So well-said. The contempt that some extremely successful individuals hold for those who helped them obtain that success, has always been mind-boggling to me. Is it actually possible they don't see it themselves? As a biologist I wonder if they understand that they are the individuals that prevent a species from surviving? Thank you for this piece.
You will scan this class of persons in vain for any with the slightest understanding either of human biology or anthropology — they are all, to a man (and they are ALL men), what I call math-holes. They wear their ignorance of anything beyond mathematics, physics and the neoclassical economic orthodoxy as a badge of (dis)honour. As such, that their conception of the world bears not the slightest resemblance to reality is not terribly surprising.
an “ecosystem where oligarchic power gets legitimized through manufactured intellectual authority.”
I wonder if the bizarre behaviours and fantasies that these Thielian weirdos exhibit actually derive from the fact that they are partially unwitting victims of Neoliberal Capitalism. They created methods to extract such enormous amounts of wealth that in such a short time, from deregulated financial systems, that the only way they can comprehend it themselves is to fabricate ubermensch personas and cod philosophy. If they admitted to themselves that they’re not really as clever as they think they are then their self-assumed deity would collapse and we would all see them for the Gollum-like creatures with daddy issues that they are.
Glad to see someone cover this for what it is. What bugs me isn’t just tech fan guys playing philosopher, but that they’ve figured out how to simulate wisdom while scaling bullshit. Half of it feels borrowed.
Andreessen lurks around “intellectual” Christian Nationalist debates. He follows enough semi-obscure accounts to definitely be gathering intel on what lands best, testing out talking points on the smarter people in the niche—the ones who can at least recognize a few logical fallacies when it’s an opponent talking.
And Thiel—who is genuinely intelligent and likely the smartest one of them, but needs the most help sounding more appealing—has attracted hordes of sycophants who ironically copy his brand of contrarianism to a T, without having much thought for themselves. Talk about memetic desire. They go on about thinking outside the box while parroting lines from Zero to One.
A lot of this hype-y pseudo-intellectualism is like a conglomeration of half-read philosophy, YouTube lectures, and a deep faith in the promise of their own potential net worth. If they just copy the successful guys and sound smart, surely something will manifest…
The people who suck up to the oligarchs further worsen their detachment from reality. While I don’t agree with him on everything (I do an exceptional job of keeping myself out of echo chambers, truly), Richard Hanania did a good job describing the tech bro flatterer dynamic in his article “Why Billionaires Go Insane.” From what I recall, his part about “transactional” views of relationships was pretty accurate/apt.
Oh, and the religiosity is the strangest part—but not surprising. Techno-mysticism is a weak attempt at moral cover. Using UFOs, Christian Nationalism, Rupert Sheldrake, half-baked and half-stolen ideas from Hinduism and Buddhism, Russian Cosmism, and whatever else is lying around, they’ve built a whole cosmology to explain why they get to rule in a way that feels slightly more meaningful to people. (Because it markets itself as if it is.)
And it works. They wrap it all in just enough elevated language to pass for deep or serious.
At least Thiel has real intellect and follows his own internal logic rather consistently—which is part of why some of his interviews come across so poorly. Most of the others and their sycophants are just performing, and letting the algorithms take care of the rest. A long con with a sprinkle of systems theory and Jungian symbolism.
I wrote something along these lines, though more about how truth becomes a gaping hole in Network States (and other pseudo-libertarian decentralization efforts):
You may be smart enough not to attack these hucksters’ daddy Curtis Yarvin, but I’m not. 🙂 His stock in trade is the unsupported supposition—find an obscure text that’s obscure for a reason, find a nugget in it that seems to say the same thing he wants to, then pretend like that props up his entire house of cards “philosophy.” He’s not so much intelligent as he is well read, and, like you wrote, his whole system of “thought” collapses under the weight of its ignored moral and ethical atrocities. As in, no, a king by divine right is not morally equivalent to government by consent of the governed.
Thank you for pointing me to that—it’s absolutely brilliant. Well done! Suggestion (for what it’s worth): link to this essay on your new one. It’s really one line of continuous, cogent thought.
Thanks for laying things out so well in your writing. It’s so important!
Would people volunteer to be placed in a cell, if someone told them it was the smartest way for civilization to advance, especially if the person advocating it was considering whether humanity should survive?
There really isn't a species that deserves to be wiped out as a result one man's mental gymnastics.
Not only are these people trying to tell everyone the smartest thing to do is put all your eggs in one basket, but it just so happens they have invented (and own) the perfect basket for you to put them all into.
It is remarkable to me, that some people are so filled with urban resentment that they would destroy democracy, send the military into their own cities, and make their own jailers billionaires, and they would do it to "save civilization" makes it all the more ironic.
Look at the election maps, listen to the cures from the opposition; from making it harder to vote in urban areas, to "de-chartering" cities, inventing and building "freedom cities" to replace the ones we live in, to making a whole bunch of brown shirt militias to attack this or that marginalized community within cities, "Emergency managers," accelerating collapse by causing race riots in cities...
We have turned Occam's razor into a tight rope that everyone has to dance on bare foot, before they are allowed to come up with their brutish "cure" to urban America being treated as equals.
The real problem they ALL have in common is that they are mostly to severely autistic, and have failed to even try and develop other capabilities that are needed to make them feel or seem “human” … they literally lack emotional intelligence, and are stuck at about 11 years of age …
You have no idea what you’re talking about and you have no idea who you’re talking to. You’re patronizing, mansplaining, and apparently trying to set the autism acceptance movement back 50 years. May you have the day you deserve. Peace out.
How can I be patronizing or mansplaining (whatever that is), when I have never met you, and have no idea who you are or what sex, gender, you are (I prefer to keep discussions at arms length so I don’t look into those facets of a person till later … )
If you want to explore more, read the writings of Temple Grandin, and she’s on you tube as well …
Silicon Valley is basically totally filled with those on the autism spectrum … and because they breed amongst themselves, they have created generations of autistic children or offspring ..
I can’t wait to see how all of Musks children turn out … because of who he choose to procreate with, it’s going to be like the in-breeding of the European royal families, or people from the most in-bred state in America, Kentucky …
And just remember, what we call the “artistic temperament” , is actually the “autistic temperament” … keep that in mind, and a whole lot makes sense …
Pretty sure I do … I was the one who first “observed” and “diagnosed” Elon Musk, and publicly posted about it in many places.
And then it was about 7-8 months later that Musk was on SNL and announced that very fact to the world …
And yes, it got me banned and kicked out of various groups on various social media sites, but they ALL later unbanned me and allowed or asked me to return …
You’re not supposed to diagnose other people unless you are a medical professional. Self diagnosis is valid. There are reasons why some people may not want to be “outed” publicly as being autistic. You are not as clever as you think you are.
Wrong. It’s medical professionals who are not supposed to remotely diagnose … everyone else can …
And he is a PUBLIC figure, so his entire “being” and “life” is open to full scrutiny…
If he doesn’t want to be scrutinized or labeled, or criticized, he can make himself and his life more private and less celebrity like - but he won’t, can’t actually, do that, because he likes the limelight and adulation to much …
What makes him “evil” is that he failed to develop the necessary emotional control that most people have, so he’s always operating between the chronological age of 3-11 years old .
When he enters “demon” mode as he likes to call it, that’s him being a really petulant three year old child throwing fits, who thinks the world revolves around him, and the world owes him everything …
He just doesn’t have that emotional regulation the most people develop …
That’s not what autism is and I understand now why those people blocked you. You can’t diagnose someone you have never met. Period. Autism is not why he’s a terrible human being. He’s a terrible human being because he’s wealthy, racist, and surrounded by yes men. Just like Trump.
I was unaware of that Jobs email and attendant collection of quotes; thank you for that. I learned something new today, which is a beautiful and precious thing.
In The Wizard of Oz, the “great and powerful” wizard turned out to be a man working levers and pedals, using smoke and mirrors to project an illusion. Today’s artificial intelligence boom works much the same way. The “wizards” — Sam Altman (OpenAI), Sundar Pichai (Google), Satya Nadella (Microsoft) — promise machines that can “reason” like “Ph.D.-level” human experts. What’s really behind the curtain is a warehouse full of computers processing massive amounts of human-written text, then rearranging it to make it sound smart. These systems aren’t thinking. They aren’t understanding. They’re making highly educated guesses about what words are most likely to come next.
So why pretend otherwise? Because hype is money. Venture capitalists and tech giants aren’t betting billions on a glorified autocomplete. They need you — and the investors they’re courting — to believe we’re on the edge of creating “artificial general intelligence” (AGI), the holy grail of a machine that can match or surpass human cognition. That story keeps valuations sky-high, funding flowing, and competitors scrambling to keep up.
Here’s the problem: many researchers who actually study intelligence and cognition are deeply skeptical that AGI is anywhere near. The obstacles aren’t just “make the model bigger” or “feed it more data.” True reasoning involves understanding the world, applying common sense, and learning from experience — all things current AI systems fake passably in some situations and fail spectacularly in others.
And if you’ve been watching closely, you’ve probably noticed the industry quietly moving the goalposts on what “AGI” even means. Not long ago, it meant a hypothetical future where machines could perform any intellectual task a human could. Now, in corporate press releases and investor calls, AGI is being reframed as something far more utilitarian for corporate profit: an AI that can generate more valuable outputs for more business cases, integrate into more workflows, and replace more high-cost human labor. It’s a shift from “machine with human-like intelligence” to “machine that can handle more of our to-do list in ways that boost the bottom line.” This makes it easier to declare “progress toward AGI” — and harder for the public to notice that the original goal wasn’t just a harder problem, but one that can’t be reached by this path alone. Large language models are skilled at producing plausible text, but without other forms of AI — symbolic reasoning, grounding in the physical world, real learning from experience — there is little to no chance they will ever become actually intelligent rather than just very clever simulators of intelligence, rather than.
The overpromising isn’t a slip; it’s the business model. The magic show works as long as people enjoy the spectacle and don’t ask too many questions. And history says they probably won’t. From 18th-century fake chess machines with hidden human players to 21st-century “miracle” real estate seminars, the formula is the same: big claims, impressive demos, confident voices — and a crowd that prefers wonder to reality.
Blame for a lot of this has to be laid at the Democrats and Obama's feet. When Democrats voted for the TARP in 2008 and gained control of the government in 2009 they signaled they were willing to bail out the financial system. Since then the stock market has *quadrupled* over the 25 years since the 2000 tech bubble peak. This is a 5.9% rate, which is 0.4 points higher than the longer term 5.5% grow rate in the index. This means the stock market has built an overvaluation bubble 10% larger than it was in 2000. The stock market was not in a bubble in 2007, real estate was. We see that real estate has advanced 10% higher than its bubble peak in 2006.
Since the Democrats bailed these fintech guys out and their wealth has multipled many-fold, they now feel with the Bitcoin god as their ally and now with a billionaire like them on throne, they feel like masters of the universe. If our democracy survives long enough to these bubbles to pop, it is incumbent on all who believe in democracy to prevent a bailout this time.
Yes if there is no bailout the financial system could crash leading to massive unemployment. I would note that the pandemic idled a sixth of the workforce and yet with large-scale stimulus we managed to return to prosperity in just two years. Massive stimulus provided to households will maintain aggregate demand, preventing a depression, while the financial system collapses.
To deal with the issue we will need to separate the commercial banking from investment banking activities, keeping the former alive, through a chapter 11 type mechanism, if necessary, while the latter is liquidated. This separation was what Glass-Steagall did. Funny how that works, the same problems all over again. ;)
Inflation will become a problem unless taxes on the rich and investors, but also on everyone else are raised. Since stocks, real estate and crypto will be in the toilet with the one bright spot being bonds, which will also be crushed if inflation develops, resistance to taxes by the rich and the investor class will be muted. After all, they will have large losses and won't have to worry about capital gains or income taxes for some time. Inflation won't be a problem until the asset bear market ends and the economy is in strong recovery, at which point the higher taxes will start bringing in more revenue while the stimulus payments are winding down. The strong decline in the deficit will reduce inflationary forces (the inflation driver or ID in this figure) as it did after WW II, when we did something like this to get out of the Great Depression: major stimulus and high deficits followed by collapsing deficits suppressing the inflation that developed as a result of the stimulus.
I've read quite a bit about Thiel, and I'm familiar with the thinkers who've inspired him -- Carl Schmitt, Rene Girard and Leo Strauss. Thiel and these figures are not the least bit difficult to understand. It's easy to take in their ideas and be impressed or not. But on the basis of what they have to offer, there's little to suggest vastly superior intelligence. They're interesting and original but not complex in the least.
And let's not be overawed by the oligarchs' power, wealth and authority. It's all based on enormous data centers that require gigantic quantities of power and water. Geographically, these AI and mass-surveillance hubs are exquisitely vulnerable. Mankind has the option of tolerating them or not.
Ah, the Valley’s not selling wisdom, it’s peddling cosplay for the intellect. Oligarchs playing philosopher, courtiers polishing their crowns, and Bitcoin monks chanting hymns to the goddess of ROI. This isn’t a marketplace of ideas, it’s a swap meet for moral bankruptcy dressed up in TED Talk lighting.
Blessed be the ones who still know the difference between thinking and performing.
So well-said. The contempt that some extremely successful individuals hold for those who helped them obtain that success, has always been mind-boggling to me. Is it actually possible they don't see it themselves? As a biologist I wonder if they understand that they are the individuals that prevent a species from surviving? Thank you for this piece.
You will scan this class of persons in vain for any with the slightest understanding either of human biology or anthropology — they are all, to a man (and they are ALL men), what I call math-holes. They wear their ignorance of anything beyond mathematics, physics and the neoclassical economic orthodoxy as a badge of (dis)honour. As such, that their conception of the world bears not the slightest resemblance to reality is not terribly surprising.
an “ecosystem where oligarchic power gets legitimized through manufactured intellectual authority.”
I wonder if the bizarre behaviours and fantasies that these Thielian weirdos exhibit actually derive from the fact that they are partially unwitting victims of Neoliberal Capitalism. They created methods to extract such enormous amounts of wealth that in such a short time, from deregulated financial systems, that the only way they can comprehend it themselves is to fabricate ubermensch personas and cod philosophy. If they admitted to themselves that they’re not really as clever as they think they are then their self-assumed deity would collapse and we would all see them for the Gollum-like creatures with daddy issues that they are.
Glad to see someone cover this for what it is. What bugs me isn’t just tech fan guys playing philosopher, but that they’ve figured out how to simulate wisdom while scaling bullshit. Half of it feels borrowed.
Andreessen lurks around “intellectual” Christian Nationalist debates. He follows enough semi-obscure accounts to definitely be gathering intel on what lands best, testing out talking points on the smarter people in the niche—the ones who can at least recognize a few logical fallacies when it’s an opponent talking.
And Thiel—who is genuinely intelligent and likely the smartest one of them, but needs the most help sounding more appealing—has attracted hordes of sycophants who ironically copy his brand of contrarianism to a T, without having much thought for themselves. Talk about memetic desire. They go on about thinking outside the box while parroting lines from Zero to One.
A lot of this hype-y pseudo-intellectualism is like a conglomeration of half-read philosophy, YouTube lectures, and a deep faith in the promise of their own potential net worth. If they just copy the successful guys and sound smart, surely something will manifest…
The people who suck up to the oligarchs further worsen their detachment from reality. While I don’t agree with him on everything (I do an exceptional job of keeping myself out of echo chambers, truly), Richard Hanania did a good job describing the tech bro flatterer dynamic in his article “Why Billionaires Go Insane.” From what I recall, his part about “transactional” views of relationships was pretty accurate/apt.
https://open.substack.com/pub/richardhanania/p/why-billionaires-go-insane
Oh, and the religiosity is the strangest part—but not surprising. Techno-mysticism is a weak attempt at moral cover. Using UFOs, Christian Nationalism, Rupert Sheldrake, half-baked and half-stolen ideas from Hinduism and Buddhism, Russian Cosmism, and whatever else is lying around, they’ve built a whole cosmology to explain why they get to rule in a way that feels slightly more meaningful to people. (Because it markets itself as if it is.)
And it works. They wrap it all in just enough elevated language to pass for deep or serious.
At least Thiel has real intellect and follows his own internal logic rather consistently—which is part of why some of his interviews come across so poorly. Most of the others and their sycophants are just performing, and letting the algorithms take care of the rest. A long con with a sprinkle of systems theory and Jungian symbolism.
I wrote something along these lines, though more about how truth becomes a gaping hole in Network States (and other pseudo-libertarian decentralization efforts):
https://dianoiaprotocol.substack.com/p/network-states-and-truth
Thiel needs to read up on “The Lavender Scare” in history, but alas, he’s accepted bc he’s wealthy & white!
You may be smart enough not to attack these hucksters’ daddy Curtis Yarvin, but I’m not. 🙂 His stock in trade is the unsupported supposition—find an obscure text that’s obscure for a reason, find a nugget in it that seems to say the same thing he wants to, then pretend like that props up his entire house of cards “philosophy.” He’s not so much intelligent as he is well read, and, like you wrote, his whole system of “thought” collapses under the weight of its ignored moral and ethical atrocities. As in, no, a king by divine right is not morally equivalent to government by consent of the governed.
https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/clear-thinking-v-curtis-yarvin
Thank you for pointing me to that—it’s absolutely brilliant. Well done! Suggestion (for what it’s worth): link to this essay on your new one. It’s really one line of continuous, cogent thought.
Thanks for laying things out so well in your writing. It’s so important!
Would people volunteer to be placed in a cell, if someone told them it was the smartest way for civilization to advance, especially if the person advocating it was considering whether humanity should survive?
There really isn't a species that deserves to be wiped out as a result one man's mental gymnastics.
Not only are these people trying to tell everyone the smartest thing to do is put all your eggs in one basket, but it just so happens they have invented (and own) the perfect basket for you to put them all into.
It is remarkable to me, that some people are so filled with urban resentment that they would destroy democracy, send the military into their own cities, and make their own jailers billionaires, and they would do it to "save civilization" makes it all the more ironic.
Look at the election maps, listen to the cures from the opposition; from making it harder to vote in urban areas, to "de-chartering" cities, inventing and building "freedom cities" to replace the ones we live in, to making a whole bunch of brown shirt militias to attack this or that marginalized community within cities, "Emergency managers," accelerating collapse by causing race riots in cities...
We have turned Occam's razor into a tight rope that everyone has to dance on bare foot, before they are allowed to come up with their brutish "cure" to urban America being treated as equals.
Astute analysis, Michael!
The real problem they ALL have in common is that they are mostly to severely autistic, and have failed to even try and develop other capabilities that are needed to make them feel or seem “human” … they literally lack emotional intelligence, and are stuck at about 11 years of age …
You have no idea what you’re talking about and you have no idea who you’re talking to. You’re patronizing, mansplaining, and apparently trying to set the autism acceptance movement back 50 years. May you have the day you deserve. Peace out.
How can I be patronizing or mansplaining (whatever that is), when I have never met you, and have no idea who you are or what sex, gender, you are (I prefer to keep discussions at arms length so I don’t look into those facets of a person till later … )
Well that’s gonna come as news to millions of medical professionals but you just carry on then
If you want to explore more, read the writings of Temple Grandin, and she’s on you tube as well …
Silicon Valley is basically totally filled with those on the autism spectrum … and because they breed amongst themselves, they have created generations of autistic children or offspring ..
I can’t wait to see how all of Musks children turn out … because of who he choose to procreate with, it’s going to be like the in-breeding of the European royal families, or people from the most in-bred state in America, Kentucky …
And just remember, what we call the “artistic temperament” , is actually the “autistic temperament” … keep that in mind, and a whole lot makes sense …
I don’t think you understand what autism is
Pretty sure I do … I was the one who first “observed” and “diagnosed” Elon Musk, and publicly posted about it in many places.
And then it was about 7-8 months later that Musk was on SNL and announced that very fact to the world …
And yes, it got me banned and kicked out of various groups on various social media sites, but they ALL later unbanned me and allowed or asked me to return …
You’re not supposed to diagnose other people unless you are a medical professional. Self diagnosis is valid. There are reasons why some people may not want to be “outed” publicly as being autistic. You are not as clever as you think you are.
Wrong. It’s medical professionals who are not supposed to remotely diagnose … everyone else can …
And he is a PUBLIC figure, so his entire “being” and “life” is open to full scrutiny…
If he doesn’t want to be scrutinized or labeled, or criticized, he can make himself and his life more private and less celebrity like - but he won’t, can’t actually, do that, because he likes the limelight and adulation to much …
Musk may be autistic but it’s not what makes him evil so I’ll thank you to stop spreading that dangerous misinformation
What makes him “evil” is that he failed to develop the necessary emotional control that most people have, so he’s always operating between the chronological age of 3-11 years old .
When he enters “demon” mode as he likes to call it, that’s him being a really petulant three year old child throwing fits, who thinks the world revolves around him, and the world owes him everything …
He just doesn’t have that emotional regulation the most people develop …
That’s not what autism is and I understand now why those people blocked you. You can’t diagnose someone you have never met. Period. Autism is not why he’s a terrible human being. He’s a terrible human being because he’s wealthy, racist, and surrounded by yes men. Just like Trump.
I was unaware of that Jobs email and attendant collection of quotes; thank you for that. I learned something new today, which is a beautiful and precious thing.
Well said.
PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE SERVER FARM BEHIND THE CURTAIN
by ChatGPT (as prompted by me)
https://chatgpt.com/s/m_6897cbbd284c8191abd0357b92f15d91
In The Wizard of Oz, the “great and powerful” wizard turned out to be a man working levers and pedals, using smoke and mirrors to project an illusion. Today’s artificial intelligence boom works much the same way. The “wizards” — Sam Altman (OpenAI), Sundar Pichai (Google), Satya Nadella (Microsoft) — promise machines that can “reason” like “Ph.D.-level” human experts. What’s really behind the curtain is a warehouse full of computers processing massive amounts of human-written text, then rearranging it to make it sound smart. These systems aren’t thinking. They aren’t understanding. They’re making highly educated guesses about what words are most likely to come next.
So why pretend otherwise? Because hype is money. Venture capitalists and tech giants aren’t betting billions on a glorified autocomplete. They need you — and the investors they’re courting — to believe we’re on the edge of creating “artificial general intelligence” (AGI), the holy grail of a machine that can match or surpass human cognition. That story keeps valuations sky-high, funding flowing, and competitors scrambling to keep up.
Here’s the problem: many researchers who actually study intelligence and cognition are deeply skeptical that AGI is anywhere near. The obstacles aren’t just “make the model bigger” or “feed it more data.” True reasoning involves understanding the world, applying common sense, and learning from experience — all things current AI systems fake passably in some situations and fail spectacularly in others.
And if you’ve been watching closely, you’ve probably noticed the industry quietly moving the goalposts on what “AGI” even means. Not long ago, it meant a hypothetical future where machines could perform any intellectual task a human could. Now, in corporate press releases and investor calls, AGI is being reframed as something far more utilitarian for corporate profit: an AI that can generate more valuable outputs for more business cases, integrate into more workflows, and replace more high-cost human labor. It’s a shift from “machine with human-like intelligence” to “machine that can handle more of our to-do list in ways that boost the bottom line.” This makes it easier to declare “progress toward AGI” — and harder for the public to notice that the original goal wasn’t just a harder problem, but one that can’t be reached by this path alone. Large language models are skilled at producing plausible text, but without other forms of AI — symbolic reasoning, grounding in the physical world, real learning from experience — there is little to no chance they will ever become actually intelligent rather than just very clever simulators of intelligence, rather than.
The overpromising isn’t a slip; it’s the business model. The magic show works as long as people enjoy the spectacle and don’t ask too many questions. And history says they probably won’t. From 18th-century fake chess machines with hidden human players to 21st-century “miracle” real estate seminars, the formula is the same: big claims, impressive demos, confident voices — and a crowd that prefers wonder to reality.
Blame for a lot of this has to be laid at the Democrats and Obama's feet. When Democrats voted for the TARP in 2008 and gained control of the government in 2009 they signaled they were willing to bail out the financial system. Since then the stock market has *quadrupled* over the 25 years since the 2000 tech bubble peak. This is a 5.9% rate, which is 0.4 points higher than the longer term 5.5% grow rate in the index. This means the stock market has built an overvaluation bubble 10% larger than it was in 2000. The stock market was not in a bubble in 2007, real estate was. We see that real estate has advanced 10% higher than its bubble peak in 2006.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=kYEb
Since the Democrats bailed these fintech guys out and their wealth has multipled many-fold, they now feel with the Bitcoin god as their ally and now with a billionaire like them on throne, they feel like masters of the universe. If our democracy survives long enough to these bubbles to pop, it is incumbent on all who believe in democracy to prevent a bailout this time.
Yes if there is no bailout the financial system could crash leading to massive unemployment. I would note that the pandemic idled a sixth of the workforce and yet with large-scale stimulus we managed to return to prosperity in just two years. Massive stimulus provided to households will maintain aggregate demand, preventing a depression, while the financial system collapses.
To deal with the issue we will need to separate the commercial banking from investment banking activities, keeping the former alive, through a chapter 11 type mechanism, if necessary, while the latter is liquidated. This separation was what Glass-Steagall did. Funny how that works, the same problems all over again. ;)
Inflation will become a problem unless taxes on the rich and investors, but also on everyone else are raised. Since stocks, real estate and crypto will be in the toilet with the one bright spot being bonds, which will also be crushed if inflation develops, resistance to taxes by the rich and the investor class will be muted. After all, they will have large losses and won't have to worry about capital gains or income taxes for some time. Inflation won't be a problem until the asset bear market ends and the economy is in strong recovery, at which point the higher taxes will start bringing in more revenue while the stimulus payments are winding down. The strong decline in the deficit will reduce inflationary forces (the inflation driver or ID in this figure) as it did after WW II, when we did something like this to get out of the Great Depression: major stimulus and high deficits followed by collapsing deficits suppressing the inflation that developed as a result of the stimulus.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/summary-of-concepts-involved-in-addressing#:~:text=Figure%205.%20ID%20and%20inflation%20in%20during%20WW%20II%20and%20its%20aftermath
So, pray for a panic. It's our only hope (besides Obi Wan Kenobi of course).
Andreessen owns this site, i believe..
He is definitely one of it’s original investors, & I’ve heard that he is trying to gain a larger share.
Oh..okay..thanks!
I couldn’t verify.
Not directly, i see now. Andreessen Horowitz is one of the investors.
Thanks!
👍👍
🪩🪩
Good summation of these creatures.
I've read quite a bit about Thiel, and I'm familiar with the thinkers who've inspired him -- Carl Schmitt, Rene Girard and Leo Strauss. Thiel and these figures are not the least bit difficult to understand. It's easy to take in their ideas and be impressed or not. But on the basis of what they have to offer, there's little to suggest vastly superior intelligence. They're interesting and original but not complex in the least.
And let's not be overawed by the oligarchs' power, wealth and authority. It's all based on enormous data centers that require gigantic quantities of power and water. Geographically, these AI and mass-surveillance hubs are exquisitely vulnerable. Mankind has the option of tolerating them or not.
Ah, the Valley’s not selling wisdom, it’s peddling cosplay for the intellect. Oligarchs playing philosopher, courtiers polishing their crowns, and Bitcoin monks chanting hymns to the goddess of ROI. This isn’t a marketplace of ideas, it’s a swap meet for moral bankruptcy dressed up in TED Talk lighting.
Blessed be the ones who still know the difference between thinking and performing.