โฆit is proving increasingly hard to become a Wikipedia administrator: 2,700 candidates were nominated between 2001 and 2008, with a success rate of 53%. The rate has dropped from 75.5% until 2005 to 42% in 2006 and 2007. Article contribution was not a strong predictor of success. The most successful candidates were those who edited the Wikipedia policy or project space; such an edit is worth ten article edits.Deletionism uber allez
What sort of editor, with a universe of fascinating topics to write upon, would choose to spend most of his time on the policy namespace? What sort of editor would choose to stop writing articles?โ โ 34 Administrators with minimal experience in creating contentโand much experience in destroying it and rewriting the rules to permit the destruction of even more. Is this not almost the opposite of what one wants? And imagine how the authors must feel! An article is not a trivial undertaking; sometime sit down, select a random subject, and try to write a well-organized, fluent, comprehensive, and accurate encyclopedia article on it. Itโs not as easy as it looks, and itโs even harder to write a well-referenced and correctly formatted one. To have an article deleted is bad enough; I canโt imagine any neophyte editors wanting to have anything to do with Wikipedia if an article of theirs got railroaded through AfD. It is easier to destroy than to create, and destruction is infectious. (In the study Thurner et al 2012 of 3.3 years of the online SF game Pardusโ , players were found to โpay it forwardโ when the subject of negative actions; the community was only saved from an epidemic of attacks by the high mortality & quitting rate of negative editorsโI mean, negative playersโ โ .)
Deleting articles and piling on policy after guideline after policy are both directly opposed to why Wikipedians contribute!
We have, whatever Burnham hoped, in fact declined into the worst possible kind of governanceโa โtechnocracyโ of dumb people who spend all their time stealing.yup
No general or political leader was blamed for Americaโs longest war ending in humiliating defeat. No one was fired or resigned. Moreover, the total lack of accountability for a catastrophic systemwide failure is, according to Yarvin, not a problem that could be solved by electing better leaders or applying more political will, because it is an essential feature of the systemโs design. โWhy did this happen?โ Yarvin asked. โVery simply: because no one is in charge of the government.โThat's always been the most powerful argument I've used for years. You live in anarchy right now. This is the place in which I disagree with Yarvin -- there is no other form of government. Nobody's ever in charge.
Not the wrong people; no one.
Given the Russian re-conquista of Ukraine has dragged on long enough to have Mordor's corpse-puppet Biden openly let slip the goal is regime change in the RF, I suppose now's a good time to go over what the conflict between the West and the Rest is really about. The great war in 1914 was an Anglo-French Jihad against Absolute monarchy (that in typical Anglo fashion, had little problem with "their" absolute monarch in Russia). Similarly, WWII was about what kind of socialism was going to be imposed upon the world. Many rightly characterize that war as "The war to save Joseph Stalin". Both wars were waged to impose ideology on enemies and fought by conscripts, as that's what such a war requires.
The internal contradictions of Marxism and Anglo imperialism (which is ultimately what Marx was a reaction against) resulted in some "Troll's Remorse" when the Anglos realized what they wanted was Fascism all along. As such, ever since the collapse of the international communist project, we've lived under the Anglo flavor of fascism. Which is to say, the adoption of a corporate form by the government, and transformation of corporations into quasi-governments. This new dispensation was not merely to be the "NSDAP with anglo characteristics", but in typical Anglo fashion adopted a universalist outlook, in keeping with their ambitions of world domination. As such, every government they installed post-war (and post communist collapse) have been essentially the same. The difference between the American and French government is little different than that of Coke and Pepsi. They're both swarms of bureaucratic organizations with little difference in internal structure than any other conglomerate firm.
In this mental model, much of the agenda of GloboHomo makes sense. When the loyalty to be inculcated is to a brand rather than a people, those staffing the firm that was a nation are of little consequence. As such, displacing the indigenous population with cheap immigrants who have little to no rights is very much to be desired. The callous disregard for the fate of the western state's victims becomes "It's just business". Similarly, the only attitude which cannot be tolerated whatsoever is what it replaced -- national identity.
Of course there's one more level to be discussed here. Over the course of the 20th century, every single one of these bureaucracies in every western nation became captured by organized crime. The Chicago outfit and a military cabal leveraging Yamashita's Gold corrupted US institutions in the same way NATO's GLADIO later did to Europe. Within short order, the remaining pretense that the goal wasn't just a bust-out on these moribund nation-firms (including the US itself) was discarded. From this point forward, the empire became one obsessed with installing gangster states that park their ill-gotten loot in Anglo banks. In short, they preferred wholly-owned subsidiaries to direct control.
Which cuts to what the current war is actually about. The only means by which a re-conquista is legitimated is through national identity. Russia, having emerged from incredible humiliation at the hands of an Anglo bust-out near the turn of this century, has re-discovered this. As such, they view having a wholly owned subsidiary of the anglo gangster-state on their border made with ethnic russians as intolerable. That said, they aren't selling it as that. They are couching it as a war to impose ideology, stealing valor from the great patriotic war. This is put to the lie by them not using conscripts as of yet, and keeping this strictly Kabinetskrieg. This makes sense, as it's unlikely the West will escalate much further.
I doubt a bunch of gangsters are too keen on destroying the world in nuclear fire. I suspect they'll stop at this moronic idea of "sanctions" (read: creation of smuggling opportunities for gangsters). They've already walked back sleepy Joe's gaffe about regime change, even though the dopes in the WH probably do want it. I'm sure the CIA will talk them into hiring Golgo 13 instead, worked great against Castro, right?
In many ways, this war is seen as a blessing to these types. It's given them an excuse to launder money and run guns on an unheard of scale. As such, they'll extract the maximum amount of blood from the Ukranians and then toss them aside like a used condom. An actual war where you have to conscript normal upright people might fuck up their profits or even worse, expose their operations. It could also spawn competing cabals; these crooks remember their origins well.
Meanwhile back at home, the saps are none the wiser and distracted with war porn. What's not to like? Sure, this revocation of bank reserves has ultimately doomed the dollar. But can anyone say with a straight face that the plan was to have it survive with this level of debt accumulation? It's a bust out, and everything's going according to plan.