Was Nicholas Wade purged? OK, maybe “preemptively auto-purged” is more like it. I was kind of hoping for an adult conversation about having adult conversations about race. I’m not holding my breath, but I predict NPR and it’s affiliates are going to be able to put lipstick on this pig. (I just don’t know how.)
SoBL points out how just badly we need “Feminist Biology”—which makes about as much sense as Trinitarian Electromagnetics. Only you’re not allowed to laugh. (Also at Theden with added art.)
Speaking of SoBL, this is important. Even Steve Sailer noticed. Not that any amount of dirt can stick to Inner Party faithful, of course. So long as Men behind the Curtain say they love Jesus, Sub-Saharan African Babies, and Gay Marriage, the Witch Hunters will quickly turn their tiny attention spans to the less well-placed. Real power is not having to say you’re sorry (and actually mean it).
At Social Matter, Laliberte pens The (Heart)Broken Society; Bennet on how Mises was wrong about value; Glanton on the Limits of Sympathy (or empathy or both); Dampier on the economics of eroding social trust; and fresh of the bit-presses today, Laliberte’s interview with Nicholas Wade.
Nick Land was kind enough to offer praise for Yours Truly’s Urban Dictionary definition of “Neoreactionary”. OK, so it wasn’t perfect. Hey, what part of “Urban Dictionary” (blocked @ work!!) do you not understand? But if it’s good enough, then go over and upvote it, or… write a better one. Land also offers praise for The Duck’s debating style.
I liked this piece from Mitchell:
But vice is subtle and patient. The shadow cannot afford to be exposed in the act of it’s manipulation; to do so may free the afflicted from her grasp, forever. So the shadow employs deception, using whatever the terminology of the day, that special language of the fashionable, to maintain her subjects captivity. In 1776, the key word was ‘liberty’. In 2014, the key word of our fashionable talk is ‘equality’. Through such fashionable language Vice makes her plays. By veiling her manipulations under shroud of freedom, equality, and justice, she has free reign to commit her atrocities upon the Prideful man, and through him the whole world.
Steve Sailer, a man of great wisdom and many talents, has proven he should be offered a writer’s job at SNL. I believe the term of art is: LOL. Also: a very interesting article on the differences between Continental and British traditions. Reason #634 “White” is not a nationality. Timely, helpfully Sailer re-posts his seminal 1998 paper on race as extended family. Could be relevant. Someday. Say, if we ever get that adult conversation we’ve been told we need.
Jim points out the real problem with Boko Haram—being on the wrong side of history is the worstest crime in the world. Also Powerline speaks truth to Michael Mann, and ironically, given Mann’s litigiousness, they’re probably on solid ground. Also, Jim watches Disney movies so you don’t have to. Spoiler alerts… I think.
Moe McCCLendon (via …). Is this the International Brotherhood of Carlyleans we’ve been waiting for? (I hope so.) [Update: Nope.]
Scharlach posts his first one in a while: Discrimination is Natural. Yep. So hey Proggies, pick a story and don’t be too alarmed where it leads. Also, Coyne Won’t Answer Me. Perhaps silence is the most honest answer he’s prepared to give. (Land takes notes.)
Zippy thinks that most of the time people accuse someone of being “racist” the accused rather than the accuser is in the right. I’ll see that “most of the time”, and raise you an “all the time”. “Unjust prejudice” is, indeed, a sin. Because it is unjust; not because it is prejudice. Not satisfied with that bet, Zippy doubles down. Zippy is an Essentialist Hammer looking for Nominalist Nails. He manages to find them everywhere. My humble suggestion is read what your interlocutors actually say instead of making up their argument for them. Jim notices. Hilarity!
[UPDATE: Wesley uncovers use of “racist” in English no later than 1903. Doesn’t change the narrative much but it’s important to get facts straight.]
Poet Laureate of the Neoreaction (Moldbug came in second), E. Anthony Gray (@RiverC and a zillion other pseudonyms) twitlongered this bit of political theory the other day. I thought it was pretty good.
Oddblots on why internet slow lanes may make perfect sense:
The benefit monopolies offer is not just that they’re good investments, but that they concentrate wealth in the hands of someone smart enough to monopolize something. Wealth tends towards entropy, so brief concentrations of it are a beautiful thing. And while markets are great at optimizing the last .1% increase in efficiently for a known process, they suck at paradigm shifts—unless there’s someone really smart with enough money to singlehandedly shift that paradigm. Google’s near monopoly on search has probably hastened the arrival of self-driving cars by a few years, saving numerous lives. Score one for monopolies! Even my least favorite monopoly, USG, has deployed money in interesting and otherwise infeasible projects, such as landing on the moon and defeating the USSR.
Jaq Royale is taking the medicine and reports scales falling from his eyes. Welcome, Jaq. Glad to have you! Try not to crap on the carpet. (Master Moldbug has taught us many things. Among them: Do not use blogspot. Just joshin’. I really don’t know. Pretty happy, certainly not THRILLED, with WordPress however.)
Wunderkind Wes Morganston (@nydwracu), best editor in the Whole of Neoreaction, turns one of his own comments at Scott Alexander’s into a first class piece of political theory. (Still with very long sentences.)
Like most of us, Malcolm Pollack, tries to not pay attention to the news. Sometimes he just can’t not do it. Obama’s blackness is the least offensive thing about him.
Filed under not only not this week but practically from the undateable past, Land points to this Anomaly UK classic from February 2012. (Did they even have teh interwebz back then?)
OK. That’s all I got time for. This was supposed to go out Thursday, but I was moved to say something else. If I was genuinely concerned about blog traffic, I’d probably be way more organized about stuff like this, like getting posts out in a uniform timely manner. That said, compliments and substantive disagreements are always welcome. And occasionally inspiring.
Keep on reading and DONATING to Theden and Social Matter. May The Reaction® Be With You! TRP… over and out!
You got that reversed.
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At least I thought you did the first time through. I guess either you or my brain edited the post.
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I was about to edit the post, and then realized, no that’s what I meant. I’ll admit it’s an awkward construction. But I was only following yours. ;-)
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Bennet’s post on Mises and value was very disappointing. But more to the point, what was the goal? The market intervention implications of the objectivity of value are progressive in the extreme.
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Handle, if I understood what that meant, I might be able to comment. I am convinced that market interventions are sometimes necessary, even if only to ensure some markets do not exist or have punishingly high inefficiencies. Of course, I would come down on the side of letting free markets work, especially in the case of pricing long term debt, far more often than our masters currently allow it. It was good to see you and Foseti over there. I think those “kids” got a good thing going over there in spite of the admittedly lackluster economics reporting!
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Jaq Royale’s post cracked me up. I remember being in the exact same place almost two years ago–reading Moldbug for the first time and being like, “What?! Whoa…wait a minute?’ as the world suddenly flipped upside down.
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@Nick:
It’s really about credibility and humility. If you like what the folks at Social Matter are doing, then you want them to earn a reputation for rigor and reliability. Bennet set that goal back with his post, which is a bad result for Social Matter.
Economics is often subtle, difficult, and counterintuitive, and the arguments one needs to make often require a great deal of sophistication. If Bennet is going to go up against a master like Mises, (really the whole Austrian tradition including Hayek, Rothbard, and Hoppe), ‘and everybody else’, then he’d better be packing some serious heat, or else he’s going to reveal himself as being both undeservedly arrogant and also ignorant.
What is ironic is that it is the Austrian tradition and their central concept of the subjectivity of value that is most sympathetic to your complaints about monetary manipulation by the state, and it is arguments against that conception – like Bennet’s! – that have historically been marshaled in favor of the Socialist / Keynesian model of central banking and the management of fiat currency, which all rely on the incoherent notion that commodities and labor are worth something other than what the market is willing to pay for them. The Austrians hate the Fed more than anybody, and this is why they hate it.
I agree with you that cheerleading and encouragement is appropriate to motivate these guys to keep doing their good work. But it should always go exclusively in the direction of high quality, and gentle incentivizing that they stick to subjects in which they can leverage their top notch comparative advantages. Bennet should thus be encouraged to focus on other subjects besides Economics, where he has been weighed and measured and found wanting.
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That labor is worth something other than what the market is willing to pay is incoherent if value is narrowly defined as market price.
But I would prefer to live in a culture that believes that human labor, and human life, has an intrinsic value that goes beyond the market price, that will not suffer to be tallied up in GDP and compared in X dollars for preserving a reputation for honor or Y% more for the risk of loss of reputation due to dishonesty being discovered. Virtutis praemium suum est.
Or, as Carlyle says, we can’t be owls and beavers, we must be men.
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I imagine it happened like the chairman getting exiled in the movie Judge Dredd
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Hey, where was/is my welcome commitee?
Oh, when I reconsider it, I don’t want one. I prefer to like most things which are subtle and danerous creep in through the cracks in the cement floor of the basement (which we incidentally suspect may be one of the residences most suspectible to our pernicious influences)…
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Ademonos, the Official Welcome Committee was on an undisclosed island in the Indian Ocean. In their absence, I can only notice what gets brought to my attention. Which it has now.
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According to Aristokles, apparently McCCLendon really was what he later claimed to be pretending to be, but had something of a nervous breakdown.
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Handle, is THIS a respectable answer?
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Alfred, thanks for the info. Nervous breakdown or no, not someone to be entirely trusted.
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A neologism y’all may appreciate: Prumbots – Professional Umbrage & Offense Takers.
Coined today in this blog post re: this weeks controversy in Australian state politics. Use freely and enjoy :)
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