The most direct way to carry this discussion forwards is digression. That’s what the history of capitalism suggests, and much else does, besides.

To begin with uncontroversial basics, in a sophisticated financialized economy, debt and savings are complementary concepts, creditors match debtors, assets match liabilities. At a more basic level of economic activity and analysis, however, this symmetry break down. At the most fundamental level, saving is simply deferred consumption, which — even primordially — divides into two distinct forms.

When production is not immediately consumed, it can be hoarded, which is to say, conserved for future consumption. Stored food is the most obvious example. In principle, an economy of almost open-ended financial sophistication could be built upon this pillar alone. A grain surplus might be lent out for immediate consumption by another party, creating a creditor-debtor relation, and the opportunity for financial instruments to arise. Excess production, at one node in the social network, could be translated into a monetary hoard, or some type of ‘paper’ financial asset (producing a circulating liability). The patent anachronism involved in this abstract economic model, which combines primitive production with ‘advanced’ social relations (of an implicitly liberal type) is reason enough to suspend it at this point.

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Trolls are funny, so long as they’re ruthlessly eliminated.

Firstly, they seem to be shocked and appalled to find that neoreactionary blogs are unconstrained by the masochistic principles of ultra-liberal comments policy.

Secondly, they totally miss the way relevant incentives line up, especially right now, given the debates unfolding about our own micro-cultural dysgenics. Comments are not any kind of asset to be welcomed with gratitude, unless they’re intelligent, appropriately directed, and reasonably civil. Otherwise, they’re just pollution. Why on earth — in an environment cross-cut by discussions about keeping well-meaning, polite-but-dim commentary at bay — would anybody expect the door to be held open to hostile snarls, snarky one-liners, insults, and disposable trash-talk?

Outside in has benefited immensely from some of the most brilliant commentary on the web. It takes very seriously the warning — most insistently from Vladimir — that the rational expectation is for entropy, so that high-quality discussion cannot at all be taken for granted. In consequence, the private army here is simply itching to string up a few random commentators as a sacrifice to Malthus. And then some graffiti-clad, obnoxious drunk, drooling troll stumbles it …