(Evidence: What does an ordinary western citizen think about freedom in China? And what about buying cheap products from China?)
Yet Moldbug somehow argues that external pressure would keep sovereigns from making their patches into slave labor camps (either with physical barriers or propaganda or mind control or something weirder)! So that the tyrants of slave patches sell their slaves’ products to the complacent liberal patches, and import catgirls from there for themselves.
+Tyrants are known to enjoy domination and torture of subjects even at cost to themselves (e.g. Hitler, Mussolini, the Kims, Pinochet or the various post-soviet dictators).
I think that’s an extremely likely, extremely dangerous failure mode that simply kicks the entire proposal back to the drawing board (and wipes the board clean for good measure). Unless strong further evidence for the defense is forthcoming, I proclaim the case on Patchwork closed.
Note that Moldbug spins some long, unlikely, hyper-Functionalist story somewhere on UR—as an attempt to juggle the Holocaust into a different reference class, maybe?
Moldbug somehow argues that external pressure would keep sovereigns from making their patches into slave labor camps
In my opinion this is very similar to the standard libertarian argument, except that instead of companies on the free market, MM speaks about sovereigns. And it didn’t convince me, too.
I am not defending MM here, I am just trying to understand him and pick the parts of his theory that seem correct to me. This is not one of them.
But to be fair, and fight the status quo, imagine that we are both subjects of the Moldbuggian Kingdom in the alternative universe, and we are discussing pros and cons of democracy, as a hypothesis. In that case, Hitler and Pinochet would be actually arguments against democracy. Like: “Let’s imagine that we try this democracy thing here. What makes you believe that people would not vote for an evil charismatic leader like Hitler? Also, even a democratic country needs a strong army, somehow isolated from the election process (otherwise a foreign attack during the election day would defeat the unprepared country). So what makes you believe that an army leader could not take over the power, like Pinochet?” And it would be your turn to convince me that it cannot happen, which would be rather difficult, because in reality, it happened.
To be clear, my point is that horrible evil things can happen in any political regime. Including democracy; including libertarian utopia; including MM’s utopia. Therefore “it could happen in a regime X” is not a sufficient argument for democracy. At best, it could be made to a statistic argument about how likely do different horrible things happen in different regimes to an average person.
And we should include all the horrible things that happen, not just those caused by the government directly. To take everything that happens in a country as a result of the government action or inaction. If the tyrant executes one hundred people, that’s one hundred people dead. If the small criminals independently murder one hundred people, that’s also one hundred people dead. The government is equally responsible for both. Just like the tyrant could decide to not execute those hundred people, so could the government decide to spend a bit more money on police instead of something else. Sovereign government has total power over their territory; therefore also it has total responsibility. All crimes that happen in a democratic country are the crimes of the democratic government. And that is a lot of crimes. Again, no government can bring that crime to zero, but we can still discuss whether government X can bring the total crimes in the country to a lower level than government Y. According to MM, the democratic governments are pretty bad at this.
The American patchwork resulted in civil war.
The Italian patchwork was eventually invaded.
Both were still extremely productive and raised living standards dramatically and furthermore made innovations that changed the world for the better. I consider the evidence that patchworks are bad insufficient.
Recall that in Neocameralism/Patchwork CEOs are under plausibly tight control to ensure profit maximization. You are using loaded terminology. Your argument is much better if you talk about profit maximizations not necessarily being as benign as imagined in a transhuman world rather than importing connotations of alpha apes doing anything they want and this ending badly.
+Tyrants are known to enjoy domination and torture of subjects even at cost to themselves (e.g. Hitler, Mussolini, the Kims, Pinochet or the various post-soviet dictators).
Disappointed you would do this. Down voted.
Note that Moldbug spins some long, unlikely, hyper-Functionalist story somewhere on UR—as an attempt to juggle the Holocaust into a different reference class, maybe?
Oh come on. Pot calling kettle black. You kind of do stuff like that all the time my friend. Without linking to the actual article related to this (which I don’t recall) is from a consequentalist view of communication nothing but a boo light.
Recall that in Neocameralism/Patchwork CEOs are under plausibly tight control to ensure profit maximization.
And? So someone can quite legally buy/acquire all the shares of a patch and order the CEO to do fucking anything, not just “maximize cash flow”. Doesn’t even have to be a single shareholder. What if the shareholders desire control over their property, huh—who’s gonna stop them then? The CEO? What if they promise the CEO a cushy deal?
Of course there would probably be more “rational” slave camps on average than “sadistic” ones. I’m going for the worst case scenarios here simply because… why shouldn’t I? I see zero evidence that, among a million patches, the worst cases would never ever arise once.
Psychopaths/sadists have amassed capital before, they have amassed influence before, they have gained partners’ trust before. Why wouldn’t they be able to exchange those for total+secure sovereignity within a Patchwork model?
I see zero evidence that, among a million patches, the worst cases would never ever arise once.
Looking at the real world spending of people with power and wealth and the traits these people have it seems to me that you would see many many more Dubai’s and Singapore’s than summer camps for sadists.
Why is one in a million that terrible? Its a far better track record than democracy or monarchy have… Indeed why would one in a hundred or one in ten be that horrible? Your opinion if this is an acceptable utilitarian trade and even desirable compared to modern third world misery, depend strongly on where you stand on torture vs. dust specks.
Looking at the real world spending of people with power and wealth and the traits these people have it seems to me that you would see many many more Dubai’s and Singapore’s than summer camps for sadists.
In the 20th century, in a world where democracy and human rights are actively promoted, all factors that would be missing from Moldburgia. Look at the real world behaviour of autocrats in the past.
Yet Moldbug somehow argues that external pressure would keep sovereigns from making their patches into slave labor camps (either with physical barriers or propaganda or mind control or something weirder)! So that the tyrants of slave patches sell their slaves’ products to the complacent liberal patches, and import catgirls from there for themselves.
+Tyrants are known to enjoy domination and torture of subjects even at cost to themselves (e.g. Hitler, Mussolini, the Kims, Pinochet or the various post-soviet dictators).
I think that’s an extremely likely, extremely dangerous failure mode that simply kicks the entire proposal back to the drawing board (and wipes the board clean for good measure). Unless strong further evidence for the defense is forthcoming, I proclaim the case on Patchwork closed.
Note that Moldbug spins some long, unlikely, hyper-Functionalist story somewhere on UR—as an attempt to juggle the Holocaust into a different reference class, maybe?
In my opinion this is very similar to the standard libertarian argument, except that instead of companies on the free market, MM speaks about sovereigns. And it didn’t convince me, too.
I am not defending MM here, I am just trying to understand him and pick the parts of his theory that seem correct to me. This is not one of them.
But to be fair, and fight the status quo, imagine that we are both subjects of the Moldbuggian Kingdom in the alternative universe, and we are discussing pros and cons of democracy, as a hypothesis. In that case, Hitler and Pinochet would be actually arguments against democracy. Like: “Let’s imagine that we try this democracy thing here. What makes you believe that people would not vote for an evil charismatic leader like Hitler? Also, even a democratic country needs a strong army, somehow isolated from the election process (otherwise a foreign attack during the election day would defeat the unprepared country). So what makes you believe that an army leader could not take over the power, like Pinochet?” And it would be your turn to convince me that it cannot happen, which would be rather difficult, because in reality, it happened.
To be clear, my point is that horrible evil things can happen in any political regime. Including democracy; including libertarian utopia; including MM’s utopia. Therefore “it could happen in a regime X” is not a sufficient argument for democracy. At best, it could be made to a statistic argument about how likely do different horrible things happen in different regimes to an average person.
And we should include all the horrible things that happen, not just those caused by the government directly. To take everything that happens in a country as a result of the government action or inaction. If the tyrant executes one hundred people, that’s one hundred people dead. If the small criminals independently murder one hundred people, that’s also one hundred people dead. The government is equally responsible for both. Just like the tyrant could decide to not execute those hundred people, so could the government decide to spend a bit more money on police instead of something else. Sovereign government has total power over their territory; therefore also it has total responsibility. All crimes that happen in a democratic country are the crimes of the democratic government. And that is a lot of crimes. Again, no government can bring that crime to zero, but we can still discuss whether government X can bring the total crimes in the country to a lower level than government Y. According to MM, the democratic governments are pretty bad at this.
The American patchwork resulted in civil war. The Italian patchwork was eventually invaded.
Both were still extremely productive and raised living standards dramatically and furthermore made innovations that changed the world for the better. I consider the evidence that patchworks are bad insufficient.
Recall that in Neocameralism/Patchwork CEOs are under plausibly tight control to ensure profit maximization. You are using loaded terminology. Your argument is much better if you talk about profit maximizations not necessarily being as benign as imagined in a transhuman world rather than importing connotations of alpha apes doing anything they want and this ending badly.
Disappointed you would do this. Down voted.
Oh come on. Pot calling kettle black. You kind of do stuff like that all the time my friend. Without linking to the actual article related to this (which I don’t recall) is from a consequentalist view of communication nothing but a boo light.
And? So someone can quite legally buy/acquire all the shares of a patch and order the CEO to do fucking anything, not just “maximize cash flow”. Doesn’t even have to be a single shareholder. What if the shareholders desire control over their property, huh—who’s gonna stop them then? The CEO? What if they promise the CEO a cushy deal?
No one. But then don’t invoke Hitler or Kim or Stalin, invoke slave ownership.
Of course there would probably be more “rational” slave camps on average than “sadistic” ones. I’m going for the worst case scenarios here simply because… why shouldn’t I? I see zero evidence that, among a million patches, the worst cases would never ever arise once.
Psychopaths/sadists have amassed capital before, they have amassed influence before, they have gained partners’ trust before. Why wouldn’t they be able to exchange those for total+secure sovereignity within a Patchwork model?
Looking at the real world spending of people with power and wealth and the traits these people have it seems to me that you would see many many more Dubai’s and Singapore’s than summer camps for sadists.
Why is one in a million that terrible? Its a far better track record than democracy or monarchy have… Indeed why would one in a hundred or one in ten be that horrible? Your opinion if this is an acceptable utilitarian trade and even desirable compared to modern third world misery, depend strongly on where you stand on torture vs. dust specks.
In the 20th century, in a world where democracy and human rights are actively promoted, all factors that would be missing from Moldburgia. Look at the real world behaviour of autocrats in the past.