Way back in 1996 when the Communications Decency Act of 1996 was being contemplated, no one imagined the outsize role of the internet. In fact, few of the people debating the bill had ever seen this internet thing. The internet as we understand it was in its infancy and only tech savvy hobbyists were using it. Most homes did not have a personal computer at the time. The only thing everyone was sure about was that the internet had to be free to grow.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act made a lot of sense to all involved, because it gave the new internet companies relief from parasitic lawyers who were already sinking their fangs into the industry. Giving the public platforms protection from liability allowed them to host the public platform without having to edit everything the users posted on the platforms. At the time, the tech companies claimed they lacked the resources to monitor user behavior.

The logic made sense as long as that last bit was true. If the people creating these public platforms could not edit what was posted, then they could not reasonably be held accountable, as we do for newspapers and magazines. The New York Times controls its content, so in theory it is responsible for it. As a practical matter they are never held accountable and libel people daily as we saw with the Sarah Palin case a few months ago, but that is a topic for another day.

In a quarter century, much has changed. Not only can the tech platforms edit what is posted on their sites, they now aggressively monitor content. Not only that, but they also promote content on the platforms and they create their own content. The millions of bots used to boost some content over others is a form of content. It is similar to a newspaper making the editorial decision to post some stories on the front page and relegate the real stories to the back pages.

The Section 230 protections were specifically tailored on the assumption that the platforms could not control what was posted. Therefore, someone could not reasonably sue them for defamation. It would be like holding the building owner liable for something someone write on the walls outside. In theory, the platform, like the building owner, would take reasonable steps to remove the material. If the court asked, they would try to identify the person responsible.

Of course, we live in a different age and therefore the laws crafted for the prior age no longer make any sense in this age. No one in 1996 could contemplate a world where an oligopoly in Silicon Valley controlled political discourse. Further, no one imagined the oligopoly being controlled by crazy people. This is why the matter is working its way through the courts in various conflicting cases. In fact, it will probably end up in the Supreme Court in the next term.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld a Texas law barring companies from removing posts based on political ideology. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit overturned a similar Florida law on the grounds that it violated constitutional protections for tech companies. The question is whether these private firms that get the same protections as all other private firms or are they private firms operating public accommodations and therefore can be regulated.

Morally, this would be a simple question if not for the racial double standard that has become nearly universal. Facebook regularly hosts livestreams of black people hunting a killing white people. This happened most recently with the Memphis spree killer who livestreamed his rampage on Facebook. On the other hand, a white guy uses the wrong pronouns when describing a public degenerate and he is banned. In the age of Jim Snow, everyone knows the score.

Before the Jim Snow laws, when Section 230 was created, no one imagined the sorts of double standards we now accept. In 1996, everyone agreed that a public accommodation had to accept everyone as long as they did the minimum that was required of the enterprise. Restaurants could require a dress code, but they could not ban people for holding the wrong opinions. If they violated their own rules, then they could be held accountable in the courts.

Ultimately, the court will have to fashion a new standard. If Facebook is a public accommodation, then what are the rules that define such a thing? If it is a private company, then how can it have special privileges? The simplest solution is to clarify how one can claim Section 230 protections. A platform that does not edit the content of users would qualify, while a firm that censors the users would not qualify. This would be the logical solution, which is why it cannot happen.

Instead, the court will end up supporting the tech companies, because the so-called conservatives will be so high from chanting “they are private companies” that the crazies on the court will write the decision. We will end up with a new standard that says private companies can viciously and aggressively discriminate, as long as it is not against protected classes. At this time, there is one class left unprotected in the law, which is the class known as while people.

In fact, there is a good chance that the court creates a new framework that requires public platforms to aggressively censor content in order to get the protections offered under Section 230. That would mean a site like Gab is wiped out unless they apply the same standards as Silicon Valley. It would also mean that hosting companies are required to monitor the content of their users. This would be the first example of “common good conservatism” in the law.

This sounds terribly negative, but it is realistic. Stalin allegedly said that it is not the votes that count, but who counts the votes. He probably never said it, but it is something he would have grasped. He was a communist, but he eventually came to see that who decides counts for more than how things are decided. That is what we see in the current age with things like censorship. It is not the rules that matter, but who is enforcing and interpreting the rules that matters.

If the tech firms were run by the same sorts of people who were running what passed for big tech in 1996, none of this would matter. The internet pioneers were civic nationalists and libertarians. They were on-line to get away from people who wanted to police free expression. They needed Section 230 to keep the internet open, but they were replaced with people who want to close it down, so one way or another, speech will be closed down on the internet.

Finally, this is a good reminder that when a society begins to debate the letter of the law, it no longer respects the spirit of the law. Put another away, if the people in charge are so corrupt that they need written rules to behave themselves, they are corrupt enough to find a way around those written words. This is where we find ourselves with the current ruling class. They see the rules like they see the truth. If they are useful, they enforce them. If not, then not.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Notes: The Monday Taki post is up. This week is a post about cultural vandalism, a term that I would like to see more often. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door, covering some news items of the day. SubscribeStar and Substack.

Since roughly the French Revolution, the dynamic of Western politics has been the conflict between radical forces and reactionary forces. The radicals, armed with liberal ideas, seek to change social arrangements for the better. The reactionaries, fearing what change could bring, instinctively oppose these changes. This description is entirely self-serving, which is why “radicals” love it. The point is to frame politics as good guys, the radicals, versus bad guys, the reactionaries.

In this age it does not hold up as a logical construct because the people waving the flag of radicalism control the institutions. The so-called reactionaries cannot be working from fear for what change will do to their social power, when they have no political or social power to conserve. This does not stop the radicals from pretending their victims have power, but it is a self-serving game of make believe. The people on the receiving end of radicalism know who has the whip hand.

This is why the old Left-Right framing makes no sense. The people claiming to be on the Right these days are not monarchists. They are not in genuine opposition to the people on the Left. They simply prefer a slower pace of change. The Left is certainly not opposed to institutional power, like all prior left-wing movements. They worship institutional power and act in defense of it. To maintain the old framing, the dissidents are the New Left and the regime is the New Right.

Recent events support this new framing. The election integrity protests during the 2020 cycle looked like every other protest against power. The people in control of the institutions certainly saw it that way. They still carry on like January 6 was a failed Bastille Day or the echoes of 1848. In response, they are acting like institutional power always reacts to threats. They are rounding up opponents, abusing the rights of their citizens and threatening retribution.

A good example of this new reactionism is in the paranoid chanting about threats to “our democracy” that are a feature of the current regime. Those old enough to remember the 1980’s or even the 1990’s see this fetish for democracy as novel. The standard response from so-called conservatives whenever someone said America was a democracy was to correct them and say it was a republic. Even the Left would make this point, lamenting the lack of democracy.

All of a sudden, as if there was a secret meeting of the ruling class, America is a democracy and that democracy is under assault. This started in the Obama years when his backers pushed the nutty idea that white people would oppose him strictly on the grounds that he was a black Muslim from Africa. Even though he gained a bigger majority of the white vote than Bush or Clinton, they persisted in this claim, saying his opponents opposed the democratic process.

Of course, what solidified the new language was 2016. The man who won the election based on the rules of how we conduct elections, was deemed a threat to the process that put him in office. This is not what they meant when they said Trump was a threat to democracy. What they meant was that he was a threat to the established order and the people it benefits. The word “democracy” now implies the established order and the semi-permanent ruling elite.

This is no different from how genuine reactionaries in 18th century Europe responded to the threat of socialism. They used the same sort of language and they used the same sort of tactics we see today. The point of their rhetoric was not to persuade the masses to side with the old order, but to persuade the people running the institutions to use their power to defeat the radicals. In other words, reactionaries do not seek to win arguments, but rather to rally elites to wield power.

Here is an example in the New York Times. David Leonhardt is employed by the “paper of record” to inform the managerial class. His archive is full of stories that would be of use to people in power, but utterly worthless to everyone else. His job at the media shop that serves the regime is to set the tone for other regime outlets and to help set the priorities of the regime. Normally he worries about how to keep the peasants fed, but this post is about “threats to our democracy.”

The reactionary quality is clear in the first so-called threat. He claims, “a growing movement inside one of the country’s two major parties — the Republican Party — to refuse to accept defeat in an election.” The New York Times literally created a bureau in 2016 to cover the Russian collusion hoax. The point of their existence, and that of all regime outlets, was to undermine the legitimacy of the Trump presidency. The word “hypocrisy” does not scratch the surface here.

The second threat somehow manages to be even more contradictory. “The second threat to democracy is chronic but also growing: The power to set government policy is becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion.” On the surface this sounds fine, but he does not mean public opinion as in elections. He means the perception of public opinion as held by the people in power. His example is the recent Dobbs case, which he claims runs counter to public opinion.

When you interpret “democracy” to mean “established order” when used by regime elements, this makes sense. There is a Burkean flexibility in defense of the status quo in the face of public discontent. That is, they acknowledge the rules and the rights of the people, but only as far as they are reasonable. If the rules or the exercise of rights threaten the established order, then they are unreasonable. You can have whatever political system you like as long the people in charge agree

This new reactionism is what lies behind the weird social fads and assaults on decency that have become common. The claim by the people behind these things is that they are trying to subvert the old order, when in reality they are useful idiots. Their job is to keep the people occupied with these controversies so they do not start thinking about why their schools are a mess or why two incomes are no longer enough to provide a middle-class life. it is defensive distraction.

Historically, reactionism is something that flowers at the end of an age when the old order feels threatened. That is one way to read the current crisis. The people leading the charge to defend “our democracy” are decrepit old people who represent the dire warnings about managerialism. They are mediocrities raised up to the top of the social order, yet fully aware of their mediocrity. It is a system now dominated by highly insecure managers paranoid about everyone around them.

The reason reactionism turns up at the end phase of a regime is that it often works fairly well to blunt the forces of change. Reaction is what drove the response to Napoleon, eventually leading to the restoration in France. Reaction held back the tides of socialism in the 19th century into the 20th century. Reaction is what defeated Trump and put Joe Biden in the White House. Fear is a powerful motivator and powerful people in fear for their position make for a powerful force.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Note: The comments have been getting bombed by Ukrainian bots, which is why moderation has been so immoderate. This was part of the public relations campaign around the recent offensive. It is slowly abating, but for now moderation will remain tight to prevent a flood of nutty comments.

In the old television series MythBusters, there was a scene where the crew was doing something disgusting. The setup of the show was to explain the “myth” they were testing then follow them along as they set up their tests. A big part of the show was sight gags, so this meant putting the hosts of the show in foolish situations. In one of these setups, the camera is following one of the hosts and he looks at the camera and says, “there is no dignity in show business.”

It was a memorable moment because we live in an age where performers are treated like conquering heroes. For most of human history, performers were at the very bottom of the status ladder. They were treated worse than slaves in many societies, as it was assumed that people willing to humiliate themselves for the entertainment of others were people of low moral standards. If someone has no respect for himself, then he is unlikely to respect the standards of society.

Today the opposite is true. We worship celebrity. The Republican Party is running three celebrities in big elections this year. Hershel Walker, the former football star, is running for Senate in Georgia. Doctor Oz is running for Senate in Pennsylvania. In both cases, their reason to be in the race is they are famous. In Arizona, Kari Lake was a local TV anchor before running for governor. Her party switching suggests she is willing to do anything for applause and your vote.

Of course, politics in a liberal democracy is just entertainment. It is like the talent shows where the viewers are asked to vote for the performer they liked best, but only after hearing the opinion of celebrity experts. Naturally, most people follow the lead of the celebrity experts, which is why they are there. Politics works exactly the same way, except the celebrity experts are called pundits. Their job is to shape public opinion around the two party system.

That line about there being no dignity in show business still applies. It is why our politicians look more like carny trash than serious adults. The coin of the realm is attention and eventually, you have to degrade yourself to get it. People who have no qualms about making themselves the object of mockery just to entertain the masses will be naturals in the political game. Politics in a democratic system naturally selects for people willing to trade their dignity for applause.

This is most obvious in the pundit class. These are people who dream of one day being an extra on a good television show. In other words, unlike the people who run for office, these people think even less of themselves. It is why their opinions can easily change from one election to the next. If this season the smash hit is angry black guy, then they will sign on for a role in angry black guy. If next season the show is strong female, then they will audition for that show.

You see this with so-called conservatives. Fifty pounds ago, S. E. Cupp played the role of naughty female libertarian on Fox. She would show a little skin, put on the glasses and repeat libertarian lines about socialism. That show closed so she is now playing the role of matronly MAGA hater on CNN. Many of the people in this

declaration of war against Trump voters switched to being Trump supporters. There is no dignity in show business, so they had no trouble with it.

There is a funny thing about a world of no standards. In addition to drawing in people willing to play any role just to get on stage, it seems to draw in people who seem to enjoy degrading themselves in public. Self-declared super genius Tom Nichols is probably the best example. He seems to get a weird thrill out of making an ass of himself in public. It does not appear to be just about getting attention. He really likes to humiliate himself on-line.

Just look at the first line of that Twitter post. “In forty years of studying Russia the thing I always struggled to get my arms around is that this remarkable and immense nation, a source of cultural and scientific genius, is also so riven by ignorance and insecurity that it is incapable of living in peace with the world.” This is a man who lives in a country that has been at war with the world for most of its existence. His cult is responsible for more dead people than Genghis Khan.

That whole series of posts is like someone had decided to lampoon the Trotsky cult we call neoconservatism by conjuring an absurd character that embodies an exaggerated version of its qualities. That ridiculous person then does ridiculous things to highlight the absurdity of his group. Tom Nichols is the Mr. Bean of neoconservatism and he is thrilled to play the part. One gets the sense that if Bill Kristol says the role could use some clown nose, Nichols is dressing as a clown.

It is possible that Nichols is so devoid of self-awareness that he does not see the absurdity in his act. In fact, this is a possible clue to why many celebrities seem to think highly of themselves, despite what they do for a living. Ocasio-Cortez, for example, thinks she is a world historical figure. It could be that a total lack of self-respect rests on a total lack of self-awareness. If you cannot tell when they are laughing at you rather than with you, then it does not matter.

The Founders never imagined that the country they were creating would one day lead to rule by circus freak, but they understood the risk of democracy. They knew that a system that relied on the shifting opinion of the masses would attract those who are good at appealing to the masses, but not good at governing. We see this today as our political system looks like a bad TV show. It is full of people who are good at getting public attention, but they are not good at anything else.

What no one anticipated is that rule by circus freak has degraded all of society, along with the people on the stage. To sit in the crowd, applauding as a man humiliates himself for your amusement, debases you as much as the performer. You cannot seek to raise yourself up from your base condition when you are simultaneously cheering for others to reduce themselves to their base condition. In a democracy, we all sink into the ooze together because there is no dignity in democracy.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Last month, conservative media was buzzing about a British pick up artist being banned from the internet. On the same day, all of his social media accounts were shutdown and his payment processors dropped him. Conservatives noticed this incident because the victim did not look white. It turns out that he is half-black, so for American conservatives he is an ideal victim. It is the DR3 exception to the “they are private companies” principle of conservatism.

Amusingly, the regime media felt the need to address the issue, probably for the same reason so-called conservatives noticed the story. An iron law of the new religion states that any time a nonwhite cries out, it must be noticed. The New York Times helpfully stepped in and solved the problem. They noticed his banning but spent the bulk of the article explaining how his white half caused his black half to violate all of the important rules of the one true faith.

The racial part has another angle. Andrew Tate made the fatal error of turning up on banned shows like Alex Jones. Tariq Nasheed is every bit as “misogynistic” as Andrew Tate and he adds in wacky conspiracy theories. He makes Alex Jones look like a piker when it comes to the conspiracy stuff. On the other hand, he is viewed as left-wing, mostly because of his over-the-top hatred of white people. He gets to hate women as much as he likes on social media as a result.

Putting aside the racial angle, the stunning part of the coverage was that no one dared ask how these allegedly independent private companies came to the same conclusion within minutes of one another. It is quite a coincidence. If this had rolled out over a period of weeks and one platform held the line, then you could argue that it was mostly a case of monkey see, monkey do. In this case, it looked like a coordinated effort, yet no one asked who was coordinating it.

Of course, it is possible there is no coordination at all. The people running these tech firms are all alpha clones from the Central Hatchery and Conditioning Centre of the managerial state. They all believe the same things about themselves and the world they see themselves destined to manage. No one has to tell the prison guards what to do when they see an inmate scaling the wire. Like a school of fish, these people could be naturally reacting to what they see.

They could also have set up a clearinghouse for dealing with this stuff. That has happened in the past. They created an ad hoc committee to coordinate hiring in order to suppress wages. They also like to outsource this work to the same two companies, the SPLC and the ADL, which can do the coordination for them. It would be interesting to hear what they have to say about his, but to date no one in the media has raised the issue with them or to a politician.

It is not just the Silicon Valley companies illegally and immorally colluding to violate the civil rights of Americans. It appears the banking cartel is colluding to undermine the Second Amendment rights of Americans. They may also be pressuring others to follow on with their own measures. UPS is getting into the act. As we see with tech censorship, there is a whole lot of coincidental timing to this. It is almost as if there is someone working behind the scenes coordinating it.

One possible hand in this is the regime itself. We now know that the Biden administration works with Twitter to ban opponents. We also know they send the FBI to social media companies to threaten them if necessary. They sent a group of goons over to Facebook to tell them to censure the Hunter Biden laptop story. Given the grotesque authoritarianism of the regime, it should not shock anyone if we learn that they have created an unofficial Ministry of Truth.

This brings us back to that key question. Why is it that no one in the mass media, even so-called conservative media, ever asks about the coordination? Why is it no one noticed that the streaming platforms appeared to be ready with a public relations campaign right after the George Floyd incident? The next day they all had reworked their interface to promote pro-black content. You would think at least one person would wonder out loud about who is organizing this stuff.

One reason is fear. Every day that Haitian halfwit is sent out by the Biden regime to do a song and dance routine in the pressroom. She is an angry simpleton reading from a script so this should be easy money for a snarky reporter. Ask a question that makes her look more foolish than normal and you get fifteen minutes of fame. The only one who dares utter a discouraging word is Peter Doocy from Fox News and his questions are a great example of pulling your punches.

The reason the rest of them nod along pretending that the moron reading answers from a book is perfectly normal is they do not want to lose their job. Jean-Pierre could literally be flinging her poo at them and they will treat her like a queen. They say there is no dignity in show business. It is even more true in political show business. In tyrannical politics, groveling is the coin of court. No one in the media dares look up from their groveling for fear of losing their access.

The other reason is that none of them think to ask about who may or may not be behind what looks like coordination. It is the Pauline Kael effect. She was the crackpot film critic in the 1970’s who is allegedly said that Nixon could not have won because she did not know anybody who voted for him. The quote used is not real, the real quote is actually worse, but the sentiment is very real. The Cloud People live insular lives in which everyone has the same attitudes.

From the point of view of the managerial class, it is perfectly sensible for the tech oligarchs to censure speech. It is the responsible thing to do. They are baffled as to why anyone is upset by this. Not only are they not offended by censorship, but they would also be shocked if these firms were not coordinating their efforts. It is why they mount pressure campaigns against holdouts. Teaming up to suppress speech is really just a good example of political unity when you think about it.

When you step back and look at what is happening, it is remarkable. Managerialism in the West has achieved something that the Bolsheviks and Nazis were never able to accomplish at their peak. The operation of the managerial class is entirely informal, a habit of mind, rather than a set of rules. The communists and fascists had to rely on physical compulsion to maintain control. That requires a set of rules that can be enforced quickly by the regime.

The managerial class has created a culture which maintains their power. The reason the Biden White House is sending goons out to rough people up is that from their point of view it is the moral thing to do. Those old rules against doing such things do not register for them, because they lie outside the managerial morality. For the same reason no one asks any Andrew Tate was targeted by the tech giants, no one wonders if roughing up political opponents is against the rules.

For those familiar with the intellectual history of radicalism, we have arrived at a rather ironic moment. The West is now controlled by a culture of compulsion. The reason the people in the institutions exist is to compel behavior. The point of the nutty fads and grotesque violations of liberal norms is to force people, at the very minimum, to tolerate that which should never be tolerated. Ours is a society evolving around hierarchical humiliation rituals that have no practical purpose.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Notes: The Monday Taki post is up. This week is a post that has little to do with the headline of it. Sunday Thoughts is back behind the green door. SubscribeStar and Substack.

A feature of this age is lots of talk about the future, but not in the practical sense as was the case in the past. A century ago, industry would promise labor saving devices to make material life better for regular people. Today, the managerial elite talks about the future in vague terms, sometimes awful and sometimes glorious. In the future, we will go about in self-driving electric cars, unless Gaia burns creation to a crisp over the use of fossil fuels and inappropriate pronouns.

The fact is the managerial elite does not speak in specifics about the future because they do not have a clear vision for it. The only thing they are sure of is they will be in charge of it and as such, it will need their constant attention. Like the members of a committee, the managerial class can only imagine the next meeting. The future is always more of them doing what it is that makes them possible. As a result, the future they work towards is more of an aesthetic than a real place.

For example, the long running war on manufacturing in the West is not about the practical issues related to making things. It is mostly about removing these things from the view of the managerial elite. Note that in the 20th century the corporate office moved from where actual work was done to a corporate campus. The manager did not want to hear, see and smell the work. Something similar is happening in Western society where work is moved to the periphery.

This was a big part of the drive to ship manufacturing to low cast places like Asia and South America in the last century. Business took the incentives to leave, but those incentives were created by the managerial elite. The refrigeration maker did not lobby for trade deals that would force him to move his plant to Mexico. Those trade deals were made and business responded. Those ugly eyesores were then removed from the sight of the people who manage the world.

Now that some of this is coming back onshore due to the trade wars, supply chain issues and other problems, those businesses get stuffed on the fringe. Not a single voice in the managerial elite calls for rebuilding cities by rebuilding their manufacturing base or even encouraging reshoring back to the cities. Instead, the reshoring is going on in exurban industrial parks hidden from the sight of the rulers. The plans for the city, real or imagined, do not include the laboring classes.

The global crisis is due in no small part to this sensibility. The reason the violent Trotsky cult called neoconservatism keeps insisting Russia is nothing by a big gas station run by peasants is it has to be for the Great Reset to work. In order for the EU to be the leisurely playground imagined by the managerial elite, it is needs lots of cheap energy products from Russia. That can only happen if Russia knows its place and operates a giant gas station staffed by peasants.

Similarly, China is supposed to be a giant industrial park staffed by disposable people who all look alike to the managerial elite. The things that make the world look ugly and smell bad, like making steel, batteries, solar panels and Apple products, need to be made and made cheaply, but who wants to see it being made? No one in the managerial elite, so it gets sent abroad. China’s place in the scheme is to be a giant industrial zone for peasants to make cheap consumer goods.

Agriculture is coming under the same pressure. The push to end the growing of food in Western countries looks like madness. It is driven, however, by the same aesthetic that shipped manufacturing abroad. The beautiful people of the future do not want to think about how their food gets to their plate. Things like animal rights and bizarre dietary claims are just cover for an aversion to facing the reality of the food chain. They indulge these fads because they promise to hide the truth of life.

For European elites, this means food production gets shifted east to the Slavic lands and South to the MENA. In America, it means food production gets shifted south to Latin America and even China. This changing of the food supply is not better in a practical sense, but in an aesthetic sense. It is out of sight so therefore the managerial elite is not troubled by it. The corporate campus of the New World Order will be separate from the work that is required to maintain it.

The rise of the corporate campus in the last century was not driven by practical needs, but by the aesthetic of the people running the company. The guy who worked his way up from the bottom had been replaced by professional managers, trained at the best colleges and universities. The owners were now fund managers. This new breed of corporate manager did not want to be close to the work. In fact, she resented it as a reminder of why the business existed in the first place.

It is not unusual for the managers in a modern corporate office to not know how the company makes money. Few corporate managers have had a hand in making their products or delivering their service. The exception are the firms that work as middlemen in the new economy. Many managers work in areas that have no relationship to the business of the company. There is a physical and psychological gap between those who labor and those who facilitate labor.

Note that it is not always an economic gap. A hard working tradesman or a small businessman has a better material life than the corporate manager, but he lives in a different cultural, physical and psychological zone. The self-employed plumber with a couple of men working for him is not going to be playing golf with the assistant strategy director or the corporate success coach. These are people who do know one another or even know of each other’s existence.

This is the world the managerial elite is working toward. They do not need to know why plugging in the Tesla makes the red light inside turn green. They do not need to know how their soy latte came into being. The messy and unpleasant things about human existence have been moved off to the periphery. They just exist and no one needs think too much about how they work. The managerial class is liberated from the human condition because they no longer have to witness it.

This works fine as long as the bulk of Western people are fine being converted into a massive servant class, mingled in with foreigner imports. This works if Russia is happy to be a giant gas station run by peasants. As long as China is fine being an industrial park that makes no demands on management, it is all good. In other words, if the peasants never get any wild thoughts in their heads, the world imagined by the managerial elite is a glorious place.

It remains to be seen if such a world is possible. The Russians are not happy being a giant gas station run by peasants. The Chinese think their culture and civilization is more than a polluted industrial zone. Even the Indians seem to be tiring of their role as call center to the West. On the other hand, the managerial elite is smart and ruthless, mostly ruthless, so they cannot be discounted. These are people selected for their ability to impose their will on their host.

In the end, the future will be decided by who, not how. This may be the great flaw in the managerial system that has evolved to this point. A system that places all value on clever verbal tricks to control how things are done may not be much of a match for people who can actually do things. Baring some détente between the managerial elite and the rest of the world, like that which happened between labor and management in the 20th century, the crisis is headed for conflict.

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