Right now the theory of network states has a built in "Agree or Leave" policy, which I expect if network states actually come from this pitiful Butterfly Revolution will devolve into "Agree or Die." And the 20th century taught us that these sorts of glorious revolutions keep going until the policy is "Agree and Die!" through famines, resource depletion, and counter revolutions
The billionaires somehow think their current wealth protects them from a hungry mob. I really don't understand tbe reasoning.
Further, they still focus on a geographically based monarchy, which is stupid when you could have a federal platform handle the geography issues and evolve the nonessential services to subscriptions provided by any sort of group: multinational, union, church, local community, legacy geographic states and cities, etc.
The focus of any movement from status quo must be in terms of improvement of lives and capacity to handle global challenges, like global warming, space mining and settlement, etc.
> The billionaires somehow think their current wealth protects them from a hungry mob. I really don't understand tbe reasoning.
Motivated reasoning makes it difficult for most of us to realise why someone else may call us a mortal enemy (unless we ourselves are severely depressed), and the super-rich are no better.
Outside-the-box thinking is also always difficult. Empires fall when the ruling classes begin to assume the empire's power is the natural order of the world and begin fighting each other to extract wealth from the empire rather than to grow it.
Even to the extent there is historical precident specifically of a threat to business leaders: talk of personal threats to those winning at capitalism has been around continuously since the Communist Manifesto, yet with the fall of the USSR many may think such talk is just talk, that Brian Thompson was a fluke rather than an indicator, etc.
> The billionaires somehow think their current wealth protects them from a hungry mob.
Luigi Mangione aside, hasn't it? Their wealth gets spent on getting the hungry mob to fight amongst themselves about trans rights and abortion and government efficiency and it seems to have been pretty effective because we're no longer talking about taxing the rich and making life better for as many people as possible, instead we're talking about Elon Musk.
No one's storming the terrace at Mar a Lago over the price of eggs.
The funny but tragic thing is why would you even try to do it that way rather than skip past all this nonsense by building a new separate equitable system that is dictator-proof.
Why not literally leave them in the dust, rather than negotiate with terrorists or try to change their mind?
The more they try to push back, the more we'll fix it to be resilient to it, and despite the resources and threats at their disposal we have to realize we actually have more.
My jaded, knee jerk response was going to be "build a dictator proof system and the world will build a better dictator". I don't want to be hopeless on this so I'm honestly asking about your ideas about it.
We need to invest effort into researching how to make quick, high-quality decisions as a collective. Large concentrations of power emerge because we haven't yet discovered how to make effective decisions democratically. Representative democracy is not good enough. We need a robust system of direct democracy capable of producing decisions that are at least as good as those made by a skilled small group.
Innovations like blockchains and LLMs might finally enable us to develop such a system.
> Seriously. Have these guys actually read history?
If you read the work of someone like Yarvin, the answer appears to be: Yes, but selectively. Same with scientific literature. He's very selective in what he reads and how he interprets it. He does not appear to care about the implications of this bias, or register that it exists; his bias is such that it discounts the need to even account for its existence, if that makes sense.
I don't think these people do much reading about things that don't serve them. For lack of a better way to phrase it. I had this revelation while reading into project 2025, Yarvin's work itself, and other, related, periphery works.
I don't like it. I find it very unpleasant. I would rather read something I agree with more, or which feels constructive. I'd like to refine my understanding of history, policy, philosophy, and the rest of the world in ways which I find agreeable and additive to my own beliefs and desires in the world. But I recognize that that's overly self-serving and not conducive to functional, socially-integrated learning and growth. I don't want to bubble myself.
These people don't seem to care. They don't immerse themselves in the nuances of cultures, belief systems, or most plainly perhaps: the reality of people they don't agree with or care about.
The world isn't a complex system of people to them. Everyone else is a distraction or barrier to their desires and preferences. If it isn't functioning to serve them, something is wrong. This is why they all seem to land with this authoritarian stance. They reject everything else. They even want to destroy it.
That has been my take on it, anyway. Many would argue that the people behind Project 2025, the broligarchs, or someone like Yarvin are all far more intelligent than I am. I'm entirely open to that possibility.
What if they have and it's what they want? If you're a billionaire who already has everything this system can offer, you'd likely desire a system that can give you even more. A system that doesn't limit you in ways that this one does. You'd want to be a king. Even if it means waging war with other kings, it would enable a far more exhilarating life, full of possibilities that don't exist in a system where ordinary people have a say.
I haven't gotten there myself, but I like to think that if I was a billionaire I'd like to see as few ripples as possible in the system that's keeping track of my billions.
And those small kingdoms did not care about oil, minerals back then - things that might not exist in your vicinity, but are required to run a modern economy today.
This entire concept of city-states exists on a premise of peaceful coexistence and cooperation. Given our history, this is pure fiction. (And then these people shit on Communism.)
Of course they did care about minerals. They cared about salt, gold, tin, copper, iron. Also about navigable seaports, sea passages, fertile land, forests, and also workforce. For these resources wars were waged all the time in the Middle ages.
Oil was not as valuable as nowadays, but it was a priced export used as lighting fuel, weapon component for Greek fire, and also as a drug for some health conditions since ~400 BC, and more so later. It was not the central fuel for the economy, but it was considered a valuable resource, though not one for which a war would be started probably.
You are right. I oversimplified my statement to make the point that the resource requirements of modern economies are more complex. So conflicts happened over less complex resource requirements back then.
Also resources are not just the source materials, but anything within a supply chain, including intermediate products.
> This entire concept of city-states exists on a premise of peaceful coexistence and cooperation
F*ck no. From early Sumerian cities to Greek city-states, they were at each others' throats regularly. You can speak of peaceful cooperation maybe in certain stages of Ancient Egypt, and very early Anatolian settlements like Catalhuyuk.
China is happy to just move into the sphere of influence Trump has vacated. His strategy only works if China plays ball to form a new colonially divided world, but they are probably way too smart to walk into that trap.
Just watching the US push their closest allies and trade partners into their arms is worth more than any “picking off” hillbilly states would do.
How would city-states work in the age of nukes? It will lead to nothing but predation (see Mortal Engines for a YA take, what I'd give to watch the City of New York pursuing Roanoke or Asheville across the plains from atop the Chrysler building)
I don't see how these "tech titans" who understand economies of scale think scaling governments down is an improvement, so I suspect there is (self?) deception at play, and what they are optimizing for is minimizing oversight over their activities, and I suppose they see themselves as taking control of the cities and picking off the neighboring later... In this magical-thinking-land, Canada, Mexico, Russia and China will leave weakened city-states unmolested out of respect of the billionaires? The reasoning is juvenile and/or dishonest.
I wonder: do these people really believe this stuff is going to work out well, or is working out badly for most people the point?
For most authors from Ayn Rand to Karl Marx I get the idea that they genuinely believe their ideas would make life better for the majority of the human race. I don’t think the problem with their ideas was obvious to them when they wrote them.
In this case I’m not so sure. A lot of the NRx writings drip with contempt for most people, which usually comes from externalized self hate. This stuff has a real misanthropic quality veiled behind a lot of tedious overwrought sophistry.
Also: reading the futurists, I would be shocked if they were not on speed. Didn’t meth hit around this time? Amphetamine abuse produces a specific sort of cognitive artifact.
Silicon Valley’s turn toward nihilistic accelerationism is probably chemically induced to some extent too.
The Russian Cosmists and the American futurist writers from the early days of the 60s counterculture (Leary, Wilson) are all way more interesting.
What makes this such a viable conspiracy theory is just how unoriginal it is. Like feudalism never existed before, like the US never had company towns with people paid in an analog of crypto that could only be traded with that company…
Which is also what makes it scary because it’s difficult to imagine an elite cabal of multi-billionaires having nothing but complete indifference about the vast majority of people they’ve effectively isolated themselves from in their little echo chamber. And if you’re bored of being a CEO or VC where do you go from there?
I think you have to imagine just how out of touch with the people one has to be to genuinely believe that they can do better as a dictator, or the inner sanctum of a dictator, than the people can do as a democracy.
You start helping humanity, as Christ did from the start or Gates did once he conquered the business world. Imagine the good someone as influential & rich as Thiel could do.
Instead his “good” is focused on transforming society for unclear societal benefit. How do the poor, the fatherless, and the oppressed benefit from living in ocean communities or as city states?
> How do the poor, the fatherless, and the oppressed benefit from living in ocean communities or as city states?
You mean the millstone around the neck of society? The thinking goes: getting rid of entitlements supporting these groups will lower taxes and improve the allocation of capital, an all-round win, except for the guy who got too sick or too old to work.
> For most authors from Ayn Rand to Karl Marx I get the idea that they genuinely believe their ideas would make life better for the majority of the human race. I don’t think the problem with their ideas was obvious to them when they wrote them.
The catch is that today we are literally living what Karl Marx predicted to the letter.
I often compare Ayn Rand and Karl Marx in the following way: both of them were pretty good critics. They pointed out a lot of problems with the systems they were criticizing. I don't think either one of them had good solutions.
It's much easier to criticize than to build or fix.
>reading the futurists, I would be shocked if they were not on speed.
Nazis/fash were well known meth heads. Mescaline was also available across Wien and Weimar, my great grandma used to push a little on the side.
>contempt for most people, which usually comes from externalized self hate
Sure does! Bigger question is, where does all that self hate come from? Because I've never met a person who likes to hate themself.
Could it be, perhaps, that... it's something that has been internalized first? Sort of a "seeing others hate you turns you into a hateful person" type of situation?
As for self hate: A ton of nerds were picked on mercilessly as children. I don’t mean just teasing either, but routine physical assault. I know from experience.
If you experience mistreatment and then turn around and try to inflict it on others, you failed the test.
When I was older I learned that my personal tormentors were all victims of extreme domestic abuse.
I see what you mean. But none of the people in question 'tried to inflict violence on others', they wrote books didn't they? Sort of extended lay takes on why they think this violence is so ubiquitous in their life, why they've been subjected to it, and what should "we all" do about it.
(The fools. Monkey see, monkey do, monkey comprehend, monkey turn into a giant finger pointing at giant complex problem over there, monkey gets covered in shit again by the other monkeys. Because that's not a problem, that's the feeder. "Silly book writing monkey! Pooh pooh, go suffer elsewhere!")
>If you experience mistreatment and then turn around and try to inflict it on others, you failed the test.
How certain are you of the legitimacy of the testing authority? Because that "test" sounds more like a cruel human experiment. I am instead reminded of another test, conducted by a certain old man on a certain mountain...
An idiot inflicts violence directly. A smart sadist tells others to do it with a convincing rationale. Hitler and Mao and Pol Pot probably never killed anyone.
It’s sort of like the saying: if an idiot wants to rob a bank he gets a gun and a ski mask. If a smart person wants to rob a bank they get a banking license.
As for the test: there is no authority. It’s implied by reality and by game theory.
"Reality"? That was the thing they teach at uni wasn't it? Or maybe that was "game theory", and "reality" was the one that's on the telly? I'm confused!
Point being, not too cash money of you to posit the self-evidence of certain conclusions that feel morally authoritative and ethically certain, while simultaneously moving the goalposts on the parallel thesis. I kinda thought we were talking about people who stayed writers after their first book?
I don't think Marx or Rand were sadists, and even if we assume ill intent on their part, the question of what causes the thing you call "sadism" remains open (although I kinda answered it, but I can't know for sure how true is my answer without the output of others, right?). If, of course, you believe in cause and effect and all that in the first place... You'd be surprised (I know I was) at how many people think they do, but their tracing of causes stops at the first though-terminating cliche.
In fact, here's one (Godwin style):
Hot take about that Schicklgruber kid you brought up and his ilk: monstrous characters, antropomorphic salient points for Pax Americana's culture in the best traditions of ancestor worship and all that, proper antonyms to "Santa Claus" really... I don't know if H****r ever killed anyone with his own hands (other than his own sorry ass in the end) yet I still find it's rather the people who created the circumstances for his emergence or exploited its effects (my first cell phone was named after one of them); the people who voted for him (very fine moral ethical prosocial people); his nominal opponents, who enabled him to take emergency powers (some of which went out to found Communist parties sporting concentration camps well into the Cold War); and, most importantly, the people who obeyed the dicta of the system of which he was figurehead ("don't look at me just doing my job"): those were the real culprits of that shameful page of world history.
And while individual military dictators have so far been limited by the normal human lifespan, those other mfs that empower them are still all over the place, being not identifiable individuals per se, but one might say cases of self-reproducing character types and life scripts. It is those that the radical ideologues — who are, unsurprisingly, pariahs in pleasant company (of Westerners) — are useful in identifying and counteracting. But the Westerner, being a memetically vulnerable humanimal, apparently can't read a book without suspending disbelief...
Which is how you get edgelords who personally identify with the problem statement. You know the character type. May you never know the associated life script :)
The small patchwork of kingdoms were always redrawing their borders and sending people to fight over it.
But back then the nobles and kings were expected to at least be present for the fight.
It will not be peace. They will forever try to eat eachother and feed paupers to the war gods while these cowards hide in their luxury bunkers.