Capitalists and ropes

https://twitter.com/clairlemon/status/902498399634636800

How does this square with accelerationism? The forces of capitalism and the market feeding themselves into a self-catalytic process by which humans and their talents are consumed to form... Genderqueer Maoism?

A lot of people are completely focused in economics, like Marxists, libertarians or accelerationists. And yes, the economy is very important. Marx was an improvement over the religion-centered theories of history which preceded him. And the short-lived race-centered theories were worse. Yes, the economy is hugely important. It's one great pole of human society. How people organize to make stuff and exchange it can explain a great deal of what society is and does.

But there's another one pole. Violence. Or in other words, politics. How people organize to break stuff and kill people. That is also hugely important, and it explains a great deal of what society is and does. And it's always there. Violence is always there. You may not be interested in war, but Trotsky is, so you better be too.

Politics and the economy are obviously related. You need to make weapons before using them. And the other way around: what you are allowed to make and how to exchange it depends on those guys with guns. Yin-yang, folks.

Politics and Economics are bound together. They cannot live separately, as much as they'd like to. Politics can't do as it please, if people won't make stuff for it. The communists realized that the hard way. But economics can't do as it please either. The guys with guns won't let them. Capitalism won't consume everything for its own purposes. It has no purpose. It can only work in the small range that Politics allows it to. Right now, capitalism can consume everything, as long as it's for the benefit of advancing the holy cause of Marriage Equality, Transexual Toilet Rights *and* Protecting Muslim Feelings.

What's scary is that capitalism can work with that. And make money. Oh well. Skynet is going to be very queer.

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"What’s scary is that capitalism can work with that. And make money." In the short run, yes. It does seem so. But let's wait for the long run, shall we? My take, this thing can't go on for longer than 3 generations. It might well last much less than that. I just don't see men working hard for the economy when they don't have wives and kids. And I don't see how men can have wives and kids when they are not allowed to be men under the current dispensation. We shall see. The Epilogue on this story has not been written yet!

"A lot of people are completely focused in economics, like Marxists, libertarians or accelerationists." I'd classify acceleration as a sub-category to either economic or social/political theories. Economic accelerationism calls to push capitalism or socialism to their implied revolutionary conclusion. Social accelerationism calls for pushing the progressive social mania faster than even normal liberals can keep up with. Rather than raising the cost of signaling, this makes signaling effectively worthless as it offers no protection from the mob.

There's the long run and then there's the Long Run. Any closed state can function in any sort of crazy deluded chaos indefinitely. As a corollary, any closed state can make it in the interests of internal actors to fuel the crazy deluded chaos indefinitely; that internal equilibrium wouldn't be possible if it were not also possible to deter CEOs from upsetting it, would it?

My advice to men in the west who want a wife and kids is to emigrate. Capitalism between societies works as well. If one society gives its men a crap deal, they can move to a new society that gives them a better one, and help that new society out-compete the previous society that gave them the crap deal, and eventually replace it. Much like more competitive companies replace less competitive ones in the free market. If you are a hard working, educated Western man, there are plenty of non cultural marxist countries that would take you and give you a wife and kids. Hell, you might even be able to get away with dumping your college debt on the previous society that gave you the crap deal, to deal with. I doubt China or Russia would care about enforcing college loans to American banks.

I don't think that companies presently are forced to virtue signal. There is much simpler explanation for such advertisments. Companies don't virtue signal. People do. So there is someone who has a job somewhere. The person does the job (usually) to earn a salary. Now there is an opportunity to earn the salary and to earn some status points by pushing a virtue signaling advertisment. People use that opportunity. Spandrell, you surprised me with this post. You present an explanation of a human behavior and do not even mention status maximizing. Are you revising your theory? Why? I like it, it explains so many things.

Companies have command chains. Employees usually aren't allowed to maximize their status against the interests of the company. That companies now obviously encourage this sort of signaling from the top down needs explaining in terms of the company, not the individual employees.

I don't see any reasonable accounting methods by which these companies are making money. Hordes of brown people who would have starved to death without redistributionism now pour 100% of the money they get in welfare into ipods and nike air jordans, and in a relatively predictable manner as well. It is essentially a slave economy, and the middle class are the slaves. The economic game is already who can most efficiently coax the white tax dollars out of the monkeys the fastest. Quantas wants a harder edge on welfare vacations because they can see that the pavement apes already well have their fill of shoes and gangster rap cds about raping white women, and the state wants to expand its range of operations. There is nothing unusual about people paying tribute to the main mode of economy, which in this case always has been welfare. the guys with the guns wont stop 'capitalism,' they are prison wardens manning the watchtower whike you work. Also racial theories were not entirely incorrect.

You may not be interested in war, but Trotsky is, so you better be too. But today's Trotsky doesn't deploy, it's just part of his economics. As the Deployables and especially Deployed realize this then things will change and the acceleration will take an unexpected direction yet unknown. But war means the guys with guns run things. If you think these so called Generals have us....No...they lost us. Weak, Venal and easily cowed they should have avoided War.

You err greatly when you lump libertarians in as only focused on economics. Those that are focused strongly on economics are typically also focused strongly on culture (Lew Rockwell, Molyneux, Hoppe). Those that focus on culture tend to have mushy leftist economics at best (UBI, immigrants are good for the economy regardless of skill, etc.). The libertarians emphasizing economics simply don't speak much about culture because they understand once people are economically responsible for their actions, the culture fixes itself.

I meant "employee" as a general term for all persons working at a company including the senior managment. Any command chain has someone on top. And that person can and does maximize status. The example of your post is a CEO! Managment, especially senior managment is hard to control. The people at the top are usually allowed to maximize their own status against the interests of the company. Who could keep them from doing it? The general assembly of shareholders? If a CEO wants to virtue signal, no one can keep him from doing so.

Yeah, but these virtue-signaling CEOs aren't running their companies to the ground. Going full communist would give them plenty status points, yet they somehow keep themselves from signaling that particular sort of virtue. It follows that gender-denialism has grown very fast as a focal point for virtue signaling because it interferes (relatively) little with running a functional corporation.

Not culture. Politics.

Well, whether they are running their companies to the ground is debatable. Time will tell. You have written a lot about the benefits of virtue signaling, very little about the costs. I assume the signalling CEOs are aware of the costs. Being a well paid CEO of a profitable company also gives status. So he will try to get additional status points on top of that, but keep the status of a rather successful CEO (doesn't matter if that adversely affects the bottom line as long as the company desn't go bankrupt). Anything else would result in a lower total of status points. You know a lot of history. Haven't monarchs done the same thing? Signaling holiness while trying to keep the crown?

No, kings tend to believe themselves above such concerns. To the extent they virtue signaling is because they need to pander to their ministers to get things done.

Great post. I'd never thought of economics and politics as being opposites-yet-mutually-dependent, but when you put it that way, it makes sense.

For some reason, I can't figure out what this post is actually saying. Is it saying that businesses will do things that are not inherently profitable, but that are seen as virtuous? Is it saying that businesses have to go along with political trends? What is it saying? I'm Australian. Qantas is just one major company among many (over 50) that has announced support for gay marriage. At some level, it's similar to sponsoring a cricket match or using renewable energy. The only organized opposition to gay marriage is coming from churches, family-values lobby groups, and politicians hoping for the conservative vote. As you might expect, the media, the universities, and the pundit class are close to unanimous on the issue, and it is frequently emphasized that young people strongly support gay marriage rights. The one place where I see a kind of elite unease or uncertainty about success, is in connections being made, by the campaign against gay marriage, with promotion of gay marriage, gender fluidity, transgenderism, etc, in schools.

I’m saying that big business will support leftism, unlike many assume. The title is a reference to Lenin's quip : the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.

Emigration works in the rapidly eroding context of Pax Americana (farcical as that historical narrative is, it does describe a geopolitical epoch), but said erosion calls me to question the long term desirability of such an prospect. Russia or Eastern Europe are hot-beds of potential "kinetic," contact with the western empire. China sounds increasingly high on it's own supply of ultra-jingoistic chauvinism. It might very well be a rough road ahead for expats in the east.