The first and most obvious problem with making a plan to ensure all boots cost $450, and are of such high quality that you only need one pair for your whole adult life is: we do _not_ want a bureaucracy setting standards of quality, or picking winners and losers. That guarantees not only mediocre quality but no hope of innovative improvements. Besides it gives those armigers more undeserved power.
Instead of that, here's a thought: instead of taxing goods at point of sale, tax them at the landfill. When a pair of boots shows up at the dump, send a disposal bill to the cobbler. This bill should be pretty exorbitant and independent of the sale price, such that if your boots regularly end up in landfills and don't sell for very much you're ruined. Bonus: no bill if the cobbler is dead. Every cobbler strives to make a boot that outlives him. Because then he never pays the boot tax. Set the tax at say, 25% of the average sale price of a boot. Think it through. How long before walmart closes its footwear department?
That's fun. Might need a death penalty for littering in order to make it very effective, and a complete prohibition of holding on to old boots. Also, a lot of those Philipino child laborers make pretty good and long lasting shoes. And some other things to niggle about. .
Also, the beaucracy wouldn't be setting standards of quality. Just only certain means of production may be used. Anything out of place in 1920 and you're shut down.
Still a good example of absolute public policy you're giving. Many ways to get to good government, once you accept that goal.
Sure, there are some holes. Here I assume that all shoes, regardless of how they are initially abandoned, eventually make their way to the landfill and get accounted for. I don't think it's a problem for people to hold on to their old boots for sentimental value. This whole scenario doesn't work for boomer hoarder types. Surely there are no u-haul storage centers to fill up with their crap, if there was even crap to buy in the first place, so if someone loves his old boots so much he puts them on the shelf as a conversation piece that's not a big deal.
Beyond that eventually space constraints under his relatively expensive hand-crated bed in his relatively small, functional, and sturdy house will force him to make some tough decisions. If hoarding gets out of hand in spite all that and the prince thinks that's a problem he *is* an absolute monarch and can probably come up with a solution.
If people are colluding with a maker of substandard shoes to help him avoid the landfill tax for some reason then you have a problem too. I also assume that import controls will prevent competition from outside sources (re: Filipinos), but of course the black market will provide (and maybe even follow up to make sure their goods don't end up at the landfill). Not even the absolutest of monarchs is going to completely shut down the black market.
I wouldn't want a bureaucracy mandating tools or techniques of a trade either. It's at least possible that there are yet-undiscovered tools and techniques for making better shoes that don't alienate the cobbler, and we don't want midwit bureaucrats who only know how to check off boxes next to a list of specifications interfering in that kind of innovation or we'll end up with the smoke detector situation, except with everything. Ideally the midwits are the tradesmen, not the regulators, and that's ok because we need lots of tradesmen now.
If this system is going to work, we also need our trade regulations to have built in unit-testing of their observed results against their intended results. An untested regulation is worse than no regulation at all. But this is depth of abstraction which a midwit procedural bureaucracy cannot fathom.
Which means that we need someone functioning higher than midwit to administrate them, which means we don't have a large pool of potential administrators to draw from, which is why they need to be slim and agile, so again overspecification is not ideal.
We know what we don't want: lots of miserable people working on assembly lines making cheap plastic crap, or worse yet soulless robots doing that while the miserable people plot to overthrow the regime, or just drink themselves to death while arguing about their gender pronouns. The minimum possible intervention to achieve that would be ideal. So it can't be over-specified. So incentivise the desired outcomes and disincentivise the undesirable ones, don't specify the process.
The thing is that it's not a bureaucracy setting standards of quality. It's history. Classical design and artisanal practices have been produced and improved through an iterative process that is thousands of years long. Durability is not the goal, it is a tertiary benefit of human centric products and production. Have you ever worn hand made leather shoes? Regardless of your political persuasion, you should.
Try sending a message to this small producer of hand made leather shoes in the city of Leon in Mexico. Ask them if they have any shoes with a natural crepe sole. If you are lucky they may have an oxford shoe with a crepe sole made from the rubber of their own Pará tree. Buy it immediately. It will cost you around 400 dollars.
Wear these shoes for 10 minutes and tell me that it is humane to allow anyone to continue to live their lives wearing the completely dehumanizing plastic injection mold alternative that is currently the universal standard. There is a way to make shoes and other goods that is already known and already proven. Using metrics to evaluate the production of footwear other than "is it good?" is just more of the same misanthropic neoliberal woo. IMHO :)
In the words of my maudlin armiger brethren, footwear is a human right.
Sure, this is a kind of self-regulation that emerges when incentives are aligned well. Or in the case of very old trades, because the alternative options just didn't exist.
But there has to be freedom to innovate, so you want the regulation that prevents the factory-made garbage as far-removed from the craftsman as possible. Autonomy is a big part of being "human centric". The landfill tax thing is just a thought experiment in that direction.
There are problems with other approaches. Some things can't be made without global supply chains and mass production. For example nobody is going to be hand-crafting CPUs and other ICs in their garage. I assume we're not going neo-primitive here and that we still want CPUs. We just don't want the process of making them to be miserable, dehumanizing, or completely inhuman.
We'll accept somewhat more expensive electronics, but with the expectation that their from and function is commensurate with the pricetag. So we can't just ban factories, or automation, or CNC machines. Not for shoes or anything else. Even the shoemaker wants machines and industrial processes - for example the ones that transform latex into rubber - and supply chains - for example the one getting that rubber (or rubber tree sap) from the tropics to his workshop. We just want all this stuff to be guided by capable hands who are proud of their work.
Production machinery is relatively expensive, and I very much doubt there will be some thriving black market in shitty shoes to pay for it.
People crave good societal health, they are just too dumb to achieve it (let’s leave our multigenerational family farm to work in some shitty factory!...oops factories are gone, so is the family farm and now that land is worth a million dollars).
Sure, there's not much of a case for industrial-scale black market production (at least, if it's happening it's happening overseas and your problem is border/port control in that case).
But for example, hand-stitching is always better quality than machine stitching, and creates an order of magnitude more demand for skilled labor. So maybe you ban the sale and manufacture of sewing machines and that's pretty easy to enforce so problem solved. But rough cuts on the fabric/leather do not require much skill and we don't need assembly lines of unskilled labor roughing out patches of shoe leather, so maybe you stamp the roughs out with machines. Saves the cobbler time, does not harm the dignity of any laborer or do much to suppress jobs or wages. Best counter-argument I can think of here is these menial tasks are good things to put apprentices on while they learn the basics of the craft.
Honestly it doesn’t take a huge disincentive for people to switch over from crappy products to nicer ones, and you only “need” to satisfy the condition of maximum esteemable employment to reap the benefits of this system.
Probably wouldn’t take a whole lot to make Budweiser or Nike non-viable entities.
Sin taxes unironically work at improving societal health. Libertarians always have the worst takes about taxation because it’s utility as a disincentive in incredibly high, e.g the alcohol taxes follow a step function is most jurisdictions and so do the rates of alcoholism (just inverted).
Really enjoyed this piece. Reminded me of one of your earliest writings in UR about the virtual caste system in America. However, as a film buff, I want to point out that movies with more imagination were produced in the 1960s as opposed to the 2010s. For instance, 2001: A Space Odyssey came out in ‘69 and you can’t argue that it lacks in overall trippiness factor
It's also in the pace and the complexity. It's like many of our sports, which progressively are getting more and more technical. From double jumps, we go to triple, then quadruple.
I've often thought that copyright law contributed to a glut of commercial art, generally low quality and heavily marketed (aka appealing to the lowest common denominator). Attacking commercial art by dismantling copyright law could redirect artistic demand towards patronage systems like patreon, changing artistic incentives and hopefully improving art as a whole.
It's very interesting to read a plan for artistic development that uses rather than dismisses copyright law to similar ends, in attemptedly emulating the artistic environment of renaissance Italy. For not considering the tournament economy could be tackled in the first place I blame insufficient imagination.
Yes, it seems like back in the day, there was an extremely strict copyright law by dint of nature. So maybe there weren't so many legal prohibitions on copying, but you couldn't Ctrl C a painting. Maybe artificially replicating those circumstances could be a good thing.
Forgive me for commenting before I have read the whole text of the chapter. It is either very long or I am a very slow reader. I have a point on artificial difficulty / intentional disutility. Perhaps most of that decreased efficiency can be obtained in ways that actually arent artificial but rather relate to the enforcement of standards and quality?
An example. I can build and have a "wooden structure" approved as a designated wooden building and treated by all the engineers in town as if this building has the same properties as a real wood building even if I haven't made the building from wood. Most "wood homes" today are made primarily from oriented strand board. Which is actually basically just sawdust and wood chips and glue. Its wood chopped up and rearranged and repackaged as Wood* TM. If I want a higher quality Wood* TM product I can purchase *PlyWood*. Which is again, just more strips of non wood smashed together with glue, then we call it "wood". Then the mortgage for that fake wood building is it self chopped into strips and tranches and glued back together again and sold as a mortgage security. And the same is done with people, and countries, and brands, and companies. It's all chopped up and rearranged and repackaged and sold as "wood".
What would be so "artificial" about telling builders they can only call actual wood, wood.
What is the disutility in making lying to everyone all the time illegal?
I agree with you to some degree. The existing demands that the government is placing on manufacturing and construction are doing exactly this: they generate demand for highly-priced labor here, in the U.S.
However, there's a shortage of people who wish to go into the lucrative business of, e.g., construction. A friend who was doing just fine in construction decided to switch to earning a degree in Computer Science, so he can write widgets in React. He originally has an M.A. in English Literature.
There needs to be some way that people can earn status by working in construction. Status-seeking is not exclusive to the "elites" - it's a normal human desire that is completely rational and justified in that achieving higher status improves one's ability to feed themselves, have a family, and so on.
Oy! Now you've gone and complicated your nice Three Layers of Gentry, Commoners and Clients into strata of *armigers*, *yeomen*, and *lazzari*, with *autochthons* and *rubble* added in for good measure. Actually, really you should group the lazzari/autochthons/rubble as **misfits**. Because the poor dears don't fit into the glorious present system decreed by the Master of Arms at the Palazzo dei Armigeri. And because of the Rule of Three.
The interesting point, of course, is that with your new Nietzschean Revaluation of Values you have decided that we can't just leave the Clients to molder away. By dividing them, like Gaul, into three, Gaius, you have decided that We Must Do Something about them instead of just using them, as the Gentry/armigers have done, as political cannon fodder.
I just wish Curtis would settle on his terminology already so we can finally start turning him into the next Marx. One day 'read theory' will mean 'read Moldbug'.
Settling on terminology might defeat the point of changing it; escaping negative connotations being ascribed. As the prophet Alinsky says: “ Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
Also, I think that if we are going to have Italian lazzari the armigers should be "armigeri" so we can practice our fake Italian and talk patronizingly about "i nostri armigeri".
LET'S GOOO, but only as long as Lazzaria includes a patch for our brothers optimized for breaking the Washcorp DRM on all those 200$ movies! Perhaps there should be a cyberpunk dystopia of cryptoanarchy somewhere within the safari territories.
This is perhaps the understatement of all understatements. But we don’t do relative public policy here. We do absolutely public policy here. Go to Andrew Yangs YouTube channel if you want wonky stuff, which is fine.
No complaints! Love the blog and reading posts, but find it hard to believe anyone alive gonna find this alluring.
People are gonna find blonde children in fields with the sunflowers and shit far more enticing. Romantic nationalism, inspirational myths, that's where the treasure is.
So it's the classic, teenage, Sim City delusion, with "artificially difficult technology mode" checked, because central planning in your pajamas was too easy of a game. Add the Sim City extension pack: Beat Hypercapitalist Meritocratic Postmodernism. Press Z to remedievalize.
Divergence long ago completed, continuing to pester the shoddy premises:
> In this reality, the streets of Columbia are full of happy, busy, and well-dressed people, working hard and living life fully. The business of Columbia is humming; her trade is in the black; her budget is balanced; her debt is not a sinkhole, her equity a bubble, her currency a juggle, her housing an ATM; her commerce is not devoured by monopolies, her farms by banks, her industries by imports… hm.
>
> We see that things are not going well in the econ department. This makes sense, as a country without serious security or economic problems needs no regime change at all. If Columbia’s real problems are economic, its next prince will need a new economics.
That's mixing positives and negatives into an illogical soup. Progress has occurred _despite_ imbalanced budget, incomprehensible debt, equities on steroids, and viral oligopolies. There is a real world where fracking was discovered and solar panels are built, and the armigers have periodic wars over fake dollars and bitcoins on top; pointless battles. The real world still exists and will continue to improve. See Ridley and Pinker.
I wonder if you've ever considered that these Sim City fantasies -- doomed to failure -- are actually the cause of the thoughts of "the human catastrophe of mass uselessness" that nihilistic and suicidal armigers can't shake?
Here's a plan: convert the armigers, yourself included, into yeomen by lobotomizing central planning fantasies and encouraging them to find the inherent meaning in life, finding a good partner, settling down, making some babies, getting a couple dogs, and slowly improving their Widgets at Widgets Incorporated... because that's what actually improves the world. If you want a revolution, wait until colonizing other planets is cheap.
I'm literally unable to grasp that there is someone here unironically making ad hominem arguments. This is just the worst.
If you're not afraid to make a counter-argument, then go ahead and do it. To be clear, there are parts of Pinker that I disagree with, particularly some of his conclusions. The raw data, though, is great. Same with Ridley, Goklany, Rosling, etc.
I never said that. I think Goklany summarized it best (quote below). I guess it's mostly a combination of the discovery of cheap energy and relative economic freedom. Be careful playing Sim City with working societies or else you end up in a Maoist or Stalinist hell-hole. See Huemer's In Praise of Passivity for the dangers of these sorts of "in place" revolutions: https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/papers/passivity.htm
"Despite "recklessly" increasing its numbers during the past millennium, humanity has never been better fed, healthier, or longer lived. The state of humanity has never been better.
Since Malthus wrote his Essay on Population two centuries ago, the average person’s life span has more than doubled. He is better educated and wealthier. She is freer to choose her rulers and express her views. He is more likely to live under the rule of law and is less fearful of being arbitrarily deprived of life, limb, freedom, property, wealth, and other basic human rights. Her professional, social, and physical mobility, while still limited in many places, is less likely to be circumscribed by caste, class, location, or other accidents of birth. Not only is work less physically demanding, he works fewer hours, earns more, and has more leisure time at his disposal.
The proximate causes for the improvements in the human condition... are the forces of technological change and economic growth, supplemented by trade in products, ideas, and technologies associated with those forces.
Virtually every indicator of human welfare also improves with wealth, as do the environmental indicators that we know to have the greatest bearing on public health... In the United States, this upward march has been in progress at least since the 1880s... Pollution levels did not keep pace with the growth in population or consumption of energy, other natural resources, and chemicals... Despite a 100-fold increase in organic chemical usage, public health has continued to improve... The inverse trends between chemical usage and public health is consistent with the notion that new technology does not, in fact, make matters worse. If anything, it replaces worse risks with risks that are not so bad... In fact, the air and water quality in the United States and the world’s rich nations are better today than they have been in decades. The increase in their agricultural productivity has allowed them to reestablish forests and set habitat aside... As the cases of the Clean Air Act of 1970, Clean Water Act of 1972, and Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 show, much of the improvements in the United States for the air and water quality indicators examined in chapter 6 preceded the enactment of stringent national environmental laws.
Although many of today’s developing countries haven’t been on the cycle of progress for long, Human Development Indices in their urban areas exceed those in rural areas. This might seem counterfactual to many casual observers given the obvious- and very visible- squalor and pollution in the cities of developing countries such as Mexico City; Teheran, Iran; and New Delhi, India... Because rural areas are generally poorer, they lack access to many of the technologies that have improved human well-being in urban areas... The case of sanitary reform in India also hints at the importance of economic growth... Sanitary reform came to India in 1870, well before it was introduced in Italy in 1890... However, even now, large portions of the Indian population lack access to sanitation. Clearly, neither technology transfer nor knowledge of a technology’s potential is sufficient to stimulate technological change."
The Improving State of the World: Why We're Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet Paperback – by Indur M. Goklany (Author)
I didn't say you said that. I said that's Pinker's gist. I'd reply to anything else you'd said if I thought you understood even the basics of the points being made.
Yeah, obviously the system is corrupt. Welcome to apeworld. The system also isn't as bad as it used to be and is improving despite the corruption. Be careful what you wish for with a revolution. Sim City and Whole Foods often go poof. I'm all for revolution on unused naked land. Take over an island. I might join.
You're presupposing that revolutions always improve society which obviously isn't always the case. See Huemer's In Praise of Passivity for the dangers of these sorts of "in place" revolutions: https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/papers/passivity.htm
Not at all, all I'm presupposing is that there are things that could be improved. Also, I read the paper you linked and I find the author's argumentation to be about 70-80% invalid at the very least. If you want me to go into the specifics - tell me which section, I don't have the time to type it out point by point.
> Not at all, all I'm presupposing is that there are things that could be improved.
The overall context is Yarvin arguing that a political revolution with a prince/monarch/etc. is necessary because "things are not going well". I counter-argued that things are in many ways going well _despite_ the terrible actions of the leaders and to be careful of playing Sim City and causing more damage than benefit. Of course I believe that Yarvin and you believe you can improve society. I just think it's dangerous and deluded and there is an alternative of 1) build a beautiful bubble and do the best you can in your little world, and 2) if you want to experiment, take over an uninhabited island (I'm not being sarcastic, I think that would be legitimate).
> If you want me to go into the specifics - tell me which section, I don't have the time to type it out point by point.
I think the most relevant would be "4.4. Don’t Fight for What You Believe In".
>That is mixing positives and negatives into an illogical soup. progress has occurred...
Well here I will start with Pinker, as it sounds like you have read 'angels of our better nature' and 'enlightenment now'. To put it short Pinker cherry picks stats and his historical scholarship is sloppy. Innovation has been declining in all fields since the 70s by many metrics/proxies. Many people do not feel the world is getting better, which is evidenced by suicide and depression rates. Thought experiment- If you told a man of 1910's of the luxuries of the modern world (washing machines, tap water, electricity in abundance, TV etc) and then told such a man that 18-25's suicide rates had gone up three fold in the same era, would this man think 'things must be getting better all the time in that era'? A very good piece on this is the chapter "Enlightenment never" in "Modernity and cultural decline- a biobehavioral perspective"
Note that essentially ALL the progress has been made in physical technological fields or in techniques of production, not in the quality of human life. Sure we have fracking and solar panels and they ARE cool (to some people), but whos life have they improved? Who has sat down and contemplated "Thank god for [solar panels, fracking, an intricate understanding of the mechanisms for the haber-bosch process], for they offered an avenue through which my life improved". Maybe the people who implement and invent such things see an improvement in themselves, outside that these technologies promote a spiritual wasteland precisely BECAUSE of the system into which they are nestled. Solar panels are great, but wouldn't it be better if solar panels provided the energy to an economy that did not merely move on its landmass, products, manufactured in other nations, causing its own inhabitants to loose their jobs and turn to heroin?
Its not a false mixing of technology and economics. One is nestled inside the other, and because of this will promote certain results/ directions. Nukes are cool...aiming nukes at one another is not. Gene modification is cool...making a super-virus/ bacteria is not. Rocket jets to planets are cool...rocket jets assisting the dismemberment of Syrian children are not.
>convert the armigers
This is the worst mistake of governance. If everyone was just x...then y. If everyone was just Catholic then saved souls. If everyone was just communist, then utopia. If everyone were just yeomen...(Pol Pot had similar leanings). People want different things. Some people want power- if your solution to this is to eliminate power, or reduce it somehow this is madness. Moldbugs piece points out precisely this; current system wants everyone to be cosmopolitans - ie thats how you get more assets/ money/power.
> Innovation has been declining in all fields since the 70s by many metrics/proxies.
All fields? That seems like an overstatement. Obviously, biotechnology, computers, fracking, and many others immediately pop to mind. What are your metrics/proxies?
> Many people do not feel the world is getting better, which is evidenced by suicide and depression rates.
Suicides are a scourge, but why? I haven't investigated the science on suicides, but I have my own anecdote: I was suicidal when I was young. Why? It's hard to say for sure because the past is a fog but I think it was largely because of all of the doom and gloom propaganda from culture, school, and media. Reading Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist was quite literally what took me out of my mid-20s malaise.
> A very good piece on this is the chapter "Enlightenment never" in "Modernity and cultural decline- a biobehavioral perspective"
Interesting, ok. Can you please give a high level summary?
> Note that essentially ALL the progress has been made in physical technological fields or in techniques of production, not in the quality of human life. Sure we have fracking and solar panels and they ARE cool (to some people), but whos life have they improved? Who has sat down and contemplated "Thank god for [solar panels, fracking, an intricate understanding of the mechanisms for the haber-bosch process], for they offered an avenue through which my life improved".
At minimum, fracking alone is huge because that increases energy production and ultimately it's energy that is a key necessary prerequisite for all the fancy things we can do with reality.
> Maybe the people who implement and invent such things see an improvement in themselves, outside that these technologies promote a spiritual wasteland precisely BECAUSE of the system into which they are nestled.
I don't deny there is a spiritual wasteland but I think it's a simple mental step sideways to escape. What's the alternative proposal under discussion in this serialized book? 1) Take over, 2) ??
> Solar panels are great, but wouldn't it be better if solar panels provided the energy to an economy that did not merely move on its landmass, products, manufactured in other nations, causing its own inhabitants to loose their jobs and turn to heroin?
These are very sweeping claims. As I mentioned to another poster, I have built a Beautiful Bubble (TM) in which I can build an idyllic life, take advantage of this wave of progress over the last few hundred year, and make an actual impact on my own spiritual being and those I care about. In my opinion, if you want to fight for something, fight against the neurotic propaganda that the world is terrible and give people the tools to make their own Beautiful Bubble.
> Its not a false mixing of technology and economics. One is nestled inside the other, and because of this will promote certain results/ directions. Nukes are cool...aiming nukes at one another is not. Gene modification is cool...making a super-virus/ bacteria is not. Rocket jets to planets are cool...rocket jets assisting the dismemberment of Syrian children are not.
Sure, people have to be mentally healthy to use these technologies and we have a lot of mental ill-health, but I don't see what the proposal is of the Moldbugs. I think two reasonable proposals are 1) Help people build Beautiful Bubbles, and 2) Take over an uninhabited island somewhere to run your social experiments.
> if your solution to this is to eliminate power, or reduce it somehow this is madness
Agreed. I think the only thing in nature that can keep power balanced is competition. That is why I'm an anarcho-capitalist. There will, of course, always be powerful people, companies, personalities, etc. They need to be kept in check. But again, I only recommend trying ancapistan on an uninhabited island or a new, virgin planet. It's too risky (as most social revolutions and experiments are) given the Beautiful Bubbles we have at hand.
I think the crux of the problem is this. You have a beautiful bubble. This is good, by all means. It is exactly what I myself am working towards.
Can everyone create their own beautiful bubble themselves? my answer is no.
Does everyone deserve their own beautiful bubble? my answer is yes.
Does giving most people more 'freedom' mean they will create more beautiful bubbles? my answer is the exact opposite will occur, and this is exactly what we have witnessed over the past 3-4 centuries. We have huge centres for entertainment, but most people have forgotten how to relax such that they are refreshed. We print more books than any other civilisation, and have higher literacy rates - but do not know HOW to read. We speak the loudest of any century but by all rights have forgotten the arts of speech craft (as a rough proxy more delicate and precise words are more seldom used than 100 years ago). And the reason is simple, in a system based on utility and comfort there is no need for these things unless you yourself are smart and disciplined enough to both recognize and train for the benefit.
Robots are cool, but robots are not human. Humans are beautiful, and more beautiful the more humanity they express.
Turning humans into robots is ugly- both for robots and for humans:
Humans forced to work as robots are incredibly inefficient - which is ugly from a systems perspective.
Robots expressing some form of humanity is ugly- its creepy, like a clown, because it has no 'soul' (for lack of a better word).
You may have escaped the "spiritual wasteland" but, under the current system, most will not.
>I haven't done serious research on suicide
I can tell.
>Fracking is huge because energy production
See you did it again "being able to do more stuff is better". For a civilisation as a whole maybe, for individuals no way. You should be free to choose your limitations- your limitations are exactly what makes life worth living. If you lived forever life would be meaningless; if you can do anything everything is meaningless. Civilisation is defined by its internal and external limitations: moral, philosophical, geographical and temporal. Otherwise life is just swapping and changing when things get tough and loses its poetry because it loses its continuity.
>Give people the tools to make their own beautiful bubble
Yes. I'd argue one of the tools to achieve this is the system (philosophical, moral, geographical, temporal) into which people are born. Giving tools under a bad system is like giving people electric power tools in a barn with no sockets (they may still have some benefit, but their efficiency and effectiveness is massively reduced).
> Can everyone create their own beautiful bubble themselves? my answer is no.
Unless one is living in the third world, we're all vastly better off than our grandparents and have the ability to live in a beautiful bubble. I don't see why your answer is "no". I agree most people need guidance to build a beautiful bubble, create values-based communities, etc. That's something this smart and forward-thinking community could actually help provide.
> Does giving most people more 'freedom' mean they will create more beautiful bubbles?
I think everyone builds their beautiful bubble in their own way. However, it is required to not be dying of dysentery (or, dying before one even has a chance -- during childbirth -- the fate of swaths in the past) and to have plentiful goods at hand.
> We have huge centres for entertainment, but most people have forgotten how to relax such that they are refreshed. We print more books than any other civilisation, and have higher literacy rates - but do not know HOW to read. We speak the loudest of any century but by all rights have forgotten the arts of speech craft (as a rough proxy more delicate and precise words are more seldom used than 100 years ago).
All of those beautiful things are in my bubble. I'm an average man and have three bookshelves, not to mention all of the vast troves of information available on the internet. I have all the greatest music, poetry, and art of all time at my fingertips. I think anyone in the 1st and 2nd worlds can build such a bubble, particularly today with the internet. As mentioned, they do need guidance, though.
> And the reason is simple, in a system based on utility and comfort there is no need for these things unless you yourself are smart and disciplined enough to both recognize and train for the benefit.
I think it's much deeper than that: the loss of meaning and purpose. That's part of building a beautiful bubble that people need the most help with. But all of those "utilities" are required to actually build that bubble once one does find meaning and purpose.
> Robots are cool, but robots are not human. Humans are beautiful, and more beautiful the more humanity they express.
Agreed.
> Turning humans into robots is ugly- both for robots and for humans:
>
> Humans forced to work as robots are incredibly inefficient - which is ugly from a systems perspective.
>
> Robots expressing some form of humanity is ugly- its creepy, like a clown, because it has no 'soul' (for lack of a better word).
The average amount of hours worked per person has about halved since 1870 (Maddison, 1998). Whether or not today's work is more "robotic" than before seems irrelevant (and quite arguably given most used to be farmers). The extra leisure time is what matters. Yes, most people are misusing that time. That's a fixable problem.
>> I haven't done serious research on suicide
> I can tell.
You are the one who made broad claims about suicide, not me, and thus the burden of proof is on you. I was admitting my ignorance, which I think is a proper thing to do, and I provided a personal anecdote, which is still more evidence than you've provided so far. I'm open minded but I'll need more than vague assertions. I would guess that there has been serious research done on interviews of suicidal people and qualitative analyses of the results, correlations of suicide with other factors (e.g. fatherlessness, nihilism, etc.).
> If you lived forever life would be meaningless; if you can do anything everything is meaningless.
I'll focus on this point as a microcosm of your paragraph. I don't understand it. I want to live forever. I think life is inherently meaningful. This is exactly why I want to live forever: to never lose touch of this beauty. However, I do think this goes back to the point above: most people have lost touch with meaning and purpose (ironically, Yarvin's writings about nihilism seem to exacerbate this). I think this issue is largely orthogonal to the political structure, but it certainly helps to not have a brain-eating parasite while doing this search. Frankl has an interesting argument that meaning can even be found in the darkest of struggles, and while I agree, I think that's needlessly masochistic.
> Yes. I'd argue one of the tools to achieve this is the system (philosophical, moral, geographical, temporal) into which people are born. Giving tools under a bad system is like giving people electric power tools in a barn with no sockets (they may still have some benefit, but their efficiency and effectiveness is massively reduced).
I get your point that with great material wealth, degeneracy may follow and may fight against a meaningful life, but I'd rather have the material wealth and help those struggle through the degeneracy than risk a risky revolution that might halve that wealth, as most autocratic revolutions have done in the past. The historical evidence is simply against the ideas of this group. And it's not fair that you're going to pop my Beautiful Bubble in your attempts to fix the degeneracy through brute force.
>we're all vastly better off than our grandparents
No i do not think this is the case. I think a lot of people a far worse people than their grandparents or great grand parents. If you do not see this your bubble may have blinded you, or you just havent looked. We are materially better off, sure, but man is not one giant stomach.
>you make sweeping claims
No. I offer my opinion. I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken. If you are open minded, research the topic.
>Pop my beautiful bubble in an attempt to fix degeneracy
I think you misunderstand the whole premise of this 'revolution'. I would encourage you to re-read all of Gray Mirror. The proposal of a 'risky revolution' was demolished in part 1 i think.
If you recall part 4- salus populi suprema lex. You can measure all wealth as 'material wealth' sure. You could also measure the suns emission at just 284 nm - the reason why chlorophyll is green will go straight over your head. You are still analysing everything through a "more stuff is always better" lens, and as long as you do that you won't really get where I am coming from.
>People work less than 100 years ago.
True. But they also work more than 400 years ago. And how much of this work is productive work? On average 30-40% of western work forces are simply unnecessary (ie paper pushers, trackers or very low skill robot). Far less unnecessary work was done in the past - and unnecessary work is strictly dehumanizing, and thus results in less 'happy bubbles'. Free time is barely utilised at all- 3.5 hours of TV a day on average, 3.5 hours on phone (its 5.4 for americans) ON AVERAGE. Maybe an hour+ commute. ie on average, you have just lost all the supposed advantages of post-industrial society: that time is spent on mindless things, for some people after mindless work. (these are averages so half of people spend MORE time than this on such 'entertainments'). Factor in video-games, other mindless entertainment, fewer cohesive friendships, time spent dealing with the myriad of technical issues that come from these advancements... I'm really not seeing this as 'degeneracy may follow', I'm seeing it as 'degeneracy HAS followed, in abundance, has reduced many people to robots with little anchorage, and shows no sign of abating because … Google maps and more stuff is 'cool''
This is not the position I am in. Its the position I see a lot of people in - and when you answer 'give them tools' I seriously think you misunderstand the gravity of the situation.
>Help people find meaning and purpose
I think, for many people, meaning is not something they can 'find' but only something they can carry/ pass down. Again, you think everyone can just do what you did, what if they cant? What if some (or even most?) people literally need a structure in which to pursue any meaning or purpose (ie they cannot craft their own meaning, but only find meaning by continuing a life-long tradition?), and then you put them in a system than actively demotes such structures from arising? Such people will suffer and not know why they are suffering.
> I think a lot of people a far worse people than their grandparents or great grand parents.
I think the crux of our disagreement is that I don't think material and mental wealth have to be in conflict. I think that as we solve most major biological and material problems, more and more people will be searching for meaning and mental health.
> If you are open minded, research the topic.
Do you have some evidence or books to recommend?
> I would encourage you to re-read all of Gray Mirror.
It's hard to follow and I'm no dummy. Can you summarize it? My impression is that, somehow, Moldbugs want to wield the brute force of the state to drive some sort of risky cultural revolution.
> You are still analysing everything through a "more stuff is always better" lens, and as long as you do that you won't really get where I am coming from.
I think "more stuff is always better" *and* meaning are both good. I believe the two can co-exist. I'm worried that Moldbugs' pursuit of the latter will destroy the former.
> when you answer 'give them tools' I seriously think you misunderstand the gravity of the situation.
I agree the situation is grave. You make very valid points that the suicide and opioid epidemics are evidence of that. My points are:
1) Run your social experiments on an uninhabited island (simply take it over), and/or
2) Help people find meaning and build their beautiful bubbles.
> Again, you think everyone can just do what you did, what if they cant?
That's a very pessmistic premise and I think the burden of proof would be on you to run a risky social experiment based on that belief. I think all but psychopaths have intuitive concepts of what is meaningful (see, for example, Baumeister et al., 2013).
> What if some (or even most?) people literally need a structure in which to pursue any meaning or purpose (ie they cannot craft their own meaning, but only find meaning by continuing a life-long tradition?), and then you put them in a system than actively demotes such structures from arising? Such people will suffer and not know why they are suffering.
Yes, I think that's the "give them tools" debate above.
Thiel's hypothesis is a fair and strong one but the evidence is still pretty weak and pending. World War II also decelerated progress a lot but it was just a blip in the long tide of improvement (Ridley/Pinker/Goklany/Rosling/etc.).
Now do that same analysis but take antibiotics as a given, drinking and smoking pegged to the modern rate, as well as washing your hands. Lifespan has decreased dramatically in a very short time span. Excess calories and spiritual malaise are scourges, Pinker does not account for that.
I just finished the chapter. Thanks for this diagnosis, it clarified my thinking even further. I especially appreciate having names and definitions: armigers and yeomen.
Figuring out yeomen forced to be armigers is interesting. I never felt any particular attachment to my mother country or anything like that (we moved from Russia when I was 18, and I'd never been back and haven't wanted to go until very recently, for various reasons), and I've moved to Seattle to work as a software engineer years ago, away from my parents, who always lived apart from any "community", and have lived here ever since. Seattle has always seemed extremely provincial to me, in comparison to Washington, D.C., where my parents had settled, and I think indeed it is the feeling of power or "meaning" that I sensed in D.C. right away. Literally the first night I slept there, I just knew. I've been resenting Seattle for the past 15 years, and I think I understand why now: it's full of yeomen who were improperly made into armigers.
The greatest sense of community or continuity I felt in the past several years is a couple of weeks ago when I began playing Mozart again.
And here, I do want to disagree: I think that institutions are created by yeomen-as-armigers, as a sort of cargo-cult. Real armigers have communities, but they take the shape of salons, letter correspondence, and now, the sort of podcasts you're appearing on. The key difference is that armiger communities still emphasize the individuals that comprise them. Institutions and participation in them don't give "real" armigers meaning, they are a huge source of disappointment and disillusionment.
P.S.: If I could turn myself into a yeoman, as I often wish I could, I would choose the Mormons as my ideal community. I admire them greatly, and I'm saddened that I constitutionally can't fit into the mould of a follower.
Who gets the aircraft carriers, Curtis? Who gets to command the CVNs? Most people during a secessionist movement would be more concerned with the nukes, as well they should be. But nukes are boring; carriers are fun!
Ever seen a CVN in the flesh? Ever strolled by one? It takes a few minutes. It's a long-ass ship. The one I deployed on was 1,150 ft long. And its flight deck was pretty wide too. "Four-and-a-half acres of sovereign US territory" was the quip, sailing at leisure through the Strait of Hormuz and into the Persian Gulf. Ready and willing to "put warheads on foreheads." So who gains this power? Who gets the carriers? Because someone has to. No way they're gonna end up parked in some dry dock, rusting away like defunct train engines at an old cross-track depot. They're way too much fun for that.
On the off-chance anyone reading this has a family member stationed on a CVN, and its command offers a week-long cruise between Hawaii and San Diego or some such (mine did this), I recommend you take it. The accommodations won't be great, but you'll forget all about them once you get to watch Flight-Ops.
Watching an F-18 get launched from a modern aircraft carrier is a spiritual experience. It changes your worldview. It makes you feel like you're in the future. Sure, you knew nuclear-powered steam systems existed. And jet engines too. But combined together? With radar-guided bombs strapped to wings so short your mind boggles they even create lift? Yeah, it's real. And the whole process is controlled top-to-bottom by the current US Government.
Here's a thought: what if the Prince asks for some kind of personally created thing as a component of taxation (or land value tax)? So a citizen pays most of his taxation with money, but also has to hand over a personally created good, e.g. a table, painting, sonnet, pair of shoes, etc, etc, etc. The Prince can then choose to redistribute the thing, or publish it, or keep it (a status improving event for the citizen), or hand it back to the citizen. The idea wouldn't be that the economy is based on the artificial difficultly, more that citizens are incentivised to create with it. Because personal creation is inherently gratifying (which is why Curtis wants to introduce it), citizens will then get the "bug" for creation.
My thinking stems from the establishment of a currency; the government makes it an accepted form of money by demanding taxation is paid in it. This is the means by which government takes a proportion of a citizen's labour for the running of the state. So in our current paradigm the government doesn't care as to the nature of the labour; as long as the citizen generates cash, the government isn't bothered whether the labour is mindless factory work, or composing sonnets.
But Yarvin's Prince IS concerned about the nature of the labour, he wants to introduce "artificial" difficulty in production for the long term health of the citizen (mostly mental health if we're honest), and therefore the state. As taxation is the means by which a state interacts with the labour of the citizens, then it seems that it is the best means of altering the nature of that labour.
I do like the sound of the idea, even just as a competition. I think it raises an important issue though- intellectual property rights. Its very good controlling the labour of ancient material goods so as to raise 'human capital' through craft work. But equally you need the incentive to create new things, part of that is prestige as you address, but some might need material incentive to create (a free pair of boots perhaps? ) and how that is organized is very important ( ie you essentially want it to be physically impossible for one company to own an entire chain of supply and automate it). How is it determined where and what needs difficulty (eg artificial difficulty for a military is probably a bad idea)?
Maybe this will go back to his older ideas of 'patchwork' - separation to get the best results. Maybe only certain areas could produce certain products, cities dedicated to the production of ships (which is historically normal), land vehicles (Detroit on steroids?), computers. It would be the 'patches' answerable to the prince: who wants to see quality works and happy people. Its quite hard to introduce meaningful artificial difficulty for large technological systems (production of spacecraft, submarines etc) as part of the beauty of technological systems is their efficiency. The sort of compromise the 'new economics' would have to make is: the engineer who makes transport efficient cant make food production too efficient (and as a consequence is surrounded by happier people), but at the same time farmers can't make the engineers beautiful floating airship cities (i exaggerate) less efficient (and as a consequence is provided human-centric tools by the engineers).
You proposed a 'trade up' to the prince, but maybe a 'trade between' the 'patches' would be ideal for this purpose. The incentive? Well when the world gets bigger (and things get rarer) incentives abound ( 700 years ago: spices, gold, ancient artefacts, silver, gems, the daughter of a great Arabian prince) - the aim could be to make the world 'bigger' (philosophically) so such incentives once again exist. Imagine if Swiss Cuckoo clocks were only exchanged for great works done for the High King of Zurich (eg he wants exceptionally comfortable chairs/houses for some of his subjects after a days work in the mines) : immediately these works would be of greater material wealth as they convey power. I imagine such a system could incentivise production of new things in a very human way. Maybe in the future intellectual property will be less about explicit cost and more about implicit uniqueness (create a power dynamic such that states/princes want to get hold of inventors) - and hence the incentive for craftsmen will be to create the rarest items (Daedric sword of banishing), but not necessarily the HARDEST to make - ie a happy symbiosis between the intellectual 'whats the most beautiful thing I can think of' and 'how can this be made by humans': things made in sweat shops aren't that special (would you rather sit in a Hyundai i10 or SR-71 Blackbird? What if we made shoes like the SR-71 Blackbird (in uniqueness, not speed))
Thanks for the response. I love the idea of patchwork, and I hope that if (prob. when) this current regime of governance collapses it's what we're left with. Let's be clear about what I'm proposing: this is NOT a scheme to give the patch a competitive edge (even though it may lead to it). I don't actually propose a 'trade up' to the prince, this is not a trade, it's a demand, a compulsory price for continuing to live under the rule of the prince.
But as prices go, this may be better than cash. My understanding is that the Patch Prince is selling citizenship, so citizens commit to purchasing their place when they reside on the patch. To make it attractive to these customers, the prince ensures the citizen customers' needs are met according to the Maslow hierarchy. A free market for food seems to work well for meeting that need, security might be more centralised and paid for by "taxes".
But our present society has greater and greater trouble meeting the needs further up the pyramid. Many people in our present society struggle to find feelings of belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation. My reading of Yarvin's point is that our present economy, efficient as it is, treats people as machines, and that it will never meet higher needs. An increasingly small number of people have roles that are both lucrative and meaningful, much of the rest are on anti-depressants. Or worse.
This might be great for GDP growth, but ultimately it erodes the sum total of human capital growth.
So the idea of my scheme is give an incentive not create great works like SR-71 Blackbirds (or i10's; creating a good economy car that turns a profit might actually be harder...) , but rather to create personal works. And ultimately the great works will follow.
Maybe this is jumping the gun, but there is still no discussion on why our Prince Francia cares about the human capital of his realm, in a time when that won't necessarily be a means to any other form of capital.
Reminds me of Norm Macdonald’s joke regarding the homeless man’s dog: The dog has got to be thinking, “This is the longest walk in the world...Hey buddy, I can do this myself.”
The shortest path to a monarchy is likely making a(n ever-expanding) charter city in Columbia itself, rather than taking over America and naming it as such.
It was worth the wait. Thanks man.
The first and most obvious problem with making a plan to ensure all boots cost $450, and are of such high quality that you only need one pair for your whole adult life is: we do _not_ want a bureaucracy setting standards of quality, or picking winners and losers. That guarantees not only mediocre quality but no hope of innovative improvements. Besides it gives those armigers more undeserved power.
Instead of that, here's a thought: instead of taxing goods at point of sale, tax them at the landfill. When a pair of boots shows up at the dump, send a disposal bill to the cobbler. This bill should be pretty exorbitant and independent of the sale price, such that if your boots regularly end up in landfills and don't sell for very much you're ruined. Bonus: no bill if the cobbler is dead. Every cobbler strives to make a boot that outlives him. Because then he never pays the boot tax. Set the tax at say, 25% of the average sale price of a boot. Think it through. How long before walmart closes its footwear department?
That's fun. Might need a death penalty for littering in order to make it very effective, and a complete prohibition of holding on to old boots. Also, a lot of those Philipino child laborers make pretty good and long lasting shoes. And some other things to niggle about. .
Also, the beaucracy wouldn't be setting standards of quality. Just only certain means of production may be used. Anything out of place in 1920 and you're shut down.
Still a good example of absolute public policy you're giving. Many ways to get to good government, once you accept that goal.
Sure, there are some holes. Here I assume that all shoes, regardless of how they are initially abandoned, eventually make their way to the landfill and get accounted for. I don't think it's a problem for people to hold on to their old boots for sentimental value. This whole scenario doesn't work for boomer hoarder types. Surely there are no u-haul storage centers to fill up with their crap, if there was even crap to buy in the first place, so if someone loves his old boots so much he puts them on the shelf as a conversation piece that's not a big deal.
Beyond that eventually space constraints under his relatively expensive hand-crated bed in his relatively small, functional, and sturdy house will force him to make some tough decisions. If hoarding gets out of hand in spite all that and the prince thinks that's a problem he *is* an absolute monarch and can probably come up with a solution.
If people are colluding with a maker of substandard shoes to help him avoid the landfill tax for some reason then you have a problem too. I also assume that import controls will prevent competition from outside sources (re: Filipinos), but of course the black market will provide (and maybe even follow up to make sure their goods don't end up at the landfill). Not even the absolutest of monarchs is going to completely shut down the black market.
I wouldn't want a bureaucracy mandating tools or techniques of a trade either. It's at least possible that there are yet-undiscovered tools and techniques for making better shoes that don't alienate the cobbler, and we don't want midwit bureaucrats who only know how to check off boxes next to a list of specifications interfering in that kind of innovation or we'll end up with the smoke detector situation, except with everything. Ideally the midwits are the tradesmen, not the regulators, and that's ok because we need lots of tradesmen now.
If this system is going to work, we also need our trade regulations to have built in unit-testing of their observed results against their intended results. An untested regulation is worse than no regulation at all. But this is depth of abstraction which a midwit procedural bureaucracy cannot fathom.
Which means that we need someone functioning higher than midwit to administrate them, which means we don't have a large pool of potential administrators to draw from, which is why they need to be slim and agile, so again overspecification is not ideal.
We know what we don't want: lots of miserable people working on assembly lines making cheap plastic crap, or worse yet soulless robots doing that while the miserable people plot to overthrow the regime, or just drink themselves to death while arguing about their gender pronouns. The minimum possible intervention to achieve that would be ideal. So it can't be over-specified. So incentivise the desired outcomes and disincentivise the undesirable ones, don't specify the process.
The thing is that it's not a bureaucracy setting standards of quality. It's history. Classical design and artisanal practices have been produced and improved through an iterative process that is thousands of years long. Durability is not the goal, it is a tertiary benefit of human centric products and production. Have you ever worn hand made leather shoes? Regardless of your political persuasion, you should.
Try sending a message to this small producer of hand made leather shoes in the city of Leon in Mexico. Ask them if they have any shoes with a natural crepe sole. If you are lucky they may have an oxford shoe with a crepe sole made from the rubber of their own Pará tree. Buy it immediately. It will cost you around 400 dollars.
https://www.facebook.com/bristol1946/
Wear these shoes for 10 minutes and tell me that it is humane to allow anyone to continue to live their lives wearing the completely dehumanizing plastic injection mold alternative that is currently the universal standard. There is a way to make shoes and other goods that is already known and already proven. Using metrics to evaluate the production of footwear other than "is it good?" is just more of the same misanthropic neoliberal woo. IMHO :)
In the words of my maudlin armiger brethren, footwear is a human right.
Sure, this is a kind of self-regulation that emerges when incentives are aligned well. Or in the case of very old trades, because the alternative options just didn't exist.
But there has to be freedom to innovate, so you want the regulation that prevents the factory-made garbage as far-removed from the craftsman as possible. Autonomy is a big part of being "human centric". The landfill tax thing is just a thought experiment in that direction.
There are problems with other approaches. Some things can't be made without global supply chains and mass production. For example nobody is going to be hand-crafting CPUs and other ICs in their garage. I assume we're not going neo-primitive here and that we still want CPUs. We just don't want the process of making them to be miserable, dehumanizing, or completely inhuman.
We'll accept somewhat more expensive electronics, but with the expectation that their from and function is commensurate with the pricetag. So we can't just ban factories, or automation, or CNC machines. Not for shoes or anything else. Even the shoemaker wants machines and industrial processes - for example the ones that transform latex into rubber - and supply chains - for example the one getting that rubber (or rubber tree sap) from the tropics to his workshop. We just want all this stuff to be guided by capable hands who are proud of their work.
Production machinery is relatively expensive, and I very much doubt there will be some thriving black market in shitty shoes to pay for it.
People crave good societal health, they are just too dumb to achieve it (let’s leave our multigenerational family farm to work in some shitty factory!...oops factories are gone, so is the family farm and now that land is worth a million dollars).
Sure, there's not much of a case for industrial-scale black market production (at least, if it's happening it's happening overseas and your problem is border/port control in that case).
But for example, hand-stitching is always better quality than machine stitching, and creates an order of magnitude more demand for skilled labor. So maybe you ban the sale and manufacture of sewing machines and that's pretty easy to enforce so problem solved. But rough cuts on the fabric/leather do not require much skill and we don't need assembly lines of unskilled labor roughing out patches of shoe leather, so maybe you stamp the roughs out with machines. Saves the cobbler time, does not harm the dignity of any laborer or do much to suppress jobs or wages. Best counter-argument I can think of here is these menial tasks are good things to put apprentices on while they learn the basics of the craft.
Honestly it doesn’t take a huge disincentive for people to switch over from crappy products to nicer ones, and you only “need” to satisfy the condition of maximum esteemable employment to reap the benefits of this system.
Probably wouldn’t take a whole lot to make Budweiser or Nike non-viable entities.
This idea has merit. Tax as incentive.
Sin taxes unironically work at improving societal health. Libertarians always have the worst takes about taxation because it’s utility as a disincentive in incredibly high, e.g the alcohol taxes follow a step function is most jurisdictions and so do the rates of alcoholism (just inverted).
Really enjoyed this piece. Reminded me of one of your earliest writings in UR about the virtual caste system in America. However, as a film buff, I want to point out that movies with more imagination were produced in the 1960s as opposed to the 2010s. For instance, 2001: A Space Odyssey came out in ‘69 and you can’t argue that it lacks in overall trippiness factor
It's also in the pace and the complexity. It's like many of our sports, which progressively are getting more and more technical. From double jumps, we go to triple, then quadruple.
I've often thought that copyright law contributed to a glut of commercial art, generally low quality and heavily marketed (aka appealing to the lowest common denominator). Attacking commercial art by dismantling copyright law could redirect artistic demand towards patronage systems like patreon, changing artistic incentives and hopefully improving art as a whole.
It's very interesting to read a plan for artistic development that uses rather than dismisses copyright law to similar ends, in attemptedly emulating the artistic environment of renaissance Italy. For not considering the tournament economy could be tackled in the first place I blame insufficient imagination.
Yes, it seems like back in the day, there was an extremely strict copyright law by dint of nature. So maybe there weren't so many legal prohibitions on copying, but you couldn't Ctrl C a painting. Maybe artificially replicating those circumstances could be a good thing.
Forgive me for commenting before I have read the whole text of the chapter. It is either very long or I am a very slow reader. I have a point on artificial difficulty / intentional disutility. Perhaps most of that decreased efficiency can be obtained in ways that actually arent artificial but rather relate to the enforcement of standards and quality?
An example. I can build and have a "wooden structure" approved as a designated wooden building and treated by all the engineers in town as if this building has the same properties as a real wood building even if I haven't made the building from wood. Most "wood homes" today are made primarily from oriented strand board. Which is actually basically just sawdust and wood chips and glue. Its wood chopped up and rearranged and repackaged as Wood* TM. If I want a higher quality Wood* TM product I can purchase *PlyWood*. Which is again, just more strips of non wood smashed together with glue, then we call it "wood". Then the mortgage for that fake wood building is it self chopped into strips and tranches and glued back together again and sold as a mortgage security. And the same is done with people, and countries, and brands, and companies. It's all chopped up and rearranged and repackaged and sold as "wood".
What would be so "artificial" about telling builders they can only call actual wood, wood.
What is the disutility in making lying to everyone all the time illegal?
Nothing wrong with timber framed houses, you just need to get autarkic with our lumber supply, we ship so much to China it’s insane.
Nothing artificial, but someone would have to have the power to destroy or override Olsonian(after Mancur Olson) interest groups.
I agree with you to some degree. The existing demands that the government is placing on manufacturing and construction are doing exactly this: they generate demand for highly-priced labor here, in the U.S.
However, there's a shortage of people who wish to go into the lucrative business of, e.g., construction. A friend who was doing just fine in construction decided to switch to earning a degree in Computer Science, so he can write widgets in React. He originally has an M.A. in English Literature.
There needs to be some way that people can earn status by working in construction. Status-seeking is not exclusive to the "elites" - it's a normal human desire that is completely rational and justified in that achieving higher status improves one's ability to feed themselves, have a family, and so on.
Oy! Now you've gone and complicated your nice Three Layers of Gentry, Commoners and Clients into strata of *armigers*, *yeomen*, and *lazzari*, with *autochthons* and *rubble* added in for good measure. Actually, really you should group the lazzari/autochthons/rubble as **misfits**. Because the poor dears don't fit into the glorious present system decreed by the Master of Arms at the Palazzo dei Armigeri. And because of the Rule of Three.
The interesting point, of course, is that with your new Nietzschean Revaluation of Values you have decided that we can't just leave the Clients to molder away. By dividing them, like Gaul, into three, Gaius, you have decided that We Must Do Something about them instead of just using them, as the Gentry/armigers have done, as political cannon fodder.
I just wish Curtis would settle on his terminology already so we can finally start turning him into the next Marx. One day 'read theory' will mean 'read Moldbug'.
Settling on terminology might defeat the point of changing it; escaping negative connotations being ascribed. As the prophet Alinsky says: “ Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
Also, I think that if we are going to have Italian lazzari the armigers should be "armigeri" so we can practice our fake Italian and talk patronizingly about "i nostri armigeri".
And what should the yeomen be, "i nostri rustici"?
Wonder if Curtis has read the Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. It's a masterclass in understanding subtext and uses language like utochthons.
LET'S GOOO, but only as long as Lazzaria includes a patch for our brothers optimized for breaking the Washcorp DRM on all those 200$ movies! Perhaps there should be a cyberpunk dystopia of cryptoanarchy somewhere within the safari territories.
It's called the pirates guild
Tough sell
This is perhaps the understatement of all understatements. But we don’t do relative public policy here. We do absolutely public policy here. Go to Andrew Yangs YouTube channel if you want wonky stuff, which is fine.
*absolute
Absolute public policy is way more fun, if anything.
No complaints! Love the blog and reading posts, but find it hard to believe anyone alive gonna find this alluring.
People are gonna find blonde children in fields with the sunflowers and shit far more enticing. Romantic nationalism, inspirational myths, that's where the treasure is.
Read the last paragraph of the essay fam
So it's the classic, teenage, Sim City delusion, with "artificially difficult technology mode" checked, because central planning in your pajamas was too easy of a game. Add the Sim City extension pack: Beat Hypercapitalist Meritocratic Postmodernism. Press Z to remedievalize.
Divergence long ago completed, continuing to pester the shoddy premises:
> In this reality, the streets of Columbia are full of happy, busy, and well-dressed people, working hard and living life fully. The business of Columbia is humming; her trade is in the black; her budget is balanced; her debt is not a sinkhole, her equity a bubble, her currency a juggle, her housing an ATM; her commerce is not devoured by monopolies, her farms by banks, her industries by imports… hm.
>
> We see that things are not going well in the econ department. This makes sense, as a country without serious security or economic problems needs no regime change at all. If Columbia’s real problems are economic, its next prince will need a new economics.
That's mixing positives and negatives into an illogical soup. Progress has occurred _despite_ imbalanced budget, incomprehensible debt, equities on steroids, and viral oligopolies. There is a real world where fracking was discovered and solar panels are built, and the armigers have periodic wars over fake dollars and bitcoins on top; pointless battles. The real world still exists and will continue to improve. See Ridley and Pinker.
I wonder if you've ever considered that these Sim City fantasies -- doomed to failure -- are actually the cause of the thoughts of "the human catastrophe of mass uselessness" that nihilistic and suicidal armigers can't shake?
Here's a plan: convert the armigers, yourself included, into yeomen by lobotomizing central planning fantasies and encouraging them to find the inherent meaning in life, finding a good partner, settling down, making some babies, getting a couple dogs, and slowly improving their Widgets at Widgets Incorporated... because that's what actually improves the world. If you want a revolution, wait until colonizing other planets is cheap.
>See Ridley and Pinker
lmao. The epitome of 'technology make line go up'.
I'm literally unable to grasp that there is someone here unironically citing Pinker. This is just the best.
I'm literally unable to grasp that there is someone here unironically making ad hominem arguments. This is just the worst.
If you're not afraid to make a counter-argument, then go ahead and do it. To be clear, there are parts of Pinker that I disagree with, particularly some of his conclusions. The raw data, though, is great. Same with Ridley, Goklany, Rosling, etc.
I never said that. I think Goklany summarized it best (quote below). I guess it's mostly a combination of the discovery of cheap energy and relative economic freedom. Be careful playing Sim City with working societies or else you end up in a Maoist or Stalinist hell-hole. See Huemer's In Praise of Passivity for the dangers of these sorts of "in place" revolutions: https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/papers/passivity.htm
"Despite "recklessly" increasing its numbers during the past millennium, humanity has never been better fed, healthier, or longer lived. The state of humanity has never been better.
Since Malthus wrote his Essay on Population two centuries ago, the average person’s life span has more than doubled. He is better educated and wealthier. She is freer to choose her rulers and express her views. He is more likely to live under the rule of law and is less fearful of being arbitrarily deprived of life, limb, freedom, property, wealth, and other basic human rights. Her professional, social, and physical mobility, while still limited in many places, is less likely to be circumscribed by caste, class, location, or other accidents of birth. Not only is work less physically demanding, he works fewer hours, earns more, and has more leisure time at his disposal.
The proximate causes for the improvements in the human condition... are the forces of technological change and economic growth, supplemented by trade in products, ideas, and technologies associated with those forces.
Virtually every indicator of human welfare also improves with wealth, as do the environmental indicators that we know to have the greatest bearing on public health... In the United States, this upward march has been in progress at least since the 1880s... Pollution levels did not keep pace with the growth in population or consumption of energy, other natural resources, and chemicals... Despite a 100-fold increase in organic chemical usage, public health has continued to improve... The inverse trends between chemical usage and public health is consistent with the notion that new technology does not, in fact, make matters worse. If anything, it replaces worse risks with risks that are not so bad... In fact, the air and water quality in the United States and the world’s rich nations are better today than they have been in decades. The increase in their agricultural productivity has allowed them to reestablish forests and set habitat aside... As the cases of the Clean Air Act of 1970, Clean Water Act of 1972, and Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 show, much of the improvements in the United States for the air and water quality indicators examined in chapter 6 preceded the enactment of stringent national environmental laws.
Although many of today’s developing countries haven’t been on the cycle of progress for long, Human Development Indices in their urban areas exceed those in rural areas. This might seem counterfactual to many casual observers given the obvious- and very visible- squalor and pollution in the cities of developing countries such as Mexico City; Teheran, Iran; and New Delhi, India... Because rural areas are generally poorer, they lack access to many of the technologies that have improved human well-being in urban areas... The case of sanitary reform in India also hints at the importance of economic growth... Sanitary reform came to India in 1870, well before it was introduced in Italy in 1890... However, even now, large portions of the Indian population lack access to sanitation. Clearly, neither technology transfer nor knowledge of a technology’s potential is sufficient to stimulate technological change."
The Improving State of the World: Why We're Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet Paperback – by Indur M. Goklany (Author)
I didn't say you said that. I said that's Pinker's gist. I'd reply to anything else you'd said if I thought you understood even the basics of the points being made.
lmao. Great points. Strong arguments. I hope you're part of the transition team to the great Monarchical Farce.
Not much more to do with irrelevant gish gallop than dismissal.
I did have a good laugh at this part in particular though:
>She is freer to choose her rulers and express her views
Take your pick of corrupt neoliberal oligarchs!
Yeah, obviously the system is corrupt. Welcome to apeworld. The system also isn't as bad as it used to be and is improving despite the corruption. Be careful what you wish for with a revolution. Sim City and Whole Foods often go poof. I'm all for revolution on unused naked land. Take over an island. I might join.
Just want to point out here that 'progress has occurred despite' is a very weak argument against almost any proposal that concerns improving society.
You're presupposing that revolutions always improve society which obviously isn't always the case. See Huemer's In Praise of Passivity for the dangers of these sorts of "in place" revolutions: https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/papers/passivity.htm
Not at all, all I'm presupposing is that there are things that could be improved. Also, I read the paper you linked and I find the author's argumentation to be about 70-80% invalid at the very least. If you want me to go into the specifics - tell me which section, I don't have the time to type it out point by point.
> Not at all, all I'm presupposing is that there are things that could be improved.
The overall context is Yarvin arguing that a political revolution with a prince/monarch/etc. is necessary because "things are not going well". I counter-argued that things are in many ways going well _despite_ the terrible actions of the leaders and to be careful of playing Sim City and causing more damage than benefit. Of course I believe that Yarvin and you believe you can improve society. I just think it's dangerous and deluded and there is an alternative of 1) build a beautiful bubble and do the best you can in your little world, and 2) if you want to experiment, take over an uninhabited island (I'm not being sarcastic, I think that would be legitimate).
> If you want me to go into the specifics - tell me which section, I don't have the time to type it out point by point.
I think the most relevant would be "4.4. Don’t Fight for What You Believe In".
I think your characterizations are unfair.
>That is mixing positives and negatives into an illogical soup. progress has occurred...
Well here I will start with Pinker, as it sounds like you have read 'angels of our better nature' and 'enlightenment now'. To put it short Pinker cherry picks stats and his historical scholarship is sloppy. Innovation has been declining in all fields since the 70s by many metrics/proxies. Many people do not feel the world is getting better, which is evidenced by suicide and depression rates. Thought experiment- If you told a man of 1910's of the luxuries of the modern world (washing machines, tap water, electricity in abundance, TV etc) and then told such a man that 18-25's suicide rates had gone up three fold in the same era, would this man think 'things must be getting better all the time in that era'? A very good piece on this is the chapter "Enlightenment never" in "Modernity and cultural decline- a biobehavioral perspective"
Note that essentially ALL the progress has been made in physical technological fields or in techniques of production, not in the quality of human life. Sure we have fracking and solar panels and they ARE cool (to some people), but whos life have they improved? Who has sat down and contemplated "Thank god for [solar panels, fracking, an intricate understanding of the mechanisms for the haber-bosch process], for they offered an avenue through which my life improved". Maybe the people who implement and invent such things see an improvement in themselves, outside that these technologies promote a spiritual wasteland precisely BECAUSE of the system into which they are nestled. Solar panels are great, but wouldn't it be better if solar panels provided the energy to an economy that did not merely move on its landmass, products, manufactured in other nations, causing its own inhabitants to loose their jobs and turn to heroin?
Its not a false mixing of technology and economics. One is nestled inside the other, and because of this will promote certain results/ directions. Nukes are cool...aiming nukes at one another is not. Gene modification is cool...making a super-virus/ bacteria is not. Rocket jets to planets are cool...rocket jets assisting the dismemberment of Syrian children are not.
>convert the armigers
This is the worst mistake of governance. If everyone was just x...then y. If everyone was just Catholic then saved souls. If everyone was just communist, then utopia. If everyone were just yeomen...(Pol Pot had similar leanings). People want different things. Some people want power- if your solution to this is to eliminate power, or reduce it somehow this is madness. Moldbugs piece points out precisely this; current system wants everyone to be cosmopolitans - ie thats how you get more assets/ money/power.
> Innovation has been declining in all fields since the 70s by many metrics/proxies.
All fields? That seems like an overstatement. Obviously, biotechnology, computers, fracking, and many others immediately pop to mind. What are your metrics/proxies?
> Many people do not feel the world is getting better, which is evidenced by suicide and depression rates.
Suicides are a scourge, but why? I haven't investigated the science on suicides, but I have my own anecdote: I was suicidal when I was young. Why? It's hard to say for sure because the past is a fog but I think it was largely because of all of the doom and gloom propaganda from culture, school, and media. Reading Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist was quite literally what took me out of my mid-20s malaise.
> A very good piece on this is the chapter "Enlightenment never" in "Modernity and cultural decline- a biobehavioral perspective"
Interesting, ok. Can you please give a high level summary?
> Note that essentially ALL the progress has been made in physical technological fields or in techniques of production, not in the quality of human life. Sure we have fracking and solar panels and they ARE cool (to some people), but whos life have they improved? Who has sat down and contemplated "Thank god for [solar panels, fracking, an intricate understanding of the mechanisms for the haber-bosch process], for they offered an avenue through which my life improved".
At minimum, fracking alone is huge because that increases energy production and ultimately it's energy that is a key necessary prerequisite for all the fancy things we can do with reality.
> Maybe the people who implement and invent such things see an improvement in themselves, outside that these technologies promote a spiritual wasteland precisely BECAUSE of the system into which they are nestled.
I don't deny there is a spiritual wasteland but I think it's a simple mental step sideways to escape. What's the alternative proposal under discussion in this serialized book? 1) Take over, 2) ??
> Solar panels are great, but wouldn't it be better if solar panels provided the energy to an economy that did not merely move on its landmass, products, manufactured in other nations, causing its own inhabitants to loose their jobs and turn to heroin?
These are very sweeping claims. As I mentioned to another poster, I have built a Beautiful Bubble (TM) in which I can build an idyllic life, take advantage of this wave of progress over the last few hundred year, and make an actual impact on my own spiritual being and those I care about. In my opinion, if you want to fight for something, fight against the neurotic propaganda that the world is terrible and give people the tools to make their own Beautiful Bubble.
> Its not a false mixing of technology and economics. One is nestled inside the other, and because of this will promote certain results/ directions. Nukes are cool...aiming nukes at one another is not. Gene modification is cool...making a super-virus/ bacteria is not. Rocket jets to planets are cool...rocket jets assisting the dismemberment of Syrian children are not.
Sure, people have to be mentally healthy to use these technologies and we have a lot of mental ill-health, but I don't see what the proposal is of the Moldbugs. I think two reasonable proposals are 1) Help people build Beautiful Bubbles, and 2) Take over an uninhabited island somewhere to run your social experiments.
> if your solution to this is to eliminate power, or reduce it somehow this is madness
Agreed. I think the only thing in nature that can keep power balanced is competition. That is why I'm an anarcho-capitalist. There will, of course, always be powerful people, companies, personalities, etc. They need to be kept in check. But again, I only recommend trying ancapistan on an uninhabited island or a new, virgin planet. It's too risky (as most social revolutions and experiments are) given the Beautiful Bubbles we have at hand.
I think the crux of the problem is this. You have a beautiful bubble. This is good, by all means. It is exactly what I myself am working towards.
Can everyone create their own beautiful bubble themselves? my answer is no.
Does everyone deserve their own beautiful bubble? my answer is yes.
Does giving most people more 'freedom' mean they will create more beautiful bubbles? my answer is the exact opposite will occur, and this is exactly what we have witnessed over the past 3-4 centuries. We have huge centres for entertainment, but most people have forgotten how to relax such that they are refreshed. We print more books than any other civilisation, and have higher literacy rates - but do not know HOW to read. We speak the loudest of any century but by all rights have forgotten the arts of speech craft (as a rough proxy more delicate and precise words are more seldom used than 100 years ago). And the reason is simple, in a system based on utility and comfort there is no need for these things unless you yourself are smart and disciplined enough to both recognize and train for the benefit.
Robots are cool, but robots are not human. Humans are beautiful, and more beautiful the more humanity they express.
Turning humans into robots is ugly- both for robots and for humans:
Humans forced to work as robots are incredibly inefficient - which is ugly from a systems perspective.
Robots expressing some form of humanity is ugly- its creepy, like a clown, because it has no 'soul' (for lack of a better word).
You may have escaped the "spiritual wasteland" but, under the current system, most will not.
>I haven't done serious research on suicide
I can tell.
>Fracking is huge because energy production
See you did it again "being able to do more stuff is better". For a civilisation as a whole maybe, for individuals no way. You should be free to choose your limitations- your limitations are exactly what makes life worth living. If you lived forever life would be meaningless; if you can do anything everything is meaningless. Civilisation is defined by its internal and external limitations: moral, philosophical, geographical and temporal. Otherwise life is just swapping and changing when things get tough and loses its poetry because it loses its continuity.
>Give people the tools to make their own beautiful bubble
Yes. I'd argue one of the tools to achieve this is the system (philosophical, moral, geographical, temporal) into which people are born. Giving tools under a bad system is like giving people electric power tools in a barn with no sockets (they may still have some benefit, but their efficiency and effectiveness is massively reduced).
> Can everyone create their own beautiful bubble themselves? my answer is no.
Unless one is living in the third world, we're all vastly better off than our grandparents and have the ability to live in a beautiful bubble. I don't see why your answer is "no". I agree most people need guidance to build a beautiful bubble, create values-based communities, etc. That's something this smart and forward-thinking community could actually help provide.
> Does giving most people more 'freedom' mean they will create more beautiful bubbles?
I think everyone builds their beautiful bubble in their own way. However, it is required to not be dying of dysentery (or, dying before one even has a chance -- during childbirth -- the fate of swaths in the past) and to have plentiful goods at hand.
> We have huge centres for entertainment, but most people have forgotten how to relax such that they are refreshed. We print more books than any other civilisation, and have higher literacy rates - but do not know HOW to read. We speak the loudest of any century but by all rights have forgotten the arts of speech craft (as a rough proxy more delicate and precise words are more seldom used than 100 years ago).
All of those beautiful things are in my bubble. I'm an average man and have three bookshelves, not to mention all of the vast troves of information available on the internet. I have all the greatest music, poetry, and art of all time at my fingertips. I think anyone in the 1st and 2nd worlds can build such a bubble, particularly today with the internet. As mentioned, they do need guidance, though.
> And the reason is simple, in a system based on utility and comfort there is no need for these things unless you yourself are smart and disciplined enough to both recognize and train for the benefit.
I think it's much deeper than that: the loss of meaning and purpose. That's part of building a beautiful bubble that people need the most help with. But all of those "utilities" are required to actually build that bubble once one does find meaning and purpose.
> Robots are cool, but robots are not human. Humans are beautiful, and more beautiful the more humanity they express.
Agreed.
> Turning humans into robots is ugly- both for robots and for humans:
>
> Humans forced to work as robots are incredibly inefficient - which is ugly from a systems perspective.
>
> Robots expressing some form of humanity is ugly- its creepy, like a clown, because it has no 'soul' (for lack of a better word).
The average amount of hours worked per person has about halved since 1870 (Maddison, 1998). Whether or not today's work is more "robotic" than before seems irrelevant (and quite arguably given most used to be farmers). The extra leisure time is what matters. Yes, most people are misusing that time. That's a fixable problem.
>> I haven't done serious research on suicide
> I can tell.
You are the one who made broad claims about suicide, not me, and thus the burden of proof is on you. I was admitting my ignorance, which I think is a proper thing to do, and I provided a personal anecdote, which is still more evidence than you've provided so far. I'm open minded but I'll need more than vague assertions. I would guess that there has been serious research done on interviews of suicidal people and qualitative analyses of the results, correlations of suicide with other factors (e.g. fatherlessness, nihilism, etc.).
> If you lived forever life would be meaningless; if you can do anything everything is meaningless.
I'll focus on this point as a microcosm of your paragraph. I don't understand it. I want to live forever. I think life is inherently meaningful. This is exactly why I want to live forever: to never lose touch of this beauty. However, I do think this goes back to the point above: most people have lost touch with meaning and purpose (ironically, Yarvin's writings about nihilism seem to exacerbate this). I think this issue is largely orthogonal to the political structure, but it certainly helps to not have a brain-eating parasite while doing this search. Frankl has an interesting argument that meaning can even be found in the darkest of struggles, and while I agree, I think that's needlessly masochistic.
> Yes. I'd argue one of the tools to achieve this is the system (philosophical, moral, geographical, temporal) into which people are born. Giving tools under a bad system is like giving people electric power tools in a barn with no sockets (they may still have some benefit, but their efficiency and effectiveness is massively reduced).
I get your point that with great material wealth, degeneracy may follow and may fight against a meaningful life, but I'd rather have the material wealth and help those struggle through the degeneracy than risk a risky revolution that might halve that wealth, as most autocratic revolutions have done in the past. The historical evidence is simply against the ideas of this group. And it's not fair that you're going to pop my Beautiful Bubble in your attempts to fix the degeneracy through brute force.
>we're all vastly better off than our grandparents
No i do not think this is the case. I think a lot of people a far worse people than their grandparents or great grand parents. If you do not see this your bubble may have blinded you, or you just havent looked. We are materially better off, sure, but man is not one giant stomach.
>you make sweeping claims
No. I offer my opinion. I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken. If you are open minded, research the topic.
>Pop my beautiful bubble in an attempt to fix degeneracy
I think you misunderstand the whole premise of this 'revolution'. I would encourage you to re-read all of Gray Mirror. The proposal of a 'risky revolution' was demolished in part 1 i think.
If you recall part 4- salus populi suprema lex. You can measure all wealth as 'material wealth' sure. You could also measure the suns emission at just 284 nm - the reason why chlorophyll is green will go straight over your head. You are still analysing everything through a "more stuff is always better" lens, and as long as you do that you won't really get where I am coming from.
>People work less than 100 years ago.
True. But they also work more than 400 years ago. And how much of this work is productive work? On average 30-40% of western work forces are simply unnecessary (ie paper pushers, trackers or very low skill robot). Far less unnecessary work was done in the past - and unnecessary work is strictly dehumanizing, and thus results in less 'happy bubbles'. Free time is barely utilised at all- 3.5 hours of TV a day on average, 3.5 hours on phone (its 5.4 for americans) ON AVERAGE. Maybe an hour+ commute. ie on average, you have just lost all the supposed advantages of post-industrial society: that time is spent on mindless things, for some people after mindless work. (these are averages so half of people spend MORE time than this on such 'entertainments'). Factor in video-games, other mindless entertainment, fewer cohesive friendships, time spent dealing with the myriad of technical issues that come from these advancements... I'm really not seeing this as 'degeneracy may follow', I'm seeing it as 'degeneracy HAS followed, in abundance, has reduced many people to robots with little anchorage, and shows no sign of abating because … Google maps and more stuff is 'cool''
This is not the position I am in. Its the position I see a lot of people in - and when you answer 'give them tools' I seriously think you misunderstand the gravity of the situation.
>Help people find meaning and purpose
I think, for many people, meaning is not something they can 'find' but only something they can carry/ pass down. Again, you think everyone can just do what you did, what if they cant? What if some (or even most?) people literally need a structure in which to pursue any meaning or purpose (ie they cannot craft their own meaning, but only find meaning by continuing a life-long tradition?), and then you put them in a system than actively demotes such structures from arising? Such people will suffer and not know why they are suffering.
> I think a lot of people a far worse people than their grandparents or great grand parents.
I think the crux of our disagreement is that I don't think material and mental wealth have to be in conflict. I think that as we solve most major biological and material problems, more and more people will be searching for meaning and mental health.
> If you are open minded, research the topic.
Do you have some evidence or books to recommend?
> I would encourage you to re-read all of Gray Mirror.
It's hard to follow and I'm no dummy. Can you summarize it? My impression is that, somehow, Moldbugs want to wield the brute force of the state to drive some sort of risky cultural revolution.
> You are still analysing everything through a "more stuff is always better" lens, and as long as you do that you won't really get where I am coming from.
I think "more stuff is always better" *and* meaning are both good. I believe the two can co-exist. I'm worried that Moldbugs' pursuit of the latter will destroy the former.
> when you answer 'give them tools' I seriously think you misunderstand the gravity of the situation.
I agree the situation is grave. You make very valid points that the suicide and opioid epidemics are evidence of that. My points are:
1) Run your social experiments on an uninhabited island (simply take it over), and/or
2) Help people find meaning and build their beautiful bubbles.
> Again, you think everyone can just do what you did, what if they cant?
That's a very pessmistic premise and I think the burden of proof would be on you to run a risky social experiment based on that belief. I think all but psychopaths have intuitive concepts of what is meaningful (see, for example, Baumeister et al., 2013).
> What if some (or even most?) people literally need a structure in which to pursue any meaning or purpose (ie they cannot craft their own meaning, but only find meaning by continuing a life-long tradition?), and then you put them in a system than actively demotes such structures from arising? Such people will suffer and not know why they are suffering.
Yes, I think that's the "give them tools" debate above.
Thiel's hypothesis is a fair and strong one but the evidence is still pretty weak and pending. World War II also decelerated progress a lot but it was just a blip in the long tide of improvement (Ridley/Pinker/Goklany/Rosling/etc.).
“Human lifespan is going up” -Some Bigbrain
Now do that same analysis but take antibiotics as a given, drinking and smoking pegged to the modern rate, as well as washing your hands. Lifespan has decreased dramatically in a very short time span. Excess calories and spiritual malaise are scourges, Pinker does not account for that.
I just finished the chapter. Thanks for this diagnosis, it clarified my thinking even further. I especially appreciate having names and definitions: armigers and yeomen.
Figuring out yeomen forced to be armigers is interesting. I never felt any particular attachment to my mother country or anything like that (we moved from Russia when I was 18, and I'd never been back and haven't wanted to go until very recently, for various reasons), and I've moved to Seattle to work as a software engineer years ago, away from my parents, who always lived apart from any "community", and have lived here ever since. Seattle has always seemed extremely provincial to me, in comparison to Washington, D.C., where my parents had settled, and I think indeed it is the feeling of power or "meaning" that I sensed in D.C. right away. Literally the first night I slept there, I just knew. I've been resenting Seattle for the past 15 years, and I think I understand why now: it's full of yeomen who were improperly made into armigers.
The greatest sense of community or continuity I felt in the past several years is a couple of weeks ago when I began playing Mozart again.
And here, I do want to disagree: I think that institutions are created by yeomen-as-armigers, as a sort of cargo-cult. Real armigers have communities, but they take the shape of salons, letter correspondence, and now, the sort of podcasts you're appearing on. The key difference is that armiger communities still emphasize the individuals that comprise them. Institutions and participation in them don't give "real" armigers meaning, they are a huge source of disappointment and disillusionment.
P.S.: If I could turn myself into a yeoman, as I often wish I could, I would choose the Mormons as my ideal community. I admire them greatly, and I'm saddened that I constitutionally can't fit into the mould of a follower.
Oh, and: one of the previous pieces that have clarified my thinking was this Jacobin article that references Bildung, also: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/victorian-values-fitness-organic-wealth-parenthood/
Who gets the aircraft carriers, Curtis? Who gets to command the CVNs? Most people during a secessionist movement would be more concerned with the nukes, as well they should be. But nukes are boring; carriers are fun!
Ever seen a CVN in the flesh? Ever strolled by one? It takes a few minutes. It's a long-ass ship. The one I deployed on was 1,150 ft long. And its flight deck was pretty wide too. "Four-and-a-half acres of sovereign US territory" was the quip, sailing at leisure through the Strait of Hormuz and into the Persian Gulf. Ready and willing to "put warheads on foreheads." So who gains this power? Who gets the carriers? Because someone has to. No way they're gonna end up parked in some dry dock, rusting away like defunct train engines at an old cross-track depot. They're way too much fun for that.
On the off-chance anyone reading this has a family member stationed on a CVN, and its command offers a week-long cruise between Hawaii and San Diego or some such (mine did this), I recommend you take it. The accommodations won't be great, but you'll forget all about them once you get to watch Flight-Ops.
Watching an F-18 get launched from a modern aircraft carrier is a spiritual experience. It changes your worldview. It makes you feel like you're in the future. Sure, you knew nuclear-powered steam systems existed. And jet engines too. But combined together? With radar-guided bombs strapped to wings so short your mind boggles they even create lift? Yeah, it's real. And the whole process is controlled top-to-bottom by the current US Government.
So who gets it afterwards?
Good point, maybe we should vote on the issue.
Here's a thought: what if the Prince asks for some kind of personally created thing as a component of taxation (or land value tax)? So a citizen pays most of his taxation with money, but also has to hand over a personally created good, e.g. a table, painting, sonnet, pair of shoes, etc, etc, etc. The Prince can then choose to redistribute the thing, or publish it, or keep it (a status improving event for the citizen), or hand it back to the citizen. The idea wouldn't be that the economy is based on the artificial difficultly, more that citizens are incentivised to create with it. Because personal creation is inherently gratifying (which is why Curtis wants to introduce it), citizens will then get the "bug" for creation.
My thinking stems from the establishment of a currency; the government makes it an accepted form of money by demanding taxation is paid in it. This is the means by which government takes a proportion of a citizen's labour for the running of the state. So in our current paradigm the government doesn't care as to the nature of the labour; as long as the citizen generates cash, the government isn't bothered whether the labour is mindless factory work, or composing sonnets.
But Yarvin's Prince IS concerned about the nature of the labour, he wants to introduce "artificial" difficulty in production for the long term health of the citizen (mostly mental health if we're honest), and therefore the state. As taxation is the means by which a state interacts with the labour of the citizens, then it seems that it is the best means of altering the nature of that labour.
Any thoughts, anyone?
I do like the sound of the idea, even just as a competition. I think it raises an important issue though- intellectual property rights. Its very good controlling the labour of ancient material goods so as to raise 'human capital' through craft work. But equally you need the incentive to create new things, part of that is prestige as you address, but some might need material incentive to create (a free pair of boots perhaps? ) and how that is organized is very important ( ie you essentially want it to be physically impossible for one company to own an entire chain of supply and automate it). How is it determined where and what needs difficulty (eg artificial difficulty for a military is probably a bad idea)?
Maybe this will go back to his older ideas of 'patchwork' - separation to get the best results. Maybe only certain areas could produce certain products, cities dedicated to the production of ships (which is historically normal), land vehicles (Detroit on steroids?), computers. It would be the 'patches' answerable to the prince: who wants to see quality works and happy people. Its quite hard to introduce meaningful artificial difficulty for large technological systems (production of spacecraft, submarines etc) as part of the beauty of technological systems is their efficiency. The sort of compromise the 'new economics' would have to make is: the engineer who makes transport efficient cant make food production too efficient (and as a consequence is surrounded by happier people), but at the same time farmers can't make the engineers beautiful floating airship cities (i exaggerate) less efficient (and as a consequence is provided human-centric tools by the engineers).
You proposed a 'trade up' to the prince, but maybe a 'trade between' the 'patches' would be ideal for this purpose. The incentive? Well when the world gets bigger (and things get rarer) incentives abound ( 700 years ago: spices, gold, ancient artefacts, silver, gems, the daughter of a great Arabian prince) - the aim could be to make the world 'bigger' (philosophically) so such incentives once again exist. Imagine if Swiss Cuckoo clocks were only exchanged for great works done for the High King of Zurich (eg he wants exceptionally comfortable chairs/houses for some of his subjects after a days work in the mines) : immediately these works would be of greater material wealth as they convey power. I imagine such a system could incentivise production of new things in a very human way. Maybe in the future intellectual property will be less about explicit cost and more about implicit uniqueness (create a power dynamic such that states/princes want to get hold of inventors) - and hence the incentive for craftsmen will be to create the rarest items (Daedric sword of banishing), but not necessarily the HARDEST to make - ie a happy symbiosis between the intellectual 'whats the most beautiful thing I can think of' and 'how can this be made by humans': things made in sweat shops aren't that special (would you rather sit in a Hyundai i10 or SR-71 Blackbird? What if we made shoes like the SR-71 Blackbird (in uniqueness, not speed))
Thanks for the response. I love the idea of patchwork, and I hope that if (prob. when) this current regime of governance collapses it's what we're left with. Let's be clear about what I'm proposing: this is NOT a scheme to give the patch a competitive edge (even though it may lead to it). I don't actually propose a 'trade up' to the prince, this is not a trade, it's a demand, a compulsory price for continuing to live under the rule of the prince.
But as prices go, this may be better than cash. My understanding is that the Patch Prince is selling citizenship, so citizens commit to purchasing their place when they reside on the patch. To make it attractive to these customers, the prince ensures the citizen customers' needs are met according to the Maslow hierarchy. A free market for food seems to work well for meeting that need, security might be more centralised and paid for by "taxes".
But our present society has greater and greater trouble meeting the needs further up the pyramid. Many people in our present society struggle to find feelings of belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation. My reading of Yarvin's point is that our present economy, efficient as it is, treats people as machines, and that it will never meet higher needs. An increasingly small number of people have roles that are both lucrative and meaningful, much of the rest are on anti-depressants. Or worse.
This might be great for GDP growth, but ultimately it erodes the sum total of human capital growth.
So the idea of my scheme is give an incentive not create great works like SR-71 Blackbirds (or i10's; creating a good economy car that turns a profit might actually be harder...) , but rather to create personal works. And ultimately the great works will follow.
To condense this idea: In the future we no longer produce 'products' we produce 'artefacts'.
Maybe this is jumping the gun, but there is still no discussion on why our Prince Francia cares about the human capital of his realm, in a time when that won't necessarily be a means to any other form of capital.
Because he loves them, like a boomer loves his 67 chevelle
Reminds me of Norm Macdonald’s joke regarding the homeless man’s dog: The dog has got to be thinking, “This is the longest walk in the world...Hey buddy, I can do this myself.”
Armigers and autochthons? Has Moldbug been reading Gene Wolfe?
Our sun may not be dying, but it sure seems like urth is.
The shortest path to a monarchy is likely making a(n ever-expanding) charter city in Columbia itself, rather than taking over America and naming it as such.
Yarvin should talk more about charter cities.