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.
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.
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.
I’d be interested in theories as to why Yarvin, in all his quarter-bakedness, appears to be so influential.
Anyway, as for history, Tyler Cowen argues he doesn’t understand how monarchies have worked. (And Yarvin does seem to advocate for monarchy, rather than dictatorship, if there’s a difference.)
“The most telling criticism of absolute monarchy is a historical one. In the UK above all, the so-called “absolute” monarchs faced severe fiscal demands, which they met only by granting increasing powers to Parliament or the local nobles. And that was the case when government was a very small percentage of GDP. How would things work today? Would a king have as much power as, say, Tim Cook does? If the executive branch and legislature were to renegotiate old bargains today, the results might be so messy that each would end up with less power and coherence than what Yarvin sees now.”
His lack of knowledge about what was and was not a successful America car speaks volumes. The author must be surrounded by Tesla and Volvo owners and just picked any American car.
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.
Total yes to your description my sense was that he has a shallow understanding of our institutions and a superficial or perhaps selective knowledge of political history.
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.
(I read these blog posts courtesy of Steve Randy Waldman who said emphatically that he did not agree with Yarvin/Moldbug on everything but that he had some original thoughts about money)
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
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.
Priceless.
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.
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.
Yarvin is just a 2 bit anarchist.
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.
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.
I’d be interested in theories as to why Yarvin, in all his quarter-bakedness, appears to be so influential.
Anyway, as for history, Tyler Cowen argues he doesn’t understand how monarchies have worked. (And Yarvin does seem to advocate for monarchy, rather than dictatorship, if there’s a difference.)
“The most telling criticism of absolute monarchy is a historical one. In the UK above all, the so-called “absolute” monarchs faced severe fiscal demands, which they met only by granting increasing powers to Parliament or the local nobles. And that was the case when government was a very small percentage of GDP. How would things work today? Would a king have as much power as, say, Tim Cook does? If the executive branch and legislature were to renegotiate old bargains today, the results might be so messy that each would end up with less power and coherence than what Yarvin sees now.”
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/06/should-the-u-s-have-a-monarchy.html
His lack of knowledge about what was and was not a successful America car speaks volumes. The author must be surrounded by Tesla and Volvo owners and just picked any American car.
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.
Oy. Really, OY!
Total yes to your description my sense was that he has a shallow understanding of our institutions and a superficial or perhaps selective knowledge of political history.
This whole argument is so sci-fi as to make little human sense at all.
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.
I had a very savvy, very effective boss once who had this phrase: "too stupid for words." Rarely do I employ it. But it fully applies to Mr. Yarvin.
(I read these blog posts courtesy of Steve Randy Waldman who said emphatically that he did not agree with Yarvin/Moldbug on everything but that he had some original thoughts about money)