An action could start with the dissemination of a list of reforms. A list of demands. A numbered list. The One Way, the Two Whatevers, the Three Represents, the Four Cheaps, the Five Loves, the Six Dimensions of Wellness, the Seven Bad Ideas, the Eightfold Path, the Nine Muses, the Ten Commandments, the Eleven Broken Promises, the Twelve Apostles, the Thirteen Colonies, the Sixteen Laws of Capitalism, and so on. Any whole number under twenty will serve.
Retaining the large while releasing the small. Enjoying the shade of trees planted by ancestors. Practice is the sole criterion of truth.
In Thucydides’s trap, the waning hegemon gets drawn into conflict with the rising power, not understanding this is useless and eventually will cause it to lose more than if it had conceded the hegemonic role. Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms. Extant and permeable to inspection and alteration. The Chinese party-state system is very different from multiparty parliamentary systems. Representation is compromised everywhere. Representation is damaged everywhere. Rule from above, rule from below. The excluded middle. The Chou-an Society is the Peace Planning Society. Extant and public.
Peng Jinyi’s Three Problems to Be Solved, 1915: gender equality, labor justice, end of imperialism.
“All for the people; all relies on the people; from the people and to the people.” Mao Zedong, 1927. “That government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this Earth.” Abraham Lincoln, 1863.
Class struggle tries to change the system, weiquan tries to protect individual rights in the current system. Laborers hired by capital are only a form of capital. Or they are disaggregated commodities owned by capital. Article 1 of the constitution: “The People’s Republic of China is a socialist state under the people’s democratic leadership led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and farmers.” Article 2: “All power in the PRC belongs to the people.” Cai Yuanpei, 1918: “Nothing but an international bond of working people can ever ensure their definitive triumph. Laborers are sacred!”
P2P is peer to peer, usually loans without bank intermediation. Blockchain governance is an algorithmically assisted direct democracy, or a representative government in which the representatives are in part algorithmic. Laws are algorithms in a system in which human legal workers (researchers, lawyers, judges, plaintiffs) make definitions and choices at the branching points in various decision trees. Representative government is already semi-algorithmic. New laws are clinamen (Greek for “swerve in a new direction”). Impulses. “Allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.” Who are the discredited in the current situation?
Gray rhinos are like black swans, but less unusual than black swans, which are very unusual. Gray rhinos are more like lurking big problems people ignore, capable of causing big trouble. Proximity diagrams based on cloud data. Peng Ling, member of standing committee and possibly the next president of China and general secretary of the CCP, works at the center of the largest web of contacts of anyone in the Party, a web that includes non-Party communities of artists and intellectuals, and many women in all stations of life. Either a gray rhino or a black swan. “No woman could do this but her, although every woman does it every day.” It’s impossible, so when it becomes possible it will be easy. Peng’s closest colleague on the standing committee is Chan Guoliang, minister of finance. Chan’s daughter, Chan Qi, has systematically evaded the Social Credit System and all activity in the cloud. Proximity network for her is therefore incomplete, but suggestive. Social advocate, suspected leadership in the migrant workers’ offline network sometimes called WeDon’tChat. Departing president Shanzhai is closely associated with standing committee member Huyou, minister of state security, who is closely associated with PLA’s Central Military Commission and the Skyheart program, which is associated with Red Spear. Hostile pilot syndrome is a political tactic. Assassination is a political tactic.
Frederick Fredericks. American quantum encryption expert. Proximity network almost completely incomplete. Frid ric, from Old German, means peace power.
If everyone had adequate life support. If the work of human civilization was devoted to biosphere rectification. If their systems of exchange promoted these projects.
An oracle answers questions. A genie obeys commands to the best of its abilities, and makes suggestions. An agent acts in the world. An AI can act only within electrical systems. Electrical systems control many aspects of the infrastructure. The Internet is a permeable speech space. The infrastructure is permeable. Every actor is part of an actor network. Allies are needed for effective action. “No man is an island” (Donne). A situation may be effectively computable without being effectively actionable. We know, but we can’t act. Speak now, or forever rest in peace.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
liliang pingheng
Balance of Forces
Ta Shu was still standing there in the hallway, thinking over his options and realizing he had none to speak of, when a young woman appeared beside him. One of John Semple’s assistants, a diplomat. Valerie something.
“Valerie Tong,” she said. “American Secret Service.” She handed him a pistol no bigger than the palm of his hand, made of plastic, like a child’s toy. “Taser dart,” she said. “It takes about an hour to recover from shots. It has four shots.”
“But—”
“They’re on the top floor, Room 5C.”
“But—”
“Take Fred and Qi downstairs to the transport center. Rover 14 is programmed to drive to the American mine complex in north Procellarum. Put them on that rover and then come back here.”
“Shouldn’t I go with them?”
“We could use you here to help negotiate a settlement.”
“But I’ll be identified as the one who set them free.”
“That doesn’t matter. It might even help. Besides, it will be your word against theirs. Right now the security cameras where you’re going will show blank for the next hour.”
“All right,” Ta Shu said, standing carefully upright and inspecting the little gun in his hand. “Just pull trigger? No safety?”
“The safety is off. Just pull the trigger.”
“Room 14?”
“Room 5C! Top floor. Rover 14 after that, down in the transport center. Bottom floor. Go high then low.”
In the midst of greatest obstruction, friends come.
He hurried as best he could to the stairwell and lofted up the stairs four at a time, feeling like a newborn superhero, clumsy with his unaccustomed powers. The little gun was in his coat pocket, and when he came to the fifth floor, he pulled it out and put his forefinger through the finger guard and pressed the trigger ever so gently. No way to practice pulling it, oh well. He walked gingerly to Room 5C, lurched through the open doorway and shot Bo and Dhu and then two of their henchmen, tick tick tick tick, after which the four fell and thrashed around on the floor, kicking and shuddering. Then a fifth agent came in another doorway looking surprised, and suddenly Fred Fredericks was flying though the air behind him, feet first, kicking the man hard in the back of the head, which sent the man flying across the room into the doorjamb, where he smacked the front of his head. Fred spun in the air, arms thrown out, and landed badly on a desk next to one of the quivering downed men.
Qi appeared in that same doorway holding her belly. She helped Fred get to his feet and away from their spastic captors. The shuddering men were awful to see, but worse was the one Fred had kicked in the head, who lay sprawled on the floor, inert.