The direction
"It's not a question of if they are in some way corrupt, it's most likely they all are in one or another. It's about how quickly the policy changes toward a welfare state we can go. We are headed toward technological socialism in all likelihood. How fast we go and how it will look on the way are in play."
That is the claim, stated plainly: not corrupt versus clean. Speed and shape are the variables. The direction is the thing to argue about, and the parties are not arguing about the direction.
Why "socialism," why "technological"
"I agree and use the socialism word as it's the closest past system and why the modifier of technological. It's basically we are on the cusp of eliminating the need for most human labor."
The word is used because it is the closest past system, not because it is 1917 again. The modifier does the work. Once AI and machines can do most human labor, production stops being the bottleneck. Distribution is. Who gets what, who decides, who manages the people who are no longer needed as workers — that is the welfare state, that is the farm, that is the whole fight.
A verdict, not applause: the label fits as a direction — a tech-managed welfare state — and misleads if it is read as state ownership of everything. What is coming, in this reading, is control without ownership: the factories, platforms, and models stay private, while the state regulates, funds, backstops, and data-pipes them, and the platforms do the actual governing — who can speak, transact, travel, get paid.
The people farm
"Government as we have it set up is akin to a people farm."
People need to believe in tomorrow to go about their day. The farm manages that belief: keep the herd calm, fed enough, believing tomorrow will come, harvest the labor, the taxes, the attention, and do not let them see how close the world is to destruction constantly. That is the Men in Black point Jack invoked — people are able to go about their day because they do not ever know their world is close to destruction of some sort constantly.
A farm does not need to be cruel to work. It just needs people to believe in tomorrow.
Replacement, in farm terms
"It seems to also have been decided some groups are becoming unprofitable."
Loss of reproduction on one side, mass migration on the other. "They want the infrastructure in place for a new group that will reproduce more and ask less questions. They not being any particular, doesn't even have to have been a conscious choice, it's the shape of the field."
And the resource version, in his words: "replacing the populations of America and Europe eliminates the populations that consume the most resources. Replacing them with lower input versions so you still get the numbers to facilitate the searching for Bobby Fischer distribution still."
Lower input per head, same total numbers, same chance of finding the outlier — the one-in-millions mind, the Fischer — much cheaper farm. Add the other two costs he named: expectations of corruption already set up — "most have come from places with rampant corruption" — and routinely disruptive behaviour — "France takes to the streets regularly. We have almost non stop protests. Obviously they are everywhere, and we back many of them."
"It's the right play if you're the farmers."
And the people who seem to be making the choices are, in his framing, "protecting the current systems and themselves" — not shaping the field, keeping their jobs, funding, status, and the system that keeps them in place.
The label question he raised: "replacement theory is conspiracy while predictions of being replaced are not questionable" — because, in his framing, "one wants to alter it." The prediction is passive and acceptable. Wanting to alter it draws the label.
Over-educated
"And it's fair to say over educated."
They used to say go to college, get a good job. Many more did, "but there are not enough good jobs, so we have people that can't really pay for the education it took to get that job. Not to mention it dilutes the quality of the education itself, as more and more flooded in like any business they want to accommodate so you the creation of new degree programs not called for by a need, but social trends. Like the boom in hr. And the social sciences as a whole."
The tell he pointed to: a video, pretty sure Yale but might have been Harvard, where a girl said the point was to build a home, in reference to the campus. "Such a clear sign we had lost the purpose of college especially an elite university. It's supposed to be a home, and you should be challenged on almost all your understanding and beliefs. Not a safe space home."
His closing line on that thread: "And are only useful to a farmer as slaughtered."
The pressure valve
The Campaign (2012) — the movie he was surprised he had not seen, with a very strong cast, a parody on how corrupt our systems are. "If we didn't have so much corruption this type of movie would never hit. It's also just the right outlet to let the pressure off."
"Corrupt politics become expected and to be laughed at." "They have our whole system like that."
In his pressure terms: people laugh, vent, the pressure equalizes a little, and then they go back to believing in tomorrow, back to the farm, without actually changing anything. Once corrupt politics become expected and to be laughed at, you do not have to change them anymore.
Open tensions — left for Jack, not resolved here
- If the field, not a meeting, selects for lower input and fewer questions, what would altering it even look like — and who would do it?
- If labour goes away faster than politics can handle it, is the welfare floor a bridge or the trap itself — the Nov 5 benefits point, where help keeps people just over broke, enough not to complain, not enough to shift dynamics?
- If both parties have slid left rapidly, in their own left/right terms, and are one team in certain aspects — like the NFL expanding but not liking external competition — what is the outside of that league, if anything?
