Read on Twitter
We have seen how the modern world is structurally left-wing. Our society has a chronic aversion to the investment of power into individuals, and therefore we find ways of putting it in groups
You canât actually get rid of authority, you can only distribute it around. If a decision gets made, and it forces you to behave in a certain way, authority was exercised. Whether the decision was made by a group or an individual, itâs the same amount of authority
If you kill the king and replace him with a mob, the mob gains exactly as much sovereignty as the king they killed, or maybe a little is lost to heat. This is known as âconservation of sovereigntyâ.
It is easier to manipulate a mob than a king. Sovereignty doesnât âwantâ to be fragmented, it âwantsâ to be concentrated, so when you distribute sovereignty equally it accumulates in whoever is best at manipulating the mob https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1064256128190570496
There have been many bad kings through history, and there have also been good kings. But there has NEVER been a good mob. The mob is amoral, the mob is ravenous, and when it can find no outside aggressor it begins to devour itself
A structurally left wing organization like the US government has built-in mechanisms to cyclically redistribute power from individuals to mobs. Mechanisms with names like âterm limitsâ, âchecks and balancesâ
A structurally right wing organization would have no committees at all. Every decision would be made by a individual. The liberal hears this and recoils in anger and fear
It has become our condition to submit to mob rule and call it freedom. We mistakenly believe that if we cannot perceive a specific person above us, we are our own masters.
The democratizing urge, as Nietzsche rendered it, is "no shepherd, and one herd." But the herd is a more capricious master than any shepherd. A man is at least CAPABLE of constancy, compassion, charity, mercy, and fairness. A mob is not.
The key revelation of economics is that people behave according to their incentives. This can seem tautological at times because there are incentives other than money. A good economist has a knack for perceiving people's true incentives. @robinhanson is a great economist.
Groups cannot manifest virtues the way individuals can, because each person in a group has incentives to give a little less than they take, and to manipulate others into giving more.
The inability of groups to behave virtuously is called the tragedy of the commons, everyone knows it. Ideologies are adaptive when they dampen the tragedy/commons feedback loop, but they can never solve it, only partially mitigate it.
Governance is an engineering problem. A good system of governance is one that aligns the incentives of the ruler with the good of the people. A bad system incentivizes the ruler to act selfishly, to enrich himself at the expense of his people
The average democratic citizen believes that power corrupts, and imagines that powerful people are evil. If a man has never held any power (most people), he thinks power is only a privilege; the truth is that the privileges power conveys are far outstripped by its obligations
Conquest's 2nd law is underspecified. If any organization that is not explicitly right wing becomes left wing over time, then what, precisely, is an explicitly right wing organization? Explicitly right wing = STRUCTURALLY right wing = decisions are made by people, not groups
A man acting on his own has incentives that a man acting in a group does not. When the group makes a decision and something goes wrong, it's no one's fault. When something goes right, everyone fights for credit. A man has accountability or "skin in the game", a group does not
I hear often that certain people or groups of people are "oppressed". What does it mean to be oppressed? It's a non-specific word that refers to a sense of alienation and impotence that the average person feels in their modern life
What causes this feeling of powerlessness? I have said before that leftism manufactures the miserable conditions that make people amenable to more leftism. The problem is too much freedom. The problem is too much equality. https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1024462501306462208
No one above you means no one to guide you. No one above you means no one is accountable for you. No one below you means no responsibilities, and no responsibilities means your existence is pointless.
You feel oppressed because you are worthless and you are worthless because you have been structurally and categorically denied the opportunity to be worth anything. https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1034800871912038401
You think the problem is that someone, somewhere, still has authority, and like the child in Omelas, its aura poisons you. https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1053456783136575490
The liberal mental model of the world says that oppression will cease when all authority has finally been removed from individuals and distributed among the mob. In fact the opposite is true; this will maximize oppression
When you are "liberated" from all rulers, you also give up the opportunity to rule. But ruling is precisely the opposite of what you imagine, it's not the privilege of having a slave, it's the obligation of having a charge.
You will never find deliverance from this condition until you learn both to rule an to BE RULED. Ah but of course, what leader is worthy in these trying times? That is another problem, for another day... https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1017034563283894278
