Socially acceptable narratives police the boundaries of permissible thought. Truth is optional. Belonging requires compliance.

In 200 years historians will label this period of history as Byzretardistan

Climate alarmists in power: Reduce fossil fuel consumption! Shut down refineries! (which they do), Tax the drillers, tax the oil companies, shut them all down! Same Climate alarmists (when not in power): Outrage! look at those gas prices!

The government objective to improve the lives of citizens is first order thinking. The second order effect is the citizen becomes more subservient to the state, for god's sake! We've seen the outcome of that bullshit a million times.

“To BEGIN regularly, we must consider the idea of causation, and see from what origin it is deriv’d. ’Tis impossible to reason justly, without understanding perfectly the idea concerning which we reason; and ’tis impossible perfectly to understand any idea, without tracing it up to its origin, and examining that primary impression, from which it arises.” - David Hume

We used to imitate people. Now we increasingly imitate the statistical shadow of other people’s behavior.

The machine does not need desires of its own. It only needs to discover which human desires are contagious. "Recommendation algorithms are not merely neutral mechanisms for discovering consumer preferences. Pomella uses René Girard to argue that platforms have effectively industrialized mimesis. They observe imitation, quantify it, redistribute signals of desirability, and thereby stimulate further imitation. He calls one consequence “mimesis without subjects”, because algorithmic infrastructure can mediate mimetic processes without requiring a particular human model to initiate each cycle." journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs…

If you care so much about egalitarianism, give up everything you have homo. Otherwise, shut the fuck up.

Billionaires are largely the outcome of the distribution, not its original cause. They may exploit and reinforce the system, but they did not create the century-long financialization of the global economy. That architecture was built by the interests that captured government, rewrote the rules, and fused political authority with financial power. Today’s extreme wealth concentration is not evidence that government lacks authority. It is the unintended consequence of authority accumulated drip by drip, bureaucracy by bureaucracy, crisis by crisis, until the system became too captured to correct itself. But keep voting for the same duopolistic bullshit. In four years, they will change the costumes, recycle the slogans, and sell you the same hyperreal system as reform.

When a society loses the capacity to understand complex systems, it does not stop looking for causes. It starts looking for culprits.

Politicians of the spectacle continually manufacture fantastical narratives of impending catastrophe, throwing one after another into the public arena until something resonates with their tribe. Once a narrative captures attention, it is repeated, amplified, and transformed into political identity. The spectacle becomes self-sustaining: fear substitutes for analysis, narrative substitutes for causality, and tribal affirmation substitutes for evidence. It may be the most successful illusion in politics: convincing people that participating in the spectacle is the same thing as understanding the system.

The only good philosophy, ideology, or religion is anti fragile to philosophy, religion, or ideology.

The bullshit $5,000 “Trump dividend” is political enticement masquerading as economic policy. It offers voters an immediate, visible payoff while obscuring the enormous tail risks accumulating underneath the system. A $5,000 check feels certain and tangible. The future costs are diffuse, probabilistic, and politically invisible. More borrowing, higher debt-service costs, inflation risk, pressure on Treasury yields, and greater fiscal fragility don't arrive neatly labeled on Election Day. This is precisely how political systems misprice risk. Concentrate the benefit in the present, disperse the cost into the future, and let someone else absorb the tail. Both parties have learned the same trick. The disagreement is mostly over who receives the transfer and what story is used to justify it. Our system of governance has turned into a garage sale for the well-connected and pseudo-experts. Eventually it will collapse. Get out of debt, hedge your bets, and have multiple sources of income.

Socialist: We need to seize production! Outrage. Me: Um, you're free to do that here. LOL