Ascending The Tower – Episode IX – “Learning to Think Well”
Written by Nick B. Steves and Anthony DeMarco Posted in Ascending the Tower
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
This week, we’re joined by Warg Franklin and Anton Silensky for a discussion on Donald Trump, the teleology of action, and the antiversity.
Brought to you by Anthony DeMarco and Nick B. Steves, Ascending the Tower is a podcast distributed by Social Matter and represents the latest project of the Hestia Society. Please leave feedback in the comments, and if you’d like to get in touch with Anthony DeMarco, you can find him at: survivingbabel@gmail.com
Produced in part with the support of JerseyGuy, Reactionary Tree, and Crab Aesthetics.
Notes:
2:21 – Can’t Stump the Trump!
10:51 – Could Trump consolidate executive power?
23:36 – A “culture first” approach does not work
32:00 – The teleology of action independent of sentiment
42:36 – Leftist Power Words that suppress real social science
51:40 – The Antiversity: dedicated to the production of Truth
1:05:43 – Observation as basis for Antiversity social science
1:17:57 – The stunning power of real social science
1:26:06 – Profiting from Truth and overcoming the problem of scale
1:45:28 – Out of Left Field question
Related Show Links:
Music:
Opening – “Memories” by Silence Kingdom (excerpt)
https://www.jamendo.com/en/track/365055/memories
Closing – “Summertime” by Al J
https://www.jamendo.com/en/track/554758/summertime
Trump’s Immigration Troll
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform
Pregnancy is the new shooting yourself in the foot
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2560032/The-maternity-military-How-nearly-100-female-soldiers-sent-home-Afghan-frontline-getting-pregnant.html
Moldbug’s first Antiversity post
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/10/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified.html
Overview of Aristotle and constitutions
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-politics/
Distance from Harvard
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/distance-from-harvard/
Global Existential Risk (lots of possibilities!)
http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html
Picture of the New Balance Royal Caribbean
http://bit.ly/1Vt3lDE
Ascending the Tower
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The weak unwilling rulers like Nicholas II of Russia or great, but unwilling rulers like Pedro II of Brazil are the things that convinced me to prefer SovCorp over Monarchy (by generalization it applies to any craft, not just statecraft – for example, in some old family of bakers there’s bound to appear someone who will not be a good baker, or who will dislike baking). SovCorp being an elective monarchy solves the problem succession that plagued many a monarchy in history (the most notable example being Henry VIII of England), but also of social mobility (via shares). IOW sovereign joint-stock corporation solves many problems simply by existing, for-profit motive is great motive for good governance. But, it’s by by no means the only possible way, as Rothbard explainded it:
What would voting be like in a totally privatized society? Not only would voting be diverse, but more importantly, who would really care? Probably the most deeply satisfying form of voting to an economist is the corporation, or joint-stock company, in which voting is proportionate to one’s share of ownership of the firm’s assets. But also there are, and would be, a myriad of private clubs of all sorts. It is usually assumed that club decisions are made on the basis of one vote per member, but that is generally untrue. Undoubtedly, the best-run and most pleasant clubs are those run by a small, self-perpetuating oligarchy of the ablest and most interested, a system most pleasant for the rank-and-file nonvoting member as well as for the elite. If I am a rank-and-file member of, say a chess club, why should I worry about voting if I am satisfied with the way the club is run? And if I am interested in running things, I would probably be asked to join the ruling elite by the grateful oligarchy, always on the lookout for energetic members. And finally, if I am unhappy about the way the club is run, I can readily quit and join another club, or even form one of my own. That, of course, is one of the great virtues of a free and privatized society, whether we are considering a chess club or a contractual neighborhood community.
—
Of course, getting there is the real problem.
You don’t need SovCorp to do elective monarchy – the Venetian system would work just fine for that. The Doge was, essentially, a monarch-for-life elected by (and almost always from the ranks of) a small oligarchy.
For a historical example of an optimal balance of order, personal liberty, prosperity, resilience, and staying power, it is very hard indeed to beat Venice.
Aristocratic republic doesn’t have a well defined, ah let’s say ‘ownership’ (and thus dividend). Because it doesn’t employ shares it suffers the social mobility problem. Corporate structure also allows for peaceful hostile takeovers by a better governed state.
…or by a worse governed state. I guess it kind of depends on your definition of “better” and “worse”. I hate to sound Marxist here, but being better at maximizing profits is no guarantee of being a better government for the people who live in your territory.
Everyone looks at the Google campus and assumes that’s the valid model for what corporate governance would look like. But what if the actual valid model ended up looking more like Matewan? Or, perhaps more likely, looking like the Google campus for a small percentage of cognitive elites, and Matewan for everybody else? You don’t exactly have to be Eugene V. Debs to not see that as an optimal state of affairs.
Corporate governance is a bad idea because corporations don’t solve for the same X’es that a good government does. That’s not a slam against corporations – I have no problem with them being what they are and doing what they do. I just don’t want them to be the government, because I see no reason to believe that being good at one thing necessarily means you’ll be good at anything else, even if those things appear on the surface to be related. In other words, being the best basketball player in the world doesn’t mean you’ll be a good baseball player – just ask Michael Jordan.
So no, I’m not sold on corporate governance. Not at all.
But profit-maximizing government IS good government, that’s one of the key Mencian insights. And yes, you do sound exactly like Marxist. Your arguments against SovCorp are the same as leftist arguments against Ancien Régime. And no, it wouldn’t be Matewan for anyone, simply because such a thing would be bad profit-wise. Maximization of profits woul entail, among other thing, maximization of value of capital stock, and having a Matewan all around would devastate the value of capital stock.
Corporate governance isn’t bad idea, in fact, corporate government would be better than any monarch ever was, or ever could be. I’m well aware of your disdain for corporations and capitalism. All of you Throne & Altar Conservatives always speak about Platonic, ideal, monarch that is father to the people, and state a family, and of a perfect romantic incorruptible and idealistic nobility, but it’s all nonsense and it was never like that, historically speaking. Sure, kings weren’t evil tyrants as left claims (well, most of them weren’t), but they also weren’t living saints that you T&A types like to paint them as. Problem with the monarch-model of governance is that it works great with omniscient and immortal god-emperor, but those tend to be, unfortunately, in short supply; so we’ll just have to settle for a good selection mechanism for the leader.
>But profit-maximizing government IS good government, that’s one of the key Mencian insights.
And it’s total horsecrap.
Profit-maximizing governance is good corporate governance, but corporate governance and the governance of a nation-state are not the same things. Again, they aren’t designed to solve for the same X, and I see no reason to believe that a mechanism designed to solve for one X will be any good at solving for a different X.
My laser printer and my toaster were designed to solve different problems. Arguing that my laser printer would be great at making toast because it’s great at printing documents is nonsense. Similarly, the corporate structure was not designed to govern a nation-state, and telling me that it would be good at doing so because it’s good at maximizing corporate profits is nonsense.
>And no, it wouldn’t be Matewan for anyone, simply because such a thing would be bad profit-wise.
How? Why? I invoke Hitchens’s Razor on all of these bizarre claims. Prove them.
>Maximization of profits woul entail, among other thing, maximization of value of capital stock, and having a Matewan all around would devastate the value of capital stock.
Again, this is solving for a different X than governments are supposed to solve for. My expectations from my government are not that it will send me a fat check in the mail every month – and if those *were* my expectations, why not just support a socialist welfare state or UBI? My expectations my government are that it will organize national defense against foreign invaders, that it will find a way to keep essential infrastructure running, that it will strictly enforce decent and sensible criminal laws, that it will fairly and impartially adjudicate civil lawsuits, that it will uphold public morals and order, and that it will not unduly impose upon the legitimate liberties of free citizens.
Placing those things as a second priority behind concerns about how big a check the government can send you every month is not the mark of a reactionary, or a futurist, or a libertarian, or an ancap, but of a welfare nigger.
Profit-maximizing governance is good corporate governance, but corporate governance and the governance of a nation-state are not the same things. Again, they aren’t designed to solve for the same X, and I see no reason to believe that a mechanism designed to solve for one X will be any good at solving for a different X.
My laser printer and my toaster were designed to solve different problems. Arguing that my laser printer would be great at making toast because it’s great at printing documents is nonsense. Similarly, the corporate structure was not designed to govern a nation-state, and telling me that it would be good at doing so because it’s good at maximizing corporate profits is nonsense.It doesn’t solve for a different X, it solves for exactly the same X, and it’s not by accident that corporate structure was adopted by most enterprises.
How? Why? I invoke Hitchens’s Razor on all of these bizarre claims. Prove them.You would see why if you weren’t such an utter ignoramus in the field of Economics. It’s simple really, just like with any company, the better the policies, the better the governance, the greater the value of the shares. It’s one of advantages of living under a rule by joint-stock corporation too, you finally have a live and independent number, a stock price, that you can look at when judging the performance of a leader.
Again, this is solving for a different X than governments are supposed to solve for. My expectations from my government are not that it will send me a fat check in the mail every month – and if those *were* my expectations, why not just support a socialist welfare state or UBI? My expectations my government are that it will organize national defense against foreign invaders, that it will find a way to keep essential infrastructure running, that it will strictly enforce decent and sensible criminal laws, that it will fairly and impartially adjudicate civil lawsuits, that it will uphold public morals and order, and that it will not unduly impose upon the legitimate liberties of free citizens.
Placing those things as a second priority behind concerns about how big a check the government can send you every month is not the mark of a reactionary, or a futurist, or a libertarian, or an ancap, but of a welfare nigger.Who says that the government would send you and me any checks? Shareholders get the dividend, and they’re what you would call nobility in the previous times (that’s why I prefer SovCorp over AristoRepublic, because SovCorp has all the advantages of AristoRepublic, plus much, much, more – because SovCorp is basically a formalized form of AristoRepublic). Most people don’t have any Microsoft shares, and there’s no reason to believe why it would be any different with state-shares. SovCorp would do exactly what you would expect good government to do, and the better it does its job, the more money for the nobility (It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. Or IOW SovCorp solves the problem of disparate interests between government and the people, by making the interest of the nobility and the interest of the public converge.).
I can see that I’m simply not going to make you understand that applying the principles of economics to fields other than economics will end up in nonsense answers.
Then again, economists think that economics explains everything, in the same way that neuroscientists believe that neuroscience explains everything and that psychologists believe that psychology explains everything. To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Economics is the science of social (literally “household”) order, not money. If government were not profitable, no one would do it. Government is profitable, but we pretend it is not. This leads to the leviathan, in a real sense fascist, state that we now have. Formalize the profits, and 98% of robbing peter to pay paul will cease.
I think that’s not the real issue here. I think that the problem is probably in that we disagree about what “good governance” is. For example of what I mean, let’s take Crusades. You probably consider them a good idea, I consider them a horrible waste of capital (though Fourth Crusade maybe even ended up turning a profit).
Ah. So you consider it a horrible waste of capital to have defended western civilization from being overrun by Muslim hordes, except for the one crusade where one western power destroyed another (that being the one that had served for centuries as the west’s bulwark against invasion by the abovementioned Muslim hordes) in the name of short-term profit. That one might have been okay.
Thanks for proving why people who think like you should never be left in charge of anything important.
No, you misunderstood me. I think all Crusades were unwise, and especially the Fourth one. I’m not against defending the West from Mahometans, quite the contrary. I just think that expensive, but futile military expeditions are stupid. As a reactionary I’m always for a low time preference solution. And that means that, since it’s easier to defend than attack, that West should have defended its borders from Mahometans, and built itself up from the inside over the centuries, until the opportunity presented itself for strategic and long-term victory over the Mahometans.
Equivalently, in modern setting, I’ve heard many speak in Reactosphere about conquering Istambul these past few days, but starting the war with Turkey would be extremely unwise. Much better to make your country prosper and wait until Mahotemans implode, before you make any moves. So, actually, quite the opposite to your assertion about short-term gain, I thing that short-sighted action based on romanticism is unwise, and that one should always aim for the low time preference solution, which means long term planing instead of futile idealism.
I would argue that “culture first” does generally work, but that there are specific reasons why Reagan’s version of it failed.
First there is the fact that late 20th century Americans were (and still are) a particularly atomized, deracinated, historically ignorant people. And as Mencken observed, Americans are also easily-gulled trend-followers and bandwagon-jumpers whose opinions on important matters can be turned on a dime by slick-talking snake-oil salesmen.
Second, Reagan was unable to gain control of all of the organs of cultural production. In other words, he couldn’t purge the media and academia. He was personally immune to their attacks, but that was through force of personality, which made Reaganism essentially a personality cult. The problem with personality cults is that once the personality leaves the stage, they evaporate. Reagan’s aura managed to get his less-charismatic successor elected to a single term in office, but Bush, Sr. did not share Reagan’s immunity to The Cathedral’s attacks, and with the organs of cultural production still firmly in their hands, they were able to take him down in one term.
But the truth is that the right didn’t lose when Reagan left office. the right lost when Joe McCarthy was hounded out of power. Once he was gone, Hollywood and academia were free to go as far left as they wanted – and that was very far left indeed. And not only that, but they got his scalp in a way that set the pattern for all of their political victories from that point forward. They complained to the Republicans that McCarthy was being mean to them and helpfully advised them that having such an extremist in their party would surely hurt them in the elections. The GOP gratefully accepted this advice and purged McCarthy themselves.
Too bad. McCarthy could have told Reagan that he was going to accomplish nothing, and why, but Reagan never asked.
If McCarthy was a millihitler of rightitude, Reagan was a nanohitler. Not only not enough to cause harm, but in fact an hormetic boost to the left’s endocrine and immune systems.
Speaking of social science, I wonder what Anton and Warg think of this?
http://thesmartset.com/lets-abolish-social-science/
I asked Warg privately. He wasn’t too impressed. Something about butthurt his field is run by commies or somesuch. Basically, Lind’s critique is valid: Social Science in the 20th century was an abortion. It was never not about shilling for the revolution. But that doesn’t mean that real social science cannot exist, only that it is much harder than people think.
Great podcast, but Anton Silensky, though he had much that is interesting to say, needs to let people talk; he kept interrupting.
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