1/ I'm going to engage in meandering reflections throughout the day on basic rw political theories about the US, and modernity. They're numbered for your convenience, so you can ignore them if you want to (and also for organization)
2/ The immediate impetus is this thread from ZHP, a pithy and hard-hitting summary of things Moldbug ~ Land ~ SM ~ #NRx have been saying for 13 years
3/ Simplest way of pinpointing my disagreement with ZHP/Moldbug: I agree with large parts of the analysis on the trajectory of the modern west, but continue to think electoral politics is important and consequential
4/ (For new followers unfamiliar w/ my 2016-2017 blog: if u feel compelled to jump into my mentions challenging some view u think I hold, please skim first. I don't mind being negged for my bad takes but it's tiresome to be negged for other's bad takes)
5/ Another way to put it: a reactionary's theory of what's wrong with the modern world and how it went wrong is going to differ depending on whether he thinks everything went wrong in the same way everywhere all at once, or whether local circumstances affect severity
6/ Let me give a concrete example. Imagine you think that aggregate nat'l-lvl social statistics are a weighted average of the characteristics of the sub-populations that make up the whole. So for example.... oh idk.... say you had an island and moved ppl onto it from elsewhere
7/ Say you bring 10% of the population from Nigeria, and 10% from Guatemala, and 20% from Sicily, and the rest from England
avg height on your island will be a weighted avg of avg heights of source-populations
avg lifespan will be a weighted avg of avg lifespans of sources
avg height on your island will be a weighted avg of avg heights of source-populations
avg lifespan will be a weighted avg of avg lifespans of sources
8/ & also avg weight, & avg iq, & avg susceptibility to various hereditary diseases, & avg rate of murder per 100k, & avg annual savings rate...
Some stats might be changed in new envir'mt or by cross-group interactions, but 1st-order they result from avg'ing (by hypothesis)
Some stats might be changed in new envir'mt or by cross-group interactions, but 1st-order they result from avg'ing (by hypothesis)
9/ This means: you can't just pass a healthcare law w/ goal of getting arbitrarily long lifespans, b/c you think the major determinant is the source populations.
& also you can't just bring murder rate to 0 w/ strict criminal law, b/c again: linear combination of subpopulations
& also you can't just bring murder rate to 0 w/ strict criminal law, b/c again: linear combination of subpopulations
10/ Here is my point. Why has attempted murder (along with many other categories of crime) skyrocketed since 19th c? Reactionaries all want to solve. NRx'ers say a sover'n state can clearly promulgate a law & clearly enforce it, and that ends murder: problem is political process
11/ The hypothesis that different sub-pops have different murder rates (& so on for other categories of crime), so *ofc* if you add other groups to NYC or Rotherham you're going to get crime rates closer to their ancestral avg, is a different and mutually exclusive explanation!
12/ If [nebulous ideological origin of progressivism] causes political gridlock causes legal ambiguity causes suffering, then the excess suffering can't be attributed to demographic changes. Conversely if it's exactly what you'd expect from a linear combination of sub-pops...
13/ ... "leftism" doesn't explain anything except to the extent that leftism causes or is a reflex of the demographic changes.
(Have we drifted far away from "is politics meaningful," "is originalism coherent"? Be patient...)
(Have we drifted far away from "is politics meaningful," "is originalism coherent"? Be patient...)
14/ The awkward cases for #NRx are something like SAfrica or Congo. Do you *really* think your sovcorp could, with sufficiently judicious bloodshed, reduce the population to compliance with any arbitrary set of "good laws"? If not - could you do it in India? In Greece?
15/ Conversely the awkward case for (paleoreactionary?) demographic explanations is New Zealand. Whatever happens everywhere, all at once, even places w/o meaningful minority populations, can't be explained by demographics
shylockholmes.blogspot.com/2017/07/on-tim…
shylockholmes.blogspot.com/2017/07/on-tim…
16/ Obviously there are other alternatives to Moldbug besides demographics
Even for demographics, there are more complex possibilities than linear combination of traits (like tribal coalition-formation and rivalries)
This is meant to be demonstrative.
Even for demographics, there are more complex possibilities than linear combination of traits (like tribal coalition-formation and rivalries)
This is meant to be demonstrative.
17/ (Here I'll pause for a moment to answer a few comments that have cropped up so far)
18/ "Isn't it just both? IDGI" — I've heard several versions of this response. Simplest response first: law affects demographics, the courts affect demographics.
19/Therefore "constitutionalism is a death-pact that causes progressive theocracy, elections don't matter & originalism is meaningless lol" is flatly incompatible with "both/and". I'm not telling you to waste time on politics, just identifying an inconsistency.
20/"B/c western constitutional norms produce a distributed theocracy that produces [social ill], [that ill] can never be mitigated by the normal politics"
cannot be linearly combined with
"Normal politics result in [demographic changes] that determine the level of [social ill]"
cannot be linearly combined with
"Normal politics result in [demographic changes] that determine the level of [social ill]"
21/... And this is assuming you've good-faith reasons to think each theory is true & responsible for particular fraction of variance. I may vaguely sketch out reasons to doubt this later, but today I want to keep going (before I lose my final few readers).
22/ Back on topic. Do politics "matter"?
One way of asking that question is: Does the amount of difference you can make on political outcomes justify research, donations, canvassing, going out to vote? Almost certainly not.
One way of asking that question is: Does the amount of difference you can make on political outcomes justify research, donations, canvassing, going out to vote? Almost certainly not.
23/ But that's a practical question. The answer differs from case to case, and few of us are purely practical-minded anyway. Whether counterfactually different electoral outcomes > different candidates > different appointed officials > different laws/policies/etc is a distinct q.
24/ Incidentally, the ordinary hierarchy of idealism/pragmatism in US culture is idealists go to work for the govt or other public institutions, pragmatists limit their "making a difference" to voting and maybe donations, plus vicarious consumption of TV news
25/ There is something quite radical about the position, embraced by a broad spectrum from Moldbug to BAP, that the most pragmatic course is to prepare to serve in a gov't and that paying attention to political news is puerile idealism.
I don't disagree w/ this!
I don't disagree w/ this!
