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Throughout history when societies enjoy above average improvement, it is because they are able to displace inheritance-based systems. These inheritance-based sy

Throughout history when societies enjoy above average improvement, it is because they are able to displace inheritance-based systems. These inheritance-based systems hand out benefits to random children, they subvert progress by enabling the incompetent and disabling the competent. Commonly, people who inherit stuff (money, authority, property) keep skewing laws to prevent others benefiting from the fruits of their labor, so that inheritors can maintain ownership. They do this by paying to skew laws to benefit owners over achievers. If privacy doesn't exist anymore, then the inheritors will receive a level of power they have never had before. They will be unstoppable. We will reach an end-state of cultural-political development where the inheritors will no longer be challenged. We have had dark periods of time when inheritors have ruled for long periods, ancient Egypt with mass enslavement for example. Without privacy we will reach an event-horizon of wealth inequality, and no political counter-movement will be able to take root to challenge it. We are seeing the beginning of this in Hong Kong, we are seeing it in an uncompetitive pay-to-play patent system, in an increasingly monopolistic corporate environment, in increasingly uncompetitive marketplaces in dark pool trading systems, and in Apple/Microsoft/Facebook/Google/Amazon app stores and tech markets. The threat to privacy is the greatest threat to progressive civilization we have ever encountered IMO.

f883l 7y ago
This reminds me of one curious legend / hypothesis about the last days of Atlantis that I read in some book. The story was basically that during the Atlantis era, the "world config" was tuned slightly differently and that allowed what we'd call magic: curious long distance effects that could be caused without the modern tech. For some time it went well, but then it started sliding to the dark side: bad and evil people, that could use anything to gain power, kept winning over the good people who were restricted by "moral" and things like that. By about 10,000 B.C. the power of evil people became indisputable: they could see nearly everything and could instantly squash any opposition by means of notoriously powerful black magic. There were a couple unsuccessful attempts to bring power back to good people, but it never worked for long time: evil people kept taking it back quickly and efficiently. I think, the Lord of The Rings book took the idea from that story. The situation looked completely hopeless and there was no point to continue running this show, so shortly before 10,000 B.C. the entire civilization was "hard reset" and the "world config" was tweaked to prevent any long distance effects. Since then people are following the technology track. As we see, it's taken only 12,000 years to replicate the very same system without any magic: powerful long distance weapons and amazing surveillance technology that would impress even the Sauron form the movie. We are only missing that Sauron who would consolidate all the power.
- teddyh 7y ago
  > We are only missing that Sauron who would consolidate all the power. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21074907 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21074907 “And nine rings were gifted to the race of men, who above all else desire power. […] But they were all of them deceived.”
- Kinnard 7y ago
  Where did you come across this curious legend??
  - f883l 7y ago
    That book was written a few centuries ago by one bishop.
    - Kinnard 7y ago
      What's the name of the book? What's the name of the bishop?
jonnybgood 7y ago
> If privacy doesn't exist anymore, then the inheritors will receive a level of power they have never had before. I’m having a hard time understanding your implication here. Wouldn’t the inheritors want more privacy as that would lessen the visibility of their actions and those involved?
- deogeo 7y ago
  > Wouldn’t the inheritors want more privacy For themselves - not necessarily for others. And when privacy is invaded, only the powerful get access to the resulting information. There's also the matter of who needs privacy - the loss of it hurts those without power to defend themselves more. E.g. Hong Kong protesters are rightly worried of being identified.
- Renaud 7y ago
  If I understand the grand-parent correctly, his/her point is that the lack of privacy gives more control to the inheritors as they can use that as a way to pass more stringent laws governning communications and enforce blanked surveillance as a way to quash dissent. There is an assymetry because the procecutions under these laws will not be as effective against of those who have the means to defend themselves against them (basically money and influence). Also the loss of encryption will probably not affect all means of communication but getting mass-appeal apps like FB and WhatsApp to forego with encryption means most people would then easily become 'surveillable'.
- justinclift 7y ago
  For a more concrete example: At present, a new item in the news cycle is a 2nd whisteblower coming forward about Trump - Ukranian things. This person is apparently being represented by the same lawyers as the 1st person. If (all) encryption becomes subverted, that law firm would have no effective way to store and/or communicate details digitally. Back to pen-and-paper records, only meeting in person in (eg) secluded locations, etc.
analognoise 7y ago
The "meritocratic" system is as big a fraud and every bit as bad (if not worse) than the inheritance system.
- Renaud 7y ago
  I think you have to qualify that blanket statement and give your definition of "merit".
  - mikaelmello 7y ago
    Merit != Meritocracy
  - jonnybgood 7y ago
    I think you wanting them to define merit may prove their point. Who defines what merit is? Merit, depending on time and place, has been as arbitrary as your level of attractiveness, wealth, religious conviction, political conviction, etc. Merit means something different to many different people.
    - raxxorrax 7y ago
      It can be seen as an appeal to fairness and it can be seen as a distinct set of KPI that can measure the value of your efforts. You picked the latter one.
    - swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
      Most things in life require some sort of technique or procedure which can be done poorly or can be done more well (less wastefully?) These can be objective metrics. They can be measuring pretty much anything you want, and you usually find a way to get better at it. I think finding the right things to measure is the most challenging part, almost because of the fact that you can usually 'game the system'. But to deny merit completely or find it in contempt is in my unearned opinion, a fear response in denial of the massive amount of skill a small but influential number of people develop in all sorts of endeavors.
- 7y ago
quanticle 7y ago
What's your source for ancient Egypt having mass enslavement? The sources I've read on the matter indicate that ancient Egyptian society was no more and no less reliant on slavery than its contemporaries (like the Phoenicians). The popular image that we have of the pyramids being built by vast armies of slave labor is a myth. Most Egyptian monuments, like the Pyramids or the temple of Ramses II were built using paid wage labor that would have been otherwise idle during the dry season.
- Kinnard 7y ago
  >"‘We cannot hide from my lord that, with all the money and animal stocks consigned to my lord, nothing is left at my lord’s disposal save our persons and our farmland. Let us not perish before your eyes, both we and our land. Take us and our land in exchange for bread, and we with our land will be serfs to Pharaoh; provide the seed, that we may live and not die, and that the land may not become a waste.’ (JPS Tanakh, 2000) “Smoothing out the ravages of the business cycle” indeed. What Mr. Ruby ignores, and what the text devotes many verses to emphasizing, is that central planning of the kind undertaken by Joseph and Pharaoh ultimately leads down a Hayekian “road to serfdom.” Here, what starts as a grain shortage brought on by natural cycles in the east wind and the Nile’s ebb and flow is leveraged by a government with authoritarian ambitions to utterly enslave the people – better yet, to have the people beg the government to enslave them! This much is clear: the more the coercive power of the state is deployed in the name of preventing individuals from making bad decisions about how to arrange their own sustenance, the greater will be the eventual loss of individual liberty." https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-road-to-egypt-job-creators-in-the-ancient-world/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-road-to-egypt-job-creators... It's a source, whether you deem it credible or not.
  - swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
    Lack of coinage was probably the culprit. What other way does a central authority coordinate a basic income to a large population? Well, if they're on the roster and they have the documents, they get their share of the harvest.

f883l 7y ago

This reminds me of one curious legend / hypothesis about the last days of Atlantis that I read in some book. The story was basically that during the Atlantis era, the "world config" was tuned slightly differently and that allowed what we'd call magic: curious long distance effects that could be caused without the modern tech. For some time it went well, but then it started sliding to the dark side: bad and evil people, that could use anything to gain power, kept winning over the good people who were restricted by "moral" and things like that. By about 10,000 B.C. the power of evil people became indisputable: they could see nearly everything and could instantly squash any opposition by means of notoriously powerful black magic. There were a couple unsuccessful attempts to bring power back to good people, but it never worked for long time: evil people kept taking it back quickly and efficiently. I think, the Lord of The Rings book took the idea from that story. The situation looked completely hopeless and there was no point to continue running this show, so shortly before 10,000 B.C. the entire civilization was "hard reset" and the "world config" was tweaked to prevent any long distance effects. Since then people are following the technology track. As we see, it's taken only 12,000 years to replicate the very same system without any magic: powerful long distance weapons and amazing surveillance technology that would impress even the Sauron form the movie. We are only missing that Sauron who would consolidate all the power.

teddyh 7y ago
> We are only missing that Sauron who would consolidate all the power. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21074907 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21074907 “And nine rings were gifted to the race of men, who above all else desire power. […] But they were all of them deceived.”
Kinnard 7y ago
Where did you come across this curious legend??
- f883l 7y ago
  That book was written a few centuries ago by one bishop.
  - Kinnard 7y ago
    What's the name of the book? What's the name of the bishop?

jonnybgood 7y ago

> If privacy doesn't exist anymore, then the inheritors will receive a level of power they have never had before. I’m having a hard time understanding your implication here. Wouldn’t the inheritors want more privacy as that would lessen the visibility of their actions and those involved?

deogeo 7y ago
> Wouldn’t the inheritors want more privacy For themselves - not necessarily for others. And when privacy is invaded, only the powerful get access to the resulting information. There's also the matter of who needs privacy - the loss of it hurts those without power to defend themselves more. E.g. Hong Kong protesters are rightly worried of being identified.
Renaud 7y ago
If I understand the grand-parent correctly, his/her point is that the lack of privacy gives more control to the inheritors as they can use that as a way to pass more stringent laws governning communications and enforce blanked surveillance as a way to quash dissent. There is an assymetry because the procecutions under these laws will not be as effective against of those who have the means to defend themselves against them (basically money and influence). Also the loss of encryption will probably not affect all means of communication but getting mass-appeal apps like FB and WhatsApp to forego with encryption means most people would then easily become 'surveillable'.
justinclift 7y ago
For a more concrete example: At present, a new item in the news cycle is a 2nd whisteblower coming forward about Trump - Ukranian things. This person is apparently being represented by the same lawyers as the 1st person. If (all) encryption becomes subverted, that law firm would have no effective way to store and/or communicate details digitally. Back to pen-and-paper records, only meeting in person in (eg) secluded locations, etc.

analognoise 7y ago

The "meritocratic" system is as big a fraud and every bit as bad (if not worse) than the inheritance system.

Renaud 7y ago
I think you have to qualify that blanket statement and give your definition of "merit".
- mikaelmello 7y ago
  Merit != Meritocracy
- jonnybgood 7y ago
  I think you wanting them to define merit may prove their point. Who defines what merit is? Merit, depending on time and place, has been as arbitrary as your level of attractiveness, wealth, religious conviction, political conviction, etc. Merit means something different to many different people.
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    It can be seen as an appeal to fairness and it can be seen as a distinct set of KPI that can measure the value of your efforts. You picked the latter one.
  - swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
    Most things in life require some sort of technique or procedure which can be done poorly or can be done more well (less wastefully?) These can be objective metrics. They can be measuring pretty much anything you want, and you usually find a way to get better at it. I think finding the right things to measure is the most challenging part, almost because of the fact that you can usually 'game the system'. But to deny merit completely or find it in contempt is in my unearned opinion, a fear response in denial of the massive amount of skill a small but influential number of people develop in all sorts of endeavors.
7y ago

quanticle 7y ago

What's your source for ancient Egypt having mass enslavement? The sources I've read on the matter indicate that ancient Egyptian society was no more and no less reliant on slavery than its contemporaries (like the Phoenicians). The popular image that we have of the pyramids being built by vast armies of slave labor is a myth. Most Egyptian monuments, like the Pyramids or the temple of Ramses II were built using paid wage labor that would have been otherwise idle during the dry season.

Kinnard 7y ago
>"‘We cannot hide from my lord that, with all the money and animal stocks consigned to my lord, nothing is left at my lord’s disposal save our persons and our farmland. Let us not perish before your eyes, both we and our land. Take us and our land in exchange for bread, and we with our land will be serfs to Pharaoh; provide the seed, that we may live and not die, and that the land may not become a waste.’ (JPS Tanakh, 2000) “Smoothing out the ravages of the business cycle” indeed. What Mr. Ruby ignores, and what the text devotes many verses to emphasizing, is that central planning of the kind undertaken by Joseph and Pharaoh ultimately leads down a Hayekian “road to serfdom.” Here, what starts as a grain shortage brought on by natural cycles in the east wind and the Nile’s ebb and flow is leveraged by a government with authoritarian ambitions to utterly enslave the people – better yet, to have the people beg the government to enslave them! This much is clear: the more the coercive power of the state is deployed in the name of preventing individuals from making bad decisions about how to arrange their own sustenance, the greater will be the eventual loss of individual liberty." https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-road-to-egypt-job-creators-in-the-ancient-world/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-road-to-egypt-job-creators... It's a source, whether you deem it credible or not.
- swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
  Lack of coinage was probably the culprit. What other way does a central authority coordinate a basic income to a large population? Well, if they're on the roster and they have the documents, they get their share of the harvest.