Quick note about the shared post at the end saying that Silicon Valley bros’ ignorance of political philosophy etc explains their adoration of Yarvin.
JD, a former a VC in the Valley, has a undergrad degree from Ohio State in poli sci and philosophy, with grades high enough (would be around a 4.0) to get into Yale, the most competitive law school in the country.
To be clear: this is not a defence of JD or of Yarvin, god forbid. It’s a counterpoint to the running assumption in this piece that studying the humanities inoculates us from stupid.
Full disclosure: humanities PhD here; this isn’t a gotcha. But I am pouring cold water on the idea that ignorance here is a prime mover. Malice is. And no theoretical education of any kind can correct that vice.
Interesting but unfortunate upshot: the humanities are not, contra received wisdom, an effective source ,,also,, of moral education. That talking point (re: we’re training virtuous citizens!) should be retired.
I thought the same thing. He must mean the Corvair, the car Nader called “unsafe at any speed”. We had a Nova that was very reliable. Unfortunately we replaced it with the first model of the Citation which replaced the Nova. It had serious problems with its brakes locking up. The car was so dangerous we sold it back to the dealer. The company spent months denying there was a problem until the government forced a recall. Lawsuits later revealed that GM had known about the brake problem before putting it on the market. So much for the free market being better than government.
As for this interview with Yarvin, it is complete gibberish. He sounds like a freshman in an elite college trying to impress a girl he knows is smart. I knew a few guys like that back in the day.
I think he meant the Vega. It was a dog. The Corvair and Nova were pretty good cars. My Dad worked for GM, so all we had were GM cars. My Mom's Nova was a nice little car. Her Vega lasted about one year before they ditched it. And then she replaced the Nova with a Camaro. BLISS>
Nader was right about many things but not about the Corvair: "[A] 1972 Texas A&M University safety commission report for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) which found that the 1960–1963 Corvair possessed no greater potential for loss of control in extreme situations than contemporary compacts." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Corvair
Maybe it was a success but it was a really shitty car. At least the Cutlass, Monte Carlo and Malibu were a little bit cool. The Nova is down there with the Vega, Monza and Gremlin in terms of style and reliability. And the Gremlin was at least cool in a weird hippy sorta way.
I encountered Yarvin years ago when he was Mencius Moldbug, and thought what I think about all these pretentious not-so-intellectuals - they’ve never had to deal with other people, and they have a skewed view of history.
If revolutions devour their children, Yarvin would likely become a poster child for this one.
For starters, when valorizing decisive "CEO-style" governmental leadership based on assertions of executive branch authority over "entrenched bureaucracy", he ought to consider that of recent national leaders who produced "world-historical" results, Chairman Mao came closest to realizing his ideal of the ideologically driven, decisive, and activist leader capable of "reforming" recalcitrant bureaucratic opposition (for example, the "Three-Anti" campaign).
Mao's efforts succeeded in subverting the emergence of a technologically and economically sophisticated China for around two decades at a cost (according to Zhao Ziyang, who was in a position to make a reasonably accurate estimate) of up to 80 million unnecessary deaths, including not only detractors outside the party but also thousands of party cadre who's crime was often justified skepticism of Mao's casually conceived and counterproductive economic policies and "management methods".
Yarvin, who so enjoys trolling whatever passes for conventional political wisdom, would almost certainly have been one of them.
Anyone who thinks that China circa 1949 was fertile ground for the emergence of "a technologically and economically sophisticated China" has zero knowledge of China in 1949. The China that Mao left to Deng Xiaoping (who Mao protected for the very reasons Deng was successful) was ready to grow.
Look at a graph of Chinese economic growth under Mao to the present and you are looking at a Rorschach test: does that line appear flat until the early 1980s because starting from a primarily agricultural economy, even a robust annual growth rate appears flat on a chart scaled to accommodate the much larger and richer China post-1990 (“Look for example at India: similar curve, only increasing even more slowly’), or does it represent significant forgone opportunity due to ideologically driven mismanagement?
And if it’s the latter, what’s your standard of comparison; given that a highly ideological and personalized leadership of some sort was probably inevitable, was the Chinese economic growth under Mao better or worse than the probable alternatives?
If you rescale the left end of that graph so that fluctuations in yearly growth in Mao’s economy are easily visualized, you can clearly see the dips resulting from his occasional attempts to reestablish ideological purity, and I’m convinced that these efforts significantly retarded economic growth. But I’m also certain that economists and historians will still be arguing over how much a 100 years hence.
What I do think is incontestable is that the various purity drives were classic examples of “the revolution eating it’ own”, during which a highly ideological and economically unsophisticated “Great Leader” and his faction of the ruling elite regularly undertook purges directed at large numbers of deviationist “Deep State” technocrats who were keeping things running,
I don’t think Trump is Mao – for starters, Trump is not much interested in political theory and is completely disinterested in “ideological consistency “.
But Trump is at least Mao’s equal in terms of the fundamental personal economic ignorance on which he bases policy, and he obviously intends to displace competence in favor of ideological purity whenever it attempts to temper (or frustrate, depending on your point of view) obviously counterproductive or even destructive policies.
At the moment, Trump may not have the ability to inspire his followers to drop their “rich peasant” neighbors head-first down the village well or to order the relocation of millions of their better-educated counterparts to the countryside for “Re-education.”
But I’ve little doubt that if things go sideways as a result of his economic mismanagement, he would undertake the equivalent if he could.
And that's the main point of the original post: if Trump supporters - including the self-interested ultra-rich operators currently competing to ingratiate themselves during pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago and the Republican Senators and Representatives acquiescing to his appointment of incompetents to cabinet-level positions for fear of being primaried - knew any history, they would realize that proximity to this sort of ignorant and psychologically unstable leader is no sort of protection against his arbitrary withdrawal of favor.
And that once when they start valorizing someone like Donald Trump as a “CEO President” and enabling his worst instincts via concepts such as Presidential Immunity and extreme versions of Unitary Executive power, they can look to Chairman Mao’s China for a general templet of what happens to the people surrounding the “ Great Leader”- and much of the rest of society - once everyone starts denouncing others before they get denounced themselves.
Yes, well. I have little to no interest in Trump, American electoral politics or assessments of Mao as revolutionary nation-builder based on graphs of economic performance as if such developments took place in an abstract space occupied by abstract people and abstract infrastructures etcetera.
My point stands: Mao made mistakes but overall he prepared the ground for the lift-off. What Japanese colonialism did in Taiwan for a brutal authoritarian like Chiang Kai Shek to step into, Mao did for a much larger and far more unwieldy China.
This is quite a disappointing attempt at takedown. One can certainly argue with Yarvin’s ideas, but Drezner is simply not engaging with them. You would have to read some of his work. Drezner’s article is just a ‘point and laugh’ at things that are outside the narrow box of received opinion. And a lot of knocking down of strawmen.
How many "corporate monarchies" have succeeded over the history of capitalism versus the number of failures?
Most of the techbro "monarchies" are built on research and development bought and paid for by poor old democratic government. Without this generally "invisible" injection from the state, these people would likely have failed like most start-ups fail.
I just got to the part where you respond to his Holocaust claim, and I’m already a bit disappointed. Several serious thinkers have made strong arguments that the Holocaust was not just unique but *uniquely* unique and unprecedented compared to other and previous atrocities.
Do you seriously think the guy has never heard about the Inquisition and other things like that? What exactly are you getting at here?
And the fact that a far right thinker is talking about it in this way while you are criticizing him is not a little ironic.
The Holocaust was unique but far from unprecedented. Julius Caesar himself committed genocide. The Turks committed genocide against the Armenians. Americans committed genocide against NAs. History is replete with this sort of thing. What the Germans did was to industrialize genocide. Let's not forget Stalin's starving Ukrainians.
He is also not talking about David Sorkin's point that the Nazis systematically undid 400 years of progress as far as Jewish citizenship and emancipation even taking away property rights.
But Yarvin/Moldbug is talking about the level of violence not the things which made the Holocaust unique such as the level of industrialization and meticulousness.
Also, consider the premise: the wealthiest major economy in human history is a failed state and only corporatist dictatorship can drag it up from its position of preeminence.
I would argue that America has many traditions, and *not having monarchy* is one of the most important of those traditions. Part of what makes Yarvin so stupid is that his ideology undermines the founding ideals and myths of America itself; he wants America to not be America, but rather some other country that only exists in his head.
“Look, maybe Yarvin makes more sense in his writings than in his oral interviews, though I doubt it.”
Fuck no he doesn’t! I’ve tried reading his Substack. Aside from being completely off his rocker, the guy is a rambling mediocrity. His thoughts are meaningless. The only reason we ever heard of him is because he made a bunch of money in Silicon Valley, and our society erroneously equates money with intelligence and capability.
Guys like Yarvin (and that history-illiterate idiot podcaster Darryl Cooper) are perfect examples of why we should learn history from books, not the Internet.
It’s a pity that Marchese started off with a reverse Godwin because it’s very easy to make any other abuse by a leader look minor and insignificant by comparison. But overall, Dunning Kruger (or possibly Overton) probably sums up the interview.
Quick note about the shared post at the end saying that Silicon Valley bros’ ignorance of political philosophy etc explains their adoration of Yarvin.
JD, a former a VC in the Valley, has a undergrad degree from Ohio State in poli sci and philosophy, with grades high enough (would be around a 4.0) to get into Yale, the most competitive law school in the country.
To be clear: this is not a defence of JD or of Yarvin, god forbid. It’s a counterpoint to the running assumption in this piece that studying the humanities inoculates us from stupid.
Full disclosure: humanities PhD here; this isn’t a gotcha. But I am pouring cold water on the idea that ignorance here is a prime mover. Malice is. And no theoretical education of any kind can correct that vice.
Interesting but unfortunate upshot: the humanities are not, contra received wisdom, an effective source ,,also,, of moral education. That talking point (re: we’re training virtuous citizens!) should be retired.
Yes to all your excellent points except one: The Chevy Nova was a success, and "nova" doesn't mean "no go." Gift link: https://wordworking.medium.com/lets-get-one-thing-straight-about-the-chevrolet-nova-3013e85a88dd?sk=685ea60071996117a516dbd32ea9d39e
I thought the same thing. He must mean the Corvair, the car Nader called “unsafe at any speed”. We had a Nova that was very reliable. Unfortunately we replaced it with the first model of the Citation which replaced the Nova. It had serious problems with its brakes locking up. The car was so dangerous we sold it back to the dealer. The company spent months denying there was a problem until the government forced a recall. Lawsuits later revealed that GM had known about the brake problem before putting it on the market. So much for the free market being better than government.
As for this interview with Yarvin, it is complete gibberish. He sounds like a freshman in an elite college trying to impress a girl he knows is smart. I knew a few guys like that back in the day.
I think he meant the Vega. It was a dog. The Corvair and Nova were pretty good cars. My Dad worked for GM, so all we had were GM cars. My Mom's Nova was a nice little car. Her Vega lasted about one year before they ditched it. And then she replaced the Nova with a Camaro. BLISS>
Nader was right about many things but not about the Corvair: "[A] 1972 Texas A&M University safety commission report for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) which found that the 1960–1963 Corvair possessed no greater potential for loss of control in extreme situations than contemporary compacts." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Corvair
I’m sure he meant Vega. An absolute disaster.
Maybe it was a success but it was a really shitty car. At least the Cutlass, Monte Carlo and Malibu were a little bit cool. The Nova is down there with the Vega, Monza and Gremlin in terms of style and reliability. And the Gremlin was at least cool in a weird hippy sorta way.
I encountered Yarvin years ago when he was Mencius Moldbug, and thought what I think about all these pretentious not-so-intellectuals - they’ve never had to deal with other people, and they have a skewed view of history.
HaHaHaha!!!
They elected Donald Trump, and maybe the world’s most capable C.E.O. is in there.
They who elected Donald Trump are the world's least capable electors.
Businesses as Monarchy's: Yes, the Board of Directors are lap dogs but the customers have teeth.
If revolutions devour their children, Yarvin would likely become a poster child for this one.
For starters, when valorizing decisive "CEO-style" governmental leadership based on assertions of executive branch authority over "entrenched bureaucracy", he ought to consider that of recent national leaders who produced "world-historical" results, Chairman Mao came closest to realizing his ideal of the ideologically driven, decisive, and activist leader capable of "reforming" recalcitrant bureaucratic opposition (for example, the "Three-Anti" campaign).
Mao's efforts succeeded in subverting the emergence of a technologically and economically sophisticated China for around two decades at a cost (according to Zhao Ziyang, who was in a position to make a reasonably accurate estimate) of up to 80 million unnecessary deaths, including not only detractors outside the party but also thousands of party cadre who's crime was often justified skepticism of Mao's casually conceived and counterproductive economic policies and "management methods".
Yarvin, who so enjoys trolling whatever passes for conventional political wisdom, would almost certainly have been one of them.
Anyone who thinks that China circa 1949 was fertile ground for the emergence of "a technologically and economically sophisticated China" has zero knowledge of China in 1949. The China that Mao left to Deng Xiaoping (who Mao protected for the very reasons Deng was successful) was ready to grow.
Look at a graph of Chinese economic growth under Mao to the present and you are looking at a Rorschach test: does that line appear flat until the early 1980s because starting from a primarily agricultural economy, even a robust annual growth rate appears flat on a chart scaled to accommodate the much larger and richer China post-1990 (“Look for example at India: similar curve, only increasing even more slowly’), or does it represent significant forgone opportunity due to ideologically driven mismanagement?
And if it’s the latter, what’s your standard of comparison; given that a highly ideological and personalized leadership of some sort was probably inevitable, was the Chinese economic growth under Mao better or worse than the probable alternatives?
If you rescale the left end of that graph so that fluctuations in yearly growth in Mao’s economy are easily visualized, you can clearly see the dips resulting from his occasional attempts to reestablish ideological purity, and I’m convinced that these efforts significantly retarded economic growth. But I’m also certain that economists and historians will still be arguing over how much a 100 years hence.
What I do think is incontestable is that the various purity drives were classic examples of “the revolution eating it’ own”, during which a highly ideological and economically unsophisticated “Great Leader” and his faction of the ruling elite regularly undertook purges directed at large numbers of deviationist “Deep State” technocrats who were keeping things running,
I don’t think Trump is Mao – for starters, Trump is not much interested in political theory and is completely disinterested in “ideological consistency “.
But Trump is at least Mao’s equal in terms of the fundamental personal economic ignorance on which he bases policy, and he obviously intends to displace competence in favor of ideological purity whenever it attempts to temper (or frustrate, depending on your point of view) obviously counterproductive or even destructive policies.
At the moment, Trump may not have the ability to inspire his followers to drop their “rich peasant” neighbors head-first down the village well or to order the relocation of millions of their better-educated counterparts to the countryside for “Re-education.”
But I’ve little doubt that if things go sideways as a result of his economic mismanagement, he would undertake the equivalent if he could.
And that's the main point of the original post: if Trump supporters - including the self-interested ultra-rich operators currently competing to ingratiate themselves during pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago and the Republican Senators and Representatives acquiescing to his appointment of incompetents to cabinet-level positions for fear of being primaried - knew any history, they would realize that proximity to this sort of ignorant and psychologically unstable leader is no sort of protection against his arbitrary withdrawal of favor.
And that once when they start valorizing someone like Donald Trump as a “CEO President” and enabling his worst instincts via concepts such as Presidential Immunity and extreme versions of Unitary Executive power, they can look to Chairman Mao’s China for a general templet of what happens to the people surrounding the “ Great Leader”- and much of the rest of society - once everyone starts denouncing others before they get denounced themselves.
Yes, well. I have little to no interest in Trump, American electoral politics or assessments of Mao as revolutionary nation-builder based on graphs of economic performance as if such developments took place in an abstract space occupied by abstract people and abstract infrastructures etcetera.
My point stands: Mao made mistakes but overall he prepared the ground for the lift-off. What Japanese colonialism did in Taiwan for a brutal authoritarian like Chiang Kai Shek to step into, Mao did for a much larger and far more unwieldy China.
Priceless.
This is quite a disappointing attempt at takedown. One can certainly argue with Yarvin’s ideas, but Drezner is simply not engaging with them. You would have to read some of his work. Drezner’s article is just a ‘point and laugh’ at things that are outside the narrow box of received opinion. And a lot of knocking down of strawmen.
How many "corporate monarchies" have succeeded over the history of capitalism versus the number of failures?
Most of the techbro "monarchies" are built on research and development bought and paid for by poor old democratic government. Without this generally "invisible" injection from the state, these people would likely have failed like most start-ups fail.
I just got to the part where you respond to his Holocaust claim, and I’m already a bit disappointed. Several serious thinkers have made strong arguments that the Holocaust was not just unique but *uniquely* unique and unprecedented compared to other and previous atrocities.
Do you seriously think the guy has never heard about the Inquisition and other things like that? What exactly are you getting at here?
And the fact that a far right thinker is talking about it in this way while you are criticizing him is not a little ironic.
The Holocaust was unique but far from unprecedented. Julius Caesar himself committed genocide. The Turks committed genocide against the Armenians. Americans committed genocide against NAs. History is replete with this sort of thing. What the Germans did was to industrialize genocide. Let's not forget Stalin's starving Ukrainians.
He is also not talking about David Sorkin's point that the Nazis systematically undid 400 years of progress as far as Jewish citizenship and emancipation even taking away property rights.
But Yarvin/Moldbug is talking about the level of violence not the things which made the Holocaust unique such as the level of industrialization and meticulousness.
An only slightly more narcissistic version of William F. Buckley Jr. But in the end conservatism and its adjacents are all cut from the same cloth.
Also, consider the premise: the wealthiest major economy in human history is a failed state and only corporatist dictatorship can drag it up from its position of preeminence.
He’s just fundamentally unimpressive. I first came across him last year.
https://theideaslab.substack.com/p/curtis-yarvin-pseudo-intellectualism
Yarvin is just a 2 bit anarchist.
Absolutely essential reading about Moldbuggery:
https://pseudepigrapha.substack.com/p/waiting-for-diocletian
I would argue that America has many traditions, and *not having monarchy* is one of the most important of those traditions. Part of what makes Yarvin so stupid is that his ideology undermines the founding ideals and myths of America itself; he wants America to not be America, but rather some other country that only exists in his head.
Yarvin's responses seem to be written by AI.
“Look, maybe Yarvin makes more sense in his writings than in his oral interviews, though I doubt it.”
Fuck no he doesn’t! I’ve tried reading his Substack. Aside from being completely off his rocker, the guy is a rambling mediocrity. His thoughts are meaningless. The only reason we ever heard of him is because he made a bunch of money in Silicon Valley, and our society erroneously equates money with intelligence and capability.
Guys like Yarvin (and that history-illiterate idiot podcaster Darryl Cooper) are perfect examples of why we should learn history from books, not the Internet.
It’s a pity that Marchese started off with a reverse Godwin because it’s very easy to make any other abuse by a leader look minor and insignificant by comparison. But overall, Dunning Kruger (or possibly Overton) probably sums up the interview.