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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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John Bull was not a real person but the qualities he represented were real. He represented Britain.

Davos Man is not a real person, yet the qualities he represents are real. These are the people who decide where the world is headed. It's the heartland of the liberal economic consensus, of the stupid buzzwords like 'resilient dynamism' and 'Creating a shared future in a fractured world'. Xi Xinping gave the 2017 address, defending free trade. Nahrendra Modi gave the 2018 address. It's a high profile event, even if it's purely symbolic.

Schwab is Davos Man incarnate. He founded the WEF and is seen to be responsible for Davos. If you're against the liberal internationalist consensus, you're against Davos and Schwab. We like to personify things. See US caricatures of the Jap in WW2. It's a natural propagandistic tactic.

Thus we get artfully done videos like: https://youtube.com/watch?v=UrEUzKTt7j0

Leonardo attacks a lot of things - big tech, Snopes fact-checking, mask/muzzle-wearing, modern 'art', Chainlink smart contracts (which is a somewhat esoteric /biz/ meme), public transport, eating the bugs... But all of them are seen to come under the aegis of Davos Man, they are the policies of the elite. Or they will soon be policies of the elite. You're not supposed to interpret the idea literally - nobody genuinely thinks that you just need to perforate Schwab's head and decisively change the world. He's representative.

Chainlink smart contracts (which is a somewhat esoteric /biz/ meme)

What? Since when was Chainlink globohomo? I only really check /biz/ when crypto goes up or down for the fun doomer or smug posting so maybe there has been a change but link just seemed like a super meme.

Well the idea is that Chainlink oracles will allow automatic control mechanisms. The use-case is that it's supposed to convey information from off-chain securely to on-chain. If Alice bets 20 Eth that Biden wins the election, an oracle is needed to determine if he wins or not, so the Eth goes to the right person. The fear is that Chainlink will be used to take away the banking of wrongthinkers as in the video. It's firmly enmeshed into the crypto ecosystem at this point and all but dominates its niche.

Plus the price action has been very bad and people are very dissatisfied with it, often blaming Sergey for selling too much. Chainlink's strongest defenders have been effectively silenced. To be fair, supply has increased at a fairly moderate rate, FTM or MATIC have seen much more supply increase and much greater appreciation per token. There's also disquiet at how many women are in Chainlink's management and HR branch.