The beast needs to die first. In the US there is no national culture, no binding force. I wouldn't trust anyone who was able to rise to power under the current regime, nor do I think the people of the US have the character or virtue to identify and support the kind of person who could maintain an effective, spiritually healthy government. My point is that I don't see regime change (where the territorial US remains an intact political entity) coming from the top down, or from the bottom up any time soon. Political balkanization followed by a de facto dissolution of the union in some way, might clear the way for accountable power structures and pre requisite levels of social trust to emerge.
But Curtis, we are inflating people out of USD denominated poverty by the millions every year! If Weimar Germany was so bad, how come everyone in it was a millionaire? Did you know that 3rd world workers who earned 1 USD per day in the 1960s are earning 5 USD per day today! That is a nominal increase of 5 times! Explain to me how a system that can generate results like THAT is "hiding losses". I can wait while you rewrite your post to correct glaring your error.
It's telling that every single country on earth has a currency that it controls, or that some other government controls. It's not enough to read Mises, you got to read Fisher, Friedman, and yes even S*mner. If a country loses the ability to modify the value of its currency (monetary policy), then it's going to have abrupt, deep recessions. Its enimies will be able to put it into recession, by hoarding it's monetary base (the way France helped cause the Great Depression, accidentally, by hoarding gold). Until someone develops a way to solve the problem of nominal rigidities, we're stuck with fiat currency as the national medium of account, at a minimum.
Extremely sad to read this. Who cares about the nice plan when there was nether a monarchy worth imitating. For sure not in the cruel and suffocating modern Russia or China. The horrible revolutions happened in Russia and France for a reason (never mind that what replaced them was worse). CY favorite explanation of a company governed by a CEO is only good on paper, there are 100s dysfunctional companies for each one that might lend itself as an monarchical example. Everyone knows that working for Jobs was a horror. Monarchs are human too, they don't have a ten point plan on serving people, they always and forever serve themselves.
Big Yarvin fan here. Although I discovered him only two months ago, I've been voraciously consuming everything I can in my spare time (this blog, the old one, the books, the YouTube interviews). I agree with much of it. But there's one weakness in the middle of it that I'd like to hear justified (or rationalized, as the case may be). His argument for the degeneracy of the current regime often regards (violent) crime as worse now than it was. As he says a few times, 50 times worse than it was in Victorian London. But isn't that false? Haven't Pinker and others shown this to be false? Not just false, in fact, but the opposite of the truth? Isn't it rather that we (in the Western countries anyway) are living in the safest period in recoded history? Sure, there are neighborhoods of my city (Pittsburgh) that I would not want to walk through at night, but (just to take the period I know well) in Augustan Rome you couldn't walk *anywhere* at night safely without arms or, ideally, a bodyguard. And Augustus is sometimes Yarvin's ideal. So what gives? Yarvin is usually good with primary sources, but he seems to have slipped here.
So after all that, we're to be ruled with an iron rod by a Han-Bugman despotate after all (really, Curtis, IQ Fetishism is beneath you). I suppose it would be a marginally better fate than falling under the sway of sub-Saharan afro-Islam and having that be our malevolent monarch (which is what our current regime desires, a soft and lazy realm, a helpless girl waiting to be ruthlessly conquered). We all Rotherham now.
Really it was a solid piece until the IQ fetishism. And in an article where you yourself say of the Han "by whom you may not want to be conquered").
> But, Porphy, that was jokes! That was MM joshing around! He was just kidding!
I know this. But all his jokes are, well, you know.
Since I am not a monarchist, I am not entirely convinced that a monarchy (even an accountable one) will solve the problems that are underneath. But the way I read Curtis Yarvins ideas, solutions are always debatable. What is nevertheless clear is our agreement that there is an underlying and fundamental problem with democracy, which expresses itself in the institutional failure of American authorities, which has large consequences for societies outside of their own borders. When American institutions fail, European institutions will also disintegrate.
Everything that happens in the USA happens given time nearly everywhere else or at least in happens in all countries with a similar model of governance (i.e. democracies).
Colombia, maybe even Iran could be examples of moderately spiritually competent, but physically incompetent regimes. Of course I'm sure if any of us saw apex spiritual competence, we'd weep.
#10 is amusing. CY has ret-conned an airy spiritual justification for a preferred economic policy (in this case, protectionism) after it has become clear that it will make us materially poorer, even though it was originally supposed to do the opposite. This is precisely what the socialists did in the 20th century. Am I really paying good money to read basic bitch mercantilism?
Can we even do ‘spiritual competence’ without a more explicit religion? Sure as Gray Mirror groupies we may like your 10 principals, we may like the ‘truth’ as the ultimate value. But unless Curtis is going to declare himself Moses or the Messiah (which I am not necessarily saying is a bad idea, but I think he has a day job) how are the Amerikaners going to accept these 10 Commandments as the correct ‘theory of the good’? Vermeule is going to come waving his Lady of Guadelupe at us - and maybe he will win? I guess I am saying - don’t we need throne AND altar?
I'm not going to quibble. It's easy to quibble. I'll just say this much: the main goal of the government is the well-being of its people. That's the basic principle of Yarvinism. Very consequentialist, that, but whatevs. The main question is this, then: imagine that a bunch of black people in America aren't doing comparatively well, and they point to a legacy of slavery and discrimination to explain why. And you tell them: no collective resentment. How's that going to work? Aren't they just going to resent you more?
OK, then, allow them to have their collective resentment. Then that pisses off a lot of white people who never did anything wrong to a black person. So *they'll* be collectively resentful.
Unless I'm misstating things, we have a dilemma: two options, both immoral. Why take the first horn? Because there are more whites than nonwhites? Not the worst reason in the world, but is that it?
My Dear Sir: w/ regard to our lower classes being hopeless: Our commons are civilized, too civilized, our elites are Barbarians. >>This is of course in response to your strange snobbery towards the 'lowers', strange when combined with your loathing of the Upper.
Our elites are no upper, their the degenerate end of their lines, and what an end it is...
"America's decadent elite is a plundering barbarian horde, leaving social and material destruction in its wake." ... "Likewise today, barbarians are predatory, destructive, and nomadic: they consume and exploit, but don’t produce. There is no need for a Journal of Barbarian Studies. Just look around: their realm is the entirety of the public culture."
In short they are not an Upper Class, nor we a lower one.
And we don't need them, no one needs them, anywhere.
One should mention by the way that if you have a motivated middle the tops heads can come off, and the 'lower' classes can rise, or at least live in peace. Frankly reading this self loathing yet snobbish tripe from you is becoming wearying. Your appeal to our barbarians effete overlords trembling behind the wire is peak ...something...I'm at a loss for words. Why would you appeal to coward sociopaths who've run out their string?
As for the 10 demands, sure we can have all that....after we get busy with Dr. Guillotine's patented cure all. The very air will be sweeter for the passing of the swine to whom you claim should restore order...and no order is possible while they draw air.
The beast needs to die first. In the US there is no national culture, no binding force. I wouldn't trust anyone who was able to rise to power under the current regime, nor do I think the people of the US have the character or virtue to identify and support the kind of person who could maintain an effective, spiritually healthy government. My point is that I don't see regime change (where the territorial US remains an intact political entity) coming from the top down, or from the bottom up any time soon. Political balkanization followed by a de facto dissolution of the union in some way, might clear the way for accountable power structures and pre requisite levels of social trust to emerge.
But Curtis, we are inflating people out of USD denominated poverty by the millions every year! If Weimar Germany was so bad, how come everyone in it was a millionaire? Did you know that 3rd world workers who earned 1 USD per day in the 1960s are earning 5 USD per day today! That is a nominal increase of 5 times! Explain to me how a system that can generate results like THAT is "hiding losses". I can wait while you rewrite your post to correct glaring your error.
It's telling that every single country on earth has a currency that it controls, or that some other government controls. It's not enough to read Mises, you got to read Fisher, Friedman, and yes even S*mner. If a country loses the ability to modify the value of its currency (monetary policy), then it's going to have abrupt, deep recessions. Its enimies will be able to put it into recession, by hoarding it's monetary base (the way France helped cause the Great Depression, accidentally, by hoarding gold). Until someone develops a way to solve the problem of nominal rigidities, we're stuck with fiat currency as the national medium of account, at a minimum.
US
It kills me that it must be said,
So obvious and forgotten instead.
Forgotten connotes an artifact,
Which left to crumble betrays the fact
That a better description might be "chased out",
Your right to yourself: your right to your rout.
Imagine that you have been split into halves,
One forges wonders, Two melts down calves.
Steam soot and blast obscure all in that place.
You see another but squint for the face.
Recognize someone you long ago knew!
Go to yourself, you will find me there too.
Extremely sad to read this. Who cares about the nice plan when there was nether a monarchy worth imitating. For sure not in the cruel and suffocating modern Russia or China. The horrible revolutions happened in Russia and France for a reason (never mind that what replaced them was worse). CY favorite explanation of a company governed by a CEO is only good on paper, there are 100s dysfunctional companies for each one that might lend itself as an monarchical example. Everyone knows that working for Jobs was a horror. Monarchs are human too, they don't have a ten point plan on serving people, they always and forever serve themselves.
Big Yarvin fan here. Although I discovered him only two months ago, I've been voraciously consuming everything I can in my spare time (this blog, the old one, the books, the YouTube interviews). I agree with much of it. But there's one weakness in the middle of it that I'd like to hear justified (or rationalized, as the case may be). His argument for the degeneracy of the current regime often regards (violent) crime as worse now than it was. As he says a few times, 50 times worse than it was in Victorian London. But isn't that false? Haven't Pinker and others shown this to be false? Not just false, in fact, but the opposite of the truth? Isn't it rather that we (in the Western countries anyway) are living in the safest period in recoded history? Sure, there are neighborhoods of my city (Pittsburgh) that I would not want to walk through at night, but (just to take the period I know well) in Augustan Rome you couldn't walk *anywhere* at night safely without arms or, ideally, a bodyguard. And Augustus is sometimes Yarvin's ideal. So what gives? Yarvin is usually good with primary sources, but he seems to have slipped here.
I'm in.
So after all that, we're to be ruled with an iron rod by a Han-Bugman despotate after all (really, Curtis, IQ Fetishism is beneath you). I suppose it would be a marginally better fate than falling under the sway of sub-Saharan afro-Islam and having that be our malevolent monarch (which is what our current regime desires, a soft and lazy realm, a helpless girl waiting to be ruthlessly conquered). We all Rotherham now.
Really it was a solid piece until the IQ fetishism. And in an article where you yourself say of the Han "by whom you may not want to be conquered").
> But, Porphy, that was jokes! That was MM joshing around! He was just kidding!
I know this. But all his jokes are, well, you know.
Since I am not a monarchist, I am not entirely convinced that a monarchy (even an accountable one) will solve the problems that are underneath. But the way I read Curtis Yarvins ideas, solutions are always debatable. What is nevertheless clear is our agreement that there is an underlying and fundamental problem with democracy, which expresses itself in the institutional failure of American authorities, which has large consequences for societies outside of their own borders. When American institutions fail, European institutions will also disintegrate.
Everything that happens in the USA happens given time nearly everywhere else or at least in happens in all countries with a similar model of governance (i.e. democracies).
Colombia, maybe even Iran could be examples of moderately spiritually competent, but physically incompetent regimes. Of course I'm sure if any of us saw apex spiritual competence, we'd weep.
The crowdspeak levels here are off the charts.
This is a great post! Is it me, or is Curtis just killing it in 2021?
I wrote my thoughts on it here: https://hyperculture.substack.com/p/a-reply-to-curtis-yarvins-we-dont
#10 is amusing. CY has ret-conned an airy spiritual justification for a preferred economic policy (in this case, protectionism) after it has become clear that it will make us materially poorer, even though it was originally supposed to do the opposite. This is precisely what the socialists did in the 20th century. Am I really paying good money to read basic bitch mercantilism?
Can we even do ‘spiritual competence’ without a more explicit religion? Sure as Gray Mirror groupies we may like your 10 principals, we may like the ‘truth’ as the ultimate value. But unless Curtis is going to declare himself Moses or the Messiah (which I am not necessarily saying is a bad idea, but I think he has a day job) how are the Amerikaners going to accept these 10 Commandments as the correct ‘theory of the good’? Vermeule is going to come waving his Lady of Guadelupe at us - and maybe he will win? I guess I am saying - don’t we need throne AND altar?
I'm not going to quibble. It's easy to quibble. I'll just say this much: the main goal of the government is the well-being of its people. That's the basic principle of Yarvinism. Very consequentialist, that, but whatevs. The main question is this, then: imagine that a bunch of black people in America aren't doing comparatively well, and they point to a legacy of slavery and discrimination to explain why. And you tell them: no collective resentment. How's that going to work? Aren't they just going to resent you more?
OK, then, allow them to have their collective resentment. Then that pisses off a lot of white people who never did anything wrong to a black person. So *they'll* be collectively resentful.
Unless I'm misstating things, we have a dilemma: two options, both immoral. Why take the first horn? Because there are more whites than nonwhites? Not the worst reason in the world, but is that it?
My Dear Sir: w/ regard to our lower classes being hopeless: Our commons are civilized, too civilized, our elites are Barbarians. >>This is of course in response to your strange snobbery towards the 'lowers', strange when combined with your loathing of the Upper.
Our elites are no upper, their the degenerate end of their lines, and what an end it is...
Here our our elites: Cowardly yet Barbarian.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-privileged-vs-the-people/
"America's decadent elite is a plundering barbarian horde, leaving social and material destruction in its wake." ... "Likewise today, barbarians are predatory, destructive, and nomadic: they consume and exploit, but don’t produce. There is no need for a Journal of Barbarian Studies. Just look around: their realm is the entirety of the public culture."
In short they are not an Upper Class, nor we a lower one.
And we don't need them, no one needs them, anywhere.
One should mention by the way that if you have a motivated middle the tops heads can come off, and the 'lower' classes can rise, or at least live in peace. Frankly reading this self loathing yet snobbish tripe from you is becoming wearying. Your appeal to our barbarians effete overlords trembling behind the wire is peak ...something...I'm at a loss for words. Why would you appeal to coward sociopaths who've run out their string?
As for the 10 demands, sure we can have all that....after we get busy with Dr. Guillotine's patented cure all. The very air will be sweeter for the passing of the swine to whom you claim should restore order...and no order is possible while they draw air.