I Am An Epistemic Liberal.

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I Am An Epistemic Liberal

I have been pondering the meaning of my life for the last few years a lot, given having gone through some tough personal bouts. One of the…

Re-reading parts of The Sovereign Individual for the critique I'm writing about Davidson and Rees-Mogg's arguments, and the thing that really stands out at me -- and I think this is also a problem that the hyperbitcoinization crowd suffers from -- is this almost religious belief in technological determinism, as the way to predict the future. Technology is a powerful driver of culture, and in some respects can just be considers part of culture, so it goes without saying that technology helps shape and influence society. I'd never argue against a thing. But I would generally argue against any thinking that views culture and politics as *downstream* of technology. It's a complex interplay between human nature, individual and group differences, economic conditions, political climate, etc. These things interact with each other. Technology doesn't just drive all the others towards some deterministic end. I think that's actually silly!

I’m clearly going to have to take on the Sovereign Individual in my next Medium post. Too many people seem to think it’s a convincing preemptive counterpoint to everything I’m saying. Naturally, I think this is nonsense and I intend to argue why.

I've been making these arguments in fragments across social media. I figured it needed a more long-form take. https://medium.com/@mike.brock/the-libertarian-to-fascist-pipeline-30558ce03c92

The liberals thought we did a pretty good job at fascist containment. But the fascist laid low and found weaknesses. It always knew if it was going to take down liberalism, it was going to be from the inside. So it buried itself in its institutions, and started looking for weaknesses. When the time was just right, the fascists surrounded both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party (and yes, this is very much an America-centric conversation), and out popped populists on the left, and populists on the right. The 2008 Financial Crisis was the moment they waited for. This is where all the famous “libertarians” line Rockwell, and Block and Hoppe, send out their troops to seize the Republican Party. They knew what they had to do. Goebbels had it all written down for them. He passed on the fascists knowledge of how to weaponize the human spirit against itself. So it sought to establish the media infrastructure that would ultimately become the replacement media, having fully discredited the establishment, elevate a fool like Donald Trump, who we can control, with his stupid narcissism. But we’ve made the masses just so mad enough at the elites, and fueled this culture war, so expertly to bring us to this moment … that in your anger, which they so expertly controlled, as their father Goebbels intended of you, that you will hand control of your precious stupid little liberal institutions over to us. And our friends Putin, and Orban are waiting for us guys. “Let’s put these liberal fuckers down for good. We just need to get rid of thjs Trump guy, right after he blows this whole constitution thing up.” Then they’ll figure out what to do with Beijing and their Eastern totalitarianism, which they think is way less sexy than their paeanistic stuff. So they’ll fight that out later.