tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post236851002350058684..comments2024-03-21T03:55:51.565-07:00Comments on Omniorthogonal: Wingnut of the week -- Spenglermtravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-42259958199151409222013-10-23T08:37:16.722-07:002013-10-23T08:37:16.722-07:00I'm not going to beat you up over the geek thi...I'm not going to beat you up over the geek thing, its a great post and I learned a lot from it. But I will say that certain people have a tendency to get lonely in one tight community and seek comfort in the arms of another. These people will fall from one totalizing, communitarian experience to another because all they care about is the warm embrace and they are seeking something--more followership or more leadership--which they don't find in the first group. Sometimes people want to be embraced by a higher authority, sometimes they want to feel like they might rise to the top in a new community. Whatever: its not the ideas per se that attract them its their role in the dissemination of those ideas and their ability to feel comfortable in the community.<br /><br />The LaRouchies, like the Moonies, are damaged people who get off on feeling like outsiders and handing out literature to people who reject them over and over. Because something in the communal experience of interacting with other members of the cult is soothing to them.aimaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03956073425680585780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-74078017286752267652009-07-03T21:40:44.680-07:002009-07-03T21:40:44.680-07:00Oh, sweet! The latest version of the Larouche con...Oh, sweet! <a href="http://highmodernism.blogspot.com/2009/04/larouchian-madness.html" rel="nofollow">The latest version of the Larouche conspiracy graph</a> includes the MIT Media Lab, where I did my graduate work. And at least three people that I've actually met.mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-75040930641917666322009-07-03T12:09:48.821-07:002009-07-03T12:09:48.821-07:00You're dangerously close to no-true-Scotsman t...<i>You're dangerously close to no-true-Scotsman territory.</i><br /><br />? I'm not make any claims about geeks and libertarians in general, just about my own experience.<br /><br />What you are calling "civil society" is exactly the sort of vague thing that left-anarchists thought could replace both the state and capitalist enterprise (which are viewed as more or less different aspect of the same thing). Nobody is really opposed to it. The argument between Raymond and me was about the utility of market mechanisms as a substitute for government, and he ended up helping subvert the market for software and other intellectual works.mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-37985224488686473122009-07-01T12:05:06.302-07:002009-07-01T12:05:06.302-07:00To describe Larouche-ism as a 'gnostic cult...To describe Larouche-ism as a 'gnostic cult' is to give it more credit than it deserves. It is too incoherent to be properly gnostic, either in the original sense of classical antiquity, or in the political sense of the term as employed by Eric Voegelin.<br /><br />TGGP's point about civil society and its benefits as perceived by libertarians seems quite correct to me. Albert Jay Nock was a fan of civil society, which exerted 'social power' by means of moral suasion, as opposed to (and in conflict with) 'state power' imposed by physical force (or at least the threat thereof). Some libertarians seem to advocate complete autonomy of the individual, but others, like Nock, believe rather in the separation of civil society and the state.Michaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-3022154385199260872009-07-01T11:04:31.323-07:002009-07-01T11:04:31.323-07:00You're dangerously close to no-true-Scotsman t...You're dangerously close to no-true-Scotsman territory. I'd say libertarians are overrepresented among computer geeks relative to the general population, so merely being a computer geek hardly grants immunity.<br /><br />I don't think right-libertarians have any problem with civil society. I am personally <a href="http://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/there-but-for-the-grace-of-god/" rel="nofollow">skeptical</a> of the extent to which it can replace profit-and-loss, but I still like many of the goodies I get out of it.TGGPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11017651009634767649noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-49551469343114862692009-06-30T21:50:47.472-07:002009-06-30T21:50:47.472-07:00Thanks for the additional background on Spengler. ...Thanks for the additional background on Spengler. The more I read of him, the less impressed I am. His stuff on Iran is standard neocon hysteria. Daniel Larison is about the only voice on the right who doesn't seem either a liar or insane or both (but without the insanity he can't win my award).<br /><br />I suppose a lot of computer geeks are libertarians, but not the best ones who (in my day anyway) congregated around government-funded research labs and had the sense to know who was funding the future. This Internet thing you are using? Brought to you by the cream of the military-industrial-academic complex, with industry playing a distinctly minor role.<br /><br />For awhile in the late 80s I had a running debate going with Eric Raymond on an anarchism mailing list (me being a left-anarchist, him being the usual anarchocapitalist blowhard). Raymond later become an open-source <br />guru, so he essentially wound up being a leader of a very successful movement towards socialized production, although he probably wouldn't see it that way.mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-89059023084808941572009-06-30T20:10:03.309-07:002009-06-30T20:10:03.309-07:00I have never found anything valuable in Spengler. ...I have never found anything valuable in Spengler. He's an out-and-out <a href="http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2009/05/spenglers-game.php" rel="nofollow">bullshitter</a> who doesn't know what he's talking about but pulls the wool over the eyes of morons because he's more cultured.<br /><br /><i>As a math and computer geek I looked elsewhere for that stuff, and so I never expected politics to conform to a neat conceptual system, so never felt the need to shift from one extreme to another.</i><br />Uh, without computer geeks where would libertarianism be? Hayek seemed to think mathematicians & engineers were the most prone to the "fatal conceit" of thinking society could fit in a neat conceptual system. Like <a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2006/02/from_the_quaint.html" rel="nofollow">Caplan</a>, I think he was off.TGGPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11017651009634767649noreply@blogger.com