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Notes -
The new book The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism And The War On Democracy has been making the rounds. In lieu of reading it, here's an NPR interview.
At the core of this is a middle-school-cafeteria psychodrama that remains unresolved. The lived-experience of "computer nerds" is that of being instrumentally valuable to many, terminally valuable to none. As a result, anti-capitalist rhetoric that disparages money as a source of moral value is received by them as a personal attack. The computer nerd feels deep down that his earning-potential is the only thing he brings to the table in the status game; as far as he's concerned, his value on all other axes might as well be rounded off to zero.
Therefore, the computer nerds wants nothing more than to get away from all those teeming masses with their grabby hands who want to take all his stuff and leave him with nothing. If it takes moving to one of Balaji Srinivasan's seasteads, or to Elon Musk's space colony, then so be it.
Huh? Is it a zone, or the whole world? There's a big difference - but hold on. That comic is the story of nerds simpliciter, not just computer nerds. And the people most outspoken against "The Nerd Reich" are also nerds - "theater nerds" to be precise. To continue the cafeteria picture, the theater nerds are (if anything) even more autistic, more put-upon, and more bullyable than the computer nerds, while the bullies themselves (the "jocks" and "popular kids") don't even figure in to the dialectic at all. So what's going on?
I guess it comes down to the different coping mechanisms each group employs. The theater nerds find solidarity with each other at least, whereas the computer nerds have no need for each other because they have their toys to play with, which can incidentally eke them out a living independent of anyone else. But the theater nerds have no such refuge, and so, being poor in both financial and social capital, have been forced over generations to build up an elaborate alternative system of social capital which is a lot more off-putting to outsiders but seems to form much deeper personal relationships within itself than any within the computer club. This, at least, levels the playing field between the two nerd factions somewhat.
But then, if some computer nerds start getting uppity and decide to form alternative solidarity groups of their own, now this upsets the balance. I suppose the theater nerds believe there's only so much space for nerds in this world, and so any ascendancy of computer nerds will leave less for them.
Honestly, I'm really just spinning a yarn at this point. There are a lot of holes in this story that I don't know how to patch up. In particular:
But I can't shake the feeling that all of this debate about "techno-fascism" (or whatever) is operating at a high simulacrum level, concealing the true reasons why people get so animated about this and why they choose the sides that they do. But what are those true reasons?
The idea I hear is clear and simple: the techno-fascist billionaires will use AI, Palantir, drones, Flock, … to turn the world into 1984. It will be racist and sexist to show off power and control, and because the dictators are “right wing” so they have to do everything the “left wing” hates. Ordinary tech employees don’t want this and wouldn’t benefit from it, but they don’t think about it, trudging along on isolated tasks to collect a decent paycheck (The Banality of Evil).
If they limited their ideas to Mars or some bought-out city, maybe the author is motte-and-baileying, but I see no issue. Voluntary experimentation is good, maybe they do have some improved ways of running things.
There’s something to be said about how libertarians become fascists, and cyberlibertarians become cyber-fascists. I don’t think it’s a solution: tyranny collapses on itself, as the “victors” fight and die out, and doesn’t seem interesting (of course, also the ethical issues).
Socialists demand universal control, not a plurality of ideas. The idea that a colony of Randists could happily exist in a remote mountain canyon or even on Mars is deeply offensive. All must conform.
Well, socialists believe those rich people are absconding with resources that don't belong to them. It's not just some demand that people near and far must all conform.
Indeed, it's also the murder of those people if they won't.
The earliest recorded socialist was Cain, who believed (trivially, correctly) that Abel was obtaining God's favor with resources that don't belong to him.
The first act of socialism ever practiced by humanity was redistributing Abel all over the ground.
From Cain's perspective, Abel obtaining God's favor that way was stealing (and purposefully ignores "obtaining God's favor" is the entire reason those resources were put there in the first place: "obtaining God's favor" and "being better than Cain" were one and the same for Cain, though).
Interestingly, the punishment for that was not death, but exile and divine protection from anyone else murdering him. (And the even more interesting implication is that Cain having done this doesn't seem to be stated as categorically/unequivocally evil, either.)
In what way did the resources not belong to him?
You might assert that Abel does not own his sheep in the sense that nobody can own any natural resources, because all resources, animals, plants, etc., are created by God. But Cain does not seem to have objected to Abel having a flock of sheep in the conventional, everyday sense of the term.
Moreover joking about 'redistribution' here seems like just a bad interpretation of the text? Cain's motive is not to steal any of Abel's material goods. Cain does not take Abel's sheep, nor even Abel's physical body. It's hard to read as a 'redistribution' of God's favour, because there is no reason for Cain to think that murdering Abel will somehow cause God to favour Cain. On the contrary, Cain attempts to conceal his actions from God. It looks to me like Cain (correctly) believes that God would look upon his act with disfavour.
Surely the traditional reading of this text, where Cain was motivated by envy, hatred, and pride, just makes more sense? Abel had done well, and Cain was envious, and that envy curdled into bitterness and despising. He killed Abel not as part of some strategic move to take anything that belonged to Abel, for Cain makes no attempt to take anything of Abel's. Nor does he make any suggestion that Abel committed an injustice. Cain was angry that Abel had been favoured more than he had been. That was it. That was the whole cause.
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