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Fin24 user Paul questions the concept that implies that technology is responsible for the economy falling apart.
Responding to a call to add your voice to the big labour debate, Paul writes:
The piece a while back on how SA is falling apart, ended with an UP note, saying that technology was responsible for the mess, but also had the seeds of the solution. I needed you to explain a bit more....or was it our "Arab Spring" that you were inferring?
Terry Bell responds:
The "Arab Spring" movements were, in my view, essentially negative in the sense that the only common goal they seemed to have was the removal of existing, dictatorial, regimes.
Vague protestations about democracy and freedom are inadequate and, as in the case of Egypt can result in replacing one dictatorship with another that may be even worse.
I think the technological advances could be applied to liberate humanity, but only if the society in which we live is based on human need and co-operation.
This would mean the majority having all the available information and the ability to take decisions that are binding. This would necessitate a different sort of political organisation to the partial democracy we now have and would probably require elected representatives at all levels to be fully answerable to, and recallable by, their constituencies.
I hope to deal with the hows, why and wherefores in a future column.
Regards
Terry
* Add your voice or just drop Terry a labour question. Follow Terry on twitter @telbelsa.
Disclaimer: All articles and letters published on Fin24 have been independently written by members of the Fin24 community. The views of users published on Fin24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent those of Fin24.
