“A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

> Sometimes a few of the users try to hold total power over all the rest. For example, in 1984, a few users at the MIT AI lab decided to seize power by changing the operator password on the Twenex system and keeping it secret from everyone else. (I was able to thwart this coup and give power back to the users by patching the kernel, but I wouldn't know how to do that in Unix.)

> However, occasionally the rulers do tell someone. Under the usual `su' mechanism, once someone learns the root password who sympathizes with the ordinary users, he or she can tell the rest. The "wheel group" feature would make this impossible, and thus cement the power of the rulers.

> I'm on the side of the masses, not that of the rulers. If you are used to supporting the bosses and sysadmins in whatever they do, you might find this idea strange at first.

— Richard Stallman

My understanding of Urbit comes mostly from this writeup on Popehat [1] and an initial foray into the documentation of Nock and Hoon. However, the impression that I get of it enabling encrypted, distributed programs, does mirror Yarvin's proposed "Patchwork" system of nation-states [2], in the same way that a single root user mirrors a monarchy, and with analogous pros and cons between the technical and political systems.

[0]: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/4460/why-is-debian-n...

[1]: http://popehat.com/2013/12/06/nock-hoon-etc-for-non-vulcans-...

[2]: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/11/patchwo...

Since we have you have you here, could you respond to the accusations of racist views that are being attributed to you? In particular, do you consider yourself to be "racist", and if so, what does this term mean to you?

I read your blog for years, and I never got that sense that you were advocating for personal or institutional discrimination against individuals on the basis of their race. Did I miss this point among all the others?

"Once we get this far, we are almost all the way to Carlyle on slavery. We have not agreed that a man can be born a slave, but we agree that he can sell himself into slavery. That is: he can sign a contract with a master in which the slave agrees unconditionally to obey and work for the master, and the master agrees unconditionally to protect and support the slave.

Moreover, this contract need not be a mere expression of sentiment. It can and should be enforced by the State, just as a loan is. If the slave changes his mind and runs away, the State will capture and return him, billing the master for the expense. Or at least, these are reasonable terms under which two parties might agree on the permanent relationship of master and slave."

"A person makes a good slave if he is loyal, patient, and not exceptionally bright or stubborn. But even great intelligence is not necessarily a bar to a good experience in slavery, as the experience of many Greek slave philosophers, such as Epictetus, shows. A slave must carry the unique burden of personal dependency and obedience, which we are all used to expressing only toward impersonal government agencies."

"Of course, like gay marriage (or ordinary marriage), slavery is not without its abuses. When we think of the word 'slavery,' we think of these abuses. Thus, by defining the word as intrinsically abusive, like marriages in which one party beats the other, we can conveniently define away all the instances of slavery (or, for that matter, marriage) in which the relationship is functional."

I mean, if those are not actually supporting slavery, it seems to be only because he takes care to voice a lot of pro-slavery rhetoric without actually crossing that line.

As a good rule of thumb: if you really want the job, do not volunteer potential employers anything about yourself that you don't think would help you get hired. They aren't cops or courts; depending on how laws are crafted state-to-state, they are legally allowed to consider some categories of information that they aren't legally allowed to ask you outright if you volunteer it.

*There are protections in place for the bureaucracy itself, but they were implemented for practical reasons early in the country's history when it was observed that a party change leading to a clean sweep of the federal government right down to the last front-desk agent regardless of their capabilities in the task at hand was highly inefficient.