This was worth waiting for -- it's great. My problem begins with this: "In my view argument against techno-capitalism goes against the right half of the term, that is capitalism." At least in part, that's an artifact of an imbalance in the term you've picked. 'Capitalism' is irreducibly technical (or techno-scientific) and commercial, which is to say that it summarizes 'techno-commerce'. Your objection, strictly speaking, is an anti-commercial rather than anti-capitalist one, suspicious of market dynamics as the principle driver of technical innovation. Clearly, you work is cut out for you there, because -- quite apart from any cybernetic argument demonstrating that catallactic commerce maximizes economic feedback intensity -- the historical complicity of technological explosion with market-oriented social processes is overwhelmingly strong. The old (and now forgotten) growth-positive communist model was exactly the attempt to retain technological advance without a market-based economic infrastructure, and the failure of this project was spectacular. The era of consumer computing destroyed communism, because the Soviet heartland could not do Cyberspace. I don't think this is a controversial conclusion. Fascism is more flexible, of course, and precisely because it subordinates markets to a more sophisticated system of controls, it also proves itself more technologically adept. Insofar as it works, it preserves a capitalist (i.e. techno-commercial) social motor, and to the degree that it impairs this -- which it is bound to, to some extent -- it falls prey to socialist dysfunction. Economic momentum is inextricable from commercialism. Political momentum is something else, as you say, which is why a Left Singularity is even imaginable. I'm sure you'd agree that Left Singularity is dramatically incompetent, as far as technological development is concerned. In the short term at least, its popularity is unaffected by that. If there was an anti-commercialism that works, we'd know it by now.

Here are my thoughts on neoreaction and Christianity: http://occamsrazormag.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/is-christianity-inherently-left-wing-and-egalitarian/

I was responding to this post and then got distracted.... Capitalism can and often does have great feedback loops but seems to be a great leveler. Instead of having a grand vision of where to go, capitalism operates in small blind steps. Sure, the "grand vision" can be misguided, as with Marxists, but some vision is probably preferable to no vision. Capitalism seems to work best when steered by higher caliber people, such as the old WASPs in America or the 19th century Liberals one finds in Trollope's novels.

"Creative destruction is scary business, I just wonder how sustainable it is." Exactly!

"truth-seeking taking to its extreme is intelligence maximization." Well. Is it? The men who clothed you, provide you with all you consume, warm you, made the house around you and the machine you type on, the networks that carry your words seem to have found truth in achievements. Granted for which you give them money. Let's not forget farmers. You do eat. And lets not forget the armed Helots - soldiers, police, spies who count - who also undergird all by standing sentinel and acting as necesary in the interests of the rest. I have no use for this decaying, degenerate corpse of a government. The worst of tyrants mad and impotent. However if you're the alternative I'm very glad I'm an armed Helot, from the very backbone of Armed Helotry. I consider myself these days a small "r" reactionary - that is we'll do without the racism, thanks. It was no great leap for the Left to decide that whites who disagree with them are the new niggers, and it's already no leap for you, it's in the compact.

Well the traditionalists position is self-refuting. Sorry fellas. If you think that where there is an altar there is civilization, you have a pretty low threshold for civilization.

Well, that was a rather low blow. To notice that an altar is a sufficient condition for civilization, or even to aver that it is a necessary condition for civilization, is neither an admission that civilizations are all the same, nor that the barest level of civilization is "good enough" for de Maistre or those who dare quote him. So you do recognize the necessity of religious traditionalism?

The sort of society that would result from rationalizing free markets is beyond the point. People suck anyway.

and...

So after WW2 it was understood that human purpose was to be found in individual utilitarianism. Hedonism. It feels good, but few people can handle it, and if taken to its logical conclusion it destroys you, and society.

Even hyper-rational techno capitalists care about the kind of society they inhabit, don't they? Aren't we all at least just a teeny bit Speciesist? I think neoreaction does (must) accept the "realism" of local customs, traditions, religions, and mores as a coherent (more or less) set of (more or less) slowly adaptive memes that solve underdetermined, very complex social problems--problems which would render a group less fit or extinct--and not see them, as the Marxists would have it, as a largely cynical ploy to allow the Oppressor Class to oppress the Oppressed. Obviously not all such "sets" are equally coherent, nor a fortiori do they all line up equally with the remainder of observable (yet currently officially denied) reality: social hierarchy, sex difference, race/group difference, microeconomics, etc. But those "Meme Sets" which do better so line up have, it is undeniable, done a pretty amazing job of presenting at least pretty good solutions _to complex social problems which in their limit tend to get a lot of people killed. So it seems, Spandrell, you admit that unfettered techno-capitalism unleashed on humanity has the potential to do as much damage on society as liberalism has done. Perhaps more, being more efficient. This is not surprising because capitalism itself arises out of the hyper-rationalism of the Enlightenment. Capitalism unconstrained, like equality unconstrained, like liberty unconstrained have predictably devastating social consequences. But the toxin in the mix is the "unconstrained" part. And religious traditionalism is the natural constraint to ideologies gone wild. Remember social problems are underdetermined in potentially chaotic space (Pol Pot great example), so there are many _pretty good_ solutions, but none which can be calculated a priori by brute force... i.e., by pure rationalism. So in a sense, and I think you admit this, reaction _needs_ religious traditionalists on board. I know that's a drag. Singulatarianism does not give us a boner, of course, but we're perfectly happy with natural increases in secure, effecting, and not insane government._

Breakthrough in a theory of intelligence might enable a quasi human AI. (This is mindblowing shit)

There, I fixed it for you. These are not science articles, but vapid effusions of starry-eyed scientism garbled by half-educated 'science journalists' writing specifically with the intention of blowing unsuspecting minds. Too much enthusiasm is a dead giveaway. I advise strongly against reading such stuff.

They live off financial engineering.

We'll see how long the party lasts. I seem to remember that late Imperial Rome used to live off financial engineering, which in those simpler times took the shape of the debasement of coinage and other equally crude measures. The money economy tanked, serfdom exploded and subsistence farming cum stationary bandits was in. The Soviet Union used to live off a kind of financial engineering too, pumping capital from the consumer sector and agriculture into its military-industrial complex by means of price management, supply restrictions, forced savings and maintaining a firewall between the consumer currency (cash roubles) and the industrial currency (credit roubles). When those sectors were pumped dry, energy exports propped the system up for a while; eventually an external price shock finished it off.

If you are primarily concerned with technological progress, as I am, then you should probably be concerned about saving the white gene pool. Whites are currently a pathetic and degenerate people, but we do have a proven *historical* track record of technological and scientific innovation that is unsurpassed. It hasn't been that long since that period of innovation so the genetic potential has not yet been lost. White decadence is mostly spiritual, moral and cultural, rather than genetic. But that gene pool is under threat as minorities with no track record of scientific innovation overwhelm formerly innovative countries like Britain and the United States. East Asians appear to be more intelligent than white people (on average) and they are certainly more vital and less degenerate at present. But their track record of technological innovation is not quite as good as that of Europeans. Furthermore, innovation is not a zero sum game; it is more beneficial to have two or more centers of innovation, rather than just one. Multiple centers of innovation can feed off each other and accelerate innovation, as well as serving as backups in case another civilization goes crazy the way Western civilization did. Additionally, different human population groups think differently. It goes beyond just IQ to many different measurable aspects of personality and cognition. We don't fully understand what factors lead to innovation, but it is exceedingly likely that they are real, measurable and heritable. We do know which population groups have a track record of innovation and which ones don't. When a historically innovative gene pool is subsumed into a historically non-innovative gene pool, something of value may be lost. I'm an ethno nationalist not because I hate minorities or even because I love white people. White people are kind of pathetic. I'm an ethno nationalist because I want a future with high levels of technological innovation, eventually including colonization of other planets. Carving out some sizable reservations for white people would probably be beneficial to that goal, at least until we have a much more comprehensive capability for understanding and engineering the human genome. From an evolutionary perspective, white people don't deserve to survive due to our low biological fitness relative to other population groups. But evolution doesn't care about technological advancement. We should probably think about protecting low fitness high innovation population groups, assuming we want a future with maximized technological innovation. The same conclusions would apply to East Asians or other groups, but their gene pools aren't really under the same level of threat, since they're not as foolish as white people.

Spandrell (and Nick), What's so great about techno-capitalism? If we re-engineer society so that it is organised around the market, as opposed to state bureaucracy, is it really better? In what sense? If we agree that maximising the growth in output is the ultimate aim of society; the it comes down to whatever method is more efficient. But I don't see why we should agree that.

"[States] live off financial engineering. Ergo ethno-nationalism is not going to happen. QED." Financial engineering is looking so, so solid these days

Like you, I have a soft spot for ethno-nationalism, but the reality is, that unless a state is already an ethno-nationalist state (e.g., Liechtenstein), then any attempts to create one will just result in an "ethnic bunker"--see Orania: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orania,\_Northern\_Cape And that's just no fun at all.

What's your search for truth in regard to, Spandrell?

[...] Lots of good stuff on the dark [...]

> It is a particular historical phenomenon where modern polities acquired the means to fool their subjects into believing they were part of the same tribe. Uh, they are, I mean their DNA is intercorrelated and so is their nature. This gives them a basis for common understanding and cooperation, whether there is any significant group selection or not. I know I'm not telling you anything you don't know. But if you want to claim that those forces are weak in the grand scheme, just do that, rather than virtually state categorically that such forces don't exist. It would be much clearer. > Nations were artificially made through massive state propaganda .....again and again, for thousands of years. Pretty much everywhere and always, except where people decided to make something more like empires instead. It's a strain to describe that as a "particular historical phenomenon" when such a phrase clearly implies "rather delimited" historical phenomenon. I would strongly distinguish between biotechno futurism and AI futurism. Your 'exciting' news report is to me only a certain amount more comprehensible than the Sokal hoax. Maybe I'm not smart enough ; I am a lot weaker quantitatively than verbally. But I'd be fucking amazed if you could draw a tight and clear technical case that strong AI is possible. That doesn't make it unworthy of contemplating ; heck, I even contemplate God frequently, and I don't expect to resolve that question. I just think ontological humility demands we not indulge in what are (IMO) mostly just strong hunches about strong AI being possible. I don't think we know what consciousness is ; we may sort of know what 'intelligence' is but I the ground feels much less firm if you substitute the term 'creative insight'. If you happen to find strong AI way more interesting a possibility than God, hey, feel free, let a thousand flowers bloom. My taste runs more toward God, but whatever. I acknowledge that contemplating strong AI is probably far more practical, since it might * up or improve our world, whereas if God is evil then we are all * anyway and nothing would be availing, and if he is good he is interminably unclear about what he wants, means, or is willing to help out with. It seems far more likely that he is beyond good and evil if he exists, and I will just never understand him. As a pastime, then, he is downright transcendently impractical to contemplate, transfinitely more impractical than any other use of time could possibly be. I never claim to be a fundamentally practical guy. In contrast to AI, biotechno futurism is obviously possible based from known principles that can (with dilligence) be imparted clearly to IQ 120 minds, and it might end up more or less superseding ethnonationalism. (By 'possible' I mean the strong possibility that bio-transhumanism might advance sufficiently to largely transcend/revolutionize goals and meanings as we understand them now.) I am too honest to just what, completely lie about that fact? On the other hand, as noted above, Europids seem to have some special relationship with tech innovation, and it may be wise to have multiple civs in case one or more of them degenerate. There could be lots of not so per se reasons for nationalisms.

I agree we don't seek pleasure alone, though we do seek pleasure -- but do you really think it's "truth"? Truth doesn't exist in any absolute way. It tries damn hard, but no, most of the time it doesn't quite make it. I mean it's certainly a thing among others that exists, it happens... but ... see what I mean? Eudaimonists/virtuists from Heraclitus and Aristotle to Nietzsche, that is to say basically all nonfreudians-nonutilitarians, spent lots of time discussing what we seek. The answer is everything, love, hate, sex, vengeance, forgiveness, discipline, power, suffering, liberation, enhancement, self-respect . . . . . . . truth, most certainly, yessir, ver-i-tas . . . . . . . meaning (ah, that one is getting close to the mark) . . . . . . -- depth, B's term depth is the best single English predicate for what the eudaimonists have been talking about. Meaning is a close second. But there's no one predicate. Lists of predicates are better than any single predicate, but what's even more closely indicative is things like Zen and art. But that is only a beginning ; to their credit, the eudaimonists have not just sat around mincing predicates, every real eudaimonist has been interested in so much more.

> DNA goes in a regional continuum, state lines are arbitrary. I realize Nizza is not as French as Paris. But you exaggerate much. The continuum is far from smooth. Soon we will have a bunch of autosomal data, and you will probably find it particularly unsmooth across such imaginary lines as the 'Rhine'. > When you stop the cohesive propaganda, the real, old regional borders flare up again, and you see every region in Europe hating their compatriots. You're overrating the propaganda by underrating what took place through common language and culture. I know there were dialects and clines of dialects in Europe. I realize Eastern Ukraine is substantially Russo-unionist even at this hour. But to hear you tell it, people never went around casually using the word Germany for hundreds of years before 1873. Since Koennigsburg and Danzig were part of what they meant, you'll tell me it's a totally different concept. > You tell me why there is a dialect continuum across the Pyrenees which is unrelated from anything beyond. Have you tried living in a bunch of gigantic snowbound mountains? There doesn't tend to be a lot of communication with those individuals who don't painstakingly clamber through them to reach the irresistible triple-inbred maidens ensconsed therein -- which is actually most individuals.

[...] Spandrell on optimizing for truth. [...]

By the way, I merely asserted

Uh, they are, I mean their DNA is intercorrelated and so is their nature. This gives them a basis for common understanding and cooperation, whether there is any significant group selection or not.

This is true even if there were a perfectly smooth genetic continuum and arbitrary borders. Less true, but still true. And it would still be true if everyone spoke perfect Esperanto and there was not a single mountain or river in Europe. Just draw any random polygon or closed figure on the map of this flat esperantic Europe (excluding figures with an extremely large perimeter/area ratio). The people inside are more genetically related and have more of a common nature than the people outside, in some other figure 300 miles away. Anyway, I don't care personally about European countries, I am politically pan-Euro and to a smaller extent pan-human. Europe is a peninsula, and really, an island since it used to have an eastern terminus where the steppes and herding-raiding Turkics began. It's the land of hot chicks and the home of the arts and sciences.

Lol I had thought the Rhine formed like, most of the western bound of Germany. Especially with France, and I envisioned the Franco-German border as rather longer. Well I just checked a map, nobody's perfect. Anyway, sure there is a big ethnic mixup and there's exceptions and conceptual imperfections, etc etc, but Wanderer and I have made our point. Let Wanderer or whoever say more if they like ; I've written enough to outline what I understand.

Spandrell, you are a fool for discounting traditionalists and religion. Why? They are the only ones who have ever had civilization, as far as I can tell. Religion does not equal civilization, and not all of the religious have had civilization. Nevertheless high civilization has never existed without religion. Were the Victorians fools? No. You cannot build civilization without a really long view that extends beyond your lifespan. Lots of people need to put in more than they take out. Why would anyone do that? You need an optimism that your efforts really matter, that they are part of something and toward a purpose. Communism is really crappy and unsuccessful, but even that weaker level of civilization needs an ideology behind it. Europe lost its religion (mostly) in the last generation and it is rapidly losing its very civilization at present.

> Tradition depends in meme-transmitting technology. Mass-media and the internet have killed it. It’s not coming back. You forgot differential fertility. Twenty push-ups, then try Eric Kaufmann's book or just watch him spiel via internet. Meanwhile 20,000 orthodox Jews out of town on business will be using the same medium to skype their 'charismatic rabbis'. I'm not making fun of it, that's just the phrase often used ; they adhere to particular charismatic rabbis as guides.

Real civilization builders know the value of religion and they uphold it whether they believe or not. I have no doubt that lots of great civilization builders in history did their best with religion because they understood its essential role. Those who tear it down are decivilizers. Some of the most uncivilized behavior in history, and by that I mean large scale killing of good citizens, was tied with hard rejection of religion. Anti-Christian paganism in Nazi Germany, state-enforced atheism surrounding the 100 million premature deaths under Communism. Islam is warlike but even it stops at submission and is far more civilized than the Communists.

"Nationalism isn’t some natural law of human societies. It is a particular historical phenomenon where modern polities acquired the means to fool their subjects into believing they were part of the same tribe." Nationalism isn't a natural law of human societies. But tribalism is. You are correct about the difficulty of objectively determining where France stops and Germany begins or where Europe stops and West / Central Asia begins and the need for propaganda to establish that. But let's look at the United States again. Whites aren't currently a nation or a tribe, but there are clear and distinct differences between White Americans, Black Americans and Mestizo Hispanics. Other groups that are more difficult to differentiate (Lebanese Christians or something) also happen to be present in much smaller numbers. Arabs in Deerborn Michigan don't represent a significant complication to the big picture, due to their low numbers. Studies indicate that African Americans have a fair amount of white DNA, but White Americans have very little (recent) African DNA, as mixed race individuals were historically assimilated into the black community. Similarly there are a clear biological differences between whites and Mestizo/Indio Hispanics. (True white Hispanics are.... white) There also tend to be relatively distinct cultural differences between African Americans, White Americans and Mestizo/Indio Hispanics. What's more, white people instinctively recognize and act on these differences, even though they don't vocalize that recognition or even admit it to themselves. It's called white flight and it is very, very real. It doesn't just happen in housing either. Think school/college cafeterias. Despite their atomization and their lack of real community or cultural ties... American whites instinctively cluster together. This despite massive state propaganda in favor of integration and laws that prohibit so called "freedom of association". If you turn off that propaganda and make "freedom of association" possible again that segregation starts to look a little bit less de facto and a little bit more de jure. Whether or not some East Asians or rich Indians end up in there as well doesn't really matter all that much, as long as we get a handle on future immigration. Their current numbers aren't high enough to swamp us. This sort of implicit ethnostate / cognitive elitist state doesn't seem particularly unlikely in a scenario where the U.S. dissolves. Many of us already live in de facto ethnostates / cognitive elitist states, the arrangement just needs to be formalized a bit more.

1. Concentration of wealth. At least in the West, and increasingly in the developing world, life has never been so good for the masses. If you think not long ago, the champagne slogan had been "A chicken in every pot". Now, even the very poor has smart phones, car, TV etc. Due to the leverage that is available today, A small number of people are providing extraordinary value to society and are reaping equally extraordinary rewards. That is to say, meritocracy, if carried to its logical conclusion, creates concentration of wealth, but that does not mean incrementally smart person does not also reap their fair share of financial rewards by providing some value to society through companies. 2. Plutocracy. While there are handful of people who holds vast fortunes and have disproportional influence on society, life at the top is still quite dynamic. Extremely smart and driven folks gain vast fortune by providing value to society, their descendants stay wealthy for a few generations, then they come back to earth. I don't sense a permanent hereditary class lording over the rest of us. The fortunes that are made might be bigger nowadays compared to the old generations, but today's self made billionaires are also more enlighten in the sense that they are leaving the vast majority of their fortune for a good cause instead of their heirs.

Firstly, I think "liberalism" is more resilient than you think it is, and that it isn't dependent upon egalitarianism being true. If at some point the majority of the educated population comes to accept the position that individuals, racial groups, cultures, genders, religions, nations, civilizations are inherently unequal either due to genetics, internal structure, etc., the ideology of liberalism isn't threatened. Classical liberalism was never dependent upon the belief in human quality, and even bonafide left-progressivism once advocated eugenics. I think what both do in fact advocate is some form of political benevolence or humanitarianism toward the weak and disadvantaged. If inequality comes to be accepted as a permanent condition, the same people who currently advocate a welfare state may well continue to do so, as they'd likely conclude that the members of the underclass still deserve some measure of happiness even if they're incapable of improving themselves -- perhaps, especially because their incapable of improving themselves. Secondly, I don't think that most secular educated middle-class people are either pleasure-seekers or truth-seekers, at least not primarily. They're status-seekers. Their lives have "meaning", when they have a project to work on that allows them to advance their status in relation to others. That could be a self-actualizing career path, but it could just as easily be a commitment to compete in a triathlon, to learn another language, or to take up an ideological cause. If you can't make more money than others or defeat others in a physical contest, there is always the option of competing to see who has the most moral virtue, which doesn't require too much talent. I'm not convinced that the project of "being an intellectual" is primarily a commitment to truth, as much as it is another arena of status competition that allows the intellectually gifted to defeat others who have weaker arguments. It also ties into moral status competition, although with the exception of Christian traditionalists, most self-styled reactionaries do not compete in that arena, as they derive a certain amount of glee from making statements that progressives find to be morally outrageous.

I posted a comment about this the other day but Wordpress ate it up. The sciencey 'mindblowing shit' you posted links to is just plain shit. The starry-eyed enthusiasm is a dead giveaway. Such articles are written by half-educated 'science journalists' by means of garbling university press releases put out by university PR people, or by interviewing crackpots. They are not written to inform but to 'blow minds'. Gee-whiz, Higgs boson, time crystals, sure sounds impressive! Whee, there goes my toy rocket! Pfui. I strongly advise against reading such articles unless you are competent enough to winnow out the chaff (and have time to waste). Real physics, or any science for that matter, is extremely boring 99% of the time, and the 1% it's not it's still extremely boring to an outsider. It just gets dressed up (or down, depending on which side you look at) to obtain funding.

spandrell, Well spell it out, what’s your point? Progressivism is a memetic virus which hijacks the elites brains’ and makes them work against their class interest? The plutocrats will eventually be eaten up by the Cathedral and we’ll have a new USSR? What does your theory predict? The plutocrats have been eaten up by the Cathedral for a long time. That's the whole point. They can still play petty rent seeking in ways that the Cathedral doesn't care about, or even mildly frowns upon, but the impact of that is negligible in the big picture. In everything that really matters, business has been incentivized to be a reliable enforcer of the Cathedral's ideology. (It's such a good enforcer that it's one of the main reasons that make state censorship unnecesary to stabilize the regime, because any serious dissent from the Cathedral will screw up your career in private business as well.) "Class interest" is a meaningless term here. Modern society recognizes only three scales of status that really matter: sexual attractiveness, money, and bureacratic rank in Cathedral institutions. Someone with lots of money obviously wants to rise on these other status scales too, in particular the third one, which means being a good and sanctimonious Cathedral toady. That's all there is to it. It may seem shrewdly cynical, but in reality it's extremely naive, to imagine that he'd promote some sort of "class interest" by asking what would be good for rich people, instead of promoting his own interest by asking how to gain a Cathedral-bestowed status of intellectual, activist, and saint to complement his wealth. And of course that we're already well underway towards a new USSR -- it's just that it's been coming gradually, so we've been getting used to it. I don't think this will necessarily lead to a cataclysmic left singularity, but to me it seems plainly clear that by the standards of a century ago, we're already more than halfway communized by any reasonable metric -- and the future will be determined by the race between this general Brezhnevization and technological progress that hasn't yet been strangled by it. (Of course, not the least problem are the unpredictable consequences of technology itself.)

I hope our host won't mind another plutocracy-related comment. Below is an excerpt from Schumpeter's "Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy" that, in my opinion, perfectly captures the reasons for the political helplessness of the modern-era rich and the impossibility of any real plutocracy -- i.e. genuine political power commanded by sheer wealth -- in a bourgeois liberal society. In case of the Anglosphere capitalism, the masters that eventually took reins were quite different from what happened in other societies, and their weird and historically unprecedented quasi-theocratic shape and form were beyond Schumpeter's powers of analysis even in his lifetime. Nevertheless, I think his argument against the possibility a liberal bourgeois plutocracy is dead on. (All emphasis mine.)

[A medieval lord's] “profession” not only qualified him admirably for the defense of his own class interest—he was not only able to fight for it physically—but it also cast a halo around him and made of him a ruler of men. The first was important, but more so were the mystic glamour and the lordly attitude—that ability and habit to command and to be obeyed that carried prestige with all classes of society and in every walk of life. [...] Of the industrialist and merchant the opposite is true. There is surely no trace of any mystic glamour about him which is what counts in the ruling of men. [...] We have seen that the industrialist and merchant, as far as they are entrepreneurs, also fill a function of leadership. But economic leadership of this type does not readily expand, like the medieval lord’s military leadership, into the leadership of nations. [...][A capitalist] can only use rationalist and unheroic means to defend his position or to bend a nation to his will. He can impress by what people may expect from his economic performance, he can argue his case, he can promise to pay out money or threaten to withhold it, he can hire the treacherous services of a condottiere or politician or journalist. But that is all and all of it is greatly overrated as to its political value. Nor are his experiences and habits of life of the kind that develop personal fascination. A genius in the business office may be, and often is, utterly unable outside of it to say boo to a goose—both in the drawing room and on the platform. [...] Within a protecting framework not made of bourgeois material, the bourgeoisie may be successful, not only in the political defensive but also in the offensive, especially as an opposition. [...] But without protection by some non-bourgeois group, the bourgeoisie is politically helpless and unable not only to lead its nation but even to take care of its particular class interest. Which amounts to saying that it needs a master.

I'd not refreshed the page before spandrell's reply above. (Yes, I spent 59 minutes getting through this thread.) Even the "host" usage is a coincidence.

Spandrell, Yeah but in purely economical terms, the ever expanding underclass will eventually become too big a drag on the economy. Socialism stops when you run out of other people’s money. Indeed, but the financial alchemy of fiat money central banking makes these constraints far more flexible than naive accounting would suggest, and the golden goose of high-tech economy is extremely resilient and hard to kill. So while it's impossible to give any hard predictions, the system could plausibly last for many decades into the future.

My point is that market incentives drive technology development to exactly this end. Today’s social information technology is a kind of pre-Soma, and the market participants are busily making it more and more addictive.

Well what are you gonna do about it? It's either Soma or Skynet.

Waseda is known as a leftist hotbed, what exactly were they envious about? 'Freedom'? The American Dream? Or feminism?

Check this out...the Dark Enlightenment on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DarkEnlighten/status/330397227006705665 ...

> Of course I agree that presently, any plutocrat that, say, openly opposed feminism would get their company destroyed in weeks. P Theil? If only we had a hundred of em.

> Real civilization builders know the value of religion and they uphold it whether they believe or not. I have no doubt that lots of great civilization builders in history did their best with religion because they understood its essential role. Those who tear it down are decivilizers. Agree, just can't tolerate christianity in particular. The lame shall enter first, the first shall be last. We know there was some sentiment against resisting pitiless barbarians (I won't claim to know how salient it was in Rome's downfall), and I think it's plausible that the whole system was workable for a time only because common people lost access to the scriptures for ~1,000 years.

> However, there is one more thing to consider here: what do these Chinese do when they do emigrate? A few decades ago they used to precipitate out into Chinatowns as soon as they reached critical concentration. I believe you are asking, partly-non-rhetorically, how they behave in North America. NEAs agglomerate quite substantially in both elite and common American universities. But no, they don't really form their own firms or residential zones all that much -- nor, to my knowledge, contemplate the Chuang-tze at higher rates than Europid hipsters do. So by and large they are pretty integrated, with some soft and mostly early-adult self-segregation. I haven't been to Vancouver though, nor spent time in San Fran/ Berkeley except in the summer. I've spent lots of time where they are quite concentrated, but have never been where they are hyperconcentrated.

> Hm. As I’ve mentioned to you before, modern techno-capitalism really needs very few people. Most of its existing bulk today is servicing the redundant household sector, connected to the rest by common market. This seems key. Explain it a little better, would you be so kind? It clearly bears on the Span v. Vladimir question of whether sickle-cell France and America can persist for X decades because of the resilient golden goose of capitalism. I'm inclined to deny or greatly moderate the view that we 'need very few people'. I'm a cheapster, so my car is a cheap but durable one from NEA. Almost everything I buy is from the grocery store, or Walmart (NEA). The food is domestic, I don't think it can be produced as well by NAMs. My car obviously could not be made economically with substantial NAM labor, that's why I got it from NEA. The domestic distribution/infrastructure networks that get me the food and NEA goods cannot be run equally well as %NAM rises. The army that, via the $ / control of oil (???), forces NEA to send me stuff at a discount, cannot be run by NAM officers and arms engineers and arms factory guys. Vladimir has convinced me to take one of my favorite sources of doom-porn, namely Kyle Bass on debt, less seriously. It's all paper after all. It's a quite serious affair, yet a paper affair. 'Things' may go 'completely crazy' over that paper (eg, EU ends), but I guess I have been won over to the view that they won't necessarily. I'm a firm skeptic on electro-soma. I mean it exists, bigtime, but I think it will prove self-limiting. I've had girls of high and low desirability, according to my much-shifting status. They are all a lot more fun than onanism, both sexually and to go skiing with. I've played video games, not much (thanks be to God). I doubt it will compare well with bowhunting, which I've been meaning to try. I've done plenty of drink and drugs -- only ever been psychologically addicted to one, grass, -- it ended in apparently-permanent partial desensitization to the drug, but it beat the hell out of electro-soma. Even alcohol beats it handily, and I never was that crazy about it -- not enough so to be itching to get high on it often. Of course if I were NEA I'd probably enjoy it even less, due to genetic adaptation, and electro-soma would be relatively more attractive at least v. booze.

Vladimir you sound very convincing indeed, here and at Land's. And you make all the proper caveats. I probably wouldn't add a single caveat, yet I seem to weight them two, three, five times heavier than you do. And so I wind up denying your conclusion that there is some core group of true sophisticates and freethinkers in the ruling memeplex that actually understands what they are doing. I think such sophisticates exist, but I'm guessing they are about as paltry in number as highly sophisticated dissenters like us, and due to their modest numbers, they can't really do much to control the system. As I put it here some weeks ago, the Hand of Power is TED, not Edge. At TED we find some great stuff, almost all by narrow specialists. The broad-scope stuff is 98% pieties. At Edge we find plenty of silliness, but also some serious futurism, and some of the latter is even by people with academic or academoid posts -- but they aren't prominent.

Wife. Children. Family. Clan. LAND OWNERSHIP. Resource. Labor. Food production. Farming. Animal husbandry. Self-governance. Anti-usury. Education. Skills. Technology. Science. Economic freedom. Tribe. Culture. Loyalty. Defense. Nation. Closed borders. All the rest is mental masturbation. To start a viable 'movement', you first and foremost have to decide what is crucial to your value system. What is most important to you? Do you know what you want? Do you know what you don't want? Are you willing to put in the effort, sacrifice, and energy to make it happen? Can you maintain your 'utopia' without sliding into corruption, power grabs, or infighting? From a purely biological standpoint, our primary function is to perpetuate the race. "Be fruitful and multiply". Our family. Our tribe. Our clan. Our culture. Our blood. Is this important to you? Do you see anything wrong with assimilation? Are all people of equal worth? Who will be allowed in your inner circle? Can you speak other languages? Do you have a plan? Do you have a moral compass? Do you have ideals, goals, or something worth dying for? Do you have social skills that are necessary to be a leader? Can you sacrifice to obtain a desired result? From a practical, survivalist standpoint, you need land to grow food and livestock. You need a roof over your head. Can you fish, hunt, or grow a garden? Can you butcher a deer? Can you preserve your food? Do you know how to cook? Do you rely on the skill of others too much? Do you live in the city? Will you survive there? Do you have any practical skills? Can you build a bookshelf, a crib, or a house? Can you change a tire on a car? Can you fix a car engine? Do you spend your time productively? Do you buy wisely? Do you know anything about usury and the credit system? Do you invest in your security? Do you own a firearm? Can you shoot a gun? Have you ever been in a physical altercation? Are you healthy? Do you eat a lot of garbage? From a cultural standpoint, do you like your culture? What is your value system? How does it compare with other value systems? Art, music, literature--what do you value? Are you moral? Do you value all cultures equally? Are other cultures superior or inferior--are they worth preserving? Do you know how to write a poem? Play a musical instrument? Why not? Do you have an education? Do you continue your education by yourself? Do you have any spiritual beliefs? Why? Why not? Are you politically active? Why not? Why? Do you put time and energy into a cause, or do you just blog? Do you donate money to charity? Do you work to make your community stronger? Do you volunteer your time and energy into something you believe in? Are you a leader or a follower? Do you have the courage to stand by your convictions? Do you want to change the world? Are you willing to see it through to the end? Have you ever been forced to save yourself from harm? Have you saved others from harm? Do you think this is a game? Do you take this seriously? Are you a keyboard warrior, or someone who's active in the real world? Do you have any idea of how to organize a 'movement'? Do you think that this will lead anywhere? Do you have a plan? Can you defeat the 'Cathedral'? Can you replace it with something better? New movement? Nope. New name? Yup. Will anything change? Dunno.....

[…] 30: Nick Land sketches the boundaries of broad agreement among the new reactionaries, while Spandrell expounds on his now-famous […]

[…] also recently encountered this quote from Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism and […]

[…] Spandrell expounds on his trichotomy. […]

[…] just have a bad model. Not that I’m innocent of that mistake. I’m known of chanting how the truth will always prevail, even when most people obviously prefer bullshit, and have always done so. I, like Mencken, like […]

[…] assim que for compilada. Entre os marcadores de caminho mais óbvios são este, este, este, este e este. Dada a necessidade de se referir a este complexo de maneira sucinta, eu confio que abreviá-lo […]