site banner
ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35664 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

26
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Free market capitalism and identity

Today I spent some time reading about Georgia Meloni and watching some of her speeches, such as this one. She’s charismatic, but being a rootless global laissez-faire capitalist I am of course not thrilled; anyway, I’d like to offer my perspective on some of the issues raised in her speeches.

It is a natural state of affairs that the governments, by leveraging their capacity for violence, have an enormous power over their citizens and by extension on their businesses; all private organizations are by default subservient to the State.

"Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State" — Benito Mussolini

Diverting from such an arrangement is not trivial. Indeed, how do you stop the people who have, pretty much by definition, overwhelming firepower from using it to take your stuff? One way are the democratic institutions — things like the separation of powers, checks and balances, key positions being elected and therefore held at least somewhat accountable, and so on. All of that works to an extent, but these things are fragile and often not really sufficient.

The other pillar of limiting the power of the govts to control and loot private enterprise, is the competition between different countries. The states themselves can be seen as providers of a certain service — you pay the taxes, and in return get useful things like personal asset protection, arbitrage, infrastructure and so on. As such they are also subject to the market forces. If there are multiple independent offers, and you are free to choose any of them, then in fact you are likely to find a fair deal.

Therefore, in order for the free world to exist it must be possible to change your country at will. It’s easy to see that nationalism runs contrary to this goal. If you only ever can be accepted in one country, if you can only be permitted to run important businesses or organisations in the country of your birth; and doomed to be an irrelevant outsider in all others — well, then your government has you by the balls — you have no real negotiating position with the state.

This reasoning can be extrapolated to other kinds of identity Meloni mentions, to an extent, although of course the most important one of them by far is the national identity. But I disagree that the capitalist’s goal is to destroy identities. It is only necessary for them to be made interchangeable.

If anything capitalism served to amplify and increase the adoption of certain cultural elements, think the Italian cuisine or the Japanese animation. I know what you’re going to say — that it’s not real, it’s superficial, it’s commoditized and the real national identity is something else entirely. Well, it is. The real national idea, the one you’re left with when the music stops, is always to force you to surrender everything you have to the state and to go die in the trenches for no good reason, ostensibly as a sacrifice to your country. Perhaps it’s for the best if we abandon that.

Therefore, in order for the free world to exist it must be possible to change your country at will.

It is absolutely possible to change your country at will. There are very few that don't have any naturalization process and even they usually have some form of permanent residence permit.

Therefore, in order for the free world to exist it must be possible to change your country at will.

You've talked about exit rights, but what about entrance rights? That is, what happens if no nation wants a person? There are international agreements about not rendering people stateless, but I wonder how you would intend to handle that. Do you envision a global government that will grant stateless individuals some minimum rights or freedoms?

No man is free until he can unilaterally homestead his own O'Neil cylinder in the Oort cloud.

Home, home on Lagrange...

Where the space debris always collects

We posess, so it seems

Two of man's greatest dreams

Solar power, and zero-G sex....

But I disagree that the capitalist’s goal is to destroy identities.

Rightfully so the destruction of identities is a Marxist project.

To quote https://europeanconservative.com/reviews/the-great-awakening-vs-the-great-reset/

In 1960, Leo Strauss lectured on Marx at the University of Chicago. https://wslamp70.s3.amazonaws.com/leostrauss/s3fs-public/pdf/transcript/Marx-1960.pdf He stated the following argument. “If the division of labor is rooted ultimately in the bisexuality of man [i.e., our division into male and female sexes]…and the division of labor is to be overcome, let’s get rid of the bisexuality.” In other words, Strauss saw that the implication of Marxist egalitarianism was overcoming the sexual difference between man and woman as the source of the division of labor and therefore inequality. The class laughed at the preposterous notion. “Don’t laugh,” Strauss replied, “I mean, it is silly but it is a very serious problem… Marx’s position describes itself as humanism. How can there be a humanism if there is no relevant essential difference between men and brutes, and therefore if there is no relevant essence of man? No humanism without a fixed nature of man which may undergo any changes but which retains its identity within the change.”

Oh god, this entire comment chain is me driving to the darkest depths of despair.

If corporate capitalists, and academic Marxists managed to do a Le Epic Handshake to agree to rid our society of everything that makes us human, can we deplorable capitalists, Marxists, and everything between, agree to drive a stake through their heart, burn them to ash, and scatter them to the four winds, and only argue about whether they are more Marxist or more capitalist after we finish the job?

Yes and if you read "INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY AND ITS FUTURE" by the UNABOMBER you'll move to a cabin in the woods sending off bombs to Meta, Alphabet and Twitter.

But on a more serious note, no there is no Le Epic Handshake, but we have bad ideas that deny reality permeating our societal structures and we need to tell the truth more to combat them.

But on a more serious note, no there is no Le Epic Handshake, but we have bad ideas that deny reality permeating our societal structures and we need to tell the truth more to combat them.

The truth is impotent against the power of coordinated and enforced lies.

Yes and if you read "INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY AND ITS FUTURE" by the UNABOMBER you'll move to a cabin in the woods sending off bombs to Meta, Alphabet and Twitter.

Yes.... yeeeees...

But on a more serious note, no there is no Le Epic Handshake, but we have bad ideas that deny reality permeating our societal structures and we need to tell the truth more to combat them.

I disagree. We have a ton of bad ideas, right now, and historically.

It takes a Le Epic Handshake for the kind of enforcement of this particular set of bad ideas, that we see today.

It takes a Le Epic Handshake for the kind of enforcement of this particular set of bad ideas, that we see today.

I'm trying to stay true to my username and avoid the conspiracy theory and call it incompetence. The people perpetuating the ideas don't know the origin and the future of the ideas. So if there is an agreement one of the agreeing parties don't know what they agreed to.

Been there, done that. They don't even give t-shirts.

¿Por que no los dos?

Marx’s opinion on identity doesn’t exactly preclude capitalism from expressing the same. They are competing theories on the intersection of morality and resource allocation; identity only comes into it as a tool if at all.

The way eradication of identity has manifested itself in capitalism is through ESG. It inserts the neomarxist ideas in the profit maximization function. So true they don’t exclude each other, but the eradication of identity does not emerge from capitalist principles.

This is ... really confused, capitalism and capitalists has long had goals other than profit maximization, you can see that in the extensive philanthropy many do (whether explicitly left-wing or initially right-wing). the 'profit maximization function' has had ... components ... you'd call left wing long before 'ESG'. I mean, the civil rights act was decades before ESG, and that's also supposed to be neo-marxism, right?

Also, what on earth does ESG have to do with ... whatever an 'identity' is?

Also, how is 'marxism / leftism erases identity' meaningful at all? I could just as well say 'neo-marxism creates identities - gay, lesbian, black, oppressed, minority, disabled, feminist'. This is actually a common claim, remember "identity politics"?

I could just as well say 'neo-marxism creates identities - gay, lesbian, black, oppressed, minority, disabled, feminist'.

You could, and in the most technical sense it does, but those identities are not legit. Real OG sex/national identities, ethnic deeply cultural of the people identities are true identities. These new manufactured identities are only identities in the same sense a Stalker is a person.

ok. imagine i said the opposite. identity is the most important thing ever, but the real identities are black/gay/trans/woman and the fake ones are french/white/western. how would you argue against this?

Essentially, the term 'identity' has nothing to do with your actual objections. Being gay is an identity in the sense that it's ... something people do, some characteristics, etc. Similarly, being white also is. Each actually refers to many different things. What makes gay/trans bad and french/western good? That's the actual issue here.

I answered netstack and I might as well give you slightly different text. ESG is just a Trojan Horse, it is the vehicle that delivers good and bad ideas but it doesn't care about the ideas. So if a society is heading in a certain direction with laws or even opinions it tries to anticipate that in to making the highest possible profit.

So the comment earlier is that eradication of gender identity end goal Marxism as observed by Leo Strauss in 1960s. And if you look at the "gender studies" today with the likes of Judit Butler and others you find heavy influences by postmodern thinkers who most of them are Marxists thinkers. The specific example is that Butler was influenced by Althusser(a french marxist philosopher), but proving that to someone else would require me to read way more postmodern shit that I have the time or energy for. So I'm just going to assume that Leo Strauss did a good job of thinking the thought to its logical end and I'm taking the trail of crumbs to Butler/Althussers as circumstantial evidence that it was correct. Then you don't have to take my word for it. You can go and read it yourself and I'm ready to be disproved if you have the time and energy for it.

Also, how is 'marxism / leftism erases identity' meaningful at all? I could just as well say 'neo-marxism creates identities - gay, lesbian, black, oppressed, minority, disabled, feminist'. This is actually a common claim, remember "identity politics"?

That is a question that is pondered on New Discources podcast, James Lindsay did a commentary reading of 'An Essay on Liberation' by Marcuse that touched on the end game of it. I don't think I can do fairness to the argument in this comment.

I think you misunderstood my claim - if ESG is a trojan horse, it is trojan horse number twelve million, and the trojans are just the accepted and beloved leaders and owners of your city. The trojan horse is just the horse the king's messenger rides down to your city every three months to hand out edicts, it's not a secret. If the marxists have already - successfully - ""subverted"" you several hundred times (given lindsay's arguments, critical race theory is literally law! since 1964!) - you're not "fighting subversion", you've already lost, and need to stop getting mad at random, small demonstrations of that loss and ineffectively voting and posting about it and actually understand the loss

So the comment earlier is that eradication of gender identity end goal Marxism as observed by Leo Strauss in 1960s

I have no idea what this means, precise language really is useful. If you mean 'eradication of gender identity is the end goal of marxism' ... I'd expect it to be explicitly a stateless, classless society for the many - the poor and tired and beaten down given life anew, wants satisfied, labor used for the laborers, not the exploiters. While communists were generally 'progressive' on gender issues, to call that 'the end goal' of marxism is just wrong.

you're not "fighting subversion", you've already lost, and need to stop getting mad at random, small demonstrations of that loss and ineffectively voting and posting about it and actually understand the loss

I'm not mad. I post and discuss and throw in slightly provocative statements to increase my understanding of issues at hand. The thing that I really want to understand is that how the ideas from the current cultural center of the western world(US) is influencing and distorting the discussions in Sweden where I live. The Motte is the place to test ideas. Maybe I have a bad idea but I'm allowed to test it?

I have no idea what this means, precise language really is useful. If you mean 'eradication of gender identity is the end goal of marxism' ... I'd expect it to be explicitly a stateless, classless society for the many - the poor and tired and beaten down given life anew, wants satisfied, labor used for the laborers, not the exploiters. While communists were generally 'progressive' on gender issues, to call that 'the end goal' of marxism is just wrong.

How do you eradicate class to create classless society? What is class? How do we denote class? If you ever answer like the poststructuralist marxist jammed through that people denote their class through their identity then you eradicate class by allowing anyone becoming what identity they want to become any class they want, and class loses its meaning because identity lacks meaning if you can change it. It is the most succinct way I can put forward the argument.

Is ESG (neo)Marxist? I think that relies on a really wide definition, and that aping social movements for profit is a pretty generic capitalist method.

ESG is the vehicle which propagates ideas good or bad by having the externalities of those ideas go in decision making for corporations. One of those bad ideas is the eradication of gender identity. Much of the basis of ideas of eradication of gender is actual academic scholarship by the likes of Judit Butler influenced by postmodernist thinkers like Althusser who are all out Marxists, so Leo Strauss in the 1960s observed the logical end of the train of thought. Now I'm not about to read a bunch of Butlers shitty prose and read other postmodern thinkers to have definite proof that Leo Strauss was right, it has to be one of my articles of faith. And if you don't believe it, so be it!

Marxism believes that capitalism is a necessary prerequisite to full communism. In that sense, anything capitalism does to destroy tradition is something leftists should welcome with open arms and in fact rush to bring about, even if it means a temporary increase in inequality. Leftist collaboration with corporations is therefore not hypocritical at all.

This doesn't actually rebut the claim that ESG isn't 'neomarxist' - it just says that 'interacting with capitalists isn't anathema to leftism or marxism'

Therefore, in order for the free world to exist it must be possible to change your country at will. It’s easy to see that nationalism runs contrary to this goal. If you only ever can be accepted in one country, if you can only be permitted to run important businesses or organisations in the country of your birth; and doomed to be an irrelevant outsider in all others — well, then your government has you by the balls — you have no real negotiating position with the state.

Ok I guess I'll do my thing and ask the dumb question - how exactly do you have a free world when nobody is allowed to be a nationalist?

Of course you are allowed to be a nationalist, in fact I think you should be allowed to subscribe to any worldview, however wrong or extreme it might be. Freedom of speech and all that

It’s just that I won’t support you in doing so, and will back up people who work in opposition to these ideas.

Perhaps my self depreciating joke confused you, I apologise. I know I am not outlawed from being a nationalist now. I actually live on Earth too, if you can believe it. Trying again, you are saying you will back up people who work in opposition to the idea of freedom of speech and all that? For a free world?

In what way would your nationalist free utopia be free? You don't believe in freedom. You believe in suspending freedom to achieve and enforce your ideology, which is the long-winded way of saying you don't believe in freedom.

I think a less controversial way of saying this would be "exit rights are fundamental to any sort of free society", then going on to argue that nationalism and nativism in one country damages exit rights in all the others - leaving a crappy situation is great, but doesnt help if every scrap of land is occupied & no-one will let you immigrate an anything like fair terms.

I'd agree that Japanese animation is actually a part of Japanese culture (and if anything, popular culture gets ignored as "real" culture). I'd also say that Japanese animation gets watered down when it becomes less Japanese because it is sold internationally--editing it for global audiences, or outright making Japanese for global audiences in the first place. Or making things using overseas creators and overseas properties and pretending that it's Japanese animation.

But I disagree that the capitalist’s goal is to destroy identities. It is only necessary for them to be made interchangeable.

If the recent trans thing has shown anything, it's that turning identities into mere markers for self-expression that can be donned and doffed at will can functionally destroy them and the goods they provided.

There too, they first came to us with honeyed words about how this posed no threat and simply increased "freedom" for everyone. Turns out: you can't just endlessly extend "freedom" without costs. That is just a liberal fallacy.

My identity is not fully chosen, and that's partly what makes it powerful. That's what roots me. Why would I trust anyone who was a countryman today and not tomorrow, a family member today and a member of someone else's family tomorrow?

I mean, sincere religious conversion is one thing. But the market logic you're using basically presumes mercenary attitudes.

I know what you’re going to say — that it’s not real, it’s superficial, it’s commoditized and the real national identity is something else entirely. Well, it is. The real national idea, the one you’re left with when the music stops, is always to force you to surrender everything you have to the state and to go die in the trenches for no good reason, ostensibly as a sacrifice to your country. Perhaps it’s for the best if we abandon that.

And global capital's form of "identity" uproots everything stable and important to the human psyche in favor of endless consumption that is simultaneously diverse and homogenized (food court diversity I believe it's called - you can eat whatever you want but it's still shitty fast food).

All of the things that root people - to a history, to a culture, to a set of people you owe things to are dissolved in the name of turning you into an atomized (and thus unprotected) "individual. After which you are left to expect not your local community to protect you (since you left) nor even your state (which at least theoretically answers to you) but some collection of foreign nation states and, even more laughably, major corporations and the agents of global capital. They'll have your interests at heart!

It's not hard to come up with a harsh story about an ideology/position. I'm sure you feel that the above is an unjust framing of the costs and benefits of globalization.

Putting that aside: I think this entire conception of the nation is just based on a conflation between "nation", "country" and "nation-state" and presents a very narrow view of history. The concept of the nation is broader than a tool of fascists or whoever to feed you into a meat grinder.

For many places national identity is useful precisely as a form of resistance to overweening state power . This is obvious in colonial regions. Even "nations" without states use this; Quebec has won concessions due to the unity that they've managed to cobble together in the name of their "nation". Meanwhile French-Canadians elsewhere? Shit out of luck. Move to Quebec or assimilate.

For many places national identity is useful precisely as a form of resistance to overweening state power . This is obvious in colonial regions. Even "nations" without states use this; Quebec has won concessions due to the unity that they've managed to cobble together in the name of their "nation". Meanwhile French-Canadians elsewhere? Shit out of luck. Move to Quebec or assimilate.

You can also see this pattern in my native Belgium. When the Belgian revolution happened the Francophone elite envisioned a unitary monolangual French country. In the south they succeeded in exterminating the Walloon language, almost nobody speaks it today and I haven't heard of any serious movement to revive it. Here in the north the Flemish movement was largely succesful in fighting back against this, and we've managed to perserve our language and wrestle back certain political competences from the central state. Education for example is fully in the hands of the liguistic communities.

For many places national identity is useful precisely as a form of resistance to overweening state power . This is obvious in colonial regions. Even regional "nations" use this; Quebec has won concessions due to the unity that they've managed to cobble together in the name of their "nation".

Interesting point. What concessions?

Quebec gets special recognition as a distinct nation within Canada. While it probably doean't mean all that much in a strict legal manner, they tend to go their own in a lot of ways that other provinces don't. Quebec mamages their own Old Age Security plan seperate from CPP, they have their own tax collectors instead of letting CRA do it, Quebec practices civil code instead of common law at the Provincial level.

Quebec also gets privilidges such as extra Senators and nice carve outs from equilization schemes (power generation revenue not counting being a big one). Quebec also doesn't get shamed when it uses the Notwithstanding Act to compromise what are seen as core freedoms. The Official Languages Act bans English on signs in Quebec, an unconstitutional law that Quebec that Quebec maintaimed with the Notwithstanding clause amd the Federal Government turned a blind eye to. Alberta tried the same trick with an abortion ban but drew the ire of the Federal Government and was forced to back down.

Quebec also doesn't get shamed when it uses the Notwithstanding Act to compromise what are seen as core freedoms.

If anything criticizing Quebec for things that would easily be called racist if any anglophone province did it is hazardous for you because every major politician will throw you under the bus to avoid the Quebecois voting for a nationalist next election.

That poor anchor thought she was doing the right thing by standing up for minorities slamming white racists and probably thought she'd be celebrated. She didn't realize that some minorities matter more than others.

The biggest and most obvious one is the adoption of French as a national language and the requirement that it be taught in all Canadian schools. I don't think that would have flown back when Canada was still a British dominion.

Official countrywide bilingualism among other things.

You are following the free-market fallacy.

In the ideal world where the market of the ideas is completely free and inefficient, that would be a great idea; join the nation that you want to live in depending on what you believe.

But, as in academia and in the economy, real life is different; the result of demolition of nationalism and national belonging in the upper-middle class and intellighenzia had the effect of ensuring monopolism.

There are no tens or hundreds of states with different ideas, but an overbearing assimilation to a stronger ideology who does not tolerate deviation from the standard, and assimilate everything in her path.

We have a world under a Monopoly of ideas, not freedom.

Your thesis would be compelling if we ignore the natural tendency of the human to create conflict and to have a sense of belonging.

There are no tens or hundreds of states with different ideas, but an overbearing assimilation to a stronger ideology who does not tolerate deviation from the standard, and assimilate everything in her path.

Precisely why I am greatly distrustful of people who benefit from the cultural and military monopoly of the US/West arguing for their free trade/globalist policies on the grounds of "let a thousand flowers bloom".

I simply cannot reconcile takes for more integration unless I view them making the implicit assumption that the hegemon will be there to keep one hand on the steering wheel and impose ideological conformity.

Because it beggars belief that globalists in France or New York would actually want to live under the imported norms of Pakistan (people aren't just economic units, they bring their baggage with them). The most psychologically intuitive theory is that they actually don't expect to; they expect to impose their will not only on immigrants to their country but even to foreign countries with differing histories and institutions.

It’s easy to see that nationalism runs contrary to this goal. If you only ever can be accepted in one country, if you can only be permitted to run important businesses or organisations in the country of your birth; and doomed to be an irrelevant outsider in all others — well, then your government has you by the balls — you have no real negotiating position with the state.

I don't think the policies you mention are inherent to nationalism. What's to stop me from saying "it's simple, we just have a nationalist state without those specific dysfunctional policies"?

I don’t think Meloni is for America. America is (D)iffetent in its own way. And our identity is different than Italys identity. Italy has a traditional identity. A great people in their own right. Some of the interchangeable comes to America as the country with the identity of immigrant.

That being said America itself needs to have its community with their identity and not the overall what people like to call globo-homo. People do need their families. Their neighbors. Their community.

I don’t see any reason why nationalism and neoliberalism can’t coexists. The Italians can be Italians and trade with the French who are French or the Persians in Iran. And neoliberalism has its role that these places get along. And some places become like America as melting parts.

Neoliberalism shouldn’t mean that you don’t have your culture, your people, your god, your nation, your family. They can coexists.

Meloni is a special politician. She’s going to change the world. She’s everything people wanted from Trump when he was really just about owning the libs.

The World is a lost place right now. I’ve long thought the world was on the brink of a religious rebirth. And I was correct. GameStop religion was born. Bitcoin religion was born. Maga religion was born. Wokeism was born. People trying to cling to whatever cult or identity they can find. Searching for community.

I don’t see any reason why nationalism and neoliberalism can’t coexists. The Italians can be Italians and trade with the French who are French or the Persians in Iran. And neoliberalism has its role that these places get along. And some places become like America as melting parts.

And, in theory, the state can stay tiny and please libertarians. Doesn't seem to happen though.

An ideology that encourages limited government interference in the market (which cannot be separated from culture and life) + free movement of goods and peoples + seeing them as fungible inputs militates against nationalism

Look at the EU; a neoliberal and anti-national body. When Britain tried to push for more nationalism how did that go?

And, in theory, the state can stay tiny and please libertarians. Doesn't seem to happen though.

Because the libertarian ideal is an unstable equilibria, collective action is humanity's "killer app" and the moment more than two people, families, tribes, or what have you decide they're going to work together, the libertarians are doomed to be out competed.

Look at the EU; a neoliberal and anti-national body. When Britain tried to push for more nationalism how did that go?

Reasonably well for the British near as I can tell. Less well for the EU.

or raise tfr among natives

Its enough to start deporting "immigrants".

Assuming that this is cimrafa my estimate of Miloni's likelihood of success just went up a few percentage points.

Hey now, you're leaving out ISIS, Covid, Afghanistan, and Ukraine.

Look, you can delete your posts from reddit but you can't delete them from readers memories and I've been around long enough to remember numerous examples of you being "for the war before you opposed to it".

We'll see how this turns out, !remindme 4 years.

First off, I suppose I should thank you for taking the mask off, if only for a moment.

But having said that the obvious counter argument is having admitted that you feel no particular sense of loyalty and are only shopping around for who ever will give you the best price, and will ditch them in a heartbeat should a better deal come along, why should anyone give you that deal? Having effectively announced your intention to defect in the any subsequent prisoners dilemma, why would you expect anyone to cooperate with you? It seems to me that your fall into the same trap that pretty much all utopians from a progressive background seem to fall into. An inability or unwillingness to consider the possibility of multiple agents.

I kind of touched on this in my reply to @sliders1234 below, but if an identity can be changed at will it ceases to be meaningful as an identity. If an if an identity can be changed at will, what obligation does anyone else have to honor it? The answer of course is "none", because an contract that can be broken on a whim without consequence is no contract, and that's what this is really about. The Free-rider problem. You want to enjoy the privileges of membership in a tribe or nation without having to bear the associated responsibilities.

why should anyone give you that deal?

Why do companies employ people who could switch to another company? Why do they sometimes compete with that other company by making better offers? Because good employees (or citizens in this case) bring value to the company/nation.

If I am a citizen of France currently, I still have to bear the responsibilities (paying taxes, following laws etc) even if I have the option to easily become a German citizen next week. Then I have to keep up my German responsibilities.

I'm not entirely onboard with it as I think national pride and the like does have a function. But it isn't entirely crazy. It's basically an extension of the Archipelago Scott wrote about. Freedom of movement as a way to pressure governments to be the best government. Democracy of the feet so to speak.

Why do companies employ people who could switch to another company?

Just to be clear, Non-compete clauses do exist. Companies frequently take a stance on how a person can sell their labor after leaving, precisely to avoid that person jumping ship and directly helping a competitor. Of course, there is a larger body of law (the government's legal system) that enforces those clauses, so I suppose in the case of nations, the global legal system would allow nations to require that citizens not go and help another country which is economically competing with that nation.

Most workers aren't under no compete clauses though, that is reserved mostly for white collar knowledge jobs. It's not worth it for Forever 21 to have a no compete clause for their retail workers. And even if they did how would they ever know? And no competes are also often not legal depending on location. Right now if I had a no-compete clause for a job in PA, I could move to California and mostly ignore it entirely as California generally does not recognize no-compete clauses.

Sure. I'm just pointing out that it's not at all unheard of or uncommon for a company to try and get some exclusivity out of a worker.

You want to enjoy the privileges of membership in a tribe or nation without having to bear the associated responsibilities.

Whereas what the nation offers is all responsibility and privileges, if any, revokable upon the whim of the state. "Ask not what your country can do for you...."

Whereas what the nation offers is all responsibility and privileges.

Yes. We live in a society. That is what a society is.

  • -11

Don't fuck with my punctuation and represent it as a direct quote.

Are you saying that I misquoted you?

Are you saying that I misrepresented your meaning?

Go ahead clarify if you like.

Are you saying that I misquoted you?

Indeed you did. You cut my sentence in half and replaced the "," with a "."

Are you saying that I misrepresented your meaning?

Indeed you did. The gist of my meaning is the nation is offering responsibility without privileges (or limited and revokable ones).

Responsibilities and privileges are the same phenomenon, just in opposite directions. The meaning of your comment was unchanged.

Responsibilities and privileges are the same phenomenon, just in opposite directions.

Even if that were true -- and I do not believe it is -- the direction is important. Receiving a windfall and being robbed are, after all, the same phenomenon just in opposite directions.

More comments

Why should a Nation confer identity?

Think of it from an analogy of the corporate world. Some companies attract talent by paying them a lot of money. Some do it by fostering an identity; "We are all a family here". I think to very many people it's evident that the former is a more 'honest' portrayal of the transaction/relation than the latter. If anything it's a meme that companies that tout a "family environment" are to be avoided because they are probably shortchanging you in what you want mostly from them, money.

In the same vein, why shouldn't a nation be just a place you live in? If you look at immigration trends (revealed preferences), its not that people want to move to the countries that give them the strongest national identity, but the countries that give them the best place to live in. I'm pretty sure more people want to move to America than China.

Buying into any form of national loyalty means the nation can effectively have an easier time short changing you, they can send you to the trenches, they can loot you of your earnings and yada yada.

In short; Why shouldn't a market system apply when choosing a place to live? Why not have competition in this domain? I think putting national identity above how good it is to live in a nation is putting the cart before the horse. Is voting with your feet/money not that much more powerful than just voting?

Why should anything confer identity? Why shouldn't it.

Your whole argument boils down to "what's in it for me?" the obvious counter-argument is "what's in it for anyone?"

If anything it's a meme that companies that tout a "family environment" are to be avoided because they are probably shortchanging you in what you want mostly from them, money.

This is your position disguised as your opponents' position.

"Companies are not really like families" doesn't mean that families aren't real. It means that families that are as easy to change as changing your company, aren't real. And you're the one in favor of easy changes.

I don't see how its in contradiction to what I said. I am stating quite precisely that your nation should be easy to change. Because under that system Nations have an impetus to not shortchange their citizens (residents) too much.

Loyalty to a Nation is well and good if you actually like you Country. The founding fathers were loyal to America for the same reasons they were disloyal to England.

As an individual who wants to live a good life "fuck you I'm leaving" is much more appealing to me than "I'll stay here and fight with everything I have to make it better".

I can go fight and make somewhere else better. Respect should be bidirectional after all. Why be loyal to that who wrongs you? Would you be singing the same tune were you a part of a nation that hated you and your values?

I am stating quite precisely that your nation should be easy to change. Because under that system Nations have an impetus to not shortchange their citizens (residents) too much.

But your company is easy to change. And as you point out, when a company claims to be loyal like a family, it's trying to shortchange you.

This is directly contradictory to your point. You think that when it's easy to change, the citizens are not shortchanged, but your own company example is one where it's easy to change and the citizen-equivalents are shortchanged after all.

Sure its not a given that ease of leaving/entering is 100% correlated to how much X can get away with extracting B from Y. Or "shortchaging" B.

But I brought up that example to convey that when something that when A implicitly wants more from you than what you agreed to, A is probably giving you less of what you agreed to get from A.

As an individual who wants to live a good life "fuck you I'm leaving" is much more appealing to me than "I'll stay here and fight with everything I have to make it better".

This is simultaneously obviously true core of the dispute. Having said "fuck you I'm leaving" what consideration do the latter owe the former other than their enmity. Go away, we don't want you. We will not die in that man's company, that fears to die with us.

The latter doesn't owe the former anything.

Taxes were used in exchange or welfare/infrastructure/protection. Those are the concrete things that are being traded, anything else is abstract.

It might be a very useful narrative if the citizens of a nation do believe that they owe something more to a nation than what they already pay in taxes, some kind of loyalty. It might even be good for the individuals because it forces the group to stay around and improve things other than leaving.

But some countries are so far gone, and an individuals life is so short relative to institutional change that I can't in good faith suggest to anyone "just stay and make your country better bro".

If my friend laments to me that this country sucks, I won't tell him to stay around and potentially waste half of his life just voting and campaigning harder, I'd suggest him to leave to somewhere that better fits his values.

Much like marriages, some of them are better when fixed through perseverance and some of them are better when dissolved, I'm not going to ask a battered wife of a drunkard just to stay around and make the marriage better, I'll tell her to leave.

The latter doesn't owe the former anything.

Precisely, and so I ask you the same question I asked @hustlegrinder. If the only governing principle is "what's in it for me" and all you have to offer is the value of your stuff why shouldn't they just take your stuff?

Because that's something you can only get away with so many times before no more stuff is being made? I'm sure this is not the steelman of your question, but I think my answer to that is already embedded in my previous comment.

Answer me this? What option is better if a country truly royally sucks? Or what would you tell a friend who finds his country unbearable. Don't imagine he lives in the US, or Canada or Germany. Imagine he lives in cartel territory in Mexico.

My ideal allows those who love their countries and those who don't an option. Just because you have the option to leave doesn't mean you need to exercise it.

More comments

What do we define as "shortchanging"? Restrictions under the law? Or just feeling like you aren't respected?

Someone could make the cheap counterargument that any corporate actor could just leave a country that has strict and well-enforced laws around dumping and pollution.

In addition, one could also argue that we have seen what happens when countries are sorted across values (India/Pakistan, the Balkan nations). Who is to say that nations becoming Red-Tribe-istan and Blue-Tribe-istan is possible, or even good?

I'm aware of Scott's Archipelago, but I also suspect it might only work in a world that doesn't have any historical context/baggage associated with our real-life one.

Why should then the family system apply to families? Mothers only taking of their children, if someone pays them to. Likewise, children abandoning their parents in old age feeling no loyalty towards them or siblings treating eachother purely as fellow market participants.

If market is the provides superior outcomes, merely abolition of nation is insufficient to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number, any non-market system must end.

Because you are already in a transactional relationship with a modern state where you pay taxes. You pay taxes for legal system/infrastructure/protection/etc.

If the country wants something more from you, your loyalty, then they should give something equivalent to that in return, which they are incapable of giving. Unlike in a family where children are capable of returning what their parents gave them.

I genuinely can't think a country ever returning that favor minus maybe hostage situations in a foreign land where the hostages went voluntarily.

which they are incapable of giving. Unlike in a family where children are capable of returning what their parents gave them.

Even a cursory examination of the world outside our windows proves proves this statement false. Outside some absurd scenario such as a child sacrificing their lives to save both of their parents, no, the child is not capable of returning what their parents gave them because what they gave them was life itself.

You say the state is incapable of loyalty, and while in some abstract sense you might be right, every day we see agents of the state, soldiers, cops, firefighters, EMS, Et Al risking their necks for people they don't know. How do you reconcile this? Do you dismiss such people as "suckers", or you honestly believe think your tax dollars are worth the risk that a father of 3 might not live to see his kids graduate, get married, etc...? Do you believe that your tax dollars are worth more than somebody else's husband, wife, son, or daughter? I don't see how you couldn't given your previous statements. If on the other hand you don't would you allow that to stop you from calling 911 if your building was on fire?

In abstract-ideal-istan, the privileges are protection and institutions necessary to establish some independent private industry. The associated responsibilities are the taxes levied on profits made while doing so. It's not a prisoner's dilemma because the individual doesn't have the option to defect in any meaningful way.

Why would a country be willing to offer this deal? Because if they don't, someone else will, and everyone will go there.

Of course, in reality you can't reduce a country to merely a legal framework and a tax rate. There are durable illegible consequences to setting up a small business, such that emigration costs more than just lost tax dollars. And cultural dilution means there is a cost associated with immigration. If utopian progressives are ignoring something, I think it is these costs. "Dissolve all borders" passes game-theoretic and economic muster, but only if you can't see past the spreadsheet.

But having said that the obvious counter argument is having admitted that you feel no particular sense of loyalty and are only shopping around for who ever will give you the best price, and will ditch them in a heartbeat should a better deal come along, why should anyone give you that deal?

Why, for the same reason people give me all other kinds of deals; doing that brings them value.

I mentioned that I see my relationship with a country as a business transaction — I pay the taxes and follow the regulations — and in return the state allows me to operate on the territory it controls and provides a range of useful services. As an honorable businessman, I uphold my part of such a deal.

It’s also not true that I’d ditch them in a heartbeat. First, there is value in a good long-term relationship, and second, moving assets and processes is not without cost.

I mentioned that I see my relationship with a country as a business transaction

Yes, I got that, and this is where the whole game with multiple agents thing comes in. The argument that it's all just a business transaction is a double edged sword. If all you have to offer is the value of your stuff why shouldn't a country just take your stuff?

The argument that it's all just a business transaction is a double edged sword.

You thinking it’s not just a transaction makes it easier, not harder, for the state to take your stuff when the time comes, right as you’d stare at the process in disbelief, denial, hoping for the better and taking seriously the state’s shallow excuses for doing so. I’ve seen this happen many times. Sentimental feelings towards a country prevent people from cutting their losses early on.

If all you have to offer is the value of your stuff why shouldn't a country just take your stuff?

What I have to offer are the yearly taxes and the ongoing benefits of my participation in the economy, the value a country receives out of my residence in it extends far in the future.

Also most of the "stuff" we’re talking about consists of control over businesses and processes, that wouldn’t fare well after being seized.

What I have to offer are the yearly taxes and the ongoing benefits of my participation in the economy, the value a country receives out of my residence in it extends far in the future.

What if the ongoing benefits of of your participation in the economy, are less than the perceived costs? You say "value a country receives out of my residence in it extends far in the future" but how can that be if you leave? Why shouldn't the state take your stuff and kick you to the curb should the perceive it to be in their interests to do so? That is what you would do were you in the state's position, is it not?

That is what you would do were you in the state's position, is it not?

No, I don’t generally violate the NAP even if it’s profitable for me to do so — I am a principled man and I value these principles.

What if the ongoing benefits of of your participation in the economy, are less than the perceived costs? You say "value a country receives out of my residence in it extends far in the future" but how can that be if you leave?

First, it’s simply not the case, in a viscerally evident way — the state makes money on taxes and also my participation in the economy of a country means that something in it is getting done well — this is how I get my capital in the first place.

Second, I think you haven’t really understood my perspective of seeing this as fundamentally a business relationship. Suppose you are subscribed to Netflix. You pay them 10$ per month, and in return you can watch movies there. If Netflix feels they are providing you this service at a loss, they can raise the prices (let’s call them “taxes”). Then you are free to either accept these prices or to switch to a different provider.

Similarly if a state feels they spend more value on me than it gets back, well they can raise taxes and then I can decide whether or not to relocate my enterprise after that.

Ideally this all leads to a mutually beneficial arrangement where I provide value to the state, and the state provides value to me; indeed the state can provide valuable services — protection, arbitrage, infrastructure, and so on — I am not opposed to paying for them. It is only fair.

The difference is of course that the state, unlike Netflix, can use force to compel me to accept a deal that I wouldn’t have accepted on my own free will. Some things, like liberal institutions, make it harder, so I support them; some things, like proliferation of nationalism, make it easier, so I oppose them.

First, can you prove it? Many people believe themselves to be indispensable, few are.

Second, I think I might understand better than you do. Having actually spent some time as a mercenary I am well aware of the implications and downsides of that perspective/lifestyle. Lets be blunt, the NAP is a dodge. No one outside yourself is obligated to honor your principles, least of all the people paying you.

Like I said, viewing everything as a business transaction is a double edged sword.

You thinking it’s not just a transaction makes it easier, not harder, for the state to take your stuff

"Loyalty to nation" doesn't mean "loyalty to the current government". And nation isn't the only loyalty there, and it becomes harder for the government to take your stuff if it interferes with loyalty to someone else and that loyalty is recognized.

Also most of the "stuff" we’re talking about consists of control over businesses and processes, that wouldn’t fare well after being seized.

I don't even know how you'd compute "most" when comparing financial and non-financial stuff. How would you compare, for instance, teaching CRT in schools to taking $X in taxes, and how would you compare either one to taking $Y in taxes, but using the money for things most people object to?

I don't even know how you'd compute "most" when comparing financial and non-financial stuff. How would you compare, for instance, teaching CRT in schools to taking $X in taxes, and how would you compare either one to taking $Y in taxes, but using the money for things most people object to?

Well imagine if someone paid you one billion dollars, on a condition that your children have to listen to let’s say a course of ten 1-hour CRT lectures in school. Would you agree to it?

If yes, then there is in fact a value of $X that compares to teaching CRT in schools, and it is somewhere between zero and one billion.

It may be hard to estimate precisely, so in real life you should just go with what your intuition tells you is a better option.

I could give approximate answers like you suggest, but these answers would have large error bars on them, and because diminishing marginal utility applies differently to money and to non-monetary costs, it wouldn't be possible to add up the monetary values anyway, making them useless for comparison.

If all you have to offer is the value of your stuff why shouldn't a country just take your stuff?

Because if a country does that, people will predictably stop producing stuff for the country to take, and also will leave the country if they can.

Unless you mean "some of your stuff, but not enough that you're strongly incentivized to leave or stop producing stuff", in which case they're called "taxes".

But they aren't taking "people's" stuff, they are taking your stuff specifically. You the defector is getting your stuff taken, the cooperators keep their stuff.

How is the government in question distinguishing "cooperators" from "defectors" here, such that they are specifically taking the stuff of "defectors"?

If "defector" is a broad enough category, it might still be better to take only some of their stuff rather than all of it, even from the perspective of a government that only cares about obtaining resources for itself.

First they came for the defectors? This is fine.

If your state ever gets to the point where people are so desperate to leave that the government starts going to extremes to discourage it, it's time to leave anyway, while the penalty is merely robbery, before the next "Antifaschistischer Schutzwall" goes up. "You're worthless and so I want to make it hard for you to leave me" is a self-contradictory claim. It's only a popular claim because the first part is a too-often-effective lie that abusive relationship partners use as a control tactic. But even when the best time to escape escalating abuse has already passed, the second-best time is "as soon as possible".

going to extremes

Better revision of the article, before the COVID19 section got blanked.

Edit: Don't know why that link didn't work, hopefully this one will.

Strangely, that links to something unrelated.

Your link does not mention COVID.

The point is not so about you defecting against the state, but rather about preventing the state from defecting against you.

but rather about preventing the state from defecting against you.

"defecting" implies a relationship not in evidence. If you don't owe any loyalty to the state what makes you think the state should show any loyalty towards you?

The state never did. Arguably it can't by definition. Specific people may be inclined to have loyalty, but the pressures to get into power don't favor those people.

Indeed, how do you stop the people who have, pretty much by definition, overwhelming firepower from using it to take your stuff? One way are the democratic institutions — things like the separation of powers, checks and balances, key positions being elected and therefore held at least somewhat accountable, and so on. All of that works to an extent, but these things are fragile and often not really sufficient.

every leadership, regime that has severely impugned on this right has failed or collapsed, so there is that. There is a balance.

Therefore, in order for the free world to exist it must be possible to change your country at will. It’s easy to see that nationalism runs contrary to this goal. If you only ever can be accepted in one country, if you can only be permitted to run important businesses or organisations in the country of your birth; and doomed to be an irrelevant outsider in all others — well, then your government has you by the balls — you have no real negotiating position with the state.

Not really. nationalism does not imply you cannot pick your stuff up and move elsewhere and even be accepted in your new country (like how Russian Jews assimilated well in the US)

every leadership, regime that has severely impugned on this right has failed or collapsed, so there is that. There is a balance.

The Soviet Union certainly did not respect people's right to property, including their own labor. But it did not collapse because of that. There are methods of governance that are correlated with disrespecting this right - no rule of law, military power as a domestic political force, and others. It's more likely that those others are why the nation collapses.

The Soviet Union certainly did not respect people's right to property, including their own labor. But it did not collapse because of that.

Of course it collapsed because of that.

Not respecting property caused the economy to tank. And that made it collapse.

What's your proof?

You're asking for proof for something that's really well known.

(And I can't help but wonder, if you really don't believe it, what you think caused the collapse of the Soviet Union instead. Or if you think nobody knows why it collapsed at all.)

Put simply, I think the Soviet Union failed for a variety of reasons, but one of the biggest, if not the primary reason, is that it ran on a command economy and the Soviet planners were certainly not smart enough to plan well enough. But consider the following from Scott:

Kantorovich was another Russian mathematician. He was studying linear optmization problems when he realized one of his results had important implications for running planned economies. He wrote the government a nice letter telling them that they were doing the economy all wrong and he could show them how to do it better.

Suppose Kantorovich was right and the USSR followed his equations. In that world, they've solved the economic problems while still not respecting the idea of property. What are we to say in that case?

If the argument being made is actually "regimes that historically didn't respect property rights also tend to have other problems which lead to their collapse", then I would tentatively agree. But the phrasing of "regimes that don't respect property collapse" implies that it is because they didn't respect property that they collapsed.

"Running on a command economy" is a subset of "didn't respect property".

You're ignoring the hypothetical I posed. If the Soviets had solved the economic planning problem but retained the resolve and ability to disrespect property, then their economy would not have tanked. Between "incapable of efficient allocation of resources" and "taking people's stuff without consent", I think it makes much more sense to attribute their failure to the first, not the second.

More comments

Not directly, though. The Soviet central planners made worse decisions for the use of other people’s property than those people would have made for the use of their own property, so the economy hit limits to growth prematurely.

every leadership, regime that has severely impugned on this right has failed or collapsed, so there is that. There is a balance.

That’s correct, but it’s of little comfort to you personally, if you have no plausible option to walk away from it — which is exactly my point

Not really. nationalism does not imply you cannot pick your stuff up and move elsewhere and even be accepted in your new country (like how Russian Jews assimilated well in the US)

US is not an ethnostate, and ethnonationalism is a different thing compared to the US nationalism — in this post I’m arguing mostly against the former.

Then again, nationalism of any sort is antithetical to the paradigm of shopping for countries that offer the best terms for you and your businesses.

if you have no plausible option to walk away from it — which is exactly my point

That is only assessment of your worth given by the other countries.

There's a third pillar of Sovereign accountability, and that's intra-national political competition. The nationalist conception of the high and the low versus the middle paints a more historical picture of balance of power than Enlightenment morality and constitutionalism:

The “Jouvenelian model” Bond is referring to, and which his book is opposing to the liberal model, starts from the assumption that “there is in every society a centre of control” (24). What Bond aims to show in his book is that political reality is generated by the struggle of final power centers against intermediate power centers which interfere with the governing imperatives as determined by the final center. Familiar examples would be a medieval king contending with the nobility as he attempts to levy taxes to prosecute a war or some other project; or mid-20th century attempts on the part of America’s federal government to assimilate the recalcitrant Southern states into a fully modern, liberal order...

... all the concepts of liberalism—“equality,” “sovereignty,” the “individual,” “human rights,” and so on—are produced, not by moral advances, theoretical or philosophical inquiries, or “bottom-up” revolts of the oppressed, but, rather, by powerful actors within or close to the heights of state power levying powerless groups against institutions such as the Church, the aristocracy, the paternal authority of the family and, more recently, institutions maintaining law and order, education, business, dependent states, and more

In other words, the rhetoric of Free Market Capitalism, anti-nationalism, and anti-racism, are not some morla enlightenment brought about by Progress. They are the managerial tact of American empire. The move to strike nationalist sentiment is not moral enlightenment reached by individuals freely entering a social contract. It's a political strategy being employed by power actors.

Separate question, but:

What’s going on with that website?

It’s an online journal affiliated with UCLA. There’s an apparent interest in, or at least tolerance for, “other contemporary writers thinking outside of liberal terms.” This particular article was determined to parrot various reactionary talking points. I sampled a few previous issues, most of which were less strident (though it was interesting seeing the phrase “sexual market” in 2012). Each and every article I checked cited one or more works by Eric Gans, the editor.

A brief trawl of Wikipedia suggests that Anthropoetics seems to be the vehicle for “generative anthropology,” the editor’s pet field of postmodernism. The specifics of this theory blur the lines between historical speculation and Christian apologetics. I find it challenging to tell where the rhetorical flourishes end and the actual arguments begin.

Academia truly is a foreign country.

I used to come across Gans (and people quoting him) a fair bit back when I was still regularly arguing with atheists on the internet. He's an odd duck who just goes to show that you can in fact be a conservative in academia so long as you are an atheist and a post modernist, who endorses critical theory, and consistently votes for democrats. Of course for those outside academia the question arises of whether someone who ticks all those boxes is really "conservative" in any meaningful sense.

Accountability via internecine conflict strikes me as historically accurate but inherently unstable. If defecting is the corrective mechanism, such a society is going to find itself in a defect-defect equilibrium. Presumably, at that point, the other two pillars of accountability come in and clean up. That’s cold comfort.

The second issue is removal of this pillar. There’s no guarantee that a cohesive opposition forms to a “final” power center. Modern China is perhaps a good example. Xi certainly gets things done; one wonders how accountable or constrained he actually is.

Democracy has enjoyed a competitive advantage over the last few centuries because it makes an attempt to address both of these concerns. Voting out the government is a coop-coop resolution to a given dilemma and imposes fewer costs than the defect-defect option. And substituting “consent of the governed” for “consent of the nobles” changes the dynamics of the alternate power centers.

Democracy has enjoyed a competitive advantage over the last few centuries because it makes an attempt to address both of these concerns.

That's the key insight. That liberalism has had a competitive advantage in the centralization of power is the reason it is dominant. Not because of flimsy moral premises, like the notion that the individual precedes the web of social obligations, or that there are inalienable "human rights." Those notions and self-justifications are themselves byproducts of these power struggles; such as the colonial subsidiary struggle against the former centers of Power.

We can move from a Whig view of history, from the view of Liberalism as an emergent moral enlightenment in which primordial truths were discovered, to a post-liberal model which recognizes that liberalism was an innovation in the centralization and organization of power.

Understanding liberal ideology as a set of competitive advantages is fundamentally different than understanding it as a moral Enlightenment. It's true that those are not mutually exclusive, but with this model the former is all that matters. Liberal moral presuppositions, like individual will preceding social order, are flimsy and ahistorical.

Amazing every word of what you just said is wrong.

  • -19

You should probably explain why instead of just quipping your way out of addressing James Burnham and contemporary elite theory at large.

Well the short answer is I'm not a Marxist and that I believe that the whole field of "generative anthropology" is for all intents and purposes bunk. The desire to reduce the entire span of human behavior to originating scene governed by a simple equation is at best futile, and at worst misguided if not outright evil. In practice it's mostly just intellectual types going on about how a certain quirk of some language proves some Marxist talking point.

Accordingly I put about as much stock in it as I do dialectical materialism and its practitioners, or I would a joint lecture from Bill Clinton and Harvey Weinstein about the importance of fighting "rape culture".

The long answer is probably a 10,000 word post in itself.

This is a bunch of nonsense. Pragmatic political science making falsifiable predictions has nothing to do with the origin of the word. And insofar as it does all of the scholarship of the humanities including history, economics and psychology are subject to your criticism.

The long answer is probably a 10,000 word post in itself.

I mean it is, but given you're proposing to throw out every analysis of power relationships since Machiavelli in the same bin as Marxism on the grounds that the object is just too complicated and irreducible you're going to have to make a more convincing argument than saying De Jouvenel is self serving, even as his analysis destroys much of the liberal assumptions he ostensibly holds dear.

I find it weird to accuse a school of thought that includes people with such dissimilar political views as Pareto, Mosca and Schmitt of being mere ideological vehicle. Surely if we take your analogy, that would amount to holding a lecture that included both Harvey Weinstein, Valerie Solanas and the Pope.

And what then would the lecture be about that they'd agree on if not the structure of relationships between the sexes in a purely descriptive sense.

No what it sounds like to me is that you'd really like to believe in your own particular idealism and that shattering it into object level power politics must be defended against for reasons that are beyond rationality.

You seem to be conflating the specific belief in generative anthropology with faith in the wider fields of anthropology and social science.

Granted, this is a conflation that the advocates of generative anthropology encourage, but I see no contradiction in believing that Machiavelli and Pareto have important things to teach us while simultaneously condemning post-modernism and believing that Eric Gans is full of shit.

Explain how elite theory is generative anthropology then? You haven't explained that and yet you seem to be dismissing Burnham on those grounds.

Okay, I want to see that post. Flipping through the GA Wikipedia and a couple articles was surreal. It really raises some questions about the commonly asserted leftist monopoly on academia.

The desire to reduce the entire span of human behavior to originating scene governed by a simple equation is at best futile

Liberalism isn't guilty of this? Liberalism presupposes an ahistorical "state of nature" from which individuals consented to Social Order in order to protect their rights that are said to come from God.

The alternative view is that the social order precedes the individual, and that individual consciousness is and always has been inherited from the social order, and that rights are a consequence of the social order rather than a moral justification for its existence. That strikes me as much less hand-waving than the former story.

It also doesn't restrict these power conflicts to material conditions. Things like identity and race matter as much and often weigh more than material conditions. Liberalism is closer to Marxism in its emphasis on material conditions and de-emphasis of identity and race in comparison to nationalism.

Liberalism isn't guilty of this?

Perhaps you ought to clarify what you mean by "Liberalism" in this context, because at first glance I'd say the answer is "no". Further more I'd point out disagreement on the historicity and precise nature of "the state of nature", along with everything that implies, is at the core of the divide between the classical right and the classical left along with it's various successor ideologies (Marxism, Progressivism, Post-Modernism, Et Al).

I have long since learned, as a measure of elementary hygiene, to be on guard when anyone quotes The Last Jedi.

What makes you think I'm quoting Mark Hamill and not Humphrey Bogart?

Edit: To be fair, I know that I'm in the minority here in terms of age, and I know where the immediate association with that line lies.

Touché!

EDIT: But that makes your comeback all the better!

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats