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I've noticed an increasing amount of chatter from both sides about dropping out of society -- to build a homestead, or to buy a house in some foreign, isolated part of the planet. Of course, "I want to live rural!" guys have been around for years, and actually living rural in 2024 is a pretty raw deal for most. But it's telling so many have made the leap from, "I want to live small", to "I want to live completely alone (with spouse/kid/dog)". I'm sure much of this springs from a genuine love for sustainable living, the quiet life, the country and all of its joys. But the vibe I get is a subtle rising tide of misanthropy, of decreasing faith in the common man possibly regardless of one's leaning. As someone else put it,
My question is: Have you noticed this too? Maybe my circle's blowing this out of proportion, but maybe not.
If so, what's going on here?
I've got a personal theory for what's happening. See, I'm not much of a gamer, but I play two games regularly: Fortnite and PUBG. Really they're just for stimulation while I chill out and listen to music/podcasts, but something pretty damn annoying happens almost every time. I'll be relaxing in-game, looking for loot at a calm pace, when some absolute beast of a player flies in out of nowhere and shreds my health before I can blink. Every time it feels like bullshit because I'm not even trying to compete at that level. All multiplayer games have separate queues for "casual" and "ranked", but inescapably there's a handful of sweat lords who've memorized the meta, who know exactly where the best guns and vehicles are, who throw their weight around in casual games and ruin the experience for everyone else.
And when this happens, my natural reaction isn't "This game's matchmaking has failed", it's "I'm tired of these dickheads, I should play single player games instead". In other words, this is an organizational failure. Humans are naturally excellent at organizing themselves into the right groups -- you throw hundreds of kids into the same school, and very quickly the correct circles will form. There's bound to be a lot of kids with nothing in common, but this is obvious to both parties, so they simply avoid interaction. All groups are autonomous and self-organized, and it works really well.
Online groups in 2024 are algorithm-organized. The internet has taken on a kind of 1800s-Manchester-factory-worker housing feel where everyone's crammed into the same tiny spaces despite our differences. We are now constantly aware of how the other half lives, what they are saying. It's like your teacher forcing you to let the annoying kid play kickball with your group, to sit at your lunch table, etc. Going online feels abrasive in a way it really didn't back then. In 2009 you'd hop on some forum and it felt exactly like hanging out with friends, a 100% positive and chill experience. Going online now is like hanging out with everybody. Sometimes it's good, but a lot of the time it sucks. I don't want to know what the guys I hated in high school think of politics, or movies, or anything. But now I'm going to hear it, over and over and over.
Maybe I'm nostalgic, right? 2009 was a long time ago, I was basically a kid...
But probably not. Because I have a solid point of comparison: I understand Japanese, and spend a ton of time on the Japanese web. What inspired this post is actually a single website, which is 5channel. It's the largest anonymous bulletin board on earth, but more accurately it's a collection of around 1000 bulletin boards with virtually zero moderation. You can post wherever you want, say whatever you want, and... it works. Not because the Japanese are polite or something -- they can get wild -- but because if you just let humans organize themselves, things work out. This echoes my own time as an internet moderator, where I first believed that I could shape the board through my actions, but later realized the board's quality was beyond my control, it's an autonomous process that you have little say in.
I pay $4 a month to post on 5channel. I've made hundreds of posts there, and yet no one's realized I'm a white foreigner. Despite the language barrier, I post there because it's sorta like the English web was back in 2009. There's none of the bullshit, it's a site for nerds to make dumb jokes and chat about nerd stuff. When I browse reddit or twitter or 4chan, there's a lingering unpleasant feeling, but when I go to 5ch it's just dumb fun. It's exactly like the net I grew up with. You compare the two, and the English web just feels... sick.
I'm 100% ready to believe this pessimism in the air comes from our inability to self-organize. We are locked in with people we do not like 24/7, reading their crappy opinions, we can't just splinter off and make a new community and so we live with a slight psychological chip on our shoulder but we're not sure why. What's funny is my narcissistic tendencies fade the more I use 5channel. When you're stuck around people that challenge your identity all the time, you get defensive and sorta retreat back into yourself. But when you're around people who aren't going to constantly irritate you or challenge who you are, you start to relax and open up. You may even turn into a bit of an optimist. Conversely, it's this constant feeling of "Someone's gonna try and screw with me" that sorta defines how English web feels now, why everyone's so antsy and defensive and unwilling to let their irony shield down.
Human groups are naturally pretty small. In nature, whenever any major divide happens, tribes just split off and go separate ways. Being forced into a semi-permanent state of clash really can't be good for us, despite how "normal" this has become.
One of the reasons I tend conservative is the different views towards exit rights.
For most conservatives, the reaction to liberals who want to go start a communist paradise elsewhere is "Good. Go do it!". This is a sincere wish. The presence of communism elsewhere is the surest bulwark against it happening here. The idea of communism so alluring that we need constant reminders about its failures, which are guaranteed.
But liberals have more of a "yous can't leave" attitude. The grand experiment can only work if everyone is forced to join. If the ants go somewhere else, the grasshoppers won't have any food to eat. Thus, states like California are considering exit taxes to trap the high-performing people in the state. And obviously the Soviets had to keep people inside with barbed wire and guns.
Did you just rewrite atlas shrugged in 2 paragraphs?
I would rebut, and say the issues is socialized losses and costs while privatizing the profits/tragedy of the commons/extraction without due compensation/collusion/fraud/monopoly/rivers on fire/cancer clusters/disgusting food/dangerous drugs/pinkertons/unsafe air travel. To pretend that there are not serious and almost endless downsides to unregulated commerce and exploitation is crazy.
Classically, libertarians always seem to want all the benefits of a stable state with a monopoly on powers, as long as it doesn't realllllllyyyyy apply to them, and they don't have to pay for it. Laws for thee and not for me etc....rich people already kind of live that life, so it is an attractive philosophy for many, I run into them every day.
True believers can always move to the libertarian paradise that is Somalia!
As far as keeping a tax base of people that have immensely benefited from the state apparatus to generate their wealth. It is perfectly fair to incentivise them to keep some of their wealth in the place that helped create it. Again, wanting all of the benefits while shirking the costs.
That Somalia line is a tired cliché that straight up ignores the Hoppean elephant in the room.
Libertarians are fine with authority, actually. So long as it's consensual and not tyrannical. We want our masters to compete to be picked, not ditch them altogether. That's anarchists you're thinking of.
Hoppe is quite fine with feudalism. And in my travels I've found lots of libertarians that actually did go to places like Hong Kong, Prospéra and the UAE that are clearly and obviously ruled by some authority but provide the basic entrepreneurial freedom and reasonable tax rates that are sorely lacking in the West. Better to be ruled by a fair autocrat than tyrannized by the people.
I myself have moved my permanent residence to Galt's Gulch, and it's really just fine living among civilized people that aren't trying to squeeze you for every last cent to give nothing in return under the guise of a social responsibility they abdicate every day. I recommend it.
Ah yes UAE home of literally modern day slavery and modern day monarchy with free money and sinecures for all true citizens and free or subsidized healthcare, education, and housing. An economy based on resource extraction they lucked into. Truly a beacon for humanity.
Hong Kong, a successful trading port run on British principles/laws for 100 years that is now being slowly bogged down by chinese nonsense, but hey you can still score a dog crate apartment (literally) for a reasonable price.
Prospera, I read a few think pieces about it a while ago. Seems like a good place to set up crypto scam companies and stem cell clinics. Also seems like the locals don't like it.
None of these "countries" are driving humanity forward, anywhere is already pretty nice if you're rich, and large stable governments are responsible for almost all recent scientific progress and will continue to be so. These little projects are sideshows at best.
I don't understand your final paragraph. Is there a Galt's Gulch project out there or are you saying you've moved to the UAE? Don't worry, we'll let you back in once the robots do all the work, just nice like that.
Edit: Had to look up recent Prospera stuff, as expected it is basically just a money/drug/crypto laundering scheme. Pretty funny, seems like they are about to be beaten down by the unrelenting might of the honduran government. (words that have never been said before in history)
https://theintercept.com/2024/03/19/honduras-crypto-investors-world-bank-prospera/
I'm not a libertarian, personally, but I don't think libertarians have the goal of society of driving humanity forward or progressivism of any sort. Some of them do, but that is adjacent to libertarianism. They just want a government that can defend property rights from outsiders and arbitrate disputes between insiders. You can't make a critique of liberal morality to libertarianism because they consider it in the domain of the individual and not the government.
A libertarian will tell you if you want to change the world, become an angel investor, or if you lack the means, purchase stock in the most forward-thinking companies. Or even better, start your own. Not demand the government to do so. And this is entirely consistent within their world view. Just because you don't like it or clutch your pearls about the second order consequences doesn't mean it doesn't make sense to a libertarian.
That is fine. I just think is is a terrible way to go about governing (or not governing) a large population. No man is an island, we live in a society, there but for the grace of god go I, and the thousand practical benefits of helping and being helped by your fellow humans. yadda yadda yadda....
There also seems to be an expectation that anyone and everyone is perfectly healthy and intelligent and is capable of starting a business or being the locus of their own control, etc...etc... a huge section of humanity isn't cut out for that, and the rest certainly weren't when they were born and won't be when they are old.
Nobody is clutching any pearls, just pointing out some basic stuff.
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