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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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Tyrannies are problematic because the quality of them depends massively on the quality of the individual person ruling them.

Tyrannies are problematic because there's rarely a good plan for what comes next. Once a tyranny ends (i.e. tyrant dies) there is chaos or more tyranny. The purpose of the liberal order is to try and preserve some semblance of continuity through time culturally and politically, too smooth the road, so to speak.

The weirdness we have now is because people want all of the power and none of the responsibility. If anything, there might be a valid argument to bring back landed gentry and give people a free pass to move to whichever fief suits them best.

Agree. Another belief that is simply accepted by most people is that universal suffrage is 100% right and good. Try arguing the opposite! I agree that landed families probably ought to have more of a say than renters or welfare people, but of course I think that...I own property. How we would manage giving some people more than others based on some type of meritocratic system is kind of the base level problem. The simple solution is 'might makes right,' but 2k+ years of human society have brought us to a point where most people globally think there's something wrong with that formulation, largely that the mighty (not the same a noble, merely those with power) shit all over the weak. So we have an ideal--a liberal ideal-- that we give everyone the same amount of liberty, or whatever, and here we are...the mighty shitting all over the weak, again.

The Yarvin solution, as I understand it, is to stop pretending that liberalism exists and embrace the power of the strong and attempt to wield it...somehow. My main disagreement is that it just gets right back to the starting point where it's a coin flip if the monarchs will curb-stomp you or not and there's no exit, just monarchs/tyrants/oligarchs all the way down.