Comments for Social Matter

Comment on Ascending The Tower – Episode IX – “Learning to Think Well” by Irving

Irving — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 20:20:23 +0000

Great podcast, but Anton Silensky, though he had much that is interesting to say, needs to let people talk; he kept interrupting.

Comment on Trump Is A Demon Of The Establishment’s Design by Wilbur Eitzen

Wilbur Eitzen — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 19:53:36 +0000

But Hacker and Pierson focused on how GOP operatives had gamed this system in a particular, highly coordinated way, closer to an old Southern oligarchic clique, as Cochran might have argued, than to a traditional political party. Take Trump out of the GOP presidential race—as so many establishment types hope or expect to happen—and what do you have left?

Comment on Ascending The Tower – Episode IX – “Learning to Think Well” by OLF

OLF — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 19:26:26 +0000

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.

Comment on Ascending The Tower – Episode IX – “Learning to Think Well” by AntiDem

AntiDem — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 18:44:58 +0000

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.

Comment on Ascending The Tower – Episode IX – “Learning to Think Well” by OLF

OLF — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 14:57:41 +0000

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).

Comment on Ascending The Tower – Episode IX – “Learning to Think Well” by Nick B. Steves

Nick B. Steves — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 14:18:54 +0000

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.

Comment on Ascending The Tower – Episode IX – “Learning to Think Well” by Nick B. Steves

Nick B. Steves — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 14:15:33 +0000

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.

Comment on Ascending The Tower – Episode IX – “Learning to Think Well” by AntiDem

AntiDem — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 13:56:41 +0000

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.

Comment on Ascending The Tower – Episode IX – “Learning to Think Well” by OLF

OLF — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 08:05:48 +0000

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.).

Comment on Ascending The Tower – Episode IX – “Learning to Think Well” by AntiDem

AntiDem — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 00:10:04 +0000

>But profit-maximizing government IS good government, that’s one of the key Mencian insights.

And it’s total horsecrap.

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.