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Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

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Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#271

Post by sitkack »

cempaka wrote: post #49
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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"

Musk and Doge were a distraction, the firings were done by the newly appointed heads of Departments.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#272

Post by soulofmischief »

maxglute wrote: post #245
ordinaryradical wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

IMO it's largely ignorant talking heads taking "The Empire, Long Divided, Must Unite" from popculture / memes and just ran with it, because China bad / should bulkanize, not historic credence. If there was actual historic awareness, this argument would also note significant united cycles of Chinese periods last 250-500 years, after shorter balkanization cycle (50-150 years, eastern zhou shitshow aside). Then the argu…

This is a biased and narrow take. The reality is that both the US and Chinese empires are threading a needle right now with respect to economics and civil unrest. The Chinese government is bad, and it's already split into China and Taiwan, further erosion of the dynasty is absolutely plausible.

There is zero value in pretending everything is hunky dory up until the moment that it all collapses.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#273

Post by soulofmischief »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #239
ordinaryradical wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

I’ve been hearing it’s eminent because China is not a democracy, I hear the western perspective. I see revolutions as an alternate elite agitating for change. In my model an effective suppression of an alternative elite is sufficient to prevent revolution. In my model it comes down to which secret police are more effective, the MSS or the CIA. Which is especially relevant here because how much of the ‘Thielverse’ is…

The US is not a functioning democracy and therefore effectively not a democracy at all, either.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when an empire will fall, but the signs seem to be around for a long time prior to that moment, and you basically have the people who recognize those signs, the people who don't, and the people who profit from confusion and disorder that pay a lot of money to both overtly and subtlety convince people that everything is fine.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#274

Post by soulofmischief »

esseph wrote: post #250
soulofmischief wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 totalitar…

The world population is supposed to start declining between 2080-2100 depending on your source. It's not just China, it's a global problem.

It's a China problem that they are currently projected to lose half of their massive 1.5bil population within a century, potentially putting significant strain on existing social and economic infrastructure.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#275

Post by archagon »

kypro wrote: post #218
eikenberry wrote: post #110

Didn't have time to make it through the entire (long winded) article, but is it wrong to boil down his thinking to the simple idea that a benevolent, competent dictator is the best form of government? I ask as this seems like a very simplistic and obvious idea. The problem isn't that this is necessarily incorrect, it is how do you find this mythical figurehead? History has shown that we have never discovered a system…

I'm not an expert on Yarvin's ideas, but have read enough of his stuff to suspect you're not quite representing his position accurately. In his opinion democracy is flawed in the same way a business owned by all its employees wouldn't have the right incentives to succeed, or how a plane piloted by the collective wisdom of it's passengers likely wouldn't make it very far beyond the runway. I think his idea is that you…

That could all be well and good in a vacuum, but you can't install this kind of system without some serious violence, since a large percentage of the population would not consent to being ruled in such a manner.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#276

Post by soulofmischief »

xp84 wrote: post #208
ben_w wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 The infamous famine was only about 65 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_…

> 75 years is a long time. At lot can change. True, but population collapse specifically is a tough headwind. You can't make more 2055 30-year-olds unless they've already been conceived today, and those will be the parents of the 2100 45-year-olds. While a lot can change, it's unrealistic to assume a birth rate will skyrocket all of a sudden (China's at 1.18 per woman and US is only at 1.6). The painful part, the bad…

I think any boom would be the result of the average amount and, relatedly, price of energy and land and stability available to a member of a given population sharply increasing.

Millennials are having less kids because they proportionally have less access to energy and resources. I am 30 and we just bought our first home at 200x its original value in the early 20th century, and 4x what its previous owners payed 25 years ago. And the ratio of wage to housing costs in the US is the worst its ever been.

I notice how many less things I and my friends have compared to our parents and grandparents at my age. I know I'm significantly less of a materialist than the post-WWII generations, but the discrepancy is massive.

I want kids, but currently my significant other does not, nor does her sister. My significant other cites concerns about economic and mental stability in our rapidly evolving political climate. I cite concerns about the need for fostering resilient communities through effective child rearing. The majority of my similar aged friends today are childless. Comparatively, my mother birthed me at 21.

In the late 90's and early 00's, you could be a full-time meth head and still afford property in the suburbs and some cities. Now, sober post-graduates are living in their cars working an impenetrable gig economy at the behest of big tech, the new oil industry. In this sense too, we could also measure an individual or community's health by how much influence an individual can exert on their increasingly digital lives. The app economy has eroded our rights and turned us into cattle. Even if they can't articulate it, my peers feel this and are continuing to put off kids, at risk of becoming infertile from waiting too long.

Even if later generations pick up the slack, there are still unavoidable bumps in the road ahead due to what is happening right now with my generation. If things do not improve, birth rates will only continue to go down and possibly even nosedive, given some catastrophic global event that leads to an extended reduction in supply chain resiliency.

https://www.timetrex.com/blog/us-house-prices-vs-wages

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#277

Post by mikrl »

n4r9 wrote: post #156
unsigner wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're not wrong about most of this, but anti-semitic? he's very openly Jewish

His father was Jewish but his mother is said to be a Protestant. He doesn't describe himself as Jewish as far as I can see.

Ironically, the same is true of Karl Marx! His father converted to Lutheranism and Karl was baptized as such.

As a young man he wrote a paper on the topical question of the Jews in Prussia[0], regarded in the modern day as antisemitic, though probably tame for the era.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jewish_Question

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#278

Post by runako »

hollerith wrote: post #230
runako wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 improvin…

>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. Americans have always had a (healthy IMHO) distrust of radical changes in our system of government while being unusually open to economic changes and technological changes that transform our society. I judge that t…

> distrust of radical changes in our system of government

A lot of what people are asking for is not radical in any sense other than that the status quo of USA in the 1970s is painted as "radical" now.

Making public colleges as (inflation-adjusted) inexpensive as they were in 1970. Restoring the ability of builders to build sufficient housing to increase affordability. Restoring the gun control regime endorsed by Ronald Reagan. A return to a workplace culture where it is not normal for companies to continually lay people off, regardless of their performance or the performance of the business. Etc.

Is it really "radical" to return to the enacted policies & norms of 1973 or 1980? (I am realizing I wrote this sentence in a comment thread about a person who has written about "humane" forms of genocide. The dissonance!)

Would it be a radical change to our system of government to extend Medicare to cover people as young as 60? 50? 40? 30? 18? Or to let people opt to buy, at full fare, health insurance from the government? Where is the line at which it becomes radical?

> being unusually open to economic changes and technological changes that transform our society

I agree with you here. Unfortunately, I think part of the reason for that is because we have designed an unusually precarious (among rich countries) economic system. Many people are looking for a solution to that problem, and the next gimmick can get early adoptees if it promises a way out. But that last part, about transforming society, highlights the issue that we all know this system needs radical change, even if we don't want to admit it.

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#279

Post by philistine »

xp84 wrote: post #208
ben_w wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 The infamous famine was only about 65 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_…

> 75 years is a long time. At lot can change. True, but population collapse specifically is a tough headwind. You can't make more 2055 30-year-olds unless they've already been conceived today, and those will be the parents of the 2100 45-year-olds. While a lot can change, it's unrealistic to assume a birth rate will skyrocket all of a sudden (China's at 1.18 per woman and US is only at 1.6). The painful part, the bad…

Why do you have the maximalist outlook that population must grow. All developed nations are looking at population crunches. All of them, and China and Russia as well. Reducing it to a Chinese problem is reductive. It’s a collective choice, and how is China doing better or worse than its peers?

Re: Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America

#280

Post by bdangubic »

throwaway29812 wrote: post #86
bdangubic wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

countries have no friends or enemies, only national interests

Dictatorships do they best to make everyone convinced of this. That way their way of doing business isn't questioned.

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

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