist on the planet shit about 50 bricks for every snarky comment he ever made about hair metal.  Yes, the "Rise" solo was that good.  Yes, I should still have been embarrassed, and I humiliated myself for the amusement of a non-existent reader by acknowledging that there was a hair metal band that I liked, even into the grunge/alternative era.

But everything old is new again, so let's revive Occupy!  It's time for a revival!  It's retro!  Like, audio cassettes, which are somehow a thing again because yay, retro.

Anyway, in the future/now, drones and automation are causing a total economic collapse because they t'k'r jobs!  Um, so that's not happening.  The unemployment rate was 3.7% according to the December reading, and sure, there's a Philips curve effect happening, but drones and automation are not taking everyone's jobs.  If you enjoy the pile, and it's all consensual, have fun, but really, the pile is not necessary.

But do you see why we don't do near-future sci-fi predictions?  'K, couple of comments.  First, Wilson's prediction has been ubiquitous, not just for decades, but since the industrial revolution began.  It keeps failing.  There are two problems with this type of prediction.  The obvious problem is that you cannot predict the direction nor the rate of change of technology, but the second, and arguably more important point is that the labor market is dynamic.  We do not merely observe an exogenous shock to the labor market without a labor market response.  When technology changes, the structure of the labor market changes, so the labor market does not look like it did 200 years ago, nor even 20.  Hence, when you see a prediction that technology will put everyone out of work, a) recognize that the prediction is centuries old, b) that it has always gone wrong, c) it has always gone wrong for the same reason, which is that the technology creates jobs that you cannot predict, and d) wait for a minute to watch because there are certain regularities, like this one.  Labor markets adapt as we find jobs that wouldn't have existed were it not for the technology that the person making the prediction did not fully understand.

But it's a very convenient fallacy for those committed to "late-stage capitalism."

Notice, too, that we now contend with OMG AI!  Will AI t'k'r job?  AI will change the labor market.  Jobs currently done by humans will be done by AIs.  Most education jobs can be done by AI.  AIs can blather leftist screeds and harangue you about your privilege too!  If we replace K-12 teachers and professors with AIs, and students just have AI programs write their papers for them, we can do away with the whole charade, and that's just one sector.

What happens then?  The labor market will change.  Is this the time that the prediction finally comes true?

Wolf!  Wolf!  Wolf!

Anyway, Wilson wants/needs a "late-stage capitalism" premise because every leftist needs that narrative.  Why?  Wilson wants to make a case for "universal basic income."  Originally called the "negative income tax" when Milton Friedman mused about the idea, it is an interesting notion with some benefits and drawbacks, and some risks, but the left latched onto it like barnacles a few years ago.  It won't happen.

But here's the story.  Blah, blah, drones and automation mean that everyone loses their jobs, so there's a UBI bill.  Funded how?  MASSIVE GIGANTIC HOLY FUCKING SHIT ECONOMY-DESTROYING TAXES, if you recognize that there is such a thing.  Here's the thing.  If the economy ceases to function because everyone is out of work, then profits go down, because nobody is spending.

So, what are you actually going to tax?  Wilson did not think about this.  Worse, he poses a major economic downturn.  Does the name, John Maynard Keynes, sound familiar?  There are two things you don't do during an economic downturn-- cut spending, or raise taxes.  And Wilson's plot is built on a UBI bill funded by a HOLYFUCKINGSHITGINORMOUS tax increase.  This is as bad as Herbert Hoover, but masquerading as FDR.

There's nothing to tax if the economy has collapsed, and if you try, you'll just drive what little economy there is even further into the ground.  Like I said, Herbert Hoover masquerading as FDR.

It gets worse.  If the problem is that nobody is working, you cannot have a country in which everyone is on UBI because then there's no productivity to fund that UBI.  The government takes basically everything it can from anyone who has anything, which won't be nearly enough, then prints a fuckload more, to give as UBI to a consumer base to spend on businesses whose income is entirely the UBI which they pay in taxes, which is what funds the UBI.

Can you detect the problem here?

In principle, a UBI-type system might work, for a small portion of the population if there is a functioning economy on which it piggybacks.  It cannot replace an economy, because the economy must have productivity and employment intertwined.  You cannot have the entire economy be a welfare state.

But it'll get so much worse.

Anyway, because the economy collapsed, Occupy is back!  Because OCCUPY!  Occupy was awesome, right?  So Occupy is back!  Because UBI!  Occupy is back, and pushing for UBI.

A couple at the center of the plot consists of an inept banker, whose friend gets murdered during an Occupy riot, but that can't really be it, because as we all know, extreme leftists pushing to overthrow capitalism are never violent, right?  Yeah, they're always innocent, so it has to be something else.

Anyway, his wife, Wendy, works for an ad agency.

Wendy's... firm is hired by Lucas, who is secretly plotting to defeat the UBI bill, and he wants the ad agency to shift public opinion, and a small ad agency has the power to shift public opinion on a dime because that's how public opinion works when the plot requires it.  Lucas has a scheme, which is the most mathematically stupid business scheme I have ever seen in a novel.

I swear, this is the worst, although one needs to think about money, mathematically, for a fraction of a second in order to realize it rather than spouting Marxist platitudes, and obviously, that's out of fashion.  It truly baffles me that the most evil and debunked writer in history is the one guy who never goes out of fashion.

Anyway, so here's Lucas's mathematically moronic scheme, demonstrating what happens when Marxists try to think economically.

Lucas runs a computer game, with its own game currency, which is a plot that I've read many times before, from Stephenson, Stross and others.  But here's his big idea.  He wants to pay you, as private UBI, to wear his wearable technology, which tracks everything, and then he'll use that to sell ads.  That'll be your UBI.

Think for a moment.

Yes, you buy products or use products for free and give up data.  Can you have your income be your payoff for your data?  No.  Any money paid to you can only be an investment, and an investment has to have a rate of return, so no firm will pay you unless it gets more in return.  If the payment is your income, then the maximum a firm can get back is exactly what it pays you for wearing the technology.

In fact, if you are being paid to wear the technology, the firm necessarily loses money, because it has to pay for the technology, upgrades, upkeep, maintenance, and so forth.  Mathematically, this is a surefire loser.  Lucas is a fool.  This cannot possibly make money for him because there cannot, mathematically, be an ROI.  It is impossible for there to be an ROI.

If you have a job, could someone pay you for your data to target ads?  In theory, but it would only give the firm an ROI if you have other income.  That payment cannot be your income and give the firm any ROI.

The problem is that Wilson wanted a plot about UBI, and he wanted a plot about wearables and data, but he was too blinded by ideology and ignorant of basic math and economics to see what happens when you try to put these two together.

Consequently, this is the worst evil-mastermind scheme I have ever read.  In the book, Lucas calls it, "Project Pinky," in reference to Pinky & The Brain.  If you ever watched the show, or the shorts within Animaniacs, you have a sense of the humorous implausibility of Brain's schemes.  Lucas's scheme is, ironically, no more sensible than one of Brain's schemes.  Unfortunately, I do not think that Wilson quite meant it that way.  That, though, says something about the understanding that Marxists still bring to economics.  They are constitutionally and intellectually incapable of doing basic math.

In addition, Wilson invokes every other leftist cause along the way.  The only beat he really misses is that the two main characters are straight, which is kind of verboten now in sci-fi.  In fact, since the central murder is the gay best friend, you could accuse Wilson of fridging the gay, and the accusation would probably give Wilson a fit.  Everything else is there, including sincere, heartfelt use of the metaphor of "waking up" to get to "wokeness" as a good thing.  Yes, he refers to "wokeness" as an important thing, because in 2020, the term hadn't become a full-on joke that even the left could recognize yet.  Cringe.

Some of Wilson's invocations of leftist catechism age badly, particularly as one reads in January of 2024.  Since the main characters are Jewish, they make note of an attack on the Hillel at FSU, with a group surrounding the building and holding them hostage.

But it was neo-nazis in the book.  In real-world 2023 or 2024?  The actual attacks on campus Jewish organizations are being done by leftists.  Consider Cooper Union.  Neo-nazis are not the threat.  Leftists are the threat.  Wilson gives obligatory shout-outs to "Free Palestine," but those are the people trapping Jewish students in buildings on college campuses and threatening violence.  Oops.

And historically, leftists still win on body count.  No, you don't need some drugged out loner to have murdered Ricky.  Communists really have killed millions and millions and millions, so telling me that now communism is peaceful and pacifistic?  No.

Wilson's history is a suspicious reading, and his economics and math are objectively wrong.

All of this is a shame, because he is a tremendously talented writer.  As I said, Wilson's writing chops are as good as any around today.  If he addressed those chops to something other than rah-rah-communism, he could do something valuable and meaningful.

Study first.  Learn first.  Produce afterwards.

Ruins, "Economic Pond Mossa," from Hyderomastgroningem.