Compiling a list of the official misinformation from press & state.

- Flu is more serious
- Travel bans are overreacting
- Only Wuhan visitors at risk
- Avoiding handshakes is paranoid
- Virus is contained
- Tests are available
- Masks don't help

What else?
The reason this is important is:

- people who made these mistakes haven't retracted
- indeed, many have pretended they didn't happen
- and are now pushing for censorship of "misinformation"

But without social media, seems clear the US would have been even slower to act.
Official misinformation appears to be international, across Western countries at least. Would appreciate more examples from Spain, Italy, etc before they get memory holed.

We need to document this because the folks that failed are now pushing censorship.
Here is another example. Of course, NYC cases & deaths are now going vertical.

A number of journalists and public health officials across the West were all singing from the same hymnal in February: it’s just a scare, let’s have a parade.

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More from @balajis

Feb 21
51% democracy vs ~100% democracy

In a 51% democracy you just barely pass the bar, and then assume all will do as you say. They won't.

The ideal is actually a ~100% democracy. An opt-in society, where everyone has chosen to be there. And can leave.
Set aside the question of whether ~100% democracy is practical for a second. (The ~ indicates that 100% is an asymptotic goal, even if not fully achieved.)

Once you agree it is desirable — and morally superior if feasible — then you start thinking about whether we can build it.
The fundamental concept is that democracy is about the *consent of the governed*.

If you have only 51% support, you have the absolute minimum necessary level of consent.

It's a democratic Fosbury Flop. You just barely clear the bar.
archive.is/aP2hv#selectio… Image
Read 23 tweets
Feb 20
Important article by my friend @DavidSacks. He argues crypto isn't enough, politics is needed.

My counterargument is that BTC + web3 provides the crucial philosophical/technological *base* for pro-freedom advocacy.

Examples: Wyoming, Miami, El Salvador.
bariweiss.substack.com/p/a-social-cre…
That is, I agree it's not exit *only*. You can't run forever.

But exit can get you to a high ground. You can beat a tactical retreat, to a place where you can speak and act freely, demonstrate a better system, and thereby reform the old.

That's Bitcoin.
bariweiss.substack.com/p/a-social-cre…
The Harper's letter approach fails because each signatory exists wholly within the old system. They can be surrounded, forced to recant.

But technological & physical exit gets you into a new system. With financial freedom & censorship-resistance, they can't silence your voice.
Read 11 tweets
Feb 20
Thesis: the assembly line trained people for the top-down mass politics of the 1900s.

Today's workplace is network-based. With the crucial exception of China, which still builds things, any viable political ideology will scale up what people are doing on their devices.
Put another way: you don't get communism, fascism, or mid-century democratic capitalism without mass production. Top-down politics pantomimed the assembly line. Centralized states told the masses what to do.

See for example:
Today, the West has deindustrialized, while China has industrialized.

Millions of its people are still conditioned to work together en masse in factories. The scenes below are still common.

This may be why it's capable of doing things like the 1950s US, but the 2020s US is not.
Read 8 tweets
Feb 18
The US military may be weaker than many think.

This detailed post by a retired colonel reviews everything from ground forces to air defenses, and concludes that the US military is overmatched against a peer like Russia — especially in its backyard.
smallwarsjournal.com/index.php/jrnl… Image
All the observable parts of the American state are failing. That may include the military, and in more places than Afghanistan. And that means updating our mental models.
Well, it’s not the same country.

The WW2 America could make a B-24 bomber in ~60 minutes [1]. Whereas 2022 America needs 20 years to reopen a bathroom.

[1] pbs.org/kenburns/the-w…
[2] mercurynews.com/2022/02/02/bar…
Read 4 tweets
Feb 17
Three kinds of DAOs

Autonomous DAO — a group that interacts with a truly self-running smart contract with no admin keys and no CEO

Bureaucratic DAO — a mess of politics

CEO DAO — a single clear leader
Yes, I’m well aware that the A in DAO in theory already stands for “autonomous”, but today’s DAOs mostly aren’t autonomous — so the distinction is worth making.
A non-obvious point is that a single decision maker in a CEO DAO may protect user rights more reliably than the groupthink of a bureaucrat DAO.

No decision makers (autonomous) or one decision maker (CEO) can both be better than a group of decisionmakers (bureaucratic).
Read 5 tweets
Feb 17
The truckers didn’t have a way to win.
But the Canadian state found 3 ways to lose.

First, they couldn’t censor social, so they lost the narrative.

Second, they went after the money because they lost hard power.

Third, they don’t control hard money, so they’ll lose there too.
We will see how things pan out. Much can change.

But this fits with the thesis that the Counter-Decentralization will fail in the West but succeed in the East.

There was a big push by the Western establishment for retroactive censorship — but it may prove too little, too late.
A state that loses social lacks soft power. No narrative, no obedience.

A state that loses AI lacks hard power. No surveillance, no drones.

And a state that loses BTC/web3 lacks hard money. No seizures, no freezes.
Read 4 tweets

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