aww, poor baby, he didn’t consider the risk of incentives around an avaricious power-hungry narcissist! whoops! what an utterly embarrassing and predictable mistake to make
As a prominent intellectual voice criticizing the current administration, our boy Curtis should really be grateful that they don’t hew more closely to his preferred fascist project, as if they did they would have the incentive to be just as if not more brutal in stomping out “credible” independent opposition from the right as from existing liberal institutions. After all the fascist project relies on subverting existing institutions that are too tied up in their own bureaucracy and politicking to effectively oppose them, while the whole point Yarvin has made across his whole career is that the fascists have no such impediment or incentive for restraint. The Night of the Long Knives predated Kristallnacht by more than 4 years, after all.
if I were to make any predictive guesses about this at all (and I know the possible folly herein): probably the biggest issue with this is that he’ll try use it as a beacon for others (thiel? thiel-shaped people) to put effort behind “correcting the path”
and there’s enough ghouls invested in this to try that a not-insignificant amount
“what if my CEO god-king decides not to follow my plan” is a thesis even the worst startup founders have muddled through and I find it repeatedly funny as fuck that this mediocre monster of a man is hitting it
maybe it’s indicative of other things? maybe he believed so hard in the plan that he misjudged felon’s ability? maybe felon just conned him easily? extremely possible on multiple fronts, and still just as funny
imagine how fucking frustrated the little shitgoblin must be. it makes my angry heart flutter!
I actually think it’s part-and-parcel of Yarvin’s personality. As much as he rails against “the Cathedral,” PMCs, whatever, he himself is a perfect example of a pathological middle manager. Somebody who wants power without having to shoulder ultimate responsibility. He craves the childishly simplified social environment of a medieval-fantasy king’s court, but he doesn’t want to be the king himself. He wants to be (and has been, up until now) the scheming vizier who can run his manipulation games in the background, deciding who gets in front of the king but not having to take the heat if the king makes a bad decision. (And the “kings” he works for have made plenty of bad decisions, but consequences have only just begun to catch up.)
I suspect this newfound mainstream attention is far more uncomfortable than it is validating for him. Perhaps the NYT profile was a burst of exhilaration, but the shine has worn off quickly. This correlates with the story last year about him coming back to Urbit as a “wartime CEO.” If Urbit is so damn important for building his ridiculous vision, why wasn’t he running it the whole time? He doesn’t actually want to be CEO of anything. Power without responsibility.
It’s weird how you can always find autocracy supporters in every era despite the overwhelmingly strong and incredibly obvious counterargument “what if the autocrat wants to do something you don’t like”
I’m reminded of an old essay from Siskind that tried to break down the different approaches to disagreement as either “conflict theory” - different people want different, mutually incompatible things - and “mistake theory” where we all want the same basic thing but disagree about how to get it. Given the general silicon valley milieu’s (and YudRat’s specifically) affinity for “mistake theory” I think the susceptibility to authoritarianism and fascism fits remarkably well. After all, if we all want the same basic thing the only way the autocrat could do something we don’t like is if they were wrong, so we just have to get a reasonable enough autocrat and give them absolute power, at which point they can magically solve all problems. See also the singularity God AI nonsense.
If I had my wish, it would be that this doesn’t just remind people of how authoritarians can be/are evil or incompetent, but also that the general structure isn’t actually more “efficient” because whatever delays the democratic process introduces are dwarfed by the inevitable difficulties of just trying to do anything at the scale of any modern state, much less the sheer scale of the USA.
aww, poor baby, he didn’t consider the risk of incentives around an avaricious power-hungry narcissist! whoops! what an utterly embarrassing and predictable mistake to make
(get fucked moldbug)
As a prominent intellectual voice criticizing the current administration, our boy Curtis should really be grateful that they don’t hew more closely to his preferred fascist project, as if they did they would have the incentive to be just as if not more brutal in stomping out “credible” independent opposition from the right as from existing liberal institutions. After all the fascist project relies on subverting existing institutions that are too tied up in their own bureaucracy and politicking to effectively oppose them, while the whole point Yarvin has made across his whole career is that the fascists have no such impediment or incentive for restraint. The Night of the Long Knives predated Kristallnacht by more than 4 years, after all.
if I were to make any predictive guesses about this at all (and I know the possible folly herein): probably the biggest issue with this is that he’ll try use it as a beacon for others (thiel? thiel-shaped people) to put effort behind “correcting the path”
and there’s enough ghouls invested in this to try that a not-insignificant amount
He will never stop to reflect that his “philosophy,” such as it is, is explicitly tailored for avaricious power-hungry narcissists, soooooo
“what if my CEO god-king decides not to follow my plan” is a thesis even the worst startup founders have muddled through and I find it repeatedly funny as fuck that this mediocre monster of a man is hitting it
maybe it’s indicative of other things? maybe he believed so hard in the plan that he misjudged felon’s ability? maybe felon just conned him easily? extremely possible on multiple fronts, and still just as funny
imagine how fucking frustrated the little shitgoblin must be. it makes my angry heart flutter!
I actually think it’s part-and-parcel of Yarvin’s personality. As much as he rails against “the Cathedral,” PMCs, whatever, he himself is a perfect example of a pathological middle manager. Somebody who wants power without having to shoulder ultimate responsibility. He craves the childishly simplified social environment of a medieval-fantasy king’s court, but he doesn’t want to be the king himself. He wants to be (and has been, up until now) the scheming vizier who can run his manipulation games in the background, deciding who gets in front of the king but not having to take the heat if the king makes a bad decision. (And the “kings” he works for have made plenty of bad decisions, but consequences have only just begun to catch up.)
I suspect this newfound mainstream attention is far more uncomfortable than it is validating for him. Perhaps the NYT profile was a burst of exhilaration, but the shine has worn off quickly. This correlates with the story last year about him coming back to Urbit as a “wartime CEO.” If Urbit is so damn important for building his ridiculous vision, why wasn’t he running it the whole time? He doesn’t actually want to be CEO of anything. Power without responsibility.
It’s weird how you can always find autocracy supporters in every era despite the overwhelmingly strong and incredibly obvious counterargument “what if the autocrat wants to do something you don’t like”
I’m reminded of an old essay from Siskind that tried to break down the different approaches to disagreement as either “conflict theory” - different people want different, mutually incompatible things - and “mistake theory” where we all want the same basic thing but disagree about how to get it. Given the general silicon valley milieu’s (and YudRat’s specifically) affinity for “mistake theory” I think the susceptibility to authoritarianism and fascism fits remarkably well. After all, if we all want the same basic thing the only way the autocrat could do something we don’t like is if they were wrong, so we just have to get a reasonable enough autocrat and give them absolute power, at which point they can magically solve all problems. See also the singularity God AI nonsense.
If I had my wish, it would be that this doesn’t just remind people of how authoritarians can be/are evil or incompetent, but also that the general structure isn’t actually more “efficient” because whatever delays the democratic process introduces are dwarfed by the inevitable difficulties of just trying to do anything at the scale of any modern state, much less the sheer scale of the USA.