Data is Surplus Value

Data is what the political economy wants from us and data is what we have to offer.

My problem with the digital world where corporations (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft at the top of the list) know everything there is to know about me is not that they're out there compiling this info. It is that they don't share the info with me!

Why am I not allowed to know this stuff? Why is it easier for a faceless data-collecting corporation to learn more about me than I am allowed to know about myself? If this info about me can be harvested, then don't I have a proprietary right to that information? Shouldn't all pertinent info about me be made available to me?

I listened to a lecture the other day where a cyber-security expert talked about Equifax (a credit score company) getting hacked by the Chinese in 2017. Yes, it is a shame and a crime that the Chinese now have this information about me--but, shit, man, I never asked Equifax to compile the information about me to begin with! Before I take my revenge on China, shouldn't I sue Equifax? (*) Have you ever gotten a credit report? They don't ask questions about you, they tell you things about you. Things you may have forgotten, things you may not have ever known. They are merely grabbing the info that is out there about me, creating a profile of me and doing so because the banks are greatly benefited by knowing this about me. But why don't I know about me? Why don't I get to see the benefit of that profile?

I'm not cool with the Chinese possessing my data, but how cool should I be that Equifax possesses this data? Why should I be beholden to Equifax to learn about myself? They're, in a sense, making me pay for a service I did not invite them to take up...isn't that extortion? They're not providing me with a service--the service they're providing isn't for me, it's for banks and other lending institutions--instead they are holding me hostage for a payment. This data is worth something to someone, why aren't I benefiting from it? And why didn't Equifax do a better job of protecting me from hackers? Why are they giving this information to foreign spies and not to me?

As workers, we must seek and demand the highest possible return on our labor and on our surplus value. We must demand that our gov't work with us first to receive our share of the work we perform before it goes to other entities. If my financial data, for example, is valuable to someone, it must first and foremost be valuable to me. If it is a source of revenue, then let that revenue be captured by me.

How we work (make money), how we live (spend money) and how we look to the future (save money) are the fullest and highest expressions of our citizenship. It is how we will spend the bulk of our time, it determines the forms our education will take, determines where we will live and serves to shape the peer group we will run with. Our ability to work, to make money, permeates every decision of our lives (even when we don't realize it). The American gov't was constituted to provide protections and guarantees based on property rights, due process and many enumerated freedoms. The Constitution's implicit pledge to honor the Declaration of Independence's desire for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is our bond as a nation.

I worked for a year in a call center signing people up for Affordable Care Act insurance (you probably remember it as Obamacare). I saw people getting great deals, life saving deals, and I saw people paying way too much for something they probably didn't even need. (**) I bring this up not to talk about healthcare but to talk about taxes, which eventually for me became a well worn speech: look, man, you can put down whatever you want for your projected income, you can collect whatever benefits you think you deserve, but on tax day your income will no longer be "projected" and on that day the gov't will decide what you should have received last year (meaning this year, right now). If you did worse than you thought you would, you might get a refund; if you did better, though, you will owe money, your subsidy will be deemed as incorrectly received and you will pay extra. And the gov't reserves the right to not give a shit if you didn't know that. (***)

There you go: the citizen's primary interaction with gov't is taxation. The bad news is this is one place where the customer is never right, the gov't knows what it wants from you and it will get it one way or another. The good news is when the gov't decides to tax you, then it takes an interest in you (****) and frankly it behooves the gov't to maximize your economic power because the gov't's larger interest is to maximize its own economic power. So far the American gov't has more or less allowed others (re: corporations and landlords) to maximize your surplus value, to harvest the potential revenue away from you, probably because it assumed these institutions driven to rent-seeking will do it better than the workers themselves. But I would suggest the best way for the gov't  to truly maximize the citizenry's potential is to maximize the freedoms you have as a citizen to make money, spend money and save money precisely as you see fit (outside of violence and fraud, of course). Taxation is also the source of subsidy, which I would suggest would better be thought of as negative taxation: your return from the gov't is completely dependent on your income (or ability to produce income).

In the form of negative taxation, you can receive subsidy from the gov't for your surplus value, just as with health insurance. The time you spend time working within NGO's, charities and non-profit institutions can be redeemed in the form of lowering your tax obligations and eventually putting a lot of ordinary citizens into negative taxation, meaning they would receive money back from the gov't for working in non-profit organizations.

Does the gov't benefit from this? Yes. A lot of dollars accumulated and re-directed by the gov't will no longer be needed because more citizens would be performing those tasks within their communities, generating the benefit locally rather than federally. Does the economy benefit from this? Yes. More people will be entering the workforce, even if the only compensation is subsidy from the gov't. How does the gov't deliver this subsidy? In the form of capitalizing GSE's that would take up the task of making sure certain industries (healthcare, housing, education, and transportation) would be fully functioning in a manner to serve the needs of the populace first and foremost. The gov't would be pumping money back into the economy--not by incentivizing banks with low interest rates--but by investing in workers and their communities by making sure that the necessary functions of society are well oiled. Does this limit for-profit enterprises or the citizens that want more of a professional life? No, indeed this should separate the go-getters from the masses even more, giving them more opportunity to innovate with less deleterious impact on the necessary workings of the society.

Negative taxation becomes a way for the gov't to help finance non-profits and charities with a great deal of excess labor. The good orgs will know exactly what to do with the extra help, the bad orgs will not and will shrivel away (*****). So at this point it becomes very much in the gov't's interest to separate the worthwhile charities (like, say, programs that get food to the elderly) from the ones that suck up capital without giving anything back (like, a lot of deadbeat churches that perform no worthwhile function)  Yes, churches that do stuff in the community can maintain their tax-exempt status--as can all charities that perform in their communities--but the churches that just pretend to preach a gospel can devolve into Facebook groups where they belong and be forced to pay just like everyone else that wants to live in the real world.

Supposedly a couple of the items in the recent giant Congressional emergency financial package recently passed were 1) the establishment of a digital currency (I mention this only in hopes that I will return to the notion in a future post) and 2) the Federal Reserve offering each citizen it's own account, which is an idea I heard floated for the first time in a podcast last week--I've been kinda riveted by the notion ever since I first heard it and pleased (******) that it was a part of the Congressional action.

Having an account with the Fed means they can literally guide you through every financial choice you make from birth (I'll come back to that) to death (I'll be coming back to this, too). It can help you maximize the value of your consumer spending (especially for education, for example), maximize your savings (I'll be coming back to this one, as well) and your purchasing power. There are any number of things the Fed could help us with (ditching Social Security for an actual retirement plan, would be a great start--I'll definitely be coming back to this one) but first and foremost they can guarantee all of your economic holdings (so long, FDIC, don't need you anymore), at least in the form of bonds, commodities and digital credits and provide a true credit score that is backed by the bond of gov't--rather than a shadowy corporation that I ain't never heard of (like Equifax--they got hacked by the Chinese, did you know that?). The power of an individual account with the Federal Reserve is huge and can be the basis of a whole new citizenship.

The last post was about healthcare--it all starts there. For now I'm going to move on to a pile of other things, that should come back around to healthcare--because it all ends there. But it seems to me that negative taxation is an economic bond the gov't can develop with the citizens to build a whole new world of charitable giving that goes beyond just writing a check at Xmas time. And redistributes wealth from birth without interrupting the larger economy that all of this is based on. Readjusting our individual identities starts with labor and the gov't can expand that very quickly in a manner that pours reinvestment back into America's communities by rewarding citizens to do it themselves.

It begins with data and my plan is about designing a comprehensive digital citizenship that keeps you in touch with your data (what Sartre would've called your facticity) and maximizes the individual citizen's ability to capture their own surplus value, which is to the benefit of the macro-economy. This isn't a function of government, it is a function of technology: digitization allows for us to know a lot more a lot faster. This is good for those that understand it and dangerous to those that don't. So let's help the citizens understand it: data forms our new identity, negative taxation allows the citizenry to capitalize on good works and GSE's create the sub-economy where the gov't can reinvest in the basics of society.

Charitable labor is a giant untapped reservoir of wealth and redistribution. But the first step is for each citizen to understand their own impact, their own power, their own facticity in manner guaranteed by the gov't as a fiduciary (rather than a corporation that is predatory).



(*) Shouldn't we all be suing Equifax? Your dumb fuckin' gov't let them get away with this with basically no penalty! What the fuck, dude? Where is our outrage?

(**) The really sad cases were the ones that fell between the cracks: too broke for ACA, not broke enough for Medicaid. Yeah, dude, I fuckin' cried on more than one occasion. All we could do was suggest community health centers in their area. The calls generally didn't last more than 15 minutes but you could get pretty deep in people's lives very quickly filling out this form. The desperation of the people that needed something and weren't gonna be able to get it, even in the face of this unique opportunity of Obamacare was genuinely heartbreaking.

(***) A mantra of mine for quite some time: the gov't was here when you were born and it'll be here when you die. It ain't worrying about you. Indeed, notice I'm couching all of these possible changes in the notion that the gov't will actually benefit greatly from its citizens being more plugged in.

(****) Look at Saudi Arabia. The people don't pay taxes, which sounds nice, but it means they have absolutely no say on anything their gov't does. When the gov't wants a highway, the people get a highway, but not until the gov't needs one (which is *ahem* pretty much how we got our highway system, too).

(*****) "Good" and "bad" in this sense, unfortunately, does not mean the orgs that do good work. Instead it would incentivize the popular personalities that lead the orgs to be more instrumental in directing labor and capital flows. For example, I can think of an entity in my own community that is headed by a beloved man....that totally sucks at his job. Everyone loves him because he is a truly nice guy but his nice-ness has not overall benefitted his organization. It behooves us as citizens to reward the people that are doing the good work and not simply those that look like they're doing good work. That's on us, people. The gov't in this case will likely make the same stupid mistakes that we do. But as the universe of data opens up to us, we'll get a clearer picture of which orgs work and which ones don't.

(******) "Pleased" meaning optimistic. I've never been optimistic about anything Congress has ever done but I do think this could be a hugely positive development for Americans.