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The End of Industrial Society

palladiummag.com

111–120 of 203 posts

Re: The End of Industrial Society

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting: Thiel's "truth that few people agree with you" is that capitalism & competition are antonyms, not complements. And he's in favor of the "capitalism" side. His whole business career is about eliminating competition and enjoying monopoly rents. A return to "kings and aristocracy" is the ultimate culmination of this: a king has ultimate monopoly power over the kingdom, where they not only own all the l…

The separation of powers could be expanded to a far greater extent. In particular the modern bureaucratic state, with its long-term sinecure positions at the highest levels, is entirely antithetical to the whole idea of checks and balances, or "ambition being made to counteract ambition". This is where former aristocracies might provide a better model.

I'd agree with that.

There's a tension between full capitalism, which often becomes inefficient because entrenched interests prioritize persistence of the institution over fulfillment of the institution's mission, and full competition, which often becomes inefficient because it cannot generate the institutional knowledge needed to run things efficiently. Bureaucracy and mature big companies are on the former side of the scale, bullshit startups and "artisan" (read: overpriced and poor quality) small businesses on the latter.

My ideal social system would make this tension explicit and create automatic mechanisms to break up large institutions and re-form them out of the skilled individual contributors at the bottom. Something like the California labor laws, where you cannot enforce non-compete agreements and it's very difficult to prove that the startup which just spun off stole your trade secrets. Probably even moreso, and applied to the government itself, as CA business climate has recently become relatively hostile to startups as well.

Re: The End of Industrial Society

#112
Conservatives need to lay off the Marx and French post-structuralism, and maybe go back to Burke or something. The incongruence between the aesthetics and message of these articles causes confusion to readers because most aren’t familiar with dialectical materialism (and the ones that are see through the poorly executed subversion attempt). You can tell because a lot of the comments on these articles are complaining about the style.

Re: The End of Industrial Society

#114

Palladium magazine was founded by Wolf Tivy and Jonah Bennett. It is funded by Peter Thiel. Jonah Bennett previously worked at The Daily Caller and he resigned from Palladium when it was discovered he had authored some racist messages and was friends with various white nationalists. Samo Burja, the author, is undoubtedly a more serious and educated person. However, he promotes a “Great Founder Theory” which is not so…

[deleted]

Re: The End of Industrial Society

#115
post #92

Palladium magazine was founded by Wolf Tivy and Jonah Bennett. It is funded by Peter Thiel. Jonah Bennett previously worked at The Daily Caller and he resigned from Palladium when it was discovered he had authored some racist messages and was friends with various white nationalists. Samo Burja, the author, is undoubtedly a more serious and educated person. However, he promotes a “Great Founder Theory” which is not so…

>Jonah Bennett previously worked at The Daily Caller and he resigned from Palladium when it was discovered he had authored some racist messages and was friends with various white nationalists. This is the very definition of ad hominem -- you don't want to confront the messages of the essay, so you try to discredit it by highlighting that one of its authors had opinions you disagree with.

No post body was provided.

Re: The End of Industrial Society

#116
The article begins by suggesting that the (“first”) industrial revolution remains much more important and revolutionary than the “later” (2nd, 3rd, 4th) industrial revolutions by appealing to a general sense that the later ones dont feel as impressive, but weirdly he doesn’t seem mention (at least based on my skim) the objective sense in which the original industrial revolution was overwhelmingly more notable: growth rates went from ~0.1%/year to ~4%/year, a speed up of roughly 50 times, which has not happened since. (Growth has now probably slightly slowed.)

Like, you dont have to think that everything about automobiles is great to still need to acknowledge that one super important part of cars being developed is that they were waaaay faster than horses.

Re: The End of Industrial Society

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to remember the basic idea behind a lot of these word salads is that "We need to return to kings and aristocracy" and that "Of course I am a high iq intellectual who will be the nobility and not a feudal worker, why is there any doubt?". Everything starts making sense then.

The idea of those who favor "kings and aristocracy" is more that we'll always have people around with more power than others (elites), and that formal transparency about who these people are ultimately improves accountability. Would you work for a faux "anarcho-tyrannyist" firm where you have no idea who the CEO is and who the managers are that can fire you or cut your salary?

> The idea of those who favor "kings and aristocracy" is more that we'll always have people around with more power than others (elites), and that formal transparency about who these people are ultimately improves accountability

But this is of course palpable nonsense. The entire point of kings and aristocracy was to formalise the notion that the de facto elite was in fact a class of people so superior to everyone else as to render the notion that they should be held accountable for their actions by mere commoners as laughable. The difference between a king and a president isn't that the latter's status as an elite is more ambiguous, but that the president has some semblance of accountability to the public whereas with the king, it's a case of the public being accountable to the king.

Re: The End of Industrial Society

#118
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s uncomfortable for the Thiel-funded new right movement that their dream state is essentially realized in present-day Russia, and they’re not able to explain how their ideas would lead to a different outcome. Protectionist policies, focus on national identity, celebration of traditional values and gender roles; a “national CEO” whose transformative powers transcend the slow, frustrating democratic machinery. This…

It's interesting because present-day Russia easily combines every disadvantage of the neo-Reactionary dream state, and none of its advantages . Vladimir Putin still has to fight for his legitimacy (in a way that plausibly distorts his policy choices) because he has not leveraged his mass public support by proclaiming himself an actual Tsar. (Of course he could also settle for a far more conventional role as legitimat…

> “present-day Russia easily combines every disadvantage of the neo-Reactionary dream state, and none of its advantages”

It’s because the advantages are either theoretical and illusionary, or only enjoyable by an extremely narrow oligarchy.

It’s like asking why North Korea seems to have all the disadvantages of Stalinism but none of the advantages.

Re: The End of Industrial Society

#119

Palladium magazine was founded by Wolf Tivy and Jonah Bennett. It is funded by Peter Thiel. Jonah Bennett previously worked at The Daily Caller and he resigned from Palladium when it was discovered he had authored some racist messages and was friends with various white nationalists. Samo Burja, the author, is undoubtedly a more serious and educated person. However, he promotes a “Great Founder Theory” which is not so…

Also worth pointing out that Samo Burja spent about a month before the Russian invasion of Ukraine insisting that everyone was underestimating the Russian military and that they would take Ukraine in a rout.

Public intellectuals need to be constantly judged and re-evaluated in the light of their actual predictive capacity. Burja certainly presents as an intelligent person, but since I’ve been paying attention to him the value of his insight has been dubious.

Re: The End of Industrial Society

#120
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to remember the basic idea behind a lot of these word salads is that "We need to return to kings and aristocracy" and that "Of course I am a high iq intellectual who will be the nobility and not a feudal worker, why is there any doubt?". Everything starts making sense then.

It’s uncomfortable for the Thiel-funded new right movement that their dream state is essentially realized in present-day Russia, and they’re not able to explain how their ideas would lead to a different outcome. Protectionist policies, focus on national identity, celebration of traditional values and gender roles; a “national CEO” whose transformative powers transcend the slow, frustrating democratic machinery. This…

An important question that needs asking is what happens if we run into a situation where that "slowness" of democracy gets more people killed and only a well-paced solution with some cadence to it could do the job (not "super fast", but like say a major change with a 1 year debate period and 10 year implementation period sustained steady progress)? Not arguing for a dictatorship, but out-of-the-box innovative thinking to invent a much more novel/radical political system.
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