Chaos Patch (#53)
(Open thread + links)
Universalism can really mess you up (closely related). Celebrating intersectionality. The case for moralizing gods. On the separation of property from violence. Hurlock has had enough? SoBL searches for his spot. Alrenous trawls himself. Yuray on Nrx. Against usury. Google’s Left Singularity. Comfort kills. Peak peace? The chain of being. Meta–rounds.
“As a political system, modern bureaucratic democracy exists to suppress volatility, which is to say to suppress the flow of accurate information about real conditions in society, which must come through dynamism and variation.”
When depressions last cured themselves. The distributism debate. The golden rule.
A full 20% of Americans don’t even think there’s going to be an apocalypse.
Propertarian convergence continues. Will the Anglosphere eat Europe?
Churchill’s dark side. Racistest of them all. White-on-black violence. Why conservatives are scared. Millennials aren’t cooperating with the narrative. The Hitler brand.
Designer babies (and see this). PIE kinship. Pinker exposed. No awkward questions please.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/11465481/Global-finance-faces-9-trillion-stress-test-as-dollar-soars.html
Someone brought up the idea that ‘Central Bankers’ might be right after all and not doing the wrong thing.
But apparently QE not only created money out of thin air, but the low rates also contributed to the developing world taking on a lot of loans.
So?
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Kgaard Reply:
March 15th, 2015 at 1:59 pm
Of course the central bankers were right. Neoreaction was wrong on this.
Neoreaction’s intuition that a floating currency is itself a suboptimal thing is, itself, correct and laudable. But it doesn’t follow from there that the right course of action is to impose hard money on the world. The better path is to keep the existing monetary architecture — and then add things like bitcoin or gold-linked contracts for those who want them.
By the way … while we’re on the subject of money … I have to say I find myself thinking EVERY DAY about that Ourobouros essay that Hurlock linked to last year. The key line was the owner of the means of production is not worried that his profit margin will go down. No, he’s worried that he will starve.” THAT is exactly right. Capitalism is inherently WILDLY unstable, a fact which ranks high among the justifications for soft money.
That instability leads to various psychic ills among the global populace. And on that I want to link to some of my INFJ and INFP gurus but more on that later …
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Orthodox Laissez-fairist Reply:
March 15th, 2015 at 5:35 pm
Nonsense, economic cycles were much less severe during era of hard money, than they are now.
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grey enlightenment Reply:
March 15th, 2015 at 5:59 pm
Going back to the past 150 years, there wee many more crisis and panics before the establishment of the fed than after. There were 6 major financial panics in the 1800’s and early 1900’s (Panic of 1837, 1819, 1907 ,1893 , 1873, 1896 ), versus just two in the last 100 or so years (1929, 2008). Furthermore, recessions and bear markets are increasingly infrequent and brief, and bull markets and expansions are increasingly prolonged. http://www.theresearchpedia.com/sites/default/files/finance/Economic,P20recession.jpg.pagespeed.ce.hMwLSqosF0.jpg
There were 11 recessions between 1930 to 1980 (50 years) and just three in the past 35 years. The 2001 recession was extremely mild, while the recessions pre-1981 were comparatively bad.
Orthodox Laissez-fairist Reply:
March 15th, 2015 at 6:11 pm
http://www.libertyclassroom.com/panics/
Hurlock Reply:
March 15th, 2015 at 7:54 pm
Kgaard is our pet progressive, have fun with him, but don’t take it too seriously.
Andrea Reply:
March 15th, 2015 at 11:14 pm
Yo, grey enlightenment, you sure about that dawg? cntl + f Banking Panics http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/WorkingPaper-2.pdf
Kgaard Reply:
March 16th, 2015 at 2:39 am
How is your portfolio doing there, Hurlock?
[…] Source: Outside In […]
Posted on March 15th, 2015 at 1:56 pm | QuoteAnother Look at Moral Foundations Theory: Do Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation Explain Liberal-Conservative Differences in “Moral” Intuitions?, Kugler, Jost, Noorbaloochi, 20014 (pdf)
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Scharlach Reply:
March 15th, 2015 at 8:11 pm
The name of the journal is “Social Justice Research.” I point this out without comment.
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SanguineEmpiricist Reply:
March 15th, 2015 at 8:46 pm
Btw this is why the majority of NRx discussions do not make sense because we cannot tell immediately which part of the evolutionary moral spectrum people perceive. I’ve slowly been trying to work out who perceives what, but this is a fundamental dividing point.
Look through all of Haidt’s published papers for this.
Scharlach is incorrect this is standard evmorality it seems
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Conservatives think those who disagree are wrong. Liberals think those who disagree are evil. Reactionaries think those who disagree are irrelevant, it’s not like we’re going to give them a say anyway.
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Lord Auch Reply:
March 15th, 2015 at 5:06 pm
The click bait of Pinker’s name brought me to pharyngula. Oy vey! Nie wieder!
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Spandrell’s post (ref: moralizing gods) is interesting. Commitment to a form of life demonstrated by an understanding of and obedience to the rules of the (absurd) game as a (proxy) trust/lock-in mechanism. Anyone who doesn’t want to play isn’t to be trusted – and why should they? It’s easy to defect when you have little invested. On the downside: tiddlywinks.
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forkinhell Reply:
March 15th, 2015 at 6:47 pm
Thinking about it some more: it’s like peasants and pigs. You feed the pig scraps/leftovers/waste/surplus as an investment bank. Then the year the crops fail you’ve something to fall back on. It’s stupid to grow the bare minimum. Similarly it’s stupid to trust without boundaries – to life – when it’s not absolutely necessary. More sensible to establish a safety net – contingency. Entrenchment in the net is directly proportional to reliability. This is depressingly sensible.
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Okay so my evolving hypothesis is that neoreactionaries obsessed with the collapse of European Christianity and Muslimization of Europe are, while not wrong, missing an important element: Spiritual entrepreneurism among the INFJs and INFPs of European descent. They are also fighting to save the best insights and aspects of western civilization, and they are working on a parallel track to neoreaction. They are not interested in holding up the dead husk of Christianity just for realpolitik reasons, because they take spiritual stuff VERY seriously. It is their FIRST priority, whereas with INTJs and their ilk it is philosophy that comes first.
With that intro, I present one of the aforementioned INFJs, Francis Weller. He runs workshops in California on grief. This is a presentation on the Five Gates of Grief. I just bought his book which is very profound. I am wearing out my pen underlining it. All of Costa Rica is filled with West Coast groovies working on these sorts of issues. They hail from Vancouver, Seattle, SF, LA, Sedona, Taos, Santa Fe, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaI-4c92Mqo
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Izak Reply:
March 15th, 2015 at 8:07 pm
Your use of Meyers-Briggs stuff isn’t really doing you any favors.
It seems to me, based on fertility stats, that Western Whites have a long future of fundamentalism ahead of them, since the future belongs to those who interpret scriptures ad litteram. These people are preserving nothing but the husk of faith, putting their own interpretations into the gaps. They turn to The Book, but they have no choice but to take it as literally as they can since they have no living tradition through which to lend their faith any overarching coherence.
But this could actually be good for the more libertarian-minded types. If literal interpretationists of the Bible have the highest fertility numbers (and this seems to be the case, unless someone can demonstrate otherwise), then their ethos toward scriptures may translate to the American constitution. And strict constitutionalists are much more amenable to libertarian/Austrian style thinking.
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Kgaard Reply:
March 15th, 2015 at 8:39 pm
Well you might be missing the main point I’m trying to make, which is that high-IQ NFs are simply not going to be satisfied with some warmed-over fundamentalist Christiianity for the same reason high-IQ NTs aren’t: Because it’s not true. Or, put differently, it’s not consistent with the state of the art of human knowledge as it stands today. Christianity is a myth made up 2000+ years ago. Mythologies need to evolve with the circumstances of the external world. Religions are supposed to be teleologies that best capture man’s understanding of the world and how it really works. They are SUPPOSED to update.
Case in point: That Israeli cat that Nick linked to a couple weeks ago talking about the future of the world. He specifically said the religions of the future are going to come from Silicon Valley. I actually don’t think I agree with that, again on the grounds that people who are writing code are not going to be spiritual entrepreneurs. But perhaps it is not a coincidence that new religions ARE starting nearby to Silicon Valley — i.e. elsewhere in California.
NFs are not like you and me. I presume many of the INTJ posters on here have or have had NF girlfriends or wives. They are different creatures. The smart ones are hitting the New Age spirituality angle with everything they have, as if their soul depended on it. Because, for them, it does.
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Izak Reply:
March 15th, 2015 at 8:58 pm
Well, just demonstrate to me that these guys have a future and I’ll change my thinking. New Age dudes have been around since forever, but always with an attenuated degree of influence. This guy in your vid strikes me as a hangover from the Iron John movement, which was big in the 90s.
Here, see?
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTVzSq81wCs&w=420&h=315%5D
Same difference.
Lesser Bull Reply:
March 16th, 2015 at 9:43 pm
California has been generating new cults for a *very* long time, at least since the 20s. I’m pretty sure Hurlock was slandering you when he said you were our resident prog, but the way you are carrying on here, it does sound like you think we are in year zero.
@Kgaard
Yes, I’m pretty sure there is some relationship between him and Robert Bly. I don’t have a problem with that. Bly was on to some good stuff. He got run off the stage in part precisely because he WAS on to good stuff. Uncomfortable stuff. So the powers that be grabbed on to some of the loonier fringes and used that as a cane to yank him off the stage.
Yes New Age has been around since forever. But perhaps the live issue involves degree of influence. How do you know it’s “attenuated?” Maybe it’s far higher that generally recognized — and growing. That would seem the way to bet, actually. I mean … look at all those empty churches in Europe. What are those women thinking about when they think about spiritual matters? Let’s say 1% are putting on the hajib and 20% are total hedonists who never think about it at all. Let’s say 25% are still semi Christian, and 3% are Jewish. That leaves 51% who are open to a new telos. And the people doing the work on it are the New Agers.
I’ve done enough digging in this area to recognize they are doing a lot of quality work. Part of the issue is that they are dealing in concepts and experiences that don’t have words attached to them. So they have to make up new words or re-purpose existing words, as well as make up new rituals. All of which strikes the average non-NF as bizarre, if not creepy. But this is the sort of sausage making that has always comprised religious ritual creation. The NFs are comfortable with it. So they lead the way.
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Izak Reply:
March 15th, 2015 at 10:08 pm
You’re probably quite right about broader cultural influence and these sorts of things. I don’t share your optimism at all, however. If you look at the overall mass of occultist and new age beliefs, I’d say they’re a horrible influence. There are two things that basically never benefit civilization: one is terrorism, the other is occultism. Many people around this neck of the internet read Julius Evola, but I think they’d profit more from The Reign of Quantity and the Sign of the Times by Rene Guenon.
But as long as we’re going down the rabbit hole of profound cosmic irrationality, I’d go ahead and take some of your observations a step further here.
Cardinal to my point about fundamentalism is that in order to have it, you must believe the scriptures literally. But there are plenty of gaps there that you can fill with just about anything. This is why fundamentalist sects can vary widely over how they handle exegesis. I could easily see a future of Christian ‘conservatives’ who are swayed this way and that according to what they derive exposure from, all the while thinking themselves to be devout. I can see it because it’s very much the case now. Even more disheartening is to consider the Millenarian groups, who are positive that the Earth will all be blown up in ten years (or whatever) and therefore don’t even bother to put up a fight against the more negative currents who surround them except through proselytizing, since they’re so sure that God will mop up things soon enough. It seems that while I’m right in a totally nominal sense (“Christianity” and “Islam” will prevail), you might be totally right in an essential sense (actually, new age will win).
Take a look at the sway that occultist, quasi-Gnostic currents have over Hollywood and the music industry, to take a simple example of the downside to New Age stuff. This is to say nothing of the non-denominational megachurches, who might eventually decline in number and net worth, but whose ideas will probably be firmly planted into the minds of the underclass. It’s hard not to suspect that their residual influence will inevitably contaminate those who are without any kind of living, vital tradition and who therefore obsess over which minor laws in Leviticus were overturned by Christ and which weren’t (or whatever). Those people are in a vulnerable position, and they seem to be the future, at least demographically. I’ll go ahead and apply my claim to the Muslims, while I’m at it — though they seem to be getting increasingly radical, I can easily see them letting some nonsense in. A faith rooted in mere text will always remain blind to subtext. You seem quite positive about this; it strikes me as what may constitute the death knell of Western civilization — the “second religiosity” that Oswald Spengler described.
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Kgaard Reply:
March 15th, 2015 at 10:49 pm
Well, yeah, when you combine dysgenics with breakdown of the established religious order, I guess you do get more or less what you describe for the masses. Perhaps there is nothing to be done about it. The world is a blank slate upon which man writes the meanings and myths he can conjure up.
But there is still something going on here. When I read guys like Weller or Diederik Wolsak or Richard Bartlett and/or go to their seminars, they are speaking truths that neither capitalism nor the churches can convey. If their points are objectively correct, that counts for something, no? In the end the truth wins, at least among those who care about truth.
Perhaps part of the issue is that you are describing New Age as “occult” and I don’t think that is the right term for most of it. Most of it is LESS occult than Christianity.
Let me come at it from another angle. One of the most interesting developments of recent years has been the increasing coalescence of high-IQ left-wing SWPLs around a very conservative lifestyle. I see these people all over northern Virginia and DC. They are Obama voters who live like modern-day Puritans and bring up their well-behaved children accordingly. What is keeping these people on the rails? What keeps them on the straight and narrow — AND has them all living almost identical lives? I live just like these people as well, and I never go to church at all. What is keeping it all together? Is it just the “fumes” of judeo-christian morality, which will dissipate in another generation or two?
Maybe.
Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s northern European DNA doing what northern European DNA does: Applying rational high-IQ thinking abilities to the world as it exists and making the best decisions therein. This includes explorations into teleological matters. Hence the runaway bestseller status of a book like Joseph Campbell’s Power of Myth. The dude’s work was CORRECT and thus was embraced by SWPLs.
I’m still working all this through of course …
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Izak Reply:
March 16th, 2015 at 5:37 pm
The situation you’re describing is basically identical to what Charles Murray observes in Bell Curve and Coming Apart. He overplays the element of upper middle-class religiosity, and your analysis is probably right (after all, one of the things Stuff White People Like is any religion that their parents didn’t have). But do you not see how awful of a situation this is?
Basically, you have a bunch of elites who are running the media and establishing the symbols and myths that drive the West, they’re going around telling the underclass, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law! lol” — and meanwhile, what are they doing? Getting up at 6-7 am every morning, eating healthy foods from farmer’s markets, exercising regularly, socializing often, reading and empowering themselves, etc. etc. etc.
These people are the worst kind of hypocrites, because their hypocrisy is not even the kind that resembles the tribute that vice pays to virtue. Theirs is the tribute that virtue pays to vice! So while their women are learning about the sex secrets of the Tantra and their men are going on Iron John style getaways, what trickles down to the underclass? John Hagee, Joel Osteen, Lady Gaga, Roc-a-fella Records, The Secret, and What the Bleep Do We Know featuring the zany wisdom of JZ Knight and her travelling band of Ramtha worshippers…… hmmm…..
Do you not see how this whole situation is completely broken? At least Orthodoxy (of any kind, really) binds people by providing a set of workable principles to the lowest of the dregs in society. There’s at least something to look up to concerning the question of ethics and lifestyle.
Kgaard Reply:
March 16th, 2015 at 10:58 pm
Legit concerns. But, you know, what am I supposed to do about it? Become an orthodox priest? Fat chance! That stuff is all nonsense to me. What you’re asking for is an entire demographic to live their lives as raving hypocrites: becoming priests and pious types when they don’t give a good goddamn about any of it.
It doesn’t cost a SWPL much to go out and pound the lectern about the virtue of two-parent families (based, of course, on data on child outcomes), but that’s as far as they’re going to go. Look what happened to the suit-and-tie politicians and preachers who were banging hookers in private and and pushing for traditional values in public. They were skewered! It’s no longer a valid choice for moral social organization because the news media are omnipresent and will snuff you out if you want to do a Falwell or be like that senator from Montana who was soliciting dudes in the airport bathroom.
Actually, I’d never really thought this through before but now that I ponder it, the above points are pretty solid. Back when peasants were illiterate and never left the farm, the elites could do all sorts of coke and hookers and existentialist philosophy readin’ and no one would be the wiser. But those days are over. So if an elitest must choose between doing what comes naturally and organizing the entirety of his intellectual and spiritual life around being a model for 85-IQ checkout clerks, he’s gonna choose the former.
Izak Reply:
March 17th, 2015 at 5:15 pm
Well, I think it would be nice if maybe they all just put out a PSA and said, “Hey guys. We’re the SWPLs and we run the media. We control literally every harmful influence that you and your children are experiencing right now! While we’re droning on and on about sexual liberation, we’re actually quite prudish and have had very few sexual partners. When we talk about how great and rebellious drugs are, we barely do them. When we start telling you that you should be free to do whatever you like, we actually hate freedom and live out lives in very tight-knit routines. We’re slaves of our own design! lol! So just keep it in mind the next time you feel like using Crowley, the guy whom we promote, to justify your coke addiction! Sincerely, the SWPLs.”
That’s real progress, right there.
Mark Yuray Reply:
March 16th, 2015 at 2:15 am
What, do you imagine, is the fertility rate of these high-IQ SWPLs?
Fertility rate is the metric by which I will pass judgment on the Gnon-submission of groups, religious or otherwise.
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Kgaard Reply:
March 16th, 2015 at 2:24 am
Yeah, sound point. I suspect the fertility rate is 1.6x tops. That is the fertility rate for white women with graduate degrees, so it seems a reasonable proxy.
But even if the fertility rate is sub-2.0 how much is that gonna matter if the economic significance of the top strata will remain the same or rise? In other words, as capital’s power increases relative to labor, and as each individual invention gets more and more torque in the global economy, does it really matter if you have a slight decline in the overall number of smart SWPLs? I don’t really see how it does. There will still be enough of them to shape the top echelon of the culture.
For me the only parts of the country that are gonna matter are the small successful enclaves. They are already forming. Tyler Cowen talks about this relative to the DC area. Alexandria and Arlington are booming because that’s where the SWPLs are huddling. The sticks (Loudon, Prince William, far-flung parts of Fairfax) are stagnating. You can extrapolate this pattern to the whole country.
Basically think Elysium. We are seeing it take shape right now. What is the religion of the Elysium residents? That is the relevant question even if there aren’t that many of them relative to the size of the earth-horde.
Mark Yuray Reply:
March 16th, 2015 at 12:04 pm
Are you kidding? A sub 2.1 fertility rate means the high-IQ SWPL group is going to fade into obscurity relative to the hordes within a few generations.
Kgaard Reply:
March 16th, 2015 at 12:53 pm
@Kgaard
It’s already happened. The high-IQ SWPLs have already congregated/huddled in small enclaves. The issue is whether technological advance and the increasing advantage of capital over labor will run faster than their demographic decline relative to the hordes. (Again leading to the Elysium scenario.) My bet is on “yes.”
an inanimate aluminum tube Reply:
March 17th, 2015 at 12:28 am
Fertility is not the only way groups can replicate themselves, there is also recruitment.
SWPLs can survive by recruiting the talented offspring on non SWPLs, at least for a time.
Eventually recruitment will become prohibitively difficult as the process of coming apart accelerates and non-SWPLs rapidly devolve into lemurian apemen.
But by then SWPLs will be physically secure in their Elysium, thanks to high walls and killer robots, so it won’t really matter if they have 1.6 fertility.
testtest
The exponential function ez can be defined as the limit of (1 + z/N)N, as N approaches infinity
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Posted on March 15th, 2015 at 10:30 pm | QuoteAnyway, responding to fundamentalism & sausage-making, Carl Jung
This bit won’t look right, but (6870):
Jung’s response sounds similar to Kgaard’s sausage-making observation. Let me type that up…
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Kgaard Reply:
March 16th, 2015 at 12:58 am
Good stuff on alchemy and Jung. I always found Jung to be a good thinker.
I think it’s true that the fundamentalists and their ilk WILL be a big part of the evolving right, just because the future rewards those who make babies and raise them with two parents. But that doesn’t mean the challenges for high-IQ people will change. I mean … the nature of the world has never changed, so the nature of the philosophical problem never changes either. Each generation faces the same dilemma with respect to meaning of life and how one chooses to establish oneself in relation to the existing religious norms. Jim can go on at length about the tie between Christianity and western civilization, but that doesn’t change the fact that Christianity’s relevance to high-IQ westerners is almost certainly declining. Doesn’t make those westerners any less western or any stupider. Just means they need a different model for making sense of the world.
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(con’t)
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Posted on March 15th, 2015 at 10:47 pm | QuoteSteven Pinker is a cisnormative shitlord.
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Posted on March 16th, 2015 at 6:44 am | Quotetechcrunch.com/2015/03/14/anti-robot-protest-held-at-sxsw/
So much opportunity for trolling. Sic the equalists on the hedonists, then enjoy the popcorn.
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Posted on March 16th, 2015 at 5:34 pm | Quote“Ghastly”:
“The court heard Hunter bought a pair of scissors and went to The Tapestry bar and restaurant in Mortlake with his friend Thomas Olsen.
Prosecutor Zoe Johnson QC said after the two men sat down, Hunter called out “Hi James” to 49-year-old Mr Fiennes, who was sitting nearby.
Ms Johnson said it was not believed the pair knew each other and it may have been the “most awful ghastly coincidence” that the defendant addressed Mr Fiennes by his correct name.
She said: “Mr Fiennes walked over and asked where he knew the defendant in a polite fashion.
“The defendant then said: ‘James, I’m going to have to kill you’.”
The court heard Mr Fiennes thought it a joke before the defendant stabbed him.
The Old Bailey heard Hunter had been suffering from auditory hallucinations telling him to be a “Glasgow hard man” and that he had really wanted to kill the Queen.
In a police interview, he admitted stabbing Mr Fiennes describing it as a “complete explosion in my mind”.”
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Posted on March 16th, 2015 at 5:39 pm | QuoteIran trying to boost birth rates by blocking access to contraceptives.
http://www.newsweek.com/irans-plan-boost-declining-birth-rate-block-access-birth-control-312984?piano_d=1
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SanguineEmpiricist Reply:
March 17th, 2015 at 4:25 am
This is an interesting topic, what is the tradeoff between Liberty and Survival?
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Alrenous Reply:
March 17th, 2015 at 5:56 am
Iran’s government is trying to cure the symptoms of its existence without ceasing to exist.
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Hurlock Reply:
March 17th, 2015 at 12:06 pm
Not going to work.
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Hattori Reply:
March 17th, 2015 at 3:41 pm
Can you even boost birthrates significantly through legislation?
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pseudo-chrysostom Reply:
March 18th, 2015 at 6:54 am
welfare seems to work great.
Orthodox Laissez-fairist Reply:
March 19th, 2015 at 10:36 am
Yeah, banning divorce, banning female schooling, banning female employment, and legally enforcing male authority is a good start. Hurlock has done some work on it.
http://hurlock-151.tumblr.com/post/109996347271/fertility-and-economic-prosperity
http://hurlock-151.tumblr.com/post/108562125476/patriarchy-and-fertility-the-case-of-spain
we present to you today unvarnished emanations of the ID, courtesy of the robots.
[Massive stream of depraved 4chan filth entirely deleted — I respect the critical point being made here through induced nausea, but this isn’t a porn hub. — Admin.]
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Posted on March 18th, 2015 at 6:53 am | QuoteGolden:
http://menkampf.com/
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Posted on March 18th, 2015 at 10:07 pm | Quotehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11480732/Britons-still-live-in-Anglo-Saxon-tribal-kingdoms-Oxford-University-finds.html
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Posted on March 18th, 2015 at 10:09 pm | Quote