this is a point I harp on a lot: no one thinks that they're a villain; everyone has a narrative in their own head where they are fighting for something good https://twitter.com/NoLongerBennett/status/1459533321386475524 …
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3/ No one thinks they're the bad guy. Everyone has some motive for what he does. In a conflict with one set of facts, there are [ at least ] two narratives that contextualize the facts. e.g. "This employee is committing wage theft by failing to clock out for lunch" vs
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4/ "This corporation is stealing from me. HR told me when I came on that health care was covered, but it turns out it's only covered for ME not for my dependents, and I was led to believe otherwise...and I'd already quit my other job. So they're stealing $150/mo from me >>>
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5/ ...so you're damned right I'm not going to punch out for lunch. They're stealing $150 from me, it's the least I can do to claw $30 or $40 back."
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6/ This is one of the things that's so tedious about object level politics - both narratives are often true-enough, as far as they go. e.g. pro-life vs pro-choice.
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7/ Yes, one team wants laws that protect unborn children. Yes, those laws definitionaly infringe on choices others want to make. Both narratives are coherent / true / explain the facts. I tend to trust the positive claims each team makes about their own motivations
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8/ ...and to distrust the claims they make about the motivations of the other team (almost everyone fails the Ideological Turing Test).
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9/ So, anyway, at any given time, we've got two teams with two narratives (why not three? the mathematical logic of coalition politics: 2 weak teams will always band together).
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10/ I disagree with the hard Moldbuggian stance that a 2-D alignment chart is wrong, bc "law IS good, and chaos IS evil" ... but that's largely bc I take good and evil as having real metaphysical weight, not just utilitarian ethical weight.
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11/ I do agree with a weaker version of the Moldbug claim that weak / uncertain power leads to chaos. Laws, however arbitrary, if strongly enforced, have very little direct cost (they might have lots of deadweight cost). Example:
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12/ Imagine a law that it is illegal to wear a red t-shirt, and this is enforced by a Orwellian surveillance state with hundreds of thousands of loitering armed drones. To wear a red t-shirt is to die, likely within minutes. Therefore, no one does. Therefore, no one dies.
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13/ when do the most people die from wearing red shirts? not when it's legal not when it's deeply illegal and well enforced ...but when the laws, or the enforcement of the laws, are either weak, or are in flux
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14/ the "in flux" is the one that ties this in to
#BarnLaw If we have a law on the books, and two competing tribes, one of which ignores the law (to the point that they don't realize it exists), and one of which respects the law, then red shirt deaths will not occur when >>>Show this thread -
15/ team A (don't enforce) is in power, nor will they occur when team B (death penalty) is in power, but when power is shifting between the two one day team B has 45% of the votes, the next day they have 51% ...and the war machine springs to life
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16/ now, the
#BarnLaw connection: my state and town have had the death penalty ("tear down that structure!") law on the books for years, but team A (old school townies who believe in rule of man not rule of law) has been solidly in control, so zero deaths (bc zero enforcement)Show this thread -
17/ If (when ?) the middle class rule-of-law autists are in control, everyone will know that the law applies AS WRITTEN, and it doesn't matter if you are drinking buddies with one guy on the Board of Selectmen ...however, the TRANSITION period, where the rule-of-man townies>>>
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18/ are institutionally weak but haven't faced a external / secular (long term trend of migration and gentrification) / autistic shock is EXACTLY when risk of drone-strike-the-red-shirt is at the highest Regime legitimacy is uncertain, a child says the emperor has no clothes...
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19/ ...and a public poll / warrant article / ballot question crystallizes hidden sentiment and displays the results in the open, revealing the Schelling point that has existed but been unexposed all this time. Exciting times. Sucks to be a poor SOB in a red shirt, tho >>>
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20/ ...because you were following the rules AS YOU UNDERSTOOD THEM TO EXIST (rule of man), and your internal narrative was just as legitimate as anyone else's. exeunt
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End of conversation
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