A Decentralization Mechanism

http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/article/752/radical-manufacturing

They can already print guns with these tools--the Syrian insurgents could use a few. The legal obstacles are significant, though probably hard to enforce, as with other forms of digital piracy. Also, the right materials to produce goods remain necessary and can be a major part of the cost. Environmentally, over-enthusiastic home manufacturers could be a problem.

The last bit about the "replicating rapid prototyper" has particular potential.

The nanotech promoters have been speculating for decades (starting with Feynman back in 59') about nanomachines that can create new molecules and chemicals and replicate themselves as well. This concept is much further off from realization, however, and progress has been extremely slow except for systems using biological molecules like DNA.

Rethinking Conservatism

The problem with conservatism in America is that it always loses. It was losing before the land was even settled. The Puritans were the leftists of their time, too leftist to remain in the most leftist nation in the world, and America has adopted the spirit of the Puritans to guide its political and social development. As Orwell made clear, the end game of leftism is the abolition of memory, the imprisonment of the mind, the coercive imposition of equal conditions of body and mind for all people--in other words, the most absolute tyranny ever conceived--but never thus far fully implemented.The Soviet Union was merely a primitive and premature attempt in this direction. Our elites envision a purer achievement. They are more clever and, technologically, much better equipped to pursue their end. Chinese elites posit a similar goal in the long run, though their wonderful new infatuation with Leninist capitalism has temporarily diverted their attention. The world lies at the feet of this double hegemony.

The following website offers a summary of the ideas of Mencius Moldbug, who has an unconventional notion of how conservatives (renamed reactionaries to escape the taint of centuries of retreat) may finally start winning in America (and by extension throughout the American imperium) and revive American fortunes and save us from the usual fate of empires. Moldbug is samizdat for the 21st century. Singapore (surprisingly little emulated) is probably the closest realized approach to this conception of government:

http://laurentia.jfbs.net/index.php?showtopic=69

 

My two main issues with these ideas:

1. Classical international law may not be possible for much longer given the continuing spread of WMDs to smaller and smaller entities. This technological fait accompli, provided that it proceeds apace into disseminated bio- and nanoweapons capabilities, would create conditions for either anarchy or a single global state. This is because deterrence does not work for these types of weapons. This would be sufficient to undo the Moldbug plan.

2. The other issue is the risk that some states will be commandeered by psychopaths who, moved more by passion than profit, visit grievous harms upon their people or decide to predate upon neighboring states. However, reactionary arrangements do not create this risk. They suffer the lesser flaw of not necessarily eradicating it. The risk of non-reactionary arrangments going psycho is sufficiently clear from history: any form of government yet tried faces this risk to one degree or another. The reactionary neocameralist form ought to incur a lower risk than most, perhaps lower than any, assuming it is attempted in a civilized nation. Even with global implementation of neocameralist regimes, the requirement of an international balance of power would remain in effect (at least until the problems associated with my first issue transcend known contingencies).

If you're interested in readings from the source, the collected works of Moldbug, as generously and most needfully reorganized by an acolyte:

http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/

 

I'm working my way through--verbose stuff, but with compensations in cleverness and humor.

Matrix Musings

http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/article/522/statistical-mentality

I'm too much of an agnostic to buy into this bit, since we do not know the number of simulations or the number of original histories:

Is ‘this’ history or its simulation? More precisely: is ‘this’ a contemporary biological (brain-based) simulation, or a reconstructed, artificial memory, run on a technological substrate ‘in the future’? That is a question without classical solution, Moravec argues. It can only be approached, rigorously, with statistics, and since the number of fine-grained simulated histories (unknown but probably vast), overwhelmingly exceeds the number of actual or original histories (for the sake of this argument, one), then the probabilistic calculus points unswervingly towards a definite conclusion: we can be near-certain that we are inhabitants of a simulation run by artificial (or post-biological) intelligences at some point in ‘our future’. At least – since many alternatives present themselves – we can be extremely confident, on grounds of statistical ontology, that our existence is non-original (if not historical reconstruction, it might be a game or fiction).

An Ever Bigger Beast

The government is eating the economy. Notice, though, that people have not woken up yet. We will have to hit the wall first. For now, we're just borrowing to solve our problems. Massive tax increases are the wall, and they can only be delayed for so long. I expect the political atmosphere will then become decidedly ugly, uglier even than today because the reality of the situation will by uglier. How this may interplay with the demographic shift toward the Democrats will be interesting.
Eventually, China will stop funding us. Already their funding runs at the minimum level they calculate will prevent a crisis in our economy (and, by extension, in their export trade). There isn't another comparable source of funding. There isn't likely to be. That means interest rates on government debt will go up, making the fiscal situation even less sustainable. Also, the baby boomers are retiring into a socialist morass of vast handouts and bureaucratic entanglements. The population is Mexicanizing. Given these countercurrents, it will be a major challenge to increase productivity at a sufficient rate to maintain current median family income levels--which have not increased in 40 years, except for whatever improvements medicine has provided.

Socialism by Other Means

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/09/money-market-mutual-funds

This is the "republican" version of socialism, otherwise known as corporate welfare. At this point, the entire financial system has a federal backstop, so that financiers get all the profits and taxpayers all the losses--not only flagrantly corrupt, but massively inefficient resource allocation to ensure poor economic growth in perpetuity. That is the nature of socialist economies: corruption plus inefficiency.