I have been wondering for the last month or so about the nature of the new order, as described so well in Rollo Tomassi's 4th work, The Rational Male: Religion. A good interview of Anna Khachiyan crystallized this for me (though this should be abundantly obvious from Rollo's existing body of work in retrospect):
What we’re really talking about here is a shift in governance styles: from the “prohibitive” paternal superego which sets the parameters in advance and punishes you in kind if you defy or violate them, to the outwardly “permissive” but latently punitive maternal superego, which enforces no terms or boundaries ahead of time but retaliates arbitrarily and disproportionately after the fact — in part because it doesn’t know what it wants until all is said and done. Roughly speaking, this describes any number of events that can be filed under the #MeToo movement and/or “cancel culture.The consequences of this societal shift to a Maternal governing ethic over the last century has had far-reaching consequences; religious changes are but one aspect of this transformation in our society.
The important questions left to me are:
In our world "As below, so above" eventually becomes the rule. Like our families are now, the government is largely rudderless and on autopilot due to lack of strong male leadership. It's not for a lack of trying, but mostly because of Threat Point at the individual level. Similarly, we see restrained to non-existent male frame at the macro level out of fear they'll be cancelled or worse.
As such it should shock nobody that our government has become faceless, unaccountable and beyond incompetent (acephalous, really). When it's not brainlessly applying edicts coming from long dead politicians like the vacuum from Idiocracy, it's hysterically overreacting and thirst trapping congress (notice my program senpai uwu). Imagine an ahegao face mask covering the face of humanity forever.
It really makes sense why .gov is so relentlessly hostile to "family values" when you understand the dynamic of how it works in practice. The bureaucracy are subs to the 365DNI gangster trigger pullers at the pointy end of the state. You end up with a spectrum from BTK government when evil has to get done (as that's the most gorilla pimp response demanded by the hysterical) to ineffectual Karenism when it's time to do "good"; scolding to win favor with their peer clutch (but not do much else).
In short, hurry up and burn them babies at Waco, days of our lives is on.
You may have noticed that neither approach is good governance. Nevertheless, most current phenomena make a lot of sense under this framework.
The betas who built our civilization certainly can't. They are fucked so long as they have more to lose than gain by doing the unpopular and boring work of improving our lives in the face of opposition. Their future is either become John Galt or Sisyphus.
The only path out left is internalizing game; Pimp or Be Pimped. The government would not hysterically overreact if it had a strong leader providing the rock of stability it needs. Instead, they would actually fall into said leader's frame, and get validation from accomplishing his mission of good governance. Rather than being mindless, purposeless and nihilist bureaucrats whose only thrill comes from corruption, they could actually do something good for once in their pathetic lives.
Which leads inexorably to Moldbug's (and my 90 year old Grandma's who lived through FDR's reign) conclusion. Regardless of what you call it, the only way to make the current system actually achieve good governance is with a dictatorship. I of course think this is limited thinking; why do we need to preserve the system at all? Beyond keeping the peace I can't think of a great reason.
So the questions then become: Will this system degenerate to the point where market (or other?) alternatives can just gradually replace the system peacefully? Will that system actually correct the underlying issue preventing said paternal governing ethics from taking root?
Given lack of strong male leadership, the former can be taken as a given. Practically everyone capable of righting the ship at this point is so disgusted with the system's pervasive bias against them they would rather pop a cold one than lift a finger in its' defense. At this point, vengeance is reason enough.
So, will market anarchy result in both paternal and maternal governance organizations? This is obviously the case; many paternalistic organizations persist to this day despite the overwhelming trend in corporate. What really matters is which will the market choose? This is where I am pessimistic.
A single look at the freely chosen preferences which our search algorithms (e.g. big tech) reflect back upon us show outrage bait and hysterical nonsense gets the best engagement even from men. Granted, much of this is thanks to public schools teaching our boys to be defective women (and vice versa. Egalitarianism, yay!) However, this means that the new dispensation will likely backslide faster than your head can spin.
At the end of the day, I don't actually see an answer other than the one offered by the various "Masculine Empowerment Networks" out there in the red-pilled world. None of this gets better until men get game, and impose frame in their lives comprehensively. That's actually a hard problem, so don't expect it to get solved unless there is literally no other way to get laid. ...Which to be fair is essentially how things are working out by and large.
There's your white pill for the day. Your Welcome (TM)
Millennials & Zoomers, especially the urban ones, are another species entirely and are for all intents and purposes about as mindwormed as kids in the West, especially after this year in the screen bunker. It's not surprising. They're just as attached to the global dopamine mainline streaming out of the US as everyone else. Even the kids who, for some incomprehensible reason don't speak English, get the same slop one trough down the waterfall in all the Romanian copycat Youtube & TV shows and dimestore influencers.The interview with Anna Khachiyan is also good:
What we’re really talking about here is a shift in governance styles: from the “prohibitive” paternal superego which sets the parameters in advance and punishes you in kind if you defy or violate them, to the outwardly “permissive” but latently punitive maternal superego, which enforces no terms or boundaries ahead of time but retaliates arbitrarily and disproportionately after the fact — in part because it doesn’t know what it wants until all is said and done. Roughly speaking, this describes any number of events that can be filed under the #MeToo movement and/or “cancel culture.
I’d respect it more if it were consciously cynical. The fact that these imbecilic media cretins and career State Department and CIA functionaries actually believe themselves when they say that they’re deeply offended by the repression of Putin or the CCP or Iranian mullahs or Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro — right after they get off a call about the latest U.S. arms shipments to the Saudi monarchs or cash transfers to Egyptian despots or support for a coup against the democratically elected government in Bolivia — is frightening. How could anyone believe that the U.S. actually opposes domestic repression? That kind of self-delusion means humans can get themselves to believe literally anything. That’s more frightening to me than if they were knowingly lying for power.In which Greenwald shows he really gets it. Bravo.
Or perhaps this new taste for censorship is an indication of Democratic healthiness. This is a party that has courted professional-managerial elites for decades, and now they have succeeded in winning them over, along with most of the wealthy areas where such people live. Liberals scold and supervise like an offended ruling class because to a certain extent that’s who they are. More and more, they represent the well-credentialed people who monitor us in the workplace, and more and more do they act like it.Excellent work. As such, it has the BlueAnon kooks in full 360 head spinning mode.
One of the more impactful books I've read over the years is Charles Adams' For good and evil: The impact of taxes on the course of Civilization [Free podcast covering much of the same at mises.org]
All empires eventually succumb to collapse, and the story is universally the same. Bad fiscal policy leads to worse tax policy, which leads to mass flight by productive capital when it can no longer be employed profitably.
Most Americans are not alarmed by this (as I have been for over a decade) as they don't understand both how truly extreme the level of flight from the USA has become and how American "Allies" are doing everything they can to gain from our loss. They also do not realize that the American bureaucratic regime is blindly blundering into the exact same traps which doomed their predecessors.
I see plenty of people talking about the signs and aspects of this de-industrialization (which, given all of our societies are industrial means this is actually collapse). Some are mad at the places that offshoring benefits. Few put together that there has to be a compelling reason why the nation with the most productive workers in the world wouldn't also have the most production in the world. There has to be a pretty high level of mitigating factors that make it not worth the trouble.
The hottest topic for this last decade has been Base Erosion and Profit Sharing (BEPS for short). The ability of US multinationals in particular to avoid taxation via clever and lawful use of small NATO satellite states (whom are also OECD and WTO members) has lead to great consternation among our elites, but only because of it's first-level effects (lowering of the US Government's revenue).
The reality is that the second level effects are far, far more dangerous. The mitigation efforts applied to combat BEPS have all had the unintended? consequence of offshoring the actual productive capital to a third jurisdiction, which has essentially created a (near) perpetual stalemate in this tax cold war.
Both the haven and the 3rd Jurisdiction (usually with cheap labor) profit from this and will frustrate all efforts at stopping it save measures they would regard as more profitable. Unlike the majority of concerns with "globalism" this requires no shadowy cabal, just a bunch of people acting in their own self interest.
There are only two options from here for the US Government.
In Adams' book, he described my second option as essentially being what the Romans imposed. Diocletian went so far as to outlaw paying taxes in cash, and insisting in being paid in kind (as it could not be debased, and was infinitely harder to smuggle than coinage). One can hardly see the "global tax cooperation" measures done by the OECD (where all bank account activity of signatories' subjects are 100% available to all other members) and the idea of outlawing cash as being little more than a high-tech Diocletianism.
This will simply accelerate the existing capital flight, as no sane person wishes to live in a cashless society. The possibility of having your funds easily seized to prevent you from funding your legal defense is quite simply a non-starter. This is why FATCA resulted in such a huge uptick in citizenship revocations (but which has fallen off now that we have this OECD global FATCA). Things like Operation Choke Point have not soothed fears in this department; instead it has made it clear the threat to capital is very real and serious.
If you really want to get down to it, this is the Bear case for the US Dollar, and the Bull case for crypto. However, this will play out over a far longer timeframe than anyone can remain solvent. This is essentially going to result in a century of crisis at the least for America. Personally, I'm laughing (all the way to the bank) because it's so obvious. Hedge accordingly.
PS
Yeah, I know it's worse than just tax policy.
Regulatory policy is an equal (if not worse in many market sectors) reason for offshoring.
People can want manufacturers to build in things the market won't bear all they want;
it won't change the fact they'll have to drop some other features to accomplish that at the market clearing price.
"Made in the USA" is the primary feature that was dropped.
Regulatory was also an important factor in many other Imperial collapses, including the Romans. This was because all regulation is essentially a minimum-price control. As you might imagine, outlawing production of non-substitute goods at the market clearing price is real smart. The 100% failure rate of wage and price controls continues.
Extreme authoritarianism works, because viruses aren’t magic. Extreme libertarianism works, because a naked, completely unleashed market can adapt as fast as any virus. We have inductive evidence for authoritarianism. We have to deduce libertarianism. We can still argue about the moderate window between them—but we know it sucks.Maybe, just maybe the deaths are good, and you shouldn't try to stop it? Maybe evolutionary pressure is the answer to retroviral phenomena? Nobody wants to hear this take, it's too real.
Moreover, what if even these concepts of libertarianism and authoritarianism trap us within a simplistic frame? They seem to be opposites—but they both work. Suppose we could construct some kind of five-dimensional political geometry under which they were actually one thing? Libertarian authoritarianism might work even better…
Gurri predicted throughout that entrenched authorities would be unable to distinguish between legitimate criticism and illegitimate rebellion. Once they lost control “over the story told about their performance,” they’d denounce clearly factual evidence of public discontent as lies. Gurri would later talk about centralized authority being “institutionally unable to grasp that it has lost its monopoly over political reality.” This in turn would stimulate even more “distrust and loss of legitimacy.”We can all see how the sausage is made at process driven bureaucries and realize we're fed a bunch of shit. I will do a more long-form addressing of this soon.
