from The Organization Man, by William Whyte, published in 1956, the thesis of which is basically that corporate America, far from being a beacon of hyper-individualist capitalist awesomeness, instead turns people into cowardly, risk-averse, collectivist wusses.
*** 1956! 😱 ***
from the chapter titled, "Scientism":
"The scientific elite is not supposed to give orders. Yet there runs through all of them a clear notion that questions of policy can be made somewhat nonpartisan by the application of science. There seems little recognition that ...
... the contributions of social science to policy-making can never go beyond staff work. Policy can never be scientific, and any social scientist who has risen to an administrative position has learned this quickly enough. Opinion, values, and debate are the heart of policy, ...
... and while fact can narrow down the realm of debate, it can do no more.
And what a terrible world it would be! Hell is no less hell for being antiseptic. In the 1984 of Big Brother one would at least know who the enemy was – a bunch of bad men who wanted power ...
... because they liked power. But in the other kind of 1984 one would be disarmed for not knowing who the enemy was, and when a day of reckoning came the people on the other side of the table wouldn’t be Big Brother’s bad henchmen; ...
... they would be a mild-looking group of therapists who, like the Grand Inquisitor, would be doing what they did to help you.”
(on which I've been known to have one or two thoughts as well ... 🙄)
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I've realized something that others may well have realized long ago, may reflect my naivety and optimism, but is now made me seriously doubt things can or will improve.
there is an alarming proportion of people who, having caved before authoritarianism ...
1/n
... react to those who have not, not with any of: admiration of courage, sadness at futility, curiosity, apathy, or even well-conceived disagreement or anger given they actually believe in the merits of authoritarianism, but rather pure, sadistic resentment and attack.
2/n
the desire to attack does not come from a wish to dominate, but to pool suffering; not the will of a potential master, but a fellow slave.
it is as if - or possibly literally *is* the case that - coming to terms with their own voluntary subservience ...
3/n
#bitcoin is now the universally applicable, single-issue pro-freedom schelling point that has never previously existed.
and now they are clumsily conspiring to attack it, outing themselves as unequivocally anti-freedom.
we know their attack will fail, yet the harder they fight the more attention they draw, leading more precoiners to decide to educate themselves to figure out what the hell is going on, accelerating their failure.
it really is beautiful to watch.
their options:
1 - conspire privately, perfectly making the point because #bitcoin is free and open source.
2 - argue publicly, outing themselves as technologically illiterate morons whose anti-freedom stance derives from their ignorance and stupidity.
any bitcoiners working in traditional finance: your employer may not be as awesome as mine but don’t worry, your time will come and you’ll be a god damned hero 😊
DM me if you want any advice. happy to open source my institutional orange-pilling strategy 👍
so my DMs have exploded - WHICH IS A GREAT THING!
I’ll reply to all to be polite but a lot of what I’m saying is the same so I’ll shortly do a thread to make the generalities truly “open source”
...
okay, here goes:
1. *be clear on your goals and approach them tactically*
don't make your first swing about Austrian economics, regenerative farming, the petrodollar, or whatever other nonsense you've heard me spout off on.
I’ve only cried as an adult 3 times that I can remember: when my gf accepted my proposal, listening to @Snowden, and now listening to @JackMallers.
and that order matters btw: I will only ever be in awe of Edward and Jack from afar but family is the most important thing. especially the one you haven’t started yet 😊
sorry guys, I’m totes emosh.
your regularly scheduled shitposting will return posthaste 👍
Harris said he found it quite intimidating how smart everybody seems in the community. on the one hand, yay, go us, we are super smart 🤓
but on the other, I think the intimation is more a function of behaviour than intellgience. and it's indirectly a filter for humility.
2/n
there is simply no tolerance whatsoever for bullshit, and, simultaneously, the threshold for accepting something is that you understand it 100%, which means it needs to be perfectly explained to you also.
3/n
I'd be very, very, VERY careful dabbling in the "#Bitcoin is ESG" narrative and trigger-happily nailing your colors to the mast.
this narrative is absolutely true and will win out in the long run, but because bitcoin supports freedom, not because it supports audits 🙄
if you think capital allocators are going to give the slightest shit about greenwashing in the midst of a stagflationary bond market collapse, then I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you have been hoodwunk by ur-racoons, to happily borrow an @EpsilonTheory-ism.
"ESG" box-ticking is peak Cantillon.
in fact, it's Lenz's Law of Capitalism. it's not the horse you want to back, even from the most cynically capital markets-minded perspective you can imagine, *provided* you are sufficiently long-termist in outlook.