In 20th century America, four major trends drove real estate development. To simplify, they are:
- Fiat mortgage credit
- Interstate highways and other government infrastructure like electricity
- Civil Rights-related ethnic migration
- The occult reaction against Civil Rights (‘Drug War’ / ‘Giuliani Time’) that re-settled formerly chaotic cities.
All of these trends are unraveling, and even reversing, as I write this. You can read more about the infrastructure issue in the review of a book on that topic that I wrote earlier last year.
As the reaction against Civil Rights crumbles due to financial, moral, and political issues, there must be someone to rush in to the vacuum.
It is not so much that society will collapse because of a lack of means to hold itself together, but rather that it will crumble owing to a lack of courage (both physical and intellectual) to prevent that from happening.
The country at large will continue to lose its economic vitality and social stability in an inexorable fashion. Economics involves free exchange, rather than exchange under compulsion, and as exchange under compulsion crowds out free exchange, the economy must shrink, and property must become less secure overall.
It would not surprise me if we were to see a return to the security norm, which is islands of order surrounded by vast areas in which bandits can attack travelers with impunity. While it will take some time for this reversion to happen, it seems to me to be a likely speculation, an easy bet to make and to win on.
Providing security will require some mixture of obligatory militia and private (as opposed to nation-state) professional security. The value of the real estate under protection will grow to the extent that it is better-protected at a lower price than the alternatives.
We have already seen, overseas, that the Federal government is more than willing to cede its monopoly on logistics and high-value security operations to mercenaries and other firms that can do the job better at a lower price. There is more pragmatism at the Pentagon than most are willing to give it credit for.
The reason is less intellectual and more, perhaps, based on some mixture of cowardice and bean-counting. Elites know that the public security forces are unreliable. When they have a choice, they hire mercenaries. Given that this is the case, it will be harder to prevent the lower social orders (the remnants of the middle class, non-elite corporations) from doing the same to protect themselves and their holdings.
The enormous prison systems created in a vain hope to ‘reform’ the bastards of the world will crumble and fade, because they have grown far past the ability of the host society to maintain. On a global scale, the West can’t afford to bear the burdens of the Rest while reproducing itself.
Something must give, and it will.
Things a NRx fraternity (whose purpose is to identify, attract, and organize the ancestors of the future aristocracy of the galactic super civilization) ought to build in order:
1) A private cryptographically secure comms platform and socialization rituals that provide opportunities for member bonding and family formation in a manner that promotes transmission of high IQ and other civilization-promoting talents.
2) A private investment / insurance fund for the fraternity members (the KofC attracts the best Catholic men in an area because it offers them a chance to purchase some of the best insurance products in the world – products that increases and preserves the member’s wealth and enables its transmission to future generations in a tax advantaged format)
3) A contracts arbitrage business (in order to decide justice in an NRx fashion), a collections agency to enforce payment of debts, and a security firm to protect the first two businesses and the fraternity members. These three are the fundamental tasks of any future sovereign security corporation.
4) An institute to promote NRx scholarship
5) A charity focused on accountable self-improvement
6) A defense research firm that would arm the security business with advanced weaponry (shear-thickening battle armor and rail guns as side arms, etc.), a consumer goods manufacturing / distribution business (owning organic farms and 3D-printing factories), and a private gold-backed cryptocurrency to provide an accounting mechanism for trade of goods. (Membership dues and profits from the ancillary businesses give foreign currency for purchasing gold in the real-world. The fraternity can issue cryptocurrency in proportion to its gold vault stores. And it can barter cryptocurrency to members in exchange for services provided to the fraternity and the members can then use that to barter for items from fraternity businesses.)
7) Offshore low-cost, high-quality medical treatment facilities. Secure, caring retirement facilities. Advanced life extension, and health maintenance treatments.
8) Education centers, fiber internet infrastructure, AI for capturing financial markets and political contests in democracies, molten salt nuclear power stations, civil defense centers, neutron-bomb tipped missiles for defense against catastrophic attack of NRx held areas (thinking about what happens if a system like Russia’s Deadhand autolaunches a nuke attack with MIRV ICBMs).
9) Space colonization technologies (rockets, habitats, asteroid mining, xeno-agriculture, etc.).
People are working on at least some of these, especially #1. Still pretty early for most of those, but hey, dream big…
IMO, the best way to get #1 to take off (when it is ready and is formed enough) is #2. The KofC has no real purpose other than as a form of social security for Catholics. The KofC is sometimes a little corny, but the insurance offerings and brotherhood (meaning the understanding that his Brother Knights will charitably help his family after he passes b/c that is what he has done) is enough to draw very serious Catholic men such as doctors, mayors, military officers, lawyers, engineers, etc.
A NRx fraternity ought to be able to offer similar insurance products whose funds are invested in some kind of very conservative ghost ship portfolio like this: http://www.joshuakennon.com/im-building-ghost-ship-portfolio-someone-sort-index-fund-steroids/.
And, if anyone is an ancestor of the future aristocracy, the kind of man attracted to the KofC is probably it.
A gold-backed cryptocurrency is redundant. The whole point of cryptocurrencies is that they’re already artificially scarce (if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be able to function as currencies). Gold adds nothing to them, apart from the opportunity costs of having the gold sitting in a vault doing nothing.
Space colonisation (etc, etc, etc) is another bit of tedious nerd wank that NRx need to shed.
Crytpocurrency rides on a computer network, and computer networks can be destroyed, disrupted, and disabled. Gold is the backup.
I agree that gold-backed cryptocurrency is redundant, in the same way that gold exchange standards are redundant.
“Space colonisation (etc, etc, etc) is another bit of tedious nerd wank that NRx need to shed.”
Colonization, maybe, but mining is closer — also way out of both my expertise and connections, but I doubt any of us would say no to making friends with some rocket scientists wearing misogynistic lounge clothing.
IMO, a NRx effort actually seeking the Mandate of Heaven will have to meet and surpass the USG. That means, at minimum, we’re putting people on the Moon.
Amongst my connections, there are a lot of dudes at figurative and literal levers who dislike the present social order and would really like a wife and a family instead of the daily spectre of a Ferguson-world.
We are both closer than perhaps we realize and farther than we might like to be from the Bond Villain characterization made by that reporter at the FT last year.
As far as I’m concerned, that’s a libel to be lived up to.
Yeah, imagine how wanky it would have been for Europeans to speak of eventual colonization of the Americas in 1510.
Space colonisation is an answer to… what problem, exactly? Why should it be treated any differently to seasteading? Have you solved the barriers to seasteading yet? Is space intrinsically cathedral-proof? What advantages does space offer that terrestrial living doesn’t? Are you trying to argue that space allows you to escape the cathedral’s moral activism? What makes you assume that?
Space colonisation is boring, inane, tedious, extremely lame nerd wank, and should be ridiculed at every opportunity, being a perfect example of Vladimir’s reservations about NRx becoming drenched in “nerd porn”.
I’ve written less than five paragraphs on the topic, and don’t think I’ve tweeted about it either. This discussion topic came up in my comment section, here.
>Space colonisation is an answer to… what problem, exactly?
On a physical level, civilization needs raw materials to function, and space has them. On a metaphyscial level, civilization, being the embodiment of Order, is good and ought to be protected from planet-wide catastrophes, which have happened in Earth’s past geological record. On a martial level, space is the ultimate high ground. On a propaganda level, space colonies are great things to put on posters about how awesome a group is.
>Why should it be treated any differently to seasteading?
I don’t know. Why are you treating it differently?
>Have you solved the barriers to seasteading yet?
No; have you? It seems some people are getting close though: http://aboardtheworld.com/.
>Is space intrinsically cathedral-proof?
Nope. Why does that matter?
>What advantages does space offer that terrestrial living doesn’t? Lebensraum, etc. See above. Please also note that it has disadvantages, but the few advantages are enough to warrant doing it.
>Are you trying to argue that space allows you to escape the cathedral’s moral activism?
Nope. And, nothing does that. It is like asking what allows you to escape the Devil’s attempts to seduce you to sin. You can only choose to not sin or ignore the cathedral when possible. Temptation and the activism is sort of just there.
Furthermore, assuming NRx disassembles the Cathedral at some future time, the Cathedral’s moral activism will always be there as part of the historical record, just as old Soviet posters are now.
>What makes you assume that?
Idem.
>Space colonisation is boring, inane, tedious, extremely lame nerd wank, and should be ridiculed at every opportunity, being a perfect example of Vladimir’s reservations about NRx becoming drenched in “nerd porn”.
And, how does seasteading not fit that description as well?
This is fun. What other criticisms do you have? Additionally, I repose all of your questions to you, but about seasteading. I’m curious and would like to learn more.
I think we should all become Catholics and join the Knights of Columbus (I did three years ago). 🙂
The nine points are excellent, but might be said to represent the “Maximum Program.” We do need a good #1 to replace the blog comment system and Twitter…however, for the rest, minimum program: get/stay in good condition, get a good rifle, have children. I’m happy to say I’ve managed that much.
At present the rural areas of the US remain safe, while urban areas are often dangerous. This is slowly chaning as methheads and illegal gangs are starting to make their presence felt in some rural areas. Mexico is ahead of the US in this regard. Most of rural Mexico was perfectly safe for an visiting motorcycle adventurer 15 years ago, but criminal gangs are present in rural Mexico today. I’m hoping for a huge secure island like the pacific northwest to be carved out of the present USA, but this seems unlikely any time soon.
Cryptocurrencies as gold certificates provide electronic purchasing capabilities (ever try to buy something online with gold? PITA!), easy portability (brain wallets), nearly infinite divisibility, and a public ledger mechanism of who owns what (Moldbug’s Formalism??). Gold provides natural scarcity, tradition (the point of NRx is to rediscover the ancient civilization-promoting traditions, revitalize them, and restore them to usage, no?), and a source of true value (how many people are actually willing to trade their effort for something that is just bits in a computer vs. gold in a secure vault? sheesh, I already feel queasy enough about accepting FRNs). Some kind of real-time auditing to match gold certificates vs. stored gold would be nice.
And, it isn’t quite doing nothing. Sure, gold in a vault doesn’t generate yield, but it does provide a non-usurious basis for a money system (which gives a nice legitimacy to the fraternity). In the Federal Reserve system, all the money disappears before all debts can be paid. (If I borrow the only FRN$100 in existence from Yellen and am charged $1 in interest, then immediately return the $100 to Yellen, where am I going to get the $1 in interest from? Plus, Yellen has risk now once I’ve noticed that I’ve been screwed.) In this system, if all cryptocurrency gold certificates are traded back to the fraternity in exchange for services / goods. The fraternity is sitting on a big pile of gold on which they can issue brand new gold certificates instead of just having an account balance reading zero.
Sure, use gold as a currency if you want. I just don’t see the point of a gold-backed cryptocurrency. Reintroducing a redundant layer of gold in a currency that’s already harder than gold is an example of imposing the form of tradition without concerning oneself with the function.
“It is not so much that society will collapse because of a lack of means to hold itself together, but rather that it will crumble owing to a lack of courage (both physical and intellectual) to prevent that from happening.”
It is not just lack of courage, it’s lack of legitimacy. It’s a reasonably difficult project to exterminate most courage, while pissing away most of a regime’s legitimacy is comparatively easy. And when insufficient legitimacy remains, then even if sufficient courage remains, too little of it supports official authority: some stubbornly sit things out, and some actively supports rival power centers.
When an institution is powerful enough long enough, like the Catholic Church before the Reformation, it can get away with WTF legitimacy-corroding things like selling indulgences and selling church offices. Indeed, it can get away with them for a long time, long enough to develop an somwhat-justified arrogant indifference to issues of legitimacy. But eventually enough of those things can accumulate, and enough other difficulties can pile on, that it can have a serious problem. And by the time it grasps that it has a serious problem, it can have a horrendous problem.
The conspicuous disconnect between the Constitution and obeying the Supreme Court, with the Supreme Court “interpretation” having authority while the Constitution remains the supposed basis of legitimacy (and while the pragmatic importance of rule of law remains clear to thoughtful people): WTF?
Cops freely confiscating and destroying evidence (particularly hard to overlook now with all those video recorders out there): WTF? And while perjury is similar and has been somewhat hard to overlook for a longer time, I think the destruction of evidence tends to take things to a new level: it seems easier for sympathizers to imagine extenuating circumstances for perjury than for destroying evidence, and the number of screamingly obvious destruction-of-evidence cases seems considerably higher than the number of screamingly obvious perjury cases.
Heavy racial discrimination against Asians (particularly corrosive when your most prized claim to virtue is being racist unlike those horribly-racist racists that oppose you) justified only by particularly bizarre rationalizations (diversity is more important than merit? and race, that insignificant political construct, is such a reliable metric of this pragmatically vital diversity property that we should evaluate photos of applicants? and Asians are undiverse but Jews are diverse because reasons?): WTF?
Also, the policy war over importing favored voters is less closely analogous to indulgences than, e.g., officers of the law being privileged to openly arbitrarily destroy evidence, but it seems at least related. (Nationalism and tribalism aren’t exactly legitimacy, but they play in some of the same venues.) It also seems oddly similar to the runup to the Glorious Revolution, when selective toleration was granted to the politically favored Catholic demographic and “justified” by invoking a general principle of tolerance, and the similarity became particularly odd in the USA recently when it extended to the king/president stretching the dispensing power.
The system will survive as long as it can print money. When it can’t, that’s the end of democratic governance, the welfare state, feminism, and the civil rights movement.
After a few years of Darwinian selection, the bandits you speak of, if better men don’t step up, will be white men with swastika tattoos who casually toss nonwhite babies into packs of hungry dogs. Eventually they’ll decide that stationary banditry is better than mobile banditry (less risky and pays more in the long run), and organize themselves into some sort of government.
Blacks and Latinos will have to retreat to areas where white people don’t live, and survive there on their own. There will be no jobs for them as long as white people are starving.