Anacyclosis and the problem of productivity

Economics, free trade, the minimum wage, technological advancement, immigration, and the Singularity are all pointing towards the same problem, as Fred Reed notes:

People of IQ 130 and up tend to assume unconsciously–important word: “unconsciously”–that you can do anything just by doing it. If they wanted to learn Sanskrit, they would get a textbook and go for it. It would take time and effort but the outcome would never be in doubt. Yes, of course they understand that some people are smarter than others, but they often seem not to grasp how much smarter, or what the consequences are. A large part of the population can’t learn-much of anything. Not won’t. Can’t. Displaced auto workers cannot be retrained as IT professionals.

Few of the very bright have have ever had to make the unhappy calculation: Forty times a low minimum wage minus bus fare to work, rent, food, medical care, and cable. They have never had to choose between a winter coat and cable, their only entertainment. They don’t really know that many people do. Out of sight, out of mind.

Cognitive stratification has political consequences. It leads liberals to think that their client groups can go to college. It leads conservatives to think that with hard work and determination…..

It ain’t so. An economic system that works reasonably well when there are lots of simple jobs doesn’t when there aren’t. In particular, the large number of people at IQ 90 and below will increasingly be simply unnecessary. If you are, say, a decent, honest young woman of IQ 85, you probably read poorly, learn slowly and only simple things,. Being promoted, or even hired, requires abilities that you do not have. This, plus high (and federally concealed) unemployment allows employers to pay you barely enough to stay alive. Here is the wondrous working of the market.

The Polybian system of anacyclosis proceeds in the following order:
1. Monarchy, 2. Kingship, 3. Tyranny, 4. Aristocracy, 5. Oligarchy, 6. Democracy, and 7. Ochlocracy.

Some would say that we are living under a democracy, but this is observably not true. Rather, it appears we are somewhere between (4) and (5), even though the Aristocracy is not readily apparent. In reality, the theory probably needs to be updated, but regardless, the observable fact is that the transnational cognitive elite has no regard for the common masses, and more importantly, no longer requires them in order to maintain its standard of living. The logical conclusion is that the increased irrelevance of the competent white middle and working classes is why the former is entirely willing to replace them with an even more irrelevant, and less intelligent population who can be much more easily subdued and eliminated in time.

That sounds diabolical, but logic suggests that it is the purpose and the intended consequence of Cultural Marxism. It seems woefully short-sighted to me, but if one thinks only in terms of one’s own lifetime, I suppose it might be of some appeal.

The feudalism of the Middle Ages required peasants for agriculture. But the technofeudalism of the future doesn’t appear likely to require peasants for anything. So what will be done with them? What will be done with us? The long and bloody history of Man does not suggest an optimistic answer.

Bleeding purple

It’s not often I miss being in Minnesota. But I would have liked to have been back at First Avenue last night for the party celebrating Prince’s life and music. I can’t think of a better place for it.

I talked to several of my friends from Minnesota over the last day, some of whom are still there and some of whom are not. And it’s been bittersweet to see how all of them, at least to this extent, still bleed purple. It’s a little hard to explain the sense of loss to non-Minnesotans, because it’s simply not about celebrity worship or the death of a popstar, as so many people understandably, but mistakenly, think.

It feels more like losing a cousin of whom you were inordinately proud, in part because he was so proud to bear your name and be a part of your family. Practically everyone I know had some casual connection with Prince, be it a chance encounter somewhere, a friend who worked for him, or a mutual acquaintance. It’s not a very big city, after all.

Minnesota, and Minneapolis in particular, has always had an irrelevancy complex. And not without reason; everyone at my East Coast-populated university seemed to be astonished that Big Chilly and I were not some sort of lumberjacks or farmers, while we were surprised at how… backwards they were, especially with regards to music.

But Prince not only put Minneapolis on the map, he genuinely loved the city, the state, and the people. And in that place, at that time, with that particular demographic mix, people really did genuinely transcend the usual racial issues; it took me several years away from Minnesota and six months in Tokyo to understand that certain differences actually were relevant, and just as importantly, mattered greatly to nearly everyone of any color. Perhaps only in Minnesota would a black man describing someone not liking “his kind” be referring to work habits and not race.

Prince was a part of that, both cause and effect. It was interesting to hear both his manager and some of his black bandmates talk about how growing up in a 95 percent white community affected the development of his music; they listened to KQ92 and all the classic rock just like we did because there simply wasn’t anything else on the radio besides news, classical, and terrible 70s pop on KS95. In Minneapolis, we didn’t even understand the concept of “crossover” music because it was considered normal to have a black bassist in a white band or a white guitarist in a black one; in fact, one of the members of the larval form of Psykosonik was black.

Don’t think I’m saying this as some form of virtue-signaling; you know I
don’t believe in that. I’m simply trying to describe the innocent, and
fundamentally naive, mindset of the time, which is probably not
unrelated today to disastrous things like the settlement of Somalis on the West Bank or Liberians in Coon Rapids. (I know, I know,
oh, the irony.) There is probably an interesting historical study to be done there regarding the optimal level of a minority group in a population.

As for Prince, there was a sort of etiquette everyone understood concerning him. You did NOT make a big deal about him. You didn’t tell him you were a fan, you didn’t tell him you loved his music, and you didn’t take pictures of him, you simply said “hi, Prince”. He would usually smile, accept the homage implicit in the recognition, and go about his business. If he wanted to talk to you, he’d send his bodyguard over to let you know. On more than one occasion, I had to warn out-of-town guests not to react to him being around, but everyone in Minneapolis just seemed to understand that Prince was not to be bothered. Maybe it has to do with the Scandinavian ethic, I don’t know. It’s just how it was.

It is sad that such a beloved son of the city died alone in his incredible studio-mansion. But I have no doubt that he knew his hometown loved him, as the photo above shows. I know many, perhaps even most of you, won’t grasp what Prince meant to his fellow Minnesotans, but even if you don’t, try to understand that we are mourning one of our own.

April Brainstorm tonight

Just a reminder for Brainstorm members that there is a closed event tonight. Check your email for details. Tonight will feature a guest speaker, William S. Lind, who will address the divergence between the events depicted in his novel Victoria and the massive demographic changes that we’ve seen in the last decade.

We will also be discussing recent developments in Project Big Fork and a few other issues. I’ve completed the review of the recent debate transcript and sent it off to Dr. Miller for approval; it should go out to members by Tuesday at the latest. It’s better than I remembered; if Dr. Miller is amenable, we may publish it as a $2.99 epamphlet.

UPDATE: I’m pleased to be able to say that Dr. Miller is, indeed, amenable. So it should be out reasonably soon.

As for those who are not Brainstorm members, you are invited to the Rabid Puppies Hugo Nomination Party, which will start at 12:30 PM Eastern on Tuesday, April 26th. If you can make it, you can register for it here. Thanks to the new member signups, I was able to bump up the seats to 1,000, so there should be room for almost everyone; at the last Rabid Puppies Party, 750 more people tried to register than were able to attend.

So register and keep the prosecco cold and handy in case the Puppies do well.

A message for the conservative establishment

Milo thunders like the prophets of yore:

I have a message for the conservative establishment: you fucked up big time… The assorted, well-fed, burbling lunatics, idiots and losers of the conservative media establishment and in conservative circles in general… These useless, fat blubbering losers!

“You conservatives made all the right noises but you have no appetite whatsoever to fix anything. You allowed the Left to continue to gain ground and gain ground and gain ground until a point at which — and I don’t think this is an exaggeration to say — the fabric of western culture is now at risk. From immigration, from multiculturalism, from the lies the Left tells.

Trump and I represent something that scares the Left — the utter, wholesale rejection of political correctness. Total defiance. The idea you don’t back down, you double down. When somebody comes to my event and says they’re offended by a joke, I rack my brain for a more offensive one… Trump does the same thing.

He has shown the one thing that no conservative politician or pundit or anybody really on the political Right in American public life has done for some 30 years. He has shown fearlessness, he’s not afraid of the Left. And that inspires terror in their hearts and I’m the same, I like to think.

Regardless of what you think of Milo, he is absolutely and utterly correct to condemn the craven conservative establishment in this manner. Their spirit of fear is not God-given, and their vaunted ideological principles have proven to be entirely nonexistent.

As my co-author, Red Eagle, conclusively demonstrated in Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America, conservatism is not even an ideology per se, but rather, an attitude, or to be less kind, a pose.

The early new rightists were interested in discerning the deeper roots of historical American political thought, and in turning its various strains into a viable, coherent political tradition. Some of them looked so deeply that they found inspiration from decidedly non-American sources, such as British conservative political thought. The latter was a generally elitist tradition, openly contemptuous of American-style independent citizenry and the freewheeling style of American political discourse. Among the leaders of this Anglophile camp was Russell Kirk, who is generally credited with coining the American use of the term conservative as a distinct political label. His most famous work, The Conservative Mind, proved to be quickly and profoundly influential soon after its publication in 1953. Kirk’s book synthesized various ideas from diverse 18th- and 19th-century thinkers, most prominently Edmund Burke, into six canons, or principles, of this new conservatism:

  1. Belief in a transcendent order, or body, of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience.
  2. Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems.
  3. Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes, as against the notion of a “classless society.”
  4. Persuasion that freedom and property are closely linked.
  5. Custom, convention, and old prescription are checks both upon man’s anarchic impulse and upon the innovator’s lust for power.
  6. Recognition that change may not be salutory reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress. Society must alter, for prudent change is the means of social preservation; but a statesman must take Providence into his calculations.

Whatever the left may say about them, Kirk’s principles are hardly the stuff of SS rallies. As a set of ideas, they’re not particularly systematic, particularly when compared with more radical philosophies like Marxism and its innumerable offshoots, or at the other extreme, the Objectivism of Ayn Rand. They are arguably more a set of generalized assertions and attitudes rather than principles per se. Even so, they do represent a particular worldview, though it is not the worldview of the Founding Fathers or of the early American political generations. Notice as well that several of these principles are primarily defined by that which they opposed: the dominant left-liberal worldview of the mid-20th century. From their very beginning the principles of conservatism were subordinate and defensive in nature, or less charitably, they were submissive and passive-aggressive in their relation to the left.

Conservatism cannot win. It cannot even conserve. If the West is to survive, it needs to abandon its consistent failures of the past and confidently embrace the pillars of its foundation: Christianity, the European nations, science, and capitalism. Any other strategy will fail. Any man who considers himself a Man of the West would do well to abandon the conservative establishment; it has already abandoned you.

Diversity kills community

The same negative effect of diversity on community discovered – and initially buried – by Robert Putnam in the United States is replicated in the United Kingdom by a study entitled Does Ethnic Diversity Have a Negative Effect on Attitudes towards the Community? A Longitudinal Analysis of the Causal Claims within the Ethnic Diversity and Social Cohesion Debate:

We observe that as a community becomes more diverse around an individual, they are likely to become less attached to their community. This is a strict test of the causal impact of diversity, minimizing unobserved heterogeneity and eliminating selection bias. Importantly, neither indicator of disadvantage is significantly associated with attachment.

Model 2 shows the same analysis among movers. Diversity is again significant and negative, suggesting that individuals who move from more diverse to less diverse communities are likely to become more attached (and vice versa).

Like calls to like. Most people prefer to live among their own. Segregation is not only the right of free association in action, it is a community imperative. This is further evidence that the increasingly diverse United States will not survive because it cannot survive. It is not a nation.

Jerry Pournelle on Donald Trump

A take on Trump that is entirely more interesting than my own on the man:

Trump is probably the least qualified candidate who ran for the Republican nomination this year. If you didn’t know that, you’d have to be a hermit to avoid finding it out. He also has far more delegates than any other candidate. I would think that would send a clear message to the Republican elite, particularly the country club establishment; but like the Bourbon kings of France restored after the Revolution, they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

Wouldn’t I want a more qualified, somewhat more experienced candidate? Well, of course. But the establishment wasn’t about to let anyone not within its ranks to get anywhere close to the nomination. In 1956 the goal was “anyone but Reagan” among the Republican elite. Now it’s anybody but Trump. Before Trump they made it clear to all: it’s going to be one of us, like it or lump it. We can deal with upstarts.

But they didn’t intimidate Trump, and now he’s laid all of their compliant candidates low, and they’re turning to an old enemy, Cruz, in despair. The notion is that he’ll “grow” in office; it’s for sure that Trump won’t grow under their definition of grow.

But in fact he’s likely to. He has some good advisors and he has a definite point of view that may be hard to discern because it’s masked by his blatant – loudmouthed and irritating, if you like – tactics. But he has never wavered on his desire to fill the Supreme Court with Justices as near in scholarship and view to Scalia as possible; that alone would be enough to get me to the polls for Trump if he’s nominated.

He has consistently said we need to turn control of the schools to the local districts and stop dictating to them from Washington. This has been taken as meaning that he doesn’t know what to do on a nation al scale. Well, I have news: neither does anyone else, and the attempt, even with the best of will, will always fail. The schools worked better, over all, when they were paid for by local school district taxes and run by local school boards elected by the people who paid those taxes. If you don’t believe that, get a copy of the California Sixth Grade Reader from a hundred years ago and compare it to your child’s present day ninth grade reader. Then weep.

No, he’s not a “movement conservative”, but I’m not sure I still am, and I was a protégé of Russell Kirk and Stefan Possony, and a friend of Bill Buckley and Willmore Kendall. I’ve been in that “movement” a long time. Long enough to see National Review use the egregious Frum to read most of us out of the movement.

Trump is not a movement conservative, but his inclination is to set goals and get people working on them, not to jail and fine them for not doing so. He understands that being served by mindless minions is not the path to glory or wealth. Compared to Hillary or Sanders or anyone in Obama’s train, I’ll take Trump any day. I would prefer someone with government experience – some, not one whose only experience is in government – but we seem to be fresh out of those. I suppose I’d rather have establishment country club Republicans than anyone likely to be nominated by the Democratic establishment even if a plague took all the present candidates; we tried that with Bush I, who cleared the White House of Reagan people the day after inauguration, and proceeded to saddle us with the Americans With Disabilities act and a new Federal bureaucracy; but that’s another story.

Trump is a pragmatic populist. I can live with that.

Considering the manifold failures of what we’ve been told are principled ideology, pragmatic populism is sounding pretty good right now. Whatever gets the borders closed and starts the respections. Say what you will about Dr. Pournelle, but he’s not only smart, he has accumulated a fair bit of wisdom along the way.

Homeschool or Die: 2016 edition

Now even the girls are killing each other in the public schools:

A 16-year-old girl died Thursday after fighting with other girls in a bathroom at Howard High School of Technology in Wilmington, Delaware, authorities said.

“There was an altercation that initially started between two people, and my understanding is that additional individuals joined in against the one person,” said Gary Fullman, chief of staff to the Wilmington mayor.

The student was badly injured and transported by helicopter to A.I. DuPont Hospital for Children, where she died, Fullman said.

Any bets on the races involved?

A portrait in SJW convergence

The dark side of Wikipedia:

The promise of accurate, neutral articles and privacy for contributors is often just a mirage, according to two insiders. They say they’ve been left battle-scarred after troubling personal encounters with the world’s most popular encyclopedia.

It’s billed as “the encyclopedia anyone can edit.” But for many, it’s the opposite.

Greg Kohs is among the blocked. Banned, he says, for challenging Wikipedia policies.

Kohs: Just in the past four hours, 500 IP addresses and users have been blocked from editing Wikipedia.

In 2012, Kohs helped start an opposing website called, “Wikipediocracy,” to expose what he calls Wikipedia’s “misinformation, defamation and general nonsense.”

Sharyl: So Wikipedia does censor users?

Kohs: Absolutely. In a given day, Wikipedia administrators typically are blocking about 1,000 different IP addresses.

Sharyl: 1,000 a day?

Kohs: 1,000 a day. Yes.

When Kohs ran afoul of Wikipedia, he was drawn into an unseen cyberworld. One where he says volunteer editors dole out punishment and retaliation, privacy is violated and special interests control information.

Sharyl: Most people don’t know what?

Kohs: Wikipedia is often edited by people who have an agenda.

As I wrote in SJWAL, the near-complete convergence of social media is the reason that it is necessary for the alt-right to develop superior, broad-spectrum alternatives to everything from Twitter and Tumblr to Facebook and Wikipedia.

There will be many challenges, not least of which is resisting the temptation to be bought out by these ludicrously well-funded profitless corporations. I have no doubt that Facebook, for one, will expertly play the Microsoft strategy of acquire and conquer. But those challenges must be met, all the same, because leaving the intersection of money, technology, and media under the control of SJWs means the intellectual enchainment of humanity.

And this behavior on the part of SJW Wikipedians goes well beyond creepy and reaches downright scary. Notice the typical SJW behavior of targeting their opponents’ jobs.

Kohs sees himself as an equalizer. His business helps clients, including supposed victims of unfair edits, navigate Wikipedia’s unbridled landscape. Wikipedia banned him for violating the policy against paid editing and when Kohs criticized the policy and continued under a borrowed account, Wikipedia editors targeted him.

They went to great lengths to track him, using inside information and computer addresses. They researched where Kohs grew up, and traced his movements all the way to Orlando, Florida, where he was making edits while on vacation.

Sharyl: Wikipedia editors that you didn’t know at the time were tracking your movements, speculating that you went home for Thanksgiving?

Kohs: That’s absolutely correct.

He only discovered that he was being tracked because somebody leaked internal Wikipedia discussions about him.

Kohs: And then somebody chimed in, ‘looks like someone went home for Thanksgiving to visit mom and dad,’ so you think you’re editing with some degree of privacy, but if they want to they can really start to investigate.

Book of the weekend

This week, I’m a little late on the book of the week, which essentially makes it a book of the weekend, but for those who are interested in the subject of the Singularity, Dr. Miller, my past and future debate opponent, has made the audio introduction to his book on the technofuture, Singularity Rising, available for listening. How will the Singularity affect our daily lives—our jobs, our families, and our wealth?

Singularity Rising: Surviving and Thriving in a Smarter, Richer, and More Dangerous World
focuses on the implications of a future society faced with an abundance
of human and artificial intelligence. James D. Miller, an economics
professor and popular speaker on the Singularity, reveals how natural
selection has been increasing human intelligence over the past few
thousand years and speculates on how intelligence enhancements will
shape civilization over the next forty years.

Miller considers several possible scenarios in this coming singularity:

  • A merger of man and machine making society fantastically wealthy and nearly immortal
  • Competition with billions of cheap AIs drive human wages to almost nothing while making investors rich
  • Businesses rethink investment decisions to take into account an expected future period of intense creative destruction
  • Inequality drops worldwide as technologies mitigate the cognitive cost of living in impoverished environments
  • Drugs designed to fight Alzheimer’s disease and keep soldiers alert on
    battlefields have the fortunate side effect of increasing all of their
    users’ IQs, which, in turn, adds a percentage points to worldwide
    economic growth

Singularity Rising offers predictions
about the economic implications for a future of widely expanding
intelligence and practical career and investment advice on flourishing
on the way to the Singularity. Sadly, no word on okapis.

A question for the readers

Which would you rather have first, A Sea of Skulls or SJWs Always Double Down? I’ve been focusing on the former, given how long Selenoth fans have been waiting, but it occurs to me that it might make sense to, you know, actually ask the core market what it prefers.

On a somewhat related note, the first novel in what could reasonably, but will not be, described as a New Heinlein series, Mutiny in Space by Rod Walker, will be published soon. It’s an intentional attempt to capture the style and spirit of Robert Heinlein’s classic SF juveniles. I think you’ll find it is considerably more successful in doing so than some of the previously declared New Heinleins.

UPDATE: The readers have spoken. The current schedule will remain in place. First A Sea of Skulls, then SJWs Always Double Down.