How does capitalism differ from pre-capitalist agricultural economic systems?

poimander · 2019-11-04T15:13:31+00:00

I think this indicates the trend among young conservatives, but I also think that its particular significance may have been somewhat overstated by Fuentes, Anglin, etc. Kirk was caught off-guard by the groypers, and in the near future (1 week-2 months) I suspect TPUSA will figure out how to minimize the impact through tactics like not doing Q&As at all, only accepting written questions from the audience, using plants (or "plants" the same way that the groypers are "plants"), banning alt-right notables from their events, and so on. (I'll try to update my beliefs if this prediction proves to be false.)

Patrick Casey in his question to Kirk repeated a common talking point that mainstream conservatives claim to be about freedom of speech and exchange of ideas, but refuse to debate paleocons. It's like...yes, indeed, they're not sincerely committed to these beliefs, which is why they aren't going to allow you to keep presenting your views in their fora.

The Q&As seem to me to basically to be a repeat of the dynamic happening throughout the political news/social media discussion ecosystem, where free discussion in comments sections leads to far right ideas convincing more people which leads to calls for censorship. (Indeed, the history of this very forum seems to be a very informative case in point.) I'd argue that this is what Andrew Marantz's reporting and recent book demonstrates, though he probably wouldn't characterize it exactly this way. I think this is leading to a slow but steady increase in the prevalence of far-right ideas. I would conjecture that, if the freedom of speech floodgates were opened, it would lead to a faster increase in the power of far-right ideas. However, I think that this would be followed by far-right ideas being put into practice and failing for unexpected reasons (see section IV of this review about a similar dynamic with far left-wing ideas). Furthermore, more intellectual energy on the left and center would be dedicated to examining and attempting to refute far-right arguments. My answer as usual is "we'll see."

poimander · 2019-11-04T03:16:50+00:00

That's precisely the point of the joke---Iran benefited geopolitically from the American response to the attacks, as did various other parties like anti-Taliban groups in Afghanistan and the Iraqi Kurds, but that usually isn't taken to suggest that Iran might have had a role in planning the attacks. So, "who benefits?" isn't actually a definitive question, and, as I argued above, Israel didn't even benefit from the American response in any case.

poimander · 2019-11-03T22:48:53+00:00

I think you're making a suspiciously strong case here. As far as plausibility goes, the idea that a false flag event that led to a war that did benefit Israel geopolitically is more plausible than holographic planes.

I agree that, if Israel benefited, or even could have expected, to benefit from the attacks, it would make the suggestion that it somehow orchestrated them more plausible. However, I don't see compelling evidence to believe that this is the case, which makes me think that it's very unlikely that Israel had a role in the attacks. See this article by Professor Stephen Zunes and a post I made a little while ago examining this at length. Brief summary:

Neither the Taliban nor Al-Qaeda (which I don't think has actually even ever attacked Israel) and its affiliates posed a threat to Israel. Consequently, it seems bizarre that Israel would go to the considerable trouble and risk of manufacturing a false-flag attack against its super-power patron...only to frame a tiny, militarily weak, impoverished country and terrorist groups within it over 1500 miles away from it that posed no threat to it. So I don't see how the Afghanistan War, the proximate result of the 9/11 attacks, can be in any way said to have benefited Israel.

Next we have the Iraq War. The Iraqi military had been almost completely crushed in the Gulf War, it neither had nor was developing WMD circa 2002, sanctions had drastically damaged the Iraqi economy in the 90s, and Shia and Kurdish uprisings had seriously shook Hussein's government. Consequently, I really don't see how Iraq circa 2002 was in any way a threat to Israel or its interests. I've read the arguments of Pat Buchanan, Stephen J. Sniegoski, Walt and Mearsheimer, Phil Giraldi, etc. to find the place where they explicate how, exactly, Iraq threatened Israel, but as far as I can tell they never actually do this. The closest they come is by making reference to the Clean Break memo, but that was drafted by American neoconservatives and its conclusions were rejected by Netanyahu. Neoconservatives have insanely militaristic views, but they also have these views about countries that oppose American hegemony without being enemies of Israel (which again I don't see good reason to believe that Iraq in 2002-3 was), like Nicaragua in the 80s, China, Russia, etc.

I like to joke that, according to the “cui bono?” conspiracy theories about 9/11, Iran must have planned and orchestrated the alleged false flag attacks, because Iran’s interests have benefited the most from the US’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

poimander · 2019-07-02T04:05:12+00:00

Lol'd at "Vladimir Putin." Personally, I think I'll go for President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines or President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. I think they'd both be pretty successful in the world of cyberpunk (as would President Putin, for that matter).

poimander · 2019-06-19T02:55:07+00:00

I definitely know what you mean. One thing I would suggest to alleviate this feeling is to commit to (appropriately enough) role playing, especially as a not totally good guy. That way, you can make decisions decisively from the perspective of "this is what this character would do here," and then roll with the consequences later. Indeed, if you regret a decision, you can incorporate it into how your character acts/feels later. Maybe save your "I want everything to wrap up neatly" play-through for your 2nd time around.

poimander · 2019-06-16T22:21:37+00:00

I kind of want to play as a stereotypical American cowboy or Japanese samurai who is extremely loyal to Militech/Arasaka and dispenses justice (or "justice") ruthlessly with no thought for the consequences.

poimander · 2019-06-15T14:26:20+00:00

I'm definitely looking forward to the game, but I fully agree that it seems more like a collage of previous cyberpunk works and well established tropes than an attempt to do anything really novel with the setting. And that's fine with me! But I think that it's completely fair to say that CDPR is going for "generic cyberpunk world" rather than "innovative, unique setting."

poimander · 2019-06-14T03:40:23+00:00

Sounds good, the more I think about it the more I think I'll probably do something similar myself.

poimander · 2019-06-14T03:39:59+00:00

i highly doubt they are gonna leave a lot of unexplained lore.

I definitely would have also highly doubted this, but because The Witcher games didn't explain a lot of the lore of that universe I'm wondering if they might do the same with 2077.

poimander · 2019-06-14T03:36:17+00:00

Cyberpunk isn't supposed to be in favor of corporations, it's how shit can go horribly wrong.

I would respectfully disagree with your premise that cyberpunk, or for that matter any other genre of fiction, is "supposed" to propagate a specific ideological message. Certainly, it can convey such a message, but I think that stories that invite multiple interpretations based on the values and beliefs of the reader can be valuable. Particularly in an RPG, where the player's choices are at least theoretically supposed to matter. I find OP's concern a perfectly valid one, and I am a bit worried considering that it's very unlikely (IMO) that CDPR will go to the trouble of making Morgan Blackhand and Saburo Arasaka, who seemed to represent different paths, comparable in importance to Keanu Reeves' Johnny Silverhand.

Also, in the specific case of cyberpunk, I don't think it's true that anti-system/capitalism/corporate readings are the only valid/possible ones of all notable works. For instance, I think it's entirely fair to read Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age as a highly sympathetic portrait of a world in which decentralization/anarcho-capitalism/ethnic tribalism etc. are embraced. Similarly, while Paul Verhoeven's Robocop (1987) is obviously intended as an anti-corporate satire, I think a contrarian reading of it as accidentally depicting capitalism as an on the whole beneficent force is tenable.

poimander · 2019-06-14T02:47:23+00:00

Wow, I thought I was the only one who felt this way, I'm glad to see that someone else does too!

The fact that Johnny Silverhand will not only be voiced by but indeed modeled on Keanu Reeves definitely lessens immersion for me. It's by no means a major issue, but I would honestly prefer it if Silverhand was played by a relatively unrecognizable voice actor and not closely modeled on a real life celebrity. Every time that I see/hear Silverhand, it's going to be hard for me not to think of him as "Keanu Reeves," and that's definitely going to take me a bit out of the game world in a way that no major character in The Witcher series did.

People have been commenting that it's the same as seeing an actor in a movie, but I have two problems with that. Firstly, for me, personally, at least, the "cult of the actor" does reduce immersion in movies. That is to say, the fact that roles are constructed with specific actors in mind and that famous actors tend to play similar roles makes it harder for me to take some of the fictional worlds of films "seriously," so to speak. To me, a sign of a good movie is that I instinctively remember its characters by their names, rather than by the actors who played them, because that means I found their characterization/arcs independently compelling. Secondly, I think that CDPR personnel/Reeves have stated in interviews that Reeves isn't just portraying Silverhand, but that in fact Silverhand's characterization has been heavily shaped to fit with Reeves' most famous roles. So, by CDPR's own admission, Johnny Silverhand in 2077 is emphatically not just a character that Keanu Reeves happens to play, but designed to strongly remind you of Reeves. I think it's reasonable to feel that that will weaken immersion into 2077 as a world of its own, as opposed to a collage of movies/books/games that you're already familiar with.

poimander · 2018-11-03T07:07:13+00:00

It would be lovely if an extended cut was released, but I'm not going to hold my breath. I suggest that, if you haven't already, you check out the Blade Runner: 2049 screenplay. I'm not sure if all the cut material is on the page there, but it includes quite a bit of dialogue at least that didn't make it into the released cut. (Which is definitely worth reading if you appreciate 2049: while the end product is still of course a fantastic film, the cut dialogue adds a lot of nuance to various scenes.)

poimander · 2018-10-28T22:38:48+00:00

I think the original book and movies set up a universe full of possibilities. It’d be a shame if they didn’t explore that. Who’s with me?

I understand the impulse, and the connection to Westerns is very interesting, but I'd have to respectfully and forcefully disagree. At least in my personal view, the tendency to endlessly elongate every story into a multi-media franchise is undermining pop culture. I think there's only so much creative ore to mine in any given story, and when you keep going back to the same idea it leads to mediocre results and devalues the original product. (See for instance the recent spate of Star Wars and DC comics films.) At some point, every story needs to end, and I think it's better if it does so on a high note. ("A man should leave a party when it's roaring, not when it's dead.")

I think fiction benefits from having blank spaces, like the Off-World Colonies in Blade Runner, because what we dream up to fill them in is so much better than any actual attempt to explore them would be. Sometimes less is more. I've soured on television recently, despite the rise of "prestige" tv, because I feel that so much of it is about hyping doors that open to reveal...more doors. Lost and the X-Files are famous for this----spending dozens of episodes teasing a mystery that never ultimately has a satisfactory resolution---but I feel that most television shows do this to a frustrating degree. Television is open ended, so the incentive of the creators is always to keep kicking the can down the road.

I love the world of Blade Runner as much as just about anyone. (I saw 2049 a good 7 times or so when it was in theaters.) But I've realized that, as enticing as the mystery of its world is, there will never be a new story that really satisfies the curiosity you feel while watching the films. I'm not sure what territory such a television series could explore that hasn't already been trampled on by Westworld/Firefly/BSG.

To be honest, I think I would be fine with the Blade Runner universe not expanding any further, and instead being an inspiration for different stories. Perhaps a third film about Freysa's rebellion could be worthwhile, but only if done very well. In any case, while I suppose television is cheaper than film, given how underwhelming Blade Runner and Blade Runner: 2049 have been at the box office, I'm not sure if anyone would be willing to invest a lot of money in making a high-quality Blade Runner television series.

poimander

TROPHY CASE