A few months ago I was talking to a friend who is a fellow writer. I knew that he had about twice my number of followers on Twitter, and he told me he also had around twice my number of free Substack subscribers. But it turns out that since he paywalls most of his posts he had about ten times as many paid subscribers.
AMA Question #2: (Thought experiment) Imagine you could orchestrate a hostile take over of the institutions of the liberal international order with those that share your foreign policy worldview. How would you reform the IMF, World Bank, etc? Note: In this thought experient you can't dismantle any of these organizations, you can only harness them for the ends you choose.
You mentioned being autistic in some old post (I think). What has been your experience with that sort of thing?
Also, you are an intellectual sort of guy who doesn’t dislike numbers. Why did you drop out of HS? Do many autistic market enthusiasts drop out? Runs counter to a number of stereotypes.
What books have influenced your thinking on foreign policy, in general? What are the best nonfiction books you’ve read recently? What are your favorite fiction / non-fiction books?
Best public intellectual / blogger of the moment? Best right-wing thinker?
How long do you think thr current anti-Russia overwhelming political consensus will last? Do you think it will permanently make hawkish views more prominent? How will this impact the Taiwan calculus?
Best intellectual habits you have or try to cultivate? Best practical, everyday ones?
Are you going to write another book? Should I pirate your book? What would you say is your book’s fair value?
Apologies in advance if these sound like Tyler Cowen interview questions.
Do you think wokeness is just the late stage of the Western liberal(Enlightenement) ideology? And conservatism in America failed because it is essentially just liberalism 10 years behind?
AMA Question #4: What was the full extent of US involvement in the '14 Maidan Revolution in Ukraine? Is there any peer-reviewed scholarship on this question? Why do you think some restrainers really harp on this issue while others basically ignore it?
How important do you consider the conservative takeover of the judiciary to be? SCOTUS is currently the most conservative it has been since ideologization, no matter how you measure it, and if you make a few reasonable-sounding assumptions (no huge near-future political realignment) it is likely to continue to get more conservative since the Republican advantage in the Senate is very large and, per David Shor's demographic analysis, actually growing over time relative to the United States.
Many right-wing commentators (like Niccolo Soldo) think this is unimportant and that Western elites are basically united. Certainly it seems like rules-making agencies of the bureaucracy are quite united, and it is fair to observe that decisions like Lawrence/Obergefell/Bostock came in spite of conservative majorities, though those were narrower. On the other hand, the opinion that a court without Barrett *barely* rejected in Gundy would give the conservative court system much greater scrutiny over these rules.
How much does conservative control of the courts for the foreseeable future matter?
AMA Question #1: What would a sensible inclusive European security architecture look like? After Putin's full invasion of Ukraine is that goal now forever unattainable or just deferred in the short to mid-term?
How do you think developing countries can resist wokeness if it continues to be dominant in developed world - US and Western Europe? One argument would (wrongly) imply that because rich countries are doing that it must be a pre-requisite to reach such status.
How did you end as pro-China/China dove given that people with similar views to yourself in other areas tend to be hawkish? Not always ofc but seems to be fairly common.
You seem broadly agnostic about political systems, which is fine and fairly usual for reactionaries (such as myself), but it would be interesting to hear about some public policies you consider desirable. It seems obvious to me that you are pro-market and anti-interventionist, which is, again, fine, but bonus points if you can talk about something more esoteric than that (pet issues?)
You might need to consider second-order effects like whether having more paying subscribers incentivizes substack to promote your blog. I don't know whether this is a thing yet on substack, but it might become one. Youtube has been that way for years, and it incentivises bad behavior that trades off audience trust for advertiser eyeball-hours. Youtube also went very downhill when they switched from optimizing explicit likes to optimizing watch time (the latter incentivizes time-wasting clickbait that buries the lede, and disincentivizes efficient problem-solution videos). Optimizing for paid subscribers is probably much less bad than optimizing for watch time, because at least it indicates actual appreciation of the content.
To what extent will the public at large believe what it’s told? Yarvin seems to think that democratic legitimacy doesn’t matter much — if the elites are unified enough, people will fall into line. Is he right?
If he’s right, is there any limit to what people will believe (e.g., about transgenderism)? If he’s wrong, why do you think he’s wrong?
AMA questions : 1. What is the best paper/argument in favor of markets and against socialism ? I am pretty convinced markets are superior to planned economies because of natural experiments in Germany and Korea. Also cities in the soviet-union had terrible land allocation :
But I'd like something that even a convinced socialist could not dismiss.
2. Canada is becoming pretty damn woke. What are your thoughts on that ? Provinces in Canada don't have as much power as in the US so I'm pretty pessimistic. Also, Canada is pretty woke as it is today and younger generations are even more left wing. Do you think Canada is a lost cause ? Is it reasonable to leave ?
Questions: What, as a practical matter, can ordinary citizens and employees of corporate America, do to push back against the successor ideology? At a more abstract level, how can political power be mobilized to engage, defeat, and destroy, wokeness?
AMA Question #2: (Thought experiment) Imagine you could orchestrate a hostile take over of the institutions of the liberal international order with those that share your foreign policy worldview. How would you reform the IMF, World Bank, etc? Note: In this thought experient you can't dismantle any of these organizations, you can only harness them for the ends you choose.
You mentioned being autistic in some old post (I think). What has been your experience with that sort of thing?
Also, you are an intellectual sort of guy who doesn’t dislike numbers. Why did you drop out of HS? Do many autistic market enthusiasts drop out? Runs counter to a number of stereotypes.
What books have influenced your thinking on foreign policy, in general? What are the best nonfiction books you’ve read recently? What are your favorite fiction / non-fiction books?
Best public intellectual / blogger of the moment? Best right-wing thinker?
How long do you think thr current anti-Russia overwhelming political consensus will last? Do you think it will permanently make hawkish views more prominent? How will this impact the Taiwan calculus?
Best intellectual habits you have or try to cultivate? Best practical, everyday ones?
Are you going to write another book? Should I pirate your book? What would you say is your book’s fair value?
Apologies in advance if these sound like Tyler Cowen interview questions.
Do you think wokeness is just the late stage of the Western liberal(Enlightenement) ideology? And conservatism in America failed because it is essentially just liberalism 10 years behind?
AMA Question #4: What was the full extent of US involvement in the '14 Maidan Revolution in Ukraine? Is there any peer-reviewed scholarship on this question? Why do you think some restrainers really harp on this issue while others basically ignore it?
Do you think transgenderism has its roots in science or liberal ideology?
What are your thoughts on Curtis Yarvin/Mencius Moldbug?
How important do you consider the conservative takeover of the judiciary to be? SCOTUS is currently the most conservative it has been since ideologization, no matter how you measure it, and if you make a few reasonable-sounding assumptions (no huge near-future political realignment) it is likely to continue to get more conservative since the Republican advantage in the Senate is very large and, per David Shor's demographic analysis, actually growing over time relative to the United States.
Many right-wing commentators (like Niccolo Soldo) think this is unimportant and that Western elites are basically united. Certainly it seems like rules-making agencies of the bureaucracy are quite united, and it is fair to observe that decisions like Lawrence/Obergefell/Bostock came in spite of conservative majorities, though those were narrower. On the other hand, the opinion that a court without Barrett *barely* rejected in Gundy would give the conservative court system much greater scrutiny over these rules.
How much does conservative control of the courts for the foreseeable future matter?
AMA Question #1: What would a sensible inclusive European security architecture look like? After Putin's full invasion of Ukraine is that goal now forever unattainable or just deferred in the short to mid-term?
How do you think developing countries can resist wokeness if it continues to be dominant in developed world - US and Western Europe? One argument would (wrongly) imply that because rich countries are doing that it must be a pre-requisite to reach such status.
How did you end as pro-China/China dove given that people with similar views to yourself in other areas tend to be hawkish? Not always ofc but seems to be fairly common.
You seem broadly agnostic about political systems, which is fine and fairly usual for reactionaries (such as myself), but it would be interesting to hear about some public policies you consider desirable. It seems obvious to me that you are pro-market and anti-interventionist, which is, again, fine, but bonus points if you can talk about something more esoteric than that (pet issues?)
You might need to consider second-order effects like whether having more paying subscribers incentivizes substack to promote your blog. I don't know whether this is a thing yet on substack, but it might become one. Youtube has been that way for years, and it incentivises bad behavior that trades off audience trust for advertiser eyeball-hours. Youtube also went very downhill when they switched from optimizing explicit likes to optimizing watch time (the latter incentivizes time-wasting clickbait that buries the lede, and disincentivizes efficient problem-solution videos). Optimizing for paid subscribers is probably much less bad than optimizing for watch time, because at least it indicates actual appreciation of the content.
To what extent will the public at large believe what it’s told? Yarvin seems to think that democratic legitimacy doesn’t matter much — if the elites are unified enough, people will fall into line. Is he right?
If he’s right, is there any limit to what people will believe (e.g., about transgenderism)? If he’s wrong, why do you think he’s wrong?
AMA questions : 1. What is the best paper/argument in favor of markets and against socialism ? I am pretty convinced markets are superior to planned economies because of natural experiments in Germany and Korea. Also cities in the soviet-union had terrible land allocation :
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094119096910979.
But I'd like something that even a convinced socialist could not dismiss.
2. Canada is becoming pretty damn woke. What are your thoughts on that ? Provinces in Canada don't have as much power as in the US so I'm pretty pessimistic. Also, Canada is pretty woke as it is today and younger generations are even more left wing. Do you think Canada is a lost cause ? Is it reasonable to leave ?
You are of Palestinian descent, aren't you? Is that an important influence on your anti-US foreign policy views?
Do you think “common good constitutionalism” has any legs?
Questions: What, as a practical matter, can ordinary citizens and employees of corporate America, do to push back against the successor ideology? At a more abstract level, how can political power be mobilized to engage, defeat, and destroy, wokeness?