Alleged? Go look the galaxy/solar system/planet structure and everything around it. It is feudalism. It lines up with the philosophy Moldbug outlined.
> have to do with Nazis?
You should probably go actually read Moldbug so you can understand why some people describe him as being a Nazi. I'm not trying to put the burden of proof on you or anything, it's just that if you begin trying to boil down neoreaction into an HN post, is not gonna go well and will probably upset the mods.
But uh yeah, Moldbug is an authoritarian top-down feudalist that has problems with people that aren't white. This isn't like, an ad-hom or something, he kind of just out and says it.
The galaxy system does indeed seem like the weakest link of Urbit. I personally fail to see how 256 actors, even if we generously assume are all distinct, is much better than the small handful of actors who control the IP address spaces or the DNS TLDs. His assumption is that it will get more distributed over time, but I really don't buy it. He's designed centralizing vector into the system, which will attract bad actors and will only get concentrated into fewer hands with time and will weaken the intended goal of creating a censorship resistant network.
I'm not convinced this address space problem is even one that needs solving. For example, the Lightning Network built on Bitcoin appears to offer a better solution where every identity is simply a public key. Anyone can create any amount of them, no sponsorship needed, and no public keys are any more privileged than others. The system is resistant to spam because in order to convince other nodes in the network to relay information, you need to establish a payment channel by committing to some funds on the bitcoin network, which incurs a transaction fee. The number of potential public keys for secp256k1 is sufficient that for our purposes we can pretend that they're infinite, unlike Urbit IDs. Additionally, the LN has an incentive model for routing built into it, where any intermediate node offering to route a payment can take a small fee in exchange - this removes the necessity for the network to operate on altruism, and also highly encourages competition between node operators, who can be absolutely anyone, to route information. The network can become adequately distributed that no number of entities could collude to block messages as anybody can offer to route in their place - and earn from it. Additionally, nodes offering routing are really just blind actors who take a fee to pass on a message whose contents they don't know and don't know who sent, or who is receiving. Refusing to relay a message is self-harm, as it prevents you from earning the fee on it (and will most likely get you blacklisted, further preventing your ability to earn more fees.)
You say you're not a fan of throwing around the term "Nazi" lazily, but immediately in the previous sentence you suggest that you understand Nazism as a combination of "nationalism" and "socialism". Since this is a pretty common cudgel among far-right media commentators, used to disingenuously associate Nazi atrocities with left-wing politics, it's very difficult to read that in anything but bad faith. In fact this misrepresentation is so common that r/askhistorians has an entire section of their FAQ dedicated to explaining it: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/europe#wiki_...
I deleted part of comment above because it was in no way intended to begin an argument about Nazism nor associate it with anybody in particular. I'm not qualified to speak on the subject. I see the word Nazi used all too often where it really does not apply (from both left and right wing commentators), and I was merely suggesting it should not be used so liberally.
I agree that calling Nazism left-wing is a misrepresentation, and it's one that is almost always used in bad faith. However, if by "socialism" we mean "a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole", then it's fair to call fascism a combination of nationalism and socialism. As far as I understand, Mussolini started out as a socialist, but a bit later in life he rejected international socialism and instead embraced the combination of a form of socialism (in the sense given above) with nationalism. Fascism is not socialism, but it does incorporate socialist elements and was influenced by the socialist movement.
Now, if one insists that the term "socialism" be restricted to political and economic systems that do away with (or try to do away with) hierarchy then yes, fascism is not socialist, since fascism explicitly values hierarchy.
So basically, it depends on what one means by "socialism".
In any authoritarian system that assigns control of the means of production to the state, the means of production are controlled by the authority on the top, not by the community as a whole. Your attempt at justifying combining them relies on the fiction that state control is community control, and specifically that this is true in a dictatorial state. But the idea that a system that explicitly denies the vast majority of the community input or relevance in the rule is one where the community exercises control is ludicrous.
This is why you'll see pretty much every dictatorial regime that has claimed to be socialist have tried to justify their regimes by pretending to be democratic. E.g. China even today holds on to a total fiction of a multi-party political system [1] (note: I'm talking here only about the legal parties that colludes with the CPC; not about the suppressed opposition parties) including a comical "continuation" of the Kuomintang. Others have justified a claim to "democracy" by arguing systems of approval or internal party processes ensures democracy. But a fictional democracy does not grant control to the community as a whole.
That said, it is important to remember that Marx warned about reactionary forms of socialism already in the Communist Manifesto, calling out supporters of reactionary feudal systems that wanted to leverage socialist ideas to keep their people in line. The modern attempt to treat socialism as a single system rather than as a set of characteristics that can be applied to a huge range of otherwise mutually conflicting systems - including inherently regressive ones - confuses matters.
Does "socialism" ever mean "free-market capitalism"? It often seems that libertarians are on the receiving end of the "Nazi" label because they object to socialism or government intervention in markets.
It was not my intention to begin an argument, but merely suggest that we should all tone down on the "Nazi" slur as it no longer seems to carry any weight.
>Does "socialism" ever mean "free-market capitalism"?
I would say no.
>It often seems that libertarians are on the receiving end of the "Nazi" label because they object to socialism or government intervention in markets.
I think this happens mainly for three reasons. 1) Some people support socialism so furiously that they genuinely think pretty much everyone who opposes socialism is part of the same group of "reactionaries", etc. 2) Some people dislike libertarians and try to smear them by calling them Nazis. 3) A certain subset of self-identified libertarians has had, historically, and continues to have now, an involvement with populist conservatism and with right-wing regimes such as Pinochet's. There is also a subset of self-identified libertarians who promote racism, a subset who lean socially conservative, etc.
Some self-proclaimed libertarians oppose socialism so furiously that they view right-wing dictatorship as being a better option. Personally, I'd say that people like that are not libertarians at all, but they continue to self-identify as libertarians nonetheless.
> Some self-proclaimed libertarians oppose socialism so furiously that they view right-wing dictatorship as being a better option. Personally, I'd say that people like that are not libertarians at all, but they continue to self-identify as libertarians nonetheless.
Wholeheartedly agree here. Libertarianism is by essence, anti-authoritarianism. You can't be a libertarian and at the same time, want an authority to dictate the rulebook.
For me, socialism and fascism are two sides of the same coin, that Horseshoe Theory is a real phenomenon. Of course, the two sides both vehemently disagree that they are alike (which is certainly the case if you specifically consider the ethno-nationalism of the Nazi's for instance), but the overall framework of both socialism and fascism is the centralized rule of a population through a dogmatic ideology with force or threat of force for noncompliance.
There's an interesting phenomena in reverse of the "authoritarian libertarian" too, which is the "restricted speech liberal" - those self-labelling as liberals who are opposed to free speech.
> Wholeheartedly agree here. Libertarianism is by essence, anti-authoritarianism. You can't be a libertarian and at the same time, want an authority to dictate the rulebook.
Libertarianism started on the far left for exactly this reason. The term was coined by the anarcho-communist Joseph Dejacque in a letter where he criticised Proudhon, the founder of anarchism, for not going far enough.
For a century libertarianism was inherently tied to anarchism and anarcho-communism and other forms of libertarian socialism that sees private property rights as inherently in conflict with liberty (Dejaque, already in his initial criticism of Proudhon, did call out Proudhons famous "property as theft" as something he agreed with)
> but the overall framework of both socialism and fascism is the centralized rule of a population through a dogmatic ideology with force or threat of force for noncompliance.
Centralized rule of any kind is inherently in conflict with a long range of socialist ideologies. Enough so that the Bolsheviks murdered a huge amount of socialists that opposed their coup.
He thinks the enlightenment was a bad idea and wants the world to return to feudalism, taking away the rights of Serfs, Jews, etc. This isn't quite Nazism but is pretty close to the beliefs of far-right groups like the neo-Nazis.
Quoting Terry Pratchett from memory: "They thought a king would make them free."
The thing is, feudalism works out really well for the king. Works out all right for the dukes, earls, and barons. Works out OK for the knights, and less well for the peasants. Those who advocate such stuff almost certainly think that they're not going to be the peasants. (They are also almost certainly wrong. If this dream/nightmare ever comes to pass, people like Moldbug will probably be used as useful idiots and then slaughtered like livestock as soon as they don't serve the purposes of the rulers. The rulers will be people who really understand power, not people who can write online screeds well.)
I'm sure some of it is good, honestly. But I think it's especially important to go to primary sources when people are talking about politics because (on all sides!!) people will often use imprecise language to make you think that something is worse than it actually is.
Feudalism/Democracy/Socialism/Capitalism/etc. ceased to explain reality a long time ago.
Regardless of one’s ideological starting point, the complexities of the modern world will necessitate an org chart which is both very broad and very deep.
A better explanation of what we have—and will continue to have barring some cataclysm—is laid out in Burnham’s “The Managerial Revolution” and Michels’ “Iron Law of Oligarchy.”
Exactly. That's also a big part of why Mao and Stalin had such high body counts--position maintenance.
Even Hitler was not immune. There's a story in Speer's biography where he was lecturing the gauleiters for wasting materials and skilled laborers on their McCastles when the military was in dire need. After the lecture, Speer was warned by Hitler to never do this again. Speer noted that this was the first and only time he had ever seen Hitler visibly afraid and shaken. No one is indispensable.
Similar issues arose in ancien régime Europe for the same reasons (nobles of the robe).
Of course, if we bomb, starve, or plague ourselves back into the stone age, that would definitely flatten the org chart, and forms of government would regain their distinctions.
I think Yarvin's only beef is the same one held by most of our malcontents. They aren't upset because our system is evil (it is). They are upset because they aren't at the top of it.
edit: Will also add that China is perfect example of this. In the first generation, Mao starved the peasants and executed his enemies. Once the patriarch was pushed aside,
the system scaled-up and took control, and now we have a nation which is regularly held up as an example (or even a necessity!) by our own Western elites.
