I would propose that there currently exist a third reality: a combination of the two scenarios described in the comics. An authoritarian state which restricts materials that are hazardous to the state's health, but also encourages huge debt taking/mindless consumption that zombifies the majority of the population.
Case in point: US. It restricts information that would undermine its authority as the world's dominant power, such as BP spill, bankruptcy of its banks/cities/states, ineffectiveness at resolution in afghanistan, etc. The government offers discounts/low rates for large home mortgages, expensive cars, and big student loans that would shackle the majority of the population in debt chains. It also condones mindless consumption such as reality TV, sports, celebrity news, and facebook games by not taxing them as addictive hazards.
Case in point: China. It restricts, well, pretty much anything it doesn't want the people to know with the great internet firewall and state news programs. It also encourages huge risk taking in mortgages, which recently has seen home prices go up to 30X average income. It encourages its citizens to forget about the abysmal living condition by allowing internet game cafes to spread like wildfire and trapping the players in pointless alternative realities. So they don't realize they are doing slave labor at $1/day to make ipads.
I further propose that this will continue as long as these governments worldwide can keep feeding its citizens at a minimum (food stamps, unemployment benefits, carb/sugar loaded cheap food), while offering cheap, mind-numbing entertainments to keep people at home, so they don't go out and riot on the streets. They can then keep on taxing/raising the retirement age on the productive workers
Until oil is at $150/middle class is wiped out/Iran is attacked/North Korea attacks/US defaults on SS and medicare/Japan defaults on its bonds/food prices double/Israel is attacked/automation renders most of population useless, anyways.
The important stuff in the U.S is controlled by creating false dichotomies between different alternatives that both assume a uniform underlying reality and are different in practically meaningless ways. Anything that's different from these false alternatives is assumed to be one of the false alternatives, will be viewed as kook material or will take several hours to explain. There is also plenty of genuine kook material mixed in to all of this that makes it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
The only thing that can really knock the average American out of this is long term exposure to alternatives that exist in other cultures. Ever notice how people who are well traveled often have a more nuanced understanding of most contemporary topics?
I think you might have misplaced blame on some of those points. I was not aware that the US government sponsored reality TV, celebrity news, facebook simply by the virtue of not making people pay for them. The government not taxing something does not equate to the government condoning it.
Part of that blame has to come down on capitalism. There exists a market for these things and if the market demands it, is it the government's job in matters of entertainment and nutrition to step in and decide what we can indulge in?
There's also a growing market for people who engaged in making thing entertainment and electronics hacking entertainment.
There's markets for low-brows, which everyone use. Then there are "high-brows" market in which people can engage in their perspective curiosity/sophistication.
For every mindless entertainment, there are niche hobbies which people engage in and put enormous amount of energy into.
For example, my hobby is to speculate on currencies. The side effect is that I learn about money emerge naturally in a free market economy, security schemes, and P2P networks. (Yes, I actually do that.)
I don't necessarily disagree with the overall gist of your comment, but I am curious as to what the US did to restrict information about the BP spill, and how it would have undermined US authority if the information got out that a London-based petroleum company caused a spill along the US coast.
"It also encourages huge risk taking in mortgages, which recently has seen home prices go up to 30X average income."
I don't know if the government encourages it, but recently they "banned" third mortgages to cool the market down. House-flipping isn't really a Chinese phenomenon.
"It encourages its citizens to forget about the abysmal living condition by allowing internet game cafes to spread like wildfire and trapping the players in pointless alternative realities. So they don't realize they are doing slave labor at $1/day to make ipads."
Wrong demographics. Factories consist of mostly poor migrant workers from the countrysides, they probably don't have the time/money for gaming. Internet cafes cater to urban middle-class kids who can afford to spend all their free time in LAN parties.
Don't forget in the third reality: the state taxes interest at each tax payer's top marginal rate, making it impossible for ordinary people to build wealth through low-risk investments like simple bank accounts.
Possibly not the third reality, but the only reality. What if pleasure and control are always two sides of the fascist coin? The totalitarian master isn't only saying "Sacrifice yourself for the good of the Nation, discipline yourself, follow the rules and give up your pleasures." He also says "We will break all the rules, no restrictions, all pleasures are permitted - we can kill some Jews, rape some slaves, lynchings and torture are OK!" The obscene underside of the control and discipline in the KKK and Nazism is the orgy of violence, throwing off the normal repressive rules of society that control our impulses.
Why is fascism so closely associated with control and discipline? The purpose is to conceal the totalitarianism inherent in our own society, like how we were taught that American society is free because individuals can enjoy their consumer pleasures, while people in the Soviet Union are subjected to discipline and control.
You're right. The author may have been better to argue that Huxley is scoring higher than Orwell, but not by much. Our problem is that both of them are scoring as high as they are. Apparently, there are powerful people in the world who have taken these novels not as warnings but as textbooks.
Case in point: US. It restricts information that would undermine its authority as the world's dominant power, such as BP spill, bankruptcy of its banks/cities/states, ineffectiveness at resolution in afghanistan, etc. The government offers discounts/low rates for large home mortgages, expensive cars, and big student loans that would shackle the majority of the population in debt chains. It also condones mindless consumption such as reality TV, sports, celebrity news, and facebook games by not taxing them as addictive hazards.
Case in point: China. It restricts, well, pretty much anything it doesn't want the people to know with the great internet firewall and state news programs. It also encourages huge risk taking in mortgages, which recently has seen home prices go up to 30X average income. It encourages its citizens to forget about the abysmal living condition by allowing internet game cafes to spread like wildfire and trapping the players in pointless alternative realities. So they don't realize they are doing slave labor at $1/day to make ipads.
I further propose that this will continue as long as these governments worldwide can keep feeding its citizens at a minimum (food stamps, unemployment benefits, carb/sugar loaded cheap food), while offering cheap, mind-numbing entertainments to keep people at home, so they don't go out and riot on the streets. They can then keep on taxing/raising the retirement age on the productive workers
Until oil is at $150/middle class is wiped out/Iran is attacked/North Korea attacks/US defaults on SS and medicare/Japan defaults on its bonds/food prices double/Israel is attacked/automation renders most of population useless, anyways.