I went from straight Libertarianism to Georgism to my current position of advocacy of competitive government. I believe in the right to exit and hope to work towards a world where exit gets easier and easier for larger numbers. My current anti-democratic position is informed by the amateur study of public choice theory and incentives. My formalist position is probably due to an engineering background and liking things to be clear.
When the fundamental question arises—what keeps a genuine decision maker, a judge or a bureaucrat in government (of a polity way beyond the dunbar number) honest, then the 3 strands of neo-reaction appear as three possible answers—Either the person believes in a higher power (religious traditionalism) or they feel that the people they are making a decision for are an extended family (ethnic nationalism) or they personally profit from it (Techno-commercialism). Or a mix of the three, which is more probable.
There are discussions in NRx about whether religious traditionalism should even be given a place here, since it is mostly traditional reaction, but that is deviating from the main point. Each of these strands holds something sacred—a theocracy holds the diety supreme, an ethno state holds the race supreme, a catallarchy holds profit supreme. And I think you really can’t have a long term governing structure which doesn’t hold something really sacred. There has to be a cultural hegemony within which diversities which do not threaten the cultural hegemony can flourish. Even Switzerland, the land of 3 nations democratically bound together has a national military draft which ties its men in brotherhood.
A part of me is still populist, I think, holding out for algorithmic governance to be perfected and not having to rely on human judgement which could be biased. But time and time again, human judgement based organizations have defeated, soundly, procedure based organizations. Apple is way more valuable than Toyota. The latter is considered the pinnacle of process based firms. The former was famously run till recently, by a mercurial dictator. So, human judgement has to be respected, which means clear sovereignty of the humans in question, which means something like the neo-cameralism of Moldbug, until the day of FAI.
I went from straight Libertarianism to Georgism to my current position of advocacy of competitive government. I believe in the right to exit and hope to work towards a world where exit gets easier and easier for larger numbers. My current anti-democratic position is informed by the amateur study of public choice theory and incentives. My formalist position is probably due to an engineering background and liking things to be clear.
When the fundamental question arises—what keeps a genuine decision maker, a judge or a bureaucrat in government (of a polity way beyond the dunbar number) honest, then the 3 strands of neo-reaction appear as three possible answers—Either the person believes in a higher power (religious traditionalism) or they feel that the people they are making a decision for are an extended family (ethnic nationalism) or they personally profit from it (Techno-commercialism). Or a mix of the three, which is more probable.
There are discussions in NRx about whether religious traditionalism should even be given a place here, since it is mostly traditional reaction, but that is deviating from the main point. Each of these strands holds something sacred—a theocracy holds the diety supreme, an ethno state holds the race supreme, a catallarchy holds profit supreme. And I think you really can’t have a long term governing structure which doesn’t hold something really sacred. There has to be a cultural hegemony within which diversities which do not threaten the cultural hegemony can flourish. Even Switzerland, the land of 3 nations democratically bound together has a national military draft which ties its men in brotherhood.
A part of me is still populist, I think, holding out for algorithmic governance to be perfected and not having to rely on human judgement which could be biased. But time and time again, human judgement based organizations have defeated, soundly, procedure based organizations. Apple is way more valuable than Toyota. The latter is considered the pinnacle of process based firms. The former was famously run till recently, by a mercurial dictator. So, human judgement has to be respected, which means clear sovereignty of the humans in question, which means something like the neo-cameralism of Moldbug, until the day of FAI.