The main thrust of The Phantom Public is Lippman dispensing with romantic notions of Democracy, Nationalism, Socialism and other dominating ideologiesThe main thrust of The Phantom Public is Lippman dispensing with romantic notions of Democracy, Nationalism, Socialism and other dominating ideologies of the time, substituting them instead with what in his view is a practical and realistic model.
And so, Democracy is not "rule by the people" any more than a Monarchy is rule by the soldiers who stood behind the victorious monarch. The outcome of an election is not the "will of the people" but merely a compromise substitute (ballots for bullets) of a physically violent civil war that might otherwise result.
Indeed, the Public is not a monolithic ruler. It does not lead. The member of the Public arrives long after the interested insider parties in any dispute already lined up against each other without outsider input, and stays only long enough to take the side of one or the other pre-existing parties in this dispute. The actual governing is then continued to be carried out by the victorious insiders. It is not a monolith. Not only is the Public composed of different individuals with different purposes, but who is included in the Public changes depending on the dispute at hand. This is because the fundamental difference between the disputants and the Public is not "the enlightened few vs. the ignorant many", but rather then insiders to an issue vs. the interested outsiders. Whoever belongs to the outsiders in a given issue belongs to the Public with regards to that issue.
Lippmann also spends significant time critiquing the Monoisitic theory of Nationalism and Socialism, a similarly romantic notion to the Democratic "will of the people" at odds with reality. Here he explains the innumerable problems caused by the maintained illusion that the members of a society constitute an organic whole, with one will and purpose (which, of course, is determined by the ruling class). He points out that doing away with this illusion all the dilemmas and complications he so far introduced become soluble if we at once recognize that it is the individual who acts, and not the nation, and that any conflict is between individuals, and not nations.
His overall goal with the book then is to offer an alternative for the place of the Public, disabused of romantic notions that led only to catastrophe in practice. In this he lays out the following points:
Not for the Public: 1. Executive action 2. Merits of a question 3. Analysis of the solution 4. Criteria for handling the question
This is because as outsiders, they cannot be expected to fully know the merits of the question or have the expertise to evaluate a solution or put it into practice.
For the Public: 5. Judge if actors are following settled rule of behavior 6. Criteria suitable to nature of Public opinion for #5 7. Reasonable behavior follows settled course in handling a rule
Since the public is only interested in having a settled, workable rule that everyone can agree to, and are not interested in the particulars of that rule, it is this lens through which they should judge whether to take one side or the other in a dispute....more
Based on the title I expected a collection of essays (mostly from crypto-anarchists or their opponents), similar to the kind of thing one would find iBased on the title I expected a collection of essays (mostly from crypto-anarchists or their opponents), similar to the kind of thing one would find in the Agorist Primer, but more historical-analytical rather than ideological.
What I got instead for the most part was a majority of essays that I could only describe as boring. Even doing my notes was a chore. The essays range from the ideological declarations of crypto-anarchists and libertarians to stuffy professors sobbing and seething about how the internet is making governments more subject to market forces, or how it makes taxation, law imposement and other forms of state control increasingly difficult, or doing dry historical analyses and waxing poetic about how a specific internet community many of them focused on (LamdaMOO) could be legally recognized as a country or a club or something or other.
A lot of flexing of muscles, a lot of big words aimed more at justifying a professorial salary than at providing anything useful. The only useful takeaway is maybe Hakim Bey's TAZ essay, and seeing how some of the predictions made turned out. It was interesting for example, that in the 1990s people thought it was ever possible to regulate cryptographic software, and waxed poetic in complete ignorance about how it could be controlled, when such control was impossible.
I would not recommend it, unless you are really into the author or the type of essays this book provides....more
The book takes on Intellectual Property (to which they consciously refer to as Intellectual Monopoly per the book title) from a mostly utilitarian poiThe book takes on Intellectual Property (to which they consciously refer to as Intellectual Monopoly per the book title) from a mostly utilitarian point of view. As much as I disagree with the approach to ethics this book takes, you can't deny that their case is nevertheless quite tightly argued, which is the type of book I like.
The upside of this is that we get tightly reasoned anecdotes backed up by historical and empirical data, overall showing little evidence for the necessity of any sort of IP, but plenty of harm. By far the greatest advantage I gained out of this book was learning practical anecdotes and arguments with which to dispel common concerns brought up when IP abolishment is mentioned.
They also have a central argument, which is that an industry thrives and innovates without IP, then once the incumbents are established and start running out of ideas, they lobby the government for IP protection as a means of cartelization and keeping innovative newcomers out of the market, and they bring up anecdotes illustrating this throughout the book.
Examples include the Watt-Boulton patent saga, whose villains spent more resources fighting to force competitors off the market than actually innovating, and used monopoly pricing (further proving that it truly is Intellectual Monopoly). The result of their antics was the suppression of steam technology until their patent ran out.
Benjamin Day's Sun newspaper mainly succeeded due to his innovative business organization, despite the fact that business ideas were not patentable. Today they are, and as a result we have Amazon suing Barnes and Noble over the idea of "1-click ordering" shows the ridiculousness of patents. This shows that patents are not only not necessary, but their application in practice result in absurdities.
Publishers pay a lot to be the first to sell a given book, as evidenced by authors making more from book sales in 19th century USA, where they had no copyright, than in the UK where they did, as well as by the anecdote of the 9/11 Commission Report.
Copyright law is also unenforceable, as illustrated by the 1902 Copyright Law in England, meant to curb sheet music "piracy". Several anecdotes abound of industries fleeing IP enforcement to places where it could not be enforced, such as small movie studios initially fleeing IP enforcement New York only to settle down in California, where IP on their equipment was not enforced.
The book is a treasure trove of this and other anecdotes.
As for the downside, the book as I mentioned above takes a utilitarian/conservative economist's approach to argumentation. This unfortunately results in a bit (although not too much) of mathematical economic theorizing, which was of no use to me or really anyone else (unless you're into that) and was a slog to get through. The same can be said for their solutions towards the end of the book, which apart from abolishment of IP as a legitimate form of property are not very interesting.
By far their biggest sin is committing total ethical suicide by taking a utilitarian approach to property rights. They argue as if property rights were nothing more than the best tool we have for "general prosperity". They take the view of engineering society, politicians the potter and society the clay, the very view that economists like Frederic Bastiat decried as immoral. As a result they - like the Communists they call dumb in the book - are reduced to differentiating "good" property rights from "bad" property rights depending on whether it's "socially desirable", and then simply categorize property rights in physical things as "good" and IP as "bad". A proper grounding in ethics would have helped see that the issue here is not that IP is a "bad" right, but that it's not a right at all to begin with, and therefore accepting it as a legitimate right is an absurd mockery of the Law and therefore necessarily results in the absurdities so skillfully presented in this book.
Overall I highly recommend this book as *the* book against IP to read, it has plenty of anecdotes which illustrate its points, too many to list here, and its utilitarian, practical approach - as much as I personally dislike it - promises to be highly persuasive and effective at dispelling any fears or doubts regarding the abolishment of IP that the average person might have....more
The book's thesis is pretty much what you'd expect based on the title, which to me is a good thing. It's very structured, starting off with a setup of The book's thesis is pretty much what you'd expect based on the title, which to me is a good thing. It's very structured, starting off with a setup of the liberal safeguards of criminal law, why they were created and why they are necessary. During this, the following requirements for conviction are enumerated:
1. Mens rea (guilty mind), it must be proven that the criminal outcome was either intentionally caused by the defendant, or at least the result of unreasonable recklessness on the part of the defendant. This means that as long as someone "does everything right", they cannot be charged with a crime, most relevantly if the incident occurred as a result of a lack of information the defendant wasn't supposed to have.
2. No vicarious criminal liability, only the individual's own actions are punishable. This one is pretty self-evident, as long as you didn't commit a crime yourself, directly and knowingly assisted in committing a crime or authorized someone to commit a crime on your behalf, you are not guilty of that crime, full stop. Most relevantly this involves "collective guilt" or guilt for crimes committed as an indirect result of one's actions.
As a result of the above two relevant to the book, an individual cannot be expected to monitor and police everyone else's actions. For example, if a murderer takes the bus to reach their eventual victim, the bus driver cannot be charged with being an accessory to murder due to the above two requirements, and cannot be expected to monitor all their passengers.
3. Legality, a specific, clearly defined law must be broken for punishment, with clear advance warning. This means that an individual cannot be charged with breaking a law that is so vague as to make it impossible for the average person to determine if they're in violation of it or not.
4. Presumption of innocence, meaning the defendant cannot be treated as if they are guilty unless they are found to be so. Relevant to the book is that the defendant cannot be charged with additional crimes for using all legal means available to them to frustrate the prosecution's case against them, as would be perfectly acceptable for an innocent person to do.
5. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt - the evidence against the defendant must be virtually foolproof. Relevantly the defendant cannot be found guilty of a crime they "probably" committed, the case for the defendant's guilt must be as close to bulletproof as possible. This is based on the principle that it's better to let a criminal go free than for an innocent person be punished.
6. Attorney-client privilege, the defendant must be free to discuss defense strategy and disclose the necessary information for said strategy with a lawyer without fear of such disclosure being used against them. This is to give the defendant every opportunity to mount a defense against their accusers. Relevantly this means that talking to a lawyer in confidence should be guaranteed not to get you in trouble no matter what.
7. No self-incrimination, the 5th amendment. Relevantly this means that the defendant cannot be instructed to help the prosecution with assembling the case against them, and cannot be expected to hand over confidential information or evidence without a warrant, or to assist in producing said evidence.
The book then introduces us to the various ways in which the fight against white collar crime systematically erodes all of these protections. Corporate Criminal Responsibility violates #1 and #2. RICO and the courts' encouragement to interpret it broadly violates #3. The creation of "Money laundering" and other so-called "secondary offenses" violates #2 and #4. Most disturbingly, many judges approve of secondary offenses as a way to punish defendants who "probably" committed the crime but the State couldn't make the charges stick. Many of these make it illegal to use your own money (18 USC 1957) or to lie to federal agents even if not under oath (18 USC 1001). 18 USC 1512, 1519, 1520 violate #1, #2, #4 and #5. You can be indicted for obstruction of justice for sending an in-house memo (Arthur Andersen), or for publicly maintaining your innocence (Martha Stewart). Again disturbingly and disgustingly, these laws are blatantly and explicitly justified by judges on the basis of making conviction easier, with no regard for the sanctity of the enumerated liberal safeguards. The Organizational Sentencing Guidelines make it so that the fine a corporation pays can be anything from 5% to 400% of the so-called "base fine", depending on a couple of factors. That is an 80-times difference. The organization must preserve any documentation that could be used as evidence against them, and must refrain from advising anyone not to speak to investigators. To receive a reduction in their score, it must have an effective compliance program and for cooperation to put up no defense and plead guilty to all charges. Although putting up a defense is not technically illegal, imagine if your sentence for a crime could range from six months to 40 years in prison and your full co-operation including helping prosecutors build a case against you is what makes the difference. It is very clear that this makes it for all intents and purposes illegal for a company to mount any defense against an accusation, violating #4, #6 and #7. In addition these sentencing guidelines make it so that the company must lie to all of its employees. If it openly states that it will tell anything the employee says to legal counsel to the government and aid in the employee's prosecution, it will erode the trust required for an effective compliance program since nobody will report any potential lawbreaking behavior. On the other hand, if they keep their promise in not doing that, the company will not receive the reduction for co-operation. Therefore the only legal action for a company is to make a promise of confidentiality to its employees and then later stabbing them in the back and betraying this trust.
This and other ethical dilemmas caused by these laws are then presented, with a conclusion that these "white collar" criminal laws be done away with, since they are effectively useless for their only possible purpose (increasing the amount of fines companies pay).
Even if you do not care about the "rights" of corporations, it should be noted that these blatant and disgusting violations of rights and disregard for the safeguards of criminal law do not stay isolated to corporations. 5th amendment rights of individuals can be circumvented via a subpoena to the corporation holding the evidence, and secondary offenses can be used to punish possibly innocent people who were found not guilty of a crime but the State wants to punish them anyway (Martha Stewart, the person convicted of money laundering for paying his rent while he was found not guilty of the drug trafficking charges used as a basis for that conviction, etc.).
My takeaway from the book is the illustration of the principle that politicians, Judges and the State in general do not care about the Constitution or any of the legal safeguards against the State. If they want to convict or otherwise hurt someone (and they often do), they will use any means at their disposal to circumvent and backdoor their tyranny into practice. The Constitution and other legal safeguards and principles are a joke to them and will not provide any protection from a motivated State actor....more
This short essay gives us an insight into the prevailing political attitudes in 1840s France.
Bastiat's thesis is quite simple: The Law is organized foThis short essay gives us an insight into the prevailing political attitudes in 1840s France.
Bastiat's thesis is quite simple: The Law is organized force, therefore it cannot legitimately be used for anything other than what force itself can be used for, that is, the protection of life and property. This purpose was perverted by politicians who view themselves as above humanity, and view themselves and society like a potter views his clay, passive and there for them to form in their image. Bastiat for the most part quotes his opponents to this effect and laments the moral reprehensibility of this attitude while also pointing out the hypocrisy of believing in equal rights, Democracy and the ability of the masses to elect a legislator while simultaneously believing the legislator to be a shepherd above and beyond humanity, which would be passive and purposeless without him. He also points out that the inevitable logical conclusion of this attitude is that there should be no liberty left to citizens, but that everything should be controlled by the State. This in turn leads to increased strife as everything, good or bad, will be blamed on the government and with the State tending towards bad, rather than good outcomes, is the cause of France's current (in the 1800s) plague of revolutions. He argues there would be no such strife and no need for revolutions had the law been kept to its original purpose. Of course, Bastiat's heavy reliance on appeals to God and morality will fall on deaf ears with anyone who regards said morality as mere annoying obstacle to begin with, to whom the lamentations of arrogance and of "placing humanity beneath the mud" will ring hollow. Apart from believing in the State's legitimacy to begin with, this was perhaps the most fatal flaw in his argument, as anyone who believed in human dignity or morality to begin with would recoil at the idea of "forming" society in their image. He simply did not recognize his political enemies as enemies.
What also stood out to me was this is the earliest work I know that distinguishes between the two main ways to enrich oneself in his description of the origin of property and the origin of plunder. This exact distinction is echoed by Murray Rothbard a hundred years later in his distinction between the economic means (the way of the market) and political means (the way of the State) of acquiring resources.
It's a short read so I would recommend it to anyone who would like a quick and solid moral case against any sort of Statism....more
A cursory overview of the period of European history from before WWI to the end of WWII. It certainly has a narrative and is clearly the author's own vA cursory overview of the period of European history from before WWI to the end of WWII. It certainly has a narrative and is clearly the author's own view, although it never pretends to be otherwise. Like other reviewers had said, it's best read when one already has a familiarity with the time period, as this is really just a narrative written on top.
Books referencing this one already highlighted the most useful information for me, such as the fact that before WWI free travel had been a thing.
Additional useful information was how new art caused a lot of rioting. The biggest takeaway was how popular both these wars were, how popular Hitler's dictatorship was and how little resistance there was to it internally (and even those mainly concerned that Hitler might lose), and consequently how these wars were fought for mastery and total victory, with men gleefully throwing themselves into the grinder, a far cry from the wars of old fought by volunteer professionals for specific material goals. Democratic thinking led to wars not being merely the private affairs of rulers, like Taylor says it made people full members of a community at war. This led to wonderful things like the British campaign of indiscriminate bombing of civilian houses, it being declared that free enterprise during wartime "doesn't work" which led to central planning of economies. This is of course in addition to the German atrocities. The intellectual class were much more enamored with Communism than the workers, whose strikes and general resistance (as well as that of the army) was over bad pay, bad conditions, or in case of army mutinies, bad leadership.
Resistance to war was the business of a minority of (mostly Leftist) intellectuals, whose secret meetings were regularly broken up by the police. The wars generally received overwhelming enthusiasm. Nationalism also recoiled on the Germans, against whom forced resettlement and other atrocities were committed as well, which Taylor says is Nationalism carried to its logical conclusion.
Another interesting detail is the "Weight of Metal" way that WWI was conducted: Generals were experienced in efficiently planning railway timetables and transporting men and weapons to the front lines. The doctrine of the day was to fling as many of them at the enemy as possible, and when that didn't work, throw even more men at it. It speaks to the inhumanity of the era, and while this was improved on on the Western Front, the Eastern front in WWII was fought in a similar manner.
Another interesting bit is both wars were extended and possibly made worse by US interference. While Allied leaders during WWI were reluctantly considering peace, this was thrown in the garbage when the US promised support and involvement, and this encouraged Allied powers to behave recklessly. In WWII they similarly relied on US support when it was promised and this changed their behavior significantly.
The way Woodrow Wilson dragged his "reasonable and peaceful" supporters into total war in Europe just as his aspirations to mediation might have borne fruit was also an interesting thing that I was glad was expanded on.
Soviet History - most interesting to me was how when Stalin decided on his "communism in one nation" idea, the international went from trying to spark revolutions to preventing them, until Stalin ordered its dissolution in 1943.
There are probably many more interesting pieces of information here, and very information dense as evidenced by the density of my notes, which is impressive for such a short book. Definitely an efficient read....more
Democracy is a collection of essays largely centered around criticisms of Democracy and the favorable comparison of Monarchy as preferable to DemocracDemocracy is a collection of essays largely centered around criticisms of Democracy and the favorable comparison of Monarchy as preferable to Democracy.
Because this is a collection of different essays, a lot of ground is re-treaded, sometimes to the point that the exact same argument is made multiple times over the book in different essays, sometimes even as a copy-paste. I didn't particularly mind this, especially since spaced repetition is a great way for me to retain information.
It is also not a systematic treatment of the issue separated by different topics, but rather the same central idea being repeatedly revisited from different angles, which is a format I prefer to a systematic treatment most of the time.
Finally a lot of complaints are coming from other readers about the prominence of footnotes in the book. Indeed the size of certain footnotes are so large, it's common to see them eat up an entire page. The worst offender takes up a quarter of one page, the entirety of the next, and a quarter of the one after that. Regardless I didn't mind them, as I picked up some of the more interesting tidbits of information from these footnotes, such as the nature of war under Monarchy vs. Democracy and the quotes relating to them, the anecdote of one of the greatest pressures on East Germany being emigration pressure, or von Goethe's letter to Johann Peter Eckermann on the unification of Germany, and quotations from and references to many other books that I've added to my want-to-read list (even if I might never actually read them).
In my interpretation the argument of the book largely overlaps with arguments for the privatization or socialization of any other enterprise and that even when it comes to a criminal organization such as the state, having one person run it as their private enterprise, even if it's bad, is still better than having it run by a democratically "accountable", temporary caretaker.
He certainly doesn't contrast Monarchy as in any way opposite to Democracy, in fact he shows that Monarchy was still a degrading system, mounting up debts and tyranny, but these things only really exploded - and took a force merely retarding the natural civilizational progress and turned into one of de-civilization - with the advent of democracy.
Democracy also softens the resistance to tyranny, as thanks to free entry into government, the interests of the ruling elites and the people are muddled. One can very easily see this when one complains about any given policy and armies of people immediately proceed to tell you that if you don't like it, vote for someone you do like. Every political movement of note basically boils down to voting harder, rather than putting up any actual resistance.
This muddying of the waters also changed wars from the private affairs of kings to the public and collective affair of all the people. And as the public affair of all the people, everyone was automatically involved. Anyone could be enslaved to fight, anyone's property could be commandeered, and by the enemy anyone and everything was a valid target for destruction. Democracy ushered in the era of Total war. And of course this public and collective affair cannot be a mere war of interest, it has to be a moral crusade of good against evil, which cannot end in anything but the total destruction, humiliation and surrender of evil. While a dispute between monarchs can be resolved with a face-saving agreement, a moral crusade of a democratic people cannot be sullied and betrayed by negotiating with evil.
The book talks about other things, such as different approaches to the perverse incentive structure created by Democracy that lead to the erosion of rights and morality and an ever increasing incursion of the State into the private lives of its citizens, but these are best saved for the book itself. Some essays, such as "Libertarianism and Conservatism" or "On Socialism and Desocialization" talk about topics only tangential to the title.
Sometimes, especially at the ends of essays or at length in "On Socialism and Desocialization", Hoppe makes prescriptions for potential action rather than descriptions, but these were largely either weak, uninteresting or ineffective in my view. The only exception is the prescription for a large number of localized secessionist movements at the very end of the book.
Overall it's a well reasoned, logical but difficult read on the nature and economics of government and especially Democracy and Monarchy. I feel like I learned a lot, and I'm especially glad for all the interesting factoids in the footnotes. The book does argue from a presupposed set of Libertarian values, to which he appeals when making his arguments, so this should be kept in mind when reading.
Recommended to anyone open to and interested in a thorough and rigorous critique of Democracy or democratic rule in every shape or form (as opposed to "Republic and not a Democracy")....more
I already knew the gist of Agorism before reading the book, this short book expanded on that knowledge only by a few tidbits of interesting informatioI already knew the gist of Agorism before reading the book, this short book expanded on that knowledge only by a few tidbits of interesting information and arguments.
Overall I would recommend this book to anyone who has already been convinced of Anarchism and wants a good groundwork for a consistent praxis. In fact, I was gladdened to see Konkin's repeated insistence on consistency, as this was one of the biggest selling points of Agorism for me. If you're not convinced of Anarchism, Rothbard's Anatomy of the State is a good place to start, on economics I'd recommend something like Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, on the thinkers mentioned in the book Malice's Anarchist Handbook.
I'm not sure how useful the intro to economics could have been, I didn't really have any a-ha moments, but I did go into it with an existing basic understanding of Austrian economics. The part of motivation of human action being to remove felt unease was new to me, so it did patch a few holes in my understanding. This part also repeats the essential Rothbardian idea of Economics (among other sciences) being put forth by a paid intellectual class whose explicit job is to uphold the legitimacy of the State, and provides historical examples of this happening, such as Lysenko's pseudo-biology being taught in the Soviet Union. Overall for this I'd recommend something like Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt for a more thorough and convincing read on economics, before reading this for the more theoretical part.
The book goes on to provide real-life examples of counter-economies working even without ideological basis, and how technology is increasingly enabling counter-economies to form. It makes a prediction of businesses being able to use electronic cash and encrypted data would almost completely remove the State's ability to control, which should be of great interest considering encryption is now widespread and this electronic cash now exists and is increasingly adapted.
One interesting tidbit demonstrating the state's impotence and the power of the counter-economy was the 1974 federal speed limit of 55 mph, which was almost immediately destroyed by truckers who, working together with anyone else who wanted to speed, created a radio network warning each other of police lying in wait.
This is followed by a short history of libertarianism and what preceded it, from Godwin, Stirner and Warren, through Spooner and von Mises, ending in Rothbard and the birth of the modern Liberty Movement. Although this was a useful summation for me as someone who knew most of the names mentioned (from reading Michael Malice's Anarchist Handbook, which I recommend to find out more about these names), it's a good summation overall.
The book then explains how a Libertarian Party's contradiction with a "party line" lead to infighting and eventual break with Rothbard. This is followed by an explanation of how states came to be, which is more or less the same summation seen in Rothbard's Anatomy of the State.
The general discussion about national defense was quite interesting, with theories backed up by examples such as the Makhnovtchina for mustering a defensive militia or Hong Kong in how it's not strictly in the interest of states to conquer defenseless areas even though they could.
The final chapters deal with how Konkin thinks the State would transition into the Agora, with counter-economic activity becoming ever easier and more successful, which would lead to more people turning to it as well as more infrastructure being built to support it. This would then lead to parts of the Agora operating more and more openly, and while most would remain vulnerable to being crushed by the State, eventually one of them would grow strong enough to defend itself from State aggression. This would set in motion a death spiral where the Agora's sound money is more and more openly accepted and the State loses its monopoly on the currency. This in turn leads to more and more people abandoning the bribes and protection of the State, which it can provide less and less, until it eventually loses its ability to tax, and finally being unable to properly pay their thugs, their monopoly of violence, which marks the collapse of the State.
Finally, we get a bit of insight into how the State never really had the all-encompassing power that we think it does, and the first step should be to reject the state in our hearts and minds, going as far as to suggest "Agorist psychology", similar to the kind of psychological help abuse victims get to remove their Stockholm-syndrome....more
I don't often get engrossed in a non-fiction book quite like this, but this one was definitely a page-turner in the strictest sense. Many other reviewI don't often get engrossed in a non-fiction book quite like this, but this one was definitely a page-turner in the strictest sense. Many other reviewers complained about the sporadic organization of the book, and if you're looking for something neatly organized that can later be used as an indexed reference, you might want to look elsewhere, such as books mentioned by other reviewers. It is, like the title says, a journey: Meant to read from beginning to end.
But the sporadic nature is essential to the conversational tone of the book, which is very similar in nature to a literal conversation. That doesn't mean the book was without organization though, one of my favorite devices of the book is Malice's tendency to approach an idea or concept from a mile out, providing explanations, context and examples so that by the time he presents the actual idea, you have the same context as him and can therefore sympathize with his point of view.
He often does this in podcasts as well, but having the luxury of a book these "tangents" (as other reviewers might think of them as) are a bit longer and more involved, but never boring or completely off-topic. If you are willing to follow his train of thought, they are always tied back into the discussion at hand. Because all things in the world are related, this type of strategy is essential for a non-expert to understand beyond a shallow surface level.
Some of the discussions and explanations are of ideas that many people would find objectionable, and although when Malice disagrees with them you will certainly know, no attempt is made to do the mandatory pearl-clutching ritual about how the ideas are of course horrible and racist etc. I suspect this is done partially just because it's not in the author's nature to ever pander to an audience, nor does he want such an audience, and partially by design to aggressively filter out any such person from ever consuming his content.
To finally mention the actual content: The information in this book has certainly been enriching, I haven't heard of the Trollboard and its role in the movement, or of Mark Shea's strategy to mess with journalists, which was certainly a function of understanding of the media as an enemy to be strategized against, nor have I ever heard of the "gay virus" theory. I learned more about the Rothbard/Buchanan alliance which I knew only in name before. I have heard of William F. Buckley's (whose name I keep forgetting) National Review, but I had no idea of the way they overtook Conservatism and started decreeing what is and isn't part of that movement. Motte and Bailey is another thing I hadn't heard of before, surprisingly, nor was the idea that some people have a complete lack of empathy and as a result are incapable of differentiating between universally accepted views and views that are exclusive to themselves. Here I would add that I think many of them are perfectly capable but won't - due to a similar character flaw that causes many people to eat horribly despite fully acknowledging that a healthy diet would probably save their lives in the long run, due to the simple fact that it's easier.
Jonathan Haidt's insights and Malice's conclusions on them were also fairly interesting, another person whose work I surprisingly haven't read yet. Pointing out how Obama openly said that he would serve a higher ideal ("fairness") even if it made everyone worse off was pretty eye opening. However here I would point out that having a higher ideal and sticking to it despite the apparent contradictory facts has a very good evolutionary purpose. If you had done well believing what you do for years, but now find contradictory information, it is much more likely that the information is incorrect, incomplete, or you simply don't see how it's wrong, than it is that it actually proves your beliefs (which have worked all these years) wrong.
This is actually explicitly stated in stock trading strategies. The number one factor in whether you'll succeed in day trading is how well you can stick to your pre-written strategy. If the market turns against you and you are taking a loss on a trade - the idealized "rational" thing to do would be to accept that this proves your strategy wrong and change your mind. In reality, it is stressed that even a losing trade is a good trade if it was made in service of the "greater ideal" of your strategy. In other words, the successful thing to do is to serve the ideal with a zeal some might call delusional, and not "rationally" change your mind every second on the winds of contradictory information. True belief in a higher ideal is the shield that guards you against turning tail and giving up at the slightest sign that things aren't working out.
This is actually my problem with Haidt's sterilized, strictly short term, perfect information moral dilemmas. It's implying that the world outside the perfect information system doesn't exist in terms of either space or time. Instead of his difficult dilemmas, let me posit my above day trading scenario in an extremely easy dilemma: Should a hedge fund manager following a strategy make a trade he know will lose his client money even though the strategy calls for the trade being made? The answer is obviously no, why would you deliberately lose your client money? But I just explained why it is a good strategy to serve the strategy even with a losing trade, so why this answer? This is exactly the problem with these dilemmas. Morality works on the real world, not on idealized scenarios. In the real world, you don't, in fact, 100% know that the trade will be a loss, and your action to act against your strategy will have effects on your trading psychology down the line which could result in more losses. The people trying to rewrite these scenarios aren't doing it to fit their worldview, they're trying to rewrite them into something that represents their understanding of reality (which after all is kind of the same thing).
Of course, sometimes your higher ideals and moral beliefs are just wrong.
I have heard of his Pistachio Paradox before, but I ran the numbers and they don't add up (if I recall correctly, you'd end up eating Pistachio some 3.7% of the time), but regardless it's a great point.
The rest of the chapter of The Case Against Democracy makes a pretty good case for why Democracy works neither in theory nor practice. His description of the anti-democratic techno-anarchist view was more or less my own views being repeated back to me, which I suppose is proof of how much of a free thinker I am.
Jim Goad was a name I haven't heard before, but reading about him and his work was certainly interesting, as was reading about the history of Gavin McInnes. These kinds of stories of the history (both old and contemporary) of the cultural zeitgeist were some of my favorite moments in the book.
The history of suppression of free speech and how technical free speech - the actual ability to communicate and spread information regardless of others' opinions or government policy - has never been greater before and is increasing (although I've heard these argument in fragments) was also very enriching to read.
When Michael disagrees, especially with white nationalists, he always spends a disproportionate amount of time arguing against their views. While these parts are by no means boring or uninteresting, I think they are some of the low points of the book (which are not very low).
Descriptions of contemporary events and figures such as Milo Yiannopoulos were interesting but not much new was learned as I sort of paid attention to it as it was happening. Some of the behind the scenes stuff though was always interesting, as was the lucid explainer that underlying the actions of a lot of these new right figures was the recognition of the Corporate Press as their enemy, who is engaging in strategy against them, and examples, such as Alex Jones' successful strategy against Megan Kelly, of how they strategized against the Corporate Press in turn.
Ann Coulter was someone I didn't know very much about, so it was interesting to learn about her.
Another really interesting tidbit was Ryan Holiday, who recognized his own marketing strategy in Milo's approach, and has pointed out and warned the his critics about this. The idea of getting canceled actually being a marketing and publicity boon has become more mainstream since then, (and "no such thing as bad publicity" has been around longer still) but it's nevertheless great to know that this has been a formalized strategy for a while and to know its history. In fact, I just now remembered the 2015 video game Hatred, a mediocre game whose marketing and appeal rested almost entirely in the massive controversy (one might say massive triggering) its announcement caused in one of history's earliest instances of what today we'd called cancelling. Maybe they've read Ryan's book.
As mentioned in my updates, the part on how low-brow culture induces cultural dominance was easily one of my favorite parts of this book. The explanation of how the lowest common denominator, mass-appeal nature of this media makes it effective to spread and for people to voluntarily and eager to consume makes it the perfect propaganda tool was really illuminating, as was how these ostensibly apolitical media can inject the politics of the west into places like the Soviet Union or north Korea by showing that even the lowest of the low in the west have fur coats while they have newspapers for toilet paper. Another one I thought of is Korean dramas showing the idea that individual motivations are not just the primary object of the story, but the curiosity about whether these individual goals are achieved is the hook that keeps you coming back. As such, a north Korean's interest in such media is already defined in terms of Western individualism, which is already turning him away from the collectivism of the Nation and the Dear Leader. Like Malice often says, the north Korean regime is not crazy, and everything they do is for a reason. Here too, their motivation to kill anyone caught with things as simple as trashy Korean dramas is not informed by some demented zealous rage against Western decadence, but a very informed, grounded-in-reality strategic realization that it is one of the most effective tools for radicalizing the people against them.
Continued in this same bit is a short explanation of what I think is the thesis of Thadeus Russel's book A Renegade History of the United States, in how the marginalized invent and popularize not just culture, but rights and freedoms as well. An interesting bit of trivia here that I liked was how the drag queen Divine was the inspiration for Ursule the Sea Witch fifteen years later.
All of these were tangential to the Jarod Taylor interview, and while it's good to know about him, I didn't find the actual interview terribly interesting, except for the funny fact that he would accept Thomas Sowell as hwite if he said he was.
Finally, in The Road Ahead, Malice describes several organs of the Cathedral the New Right is opposed to, and how each of these organs are breaking and losing their grip on power. What used to be a country with near universal consensus with a small group of elites having a monopoly on the microphone is quickly turning into a place where anyone is free to speak their mind to any audience they can muster, universities are increasingly seen as bad investments, corporations are increasingly defying the state either out of ideology or market reasons, and States themselves are increasingly defiant towards the Federal Government, and where this shattering of the illusion of universal consensus is leading to more and more division and independence and to more and more people recognizing these uniting organs as the enemy.
Overall I would recommend this book to anyone who is into politics enough to care and wants to have an engaging, cursory understanding of this political phenomenon. I would not recommend it to scholars who want a neatly organized, indexable treatment of the subject with no more or less information or fluff than necessary.
Books mentioned in this book that I might look into: The Machiavellians Illiberal Reformers Trust Me I'm Lying The Renegade History of the United States Death and Life of Great American Cities...more
Introduces Elm as you develop a non-trivial application with it. Introduces the basics of the language fairly well, although I had minimal experience Introduces Elm as you develop a non-trivial application with it. Introduces the basics of the language fairly well, although I had minimal experience in the language previously, this helped fill in some gaps in my knowledge and exercise/clarify certain practices, but I didn't learn anything earth shatteringly new or revelatory. I bought the book to get a solid grounding in the practices surrounding the Elm framework and I feel like I managed to accomplish that, but not more.
I also cannot comment on most of the explanations of the basics of the language, having read through Haskell Programming from First Principles and being generally familiar with Haskell and derived languages I can't say how effective the book is at explaining currying, the simplified version of Hindley-Millner type system that Elm uses, etc.
The final book is dated for Elm 0.19 and I was able to follow through the book with that Elm version with no problem. Fair warning that the book and the application you'll build as part of this book relies on json services provided by a third party (elm-in-action.com), so if that goes down you're mostly SoL for the second half of the book onwards, unless you can spin up your own server. The book is a long tutorial so it's not very useful as reference.
The quality of the book in terms of being well put together is severely lacking and in fact more fitting of something you'd find in Manning's MEAP program, except unlike other reviewers I've read the final version. Especially towards the end of the book, inline monospace text is sliced up for no reason, there are typos and at one point neglects to tell you to re-enter JavaScript boilerplate that it previously had you comment out. Thankfully if you're paying attention this is pretty easy to figure out on your own, and despite the subpar quality I had no real problems following along with the book.
If you - like me - feel the need for a structured tutorial to follow in order to get an overall grounding in a new language or framework *and* don't mind some significant (but not especially crippling) deficiencies in quality, then I can recommend this book to get a good grounding in the language and ecosystem. Otherwise, there's not much in here that you couldn't learn on your own....more
My approach to reading is to try and mine the text for information, to abstract the concrete points made and try to apply them to situations I would uMy approach to reading is to try and mine the text for information, to abstract the concrete points made and try to apply them to situations I would use them in. In this way, it doesn't matter if I agree with the text or not, I am able to see the "truth" of a point I completely disagree with.
Industrial Society and Its Future was a great exercise of this approach. There is a number of useful nuggets of information that can be extracted from this essay. Chief among them is the power process and how he uses it to explain behaviors of both human beings and the technological-industrial system that he just refers to as "the system".
His analysis of the behavior of what he calls "leftists" (I understand what he means by it but don't agree with the use of the term) is illuminating and holds up today, including the tendency of the movement to totalitarianism and total social control. His segment on oversocialization and how "leftists" of this oversocialized type aren't actually rebels is spot on. However, I personally don't think this is particularly a leftist phenomenon in the proper sense, rather it's a long standing phenomenon in the United States that clothed itself in left or right-wing packaging depending on what was more prudent (it started with people like Woodrow Wilson). Many in the original left-wing tradition (Emma Goldman, Bakunin, Kropotkin etc.) would have been disgusted by the people Kaczynski describes as "leftists", but he himself admits the possibility of as much. To me, the people he calls "leftists" I would call moral busybodies, who just in the last two decades have manifested themselves in both a right-wing (post-9/11 USA) and left-wing (2010s onward) form.
He then goes on to describe how industrial society disrupts the power process. He describes three categories of goals: those that are trivial to obtain, those that can be obtained with significant struggle, and those that are near impossible to obtain. He calls these categories one, two and three respectively, and remarks how industrial society had shifted most goals into either category one (having basic needs met and even some pleasures require nothing more than continued conformity and obedience), or category three (acquiring true influence over one's surroundings rather than being controlled by them, by starting one's own successful business or mass movement is night impossible and requires struggle against the system inherently). The point here being that category two serves the power process the best, but this is specifically the category of goals being eroded by "the system".
I think this is somewhat true in that life is becoming easier and easier, but so has becoming independent of the social systems surrounding you. It wasn't so long ago that conformity and obedience were your *only* choice, even if this conformity still came at some physical struggle and therefore did more to satisfy the power process. All a medieval peasant could hope is to move to work under a different feudal lord, at great cost and sacrifice to himself. Today, it is comparatively trivially easy to change jobs or even careers.
Kaczynski defines freedom as the opportunity to go through the power process, with a nontrivial degree of autonomy. It's the erosion of this freedom that he finds objectionable.
The author lays down some principles of history and shows how "the system" erodes freedom as defined above, and how "the system" cannot be reformed, nor the good separated from the bad parts. Here I took out my thinking cap and I think most of these principles apply in actual truth to the state, rather than some technological society.
The claim that "Technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom" stood out to me, and to me is a very important principle of anarchist praxis in a positive sense - if this is true, then technology (such as blockchain) can be developed as instruments of freedom.
Kaczynski points out the censorship that made it nigh impossible for him to get his ideas out there, and that he had had to commit acts of terrorism in order for his message to be heard. I think despite his ideology and actions this is an excellent example of the censoriousness of the corporate press that made sure only opinions it approved of ever saw the light of day, and made sure all others were silenced. I think the late success and popularity of this essay and Kaczynski's prominence in popular culture (especially meme culture) is a testament to the fact that today the monopoly and power of the corporate press is a husk of its former self, and the author would not have had to resort to such methods today in order to have an audience.
The chapter on strategy was particularly intriguing. He makes the point that a revolution must not only destroy the existing order but establish a new one, and therefore the motivating ideology has to be for something, not just against something. Kaczynski posits nature as the ideal to strive for in his ideology. Propaganda-wise, he makes a distinction between propagandizing intellectuals and people of more modest intelligence. He also echoes the sentiment that it's better to have a smaller group of deeply loyal people than to build up a huge mass of "followers" running on hype who will abandon your movement for the next cool thing. He also points out that revolutionaries should not expect to have the majority on their side until after the struggle starts in earnest. This is historically sound as the machinators of revolutions consisted of only a tiny minority of any given population, and it was only after the battle was won by the revolutionaries did the "majority opinion" side with them. I would object that a real violent struggle would not be necessary for revolutionaries who are on the side of good, and they should not expect to ever have majority support, but instead work to peacefully demonstrate the illegitimacy of the existing system while building a parallel, better alternative.
Ultimately I think this is the core reason why Kaczynski's ideology is wrong. So many ideologies advocate for a violent replacement of the old system with their new one, but only an ideology in the right can do it peacefully.
Kaczinsky also warns against working with "leftists" (or moral busybodies) who are only motivated in their struggle for power and not for actual ideals. This I agree with, although again I do not agree with describing such people as leftists. He also points out that the core goal of the ideology must be the number one priority of the revolution, as having any other secondary goal introduces the temptation to use and empower the enemy concept to achieve that goal. I have seen this many times, as people who are ostensibly against state power advocate for using state power because they want to enjoy the state's bribes in peace.
The last interesting thing I'd point out is Kaczynski's distinction between small-scale and organization-dependent technology. He argues that small-scale technology (which can be developed and used in isolation or by small communities) will survive, but large scale technology (such as modern electronics, refrigerators etc. that require power, manufacturing plants and international commerce systems to function) will die without a supportive infrastructure in place. I thought this was a really interesting distinction and I hope technology moves toward more independent, small-scale technology in the future. We're already seeing this with things like 3D printers.
Overall I enjoyed reading this and applying some of his points to my own worldview, and can definitely say it was worth finding out what the fuss was about....more
I used to watch the Anime as a kid, so this was a special experience for me. It was a fun read before bed each night, and being a light novel it was pI used to watch the Anime as a kid, so this was a special experience for me. It was a fun read before bed each night, and being a light novel it was perfect for some late night entertainment as well as getting my eyes tired out enough to sleep.
It deviated from the Anime by a surprising amount, and a lot of the spicier scenes were clearly cut down for television. These spicier or gorier scenes are present in the book, but they fit perfectly with the tone of both the light novel and the anime.
Volume 1 was almost word-for-word the same as in the anime, although some scenes were cut or added, and some spicier scenes edited down to be more tame (although ironically what does happen to Lina is worse in the show than the light novel).
My favorite story was the one that was left out of the show entirely - Volume 2: Sorcerers of Atlas - which was what happened during Lina and Gourry's stay in Atlas city, something the show skips over completely. It was just my cup of tea with it playing in a city, having intrigue and mystery, sneaking around and investigating stuff, and of course the obligatory epic battles and final showdown. It was an extremely comfy story with a good twist and a satisfying ending that was a pleasant change of pace from the other two stories which did feature in the show.
Volume 3 deviates a lot from the show itself, characters that were sort of memory holed in the show do make a (short and pathetic) return, characters that appear in the show, however, do not exist or at least do not appear in this story yet, the motivations of the villain and when certain characters appear or die, and the final battle are all completely different. It feels like this story was not so much adapted for TV as ripped off and integrated into what is a substantially different story. It also was paced much faster than the show's version I feel, although the show also includes a lot of filler material that doesn't appear in the LN....more
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