Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Thank you for engaging whole heartedly with the riddle of the flute children. Your excellent comment has given me the push back I need to rethink my position (or to retreat from the bailey to the motte)
The suggestion "kill the person who asked the question" is to be taken seriously but not literally. Think of it as a cry of pain: For fucks sake, notice the fucking problem.
Taking one step upstream, the intellectual default is to treat power honey pots as exogenous. They exist. There is nothing to be done about it. Cope as best you can.
That is at least half true. Consider the maxim "those who do not work, neither shall they eat". Not true individually. Perhaps society is organised as 50% Slaves who grow twice as much food as they eat and 50% Masters who eat but do not farm. Or perhaps society is organised as 50% able-bodied who grow twice as much food as they eat and 50% children, elderly, and sick, who eat but do not farm. The fundamental point is that the collective cannot eat more food than it grows. This is going to create a power honey pot around farm work and the distribution of food, which is intrinsic to the human condition.
Endogenous honey pots are real too. Sometimes it is a matter of degree; we leave the lid off the honey pot, forgetting that it will attract wasps. Sometimes we create a honey pot that needn't actually exist. (Weak example: We need to mandate vaccinations to counter the distrust created by mandating vaccinations. If government had focused on earning trust, rather than demanding it, we wouldn't be in our current mess. Explanation.
A strong historical example flows from the slogan "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". I used to believe that the problems in the USSR in the 1930s were fully explained by incompatible incentives. Implementing the slogan will lead to increasing problems with people hiding their abilities and accumulating needs. But I gradually noticed that death toll from the Terror was too high, and reached too far into the ruling class. There was something worse, down stream from "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need".
The problem with Utopian ideas that are not incentive compatible is that things go to shit. Then the ruling elite must construct mechanisms of coercion to create artificial incentives. There must be an Ability Finder General. There must be an Adjudicator of Needs. Imagine the surprise among the more idealistic members of the ruling elite when the battle for these position leads to them being sent to the Gulag.
Endogenous! The power honey pot exists because it is created by the unfolding logic of that particular system. It didn't have to exist. People could have looked ahead and decided on a different path. It would have saved their lives.
A weaker example, (but from 2025, so more relevant) is UK Prime Minister Starmer putting VAT (the UK's fancy sales tax) on "School fees". The UK has a "pay twice" system of secondary education. Government run schools are free at the point of use. You have already paid for them through your taxes. If you are unhappy with the education that your child is receiving, you can send them to a private school (traditionally called a "public" school, meaning open to any child whose parents were rich enough to pay the fees, and contrasting with the practice among the nobility of engaging a private tutor to teach their children exclusively.)
Sending your child to a private school saves the government money. They don't have to provide a place for your child in the government school. However, you get no refund of taxes. You have already paid taxes to provide that place and must pay a second time to fund the private school.
Starmer had two motivations. Tacitly, levelling. He wants to destroy private education so that every child has the same education, even if it is not very good. Explicitly (fig-leafly? cloakatively?), money. The money has run out and the government is thrashing about, desperately seeking new sources of money. This has somewhat backfired. Many of the parents who send their children to private schools struggle to afford the fees (the pay twice structure makes this hard). Some are admitting defeat. The addition of VAT makes the price too high and they send their child to the government run school. Providing the place costs the government money. (Hence the sense that though the government says it is trying to raise money, this is a fig leaf over levelling.)
For fucks sake, notice the fucking problem. If we want to remake society according to our own Utopian design, our best bet is to capture the education system. Then we can design the curriculum and ensure that every-one's children are taught right-think, regardless of their parents wrong-think. Starmer hasn't noticed this. He wants money. He wants equality (but doesn't much care what is in the curriculum, provided it is the same in every school). But he is squeezing private schools. Every child moved from a private school to a government school is a drop of honey in the pot. VAT is only a small matter; he is leaving the lid of the honey pot ajar.
Nobody else in the UK is noticing that the lid of the curriculum honey is left ajar. This is what I am trying to point to when I say "the intellectual default is to treat power honey pots as exogenous."
This example might not resonate in the USA, because the right has noticed that the public school curriculum is a power honey pot and maybe the left noticed first and its wasps have already arrived; the fight is starting.
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