Category: Politics

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Community Politics

Day 871 and Collaboration in the Time of Cultural Cholera

Perhaps its a function of being an American abroad in Germany, but I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the social contract and the expectations we have for free association and collaboration.

Germany’s democratic socialism is abutting against the challenges of global market capitalism and cultural pluralism. And the strain is evident. Frankfurt is expensive and there are many competing populations from refugees to globo-homo cosmopolitans

I think only one in five people I’ve encountered appear to be native born German. It’s almost enough to make me feel like I’m in America. Which is to say I see the in-group and out-group competition clearly.

Different expectations for a civic polity can range wildly depending on the goal. We enable everything from humanity wide medical breakthroughs to individual physical health through incentives both individual and collective. And yes because I’m American I notice shit like who pays for parks and recreation. I also notice soda taxes. Choices are all around us and the incentives make it look like no choice at all.

Humans live at varying degrees of abstraction. Our capacity to go from whole to parts, and parts to whole, depends on education, temperament, intellect, emotional capacity and preferences.

And that diversity of views is what makes it so hard for us to infer what “chunk” of reality our fellow humans see. No wonder we struggle with collaboration as a species. Your fellow man is as sensitive to elite semiotics as they are to casual racism.

Where our new living history takes us is going to depend a lot on how we design incentives for collaboration that provides benefits to participants that are transparent. Otherwise I’d be strapping in for more civilizational struggles.

My aspirations include us finding ways to collaborate across much wider destinies with as much freedom for all can be managed. I’m hoping AI and crypto go hand in hand. High trust and no-trust are our only options at this scale. But like any reformation it threatens the current powers and worldviews.

Categories
Culture Politics Reading

Day 869 and Novelty

When I was a university student at Chicago we went through a two year core cannon which was mostly meant as a Great Books exercise. I’ve still got a dozen rainbow colored books dubbed the “Western Civilization” readers. I treasure them.

My professor was a scholar named Katy Weintraub. She was the better half of the beloved Professor Karl Weintraub. The classes were famous for good reason. I’ll forever be grateful for having been taught the western cannon by someone as capable as her.

One lesson that has stuck with me is the dangers inherent in the human urge for newness. She brought up the insidious, cumulative effects of novelty nearly every lesson.

History was driven by “newness” and its consequences. Each new historical moment was an opportunity to be reminded how fraught with the peril novel ideas and changing cultural mores could be. Death, war, famine, and conquest lurked behind an original idea.

Every rebellion, reformation, and new republic started with some asshole sharing a bright idea. And it tended to get you killed, even if your particular form of novelty got widely adopted down the road. See Christianity, various flavors of democracy, the printing press, and the Enlightenment to name a few.

The “best” part of modernity appears to be that everyone from yours truly to Donald Trump can constantly float novelty trial balloons from the comfort of their own toilet. Best and worst are doing a Janus double duty of meaning here.

Professor Weintraub might remind us that all forms of novelty are dangerous. New ideas represent change. And change is destabilizing even if we later recognize those changes as positive.

I’m certainly feeling the destabilizing effects of having to be alive during living history these days. I bet you are too. Turns out we don’t live outside of history at all. Maybe I finally understand why novelty represented such a danger in Professor Weintraub’s mind. Change has been, historically speaking, pretty hard on those living through it.

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Community Politics

Day 838 and Wanting

I am no longer interested in living by standards I didn’t set for preferences I don’t have.

Me on Twitter 😑

A lot of what Americans took for granted about the world got a hard dose of cynical reality over the last few years. But the upside of the pandemic was the reckoning it forced on all of it. I know I walked away from those years. changed.

I’d begun my own personal journey into the existential abyss earlier as I was faced with personal health crisis before the global one. And I’m glad I had a head start. It isn’t easy making hard choices.

I’ve learned to prioritize what matters to me. I have resource constraints and it has breed in me innovation and fortitude. I’m a whiney cunt about it too. Because I simply don’t see why I need to live my life for someone else’s preferences, especially if I don’t share them. I can chose to prioritize my life and my values. And I’m free to live that way too.

America as an ideal is nobler than our reality. But as a civilizational ideal we’ve set a society where we value the freedom to live as we chose. Maybe you don’t like my choices but if I’m not harming anyone live and let live.

I want to keep civilization. I think it’s good. I want no Hobbesian war of all against all. So let’s find a way to maintain tolerance and live and let live. Weirdos like me aren’t hurting anybody. And neither should you. Authoritarians please find succor elsewhere.

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Politics

Day 811 and Hierarchy

I came across an interesting bit of reading on the relative stability of hierarchies of violence today. It’s a tidbit on a Substack so epistemic status is that I learned something and I’m thinking a lot about trust as we live through various crisis points in real time on networked media.

The article that starts with prison gangs and the weight of violent action on bosses and gets deep on hierarchical stability and selection pressures. I really do recommend the reading as it gets into Scottish kings, American federal bureaucracy, and military service academies.

I’m working on improving my theory of organizational structure because somehow I am one of the louder “thinks in public” about corporate governance and decentralized autonomous organization. It’s a bit of an accident as I am just very interested in how collectives organize resources at different scales.

Some of investing thesis surrounds a nexus of how we organize decentralized power when centralized powers wish us your in-group to be illegal or killed. It’s a salient question for all of us in an age of institutional failure and I’m keen to learn more about what works in the most adverse situations.

Skarbek might call this market competition for governance, an Italian futurist might say “War is the hygiene of the world”, a musician might say a rolling stone gathers no moss, a survivalist that the quickest stream is the freshest…But the phenomenon remains. the devil reigns in hell… because where else are you going to go

I’m a doomer but only because I’m keen to head off going to hell. I’d like to avoid us having to return to a Hobbesian war of all against all just because we’ve gotten a little tired of liberalism because it allows for out-groups to live and let live. So putting it out there that functional systems can be stable and maybe stability isn’t our only goal.

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Politics Preparedness

Day 808 and Left Eye

I’m literally sick to my stomach. I’ve got a twitch in my left eye. We’ve got dozens of competing factions in a massive narrative war online gunning for total social collapse and I’ve got multiple actual real live friends I care about deeply who think that THIS IS IT. Lemmings off a cliff would not be too far off as a metaphor.

There are multiple state, corporate, private entities working on a narrative collapse. Every single one of us needs to push back and say no. My only advice is to simply ignore them if you have already done basic preparations for your own life. If you haven’t it’s probably too late to do much more than treat this like a snowstorm.

Maybe Trump gets arrested. Maybe the money printer goes brrr. But you should assess your own risks as a responsible adult. Get out cash, buy some bottled water and get groceries for the week and keep calm. If it is indeed times for guns and butter the price of Bitcoin won’t matter.

I know I committed to a daily discipline of writing and I am doing it but I want to get off the internet and sleep for a thousand years. I’ll never get any work done or maintain my health and sanity if I don’t. So I am writing this and going to go about my life. You should too. And please nobody flee to El Salvador. I’ll write again tomorrow but if I’m quiet it’s because I am refusing to add any more fuel to this narrative fire.

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Chronic Disease Internet Culture Media Politics

Day 803 and Killing Strangers

I’ve been one of those types that absolutely has no problem taking a shot at the Christo-fascists dorks at CPAC mincing words about eradicating trans people from public life. Fuck you, you fucking fucks, you absolutely would be fine if state sanctioned violence eliminated trans people. It’s not you being metaphorical or cute or whatever justification you used. It’s killing strangers.

I wasn’t any more amused when folks decided it was alright to discuss a cost benefit analysis of keeping the disabled alive within the context of state benefits. No thanks I am not interested in a mercy killing because I’m expensive. Oh it’s a mercy killing for children? Yeah no still good thanks. Fuck you Canada. Medicare for all sounds good up until you decide to put me on palliative care via the metaphorical ice flow of opioid addiction.

So you might imagine I am equally sensitive about someone making jokes about euthanizing people who pays their bills by investing in early stage startups. Oh it was just a joke about how Keynes didn’t like the rentier class? Hilarious.

I am just rolling on the ground laughing at your erudition. Yes, benefits of a classical education. Har har. It’s so much smarter than the CPAC guy who wants to kill trans women. Definitely smarter than those segueing to mercy kill sick Canadian children. Oh wait, no it’s fucking not you sick fucks. Stop killing strangers in your rhetoric for shock value and clicks.

Perhaps I could interest the Jacobin audience members in a trip back to the Opium Wars, funded by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s grandfather, just so we understand the gruesome reality that the New Dealers saw first hand in their own family trauma. Or if we are pluming the depths of the historical animosity towards finance and it’s intense hypocrisy, I’ll send you back with a copy of my favorite conspiracy text Creature from Jekyll Island. Then we can have a nice big chuckle about blood libel if you make it back.

I cannot believe that I am writing about any of this social media blood lust but perhaps we could all listen to Marilyn Manson’s Killing Strangers together and decide that there is no clever or enjoyable way to advocate for the killing of strangers. That it’s not cute to joke about killing people you don’t know just to further your political or economic aims. I’ll try to stop joking about how it’s ok to punch Nazis.

I am baffled that I keep ending up in groups that become the target of the genocide curious. I know being a hysterical disabled white bitch is a pretty commonplace “kill them all fetish” and smarter minds than me can untangle how all roads lead to disability. Witches and bitches.

But I’m getting unsettled seeing how it piles up and I keep getting lined up in other people’s sights. I’m married to a Jewish man. I’ve got queer family members. And yes I make a living investing capital (that I raised from weirdos) into other weirdos. Don’t worry my AUM is small enough I can’t live off management fees. Ironically because I’ve got medical bills because I’m disabled.

If you don’t know what that means and you still want to kill m perhaps it’s you that is the psychopath. Just a thought. Not that psychopaths are bad it’s just that I’m worried you will act on it. It’s not always clear if we are the baddies but advocating for blanket euthanasia is probably a helpful marker. Just like as a baseline for civilizational norms.

Either way, I’m not letting any of you kill my queer disabled Jewish rentier bourgeois family members. I don’t care if you a Jacobin or a CPAC member or a pissed off narco-trafficker running Fentyl out of Toronto. If you want to kill me because I’m a stranger and you don’t want to hurt the ones that you love. Ok. But I’ve got no intentions of making it easy for you.

Categories
Finance Politics

Day 802 and Vengeance

You can’t stare into the abyss without letting it stare back at you. And I did a little too much abyssal observation over the course of the weekend. I feel overwhelmed with grief. I saw in the abyss a roiling cauldron of rage and hate and fear and despair. And I saw my own grief reflected back. The boiling blood that demands punishment flooded the news.

I feel grief for the inner child who lived through the turmoil of past market dislocations. I feel grief for my father who suffered through the bankruptcy of 2001. I feel grief for my mother whose teacher’s pension was decimated in 2008. I feel all the pain and sadness and anger and unfairness. I feel it all in my own family.

He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.

Moby Dick

I see the desire for vengeance. I feel it myself. I never saw any kind of justice for my father or my mother. My inner child will never know that peace. And I will have to be an adult and accept the disappointment of a world where far too many little children suffer for sins of their fathers. Many of us pick them up and carry them on. The churn is largely amoral and uncaring.

I see how satisfying it must be to give in to Ahab’s roiling anger. I saw many hot heart shells bursting on the time line over the weekend. A few were directed at me. I can’t be sure that my own didn’t explode on innocents. We are all culpable in ways big and small.

I am doing what I can to dust myself off and carry on because work must be done. We’ve not yet finished building a better future. We’ve barely even built the outlines for a tolerably decent present. I pray it’s too soon for us to find out how hot our hate burns.

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Politics

Day 801 and Not Today

It’s been a rocky few days watching the crisis unfolding around Silicon Valley Bank and what would happen to its depositors. We’ve received our answer.

After receiving a recommendation from the boards of the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, and consulting with the President, Secretary Yellen approved actions enabling the FDIC to complete its resolution of Silicon Valley Bank, Santa Clara, California, in a manner that fully protects all depositors. Depositors will have access to all of their money starting Monday, March 13. No losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayer.

So that’s been a wild and scary ride and I guess we are kicking the can down the road. But I wasn’t emotionally prepared for a contagion on Monday.

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Finance Politics Preparedness

Day 800 and Small Potatoes

It’s nice when a round number crops up in my daily journey of writing every single day. It’s even better when it’s colliding with the wider narratives of humans. If you aren’t paying attention to the news, Silicon Valley bank had a run on Thursday and was taken over by FDIC on Friday. Now the powers that be decide our fates. On day 800 we wait to see if anything has changed about capitalism.

I’m small potatoes so I’m scrambling for survival as much as anyone. But I’ve got a reasonably good head on me and I’ve seen this movie before. Literally. I watched Margin Call a dozen times this year. My family also went bankrupt in the 2001 crash and I was working in startup land during the 2008 crash. So this isn’t exactly my first ride on the roller coaster. I still get sick to my stomach though.

I think we are all about to have a significant conversation in America about trust and who is looking out for whom. I have my theories on how it plays out and over what time horizon. Very few of those scenarios and involves actually letting the american economy implode. But some heads will need to roll it’s just going to depend on the fates.

I really don’t feel like writing through some of this as it’s both personally traumatic because I’m a human being but also because I don’t know where this lands any more than you do. A lot depends on who blinks and who we want to scapegoat and how much we want to tolerate the unpleasant realities of who matters most. Not to be dramatic but every empire rests on a pile of skulls. It’s the degree to which this is literally true that changes over the years.

Categories
Politics Preparedness Startups

Day 799 and Black Friday

I suppose it’s now quite clear why I felt like I was driving through a snowblind yesterday. For someone who spent the year telling everyone to watch Margin Call you’d think I’d be pretty prepared for the inevitability of pricing affecting risk.

I am, of course, discussing the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. We’d discussed in our household scenario planning around what would happen if we saw banks forced to compete on better interest rates. Perhaps the same old story of mis-pricing your risk would play out. Discussions of contingency planning and multiple accounts and insurance policies both personal and professional. I really didn’t expect for any of the emergency use cases to manifest as to even contemplate it is simply too horrifying.

But horrible things happen every day and I am skeptical of my capacity to judge my own need for a comfort in a situation in which there is none to be found. I do however believe that in the wake of the Great Recession we’ve come to believe that money always gets bailed out. And why would Janet Yellen (of all people) hang out the singular shining star industry that keeps the lights on in the hollowed out shell of post-industrial American capitalism.

That said humans have been known to do spitefully stupid things that hurt themselves so long as it also hurts someone they dislike. Cut off your nose to spite your face. I don’t know if the drive for vengeance is strong enough for some populist reactionary spill over. I’d want to at least offer up a scapegoat and I’ll be curious to see who has this fate.

This seems like the crumbles to me. The logic of the Jankening is that we cannot always predict the downstream effects because this is a complex system. All I know is that to let a large chunk of the wider technology ecosystem fail would be catastrophic.

However, we have now effectively put in the minds of a new generation that banks do stupidly silly things occasionally (Lmao) and you have to be careful who you trust with risk. Everyone is running to the big banks and that will have its own consequences. I am curious to see what the downstream consequences will be.

Be careful who you trust, use some common sense and don’t be overly sure of the value of powerful people telling you want to think. They might not have your best interest at heart.