I buy, therefore I am by @BloggersRUs

I buy, therefore I am

by Tom Sullivan

Black Friday sales could hit a record $23 billion, up nine percent from 2017. That is cause for celebration somewhere. Beyond department store displays, however, other blinking lights warn humans buying products are themselves slowly becoming products.

Look around wherever you are reading this. Unless you are sitting outdoors, virtually everything in your immediate space is the product of a modern corporation. If not a consumer end-product like the screen you see before you, an intermediate. It is hard to conceive that on an island in the Bay of Bengal, a small band of humans lives a near-Stone Age existence, defiantly apart, defending their way of life from colonization and missionaries and cell phones.

The consumer culture celebrated by the Thanksgiving to New Year's season and day-to-day existence shapes not only the way we live our lives, but the way we see ourselves. Homo corporatus views the world through the eyes of accountancy. What is the bottom line? She/he is a consumer. Every human interaction is a transaction. Still an animal, base desires for food, sex, and power still control decision-making. But the way we order society is increasingly reducing us to data. Data to be aggregated. Data to be consumed. Data to sell us products. Data to control us. Data to validate our worth ... as consumers. Humans who are not have none. The First People learned this the hard way.

The Department of Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen proposes a new rule set for deciding whether an immigrant to these shores is worthy of admittance. The metrics purport to measure whether or not supplicants at our borders are, within five years of entry, "likely at any time to become a public charge." In legi-speak, that means anyone whose metrics predict they may at some time become eligible for public cash assistance. Among the deal-breaking benefits are "Supplemental Security Income (SSI), cash assistance from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, and state or local cash assistance program for income maintenance." Enjoying the unearned non-cash benefits of the Land of the Free such as public roads and police protection are not yet disqualifying. (Public comments on the proposed rule are accepted until Dec. 10.)

Basically, DHS wants to know foreigners have backgrounds that "directly correlate to a newcomer’s economic assimilation into the United States." This purports to ensure newcomers will be no financial burden to the consumer/taxpayer. What it come down to though — what homo corporatus really wants to know — is will immigrants throwing themselves at Lady Liberty's sandals be able to buy stuff  here?

In a week in which former president Barack Obama drew a charge of "virtue signaling" by volunteering at a food bank on Thanksgiving, the sitting president signaled to the world that he was fine with dismembering journalists so long as the murderous potentate would be buying billions in U.S. armaments.

For confirmation of administration commitment to that ethic, look no further than the inclusion of FICO scores among DHS's proposed new measures of human value. Josh Lauer at Slate finds this a misapplication of limited data. Although lacking a credit score would not necessarily count against an applicant, under the rule, DHS would consider a low credit score a "negative finding":

Makes sense, right? People with low credit scores are loafers and can’t be trusted to take care of themselves. Unfortunately, this is not what traditional credit scores measure. They are specialized algorithms designed for one purpose: to predict future bill-paying delinquencies, for any reason. This includes late payments or defaults caused by insurmountable medical debts, job loss, and divorce—three leading causes of personal bankruptcy—as well as overspending and poor money management.

The current apotheosis of quantified reputation, however, is China’s social credit system. Described in the Western press as an Orwellian national credit score, the program ranks Chinese citizens according to their performance as borrowers, consumers, and fellow citizens. Those with poor rankings—public smokers, slow taxpayers, people who spend too much on video games, among other red-flagged behaviors—are deprived of access to jobs, travel, discounts, and other social perks. You can’t ride a train without being reminded of the system’s perpetual judgment.

Here's a dystopian vision of the future: A real announcement I recorded on the Beijing-Shanghai bullet train. (I've subtitled it so you can watch in silence.) pic.twitter.com/ZoRWtdcSMy

— James O'Malley (@Psythor) October 29, 2018