The Humanities Are Too Important To Be Left To The Humanities Majors.

I would try to design enough formal feedback channels (besides voting) so that public opinion could be inferred without a doubt. We already live in a time where people can yell at BART officials on Twitter directly about poor service; I don't think any official who ignored or willfully misinterpreted those demands would last very long in office. And again, the public would ultimately need to approve an economic plan, and could freely reject any that doesn't reflect their interests. This doesn't solve the tyranny of the majority, but it should prevent tyranny by the planners.

Exactly, what if people could propose what they want on the ballot via referendum, then the planners could crunch the numbers and come back with costs for the most popular choices? They could try to pull a fast one and say "actually bars and strip clubs will cost 10 million labor hours each; pick either booze or hospitals but not both" but I think the public would push back against that estimate. If the government's estimates are compromised, people could recall planners (or perhaps a new group of planners could be chosen randomly by sortition) and ultimately vote for any plan that seemed desirable and attainable, regardless of the source of the plan. If Jim Bob from Duluth has had better success in predicting costs than the professionals, there would be nothing stopping people from voting for his proposal instead.

On your point about labor discipline, this is kind of one of socialism's basic arguments: when capitalist states (or historical socialist states) suppress labor movements and protests, not only is it immoral, but it also denies the government the opportunity to solve the public's problems or inefficiencies. If the public is unhappy with working conditions, then their rights to free speech, protest, and even to prevent production via striking must be protected- not only because it is morally right, but because their dissent is the only means of epxressing their real preferences to the planners and society at large. Ultimately, control of production (and of enforcement, to whatever degree necessary and practical) must belong to the workers, because otherwise they are at the mercy of whoever really calls the shots and can set the narrative (whether that is a capitalist state or state socialist planners.)

Finally, about the market: the market primarily allocates goods depending on peoples' ability to pay, not their willingness. The working class is kept in a state of debt (and in some places, literal) slavery and fear of absolute poverty. Those with vast wealth can artifically and disproportionately skew demand towards their own interests. Thus markets often fail to capture accurate demand, and we end up with outcomes that are bad for the majority but benefit the owning class (privatized health insurance, private cable monopolies, etc.) On the supply side, goods and services are overproduced and wasted (food, unsold vehicles) or are underproduced/overpriced due to regulatory capture (such as laws forbidding direct sale of vehicles by manufacturers), poor policy (either the result of upper class interests, or of government attempts to compromise between opposing classes, such as rent control). Even when production of goods adjusts to market signals, it is slow and imperfect. What if we could just decide to produce however much we would likely need to satisfy a certain goal or demand, plus a bit extra?

Overall, I feel like we're talking past each other somewhat, and I also think I could give you any number of policies, whether practical ("planners could be recalled at any time by the public") or ridiculous ("people could humiliate planners in the street to discourage them from acting too arrogant") and your response would either be (understandably) skepticism, or some variant of "the Serious People will always be around, and will find a way to exploit any system or rule to their own ends and/or to enable bullying". I don't expect to change your mind, especially with nothing but hypotheticals, but I don't think it would be productive to continue the dialogue. But nevertheless, I have appreciated the opportunity to clarify my thoughts and beliefs via answering your questions, and I am sincerely appreciative that you have asked your questions with civility, given how bad other leftists seem to have treated you. I hope I have extended you the same courtesy.

a sketch of a socialism

mutual here wanted some specifics to hang on anticapitalism, something more concrete than vibes, nicer than AES, more feasible than fully automated gay luxury space communism. this is a sketch of that; parts can be expanded as desired. this is meant to be messy rather than elegant; if you hate one part, other parts could often do it’s purpose, and the exact implementation would be a matter of dispute between political parties, on the boards of firms, and so on, just like today

(this was the effortpost that I wrote earlier, rewritten with less art because rewriting is less fun than fwriting the first time.)

short version

nationalize big firms; small ones become cooperatives. tax income to create an investment pool and subsidize prediction markets to guide investment. crappy jobs to anybody who wants them, better-paying jobs if you can convince an SOE or employer to take you on

new pareto inefficiencies this creates

reduced ability to pass on your wealth, reduced ability to hand over control of an institution in a way that can’t be taken back, weaker labor discipline, less ability to choose your own marginal propensity to save. I think these are all analogous to the pareto inefficiency of not being able to sell yourself into slavery or to sell your vote - a good trade-off for long-run freedom even if they introduce some friction, and probably good for growth through institutional integrity in the long run

I’m mentioning these at the beginning because I know there’s going to be a tendency to say this is just capitalism with more steps, and because it’s worth noting possible costs

normal consumer markets

you get money from your job/disability check/Christmas cards and go to online or in-person stores, where you spend it at mutually agreed prices on magic cards or funyuns or whatever, just like today 

prediction markets to replace financial markets

financial markets do two useful things: first, they pool people’s best estimates of future prices and risk profiles, and they direct investment towards more profitable (and, hopefully, more broadly successful) endeavors. 

the core socialist critique of financial markets is that they require private ownership of capital. but you can place bets directly!

in order to marshal more collective knowledge, everyone could get some “casino chips” each time period and cash them in at the end for some amount of cash, which they could then use in consumption markets. public leaderboards of good predictions could both improve learning and incentivize good predictions, although at the possible risk of correlating errors more. the same could apply to allowing financial vet specialist cooperatives that place bets for you for a fee. these tradeoffs, and the ways to abuse this system, are broadly analogous to tradeoffs that exist within capitalism, just without a separate owner-investor class.

almost any measurable outcome can be made the subject of a prediction market in this way, including questions not traditionally served by financial markets

lending/investment decisions

cooperatives and SOEs looking to expand production would be able to receive capital investments from the state. like loans under capitalism these would be a mix of automatic and discretionary, including:

investment proportional to prediction markets’ guesses about room for funding, or about the succcess likelihood of new cooperatives

discretionary investment by central planning boards, especially into public goods

loans at fixed interest rates

“sure, take a shot” no-questions-asked funding for people starting a cooperative for the first time

the broader principle would be to keep the amount of resources under different people’s control broadly proportional, while investing in promising rather than less promising things and not putting all your eggs in one way of making decisions

because no individual has the incentive or opportunity to personally invest their income in a business, an income tax would raise revenue for the investment fund. for the typical worker this would be slightly less than than the “virtual tax” of profit at a capitalist workplace (which funds both investment and capitalist class consumption). the exact investment/taxation rate and how progressive it would be would be a matter of political dispute

bigger firms as SOEs

big firms relying on economies of scale and having multiple layers of bureaucracy would be owned by the state. like a publicly traded corporation, these corporations would have a board of directors at the top, which could be set by some combination of:

rotating appointment by the elected government, similar to the supreme court or fed 

appointment by a permanent planning agency

sortition by proxy (choose a random citizen and they appoint the board member)

prediction market guesses about who would perform best in terms of revenues - expenses or some other testable metric

election by the employees’ union or consumer groups

direct recall elections on any of the above by citizens

and indeed you could have some combination of these, with the goal of having a governing body that is broadly accountable to the public without being easily captured by any one clique

smaller firms as cooperatives

if you want to start a firm you can go into business with your friends. you would get money from the general investment fund and govern the business together.

cooperatives would have a “virtual market capitalization” determined by prediction markets concerning how much they would be worth under state ownership, and as the ratio of this to your member base grows over and above the general investment:citizen ratio, the state (who’s your sleeping investor) would buy you out, similar to how wildly successful startups are purchased by megacorps. (most cooperatives most likely would be happy to be small.) there could be additional arrangements where you rent capital from the state rather than owning it, if you want to keep local control. 

to preserve the cooperative nature of the enterprise it wouldn’t be necessary to start arresting anyone for hiring non-employees; people could simply have the right to sue in civil courts if their goverance/profit rights as presumptive cooperants werent honored. there might still be some manner of hush-hush hiring under the table but the wage premia for keeping quiet seems like an adequate recompense for this

universal jobs

if you want a job, the state will give you one at a rate that is a little below the market rate but enough to live on, whichever is higher. people would have a right to at least x hours of work in whatever they’re most immediately productive at (in many cases menial labor) and at least y hours of whatever they insist they is their god-given calling (poet, accordionist, data scientist, whatever.) x and y would be a matter of political dispute, but with steady economic growth and automation, x could fall over time. much y time would be “fake work” but (1) of the sort that people would find meaningful (after all, if you feel it’s not, switch into something that would be) and (2) present a lot of opportunities for skill development, discovering what you’re good at, and networking 

cooperatives and SOEs would have access to people working basic jobs, maybe according to some sort of bidding or lottery scheme. movement between the two is meant to be fluid, with basic jobs workers having the opportunity to show their worth on the job and direct state employees/cooperants being able to safely quit their job at any time

state ownership of land

blah blah blah georgism blah blah blah you can fill out how this could work in a market socialist context. maybe carve in an exception for making it harder to kick people out of their personal residences

Why does no one remember Iraq? For all of Trump's faults, at least he didn't start a war that killed or maimed hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of innocent people and afflicted countless more with homelessness, hunger, trauma, and despair.

What is "corruption"?

Both liberals and libertarians believe that too many politicians serve "big business" or "crony interests" instead of the "public".

But look at from the perspective of a politician. One group of citizens may be the majority, but they have little way of influencing you outside of letters or collective actions, which are rare, and to be honest, their opinions are often uninformed and they have no control over major social organizations, so they don't matter to you all that much.

But a small minority of citizens are very important people, who direct the majority of economic activity and control the fate of your nation or- perhaps even more crucially-your home state, because they control land and resources and can choose where to invest them to create jobs. You're going to listen to what they have to say, especially since they can afford to send specialized lobbyists to wait in your office all day with lots of impressive documents and charts.

And they don't need to threaten or bribe you to get what they want; all they have to do is to make a convincing argument on why voting a certain way on a given law or regulation will benefit them (and by extensions, your constituency) or hurt them (and by extension, your constituency).

"The public may have good intentions in supporting this higher minimum wage law, or in their campaign to resist privatization," they argue, "but with all due respect to the public, they just don't know the facts. This bill will destroy jobs and hurt your state. Look, let us take you out to a nice dinner to discuss it. If you back us up on this, we'll support you come election season. Everybody wins."

"Corruption" is not the result of personal moral failing. It is the natural, inevitable symptom of a divided society, where a small percentage of owners who control almost all property and economic activity have interests that oppose that of the property-less majority. The only way to end "corruption" is to subordinate economic activity to the democratic will of society at large via the abolition of private property and the developmemt of communism.

Humans : correct in making leap from wealth as currency to wealth as energy. But logic failure : wealth ultimately is extension of desires, fluctuating with emotions and state of mind. Desires : when all are supported in purely adaptable system, true wealth is achieved.

-Usurper Judaa Marr, "Human : Nature"

7 Points of Green Accelerationism

this is maybe the most coherent political ideology I’ve ever had, I’m kind of excited: 1) Climate change is irreversible.  There is no way - other than an arbitrarily restrictive and probably needlessly difficult exercise in self-terraforming - we are going to return to anything resembling a “natural” Earth system.  If there are specific aspects of the current ecosystem we would wish to conserve - such as biodiversity, temperate weather, specific local equilibria - we must isolate them from any presumed set of “natural” interrelations and figure out how to influence new conditions to maintain and generate them in new ways.  2) Climate change is not a crisis based on scarcity or depletion of resources for consumption. It is quite literally a surplus of productive solar energy in the Earth system which its current structures are inadequate to use productively or expend, and which unused can only destroy.  Some proportion of solar energy must always be wasted (Bataille), and our current systems have little or no effective control of this waste; where they do, the forms it takes are not desirable. The “accursed share” must be decided on and disposed of collectively and rationally; the share that can be used productively can and should be maximized.  Climate change can and should be seen as a positive opportunity; attempts to simply “mitigate” instead of harnessing it are not only doomed but regressive. 3) In a non-orthogonal, unconditional sense, all of this (the Anthropocene, the formation of radically new systems of energy circulation) will inevitably happen regardless of our efforts.  The goals of “Green Accelerationist” praxis, therefore, should be understood in strictly political terms (and from my stake in this comes in, leftist ones: the capacity for productive energy use and the right to a say in destructive expenditure should be fairly distributed, not only among humans but, as far as possible, throughout the biosphere as a whole).  However the most effective methods for achieving those goals will likely be found as far from the “political” as currently understood as possible.  All present “political” institutions - states, activist organizations, - are as obsolete as the ecological ones, and will only drain any energy invested in them.  The “economic”, as a direct site of energy circulation, is a more useful site of contestation, and traditional working class tactics of organization and disruption will likely remain valuable tools for redirecting energy into more sustainable cycles.  However, the “technical” (including not only positive acts of production, but hacking and sabotage) will become a probably more important site of political contestation, as well as (to an extent identical) the “ecological” itself.  Different technologies will open radically different political and ecological prospects - and different social deployments of technologies conversely must be thought of as technically, not only politically, different.  Technology, ecology and politics are no longer feasibly separable: they are all concerned with directing energy circulation at a global scale. 4) Technical development as a form of praxis must not be allowed to be monopolized by existing institutions such as corporations, universities and governments, which determine its current “political” character.  We must not treat the control of technology by obsolete and reactionary forms as a politically neutral fact whose products are then to be harnessed and regulated by a separate “politics”, as in naive forms of “ecomodernism”.  Control of the means of research and development is as if not more important to political outcomes in the near term than control of existing means of production.  Making scientific research widely accessible is perhaps the most significant struggle currently being fought; it should be understood as the minimal precondition for almost any effective ecological praxis. 5) Green Accelerationism should be distinguished from naive ecomodernism, not only in its radical approach to the specific conditions of technical development, but in adopting a general critique of extractivism.  Extractivism is a specific, dangerous, ineffective and inherently reactionary technical, ecological and political formation that treats vast swathes of sophisticated circulatory infrastructure purely as sites of energy extraction for a small set of processes.  Extractivism should not be conflated with technology itself, whose role is now to design as many new mutually beneficial and sustainable relationships as possible. 6) Green Accelerationism should strive not only for interdependence but independence, not only for humans or an economic or national elite but for as many living beings as possible.  With a large energetic surplus and sophisticated, redundant social, political & ecological technologies permitting a wide multiplicity of sustainable relationships, the coercive dimension of ecological interrelation (understood by the Enlightenment as “nature”) can be minimized. Nor should we limit our sights to the “terrestrial”.  Access to the resources, energy and literal space of the rest of the universe would increase the flexibility and resilience of systems on Earth to change, as well as allowing greater individual independence for individuals.  Clean space travel is an ideal non-destructive outlet for excess energy that cannot be redirected into circulation on Earth. 7) The category of “ecology” resolves the antinomy of “praxis” and “anti-praxis” posed by the Unconditional Accelerationists.  No single element, including the human, within an ecological process can direct it, but ecological relationships are always reciprocal, even if unintentionally: struggling to adapt and struggling to influence are the same.  Green Accelerationism, however, emphatically rejects the claims that powerful nonlinear, nonhuman processes are incomprehensible - perhaps by humans, but the act of comprehension itself can be ecologically distributed - and that (extractive) “technocapital” is out of all of these inevitably the most powerful, except insofar as any combination of energy and intelligent organization is “technocapital”, a definition that obscures the territorialization of energy flows at present by a specific extractive class that is inadequate to the force it has unleashed.  Technocapital is not the genie, it is the bottle. The unharnessed share of solar energy increasingly exceeds that enclosed in existing “technocapital”.  Whoever or whatever controls this share controls the future.  

This seems like one of those trends that will come to define politics a few years on down the line. Racial tension is nothing new in the US, but this kind of gender clash has no historical precedent, at least to my knowledge. Someone on reddit once joked that the future of politics was the (implied nonstraight, nonwhite, liberal/leftist, feminist, etc) Tumblr party losing national elections to the (implied straight, white, rightist, anti-liberal and anti-feminist) 4chan party, and they're probably right. This is what happens when we focus on gender instead of class.

Most Popular Posts of 2018, and what that says about 2019

These are my most popular original posts of last year. You may notice a theme:

Why men bottle up their feelings - “Men need to get in touch with their feelings,” they say, right up until they do.

On the play “Straight White Men” - Or how being the ally you’re told to be makes you disliked by the people you’re supposed to be supporting.

Dirty Sock Sexuality - When the sexuality of young males is portrayed as gross, everybody suffers.

We Built an Incel Factory - A model of dirty sock sexuality appears in the wild. 

What if Sex Ed helped boys get laid? - A solution to dirty sock sexuality.

Pick your man myth, pick your misery - When fear and myth drives a woman from one set of abusers to another. 

The dumbest thing I’ve ever done - In which I am the dirty sock and waste hours upon hours of a therapist’s time. 

Cunnilingus class is cancelled until further notice - Nobody wants to learn from someone who actively loathes them, and sex-positive feminists will never change male behavior without recognizing that.

“Entitled” isn’t a catch-all for men who do bad things - Incels aren’t entitled, they hate themselves. 

Special mention: The help-to-prison pipeline - A trans man discovers that the women tasked with helping vulnerable men fear and blame them, with predictable results.  

The pattern here is that all of my top posts are about vulnerable men and boys. Specifically, how they are given from people who see them mostly as threats to be mitigated, not individuals who want growth, love, and success just like anyone else. Models for men fall into the bitter MRA whine, the anachronistic trad, or the pop-feminist “good man” schtick that sees men’s behavior only through the lens of what it accomplishes for women. There must be a way forward that allows for self-advocacy and self-worth but still respects others and I don’t think any of these models get it right. These posts poked around the edges, seeking to define the contours of the problem. In 2019, I hope to explore these themes more.

Thank you to my readers for your support in 2018!

I'm certainly not a Hamas supporter, but the idea that Israel has ever been interested in working towards a peaceful 2-state solution (and that their relation-building with Saudi Arabia has anything to do with that) is laughable.

Israelis may disapprove of Netanyahu, but from the polling data I've seen, it has more to do with his attempted subversion of democracy than his treatment of Palestine. So the idea that popular opinion in Israel was about to result in a sudden relaxation of the political and economic repression of the Palestinians (if only those no-goodniks in Hamas hadn't ruined it for the rest of them! Ah well, maybe we can try again in 50 years) is bullshit.

Israel (it's voters, state, and institutions) has had decades to do something to end the cycle, and they are indeed the ONLY party that can end this cycle. If the Palestinians' only choices are: 1. Give up and accept total defeat on Israel's terms or 2. Rage impotently and drag a bunch of innocents down into hell with you out of spite, maybe Israel should consider offering them a better set of choices?

Obviously Hamas actions are abhorrent and the rise in antisemitism is uncalled for. What is the proper the response to 75yrs of apartheid though? Something has to be done about that or his cycle will never cease.

So you came from the post in which I explicitly named three organizations working for a two-state solution. And didn’t think… to look into… their proposals for a two-state solution…

As a reminder, before Hamas’s attack, Israel was working on normalizing peaceful relations with Saudi Arabia. That’s dead in the water because Hamas broke a ceasefire and killed a thousand Jewish civilians.

Before Hamas’s attack, there were massive, frequent, and often daily protests among the Israeli public, speaking out against an administration comprised of anti-Palestinians. Those are on hold now, because a thousand Jewish civilians were killed, and the country is at war. But Netanyahu’s coalition of asswipes is built like a house of cards, and they’ll suffer in the next election. That much is clear.

Hamas wasn’t looking to gain territory, win, or free Palestine on October 7th. Israel has never lost a war in its modern history, and it has overcome far worse odds than a couple thousand terrorists. There’s no feasible way for Hamas to have won. They broke the ceasefire and killed civilians anyway. Why? Why waste those lives and those resources, knowing that Israel would retaliate against Gazans?

Because Hamas looked around and saw something that horrified them. They saw Arab nations, once their allies, walking away from the idea of killing millions of Jews in favor of normalization and peace with Israel. They saw the citizens of Israel, rallying in unprecedented numbers for peace and democracy. They saw Fatah, their Palestinian enemies since 2007, ready to come back to the bargaining table for a peaceful two-state resolution.

Hamas broke a ceasefire for a media ploy. They did it, knowing that it would stop the normalization process between the Saudis and Israelis. They did it, knowing that it would bring an abrupt halt to Israeli protests. They did it, knowing that Israel would retaliate, and that the world would be watching as Hamas put Palestinian civilians in the line of fire and blamed it on Israel. They were looking to propagandize a dying movement, and friend, it seems like you bought into it.

Something does have to be done about Israeli’s treatment of Palestinians. Something does have to happen to end this cycle of violence. And plenty of things were being done about it, in the Knesset, on the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. But Hamas considers peace without genocide to be a failure. Peace without genocide leaves Hamas out of a job. So they put a stop to it, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives.

And you don’t gotta take that from me. Ask them. They aren’t trying to hide it, they’ve been saying it all month. It’s in their founding charter.

this is horrifically uncharitable but I just… I know too many people right now who are dealing with steep cognitive decline/dementia/blah and I have reached Too Many Feelings

so

teach me how to believe. Teach me how to know what makes a good person is not inside our brains, that we can’t fall apart.

That we can still choose good even when we’ve begun to forget what choices are

When we lash out

When we truly don’t remember.

Teach me what the rules are when all that’s left is fear and anger. Teach me how they stay when everything else goes.

I’ll need them when it’s my turn, if cultivating kind emotions isn’t enough to be good in the end.

Teach me how to hope like you. Teach me how you write the moral law in something untouchable by plaque, unmaulable by aneurysm.

Teach me how the imprints stay when everything else disappears.

Very few believers will seriously claim that morality can only come from religion anymore (that argument seemed to die with the religious debates of the early aughts) but they've seemed to switch tactics recently to claiming that culture and religion are inseparable. This strikes me as an even worse argument: arguably, religion *destroys* culture by suppressing full human thought, creativity, and exploration of ideas- often other religions!

Once again begging anti-theists to realize that to get to a world without religion you’d have to commit cultural genocide. So maybe you shouldn’t push for that

I'm pretty sure this was a case I saw recently; what happened is that the federal funds had originally been transferred via ACH (which is different from a wire). ACH transactions can be reversed by the sender within 5 business days, which Elon just managed to do (he did the reverse on day 5, if I remember correctly).

This is obviously unprecdented and concerning, but the government does not have the means to directly remove/transfer funds from within your private account. They can stop transfers from a government account(or again, reverse them within a limited window) or "request" a bank to freeze/close your account for suspicious activity, but they can't just reach in to your checking account and take your money.

Elon and DOGE have access to your banking info and can drain your account.

Russia needs money? Maybe they will access your life savings. Putin is Musk ally.

Speak out against Musk? He will target dissent.

Want to file a complaint? They got rid of CFPB, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

This is beyond apocalyptic.