The need to know

Years ago I knew a chap who loved to imagine he had inside information on the next reorganisation or organisational upheaval. He loved to hint about his access to mysterious sources even though we knew it was merely gossip he was passing on. Yet he seemed to enjoy the imaginary social status of knowing what his colleagues supposedly did not know – having inside information.

Following on from the recent post about modern versions of sumptuary laws, it is worth asking if it applies to intangibles. Which intangible benefits do elites prefer to keep for themselves? A number of obvious examples spring to mind, but a big one is also an old one – inside information.

In our digital age, how do elites keep the most complete information to themselves and does such an idea even make sense in the internet age? Again a partial answer to this is an old answer in that insider discussions are only available to insiders. Outsiders always have incomplete information, internet or no internet.

In addition we also have another old answer - information intended for the masses can be degraded by official slanting and by the media. It can be degraded by being incomplete, misleading, irrelevant or simply false. It often is – we know that. Do I mean often? Always would be closer. Superior information is essential for superior social castes. Without that there would be no castes as we understand them.

The current coronavirus debacle is an example where it is not obvious that official pandemic information matches the information available to the political class. It seems likely that their information is less exaggerated and more complete than ours, perhaps dramatically less exaggerated. In other words it seems likely that our information is degraded with respect to theirs. Hence the valuable works done by sceptics, but many out there are not sceptics.

What Boris and co say about the coronavirus debacle is not what they know. Hardly surprising but worth placing in a wider context where elites feel they must have exclusive access to elite information.

Climate change is another example. Over the years there have been a number of indications that climate change information intended for the masses is either untrue, misleading or exaggerated. It is not obvious that elites and senior scientific authorities receive equally low grade information. Their general behaviour such as frequent air travel suggests not. Again it seem likely that our information is degraded with respect to theirs.

The mainstream media provide us with numerous examples where there are clearly two grades of information. The behaviour of Cyril Smith is merely one such example. It may be said that issues of this kind could not be publicised because of libel laws, but it seems just as likely that two tier information is how the game is played and there was little pressure to offer more accurate information to a wider public. As much as anything, it was simply how things are done.

Sustainable energy such as wind and solar power give us another example. As is well known they do not offer reliable sources of energy and the reasons are well known, but the public message virtually ignores this major drawback.

It seems likely that elites and upper middle class people pushing sustainable energy know perfectly well that they will require some form of expensive domestic electricity storage and/or generation. They will be able to afford it but millions may not. Two more levels of information, one accurate and one degraded. It's how things are done.