I’m from Facebook and I’m here to help….

Royalty deadbeat Mark Zuckerberg has a new scam that goes way, way beyond “Russian” propaganda.  As he told the assembled elites at…where, else…Harvard:

Our generation is going to have to deal with tens of millions of jobs replaced by automation like self-driving cars and trucks.  But we have the potential to do so much more than that.

Stop there for a moment–what exactly does the last “that” refer to?  What is its antecedent?  The automation, the mass firings…those things that the ruling class would address it self to in its interactions with the common people, the hoi polloi, those poor little Epsilons?  Or the drudgery of dealing with the great unwashed?

But he goes on:

Now it is time for our generation to define a new social contract….we should explore ideas like Universal Basic Income to make sure everyone has a cushion to try new ideas…

His new social contract can be summarized thusly:  Bend over.

A “cushion to try new ideas”?  Really?  You mean when you get fired off off a good paying middle class job because you trained a robot to do your job, a robot owned by say royalty deadbeat Zuckerberg, that you feel great about it because you’ve got a “cushion to try new ideas” like not losing your house.

And just who might pick up the tab for these costs directly attributed to automation?  Directly attributed to the profitable robots owned by Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Eric Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergey Brin?

Is the proposal that the cost be borne by the corporations that caused the harm?  Or by all the taxpayers to keep the Great Unwashed under control so they don’t burn down Facebook?

And since the royalty deadbeat brought up self driving cars, who is going to pay for the self driving roads for those self driving cars, you know, the “smart highways” or whatever they call them?

These 21st Century Robber Barrons will expect the taxpayer to pay for those smart roads or if the beneficiaries of the infrastructurer will pay, they will expect to own the roads, no doubt.  So the taxpayer will pay for the roads for the driverless cars that create the automation to creat mass firings and so that the taxpayer will pay Universal Basic Income to quiet down the clingers.

And all with the hand wringing and smarmy piety, the whinging of fake philanthropy.

Now that’s a shakedown Silicon Valley Style.