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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=Tno6nPT66RM

Have we talked about Georgia Meloni’s powerful speech? A few days ago half my twitter feed was talking about.

I believe she is fundamentally correct that we have robbed society of their identity and tried to replace it with whatever pronouns are.

The consumer stuff gets a little silly but whatever it sounds good. Need to have an enemy your fighting against.

My pro nouns are

Man, American, Catholic, Son.

I think makes a strong implication that gender identity and whole pronoun thing is for those without roots. Empty people.

What evidence is there that financial speculators are the right people to blame for what she is complaining about?

'Financial speculator' is a good intuitive descriptor for the more abstract 'commodifier'. The essence of neoliberal capitalism is that it turns every human attribute into a form of capital and every cultural artifact into a commodity. Everywhere it seeks to produce systems of winners and losers, and it desires that everything be packaged up and sold. Are 'financial speculators' in the narrow sense responsible for all this? Not wholly, no, but they serve as a useful synecdoche. The mindset of the forex trader or the rolex flipper is very much the sentient manifestation of neoliberal ideology, just as the mindset of the brutal cop is a sort of sentient fascism.

Financial speculator' is a good intuitive descriptor for the more abstract 'commodifier'. The essence of neoliberal capitalism is that it turns every human attribute into a form of capital and every cultural artifact into a commodity.

I think this view is flawed. neoliberal capitalism doesn't do that, it recognizes that this already happens naturally as we better understand the world around us. At every level of business if communication is possible there are immense benefits to scale and specialization. This goes all the way up the chain and naturally has all these effects you dislike. This is not some memetic belief system infecting the people that we can wipe and then return to our idyllic past. This is a force of nature that can only be combatted by forcing isolation from the nation outward and within the polity itself if too large. And even that would fail to outside interference with competition. This is Moloch. One does not slay Moloch so easily for he is deep in our nature.

Tariffs and regulation are probably sufficient.

I don't think so unless you're ready for the quality of life to drastically reduce and to become a global backwater entirely dependent on allies. You'd need to totally isolate your markets or your internal market simply can't compete and will collapse immediately.

Not true. Even if we assume that neoliberal capitalism is unassailably efficient, the inefficiencies induced by a socialist system would in many cases not be very great and could be protected with relatively modest tarriffs. And of course for many (perhaps most) industries, a regulated market is the best solution, as well evidenced by the real world.

Khmer Rouge and Ancapistan are two ends of a very long spectrum.

Very little of that spectrum is devoid of molochian tendencies though. Moloch is able to instantiate itself within even moderately small economies. especially if exposed to a global information source. Maybe my critique is better express in more concrete terms. If you can only really know 300 people, and I'm being generous here, and you want to know the people responsible for your various staples and customs then you're going to quickly run out of your 300 person budget. How many of those people are doing your sewer work, without economies of scale how many of them are cobbling your shoes and keeping your clothing patched up? Producing your food? Nearly zero of them are producing entertainment for you. Modern day man's consumption is the center of a web of many millions, isolating your economy isn't just a matter of cutting off some dubious Disney channels, it's paying a lot more for everything, including essentials and many going without for that fact. Those people are going to see what your vision costs them in very real and personal terms. If you can sell them on the vision you still need to deal with the fact that a collection of strong independant local communities are reliant on the kindness of other geopolitical actors to prevent their pillaging on a global stage. How do you produce cars if companies can't be allowed to grow so large that they commoditize the workers? let alone warships.