It's as if the techbros tried to emulate the positive aspirations of their hippie-tech forefathers and, over the past decade, were just like "naah, forget it."
Once upon a time, we geeks truly believed that computing and telecommunications would bring us together. It's truly depressing seeing this generation of money-addled idiots set us back thousands of years using the tech we created.
There were historical precedents, like the printing press, which was hoped to bring morality and education to the masses but brought penny dreadfuls and yellow journalism along with it, and radio / television, which was hoped to bring culture and education to the masses and brought us soap operas and more yellow journalism along with it, that should have clued geeks in about what humanity would do with computing. Technology can't solve humans being human.
I still believe that. We just lost the plot. We can get it back.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/28/maga-i...
Maybe just me.
Yarvin's ideas aren't really that interesting owing to once being described as doing for words what bitcoin did for electricity. My read was they are reaction to history downstream of Marx, which was itself an anti-clerical reaction, and this "reaction to a reaction," is a hollow simulacrum that takes in productive minds. Where Yarvin fails is that his atheism is a constraint that means he has to sound everything out from scratch again. Whenever I read his stuff all I see is a philosophical game of "God is lava."
If there is any predictive power about this admin from Yarvin's ideas, I'd look for precedents in what the WEF network did with the EU/CANZUK in the background after co-opting Karl Roves "actors of history" mentality in the last decade. Change you can't see until after, ratcheting effects, exercising hard power, etc. not anti-democractic, but post-democratic, where america is healing from decades of capture and democratic failure.
I don't think, other than maybe the sentiment of restoring the legitimacy of america's elite, that Yarvin's ideas influence anyone that much. They absolutely emboldened people to question the progressive narrative machine by showing how alternatives were rich and historically deep, but the moldbug show itself is limited. Insights into Vance and this admin will come more from thinkers with popular traction like Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Sowell, and the stories of American heroes that are examples of the essential American character, and not anti-heroic critics like Yarvin.
mmastrac•9mo ago
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=unqualified+reservations
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
ZeroGravitas•9mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=moldbug
2nd last comment starts:
moldbug on May 29, 2012 [dead] | parent | context | prev | next [–] | on: Peter Thiel's Rise to Wealth and Libertarian Futur...
> I've never understood why anyone gets so hung up on their "right to vote." Why should women have the right to vote? Why should anyone have the right to vote?