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When I first read about neoreaction, I thought it was really interesting that Bay Area computer scientists were getting into monarchism and treating it seriously. Then I read more deeply into it, and realized it was this bizarre monarchical system where kingdoms compete like corporations under a CEO and the fittest survive, like somehow social darwinism but worse, a capitalist abomination of monarchism. They make no reference to the actual historical reasons people support(ed) monarchies, like divine right of kings, providing a social ideal, which are just cooler and more passionate reasons someone might like monarchism. As it stands the neoreaction people offer nothing to the heart, belying its engineering origins. I regard it as what happens when libertarians who read Hacker News and Ayn Rand stop believing in liberty.
With respect to our rationalist posters, I think of the broader rationalist sphere as a bunch of very crazy people, most of whom have bad ideas that rarely diverge from their social mileu. People will disagree with me on this, but Scott is the singular exception, and the only one I respect: he seems like a basically normal, if very intelligent, guy who got caught up with the wrong kinda smart people and let them rot his prodigious knack for observation and empathy.
Awesome fiction tho
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No, it's more that they stop believing in the ability of democracy to deliver liberty. The whole point of competitive government is that exit is a better guarantee of liberty than voice.
Sure- what does liberty mean? This question quite literally isn’t rhetorical.
In this context, the unmolested enjoyment of one's Natural Rights. In particular Private Property. In particular of oneself.
The observation that monarchy can better secure such things than democracy isn't even a novelty, it dates back to Aristostle and it's the foundational belief of one of the major currents of the enlightenment. What history would come to call "the right wing" because of where they sat.
You can read Bastiat and Jefferson make very similar points to Hoppe. The characterization of that skepticism of both democracy and equality as a newfangled libertarian affabulation is without merit. It's been in a constant battle with republicanism in the hearts of people who love freedom forever.
I find it odd to claim that one's right over oneself is private property. Does that mean that you can sell the right (or have it confiscated to pay a debt)?
No. This is what it means to say that it is inalienable.
You can read Locke if you want the full extant of the argument, but natural rights being derived from self ownership is the classical Liberal position.
Some people believe in such rights being transferrable (to the State, typically), but they are on the "left wing" of the Enlightenment.
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Back in the late 00s and early 10s there was a professor who lived in Santa Clara and would throw some of the most interesting house parties in the bay area
These house parties were arguably some of the earliest in-person rationalist meet-ups, but because this professor was a gregarious outgoing sort with eclectic interests as well a man of import in the the West Coast SCA and BJJ communities, the crowd at these parties tended to be wildly diverse.
As a result early LessWrong had a lot of weird overlaps, Navy SEALs, Catholic Priests, UFC fighters, and Rocket Scientists all sharing a space, talking to (and occasionally getting high with) Silicon Valley billionaires, work-a-day code monkeys, and activitist college kids.
That was the environment in which rationalism got its start, but as rationalism became increasingly exclusive, trans, poly, and frankly "culty", and those with more diverse views relative to the bay-area activist set who formed the core clique quietly cut ties, and either returned to or started thier own groups resulting in "evaporative cooling" of the rationalist sphere and increasingly cult-like dynamics.
CFAR and Ziz are names that i haven't thought about in 10+ years and it feels odd to think that i used to know some these people, and simultaneously gratifying and tragic to have old intuitions confirmed.
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