[HN Gopher] The End of Industrial Society
___________________________________________________________________
The End of Industrial Society
Author : CryptoPunk
Score : 125 points
Date : 2022-05-08 14:46 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (palladiummag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (palladiummag.com)
| throwmeariver1 wrote:
| wardedVibe wrote:
| So... The US and Europe haven't stopped being manufacturing hubs.
| The kind of manufacturing changed to high end goods, and
| automation has greatly decreased the amount of labor involved.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_...
| the thesis is only possible if all you look at are the cheapest
| consumer goods, where moving to places with the lowest cost labor
| is a necessity.
| truffdog wrote:
| A common criticism of that high level view of US manufacturing
| is that it is a bit of a lie, and a lot of it is about hedonic
| adjustments for new Intel chips being faster than old ones.
| Without that, the graph of manufacturing output in dollars
| looks like a steady downward slope from the year 2000 on.
| platz wrote:
| Does he define what a social technology is?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > These social technology cores decay with time as they obsolete
| their own foundations, and as errors and parasitism build up
|
| A lot to explain there.
|
| > Yet even in the case of Britain, the key social technologies
| failed after the Second World War, as the latitude afforded to
| aristocratic scientists and industrialists was replaced by a
| system of bureaucratic processes.
|
| And there.
|
| I found this unreadable, sorry. Lots of abstract assertions with
| no support offered for them.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Agreed. I found an interesting thesis that made me think "OK,
| parts of this sound plausible to me, help me connect the dots."
|
| But then there were no dots to be found, let alone connections.
|
| I am a very literal person, and in my youth I used to think
| this was a bit of a handicap, as "big thinkers" needed to be
| able to think of things in more abstract ways. As I've gotten
| older, though, I think I've become more aware of my blind spots
| that this literal thinking can cause, but I've also become more
| confident in that 90% of "big thinking" turns out to be
| marketing bullshit. Big ideas are one thing, but if you can't
| give clear, simple-to-understand examples of the point you are
| trying to make, you're probably full of shit.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| shswkna wrote:
| A "big idea" that sounds abstract to a literal thinker,
| should be seen as a hunch or an intuition about a situation.
| It can never be explained in satisfiable depth to a literal
| thinker. Only in hindsight will it be obvious.
|
| You expect proof, or a literal pathway of thought and
| explanation, because it has served you well. This is the
| guaranteed route to proving an idea, if such a literal route
| exists. Such ideas are grounded in axioms that exist or can
| be built on smaller already established truths.
|
| It is far more difficult to explain literally a strong hunch,
| that an excellent intuitive thinker has but which is lacking
| the necessary foundation axioms. Maybe this hunch or novel
| idea cannot be structured upon existing truths, because it
| looks beyond its current viewpoint. Or maybe the idea is
| about a situation that is happening outside the established
| system.
|
| This doesn't make this idea less valuable to pursue further.
| It might just be several magnitudes harder to wrap ones head
| around.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| You've hit the nail on the head with this. I often see "big
| idea" thinkers who I find to be brilliant, like Jordan
| Peterson, criticized, and I think a lot of that comes from
| literal thinkers who 1. apply a rigorous evidentiary
| standard when assessing their writings, when they should
| instead be seen more as well-articulated cases for a
| "hunch" and thus not expected to contain proof of their
| theories, and 2. don't see the utility of expositions of
| hunches.
| discreteevent wrote:
| It took me a while to realize that if people with
| experience do not agree with something but cannot explain
| why, you shouldn't ignore them, particularly if the area is
| complex. They may just be wrong but also they may have an
| insight that you yourself might have found hard to
| articulate.
| chmod600 wrote:
| "This doesn't make this [big abstract] idea less valuable
| to pursue further."
|
| But such ideas often need to be heavily driven by the one
| with the idea. Even people receptive to the idea often
| misunderstand such a vision.
|
| So for practical purposes the idea is BS unless the person
| with the idea is actively working on it. It doesn't need to
| be proven yet, but if the person with the idea isn't
| working on it, probably nobody else will.
|
| Sure, sometimes big ideas inspire others, but often the
| ispiration is more of a winding path rather than a direct
| "I read this big idea and did it".
| stickfigure wrote:
| And also nutty statements like this:
|
| > Americans and Europeans may at that point be de-facto barred
| from visiting China by their own governments
|
| ...which seems to indicate a lack of familiarity with the
| relationship between American+European governments and their
| citizens.
| popularonion wrote:
| Americans have been de facto banned from visiting Cuba as
| long as I've been alive. I can totally imagine similar
| policies for Russia and China in the not too distant future.
| jeffbee wrote:
| "de facto" is used as an antonym of "de jure". Travel to
| Cuba is controlled by 31 C.F.R 515.560. It is controlled by
| statue, therefore it is "de jure".
| paganel wrote:
| As an EU citizen I was de facto forbidden to enter other EU
| countries until relatively recently (because of the
| pandemic), not sure why do you find that conclusion far-
| fetched.
|
| Also, because I may want to actually visit the US sometime in
| the future I've been making a conscious decision not to visit
| Iran, for example (even though I find Iran to be a beautiful
| country, at least from the photos I can find on the web). I
| know there's no explicit "if you have visited Iran you cannot
| visit the USA anymore" policy coming from the US visa
| officials, but I feel like that's the direction things are
| going right now so why risk it?
| [deleted]
| nine_k wrote:
| This does not require US or EU governments to forbid anything
| to their citizens. It may require US and EU governments to
| act so that China will see US and EU citizens as extremely
| unwelcome.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > Lots of abstract assertions with no support offered for them.
|
| Agreed. And it ignores things like the UK airplane industry,
| which was (post-war) somewhat ahead of the US with planes such
| as the Comet (eek!) and the Vulcan (yay!). But there are other
| examples.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| The article has a somber tone, lamenting the holes that have
| opened up in our societies and economies since the heyday of
| industrial production.
|
| It mentions but does not expand on the central social problem
| with industrial production: a small group of people can produce
| enough product for the whole world. And this problem becomes more
| acute, the more advanced industry becomes.
|
| (There are other problems with industrial production such as
| environmental destruction and resource depletion, but these
| problems seem to be more widely diagnosed and understood.)
|
| We have not yet solved the problem that industrial production is
| too efficient. I use the word "solved" as I consider the economic
| system from a humanistic perspective. Much like wealth
| concentration can reduce the flow of money and disincentivize
| commerce, the concentration of production can do the same.
|
| I think it's an error that efficiency is the only outcome that
| needs to be optimized, an error often accompanied by facile
| arguments about comparative advantage, freeing people to do more
| productive work, and infinite demand. Post-industrial society is,
| in my opinion, the result of these arguments failing in the real
| world.
|
| I think the next stage of economic development is a recognition
| that efficiency must be weighed against redundancy. (As well as
| conservation, but again this is more widely recognized.) This
| wouldn't be a return to pre-industrial society, where redundancy
| was a necessary background given the limits of transportation and
| communication. Rather it would require a new mindset that
| sacrifices efficiency for redundancy in a deliberate tradeoff.
| planarhobbit wrote:
| lazyier wrote:
| People, like the WEF, who spend a great deal of time trying to
| anticipate the future "revolutions" and post-"revolutions" are
| just a bunch of self-important assholes.
|
| The point about the economy and "revolutions" and other things is
| that it's an extremely complex chaotic system. Exponentially more
| complex than anything any computer can model. And details matter.
| Details matter very very much. A accidental conversation in a
| hallway or a pebble rolling across a road can lead to world
| shattering revelations and new technology that will forever after
| change humanity's trajectory.
|
| This means you cannot predict the future anymore than you can
| recreate an ice cube from a puddle it makes after it melted.
|
| The required information is simply not available.
| alexashka wrote:
| The tone of this article does not match its contents.
|
| This is some cherry picked data to suit a narrative, presented as
| a matter of fact. That is a mistake.
| kkfx wrote:
| Hum, grumble mumble... We surely are at the end of a cycle in
| human development terms, witch means the actual society going to
| change in something new, BUT "Industrial Society" is not actually
| a society in humans terms.
|
| We have had countless "industrial society" in various different
| societies, from Japanese steel, China ceramic and shipping (far
| in the past), metallurgic industry from Celts, Roman industry,
| cord and weapons industry in more recent times, ... surely
| "industry" as a concept have changed.
|
| It's still a matter of work in certain location with a certain
| supply chain to produce a certain (big) amount of goods, in tech
| terms we have switched various times and now we are about to
| change from subtractive manufacturing (CNC mills) to additive
| ones (3D printing) etc such tech change ALSO change more or less
| the human society but there are still two separate things.
|
| Actual economically-driven, neoliberal society yes completely
| fails to evolve, because real progress is against certain
| business, because managerial/profit driven development is
| incompatible with real innovation, that's an enormous issue of
| the present time, but again not an "industrial society" issue.
|
| Transportation changes thanks to TLCs and tech evolution, climate
| change push will probably push us from roads to air/water ways,
| so a future without major roads and rails infra that demand
| stability and a certain concentration will probably vanish in a
| more mixed and flexible ones, the need of big factories will
| change reducing a bit with tech progress, how we live will change
| accordingly, but again that's not an industrial society end, nor
| the actual society end...
|
| It's still probably too early to say when and how such changes
| happens if they'll happen. There are still too much variables in
| the game.
| ilaksh wrote:
| So far yours is the only substantive response to the post
| (edit: although a few others popped up after I wrote this). I
| agree with most of the broad ideas you bring up which are
| insightful. However, the tone of your comment does not seem to
| be quite acknowledging that we are in reality now in a somewhat
| dire situation. Anyway I have a few questions.
|
| I too see many issues with "managerial/profit driven
| development" and true innovation. However, do you suppose that
| we should remove the profit motive? What do we replace it with?
| Because unfortunately people seem to fall back to some sort of
| centralized system like a scientific committee or centralized
| AI. The problems with these paradigms are even more severe than
| with corporations.
|
| My take is that involving profits is a way to introduce rules
| and score keeping to the game. And again, although there are
| quite a few cheaters, and least there is a game you can play.
| If you take away the rules and points, you are left with just
| politics. Or, in the case of a centralized AI, highly
| concentrated politics related to who controls the AI. And the
| rest organizing themselves how? Because another part of this
| equation is that humans are animals and will inevitably
| construct hierarchies related to mating and resource
| distribution (just like other animals).
|
| Large scale ultra-local production empowered by things like 3d
| printing seems to be on its way. But its very far from taking
| over. And right now, for example, we have a crisis in food
| production. And the few community gardens we have are
| negligible in terms of total calories. Also, almost all items,
| from construction materials to household goods, require oil to
| produce. Its nice to fantasize about algal oil or something,
| but large scale deployment is nowhere near here.
|
| To me what could possibly work or at least be a step in the
| right direction is to use something like advanced
| cryptocurrency and smart contract technology to reimplement
| things like money and government in ways that are more fair,
| cohesive and sane. Combine or even integrate that with truly
| distributed real time and redundant information systems for
| large scale data aggregation, visualization and query. My idea
| is kind of going along the lines of the centralized 1950s style
| AI, at least as far as being able to get holistic views. But it
| incorporates modern ideas about the robustness of distributed
| networks. So we can effectively and transparently share and
| aggregate global information using peer-to-peer protocols, but
| not be restricted to a single authoritarian interpretation.
|
| But I am very curious to hear, did you have specific ideas
| about moving beyond the "managerial/profit driven development"?
| It just feels like people who want to completely drop money or
| profit from this usually don't have a great plan. I think most
| are envisioning a vast network of "intentional communities"
| where everyone just shares. Again, the reality of that is not
| going to be as great as you think. Because it means replacing
| the "game" of profit with just pure politics. Most of the
| intentional communities become kind of like little cults.
| Organization will happen one way or another. If there isn't
| some points accumulation or other structure then you default to
| manipulation, stabbings, etc.
| kkfx wrote:
| > do you suppose that we should remove the profit motive?
| What do we replace it with?
|
| Not remove, layer it. In the past we have had _public_
| universities and big "free" "innovation labs" from private
| those NOT managerial driven but just "we have big money, we
| fund some very skilled technicians who innovate on their own
| and see the outcome, something very nice for our business
| will appear". Such model have produced the most quick and
| revolutionary innovation we have seen in last century et
| least.
|
| My view is: States funds public universities whose target is
| pure research, innovation for humankind. They do not produce
| goods, just ideas and initial implementations. Companies for
| their profits, States for Citizens needs pick those ideas
| choosing what to implement, sell etc. Private research can't
| really compete so there will be a bit but not too much to
| steer society in dangerous evolution, States having the
| biggest concentration of talents and research can surveil and
| make Citizens informed enough to decide if something is good
| or not.
|
| > My take is that involving profits is a way to introduce
| rules and score keeping to the game.
|
| Although in practice we have seen the contrary: some innovate
| better than other conquering certain positions, than they
| start killing potential competitors thanks to money they have
| amassed... IMVHO innovation can only be stimulate by
| intellectual means, push needs and rewards means pushing
| dangerous innovations,, something good can arrive, but also
| much bad things.
|
| > right now, for example, we have a crisis in food production
|
| And it's cause is only partially the climate change, much is
| due by for-profit market moves, where it's more profitable
| having big food players instead of countless small ones.
| That's why IMVHO profit must be contained, it's not self-
| contained because the ideal free market can exists, only if
| kept free by force, by nature it derive quickly toward
| hierarchy against humans needs... The main point here is that
| States _as Democracies_ represent the sole real free market:
| the people, all together unable to really form a monopoly or
| oligopoly.
|
| > It just feels like people who want to completely drop money
| or profit from this usually don't have a great plan.
|
| IMVHO money is a very misunderstood topic: so far money are a
| kind of substrate of anything lent to states in the form of
| public debt; that's not "money" that's a very old scam,
| dating back from the '300 or even certain Greeks polis. Money
| must be a unit of measure of a substrate, determined, not
| owned, by the public, no private parties involved. A symbol
| we use to weight nearly anything.
|
| If we made money like that, than profit change aspect: we do
| not have financialization much more than a thin layer because
| having no value as a substrate have no value, so no option
| for profit, at all. In that case a company can have benefits
| from good ads, but can't live only on ads, it need something
| valuable underneath etc.
|
| That's the real key all actual elites do not want because
| actual money is the best way to keep people in line with soft
| tie almost no one really see and revolt.
| ilaksh wrote:
| > Money must be a unit of measure of a substrate,
| determined, not owned, by the public, no private parties
| involved. A symbol we use to weight nearly anything
|
| Maybe you can give me an example or reference? I don't
| understand what you mean.
| dtagames wrote:
| A fantastic read. Thanks for the post!
| jseban wrote:
| Stream of consciousness with a way too big scope, gives in to the
| temptation to conclude that everything will just collapse and
| disappear to get out of trouble in the end.
| xbar wrote:
| Agreed. The author discounts a great deal of flexibility in the
| existing systems.
| sysadm1n wrote:
| > We can imagine a possible scenario of the collapse of our own
| civilization. Our ability to perceive decline would be
| compromised early in the process.
|
| Social media and the Internet is the new opium of the masses. We
| view the world through this crappy lens and it never matches
| what's really going on. We think we have a clear picture, but
| everywhere there is chaos and decline. Klaus Schwab's 'Great
| Reset' proposal won't cut it. We need mobilized mass revolution
| and political will to get out of the various messes we are in.
| civilized wrote:
| > Not only marketers, but scientists, statesmen, industrialists,
| politicians, philosophers, and writers shaped ersatz social
| technology to fill the gaps, but completely failed to guarantee
| knowledge succession of the generative core of knowledge. The
| strange spiritual practices, scientific exploration of human
| psychology, and at times outright ideological cults of the
| founding cohort gave way to a more shallow type of knowledge.
| This was a knowledge of levers and buttons, rather than the first
| principles which built those levers and buttons.
|
| Quite the Just-So Story. Any evidence that people used to be
| highly concerned with first principles and this has somehow
| dropped off? I won't hold my breath.
| airbreather wrote:
| Yes, a slightly challenging read, but it's not a dissertation,
| rather more an opinion piece.
|
| There are some interesting ideas and constructs, not commonly
| presented, here.
|
| Maybe rather than criticising it for not spoon feeding you with
| extracts/soundbites from sources that may appear to be of
| "academic substance" (but ultimately most likely assumptions
| themselves), consider it a source of ideas to explore and form
| your own opinions on.
| civilized wrote:
| You seem to have missed the point of my brief comment. I
| didn't fail to understand the passage. I understood it and
| found it implausible.
| joshcryer wrote:
| The lovely thing about this "old knowledge" or "old ways"
| fetishism is that the knowledge economy is a _superset_ of
| _all_ previous paradigms.
|
| If you were to ask a blacksmith 400 years ago what he
| thought about people living in a modern air conditioned
| house and all the luxuries it affords, with a backyard
| hobby forge, making steel swords, he would probably be
| freaking miffed. A hobby?!? Forging stuff for a _past
| time_?!? I have to make 20 swords a day or my head gets cut
| off!
|
| Short of catastrophe, we will not be going back. The future
| may look different, but the knowledge and technology will
| continue to improve. If we stop driving cars and stop
| making cars because we have clean cities with many avenues
| of public transportation the knowledge of 'how to make a
| car' still exists.
|
| And there will be some dude in that hypothetical society
| building a car for a hobby.
| joshcryer wrote:
| The entire article hinges on the principle that everything
| collapses because there is "on-paper upward mobility of
| functional industrial workers to dysfunctional knowledge
| economy workers." Translation: the knowledge economy isn't as
| robust as the industrial economy because, reasons.
|
| He never gets into those reasons because he doesn't seem to
| understand industrial production, and many get it wrong. The
| industrial worker is actually not an intrinsically special
| person. The engineers behind the industrial systems, sure.
| But those engineers still exist in the knowledge economy, and
| the barrier to become an engineer in a knowledge economy, I
| would argue, is far lower. In many ways, the industrial
| worker can be a liability to the knowledge economy, not an
| asset, because they need to be trained, systems need to be
| made to met their capabilities, and they will hold on to
| those systems for a labor generation, while innovations get
| tabled.
|
| I actually agree with a lot of isolated premises in the
| article, but he arrives at the conclusion in a roundabout
| way. He says, for instance, factories in a post-industrial
| society would be local. Yes, I agree. We will only have
| resource streams and local cities would have factories that
| make everything. That's the actual realization of a pure
| knowledge economy, with many millions of decentralized
| factories making everything, with a few smart engineers
| running things, and people dropping out of the labor pool.
| This is all good, and does not lead to technological decline
| in any way.
| notpachet wrote:
| > Translation: the knowledge economy isn't as robust as the
| industrial economy because, reasons.
|
| While I didn't agree with everything in the article myself,
| I would say the translation is actually more along the
| lines of:
|
| "As a civilization becomes more efficient, fewer of the
| members of the population need to know how to actually do
| anything. The civilization becomes less robust in the face
| of new pressures because all everyone knows how to do is
| sit around in their underwear and play Call of Duty when
| they aren't LARPing being a knowledge worker."
|
| If you can survive without chopping wood, soon enough
| you'll forget how to chop wood. If a civilization can
| survive long enough without anyone knowing how to
| build/repair the technology that sits a level below the
| current water mark, it will. See: Cobol codebases.
| joshcryer wrote:
| Yeah, I know the argument, but how many people in
| industrial society know how to do anything? The engineers
| build the systems that the factory workers use. In fact,
| the workers generally know only one subset of some
| problem that is being solved by the manufacturing
| process.
|
| You have to be able to show how this "knowledge gap"
| causes a collapse because the "new engineers" fail to
| understand the building blocks and the systems will erode
| over time. As long as the standards exist _someone_ can
| "follow the recipe."
|
| I can totally concede that over long epochs of time of
| stability there would be a wax and wane of technological
| prowess and that at some point interest, or active
| knowledge, would be lost. But as long as the knowledge is
| still _there_ then it would not take much for this future
| society to repair and regain its knowledge.
|
| I see absolutely no justification for a collapse
| scenario. Your CoD LARPers will have to unclog their
| toilet eventually.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Animats wrote:
| _" Massive white-collar overproduction means the victory of sharp
| elbows over sharp minds."_
|
| Some of the oil states have hit this in a big way. Egypt, for
| one. Egypt at one time guaranteed employment for all university
| graduates. That resulted in the government employing a quarter of
| the workforce. The US is around 14% government, and it's mostly
| local government - teachers and cops. In the US, this becomes
| about half the people with college degrees doing jobs that don't
| need a college degree. A college degree in the US no only no
| longer guarantees a middle class lifestyle, it may have negative
| economic value due to debt.
|
| _The solution of overproducing white-collar jobs is at first
| natural and then dysfunctional._
|
| We see this in college administration, where the administrator to
| professor ratio has doubled in 25 years.[1] If you look at
| pictures of factories from the early 20th century, there's a
| common pattern - a small administration building in front of a
| large factory. We no longer see that.
|
| I'd expected the US to hit "peak office" about two decades ago.
| We may see that now, but it's because of working from home, not a
| reduced need for white collar work.
|
| [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/higher-ed-administrators-
| grow...
| jotm wrote:
| I like to say "countries that don't produce tangible goods are at
| the mercy of those who do". Push come to shove, the service
| economy is worthless. What matters is production of real goods
| that you can hold in your hand. At least agriculture is still a
| top priority despite calls from weirdly misled groups to end
| subsidies.
|
| Personally, seeing how easy it is to laser cut metal or get a CTO
| part or a PCB in China makes me jealous. There are similar
| services in the EU, but not as good, more expensive, and not as
| widespread (i.e. you can find them in Germany and the UK, but not
| in many other countries... at least postal services work well, I
| guess).
| closedloop129 wrote:
| >The countryside has become an industrial resource base, rather
| than the setting for a pre-industrial way of life.
|
| I would like to argue that this is the other way round:
|
| A corn field is a highly parallelized and automatized food
| creation machine. Is there a significant difference between
| operating crops and life stock or an industrial machine? I don't
| think so.
|
| Industrialization means that we have transferred the automation
| of life onto previously manual processes. The countryside was
| brought into town.
|
| This process is far from finished. Does anybody on HN doubt that
| the bureaucratic processes will be automated in a not so distant
| future? The stalling, the increase in bureaucratic processes is
| good because it makes it even more profitable to invest into
| process automation. This will overcome the 'post-industiral
| trap'.
|
| That said, the observation at the end of the article is still
| very interesting:
|
| >...will require social technologies of production and knowledge
| very different from anything we've seen before. A good place to
| start would be a new basis for friendship that defeats
| atomization, and a truthfulness that is compatible with political
| loyalty.
|
| Do social technologies have the potential to create systems with
| far greater capabilities than the ones we have? Is Facebook the
| 'Wright Flyer of social networks' or is Facebook already the
| Saturn rocket?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > Is Facebook the 'Wright Flyer of social networks' or is
| Facebook already the Saturn rocket?
|
| No. This is Facebook [1], that flappy steam powered umbrella
| machine that shakes itself to pieces and kills the pilot.
|
| Honestly, I think if there were any reason to think "Industrial
| society is eating itself", social media (and tech addiction)
| would be the number one suspects.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw_C_sbfyx8
| hammock wrote:
| Industrial society didn't end, it just moved to Asia,
| particularly Southeast Asia.
|
| Someone is manufacturing all these "post-industrial" radio
| transceivers, screens and datacenters, after all. Still others
| are mining and drilling the required natural resources.
|
| Bretton Woods and the Dollar as world reserve currency effected
| this shift from West to East.
| jonstewart wrote:
| 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 very different from the old "great man theory" of
| history.
|
| To a large extent, I applaud anyone who can make a good living
| grifting off of Thiel's self-regard, but most political economy
| essays should be read skeptically, and doubly so for anything in
| Palladium.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| 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.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| 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?
| nostrademons wrote:
| 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 land, but have ultimate say over
| everything that goes on in the kingdom.
|
| There's an opposing side to this dichotomy though: embrace
| competition. American democracy, with its separation of
| powers, is an example of this. The founding fathers
| explicitly set the government at odds with itself, because
| when "ambition is made to counteract ambition", the
| ambitious are so busy fighting each other that ordinary
| businessmen and citizens can go about their business
| relatively unmolested.
|
| To answer your question: I'd absolutely work for an
| anarcho-tyrannist firm where I have no idea who the CEO is
| and managers can fire me on a moments whim, as long as I
| can walk into another firm tomorrow and get a new job. Job
| loss is only traumatic if all your eggs are in that one
| basket; if there's always another job waiting for you, just
| go get fired and take it.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| 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.
| nostrademons wrote:
| 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.
| woodruffw wrote:
| In what meaningful sense are kings and aristocrats
| "formally transparent"? The history of aristocracy
| (historical _and_ contemporary) is the history of hiding
| money and power. The arc of liberal democracy has
| consistently bent away the kinds of secrets and implicit
| power structures that aristocracies thrive on.
| jollybean wrote:
| ? The history of aristocracy is about _amplifying_
| perception of power.
|
| Everyone knows who the King and Duke are and what their
| means of power are.
|
| The stage elaborate public things to legitimize their
| power.
|
| The Pharaohs themselves lived an entirely 'stage
| performed' existence to convince the plebes of their
| ostensible legitimacy.
|
| There are 'other groups' with power, whereupon the public
| knowledge of their influence would be to their detriment,
| and they were not 'aristocrats' though they would have
| probably desperately like to be that.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > Everyone knows who the King and Duke are and what their
| means of power are.
|
| This is only true in a limited sense. The single most
| important justification for the King's power has been his
| divine right: a doctrine of preordained power that no
| earthly force can usurp. This works pretty well on
| illiterate peasants who fear divine retribution, but the
| cat is more or less out of the bag on that front.
|
| And note: that is the _justification_ for power, which
| defines its _perception_. A king 's _true_ source of
| power has historically been his wealth (and therefore the
| size of his army and supporting court), or the support of
| extremely wealthy parties (churches, merchant classes,
| etc.). Every regent in history has gone to extraordinary
| lengths to keep the public from realizing that he is just
| a man, one whose wealth (and therefore power) can be
| taken.
| majormajor wrote:
| That, of course, is ultimately extremely defeatist compared
| to the ideals that the USA claims (the practice and
| history, on the other hand, would be another discussion).
|
| One of the things the right wing (especially the religious
| right) in the US does _far_ better than any other groups is
| to claim lofty egalitarian or noble-minded principals while
| not applying them to themselves.
|
| But if we throw that out, and want to embrace the cynicism,
| why lean to "let's just anoint the rich" over "let's more
| aggressively limit them"?
|
| After all, we know disruption and innovation rarely comes
| from big incumbents. Tax the shit out of them and turn that
| into funding and options for the rest.
|
| EDIT: there's a good tie-in there, actually - make it
| legible, that makes it easier to regulate and tax! ...
| Except I'm struggling to see why the elites would actually
| want that if it's not about formalizing and ENHANCING their
| power. So that seems like the real motive, here.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| In the internal logic of these claims, it's not
| "defeatist" so much as looking at things as they are. A
| complex society will always have elites, as a simple
| matter of structure. The remaining question is whether
| those elite social positions should be legible or not.
| It's not about renouncing egalitarian ideals at all, it's
| being serious about pursuing them to the greatest
| feasible extent.
|
| > why lean to "let's just anoint the rich" over "let's
| more aggressively limit them"?
|
| The two can easily go hand in hand. In Classical Greece,
| being publicly acknowledged as "rich" meant that you
| would be forced to pay for public works. (And the public
| valuation of your assets was backed by an offer to
| exchange them for cash! So if you thought that the
| valuation was too high, you could take the offer and be
| better off in the end. How much is a Harvard tenured
| professor position worth, in the modern day and age?)
|
| > Except I'm struggling to see why the elites would
| actually want that if it's not about formalizing and
| ENHANCING their power.
|
| Because trust is a positive sum game. Lack of
| transparency is only an advantage to those who plan to
| take advantage of it. This is how more limited and
| legible ("formalized") power can translate to enhanced
| power.
| majormajor wrote:
| There's a neat little rhetorical trick you're doing here:
|
| > A complex society will always have elites, as a simple
| matter of structure. The remaining question is whether
| those elite social positions should be legible or not.
|
| "Whether or not they should be legible or not" is _not_
| the only remaining question. Nor, I think, is "legible"
| the right word for what seems like it's being proposed -
| a return to "aristocracy" is not about just labeling,
| it's about formalizing and legitimizing power. Legible is
| a flashlight, not a scepter.
|
| In recent history it's not even a particularly primary
| one compared to "how much should we tax, regulate, and
| break up those elites." In more violent revolutions, it's
| also been "should they get the guillotine?" You're
| talking purely legibility and not "accountability" or
| "what happens next." I think things are legible enough
| that we _could_ hold the powerful more accountable than
| we do today if we wanted to. Making Peter Thiel a Duke
| isn 't going to help.
|
| And that violent example is a particularly important
| thing to remember if you're tempted to _trust_ the elites
| to not hide and obfuscate even while making claims of
| "just making things legible." I don't think "should it be
| legible" is a particularly interesting question because I
| don't trust them to play by the rules anyway. When have
| they before?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > ...it's about formalizing and legitimizing power.
|
| Again, power is a pervasive feature of any complex
| society. Do you pick formal and legitimized power, or
| power that's completely illegitimate and shorn of any
| formality?
|
| > Making Peter Thiel a Duke isn't going to help.
|
| If you have some sort of proceedings to make Peter Thiel
| a Duke, there might also be ways to strip him of his
| title for cause. Which might actually increase the
| public's collective power over acknowledged elites, and
| that without any resort to the more physical means you
| alluded to in your comment. After all, it would be more
| of a routine quasi-criminal sanction than a social
| revolution.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > If you have some sort of proceedings to make Peter
| Thiel a Duke, there might also be ways to strip him of
| his title for cause. Which might actually increase the
| public's collective power over acknowledged elites, and
| that without any resort to the more physical means you
| alluded to in your comment. After all, it would be more
| of a routine quasi-criminal sanction than a social
| revolution.
|
| This is specious reasoning. There's a process that turns
| both of us into mulch (it involves a woodchipper), but
| you shouldn't attempt that process based on the inference
| that a reverse process (a mulch-to-human machine?) must
| therefore exist.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| It's not like I'm inventing anything here. Back in the
| times and places where noble titles were taken seriously
| as markers of increased social legitimacy, stripping
| people of them was an acknowledged thing. Far more
| reversible than things like the guillotine, which in
| practice was way more comparable to your human-to-mulch
| machine - and that in its long-range society-wide
| effects, as much as its more immediate ones.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > Back in the times and places where noble titles were
| taken seriously as markers of increased social
| legitimacy, stripping people of them was an acknowledged
| thing.
|
| It was not an "acknowledged thing." It was a bloody,
| brutal affair. Men fighting for titles is probably the
| _one_ thing that measures up to religion in terms of
| lives lost.
|
| And all of this before refuting the central point: the
| duke of some random duchy in 1305 had no "increased
| social legitimacy" in any way that matters to
| contemporary humans. He was able to petition whatever
| king he served, and he could rule over his own land
| insofar as someone with a bigger army didn't mind. It is,
| on face value, _ridiculous_ that we 're discussing this
| as a viable state of affairs.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| That wasn't _just_ men fighting for titles, it was quite
| literally men fighting for their turf. The modern
| equivalent would be an all-out war among drug cartels.
| Later on, with the onset of the early modern era powerful
| monarchies managed to check the violence and gradually
| turned noble titles into more of a social reward for
| public services rendered. This is the context that those
| who view "kings and aristocracies" positively might have
| in mind.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| Bullshit. Invent any new title you want, you will still
| get powerful people who aren't holders of that title and
| whom control the holders of that title. If thats all you
| wanted, inventing a new position won't do shit. This only
| furthers the argument that what you actually wanted if
| that was your goal is to start severely limiting the
| power of someone who reaches a certain level of wealth or
| influence etc.
|
| I think you are making the mistake of reading too hard
| into these writings and somehow managed to invent a
| meaning in it. The reality is unfortunately as simple as
| that these people imagine they would get to be kings and
| rule over everyone. The philosophy dropout verbose word
| vomit is required to obscure this simple and obviously
| idiotic point because of course why would anyone pay
| attention to it otherwise.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| >>After all, we know disruption and innovation rarely
| comes from big incumbents. Tax the shit out of them and
| turn that into funding and options for the rest.
|
| This discourages investment, by reducing returns on
| venture capital investing. "Taxing the shit out of" the
| rich, as you suggest, would also affect far more than
| large incumbents. It would reduce the incentive to invest
| in general, by reducing the size of the reward for
| becoming very professionally successful, encourage
| capital flight and expatriation of the highly ambitious
| and capable, and reduce the after-tax income of the best
| investors, and with it, the volume of new investment.
| coliveira wrote:
| Who guarantees the "kings and aristocrats" are really the
| ones pulling the strings? They are frequently just puppets.
| labster wrote:
| Puppets of whom? The only (European) historical examples
| of puppet masters I can think of are the Church and other
| nobility -- certainly no one from outside the class. If a
| merchant became powerful enough, they found a way to join
| the nobility, either directly or by marriage.
| coryrc wrote:
| Turks and janissaries.
| natural_cruelty wrote:
| [deleted]
| pavlov wrote:
| 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 describes both
| Putinism and the American right's goals. It's not a
| coincidence that they were increasingly cozy with Russia
| until Putin rolled into Ukraine.
|
| Putinists love to make the claim that Ukraine isn't a real
| nation (and Steve Bannon went on record to agree). It's worth
| noting that the same arguments would apply to Canada. If the
| Thiel-funded right succeeds, they'll eventually need a war to
| fuel the nationalist fire. Why not a reunification of the
| North American colonies? Canada is obviously controlled by
| decadent forces that need to be purged, just like Ukraine...
|
| Trump wanted to buy Greenland. Good old territorial expansion
| is part of this value system.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| 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 legitimate President of a democratic nation state,
| but many observers would argue that he seems to be aiming
| at something different. Which is why this is a sensible
| question to begin with.)
| awinter-py wrote:
| yeah it's fash lite
|
| fascinating + compelling, well-written, well-read, and doesn't
| announce itself too obviously, but if you squint it's always
| 'how did the wasps lose elite culture' or 'interview with
| america's best known monarchist' or 'wang huning has a better
| take on liberalism' or some tivy tweet about 'canada is post
| democracy so let's overthrow the order'
|
| I skip the first 2 minutes of podcasts so I thought it was a
| history podcast for a while and then I realized who the guests
| were
| jollybean wrote:
| Please. I mean, yes, but we should be 'doubly skeptical' of
| everything from The Atlantic, the New Yorker, the NYT, Fox,
| Bloomberg and WSJ and Foreign Policy as well.
| Mizza wrote:
| Yes.
|
| I really wish more people knew that Jeffrey Goldberg, editor
| in chief at the Atlantic, literally beat political prisoners
| bloody while he was an IDF prison guard at the world's
| largest detainment camp.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| It's deleted now, or maybe on the internet archive, but one
| of the best rebuttals from Internet comments I've ever seen
| was on a Goldberg piece about the trope of neocon puppet
| masters claiming he had a superior spidey sense of what was
| anti-Semitic and what wasn't. The killer punchline at the
| end was "Buck up, Geppetto!"
| rabite wrote:
| >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.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| tsunamifury wrote:
| All that can be true while palladium can also be one of the
| only publications that grapples with big theories and forecasts
| of geo politics and social shifts.
|
| Are there many others? FP seems more focused on essays targeted
| at an audience of one written for ver specific inside baseball
| reasons. HBR and the likes have become laughable top 10 lists
| and passing superficial junk.
| natural_cruelty wrote:
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Sometimes men (and women, for that matter) happen to be
| exactly at the right place and at the right time to tilt
| the balance of long-range historical outcomes. What's wrong
| with acknowledging those folks as "Great", if only as to
| their influence?
| natural_cruelty wrote:
| tsunamifury wrote:
| As noted above their notion is not great man theory. It's
| that elites exist and hide and we should make their power
| structures more legible.
|
| It's a solid concept imo. But also nothing about their
| podcasts seem so bad as to wash them away with one flippant
| comment.
| majormajor wrote:
| Just curious then, how visible do they make their own
| connection to elites in the podcast or articles? Sounds
| like they're very much part of one of those power
| structures. I don't see any of that at a quick perusal of
| this article, it appears to be written as if it sits
| outside.
| jonstewart wrote:
| I don't disagree about HBR but the world is full of serious
| publications, and Palladium is not one of them.
| bigcat12345678 wrote:
| Mind to provide some recommendation of "serious
| publications"? Academic journals would be fine as well.
|
| I want to learn more about the politcal theory and relevant
| social economic grand thinking and mechanisms design.
| panosfilianos wrote:
| Journalism would be so much better with context like this. I
| wonder if there any initiatives that provide it. Maybe the
| blockchain would be of help here.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| This context is quite biased by ideological preconceptions.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| I can't tell how many layers of irony this comment contains.
| natural_cruelty wrote:
| Came here to say this. Burja is a fraud peddling in discredited
| ideas who just happens to be patronized by Thiel and other
| wealthy would-be autocrats in the American conservative
| movement. Funny how that works!
| onesafari wrote:
| What about the actual contents of the publication or article in
| question?
| chx wrote:
| It's like Jordan Peterson. Lots of fancy sounding words and
| perhaps sentences that put together come to nothing or less
| than nothing.
| timmytokyo wrote:
| Jonah Bennett goes deep down the anti-semitic neoreactionary
| rabbit hole [1]. Interesting how Peter Thiel keeps funding
| these types of people [2].
|
| [1] https://splinternews.com/leaked-emails-show-how-white-
| nation...
|
| [2] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-
| right...
| supersync wrote:
| A semi-interesting read on a topic I often think about.
|
| I'll boil it down to "new systems generate new social systems,
| that become imitations of themselves, that then cannibalizes the
| initial system."
|
| The insight I see here is we need new social technology.
|
| The "hands on" founder is back with Gen Z, along with
| verticalized ambitions. There were easy wins building on the
| institutional tech stack we've inherited, but today you are more
| likely to conform or fail if you launch a transformational
| innovation on that stack.
|
| Instead, I see founders going to the source of each institution
| to create change. Cul de Sac in AZ going after that.
|
| In the same way, we're designing a vertical reinvention of the
| org as a guild. There's institutions we're build on for sure, but
| the security comes more from community than the enforcement of
| agreements by traditional institutions.
| aww_dang wrote:
| I don't agree with the premises. The arguments are not fleshed
| out. The conclusions feel absurd and lack supporting logic.
|
| However, I was able to get past those things and enjoy the
| journey as an imaginative flight of fancy. The author might be
| better suited to fiction?
| pkdpic wrote:
| No idea what the deal is with this site, it seemed intriguing but
| found this on their articles index. Probably should read it
| before making any judgments but... its mothers day, who has the
| time?
|
| > The Taliban Were Afghanistan's Real Modernizers
|
| > Only a powerful modernizing force could overcome the tribal
| loyalties that divided Afghanistan's fragile state. That force
| was the Taliban.
| haswell wrote:
| Without reading the articles themselves, we can't judge those
| titles. It is sometimes true that truly evil forces are
| responsible for progress.
|
| Modernization is not inherently good or bad. That it might be
| propelled by an organization that itself is evil says nothing
| about the author or modernization.
| Jaruzel wrote:
| > _its mothers day_
|
| Not here it isn't.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother%27s_Day
| yorwba wrote:
| It's a very good article. You should read it. Especially if you
| disagree with the title.
| jarsin wrote:
| > With a handshake and a reputation at stake, you could sail to
| the other end of the world, spending years out of contact with
| your business partners, yet secure in knowing they would honor
| their word.
|
| How far we have fallen. We replaced handshakes with contracts
| that most people followed. Now few even follow contracts and
| break them willingly all the time.
|
| Every job/business arrangement seems to just bring in more people
| into your life that you will hate someday.
| jseban wrote:
| More like a handshake, a reputation at stake, and a threat of
| death penalty, if you want to take a more honest look at what
| would happen if you committed mutiny.
| Barrera wrote:
| > If this is correct, then post-industrial society isn't our name
| for the next stage of civilizational progress. Instead, the term
| is true in its most literal and pessimistic interpretation: a
| society after and without industrial civilization. Such a society
| doesn't even have the social infrastructure of agricultural
| civilizations. This means it cannot even mint the preliminary
| social capital needed to reindustrialize. Likewise, we have lost
| the implicit knowledge upon which our industrial systems
| functioned even as recently as a few decades ago. That knowledge
| cannot be regained absent the people who actually built and
| understood those systems.
|
| This is an interesting idea: that the shedding of industry by an
| industrial society is irreversible. There is no way to go back,
| no matter how desperately that might be desired.
|
| But the reason presented seems kind of flimsy. What does "mint
| preliminary social capital" mean and why is it impossible after
| industrialization is abandoned? The idea isn't explained before
| or after the statement.
| rayiner wrote:
| The cause isn't adequately explained, but it's hard not to see
| the ramifications of the outcome everywhere you look. We live
| in a society that couldn't rebuild, if it had to, the New York
| City subway, or the Interstate Highway System, or the national
| electric grid, or numerous other features of industrialized
| 20th century America.
| mikewarot wrote:
| >We live in a society that couldn't rebuild, if it had to,
| the New York City subway, or the Interstate Highway System,
| or the national electric grid, or numerous other features of
| industrialized 20th century America.
|
| We live in a society which lacks the _collective will_ to do
| such things. It 's only after the knowledge required to do so
| is lost that it can't be done again.
|
| Unlike after the fall of Rome, there are machine tools all
| over this country that make it possible. We don't have to
| rely on manpower, or beasts to do the work. Sitting in
| basements, garages, barns, forests. We've got the natural
| resources. We also have a widely distributed archive of
| machinists books, literacy, and the hacker ethos on our side.
|
| Mostly it's the financial distortions of the price of money,
| and tax policy, that have moved our manufacturing offshore,
| for now.
| rmah wrote:
| _there are machine tools all over this country that make it
| possible [...] sitting in basements, garages, barns,
| forests_
|
| That may not be as true as you imagine. Entire factories,
| refineries, chemical plants, etc. were dismantled and
| shipped to china during the 1990's and 2000's. Once there,
| they were re-assembled and put back into production. I have
| met people who were involved in this work. The equipment
| did not get retired, it got sold.
| mikewarot wrote:
| I understand that scaling infrastructure back up takes
| time and effort. I understand the long timescales
| involved in even the most basic of factory setup. I
| watched as it took a year to move the gear shop I was
| working at.
|
| However, we were discussing not being able to reboot
| society at all. If you know how modern machining works,
| and have access to a supply of material and students to
| teach, it can be booted back up in reasonable timeframes.
| It wouldn't have to take a few Millenia to be re-invented
| again.
|
| You can make machine shop level of flat surfaces with the
| Whitworth method. Steam technology on the small scale is
| something that can be done in the home shop. Once you
| don't have to rely on muscle to machine materials, you
| can scale up quickly.
|
| Eric Flint wrote 1632, a work of alternative fiction
| which plays out this scenario by catapulting a mining
| town in West Virginia back to the year 1632. Food was the
| critical gate to pass through, but they made it.
| trhway wrote:
| Like feudal post-Roman world couldn't repeat any large Roman
| infrastructure for a millennium.
| nyolfen wrote:
| >What does "mint preliminary social capital" mean and why is it
| impossible after industrialization is abandoned?
|
| he is referring to what he describes at the beginning of the
| essay: preindustrial social forms and traits that lend
| themselves to industrialization, like high social trust between
| strangers
| ghetzel wrote:
| I took "mint preliminary social capital" to mean,
| fundamentally, trust. The kinds of trust needed for a society
| to consent en masse to the collective capital project of
| (re-)industrializing are difficult to attain in the face of
| decaying material needs of the skilled labor force (if those
| skills even propagated forward to begin with.)
| bsedlm wrote:
| > _What, then, is the core engine of our own civilization, and in
| what way might it decay? While we lack an incontrovertible
| answer, the Industrial Revolution appears to be a leading
| candidate._
|
| I find this historically shallow (or short-term). IMO, at the
| core of civilization is the concept of "domain" (from the old
| latin meaning, which is like "realm" or possibly "kingdom")
|
| I like to recall that all the "old and obsolete industrial
| practices" are more fundamental than the novel and up-to-date
| "computer networking, artificial intelligence, and other
| "emerging technologies.""
|
| and when I say more fundamental, I mean that's it's not possible
| to have the later without the former.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| 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.
| woodruffw wrote:
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