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A big part of the problem with Western modernity is universal human rights, not in a “some people shouldn’t have rights hahahaha” shitposting way, but in the sense that some people struggle to function in modernity and must, for their benefit and the benefit of wider society, live with a lesser amount of both liberty and responsibility.
We understand this in some cases, people with down’s, late stage dementia, low-functioning autism. But those one or two cognitive steps above them have been granted, by the courts, almost absolute freedom. This was the second components of the emptying of the asylums.
Modernity is complex and confusing, I think Moldbug makes the point that plenty of people who would have been quite capable in historical situations struggle to function in their interactions with the modern state, modern employment market, modern social customs, subtext.
These people don’t deserve to be slaves. They have value as people, and in our materially abundant and prosperous society they should be supported in finding their happiness. But, in their interests and those of wider society, they shouldn’t be as free as us either.
There must be a stage between liberty and being a total ward of the state. A half-freedom.
I think about this a lot lately. I've been religiously watching Caleb Hammer's Financial Audit this year. Apparently this year in particular older fans of the show have complained that it's devolved into Caleb Springer, and all the dysfunction of humanity is paraded in front of the camera with a thin veneer of "Lets look at you finances" after 60 minutes of discovering what a low functioning member of society they are across the board.
That said, the same themes keep coming up again and again. Employment has gone totally fucky, and you need to SEO your resume and tailor it to each job application, probably using AI to save time. Because everyone is getting spammed with thousands of AI generated resumes for even entry level positions, so git gud. I'm not sure this is a state of affairs we should accept for mid-wit level career opportunities.
The second is that feeding yourself is fucked. Generational knowledge of how to make thrifty healthy meals has been lost, and low functioning individuals constantly struggle with the impulse to door dash poison, and finance it to boot. That said, cheap staples like beans, rice, etc are still widely available. So it's not totally impossible, and it helps if you were raised right.
The third is that there are arrays of predatory credit vehicles that would blow your damned mind. I knew about how terrible it was to run a credit card balance, and I knew payday loans were predatory to a point of exciting legal scrutiny. I had no idea there was a whole world of credit apps build directly into shopping apps. Pay in four, Klarna, other crap I'm probably not spelling correctly because somehow I've never actually been exposed to it personally. And seemingly the prevailing wisdom is at 18 you get a credit card, max it out because it's "free money" and then pay the minimums your entire life. Sounds like a fair trade, a few months of zero impulse control, followed by paying only a few hundred a month forever. I'd say it's just the show, but then I think back to my 20's and all the people I knew, even educated professionals, who did exactly that and were digging their way back out from it. Nobody balances a checkbook anymore, and cash isn't physical so that when you are out you are out. It's all imaginary numbers and notices you can ignore.
And I mean, that's a complexity disease that has hit the three main areas of your life, employment, feeding yourself, and money. It makes me think a lot about how the bar has risen to meet some minimum standard to meaningfully navigate society.
Yeah, there’s a meme on Anglo-reactionary Twitter, which I will do a post about at some point, that essentially says well you know popular democracy was designed for and works for 130 IQ Anglos. And the further you get away from that, you know, either the worse your democracy becomes or the less democracy you can have. Much of the American system over the last 150 years and before (thanks in some part to the wisdom of the founders) has been engineering things so that they still kind of work even when most voters aren’t 130 IQ Anglos, but there’s a limit to every system. Brazil is a democracy. India is a democracy. There are localized corruption issues but, generally speaking, these are countries in which the most popular party wins a majority in the legislature etc etc. They are still poor and dysfunctional.
I'm not sure my observations really correlate directly with "democracy only works with 130 IQ Anglos" and more, our entire society is developing pitfalls left and right in fundamental activities that everyone needs to navigate (getting a job, feeding yourself, managing your money) where the only winning move is to not engage in a whole swath of behavior.
I mean, to illustrate my point, maybe I'm getting old, or I am too paranoid about dark patterns, or what. But I got my driveway done. Dude who did it sends me an invoice. It's been generated in some off the shelf business solution, so I'm not mad at him about what comes next. But in the process of attempting to accept and pay for this invoice, it pitches me a credit card, with no obvious way to say "No I don't want a new credit card" without also shutting down the whole process. But after looking at the screen for a few minutes trying to find the hidden "I don't want a credit card, but I would like to pay this invoice button" and failing, I hit the "No Thank You" button and the whole process shut down, and it told the guy I had rejected his invoice.
I ended up paying him by check before he left.
Another example, I'm at a museum, and they have a CR Code you need to scan to take you to the page where you can reserve tickets for a particular exhibit. I have an old phone (because I refuse to upgrade perfectly good phones every 2-3 years just because), with a QR code reader that used to be reliable. I scan the code, and I now know but didn't at the time that after scanning the code, instead of displaying it's contents, it displayed an ad which looked like it's contents. I click the ad not knowing it's an ad, it takes me to a page asking for my credit card. I think this doesn't look right, so I show it to the attendant at the kiosk asking if this is the correct form to get tickets for the exhibit. They assure me it is. It wasn't. My credit card got stolen. I should have trusted my gut on that one. I didn't realize until after the fact that the QR Code reader I'd been using extremely sporadically over a decade had become enshittified with predatory ads. These days Brave on mobile has a QR Code reader built in, but I'm not sure that was the case at the time. Although I may just not have known. Regardless I'm irritated at the constant state of shifting sands under my feet revealing pit traps I'm expected to avoid.
Once upon a time, as a young teen on warez sites, there was always the game of virus roulette. You'd go to download a no-cd crack off GameCopyWorld.com, which still exists, and you were presented with 3-6 buttons that all said "Download" on them. All but one were predatory ads which caused you to install a virus. Only one was the actual download link to the no-cd crack.
The no-cd crack may also be a virus.
Now it feels like that's how everything works. Everything is an app, and every app has dark patterns trying to steal from you. I like to think I'm not a retard, but it's getting to the point where it tricks me from time to time. I can't imagine how normies fare. If Financial Audit is any indicator, not well.
I'm kind of worried over what I'm supposed to do to support my parents in this stuff as they age. They've never been great with consumer tech, especially smart phones. I'd be perfectly willing to drive over and help them occasionally to fix something or install something, or just show it how it works. But it increasingly feels like a never-ending battle. The apps, like you said, just get more confusing and more malicious. My parents are not at all senile, but increasingly at that "i'm too old for this shit" phase where they really don't want to bother learning new tech. I don't want to bother, but I feel like I have no choice.
It used to be the case that you could always opt out by calling a place on the phone, or driving to their physical store, or paying someone in cash. Increasingly it feels like we just have to use the app, which will constantly change without warning. That feels really predatory and impractical, and I can't believe it's being allowed in our society where the average US senator is 65 years old and heavily weights the opinions of old people.
Oh man, I should have included this story, but I forgot.
I had to sign up for a fucking app for my daughter's pediatrician! They literally handled all test results, scheduling, messaging etc exclusively through the Healow app, which was dog shit. I installed it, and attempted to get the account set up and synced with the doctors office properly, in their fucking lobby, and the piece of shit refused to work. Even just handing them my god damned phone and asking them to do it for me, they couldn't fucking do it. Eventually it just fucking worked for reasons that are opaque to everyone after trying enough times, but then eventually the app refused to update and wouldn't work anymore because my phone was too old. Because when you aren't wrestling with dark patterns and enshittification, there is always planned obsolescence.
We have a different pediatrician now. They have an ongoing problem where our Nurse Practitioner which we see is lazy about getting her files submitted, so our billing is always messed up. Nothing major, sometimes they tell us we owe a copay several weeks after we thought we were caught up. But at least there are actual people there we can speak to reliably, and they don't force us to go through a god damned enshittified app.
Enshittified doesn't mean "is shitty". It means "is shitty because now that you are locked in, they can exploit you". Just being shitty because they're cheapskates that can't spend the money on a good app doesn't count.
I see you are unfamiliar with the Healow app. Yes, it is shitty because they lock you in, and completely stop giving a fuck. It's more or less ubiquitous with Doctors offices, and if your Doctors office uses an app, it's probably Healow. I'm not even aware of another one. I think the Inova hospital system near me doesn't use it... yet. But virtually every other doctors office we had to use in Northern VA used it, although some were better about requiring it than others.
Mine uses Medical Brain.
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