SWL Week in Review - Late Empire
Talking about smart glasses, the phone I dropped off a mountain (and how it is impossible to recover your phone number if you do ATT sim-swapping defense 2FA with… your phone (as their system works), The prediction markets / how to get women to participate in prediction markets, and seriously - how do people REALLY spend $10K a month on tokens? What are they doing?… the impact of LATE vs. early IPOs — and all the rich early employees / engineers who are only rich because with appreciation so fast and private they had no time to sell!…. and SARBOX…. And why you can’t be anti-prediction market AND pro-early IPOs.
THE US SPEED RUN OF LATE EMPIRE?
How do we preserve mobility, freedom, celebration of success, and property rights in a world where technology and capital compound faster than labor and institutions?
Roman Republic got super rich and powerful, super unequal, the middle class got gutted… loyalty to generals, fell apart. Hundreds of years later, Byzantium — got rich and powerful, the ‘1%’ consolidated the wealth and land, made everyone serfs, the middle class lost upward mobility via the army to assets / land promises, fell. Han China same theme, land concentrated in great families, central state lost tax base, rebellions and warlordism. French Ancien Regime post wealth-trade-boom on untaxed nobility and clergy vs. bourgeois, Abbasid Caliphate, it is all the same thing. Let’s not forget the Greek Dark Ages where it got so bad they lost literacy on the heels of mass migration… or Arrakis.. that is just terrible for everyone.
If you care / know history OR just like reading science fiction / buy into those souped up fantasy narratives… it is hard to not feel like the US is indeed in late-empire mode / speed running with technology & compounding assets the consolidation of wealth & gutting of the middle and mobility that tends to lead to the fall…
The question is- what on EARTH (or not) can you possibly do about it? Is there any way to avoid the historical inevitable….
THE TECHNOLOGICAL ANSWER (Drones, Robots and Mars) — I can never tell who realizes what they are saying, vs. who is just really into science fiction… but the Drones, Robots, and Mars crowd do have one answer, just a kinda cynical, scary, and extreme one (and I think somewhat fanciful re: ‘solving the problem’). Use capital to get more ‘slaves’ (drones and robots), make them better, make them fully subservient and at the command of their capital owners… encase yourself in capital/tech so deeply you are secure and then figure out how to get to Mars / to terra nova… meanwhile, give the people around UBI and video games (and peptides) so they are docile and happy enough without mobility.
THE FAR LEFT WEALTH TAXES & THE CONFISCATION ‘ANSWER’— that folks like Bernie Sanders and the ‘increasingly crazier and crazier new left’ are into … again not sure knowingly or thoughtfully — but probably just feeding on anger and indignation vs. trying to fix things… goes the other way… if the problem is wealth concentration just get rid of the wealth (this time with more control over assets and panopticon style discipline-and-punish control vs. the good old guillotine & axe solution for heads) — the problem with this? Strong property rights, freedom, free enterprise is what makes us great AND has generated in the last century more prosperity, higher standards of living, and more fundamental science and breakthroughs than any other time in history…
So what? I am an ardent capitalist and ardent believer in freedom. I believe in meritocracy and greatness that can come from anywhere and hard work… I think the US is the greatest country ever and we should preserve / fight for it and its fundamental values… The technological path out is both a fantasy and very very cynical… I don’t want a permanent underclass & the end of mobility even if I can eek my way to the ‘right side’ of the equation personally (for a generation or two) — the far left solutions are just like giving up now and trading away what makes us great / folding our values today vs. even trying…
But what? How do we keep mobility, freedom, celebration of success, etc. how do we keep markets open, free, and powerful productive capitalism & the natural black hole collapse of obvious compounding on tech and capital at historically even more unprecedented rates (without a devastating war or economic collapse reset)? Biblical sabbaticals were kinda a half-broken answer, … but consolidated power in the state, oy vey?? I don’t want to live on arrakis… so is there any hope or are we just lemmings playing out the same storyline over and over?
… and the post-script — this all relates to Gavin’s Overton Expanding Moment this is a WILD speech from a really-wants-to-be-president… wealth taxes, private property, etc.
Regards,
Sam
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