Show trials. Procedural manipulation. Prosecuting technicalities against political enemies. State-run PR campaigns.

It all happened before, in the 17th century.

How the Persecution of Pirates Gave Us Procedural Manipulation by @rmcentush:

palladiummag.com/2024/01/19/how… In 1694, Henry Every began his career as a pirate by launching a mutiny and seizing control of his ship off the coast of Spain.

He sailed towards Madagascar, and, right where the Yemeni Houthis are today attacking ships, Every attacked a Mughal Imperial treasure ship.

You may not know that there is a third option distinct from AI accelerationism or AI doomerism:

"Become the unsafe artificial intelligence you fear to see in the world," in the words of @wolftivy

Let's talk about Wolf Tivy Thought in the New Era of Artificial Intelligence: 🧵 Artificial intelligence is possible and deadly.

This is almost always taken to be synonymous with AI doomerism or safetyism, broadly the @ESYudkowsky position.

But it is not. It is just the starting point from which a serious philosophy of AI could develop.

You Won’t Survive As Human Capital
by @miltonwrites

It was alliances of families that built the bureaucratic organizations that now regulate society. Only new alliances can replace them.

1/10

Read more here:
palladiummag.com/2023/11/24/you…
"Much of our life from childhood onward is dedicated to proving our value [as human capital]. No one living today is responsible for this mode of life. Some people more directly enforce its norms, a few try to resist them, and most go along as best they can."

2/10

What is sometimes called the international rules-based order is sometimes also called the American empire.

The most powerful empire of all time, shows the strenghts and the weakeness of all past empires but more so:

Peace and prosperity mixed with violence and extraction.

https://twitter.com/mmjukic/status/1718698874158674030

To say the American empire is in crisis, is to not say much: All empires at all times are in crisis. What does an impartial analysis of this global empire look like?

A thread. 🧵

In 2022, Yamagami Tetsuya assassinated Japan’s former leader in revenge for his ties to the Unification Church. But Japan’s cults look to become more powerful as its social order decays.

New from Correspondent Dylan Levi King (@dylanleviking)

palladiummag.com/2023/02/02/yam… Yamagami carried out his assassination as an act of revenge. The suicides of his father and brother had left scars, but his poverty was worsened by his mother tithing away the inheritance to the Unification Church. His parents lived out the decay of Japan's social order.

Count Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi dreamed of a united Europe led by a new spiritual aristocracy. Known today as the EU’s grandfather, his dream is largely forgotten.

Today from Miquel Vila (@MiquelVilam)

palladiummag.com/2022/11/09/the… Kalergi's reputation is as a postnational European federalist, a herald of global liberal aspirations. With a European noble father, a Japanese mother, and ancestry that included Byzantine emperors, he certainly had the credentials. Hitler dubbed him a "cosmopolitan bastard."

Stanford dismantled its famously spontaneous campus life. The cost may be what made it great: cultivating free, independent agency in its students.

Today from Ginevra Davis (@ginevlily)

palladiummag.com/2022/06/13/sta… Stanford's motto is "Die Luft der Freiheit weht"—“the winds of freedom blow.” The university was known for its unusually spontaneous, open student life. It formed a chaotic but productive space, many of whose graduates went on to become movers and shakers in Silicon Valley.

China’s imperial elites have made a comeback after decades of Maoist persecution. When it comes to elite persistence, are they the exception or the rule?

Today from Daniel Skipper Rasmussen (@DanielSkipper6)

palladiummag.com/2022/04/20/whe… By the century of humiliation, China's famous imperial exam system had lasted nearly two millennia. But now, its legitimacy was in crisis. Why had China's elites so manifestly failed to keep the country sovereign and powerful?

It happened—Russian jets are strafing Kiev, and tanks are rolling from Crimea, Belarus, and Donetsk. As we speak, there is fighting all over Ukraine. The international community has thunderously denounced the invasion. There is talk of heavy sanctions, but countries like Germany are blocking any attempt to disconnect Russia from SWIFT. And on social media: #IStandWithUkraine. But NGO activism cannot stop a tank brigade.

Kazakhstan’s leaders blamed foreign infiltration for its violent January protests. In the city of Almaty, I learned that the real answers lie within the state itself.

Today from Fin DePencier (@finlookedintoit)

palladiummag.com/2022/02/24/wha… @finlookedintoit All eyes are on Ukraine today, but Russia's actions have been heating up across the post-Soviet sphere. Earlier this year, Russian and CSTO troops helped Kazakhstan suppress the largest riots in its modern history. It was also a show of support for succession within the regime.

Our latest from Palladium 04: @RCCoulombe takes us on a historical tour of the rise, reign, and fall of the WASPs.

Here are some highlights 👇

palladiummag.com/2021/12/29/ame… We tend to think of the WASPs as a generally uniform national ruling class. But the reality is, this period of a national elite culture was incredibly brief and only begins in the 19th century.

In Palladium 04, @AvetisMuradyan gave us a provocative thesis: legitimate elites and criminal outlaws are often made of the same stuff — and this fact is necessary for a society's vitality and progress

palladiummag.com/2021/12/22/the… In large and complex societies, the majority of the population tends to belong to a vast, productive middle. Most effort goes toward reproducing norms and institutions: family, work, customs, and law. The markers for success are set, conformity is rewarded.

Announcing PALLADIUM 04: CULTIVATING ELITES

palladiummag.com/04-print/ palladiummag.com/subscribe/

Hezbollah has spent years building up its operations while the Lebanese state eroded. Recently, it secured oil imports from Iran without state sanction.

That's not quite sovereignty, but it's getting close. What does power look like without a state? Hezbollah is many things. A Lebanese political party; a de-facto military; a religious vanguard; an Iranian client. It even runs petroleum markets, charities, and construction work. It can exercise power on multiple fronts and has built up influence outside its Shia base.

Edison invented the lightbulb—and also many spectacular failures. Boulton set Indiana Jones style traps for burglars. Elon Musk is Elon Musk.

Great industrialists are crazy, not dour, says @benlandautaylor

palladiummag.com/2021/02/02/new… If “captains of industry” were as straight-laced, calculating, and fastidious as we imagine them to be—well, we wouldn’t have much industry.

Plenty of industrialists are sober, but such people are more suited to management and incremental improvement, not building new industries

Challengers to our current paradigm tend to style themselves as outsiders. This is bad. You will never construct a positive new order if you do not begin by sympathetically placing yourself in the center, and taking responsibility for the failings of your erstwhile elites. This is not a paean to “centrism” or “holding the center” or anything of the sort. It is simply a recognition that there exists no competent class among the current elite—which is extremely dangerous—and therefore this situation must be remedied, not performatively attacked.

They came from the internet in their war-memes and none could stand against them.

Today from Michael Cuenco

palladiummag.com/2021/04/17/ame… High modernity cemented the idea of linear progress in our minds. But what's necessary to be able to even think in those terms? And do those priors still exist today?

McLuhan was skeptical. He believed that the era in which progress was a recognizable concept might be ending.

To break out of civilizational stagnation, we are going to have to totally rethink what we know of as growth.

Right now, we are caught in an unproductive pro- vs anti-growth debate. Both of these viewpoints miss the forest for the trees. The thing that grows—the economy—is best conceived of, per Quigley, as the system that exploits resources in order to satisfy human needs and desires.

“The world, including its functional governments, is a lot more dynastic than we like to admit, and dynasties work a lot better at securing institutional continuity and good government than we like to think.”

Read @SamoBurja’s classic Botswana piece here: palladiummag.com/2019/05/09/wha… Botswana’s stability and prosperity appears paradoxical. Conventional development economics teaches that a landlocked country with an economy based around monopolistic resource extraction and an AIDS epidemic should be a basket case.

Eppur si muove.

2/n

The notion of value, once integral to economics, has been replaced by utility—to immense social detriment. @MazzucatoM is seeking to bring it back, writes @miltonwrites.

palladiummag.com/2019/11/21/mar… Modern economics was born in intense political debates about what constitutes value, wealth, and production. We often fail to remember that thinkers like Smith, Marx, and Ricardo all centered these problems, in particular polities, with the end of human flourishing in mind.

Technology itself is neither good nor bad. It is morally neutral. What matters is how it is deployed.

What we think of as “tech” in America is actually a particular set of institutions that control digital technology—not the technology itself. Material technology always depends on a stack of social technology. Therefore, the question of institutions will always have supremacy over the question of whether a particular technology is good in itself.