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I mentioned this previously, but I frequently think back to Gibson's "Jackpot" -- a cross-lashed, polycausal catastrophe: Lots of bad little things accumulating

I mentioned this previously, but I frequently think back to Gibson's "Jackpot" -- a cross-lashed, polycausal catastrophe: Lots of bad little things accumulating, building up a certain momentum. I think that even as far back as 2009, an astute observer would have noticed that society is beginning to burn through its seed corn. In some places, things are now getting extremely acute: https://www.neilobrien.co.uk/p/the-confluence?r=h8x https://www.neilobrien.co.uk/p/the-confluence?r=h8x There's no way out but through, which means that politics are going to get extremely weird. Moldbug/Yarvin is one manifestation of this, and quite a benign and even harmless one. He's foppish and playful more than he is scary.

runako 1y ago
> society is beginning to burn through its seed corn This is mostly true in the US, where a defining characteristic of the population is a belief that we cannot do better or have more, that things will always continue to get worse, and that everyone is out to take advantage of you all the time. Other countries continue to invest in the future. China, among others, do not suffer the current American fatalism.
- soulofmischief 1y ago
  China's population is purportedly set to halve by 2100. They're well on their way to a massive population shock if they don't thread the needle carefully. There's also been lots of stories about bank closures and Chinese citizens losing their money. Additionally, China, like the US and many other world powers, is a totalitarian authoritarian government which is hostile towards its people. Whether China has high-speed monorails or not, they continue to slide backwards as a country into the dark ages, increasingly relying on invasive, pervasive surveillance as a tool of short-term stability, just like the US.
  - cassepipe 1y ago
    They have invested a lot into their energy sources whether it's nuclear or renewables + batteries or hydro. They also have industrial capacity. I feel like we tend to forget that the brunt of the economic output is made by machines which feed on energy. When you have virtually free energy and sufficient level of machinery, you can do anything.
    - throwaway29812 1y ago
      [dead]
    - soulofmischief 1y ago
      Personally, I directly use energy, both current and future (access to resources) as the main currency of my economic model of the world, not money. So I do understand that China is well-equipped to weather the storm on multiple fronts. But that's orthogonal to the fact that they will experience major population shock that radically and painfully transforms their economy, and also to the fact that China is a totalitarian nightmare with strict moderation of culture, knowledge and financial mobility. Who cares if the country still exists in name, if the number of people who manage to maintain a quality of life comparable today's average continues to dwindle? And what happens if China faces civil unrest and balkanizes, due to backlash against its increasingly authoritarian regime?
      - cjbgkagh 1y ago
        > China faces civil unrest and balkanizes, due to backlash against its increasingly authoritarian regime? I've been hearing this is eminent for my entire life.... > major population shock that radically and painfully transforms their economy Ah Peter Zeihan's evergreen bugaboo. Chinese old people != American old people, the cost of old people is completely different. While China does have a Ponzi economy, much like the US, and thus is susceptible to reverse wealth effects their corporations are run by politicians instead of the other way around. As much as I would like to be able to assume that repressive autocracies lead to political instability the empirical evidence does not seem to bear that out.
        ordinaryradical 1y ago
        You’ve been hearing it’s eminent because most of Chinese history has played out this way and the Chinese world view sees government as dynastic and cyclical as opposed to progressive or something else. It’s plausible because it’s culturally coherent but that does not necessitate it. Communism could have easily been too alien to succeed but Mao made it contextual, so it unified the society instead. The way I look at it, every government has an existential risk of getting out of sync with its host culture. When that happens, the system breaks and you get an irruption—revolution, civil war, Balkanization; is the current Chinese system and its overall direction compatible with its cultural inheritance? The degree of that answer is the degree of risk.
  - cempaka 1y ago
    A good measure of where China really stands is the fact that it continues to do business with Israel, even though it would be quite trivial to cut ties.
    - bdangubic 1y ago
      countries have no friends or enemies, only national interests
      - throwaway29812 1y ago
        Dictatorships do they best to make everyone convinced of this. That way their way of doing business isn't questioned.
        bdangubic 1y ago
        sure, that makes sense… they will do the business that jeopardizes national interest is the way to go /s also I was not talking about dictatorships at all but all countries
        throwaway29812 1y ago
        [dead]
      - cempaka 1y ago
        "Countries" as such do not have interests, no. This is a line the ruling class puts out when it wants to obscure the fact that its own interests are always prioritized, often to the great detriment of the vast majority of the country. One could perhaps say that "governments" have interests, and in that case the interests of a genuine socialist state and an authoritarian regime that's just pretending to be one are quite different.
        soulofmischief 1y ago
        Governments have interests, people have interests, both are interested in the future of their country, which is just land. This is why I am careful to delineate my patriotism as to my country, land and people, but specifically not my corporate government, who are greedy, genocidal, parasitic traitors to the Constitution and to humanity. A kangaroo court controlled by organized crime.
  - ben_w 1y ago
    > China's population is purportedly set to halve by 2100. 75 years is a long time. At lot can change. 75 years ago, China was just finishing its civil war, with the losers retreating to Taiwan. Land reform had an "estimated death toll ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Reform_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Reform_Movement The infamous famine was only about 65 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine Now, I won't claim confidence that they will solve anything; but they are a dictatorship and they deliberately had a "once child" policy for a bit to prevent massive over-population, so it's absolutely conceiveable that their leadership sees too few children per woman and says "ok, new rule: if you want a kid, first one has got to be a girl, mandatory screenings during pregnancy". > increasingly relying on invasive, pervasive surveillance as a tool of short-term stability, just like the US. Given how cheap surveilance is, all nations faced a choice before GenAI made it even weirder: Either the police does this, or criminals do it for blackmail. Only solution I can see is extreme liberalisation, where personal behaviour most of us find repugnant is not just legally permitted but also socially permitted. Now that GenAI is in the mix, we need someone trustworthy to document reality and say what has even really happened. Insert your own jokes about the intersection of "government" and "someone trustworthy", but the need exists.
    - giantrobot 1y ago
      > Either the police does this, or criminals do it for blackmail. Lucky us, we get both. Not only both spying but both blackmailing us. No good for the common person can come from a panopticon.
      - ben_w 1y ago
        I think you're underestimating the scope/magnitude of the problem. But first: Governments can't function if they're not the top power — sovereign — in their territories. If they don't effectively block the growth of criminals, they always lose, and then the criminals replace them. This argument also applies to foreign governments intelligence agencies interfering locally. For scope, consider: if some government was actually serious about road traffic laws, how long would it be before everyone that drove in their jurisdiction was banned from driving? I think the answer is between a week and a month. If the UK fully enforced just its heroin laws and gave up literally everything else, the net effect is it would triple their prison population. If they tried to enforce all drugs laws, they'd bankrupt themselves building prisons. A true panopticon government cannot function without commensurate liberalisation.
  - queenkjuul 1y ago
    Yes the ever impending Chinese financial collapse I've been reading about since 2017 Any day now, right?
    - soulofmischief 1y ago
      If you're incapable of recognizing the signs of an empire's collapse, slow as it may be initially, then you're trading a feeling of superiority in the present for being totally blindsided in the future when suddenly things accelerate and the world's governments begin to struggle under increasingly untenable energy and resource demands in the name of meeting quarterly growth quotas. The fact is that the signs are there, whether you want to learn to recognize them or not. And the signs go way further back than... 2017. Furthermore, "financial collapse" is a strawman. Who knows what will happen, and if the resulting government at the end is still technically "China". We're talking about increased economic strife and lack of resources for the common man.
      - queenkjuul 1y ago
        I was referring specifically to "reports of bank closures" that were they actually happening with such frequency and scale as has been reported on since 2017 or so, would surely have already caused a financial collapse. Any day now though, surely.
      - queenkjuul 1y ago
        I do feel the need to point out that there is in fact a reason that the US media has boldly proclaimed the impending financial collapse of China every month for the last ten years, and it's precisely to give you a feeling of superiority
        soulofmischief 1y ago
        You don't know what my sources are, or my motivations. I don't have this opinion because of US media, and I always try to get to direct sources and not trust publications blindly. Who gives a fuck about feeling superior, I just want to understand what is happening around me. So now that we've dispensed with that, we can return to discussing a very real phenomenon and not dismiss it by insinuating it's all propaganda.
- UncleOxidant 1y ago
  > in the US, where a defining characteristic of the population is a belief... that everyone is out to take advantage of you all the time. I mean, living in 2025 America that's not a bad default assumption to make, is it? By default when the solar salesman (or pest control salesman) comes to the door I consider it a scam because it generally is (same for phone sales, and most internet ads). Is everything a scam? No. But lots of things are and it's best to have your defenses up.
  - ModernMech 1y ago
    It's a self fulfilling prophecy. When you believe others are out to take advantage of you, you can justify taking advantage of others, which causes them to believe others are out to take advantage of them. So on and so forth. Those who resist this cycle are labeled "naive".
  - runako 1y ago
    One doesn't even have to look to salespeople knocking to find scams. It's widely accepted that key pillars of the way we choose to organize our society have scam-like elements. Healthcare. Zero job security. Virtually nonexistent support for parents. Retirement. Education. Switching to the American form of any single one of these would cause mass civil unrest in most rich countries, but Americans don't believe things can or should be better. Many believe the lie that we (poorest state has a higher GDP per capita than France) cannot afford the things other rich countries have. The pessimism is pervasive.
    - UncleOxidant 1y ago
      [flagged]
  - evklein 1y ago
    I have no empirical evidence of this to present, but if you view every transaction as existing on some scale of scam-iness, where one side is you lose your house and wife and kids and the other is an amazing deal for you, the average position on that scale has shifted toward the backside pretty much the entirety of my life. Anything that comes to me first, I pretty much always write off as a scam. Email from someone I don't know? Scam. Car dearlership advertising 0% APR for 5 years on a brand new car? Scam. Even something like my workplace offering a new optional benefit - probably a scam. Did things always feel like this?
- ryeats 1y ago
  This is not true. Your rose colored glasses of Chinese culture, and the current state of Chinese economy and society need a reality check.
  - runako 1y ago
    Pointedly, I did not make any points about the state of the Chinese economy etc. Rather, I observe that the Chinese continue to make large investments that will not pay off in the next couple of quarters. As the Chinese economy has expanded over the last 25 years, the average standard of living for Chinese people has increased. They continue to invest in infrastructure as if there will be a future. This all stands in contrast to the United States, where eating seed corn (the OP reference) is a very good analogy for our policies and actions.
  - cogman10 1y ago
    It isn't perfect, but it's also undeniable that China is dumping a ton of money into infrastructure. It also has and has been executing multiple long-term initiatives (for example, high speed rail, renewable build out). Chinese culture isn't perfect by a long shot, in particular it's both pretty isolationist with a strong slash and burn mentality for resource acquisition. We can see both the positives and negatives of a country. I think it is a positive that china isn't as focused on short term results as the US political ecosystem is.
- pavel_lishin 1y ago
  > This is mostly true in the US, where a defining characteristic of the population is a belief that we cannot do better or have more, that things will always continue to get worse, and that everyone is out to take advantage of you all the time. As an American immigrant, this does not seem at all true to me, from either angle - I don't think that this is a defining characteristic of Americans, nor do I think that other nations don't behave the same way.
  - throw0101b 1y ago
    > I don't think that this is a defining characteristic of Americans […] You just need the right/wrong ones to think that way and get a critical mass of folks that want "change" and want it now: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism
  - runako 1y ago
    First, I am glad you are here. Since you mention that you are an immigrant, it's worth noting that the ascendant anti-immigrant fervor is a direct expression of pessimism about our future. It's a statement that there's not enough to go around, that growth is not possible. It says that in order for me to do better, I must shrink the denominator because the numerator cannot get bigger. The optimistic USA of the 1980s saw better days ahead, and so the presence of immigrants did not have the salience it has today. Ronald Reagan even had the latitude to enact an amnesty on the undocumented. > I don't think that this is a defining characteristic of Americans Here I would just ask you to look at our realized policy as the best expression of our characteristics. We don't build, or even really believe that building is possible. When we are asked to choose, we routinely cut education and healthcare. These are not signs of optimism. The pessimism has only grown; twenty years ago, it was considered possible that Americans could enjoy universal healthcare of the sort that exists in the (generally poorer) countries of Western Europe. Today, in a much wealthier America, even the suggestion has vanished from the realm of the possible and we are headed in the opposite direction.
  - gaze 1y ago
    The place where this perspective is most prevalent is socialized healthcare. It's either slippery slope evil socialism, or it's too impractical to ever be implemented here because America is too big and complicated, or it's never gonna happen due to regulatory capture.
- hollerith 1y ago
  >This is mostly true in the US, where a defining characteristic of the population is a belief that we cannot do better or have more, that things will always continue to get worse My view is basically the complete opposite: IMHO Americans have experienced things getting gradually better for essentially the entire duration of the American nation, with the result that we don't have the institutional capability to respond effectively when growth stops or when (as in the case of climate change) growth becomes the problem that must be addressed. Western Europe has proven much better at running their societies in ways that do not depend on continued growth than the US has (at least in the period after WW II) which is why it has responded much quicker and more effectively to the challenge of climate change than the US has. Here is one man's summary of this dynamic: https://theportal.wiki/wiki/Embedded_Growth_Obligations https://theportal.wiki/wiki/Embedded_Growth_Obligations Oh, wait: could it be that you are disappointed with the US (and see China in a favorable light) because the US isn't becoming Leftist quickly enough?
  - runako 1y ago
    > Americans have experienced things getting gradually better for essentially the entire duration of the American nation More or less, I agree with this part of the thesis. > Western Europe has proven much better at responding intelligently to the limits of growth than the US has This is kind of my point -- we don't do the things other countries do to respond because those things would broadly be perceived as improving the lot of most citizens, and Americans do not generally believe that is possible anymore. (Also: "socialism is bad!") But there is no reason for a country where economic measures of growth of wealth and income are so consistently strong should be so hesitant to invest in the future, and should be actively disinvesting in long-term initiatives. What's especially painful is that some of the same policy choices we make that result in more distress for citizens are also likely to reduce the long-run growth of the economy. We make choices that hurt us now and also make things worse in the future. (Generally not going to respond to the political dig because this really isn't a direct outgrowth of the typical left/right political divide in the US or its projections on other countries. For example, right-leaning Hungary has universal healthcare and free college tuition, but nobody is accusing Hungary of being Leftist.)
- paleotrope 1y ago
  Please, the fatalism you see if concentrated in the overproduced elite. Overrepresented on the internet.
sitkack 1y ago
> He's foppish and playful more than he is scary. This is a very unwise stance to take. Peter Thiel has teamed up with the Heritage Foundation to implement this plan. This is why A16Z and Musk put Trump in power, it is precisely to implement this plan.
- A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
  Musk is on the outs. And what if there is no grand conspiracy? We're extremely far from any of Yarvin's "plans" at any rate. Yarvin's most cherished plan was to create a shadow university called the "Antiversity" -- a sort of repository of all truths unbeholden to politics and fads. Is this a bad idea? Which other Yarvin ideas scare you so?
  - skrtskrt 1y ago
    Yarvin's ideas of "truths" are in the realm of phrenology and race science
  - cempaka 1y ago
    Just because Musk is done firing government employees and is engaged in a little punch-and-judy show of conflict with the Trump administration does not mean he is "on the outs"
    - sitkack 1y ago
      Musk and Doge were a distraction, the firings were done by the newly appointed heads of Departments.
  - soulofmischief 1y ago
    > And what if there is no grand conspiracy? What if, indeed... and what if they even publicly announced their conspiracy and outlined their exact plans in full? Direct texts: https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade... https://www.project2025.org/playbook/ https://www.project2025.org/playbook/ Summaries: https://www.aclu.org/project-2025-explained https://www.aclu.org/project-2025-explained https://democracyforward.org/the-peoples-guide-to-project-2025/ https://democracyforward.org/the-peoples-guide-to-project-20... Implementation tracker: https://www.project2025.observer/ https://www.project2025.observer/
and0 1y ago
RE: that Neil O'Brien piece Demographic collapse? Sure, huge issue. But why is this happening? Why did it start happening before the other issues? A rap group being critical of Churchill at an official event? Not really an issue. I don't think that is why Britain is failing. And I'll need citations for why moral introspection is demoralizing rather than uplifting and enlightening for a culture. Or maybe suggest something that the youth should feel good about rather than browbeating them for not being thrilled at the state of things. Immigration? Not an issue for the USA after the great depression, which also had a massive welfare state. I agree that Britain is collapsing, but not for those reasons. What a stunning lack of imagination. e: Also, are migrants really to blame for Britain selling off all of its state capacity for pennies on the dollar since the 80s? Did migrants vote to violently eject Britain from the European economy in 2015? Any mention of that? Or would that type self-reflection hurt the cultural morale? Maybe Britain would be better off with people who are a little less integrated with those values.
youngtaff 1y ago
> In some places, things are now getting extremely acute: https://www.neilobrien.co.uk/p/the-confluence?r=h8x https://www.neilobrien.co.uk/p/the-confluence?r=h8x Neil O’Brien is a right wing anti-immigrant Member of Parliament… as with all politicians what he says should be taken with a pinch of salt
- A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
  Rather the opposite, I think. To me it seems that the fact that he's an MP makes it all the more interesting. In the UK, as in the US and elsewhere, people across the political spectrum -- and at all levels, from MPs to "Gary the regional sales manager" -- are losing faith in democratic processes. (At least as they're currently implemented.) As an aside, this is exactly what happens in Gibson's Jackpot. > “Who runs it, then?” > “Oligarchs, corporations, neomonarchists. Hereditary monarchies provided conveniently familiar armatures. Essentially feudal, according to its critics. Such as they are.” That there's no way to vote your way out of this mess is most readily apparent in the UK, but it's true practically everywhere except Switzerland. Switzerland, to some extent, shows that sometimes problems with democracy can be solved with. . . more democracy.
  - youngtaff 1y ago
    Some people are losing faith in the democratic process but that’s largely because they’ve been fed lies by people like Farage and Johnson who’ve promised them things that cannot be delivered
    - A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
      People these days tend to simply vote against the status quo. Remember "zero seats"? And that's exactly how Trump got elected in the first place -- and then re-elected after a four-year interregnum. But scratch the surface and all mainstream political parties only offer a continuation or intensification of the status quo.
      - youngtaff 1y ago
guelo 1y ago
If you link approvingly to Blood and Soil type of content I can see why you would think of Yarvin as harmless.
pjs_ 1y ago
> no way out but through Is exactly the philosophical dead end that Nick Land and Curtis and maybe Mark Fisher arrived at. Accelerationism is like the FedEx arrow in that it’s both an unforgettable idea and easy enough that anyone can grasp it, some of the dumbest politicians of our time are ardent believers. It’s fun to think about the possibility that belief in this conclusion was premature two decades ago when CCRU and NRx people were banging on about it but now maybe it actually isn’t premature. Which would annoyingly be a pretty compelling instance of hyperstitional time war
- A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
  Accelerationism doesn't work because "accelerating" = "making things worse for the people." People who imagine that they'll emerge victoriously from the chaos are really quite childish; odds are that the accelerationists will suffer like all the rest -- or worse. They're like children who read medieval history and imagine themselves princes and dukes, rather than dirt farmers laboriously clearing woods and plowing fields. When I say that there's no way out but through, I mean that things are bad and getting worse, and there's nothing anyone can do about it other than develop the skills to survive by any means necessary. (For some that means survivalism, or moving to Fiji, or just hanging out here and making lots of money.) Do you think we can vote our way out of this mess, with representative democracy? The way things are today? lol, lmao even. As to the second part of your comment -- I'm reminded of what Jack Womack wrote in the 2000 reissue of Neuromancer: Has "the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?"
  - roughly 1y ago
    > People who imagine that they'll emerge victoriously from the chaos are really quite childish; odds are that the accelerationists will suffer like all the rest -- or worse. They're like children who read medieval history and imagine themselves princes and dukes, rather than dirt farmers laboriously clearing woods and plowing fields. This is what’s always struck me about people like Bannon, Miller, Yarvin - guys, you’re on top. The only thing keeping you there is the system. Not much use for failed history scholars in the real world.
indoordin0saur 1y ago
Is his opinion really weird when a strong centralized leader (kings, emperors, etc.) was the norm until very very recently? Seems like it's more a return of the political theory of of "enlightened absolutism" that was popular amongst philosophers in the 18th century, or maybe something like Confucius' ideas on government.
- A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
  Yeah. You should read what Schopenhauer had to say about government, and this was barely 150 years ago, in the mid 19th. > "In general, the monarchical form of government is that which is natural to man; just as it is natural to bees and ants, to a flight of cranes, a herd of wandering elephants, a pack of wolves seeking prey in common, and many other animals, all of which place one of their number at the head of the business in hand. > "Every business in which men engage, if it is attended with danger — every campaign, every ship at sea — must also be subject to the authority of one commander; everywhere it is one will that must lead. Even the animal organism is constructed on a monarchical principle: it is the brain alone which guides and governs, and exercises the hegemony. Although heart, lungs, and stomach contribute much more to the continued existence of the whole body, these philistines cannot on that account be allowed to guide and lead. That is a business which belongs solely to the brain; government must proceed from one central point. Even the solar system is monarchical. On the other hand, a republic is as unnatural as it is unfavourable to the higher intellectual life and the arts and sciences. Accordingly we find that everywhere in the world, and at all times, nations, whether civilized or savage, or occupying a position between the two, are always under monarchical government. The rule of many, as Homer said, is not a good thing: let there be one ruler, one king. In general, I think that those experiments in autocracy that have taken place between 1850-Present rather disprove this notion. (One of the rare things old Schop was wrong about!) The Athenians were right: The affairs of state must be the affairs of every citizen. England's problems won't be solved by a restoration of the Stuarts (I think that the current Stuart heir is a 50 year old banker who is exceedingly uninterested in the job) but they can possibly be solved by dispensing with parliament and enabling qualified citizens to vote directly on laws and regulatory matters. I dare say you won't end up with butter knife bans this way.
retube 1y ago
There's some startling and alarming statistics in that obrien piece. Is this guy legit? or a swivel-eyed loon of the farage ilk
- queenkjuul 1y ago
  Definitely the latter

runako 1y ago

> society is beginning to burn through its seed corn This is mostly true in the US, where a defining characteristic of the population is a belief that we cannot do better or have more, that things will always continue to get worse, and that everyone is out to take advantage of you all the time. Other countries continue to invest in the future. China, among others, do not suffer the current American fatalism.

soulofmischief 1y ago
China's population is purportedly set to halve by 2100. They're well on their way to a massive population shock if they don't thread the needle carefully. There's also been lots of stories about bank closures and Chinese citizens losing their money. Additionally, China, like the US and many other world powers, is a totalitarian authoritarian government which is hostile towards its people. Whether China has high-speed monorails or not, they continue to slide backwards as a country into the dark ages, increasingly relying on invasive, pervasive surveillance as a tool of short-term stability, just like the US.
- cassepipe 1y ago
  They have invested a lot into their energy sources whether it's nuclear or renewables + batteries or hydro. They also have industrial capacity. I feel like we tend to forget that the brunt of the economic output is made by machines which feed on energy. When you have virtually free energy and sufficient level of machinery, you can do anything.
  - throwaway29812 1y ago
    [dead]
  - soulofmischief 1y ago
    Personally, I directly use energy, both current and future (access to resources) as the main currency of my economic model of the world, not money. So I do understand that China is well-equipped to weather the storm on multiple fronts. But that's orthogonal to the fact that they will experience major population shock that radically and painfully transforms their economy, and also to the fact that China is a totalitarian nightmare with strict moderation of culture, knowledge and financial mobility. Who cares if the country still exists in name, if the number of people who manage to maintain a quality of life comparable today's average continues to dwindle? And what happens if China faces civil unrest and balkanizes, due to backlash against its increasingly authoritarian regime?
    - cjbgkagh 1y ago
      > China faces civil unrest and balkanizes, due to backlash against its increasingly authoritarian regime? I've been hearing this is eminent for my entire life.... > major population shock that radically and painfully transforms their economy Ah Peter Zeihan's evergreen bugaboo. Chinese old people != American old people, the cost of old people is completely different. While China does have a Ponzi economy, much like the US, and thus is susceptible to reverse wealth effects their corporations are run by politicians instead of the other way around. As much as I would like to be able to assume that repressive autocracies lead to political instability the empirical evidence does not seem to bear that out.
      - ordinaryradical 1y ago
        You’ve been hearing it’s eminent because most of Chinese history has played out this way and the Chinese world view sees government as dynastic and cyclical as opposed to progressive or something else. It’s plausible because it’s culturally coherent but that does not necessitate it. Communism could have easily been too alien to succeed but Mao made it contextual, so it unified the society instead. The way I look at it, every government has an existential risk of getting out of sync with its host culture. When that happens, the system breaks and you get an irruption—revolution, civil war, Balkanization; is the current Chinese system and its overall direction compatible with its cultural inheritance? The degree of that answer is the degree of risk.
- cempaka 1y ago
  A good measure of where China really stands is the fact that it continues to do business with Israel, even though it would be quite trivial to cut ties.
  - bdangubic 1y ago
    countries have no friends or enemies, only national interests
    - throwaway29812 1y ago
      Dictatorships do they best to make everyone convinced of this. That way their way of doing business isn't questioned.
      - bdangubic 1y ago
        sure, that makes sense… they will do the business that jeopardizes national interest is the way to go /s also I was not talking about dictatorships at all but all countries
        throwaway29812 1y ago
        [dead]
    - cempaka 1y ago
      "Countries" as such do not have interests, no. This is a line the ruling class puts out when it wants to obscure the fact that its own interests are always prioritized, often to the great detriment of the vast majority of the country. One could perhaps say that "governments" have interests, and in that case the interests of a genuine socialist state and an authoritarian regime that's just pretending to be one are quite different.
      - soulofmischief 1y ago
        Governments have interests, people have interests, both are interested in the future of their country, which is just land. This is why I am careful to delineate my patriotism as to my country, land and people, but specifically not my corporate government, who are greedy, genocidal, parasitic traitors to the Constitution and to humanity. A kangaroo court controlled by organized crime.
- ben_w 1y ago
  > China's population is purportedly set to halve by 2100. 75 years is a long time. At lot can change. 75 years ago, China was just finishing its civil war, with the losers retreating to Taiwan. Land reform had an "estimated death toll ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Reform_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Reform_Movement The infamous famine was only about 65 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine Now, I won't claim confidence that they will solve anything; but they are a dictatorship and they deliberately had a "once child" policy for a bit to prevent massive over-population, so it's absolutely conceiveable that their leadership sees too few children per woman and says "ok, new rule: if you want a kid, first one has got to be a girl, mandatory screenings during pregnancy". > increasingly relying on invasive, pervasive surveillance as a tool of short-term stability, just like the US. Given how cheap surveilance is, all nations faced a choice before GenAI made it even weirder: Either the police does this, or criminals do it for blackmail. Only solution I can see is extreme liberalisation, where personal behaviour most of us find repugnant is not just legally permitted but also socially permitted. Now that GenAI is in the mix, we need someone trustworthy to document reality and say what has even really happened. Insert your own jokes about the intersection of "government" and "someone trustworthy", but the need exists.
  - giantrobot 1y ago
    > Either the police does this, or criminals do it for blackmail. Lucky us, we get both. Not only both spying but both blackmailing us. No good for the common person can come from a panopticon.
    - ben_w 1y ago
      I think you're underestimating the scope/magnitude of the problem. But first: Governments can't function if they're not the top power — sovereign — in their territories. If they don't effectively block the growth of criminals, they always lose, and then the criminals replace them. This argument also applies to foreign governments intelligence agencies interfering locally. For scope, consider: if some government was actually serious about road traffic laws, how long would it be before everyone that drove in their jurisdiction was banned from driving? I think the answer is between a week and a month. If the UK fully enforced just its heroin laws and gave up literally everything else, the net effect is it would triple their prison population. If they tried to enforce all drugs laws, they'd bankrupt themselves building prisons. A true panopticon government cannot function without commensurate liberalisation.
- queenkjuul 1y ago
  Yes the ever impending Chinese financial collapse I've been reading about since 2017 Any day now, right?
  - soulofmischief 1y ago
    If you're incapable of recognizing the signs of an empire's collapse, slow as it may be initially, then you're trading a feeling of superiority in the present for being totally blindsided in the future when suddenly things accelerate and the world's governments begin to struggle under increasingly untenable energy and resource demands in the name of meeting quarterly growth quotas. The fact is that the signs are there, whether you want to learn to recognize them or not. And the signs go way further back than... 2017. Furthermore, "financial collapse" is a strawman. Who knows what will happen, and if the resulting government at the end is still technically "China". We're talking about increased economic strife and lack of resources for the common man.
    - queenkjuul 1y ago
      I was referring specifically to "reports of bank closures" that were they actually happening with such frequency and scale as has been reported on since 2017 or so, would surely have already caused a financial collapse. Any day now though, surely.
    - queenkjuul 1y ago
      I do feel the need to point out that there is in fact a reason that the US media has boldly proclaimed the impending financial collapse of China every month for the last ten years, and it's precisely to give you a feeling of superiority
      - soulofmischief 1y ago
        You don't know what my sources are, or my motivations. I don't have this opinion because of US media, and I always try to get to direct sources and not trust publications blindly. Who gives a fuck about feeling superior, I just want to understand what is happening around me. So now that we've dispensed with that, we can return to discussing a very real phenomenon and not dismiss it by insinuating it's all propaganda.
UncleOxidant 1y ago
> in the US, where a defining characteristic of the population is a belief... that everyone is out to take advantage of you all the time. I mean, living in 2025 America that's not a bad default assumption to make, is it? By default when the solar salesman (or pest control salesman) comes to the door I consider it a scam because it generally is (same for phone sales, and most internet ads). Is everything a scam? No. But lots of things are and it's best to have your defenses up.
- ModernMech 1y ago
  It's a self fulfilling prophecy. When you believe others are out to take advantage of you, you can justify taking advantage of others, which causes them to believe others are out to take advantage of them. So on and so forth. Those who resist this cycle are labeled "naive".
- runako 1y ago
  One doesn't even have to look to salespeople knocking to find scams. It's widely accepted that key pillars of the way we choose to organize our society have scam-like elements. Healthcare. Zero job security. Virtually nonexistent support for parents. Retirement. Education. Switching to the American form of any single one of these would cause mass civil unrest in most rich countries, but Americans don't believe things can or should be better. Many believe the lie that we (poorest state has a higher GDP per capita than France) cannot afford the things other rich countries have. The pessimism is pervasive.
  - UncleOxidant 1y ago
    [flagged]
- evklein 1y ago
  I have no empirical evidence of this to present, but if you view every transaction as existing on some scale of scam-iness, where one side is you lose your house and wife and kids and the other is an amazing deal for you, the average position on that scale has shifted toward the backside pretty much the entirety of my life. Anything that comes to me first, I pretty much always write off as a scam. Email from someone I don't know? Scam. Car dearlership advertising 0% APR for 5 years on a brand new car? Scam. Even something like my workplace offering a new optional benefit - probably a scam. Did things always feel like this?
ryeats 1y ago
This is not true. Your rose colored glasses of Chinese culture, and the current state of Chinese economy and society need a reality check.
- runako 1y ago
  Pointedly, I did not make any points about the state of the Chinese economy etc. Rather, I observe that the Chinese continue to make large investments that will not pay off in the next couple of quarters. As the Chinese economy has expanded over the last 25 years, the average standard of living for Chinese people has increased. They continue to invest in infrastructure as if there will be a future. This all stands in contrast to the United States, where eating seed corn (the OP reference) is a very good analogy for our policies and actions.
- cogman10 1y ago
  It isn't perfect, but it's also undeniable that China is dumping a ton of money into infrastructure. It also has and has been executing multiple long-term initiatives (for example, high speed rail, renewable build out). Chinese culture isn't perfect by a long shot, in particular it's both pretty isolationist with a strong slash and burn mentality for resource acquisition. We can see both the positives and negatives of a country. I think it is a positive that china isn't as focused on short term results as the US political ecosystem is.
pavel_lishin 1y ago
> This is mostly true in the US, where a defining characteristic of the population is a belief that we cannot do better or have more, that things will always continue to get worse, and that everyone is out to take advantage of you all the time. As an American immigrant, this does not seem at all true to me, from either angle - I don't think that this is a defining characteristic of Americans, nor do I think that other nations don't behave the same way.
- throw0101b 1y ago
  > I don't think that this is a defining characteristic of Americans […] You just need the right/wrong ones to think that way and get a critical mass of folks that want "change" and want it now: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism
- runako 1y ago
  First, I am glad you are here. Since you mention that you are an immigrant, it's worth noting that the ascendant anti-immigrant fervor is a direct expression of pessimism about our future. It's a statement that there's not enough to go around, that growth is not possible. It says that in order for me to do better, I must shrink the denominator because the numerator cannot get bigger. The optimistic USA of the 1980s saw better days ahead, and so the presence of immigrants did not have the salience it has today. Ronald Reagan even had the latitude to enact an amnesty on the undocumented. > I don't think that this is a defining characteristic of Americans Here I would just ask you to look at our realized policy as the best expression of our characteristics. We don't build, or even really believe that building is possible. When we are asked to choose, we routinely cut education and healthcare. These are not signs of optimism. The pessimism has only grown; twenty years ago, it was considered possible that Americans could enjoy universal healthcare of the sort that exists in the (generally poorer) countries of Western Europe. Today, in a much wealthier America, even the suggestion has vanished from the realm of the possible and we are headed in the opposite direction.
- gaze 1y ago
  The place where this perspective is most prevalent is socialized healthcare. It's either slippery slope evil socialism, or it's too impractical to ever be implemented here because America is too big and complicated, or it's never gonna happen due to regulatory capture.
hollerith 1y ago
>This is mostly true in the US, where a defining characteristic of the population is a belief that we cannot do better or have more, that things will always continue to get worse My view is basically the complete opposite: IMHO Americans have experienced things getting gradually better for essentially the entire duration of the American nation, with the result that we don't have the institutional capability to respond effectively when growth stops or when (as in the case of climate change) growth becomes the problem that must be addressed. Western Europe has proven much better at running their societies in ways that do not depend on continued growth than the US has (at least in the period after WW II) which is why it has responded much quicker and more effectively to the challenge of climate change than the US has. Here is one man's summary of this dynamic: https://theportal.wiki/wiki/Embedded_Growth_Obligations https://theportal.wiki/wiki/Embedded_Growth_Obligations Oh, wait: could it be that you are disappointed with the US (and see China in a favorable light) because the US isn't becoming Leftist quickly enough?
- runako 1y ago
  > Americans have experienced things getting gradually better for essentially the entire duration of the American nation More or less, I agree with this part of the thesis. > Western Europe has proven much better at responding intelligently to the limits of growth than the US has This is kind of my point -- we don't do the things other countries do to respond because those things would broadly be perceived as improving the lot of most citizens, and Americans do not generally believe that is possible anymore. (Also: "socialism is bad!") But there is no reason for a country where economic measures of growth of wealth and income are so consistently strong should be so hesitant to invest in the future, and should be actively disinvesting in long-term initiatives. What's especially painful is that some of the same policy choices we make that result in more distress for citizens are also likely to reduce the long-run growth of the economy. We make choices that hurt us now and also make things worse in the future. (Generally not going to respond to the political dig because this really isn't a direct outgrowth of the typical left/right political divide in the US or its projections on other countries. For example, right-leaning Hungary has universal healthcare and free college tuition, but nobody is accusing Hungary of being Leftist.)
paleotrope 1y ago
Please, the fatalism you see if concentrated in the overproduced elite. Overrepresented on the internet.

sitkack 1y ago

> He's foppish and playful more than he is scary. This is a very unwise stance to take. Peter Thiel has teamed up with the Heritage Foundation to implement this plan. This is why A16Z and Musk put Trump in power, it is precisely to implement this plan.

A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
Musk is on the outs. And what if there is no grand conspiracy? We're extremely far from any of Yarvin's "plans" at any rate. Yarvin's most cherished plan was to create a shadow university called the "Antiversity" -- a sort of repository of all truths unbeholden to politics and fads. Is this a bad idea? Which other Yarvin ideas scare you so?
- skrtskrt 1y ago
  Yarvin's ideas of "truths" are in the realm of phrenology and race science
- cempaka 1y ago
  Just because Musk is done firing government employees and is engaged in a little punch-and-judy show of conflict with the Trump administration does not mean he is "on the outs"
  - sitkack 1y ago
    Musk and Doge were a distraction, the firings were done by the newly appointed heads of Departments.
- soulofmischief 1y ago
  > And what if there is no grand conspiracy? What if, indeed... and what if they even publicly announced their conspiracy and outlined their exact plans in full? Direct texts: https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade... https://www.project2025.org/playbook/ https://www.project2025.org/playbook/ Summaries: https://www.aclu.org/project-2025-explained https://www.aclu.org/project-2025-explained https://democracyforward.org/the-peoples-guide-to-project-2025/ https://democracyforward.org/the-peoples-guide-to-project-20... Implementation tracker: https://www.project2025.observer/ https://www.project2025.observer/

and0 1y ago

RE: that Neil O'Brien piece Demographic collapse? Sure, huge issue. But why is this happening? Why did it start happening before the other issues? A rap group being critical of Churchill at an official event? Not really an issue. I don't think that is why Britain is failing. And I'll need citations for why moral introspection is demoralizing rather than uplifting and enlightening for a culture. Or maybe suggest something that the youth should feel good about rather than browbeating them for not being thrilled at the state of things. Immigration? Not an issue for the USA after the great depression, which also had a massive welfare state. I agree that Britain is collapsing, but not for those reasons. What a stunning lack of imagination. e: Also, are migrants really to blame for Britain selling off all of its state capacity for pennies on the dollar since the 80s? Did migrants vote to violently eject Britain from the European economy in 2015? Any mention of that? Or would that type self-reflection hurt the cultural morale? Maybe Britain would be better off with people who are a little less integrated with those values.

youngtaff 1y ago

> In some places, things are now getting extremely acute: https://www.neilobrien.co.uk/p/the-confluence?r=h8x https://www.neilobrien.co.uk/p/the-confluence?r=h8x Neil O’Brien is a right wing anti-immigrant Member of Parliament… as with all politicians what he says should be taken with a pinch of salt

A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
Rather the opposite, I think. To me it seems that the fact that he's an MP makes it all the more interesting. In the UK, as in the US and elsewhere, people across the political spectrum -- and at all levels, from MPs to "Gary the regional sales manager" -- are losing faith in democratic processes. (At least as they're currently implemented.) As an aside, this is exactly what happens in Gibson's Jackpot. > “Who runs it, then?” > “Oligarchs, corporations, neomonarchists. Hereditary monarchies provided conveniently familiar armatures. Essentially feudal, according to its critics. Such as they are.” That there's no way to vote your way out of this mess is most readily apparent in the UK, but it's true practically everywhere except Switzerland. Switzerland, to some extent, shows that sometimes problems with democracy can be solved with. . . more democracy.
- youngtaff 1y ago
  Some people are losing faith in the democratic process but that’s largely because they’ve been fed lies by people like Farage and Johnson who’ve promised them things that cannot be delivered
  - A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
    People these days tend to simply vote against the status quo. Remember "zero seats"? And that's exactly how Trump got elected in the first place -- and then re-elected after a four-year interregnum. But scratch the surface and all mainstream political parties only offer a continuation or intensification of the status quo.
    - youngtaff 1y ago

guelo 1y ago

If you link approvingly to Blood and Soil type of content I can see why you would think of Yarvin as harmless.

pjs_ 1y ago

> no way out but through Is exactly the philosophical dead end that Nick Land and Curtis and maybe Mark Fisher arrived at. Accelerationism is like the FedEx arrow in that it’s both an unforgettable idea and easy enough that anyone can grasp it, some of the dumbest politicians of our time are ardent believers. It’s fun to think about the possibility that belief in this conclusion was premature two decades ago when CCRU and NRx people were banging on about it but now maybe it actually isn’t premature. Which would annoyingly be a pretty compelling instance of hyperstitional time war

A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
Accelerationism doesn't work because "accelerating" = "making things worse for the people." People who imagine that they'll emerge victoriously from the chaos are really quite childish; odds are that the accelerationists will suffer like all the rest -- or worse. They're like children who read medieval history and imagine themselves princes and dukes, rather than dirt farmers laboriously clearing woods and plowing fields. When I say that there's no way out but through, I mean that things are bad and getting worse, and there's nothing anyone can do about it other than develop the skills to survive by any means necessary. (For some that means survivalism, or moving to Fiji, or just hanging out here and making lots of money.) Do you think we can vote our way out of this mess, with representative democracy? The way things are today? lol, lmao even. As to the second part of your comment -- I'm reminded of what Jack Womack wrote in the 2000 reissue of Neuromancer: Has "the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?"
- roughly 1y ago
  > People who imagine that they'll emerge victoriously from the chaos are really quite childish; odds are that the accelerationists will suffer like all the rest -- or worse. They're like children who read medieval history and imagine themselves princes and dukes, rather than dirt farmers laboriously clearing woods and plowing fields. This is what’s always struck me about people like Bannon, Miller, Yarvin - guys, you’re on top. The only thing keeping you there is the system. Not much use for failed history scholars in the real world.

indoordin0saur 1y ago

Is his opinion really weird when a strong centralized leader (kings, emperors, etc.) was the norm until very very recently? Seems like it's more a return of the political theory of of "enlightened absolutism" that was popular amongst philosophers in the 18th century, or maybe something like Confucius' ideas on government.

A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
Yeah. You should read what Schopenhauer had to say about government, and this was barely 150 years ago, in the mid 19th. > "In general, the monarchical form of government is that which is natural to man; just as it is natural to bees and ants, to a flight of cranes, a herd of wandering elephants, a pack of wolves seeking prey in common, and many other animals, all of which place one of their number at the head of the business in hand. > "Every business in which men engage, if it is attended with danger — every campaign, every ship at sea — must also be subject to the authority of one commander; everywhere it is one will that must lead. Even the animal organism is constructed on a monarchical principle: it is the brain alone which guides and governs, and exercises the hegemony. Although heart, lungs, and stomach contribute much more to the continued existence of the whole body, these philistines cannot on that account be allowed to guide and lead. That is a business which belongs solely to the brain; government must proceed from one central point. Even the solar system is monarchical. On the other hand, a republic is as unnatural as it is unfavourable to the higher intellectual life and the arts and sciences. Accordingly we find that everywhere in the world, and at all times, nations, whether civilized or savage, or occupying a position between the two, are always under monarchical government. The rule of many, as Homer said, is not a good thing: let there be one ruler, one king. In general, I think that those experiments in autocracy that have taken place between 1850-Present rather disprove this notion. (One of the rare things old Schop was wrong about!) The Athenians were right: The affairs of state must be the affairs of every citizen. England's problems won't be solved by a restoration of the Stuarts (I think that the current Stuart heir is a 50 year old banker who is exceedingly uninterested in the job) but they can possibly be solved by dispensing with parliament and enabling qualified citizens to vote directly on laws and regulatory matters. I dare say you won't end up with butter knife bans this way.

retube 1y ago

There's some startling and alarming statistics in that obrien piece. Is this guy legit? or a swivel-eyed loon of the farage ilk

queenkjuul 1y ago
Definitely the latter