How much do our world and the worlds of Neuroancer and Cyberpunk 2077 have in common? Here's a way we could find out.
I generally tend not to write about me on the blog, on the theory that the topics discussed here are far more interesting than the person who writing them. This week though, I’d like to mix up the formula a bit to frame some thoughts I’ve been having lately after fears of inflation are having a resurgence; though the timing seems arbitrary to me. So indulge me for a bit, I promise it will make sense in the end.
I’ve been a science fiction and fantasy fan since more or less when I learned to read, growing up in the aftermath of both the Star Wars prequel trilogy and Harry Potter series I suppose that was more or less inevitable. And while I love epic fantasy á la Tolkien and Erikson I’ve had a particular weakness for the cyberpunk subgenre ever since I first saw Blade Runner. Having read Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy last year and having played Cyberpunk 2077 recently, which has sadly received quite poor reviews in spite of its obvious high quality due to a very messy launch, I’ve been thinking about the cyberpunk genre a fair bit lately. The human mind is made to recognise patterns, and I’d be lying if I said the pessimist didn’t see some surface level similarities between our world and the type of world characters like Johnny Silverhand and Molly Millions inhabits.
Cyperpunk as a subgenre is often deeply rooted in the eighties, when it was arguably born. Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy is in essence the worst case scenario of what world the Reagan administration’s policies would create: a world filled with powerful corporations and powerless individuals, where crime and drugs is a reality for the everyman whereas the rich and powerful live in abundance. One of the key tropes of the subgenre is the megacorp which has defeated the state as the most powerful organisation in society. In reality there have been those, like the Occupy Wall Street movement, who maintain that corporations are too powerful and that big firms try, and often succeed, at influencing or pressuring the government to adopt policies favoured by big firms. In political science, state capture refers “systemic political corruption in which private interests significantly influence a state's decision-making processes to their own advantage” according to Wikipedia, or in other words exactly what Occupy Wall Street alleged big financials firms in the US is involved in. The conspiratorially minded then, might think that Gibson’s fault was believing that mega corps would dismantle the state instead of simply co-opting it, which brings us back to inflation.
The most fundamental question in the field of international political economy is cui bono? Or in plain English: who benefits? And with inflation that’s an easy question to answer: inflation benefits those with large debts and is very bad for those with large amounts of savings and with large loans outstanding. Map this on to the issue of the national debt and it resembles a public-private dichotomy: the government benefits and the big firms and investors who have lent the government money suffers from inflation. If indeed inflation picks up then how that’s handled in economies with high public debt burdens could be an indication of the relative strength of private and government interests.
If you liked this post you can read my last post about the Gamestop mania here, or the rest of my writings on politics here. It'd mean a lot to me if you recommended the blog to a friend or coworker. Check back next Monday for a new post!
Written by Karl Johansson
