Doctor Science on Conspiracy
Highly recommended. Go read.
Jason Kuznicki
Jason Kuznicki is a research fellow at the Cato Institute and contributor of Cato Unbound. He's on twitter as JasonKuznicki. His interests include political theory and history.
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on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25
on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25
on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25
The message I take from all this is that in the information age the State can’t operate in darkness — the State will have to openly apply authoritarian control, or it will slowly lose power and control will transition to the private sector. I’m working for the latter.Report
Indeed. Assange understood as an anarchist sounds a lot like he’s doing the work proposed by Patri Friedman — to change how the state behaves, change its incentives. Friedman would do it by creating competing entities, which is expensive and impractical. Assange would do it by making certain behaviors relatively more costly. I don’t know whether his strategy will win, but I’m enjoying the heck out of the fight.Report
You know, Mike, for all we wrangle around here, this statement:
“It will slowly lose power and control will transition to the private sector. I’m working for the latter.”
Is something I can get behind.Report
But then, you’re assuming that openly authoritarian control would be reviled and cause rebellion. You’re not taking into account the possibility that nobody gives a shit because their three-meals-a-day-and-Monday-Night-Football aren’t threatened.
And you’re assuming that the State cares what people think. Some Soviet dissident was quoted as saying “we decided that we would just denounce everyone, everyone we could think of, whether they were actually traitors or not, whether we actually had evidence or not. Surely, we thought, the State would not murder or imprison thousands of people with neither cause nor due process. We were wrong.”Report
place a comma behind powerReport