Big Brother where art though

Since data protection is notoriously of great public concern, the ever present fear of the Big Brother might be one of the major objections to the manifesto. You can indeed mostly forget about data protection in the proposed society. I do not however judge this a show stopper.

1984, the book that injected Big Brother into public consciousness was not primarily about a police state spying on its citizens. 1984's main concern was governance through fear - something that is already much more systematically practiced than spying on the citizens. The information gap that is so prominently exposed in 1984 is rather a means for inducing fear. This notwithstanding there have been notorious police states and they are apparently not very desirable. These police states did always and must always work with an information gap between government and citizens.

The society proposed here does not have such an information gap. Quite to the contrary it is more transparent than any other society system ever tested on a major scale.

There is another safe guard against this turning into a police state and it is just as important as the transparency: there is no continuous legislative or military that could seize power. The system is from the ground designed to be resistant against turning into a police state, it's not like current systems where such safeguards are second thoughts after bad experiences.

What remains are big nosy business, naughty neighbors and the impertinent paparazzi. Big nosy business has to crap its marketing departments. What remains of a companie's marketing is its reputation and public coverage. Those companies - as every entity in the proposed society much more transparent than any current company - do good with not pissing of their customers by spying on them. Currently the collected data is supposed to be mostly used for market research - in this case anonymous data would suffice and it would protect the companie's reputation - and for selective advertising. Advertising is forbidden as propaganda, thus no trouble here.

The business model that supports impertinent paparazzi might not work under extreme governing. The shots paparazzi make are not protected by copyright. And the media that publish these shots are not allowed to sell slots for advertising. The only way this could work might be in big daily yellow print media, which I assume will share the fate of the dinosaurs rather sooner than later. The paparazzi has a Xin like everybody else. And his victims will be really mad at him. I don't think there are that many shots that are worth ruining your recorded reputation (i.e. Xin).

Ugh, well the neighbors. Remember what I wrote about being paranoid about your wanking habits? Since you are reading this you must have decided to read on beyond that point. And here it is. This is the price that is to be paid for extreme governing. I assume the consequences to be rather mild though. Spying on your neighbors will probably be considered a very bad habit for a long time to come (and if it isn't people obviously have learned to live with transparency). Doing it might isolate you socially since it reflects in your Xin. Plus, one has the option of retaliation - just spy back. Plus it might have positive consequences, too. One thing that is commonly bemourned in current western democracies is the atomization of society, the excessive individualism. Knowing a bit more about one's neighbors counteracts this trend as does the clan system and the mutual responsibility.