Introduction
At Kingstonmouth.com., we are against all oppressive pedagogical arrangements. We assert that as independent thinkers we are involved in knowledge creation. In the formation of new notions and concepts we are guided by the application of anti-oppressive practice combined with a critical theory approach.
Consequently, our interpretations of unique phenomenon are influenced by the critical pedagogical schools and by the scholarship anti-capitalists such as Walter Rodney (Guyanese historian and political activist), Paulo Freire (Brazilian educator and philosopher), and Henry Giroux (American-Canadian scholar and cultural critic).
Similarly, these three academics also contributed to our support for the school of liberation pedagogy that underpins anti-oppressive educational approach designed to liberate minds and level the playing fields between teachers and students.
This approach has alerted us to a critical look at how the global education system has been exploited by the billionaire class and national governments to produce a particular determined outcome in favour of the billionaire class. This has created a system of modern day techno- billionaire slavery.
It is against this background that we are asserting that there is a modern day form of techno-billionaire slavery being perpetuated by the techno billionaire class. Supported by a global education system that seeks to funnel the millennial generation into an ICT/AI based education system that results in mostly low paying employment, a global virtual gulag controlled by techno billionaires. This short discourse seeks to elucidate this concept.
The Billionaire class and Technology.
Globalisation and closer integration of economies has benefitted the billionaire class, although initially the development of new technology was well intentioned. Subsequently, it has created a world economic system for the benefit of the billionaire few at the expense of the impoverishment of many. The process of global economic integration has been greatly facilitated by the advent of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Simultaneously, gross trade, foreign direct investment (FDI), capital flows and technology transfers have increased the fortunes of the capitalist class producing more billionaires than any time of our history while at the same time creating the huge gap between the rich and the poor. This has created a form of economic slavery of the working poor who are mainly the millennial generation.
The Emergence of the Billionaire Class
In recent years, the tech valuations of public companies and also private companies owned by the global billionaire class are staggeringly high. According to Vox.com., 65 billionaires on the Forbes 400 are categorized under technology — which includes the likes of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer etc.
According also to Forbes magazine, Tech billionaires are worth a combined $2.5 trillion, far outpacing the next-best-performing industries, fashion and retail ($1.7 trillion) and finance and investment ($1.5 trillion).
The Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are increasingly important in our modern society and are important drivers of current trends demands of and the global workforce. Likewise, new advances in the internet, global digitalisation, artificial intelligence technology, digital hectare and education provision, hardware and software, mobile “smartphones” are all indispensable tools of capitalist consumption. This being the case, it comes as no surprise that the billionaire capitalist clast have focused on the technology industry; it is no secret that wealthy capitalist seem to believe that fairness for them is to amass more wealth than anyone and everyone else in the world.
Likewise, the new billionaire class own almost 70% of the Global advertisement market valued at $ 590.3 Billion. In 2021, Google’s share of digital advertising revenues worldwide was projected to amount to 28.6 percent. Facebook followed with a projected digital ad revenue share of 23.7 percent, while Alibaba came in third with an expected 8.7 percent, and Amazon a project current value of 7.1%. Yet they fail to pay their fair share of taxes and use ever possible opportunity to pursue an unfair tax incentive.
Today the richest and most powerful billionaires made their fortunes out of the technology industry. Technology investment of the 21st Century has a buzz of excitement; it is the gold rush of the 19 Century, attracting a greedy and clever capitalist billionaire cabal. They exploit the creative millenial generation in technological gulags where they work for a pittance; most of whom in their lifetimes will never own a house. While these billionaires sanitize their image by branding themselves as generous humanitarians, they collude with the establishment media to rebrand themselves as philanthropists, while evading tax without being held to account by national government .They use their money and corruption to sponsor their campaign budgets making it difficult to enact laws to plug their tax loopholes.
This billionaire class act under the pretext that they have earned their wealth from multiple streams of income. However, on close examination they have earned it from multiple streams of corruption and deception, such as influencing unsuspecting investors to pot their money into carefully crafted scams, bitcoin, and devious stock trading deals while the establishment government – from the left and right – look away as they fund political parties and pebble political and public servants. These public servants and elected officials instead offer them huge contracts and collude with them to influence government policy. Most painful of all, they underpay their staff wages below the inflation rate, the real living wage.
The world is now a trans-technological playground where the billionaire class operates unchecked without impunity. The working poor has become the latest casualties because of the vile billionaire class. The middle class in the US and have been wiped out and replaced by techno billionaire slaves drawn from the millennial generations, and new economic immigrants mainly from Africa, South East Asia and Latin America. Traditional understanding of slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves some form of work, with the slave’s location of work and residence dictated by the enslaver.
Outriders of the Techno-Billionaire Slavery
Modern Techno billionaire slavery is the enslavement of people by the billionaire capitalist class who, through their money and corrupt influence, collude with national governments, intergovernmental organisations, and the establishment media elected government, and charitable organisations to establish an unpoliced institutionalised world system of exploitation of the global labour force. In order to enrich themselves, evade tax and exploit global technological recourses for their self-greed and personal enrichment.
Covid-19 saw billionaire wealth rise to levels never seen before in the global North. However the construction of the economic infrastructure that has enabled this mass accumulation of wealth was spawned over four decades ago. The report found that the number of billionaires in the UK had risen more than tenfold from fifteen in 1990, when the Sunday Times first published its Rich List, after taking into account inflation over that time period.
A study examining the increase of wealth of billionaires by using inflation-adjusted wealth data from archive copies of the Rich List, found that the combined wealth of the United Kingdom billionaires had increased from £53.9bn in 1990 to more than £653bn in 2022. “This signifies an increase in billionaire wealth of over 1,000% over the past 32 years,” according to the study.
Similar studies carried out by Inequality .org in the US in 2021 found that U.S. billionaire wealth surged by 70%, or $2.1 Trillion, during Pandemic, the wealth of the top 1% increased by $6.5 trillion last year, mainly driven by soaring stock prices and financial markets, according to the Federal Reserve. The stock portfolios of the top 1% are now worth $23 trillion, and they own a record 53.9% of individually held shares, according to the central bank. The US Federal Reserve reported in 2021 wealth of the top 1% increased by $6.5 trillion last year, mainly driven by soaring stock prices and financial markets, according to the Federal Reserve.
By 2022 the stock portfolios of the top 1% in the US was worth $23 trillion, and they own a record 53.9% of individually held shares, according to the US central bank.
Outriders of the billionaire system are national governments in the global North and China, who fail to enact a wealth tax on the billionaire class, most of whom are Techno-Billionaires who fail to pay their fair share of tax. In fact, they are offering tax enticement to these billionaire companies providing them with huge tax breaks to exploit their labour force.
Forbes Magazine revealed that local governments are dangling hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks to persuade companies like Facebook, Google and Microsoft to build server farms in their backyards. Yet these deals are shrouded in secrecy and the average cost of $1 million per job raises questions about their value. In August 2021 it was revealed in a scoop entitled, Data in the Dark: How Big Tech Secretly secured $800 Million in Tax Breaks for Data Centers in several US states.
Silicon Valley billionaire owned corporations are the new East India Slave traders of the Global south; they are taking over the digital economy in the Global South, and nobody is paying attention. Their modern day digital slavery is rooted in the design of low wages and tech ecosystems for the purpose of profit and economic exploitation.
Additionally, through programmes like Microsoft Partners in Learning and Google Classroom, young people are hooked into Microsoft and Google products from an early age, and biases global south software developers towards their software ecosystems.
International non-governmental organizations (INGO) such as the World Bank, IMF, WTO have sat with their hands folded and are doing nothing about these Techno- billionaire enslavers. It appears that they are the chief outriders that created these billionaires. They have traditionally promoted neo-liberal views of development based on the adoption of free trade, privatisation and deregulation of financial markets. The International Labour Organisation (ILO), whose aim is to advance social justice and promote decent work for the world’s labour force, has been complicit with the billionaire class by its silence on the matter.
Concerns about the job-destroying potential of technology was never a concern of the ILO. The ILO have continued to promote technology adaptation without examining its implication for a smaller global workforce that is owned by a handful of billionaires.
In the past, knowledge was power. This is no longer the case; harvested content, software, artificial intelligence and online censorship are the new tools that techno billionaires use to control us.
Conclusion
We at Kinstonmouth.com. define modern-day billionaire slavery as a phenomenon that refer to situations of exploitation of the workforce by the billionaire capitalist class. Money is used to corrupt, to influence, to collude with national governments and intergovernmental organisations, the establishment media elected government, and charitable organisations. For the purpose of establishing an unpoliced institutionalised world system of exploitation of the global labour force.
In the process, the new billionaire class enrich themselves by evading tax and exploit global human labour and technological recourses for their selfish greed and personal enrichment. At Kingstonmouth.com, we view techno-billionaire slavery as a threat to democracy and global economic justice. We are witnessing a 21st century modern day technology slavery with a new type of economic manipulation of the world’s poor by “kleptocrats” and dodgy billionaires.
Donovan Reynolds is CEO forKingstonmouth.com He is a trained Diplomat, Human Rights Activist, and a Communication Consultant. This article is edited by Ann Smith, a British Educator and Social Activist. Kingstommouth.com is a charitable organization that has been in existence for over nine years. We have an interest in Politics, Human Rights, and International Development Issues. Viewers wishing to comment on this article may do so at the space provided on this blog. Alternatively, they can contact us at kingstonmouth 63@ gmail.com or on our Twitter or Facebook Page.
