Debate rages endlessly between pure capitalists and those who want some socialism thrown in.
That’s not a good set up for rational discussion. Rational discussion works much better when you discuss actual policy issues than when you discuss highly loaded catchphrases.
While I agree, I think that was his intent. Make it too easy and it doesn’t tell you anything about the participants ability to withstand highly loaded catchphrases. You don’t always want to talk politics with people who require careful wording.
When talking politics, I’d prefer to talk to someone who can keep up with tabooing most loaded terms by default while also maintaining sanity if I want to use a broad strokes description of “capitalist pigs vs dirty commies”—similar to how moldbug talks about the “jews” and “aryans” when talking about bitcoin. It’s a way of saying “get over yourself or get out”. It’s a simple filter.
The first idea of “be a sheep” seems like John is actually engaged in wanting to have a serious discussion about politics. He lacks the knowledge that he’s advocating liquid democracy but that’s sort of okay.
The second paragraph of capitalists vs. socialist on the other hand is hard to address on a serious level. When Lenin got to power in Russia he didn’t attempt to introduce socialism directly but tried to put state capitalism into motion because he didn’t consider Russia to be advanced enough to introduce socialism directly.
Sticking with capitalism for a while till socialism can be introduced is what Lenin advocated. Moldbug knows his history. John doesn’t seem to be aware of the fact that his compromise is basically what Lenin advocated 100 years ago.
Furthermore John probably means something different when he says socialism then Lenin did 100 years ago. The problem is that I honestly don’t know what John means. The notion of John that “we” can stick with capitalism presupposes that we are capitalist. Does John means that Germany is capitalist and not socialist? Scandinavia? I have no idea. On the other end of the spectrum there are various libertarians who say that the US isn’t pure capitalist.
But even if I would know what he means, framing the debate that way is problematic. I think it’s much more useful to discuss whether markets are better than hierarchical structures to solve certain problems than to discuss government vs. private ownership.
The frame also ignores issues such as whether companies are lead by their owners or by hired MBA’s who get payed on short term metrics and who have no real incentives to act in the long term interest of the company.
The frame isn’t helpful for discussing issues such as an unconditional basic income or single payer healthcare.
I can keep my sanity if I talk with someone who’s a racist and spreads a lot of bad memes. I can also keep my sanity when I hear someone talk about capitalists vs. socialist. That doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t speak up when someone spreads harmful memes in any of those cases.
To come back to Moldbug, the interesting thing about the post that you linked is that his prediction about bitcoin turned out to be wrong. Bitcoin trades higher than when I wrote the post and is very far away from 0.
To come back to Moldbug, the interesting thing about the post that you linked is that his prediction about bitcoin turned out to be wrong. Bitcoin trades higher than when I wrote the post and is very far away from 0.
Well, his prediction about what the central banks and governments would do was wrong. His prediction about what effect such actions would have may very well have been correct.
He don’t know about the effect such actions would have. I don’t think that 0 is a good representation of what would happen if you just juke the exchanges. Nuking the exchanges would prevent a lot of people from selling bitcoins.
As far as the prediction that he made that we can evaluate on the other hand he was still wrong. I do think that thinking too much in a blue vs. green is part of the reason why Moldbug made that error.
Yes it’s fun to engage into blue vs. green debates but you really have to take care to avoid coming to false conclusions.
That’s not a good set up for rational discussion. Rational discussion works much better when you discuss actual policy issues than when you discuss highly loaded catchphrases.
While I agree, I think that was his intent. Make it too easy and it doesn’t tell you anything about the participants ability to withstand highly loaded catchphrases. You don’t always want to talk politics with people who require careful wording.
When talking politics, I’d prefer to talk to someone who can keep up with tabooing most loaded terms by default while also maintaining sanity if I want to use a broad strokes description of “capitalist pigs vs dirty commies”—similar to how moldbug talks about the “jews” and “aryans” when talking about bitcoin. It’s a way of saying “get over yourself or get out”. It’s a simple filter.
The first idea of “be a sheep” seems like John is actually engaged in wanting to have a serious discussion about politics. He lacks the knowledge that he’s advocating liquid democracy but that’s sort of okay.
The second paragraph of capitalists vs. socialist on the other hand is hard to address on a serious level. When Lenin got to power in Russia he didn’t attempt to introduce socialism directly but tried to put state capitalism into motion because he didn’t consider Russia to be advanced enough to introduce socialism directly.
Sticking with capitalism for a while till socialism can be introduced is what Lenin advocated. Moldbug knows his history. John doesn’t seem to be aware of the fact that his compromise is basically what Lenin advocated 100 years ago.
Furthermore John probably means something different when he says socialism then Lenin did 100 years ago. The problem is that I honestly don’t know what John means. The notion of John that “we” can stick with capitalism presupposes that we are capitalist. Does John means that Germany is capitalist and not socialist? Scandinavia? I have no idea. On the other end of the spectrum there are various libertarians who say that the US isn’t pure capitalist.
But even if I would know what he means, framing the debate that way is problematic. I think it’s much more useful to discuss whether markets are better than hierarchical structures to solve certain problems than to discuss government vs. private ownership.
The frame also ignores issues such as whether companies are lead by their owners or by hired MBA’s who get payed on short term metrics and who have no real incentives to act in the long term interest of the company. The frame isn’t helpful for discussing issues such as an unconditional basic income or single payer healthcare.
I can keep my sanity if I talk with someone who’s a racist and spreads a lot of bad memes. I can also keep my sanity when I hear someone talk about capitalists vs. socialist. That doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t speak up when someone spreads harmful memes in any of those cases.
To come back to Moldbug, the interesting thing about the post that you linked is that his prediction about bitcoin turned out to be wrong. Bitcoin trades higher than when I wrote the post and is very far away from 0.
Well, his prediction about what the central banks and governments would do was wrong. His prediction about what effect such actions would have may very well have been correct.
He don’t know about the effect such actions would have. I don’t think that 0 is a good representation of what would happen if you just juke the exchanges. Nuking the exchanges would prevent a lot of people from selling bitcoins.
As far as the prediction that he made that we can evaluate on the other hand he was still wrong. I do think that thinking too much in a blue vs. green is part of the reason why Moldbug made that error.
Yes it’s fun to engage into blue vs. green debates but you really have to take care to avoid coming to false conclusions.
You flatter me :) Nope, that wasn’t my intent. I probably should have talked in terms of redistribution or some other object-level policy proposals.