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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 26, 2026

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Because the sociopathic ultimately cares about his power, success, status, reputation.

And this is... unique to the sociopath, somehow?


If you have two different Centers for Kids Who Can't Read Good and Who Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too, one run by a sociopath and one run by a relatively reasonable person with sincere love for the pupils, what superseding benefit should we expect from the former?

Well, for it to not go out of business, for one. The purpose of a business is to make money, just as the purpose of life is to reproduce. Whether "going out of business in an environment where such a school is marginally or completely unprofitable" is a moral good or not, I leave to you.

I would expect to see a lot of waste which benefits the owner’s pockets or reputation.

You see waste, I see a price paid to stop him from deciding to do literally anything else. Maybe it's a little, maybe it's a lot, depends on how the market is and his other objectives.

He’ll probably do a lot of worthless assemblies and meetings where he gets to feel powerful, maybe he’ll send flyers to make the town sad about how little they care for the stupid in a bid to bring in private donations, maybe he’ll overstate how much money the school needs so he can pull a bigger salary, maybe he’ll do a whole redesign of the school that doesn’t matter simply because it makes him feel cooler.

In order: 'feeling power' is part of the compensation package, that's called 'an effective marketing strategy' (is it really his fault most people are literally hard-wired to respond to it?), that's called 'negotiating appropriately with government entities' (that either aren't paying attention or don't care), and as for the last one... it's his money, he can do what he wants with it.

Or maybe there’s some “test” that gives him a national ranking so he ignores the holistic needs of the pupils to focus on min-maxxing that one metric, so he can be boastful among his peers.

I thought that was just called "standardized testing". In this case, the metric does not match reality, and so Goodhart-ing is the rational response. And sure, if you actually care, you're going to focus on the other stuff too [because it is good to focus on those things- when non-sociopaths say "give back to the community", this is what they mean- compare car companies sponsoring racing teams, it's not just "drive up demand for the product", these people sometimes like what they're doing if indeed a sociopath is capable of liking anything], but if push comes to shove and the school is not sufficiently profitable otherwise, then yes, I'd expect maximization on the metric.


The 60iq should be trained to fulfill the duties appropriate for his iq, and he should be trained in how to pursue a happy life likewise.

You might have heard this one before.

Let's say you have 3 servants. Let's call them A, B, and C.

You have 800 dollars to distribute between them, so that they will invest those dollars and make you more money.

How should you distribute those dollars to maximize your return on investment, including what those employees cost?

If you give servant A X dollars, and he returns with 2X dollars, should he be honored more, less, or the same amount than the servant B, who you gave X-3 dollars, but returns 2*(X-3)?

How about the servant C, who does nothing?

If he justifies not doing anything by claiming the oppression inherent within the system was too much for him to handle (a point on which he is correct), how would you respond?


Ideally, each person would have the same amount of wellbeing (high), sacrificing his own for another in need

if anyone is to receive an overabundance in wellbeing

Your examples are all instrumental: "an overabundance" is seed money. Seed money for someone who isn't going to work as hard is wasted; it should have gone to the man who could have used it.

If you want to be a wellbeing-maximalist we therefore agree that the transfer goes both ways- that's what the "to each according to their need" part means (otherwise you're paying the guy who is more capable than you less just because he is more capable, and it's fundamentally destructive to do this to the guy who is [in a sense] holding your world up lest he exercise his right to display indifference to that task).

The dirty little secret of Marx and Rand is that, assuming all parties [both the "sociopath" who can see things clearly and the others who are less able] are Christ-like, they reach the same conclusion. The requirements for someone barely capable of anything, capable of some, and capable of much to be Christ-like are all different, and when we decide that "no, actually, they're all the same", we have cheated whoever that reflects least.

I think cheating is bad.