The Post-Partisan Emporium

  MAGA in One Step By  Karen Kwiatkowski ok ocracy and elections.  It’s about getting something for nothing, always and necessarily from someone else’s pot. Electing an executive, who in turn spends trillions of borrowed and stolen money every year – mainly to buy the next election, enrich themselves and their allies, always unaccountable, always unauditable, always failing to deliver more freedom and more prosperity – why, that how it works, isn’t it? H.L. Mencken was correct in his assessment of democracy and elections.  It’s about getting something for nothing, always and necessarily from someone else’s pot. Electing an executive, who in turn spends trillions of borrowed and stolen money every year – mainly to buy the next election, enrich themselves and their allies, always unaccountable, always unauditable, always failing to deliver more freedom and more prosperity – why, that how it works, isn’t it? Trump, with no third term to game, and with a new and extraord...

Belfries Simplicius The systems of our control, we are led to believe, are necessary things. It is a topic I touched on in the recent article  Measures of Control .   We are taught that to question these systems is to undermine the very foundation beneath our feet. Similarly, the ‘leaders’ of our world have shaped the perception of their positions so as to bolster them with an aura of sanctity. In reality, research shows just how superfluous leaders of companies or institutions really are. “Leaders are often thought to be instrumental to the performance of the organizations they lead. However, considerable research suggests that their influence over organizational performance might actually be minimal. These claims of leader irrelevance pose a puzzle: If leaders are relatively insignificant, why would someone commit to leading?” - Source One example amongst several studies showing that the CEO of an organization is mostly a symbolic figurehead and pushes the needle much less t...

  The Hollow Empire The civilization has become hollow, but we do not have to be. Morgoth In an earlier, more innocent internet age, a joke went around that if you typed ‘‘Google’’ into Google search enough times, the internet would meltdown and destroy itself. It never happened, though not for the lack of trying on my part. Still, I always enjoyed the idea, its call-back infinity loops, an inversion of the Asimovian paradox of artificial intelligence saving humans by enslaving them or, more recently, eradicating ‘‘transphobia’’ by eradicating humans. I asked Xitter’s ‘‘Grok’’ AI to justify its existence morally, and it replied with reems of technocratic waffle about increasing positive outcomes, encouraging human flourishing, and even being a friend to lonely hearts. Its summary of its own purpose is: The moral justification of my existence, therefore, hinges on balancing these benefits against the potential harms, ensuring that my development and deployment are guided by ethical ...