[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: ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-08 23:01 UTC)