“In the mid 1980's I was asked by an american legal institution known as the Christic Legal Institute to compile a comic book that would detail the murky history of the C.I.A., from the end of the second world war, to the present day. Covering such things as the heroin smuggling during the Vietnam war, the cocaine smuggling during the war in Central America, the Kennedy assasination and other highlights.
What I learned during the frankly horrifying research that I had to slog through in order to accomplish this, was that yes, there is a conspiracy, in fact there are a great number of conspiracies that are all tripping each other up. And all of those conspiracies are run by paranoid fantasists, and ham fisted clowns. If you are on a list targeted by the C.I.A., you really have nothing to worry about. If however you have a name similar to someone on a list targeted by the C.I.A., then you are dead?
The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening.
The concerns expressed in the post have nothing to do with conspiracy, and everything to do with power. Democracies are usually built in such a way as to prevent concentration of power -- not to fight a real or imagined conspiracy. Concentration of power in itself is bad enough even without malevolent intent behind it.
I think the point is that even when individuals accrue large amounts of power, like Page/Brin, Zuckerberg, the Kochs, the Bushes, or the Clintons, that it is never really all that concentrated, because there are still thousands and millions of competing interests to consider.
Power flows from many different places. At least for the past couple of centuries, it is never so concentrated that a single individual can orchestrate the world without repercussions.
Not only that, the article makes it sound like Larry Page set out to conquer the world and decided to start from a search engine. The reality is far from that, there is no master plan to capture the personal information of everyone, just the need to provide useful services and an incredible business acumen on the part of the management that consistently acquire winning teams and companies over the years.
Which is why democracies have checks and balances, and it is our responsibility to make sure that the power held by private institutions does not grow unchecked. The US made that mistake once, and it took a heroic struggle to wrestle that power away [1].
Searching on "alan moore christic legal institute" brings up quite a few hits centered around a pair of graphic novels called "Brought to Light". Maybe that's it? There's a full quote on goodreads.com, but it also isn't sourced. I, too, wouldn't mind having a good source for that quote. Sounds like an interesting read.
I am reminded of an Alan Moore quote:
“In the mid 1980's I was asked by an american legal institution known as the Christic Legal Institute to compile a comic book that would detail the murky history of the C.I.A., from the end of the second world war, to the present day. Covering such things as the heroin smuggling during the Vietnam war, the cocaine smuggling during the war in Central America, the Kennedy assasination and other highlights.
What I learned during the frankly horrifying research that I had to slog through in order to accomplish this, was that yes, there is a conspiracy, in fact there are a great number of conspiracies that are all tripping each other up. And all of those conspiracies are run by paranoid fantasists, and ham fisted clowns. If you are on a list targeted by the C.I.A., you really have nothing to worry about. If however you have a name similar to someone on a list targeted by the C.I.A., then you are dead?
The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening.
Nobody is in control.
The world is rudderless...”