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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   34085 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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Galt's Gulch in the novel required violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It's not physically possible. And anyway state capacity is too great for it even ignoring the physical impossibilities.

You can't seriously be arguing that state capacity is increasing at the moment.

Why not? State capacity is absolutely enormous at the moment, and it's certainly not getting smaller. Yes, a lot of people are getting away with a lot of crimes, but that's only because those in charge see no advantage to turning the state on them. A Galt's Gulch would disappear faster than you could say "David Koresh".

I'm just going to point at that infamous case of the San Francisco bridge where the suicide nets cost more than the bridge itself. You can't be arguing that state capacity is high when great projects, even ones the elite actually wants are no longer even possible. They really want to produce artillery shells right about now and are completely failing to do so.

Your next move is probably to argue that corruption and embezzlement is what the elite's revealed preference, but that's stretching the concept of state capacity to its limits.

Ask yourself really, if tomorrow China entered a total war with the US, could the elites turn the civilization they have corrupted and enshittified to the max back into a winning industrial powerhouse in a reasonable amount of time? That's what state capacity would be, and I don't think they have what it takes to even convince people to fight that war.

The corrupt bureaucrats in the Ayn Rand novel were an example of low state capacity, not high. That we are closer to them is not a mark of the power of the State, but of its weakness. Joe Biden is not FDR.

They really want to produce artillery shells right about now and are completely failing to do so.

If I do not see tangible and obvious negative consequences that elites suffer due to failing to produce artillery shells, I'd assume it's not "they really want to and are failing", I'd assume "they don't need to and thus don't want to".

I do not think the elite care much about the cost of suicide nets or whether artillery shells for some second-world war are produced.

The corrupt bureaucrats in the Ayn Rand novel were an example of low state capacity, not high.

Yes. But in our world the US has high state capacity. If you build a ghost gun, the state's panopticon finds you and prosecutes you. Something like Galt's Gulch could never be hidden for long, and when it was found it would easily be destroyed.

Why not? Or perhaps just holding steady? Or, at the very least, if decreasing, then decreasing very slowly, even as the "capacities" of private individuals are also shrinking, perhaps even faster.

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