I think I see what’s going on with the US side, at least.
I remember back almost 20 years ago, discussing politics on the internet, and it was much the same thing with the anarcho capitalists. Smart bunch of fellows making some decent points, who I basically agreed with, who also had fundamentally incoherent political theory, IMO. I put it to David Friedman in a brief exchange, if we just call the US government a defense agency, what do you have to complain about? There have been competing defense agencies, and US government won. Get over it.
Seems that some anarcho capitalists have admitted that governments are competing defense agencies, and now back Neocameralism which will, they say, produce desirable outcomes as the competing governments maximize long term shareholder value. 20 years later, this seems like an advance for their theory. I’m still not convinced they’ve rounded the bend toward coherency, but I’ll leave the politics for another day.
I read Moldbug first, and I was already having anarcho capitalist argument flashbacks, which reading Nick Land turned into a full blown trip down memory lane.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane, and getting me up to date on some of the fringe internet politics. I like to see how stories turn out. For my original objection to your comment, I was thinking about the US as a whole, which wasn’t the appropriate population for categories on a poll here anyway.
I will criticize Moldbug’s analysis of leftism, though. He presumes that the left is motivated by a fearful reaction to the Jesus people, and that through passivism, you remove the target of their fear, and the wind goes out of their sails. I think that’s the same mistake some people make about Islamists—thinking that the problem is their reaction to what you’re doing, and that if you’d only stop doing it, everything would be ok. No. Leftists and Islamists have their own agendas that aren’t just reactions to you. It’s not all about you. Other people have their own values, and pursue them.
I think I see what’s going on with the US side, at least.
I remember back almost 20 years ago, discussing politics on the internet, and it was much the same thing with the anarcho capitalists. Smart bunch of fellows making some decent points, who I basically agreed with, who also had fundamentally incoherent political theory, IMO. I put it to David Friedman in a brief exchange, if we just call the US government a defense agency, what do you have to complain about? There have been competing defense agencies, and US government won. Get over it.
Seems that some anarcho capitalists have admitted that governments are competing defense agencies, and now back Neocameralism which will, they say, produce desirable outcomes as the competing governments maximize long term shareholder value. 20 years later, this seems like an advance for their theory. I’m still not convinced they’ve rounded the bend toward coherency, but I’ll leave the politics for another day.
I read Moldbug first, and I was already having anarcho capitalist argument flashbacks, which reading Nick Land turned into a full blown trip down memory lane.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane, and getting me up to date on some of the fringe internet politics. I like to see how stories turn out. For my original objection to your comment, I was thinking about the US as a whole, which wasn’t the appropriate population for categories on a poll here anyway.
I will criticize Moldbug’s analysis of leftism, though. He presumes that the left is motivated by a fearful reaction to the Jesus people, and that through passivism, you remove the target of their fear, and the wind goes out of their sails. I think that’s the same mistake some people make about Islamists—thinking that the problem is their reaction to what you’re doing, and that if you’d only stop doing it, everything would be ok. No. Leftists and Islamists have their own agendas that aren’t just reactions to you. It’s not all about you. Other people have their own values, and pursue them.