domain:astralcodexten.substack.com
It's relative. Supporting the NEP was right wing in its time too despite being literally a Lenin proposal. Mao once called himself a right winger when he disavowed the Cultural Revolution. Politics moves and shifts.
Not wanting to tax unrealized gains, destroy crypto or engage in literal price fixing makes Trump the right wing option. I don't make the rules of hellworld, I just live in it.
FD4280
3hr ago
Doomer. If a civil war couldn’t happen over Covid, it’s not going to happen at all. Maybe an uncontested secession or three.
Botond173
3hr ago
Things like showing up to work on time, doing tasks as instructed, going to work even though your friends have something more fun in mind, time management.
This. If you're an average normie chump just out of college looking for entry-level work, your potential employer cannot really tell if you'll turn out to be a reliable wage slave or not. If, however, you've probably done various summer jobs without getting fired/arrested, you're much less of a risk in that regard. On the other hand, if you belong to a PMC family, doing unpaid internships for state institutions or NGOs and other front organizations of the Deep State is a more efficient use of your summer breaks.
Zephyr
3hr ago
I mean, not everyone is at the top; you could easily have mid level bureaucrats in the party blackmailing other mid level bureaucrats, or someone higher level (but not at the “throw your enemies out the window” high).
A lot of the time, the blackmail is the excuse you use to remove someone - you keep them around and use the blackmail to make them publicly support you, then (when they know too much, or are making noises about possibly not being 100% on your side, or are simply embarrassing now that you’ve used their support to climb higher) you reveal it to have a public excuse to remove them.
Hell, you could argue they’re more effective in totalitarian countries - if you are exposed in the US, you are definitely not getting the death penalty (you probably won’t even serve jail time if you were powerful). If China discovers you are acting against the party, you may just disappear.
2rafa
3hr ago
Jews have been bankers for far longer than modern meritocracy has existed. In any case, given the probably twenty or thirty fold increase in the number of white collar jobs created since the Industrial Revolution (on a per capita basis, let alone overall), some degree of meritocratic advancement was always inevitable. Even in 1400 someone very smart of humble birth wasn’t necessarily tied by fate to that origin - social advancement is a feature of all human society. As the total number of certain jobs increases, of course there’s space for people to move up the ladder.
But the rigorous nature of our meritocracy, combined with slower economic growth and elite overproduction, has created more perverse incentives. The only way out - the only way to protect children - is either a lottery system (structurally bad in so many ways) or some kind of hereditary structure, even if only in part.
What are the solutions here?
Imperial Japanese biopolitics included a range of policies designed to increase the Japanese race in number and quality via pronatalism and eugenics. The pronatal policies included restricting female employment, a bachelor tax, career penalties for being childless, family allowances, bigger houses for those with more children... Their whole culture spoke with one voice too, there were next to no dissenters against the message. There'd be big posters explicitly explaining the need to expand Japan territorially and demographically, it was a theme expressed in their cultural output. Accordingly they had high fertility rates (TFR around 3-4 during a major war when many men were deployed overseas) and in an urbanizing, industrial society too. Japanese fertility peaked in the 1920s due to still-low urbanization. But even in the 1940s with urbanization around 50% and a war they were far above replacement. Relationships were just a side effect.
Then when the US won WW2 and rewrote Japan's constitution, they added a section on women getting full political and economic rights alongside men. Japanese fertility never recovered from this.
Another solution in my opinion is mass-scale cloning, if the family is obsolete (we've lost the technology, we don't know how to do that anymore) let's go all-in on technology. Or have AI do all the work (romantic, physical, economic).
What's unlikely to work is tiny fiscal tweaks, a tax break here, subsidized childcare there. We know that doesn't work. A full totalitarian effort is needed to really put in effort along economic, social, legal, cultural dimensions. You have to make pro-natalism as big as anti-racism is today for it to really have a strong effect. You can be fired for being racist in a business, what about being fired for not having enough children? Hate speech is a thing, what about hate celibacy? The concept seems so cartoonish and silly to me, the horseshoe version of anti-incel rhetoric but that's the kind of normalizing power, the push-power that media and govt has. 'Hate speech' is just sparkling xenophobia, one of the oldest and most longstanding ideas in history.
I don't see any mechanism for a social fix to work outside of China, even they may lack the totalitarianism needed to push people back into having families and children. A technical fix is a lot easier, despite being a far more radical transformation.
Botond173
4hr ago
One curious fact about teen summer employment rates is that Asian teens are least likely to have a job.
I'm assuming the main reason is that Asian-Americans are the least likely to belong to the working class or the underclass.
Botond173
4hr ago
Dating sucks and gender relations are likely going to get worse as the social media experiment continues, to South Korea levels. It can only get worse from here.
I disagree with the parallel (not with your general argument). It's not sociologically possible. South Korea is a rather particular greenhouse in that regard, ethnically homogeneous and largely insulated from external trends, with distorted Confucian and cyberpunk tendencies taken to social extremes. None of that applies to the US or Western Europe either for that matter. I believe in the law that that which can't continue indefinitely, won't, even if it gets worse short-term. The hypergamy crunch is just around the corner. We're already at a point socially where there are three women to two men among new college graduates. This clearly cannot last.
09milk
4hr ago
People find SAT-solving fun, a classic example is the game Sudoku.
If you are not into it then you are not into it, but the game of building the meta, thus meta gaming itself can be fun, for people like me at least.
ChickenOverlord
4hr ago
I was a doomer 15 years ago. Things have mostly continued to get worse since then, but nowhere near as fast as I expected. The old saying goes that things fall apart slowly, then all at once. I figure it will all fall apart eventually, but I won't pretend to have any idea on the time scale. Anyone who pretends to know when is selling something.
"There are weeks where nothing happens, and there are decades where nothing happens" -Vladimir Chudin
OliveTapenade
5hr ago
This is a secular space, so I try to reserve my belief in divine intervention to the side. ;)
More seriously, I know you were joking, but I think that in Christianity it's a grave mistake to assume that divine favour clearly correlates or anti-correlates with worldly power or success. God tests and tries his people, and uses them in unexpected ways. Sometimes the church may be powerful and accepted in society; sometimes it may be reviled and persecuted. We shouldn't read too much into either situation.
oats_son
5hr ago
I'm a doomer on the U.S., and I want to know what you guys think, in general, will be the trend for the next decade or further on. Here's my theory for how all this ends:
- Politically, conflict theory has totally won. Extremists from both parties keep trying to outdo each other. This can lead to outright civil war or government breakdown down the line. Democracies all around the globe host more and more unhappy populations that, no matter which politicians they vote in, never seem to get what they want, leading them to vote in more and more strange and radical candidates.
- Government spending will never recede. Too many groups need to stay satisfied with their welfare, otherwise the party that cuts them will never win an election again. This will lead to an eventual collapse, someday, with more and more economic pain as time goes on and as less productive people exist to support the invalids and growing number of leeches.
- Dating sucks and gender relations are likely going to get worse as the social media experiment continues, to South Korea levels. It can only get worse from here.
- As someone mentioned downthread, I could easily see status becoming harder and harder to get, as the players in the game optimize towards the most awful way to live: constant striving in every arena. Anyone left playing the game is a tiger mom. This is the one I'm least sure about, but it could change rapidly as economic circumstances shift.
- I have no idea if the country will fail slow or fast, but it will likely decline in the next decade by a noticeable amount.
My friend is more of an optimist. Here's his theory on the first one:
- Eventually, one party is going to realize their extremists never win races. They elect a moderate. Things normalize, politically.
Unfortunately, I didn't quiz him on all the rest of it. But now, somehow, it is making me wonder about the outlook of most of the Mottizens. I certainly see the doomer take on things pretty often.
I see a factoid sometimes that says conservatives are happier with their lives than liberals. Maybe that's a factor of rural living, maybe that's a factor of less thinking about serious issues, and less reading. I am pretty sure that conservatives on this site, on average, do not live in rural areas and, on average, think a lot more about serious issues, and read more. So maybe some bad, anecdotal science testing on The Motte is in order.
Are you a doomer, or a "bloomer"? What are some factors that lead you to your conclusion that the country is trending downwards or upwards? Please explain yourself, and please fight it out with everyone who thinks you're wrong.
MayorofOysterville
5hr ago
Are those women not settling down leaving a number of men who want to? Or are they just part of the urbanite endless casual dating scene?
Supah_Schmendrick
5hr ago
All that remains is him being economically right wing.
Errrr...which Trump? Tariff Trump? Giant deficit-exploding OBBB Trump? Like, I could be convinced these things are "right wing" - OBBB does roll back some Medicaid expansion, and insofar as the extra spend is to lock-in the 2017 tax cuts and pay for a lot more ICE, I could see it. But the definition of what constitutes "right wing economics" is pretty flexible right now.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
5hr ago
while the left fetishizes education and high-class culture
Since when? In them I see no love for wisdom and erudition, no study in perfection.
Shrike
5hr ago
Religion as whole in the US is still declining
There have been some signs that the decline is tapering off. I would not be shocked if it continued to slide, but I also would not be shocked if it didn't go lower.
Of course part of this is the question of "what counts as religious"? The rise of the nones, for instance, hasn't really corresponded with the rise of secular atheist types (and many nones indulge in religious practices) - so has the decline of religion been essentially false, and it's just been that organized religion is on the decline? Or do we really need to look at practice and church attendance? That seems like a more serious and better measurement in many ways (as I understand it it actually is a better predictor for many religious benefits) but does that unfairly discount religious practices that are by their very nature disorganized? There's some methodological questions there. I'd simply confine myself to observing that the "decline of religion" mostly doesn't mean "the rise of secular liberal atheism" or anything like that. It means people aren't going to church, not that they have become transhumanist Star Trek liberals or something.
They are also massively less influential than they were in the 80s and 00s and they'd have to work pretty hard to get that power back.
One notable difference since the 00s, I think, is that evangelicals will be more comfortable being in a political coalition with Catholics, and even Mormons and Muslims. They're still going to have serious reservations, but Obama-era liberalism made the misstep of putting "conservative religious people" broadly on the same team in some areas. I think this is tremendously important - all the little parts of these coalitions have their own organizations and patronage networks. Exercising political power is not just about counting heads, you need networking and institutions, and "all religious groups in the US that are relatively conservative" is much more powerful a coalition than "evangelicals."
GBRK
5hr ago
I'm curious to see if organized Christianity adopts a more hardline position on immigration
Regarding america, I'm pretty sure the only organized christians worth talking about are the mormons and the catholics. Sure, there are plenty of random protestant churches, but they can hardly be called organized. Now, I can't speak for the mormons, but it will be really, really weird if the catholic church takes a more hardline position. The most consequential modern group of immigrants is latin americans, who the church loves because they're already disproportionately catholic. It might come around to some sort of de-facto restrictions on muslim and hindu immigrants-- like a christian-flavored acculturation in compromise with the protestants. But the international nature of the church causes it to trend away from strictly cultural or ethnic xenophobia.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
5hr ago
· Edited 2hr ago
People [...] age.
The problem's not "they will turn 30". The problem's in "they turned 30 before you started dating them". If you want four kids, you want to give the woman a rest between pregnancies, and it takes a couple of years before you get close enough to make babies, you're looking at the last pregnancy starting around age 38. That's starting to get dicey in terms of fertility. Certainly, you're going to have problems if you want to date a woman much over 30 (I say woman, because men can in fact have kids in their 50s or 60s, although not so much 70s because they might be dead by then).
You might be thinking that "wanting four kids" is unrealistic. My answer to that is: a society in which this is unrealistic is a society that will die out. Women need to have over 2 kids on average to replace themselves - because slightly more men than women are born - and we're in a technological state where "having kids accidentally" is not really a thing due to contraception but "not having kids accidentally" very much is. So a large chunk of people need to be intending 4+ kids in order to get the average up to 2.1 or so. If this isn't realistic, halt and catch fire; something needs to be done to fix that ASAP as a matter of societal survival, which is of course the position you're arguing against.
GBRK
5hr ago
There is potentially a discussion to be had about how Catholics got into that position
I think it's worth at least considering the possibility that we are backed directly by God :P
GBRK
5hr ago
As other people point out, it's unlikely that an african war will cause a truly large migration surge to the US. Afrigan wars are bloody, but relatively small scale. For them to become larger-scale would require african states to experience chinese-warring-states-esque darwinian evolution in state capacity, that would ironically make them better at retaining and mobilizing their populations.
No, african famine is likely to cause migration surges... but given the global climatic conditions that will be causing it, it's unlikely that anyone will be particularly sympathetic since the entire planet would end up being worse off.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
5hr ago
If you haven't learned the violin by 12, you probably aren't going to learn it very well if at all.
Musicians can actually, you know, improve past what they’ve learned by age 12. That’s when serious musicians start grinding, learning new techniques, expanding their knowledge of theory, etc. My high school’s band program (of which I was a part) was small and pathetic compared to wealthier schools in our district, but a number of the musician kids I knew even then were spending a lot of time practicing to get good enough to potentially pursue it further into college and beyond. A disproportionate number of them, as I’m sure you can imagine, were Asian. Far from the Tiger Mom caricature — toiling away miserably at an instrument they hate in order to farm Extracurricular Points — most of them seemed to genuinely love the opportunity to get better at creating beautiful music.
I had a summer job between my sophomore and junior years of high school. Your classic fast food job, working mostly with dudes 5+ years my senior. After that, though, as I started to get more serious about extracurricular, my parents encouraged me to quit in order to focus on schoolwork, summer reading assignments, summer band practice, etc. I also similarly had a job — this time a restaurant job — for over a year during college, which directly and negatively impacted my ability to participate in many of the projects which would have been very helpful for preparing my professional development in my chosen major.
I agree that these jobs were enriching in the sense that they forced me to develop time management, a thick skin when being given negative feedback or undesirable tasks, and an exposure to a broad cross-section of society. I further agree that many of the individuals at whom you’re taking aim would certainly have benefited considerably in the same way. I’m just not convinced that these are strictly superior qualities to develop for the specific class of people who are genuine candidates for the Ivy League in 2025.
I think our society does still need a basically aristocratic class of people who are afforded the luxury of focusing purely on pursuits of the mind. The problem of ensuring that they’ve interfaced enough with the real world to prevent them from spiraling into the delusions of Pure Political Theory™️ is a very real one, but I’m not convinced that making them flip burgers or pick strawberries for a year is the optimal way to achieve that end.
I’m a soft doomer about the US but much less so than I am about (Western) Europe.
Mass immigration has seen fit to proffer the United States a gentle decline toward a high-inequality, mid-tier country with Some Third World Characteristics but probably with semi-functioning politics and many centers of high economic and industrial development. What is coming for Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Britain, and increasingly also Spain, Ireland and Italy is much, much worse than that.
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