From Optimisation to Totalitarian and Fascist-style Governance

 1. Optimisation and Totalitarian Possibility

Optimisation centralises the logic of goal-directed efficiency. It thrives on measurement, feedback loops, and error correction. In social systems, this translates to:

• Citizens reduced to compliance variables or nodes in a measurable network.

• Deviations flagged as inefficiency, error, or risk.

• Rapid feedback used to enforce conformity.

From a totalitarian perspective, this is fertile ground:

• The system already expects compliance.

• Visibility and metrics allow surveillance without additional machinery.

• Deviation is inherently legible as “failure” or “non-conformance.”

So optimisation doesn’t create ideology, but it does make the mechanisms of totalitarian control easier to operationalise.

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2. Optimisation and Fascist-style Governance (Broad Sense)

Fascism, broadly, is a political logic that emphasises hierarchy, uniformity, collective identity, and a normatively “correct” ordering of society. Optimisation suits this in several ways:

• Hierarchy is codifiable: Metrics allow the assignment of rank and value.

• Uniformity is enforced: Performance standards or surveillance networks make deviance visible.

• Collective identity is measurable: Signal alignment (virtue signalling, behavioural conformity) substitutes for genuine participation.

In short: optimisation does not dictate “right-wing” content, but the mechanics of optimisation favour political forms that prioritise order, compliance, and hierarchy — which historically aligns with right-leaning authoritarian tendencies.

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3. Political Orientation of Optimisation

Optimisation itself is agnostic, but:

• It favours structures that reward efficiency over pluralism.

• It constrains uncertainty, making risk-averse, conservative agendas more achievable.

• It stifles uncoordinated diversity, which can impede leftist or radical experimentation.

Thus, in practice, optimisation is more congenial to agendas that prioritise control, measured outcomes, and standardised order — often associated with politically “right” frameworks — though the content could be bent to almost any ideology if the mechanisms are centralised.

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4. Counterpoint

Optimisation is not destiny. It can be applied to progressive or emancipatory aims:

• Distributed optimisation can enhance equity and participation.

• Measurement and feedback loops can track well-being rather than obedience.

• Systems can be designed to preserve unpredictability, creativity, and autonomy.

So the risk is not from optimisation itself, but from how optimisation is deployed, what it measures, and whose interests it amplifies.

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In short:

• Optimisation makes totalitarian structures more legible and manageable, and can therefore make their emergence easier.

• It tends to favour political forms that reward conformity and hierarchy, often aligned with conservative or right-leaning agendas, though it is not inherently bound to them.

• Its “political flavour” emerges from deployment, not from the logic itself.