Properties of Successful Failed States

[maradydd]

I've honestly never found much to get worked up over about neoreaction, one way or another. To some of my more rightish acquaintances, it's a breath of fresh air, while some of my more leftish acquaintances think it's the next great bogeyman (one wonders if the spectre of a Koch brother stumbling across Moldbug keeps them up at night). I just

Comments

[perspectivism]

Your "main thrust" takeaway is novel!

For me, the main NRx thrust is about ruler incentives across each fairly typical year-to-year (not mostly about regime-change-crisis-proofing; though that's a great topic & deserves more attention).

When rulers (actual persons) know that they're likely out of office real soon (because coalitions keep shifting), they tend to take everything that's not nailed down & neglect/damage the things that are nailed down. NRx at heart claims that reliable continuity-of-governing-power usually produces better Stationary Bandit (as opposed to Roving Banditry) incentives.

In the West, most of the time we get surprisingly decent democratic rulers. They're far from great stewards, but they're not blatantly Roving.

When we successfully export/impose "democracy" to other places where it's newer (places that have much less cultural defenses to its particular Roving-logic built up over centuries), we often sadly watch its vicious incentives in much fuller flower.

[songblaze]

Seems to me that while what you are saying is true of the West is true of Western Europe, it is not as true of the Americas.

[ext_776811]

To the best of my understanding of neoreactionaries (and I admit that I would probably have a better chance of comprehending the thought process of an octopus or establishing a cultural bond with a xerobiological space alien with plasma-dust based metabolism*), they aren't very good at researching the mechanics of state/society failure.

There is precious little historical data suggesting that the things "neoreaction" alligns itself against (things like reproductive rights, sexual liberation and normalization of non-heterosexual behaviors, friendly immigration policies and support towards "racial"** minorities, equal rights for women, you know the drill) have caused a catastrophic failure of any past empire (usually "neoreactionaries" like to say the word "Rome" at this point, at which point it is most comfortable to remind them that "Rome" was at its peak while being a "pagan" society, and was deeply "christianized" by the time of its demise. That usually causes "neoreactionaries" to blow a figurative fuse

[maradydd]

I confess I don't read much of the calls to align against $ONE_THING_OR_ANOTHER; I treat it as social signaling toward a thede I'm not part of, and therefore don't give it my attention. But, as I just alluded, I cherry-pick ideas where I find them useful; I'm still sorting out my thoughts on what (if any) the differences are between "thede" and "affinity group", for instance.

So, perhaps I'm being charitable by dint of looking only for the stuff I find interesting, which is kind of a funny way for that cognitive bias to work out. ("How systems fail" is a cross-cutting interest for me.) I have also had several long and really pretty interesting conversations with Moldbug about computability theory (we randomly ended up at the same multi-day event), and there are threads of that in the UR posts I've read. (I have not read the whole thing. Some people write too much even for me.)

[ext_776811]

Comment filter strikes again.

Should I send my DNA to livejournal, or what ?

[maradydd]

I figured after I approved one it would keep working, but apparently not. Let's see if adding your Facebook account works. Federation, how does it work? (I haven't actually looked yet.)