MichaelAnissimov comments on Neo-reactionaries, why are you neo-reactionary? - Less Wrong

10 Post author: Capla 17 November 2014 10:31PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 20 November 2014 08:05:58AM *  2 points [-]

Following your link, the description is high on left-wing buzzwords and light on actual details. I fail to see why either Michael or my self should waste our time with every crackpot proposal.

Which is exactly the same thing I normally say to your crackpot proposals, but this time I decided to be nice and actually try talking to you. I won't be so bothered again, since your entire post is basically "lol lefties" instead of actually answering the question as to why you lot seem to jump from "current-day American government is flawed" to "hurrah 18th-century monarchy!" with no distribution over possible solutions, or evidence, or search process in between.

Which rather confirms my hypothesis that it's a case of motivated cognition, and you're not worth engaging.

Ok, attempting the steelman their proposal it seems to amount to setting up a trust to be managed by a group omni-benevolet trustees. Problems like where these trustees are supposed to come from, how their omni-benevolence is to be maintained, or even the practical details of how the trust will operate are glossed over or given vague hand-wavy answers.

Not omnibenevolent: stop strawmanning. Accountable through the court system. When beneficiaries believe trustees are acting against their trust, they file suit, and an expert judge makes the actual decision based on the trust's charter. Just like in all established trusts under current law, some of which are actually-existing commons trusts. Duh.

Lol, have you read the site you linked to?

I had actually wanted to link a Wikipedia page for the subject, but Google yielded none. Alas.

Comment author: MichaelAnissimov 20 November 2014 09:21:20AM 6 points [-]

Isn't Israel an ethnonationalist state with a strong implicit hierarchy?

Comment author: [deleted] 20 November 2014 10:03:26AM 2 points [-]

Ethnonationalist democratic state with a weak implicit hierarchy, actually. Did I ever claim present-day Israel is morally optimal?

Comment author: MichaelAnissimov 20 November 2014 10:07:21AM 7 points [-]

No, but I find the juxtaposition of Marxist universalist ideas being fervently communicated by those who enjoy the economic and social benefits of an ethnostate to be amusing.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 November 2014 11:50:52AM 6 points [-]

Fair enough! And I would say we've got several social transformations to go through (ie: a general increase in the level of education and an improvement in methods of government) before we can actually abolish ethnostates.

(It should be stated: I'm a consequentialist, and an objective consequentialist. This means that when things accomplish net good (up to my understanding of "good"), I endorse them, even if they "smell bad".)

So yeah. For here and now with actually-existing people in actually-existing societies, ethnostates seem to be our best heuristic for making democratic, egalitarian societies actually work, instead of degrading into a civil war between tribal clusters (which, I think, is precisely what you're so afraid of). That doesn't make them terminally valuable, but it does leave them instrumentally useful.

Comment author: MichaelAnissimov 20 November 2014 12:13:26PM *  5 points [-]

No one said ethnostates were terminally valuable, necessarily, but yeah. I wonder what the Tumblr contingent's reaction to your last paragraph would be. You're basically saying ethnos is so important that multicultural states fall apart, and that ethnostates are the best pragmatic form of government.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 November 2014 12:44:00PM *  3 points [-]

That's not a historically or spatially universal "best"; it's not optimal. It's "the best we can do given the historical and geopolitical contingencies as they actually are right now." I don't think you even need transhumans or something to have non-ethnic states actually work, you just need to break out of the "Jihad vs McWorld" paradigm of geopolitics.

(Speaking of silly leftists, the man who wrote Jihad vs McWorld concentrated most of his ire on McWorld, since he was writing in the '90s and did not think jihad would become a severe problem. I think we can both say, on this one: what an idiot!

But the bigger question is: if he implicitly supported racial and religious chauvinist movements against capitalist globalization, does that make him, and by implication the entire left-wing "antiglobalization" movement of the '90s and 2000s, reactionary, or some other form of right-wing?

I would say, yes, at least in effect, in the same sense that "pacifism is objectively pro-fascist". You?)

Comment author: [deleted] 20 November 2014 09:13:54PM 4 points [-]

What historical and geopolitical contingencies would allow for the development of a better pragmatic form of government than ethnostates?

Comment author: Lumifer 20 November 2014 09:29:02PM 2 points [-]

Singapore is not an ethnostate.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 November 2014 11:44:49PM 4 points [-]

Singapore is a step up from most countries, but I still wouldn't want to live there -- sure, it's safe and not communist, but as far as I've heard, those are its only redeeming values. Since there are safe ethnostates that aren't communist, that still looks like a superior model.

Comment author: polymathwannabe 20 November 2014 09:48:04PM 1 point [-]

It can be argued that the U.S. is not an ethnostate either.

Comment author: MichaelAnissimov 20 November 2014 01:41:07PM 1 point [-]

No, I think that's a disingenuous usage. I also don't understand how pacifism is "objectively pro-fascist".

In the book, he uses Jihad as a stand-in for traditional values everywhere, not just Islamic Jihad.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 November 2014 02:00:42PM 3 points [-]

I also don't understand how pacifism is "objectively pro-fascist".

Google the phrase. Orwell wrote an essay on the matter.

In the book, he uses Jihad as a stand-in for traditional values everywhere, not just Islamic Jihad.

No, as a matter of fact, he uses it as a word for a new style of increasingly irrational chauvinist movements, not for "traditional values" in any sense that an ordinary conservative would recognize.

Of course, if you're willing to include Islamism in your term for neoreactionary traditional values... I'm willing to take this as further evidence that neoreaction is a terrible idea.

Comment author: MichaelAnissimov 20 November 2014 02:02:54PM 2 points [-]

Islam is certainly not neoreactionary, because neoreactionary refers to the descendants of a certain circumscribed intellectual group that developed from Moldbug in the Bay Area.