the overfamiliar elite networked social scene of the Epstein e-mail dump is not mostly about the girls and sex. similar scenes very much continue. one perspective is great, it was only the abuse that was bad. another perspective is the abuse was emblematic of the corruption of this kind of scene.
i think the question is are there reforms that would bind the interests of the represented to technocrats who attend to the boring stuff on their behalf, rather than the technocrats acting out of paternalism in isolation, sure they know what's best, pandering on purely instrumental terms for votes.
“unlimited toilet paper” is a good name for infinite-scroll social media.
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it’s easy to argue contemporary democratic outcomes are… nonoptimal. if anything the pandering to idiots has helped would-be malignant tyrants. does that alter your view? are there reforms to democracy that would render it suitable for this, already rather fallen, take on the role of democracy?
giving up on domestic banana production seems unmanly.
Cover to Leonard Cohen "I'm Your Man", showing the man (Leonard Cohen) eating a banana.
oh my god! lots of love to you, your fam, your dad. we were like "hermeneutics! hermeneutics! hermeneutics!" and it didn't work. there are some moments beyond interpretation.
the Trump version of if they'd only let him into art school.
so basically democracy is irredeemably bad at contributing to policy, so it should be manipulated around by wise technocrats. but democracy has the useful characteristic that beyond certain guard rails it cannot be manipulated to sustain a status quo, constraining perhaps unwise technocrats. 1/
i don't find it a very compelling story, but i see how one can make it. if one *did* make it, though, wouldn't Trump's ascendance, or Brexit, serve as pretty clear examples of the fuse being tripped, democracy performing its role? 2/
given what follows when the putatatively stupid demos throws off a bad status quo, wouldn't it be a frying-pan-to-fire transition? can that really be an affirmative case for democracy, if the demos can occasionally throw off bad governments but can have no capacity to help constitute good ones? /fin
but isn't this an argument for pursuing an alternative, ie manipulating the political system whatever it is so that some virtuous technocracy can be pursued? is the argument that democracy is the least bad system for being manipulable into virtuous technocracy?
oddly, the “deep state” describes the set of institutions with the best track record, from the perspective of the anti-Trump coalition. state and federal. but more corrupted institutions are not coincidentally taking those down.
the antitrump coalition used to fancy itself institutionalist, but revelations of the vile personal behavior of the people who captain once favored institutions, and the willingness of those institutions to deform themselves to curry favor with the new order is undermining that i think.
I don’t know that one, but it’s good!
the most influential (and among the most perceptive) blog comment in history.
This post is a death threat.
if these are your views, do you think democracy is actually a good idea? if so, why?
the Epstein Files are just a subset of the Google Files.
i’m going to become a rounding consultant. i will introduce clients to the function “floor” for payments and “ceil” for invoices. my yacht will require safe harbor.
there is no hypocrisy under supremacy. a double standard is, from a supremicist perspective, simply correct.
a trade deficit could in theory be balanced by transfers rather than investment. it could all balance conceptually within the current account, even if there is a fig-leaf capital account entry.
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It sounds that way from the comments, that they may in fact be common in Australia and Canada but in the US are largely restricted to academic, activist, and adjacent social locations. The backlash (ironically?) seems strongest in the least-acknowledging US though.