| Here's what I think about Curtis Yarvin. I don't think Curtis Yarvin ever says the word "degrowth" and the people who think "degrowth" is inevitable, necessary or desirable would not endorse him, but
his vision of the future is a vision of degrowth. I think he sees the peak of civilization as around 1777 in France or 1852 in Japan when there was a relatively high technology level and material stock but we were
still basically on a solar economy where wealth derived from holding agricultural land and food supplies were limited so we weren't quite ready for Marx's labor
theory of value. If you thought the greatest thing in life was the exploitation of personal services, whether that is having a house full of servants or the
debauchery of Valmont from Dangerous Liasons, you'd probably think that was the pinnacle of development. If you like pharmaceuticals or good food or things made out of metal, not so much. (Even if he didn't die in a duel or under the guillotine or from syphilis he would have been lucky to make it past 40) So far as I know the story was the same in feudal agrarian Europe, Japan and China and likely elsewhere. There was an ideology that the King or Emperor or whatever had a divine right or was a god or was descended from the gods but actually he ruled with the consent of a class of warlords and landowners and if they wanted him overthrown he was overthrown though it often ushered in a century of chaos as those warlords struggled to figure out who'd come out on top finally falling back on the old ideology out of exhaustion. The strength of modern society is not formal democracy but the very large numbers of institutions of many kinds large and small that through their many degrees of
freedom are able to face the complexity of the problems that face civilization. (See Ashby's Law) You have the many branches of government, not one church, but
many churches, many businesses, labor unions, professional associations, the academy, and civil society organizations of every stripe from Greenpeace to the Freemasons. The case for degrowth is that civilization faces many threats not least pollution, resource depletion, war, pandemics as well as continuously changing
technology, culture and economy. Critically, as Ezra Klein points out lately, the institutional complexity that it takes to manage these threats itself gets in
the way of the responsiveness of the system and that's a tough problem. I'll grant it to Yarvin that there has been an "ahistorical turn" and a lot of people, particularly the identitarian left, aren't interested in thinking about 2005 or
1974, never mind 1843 or the Ancien Regime. Yarvin's answer though is either going to be the cause of collapse or the consequence of collapse. Even if you're
Peter Thiel your wealth can only protect you so much in that scenario, it's like playing Russian Roulette with a 10 chamber revolver and 9 bullets loaded. For the
median person, it's worse. If you are looking for answers that will work in that kind of world you are better looking into matters of religion and the spirit because
those are things that don't change along with economy and technology. The way out is the way through. |
1. 1777 & 1852 were peak for iron tech. Black smithery decentralized in both solar econs. (+nitrate prod. How could those revolutions succeed otherwise?) did not read GG+S to know if he had the same or counter argument (eg incompetent monarchs.) (Role of aluminum tech is a fun rabbit hole)
2. When your main threats are either yourselves other supra-organisms (not the universe), there may be a case for violating Ashby's Law. That might not be so crackpot if your fave supra-organism has a sustainably robust energy infra
2b. One might have to make the case that the brain may be materially バロック but organizationally simple? Do hominids have the most complex brains of all? Will botanics outlive us?
2a. The hard to formalize notions of simplicity from Clausewitz
3. Loki "physically" manifesting as a Hydra, thus concluding the TV series: what if he's The Good Guy?