http://www.skepticink.com/prussian/2014/04/27/im-disappointed-in-the-neoreactionaries/

see because i tweeted something it means i have no rebuttal to his IRON LOGIC… or something

don’t miss the last line:

“Unfortunately for them, they weren’t just dealing with the mainstream. They ran into me.”

When corruption is illegal, the definition is easy, but when legal, there is still the same kind of mismatch. It can’t be called waste when it is on purpose.

Let’s take the limit. In the limit, which is worse, bribes, or British style legal corruption?

In Latin America, the social security programs are not going to destroy the government. They will simply reneg or ask bribes so expensive it’s hardly worth it. That sort of thing.

In America, the social security programs are going to destroy the government unless something else gets there first.

It’s not as if American leaders are unaware of this problem. I had several reports of them being told. They simply don’t care. They could 180 public opinion just like they did on gay marriage, most likely. (Caveat: it is perhaps impossible to brainwash people to be more mature about things – there may be an immaturity ratchet.) Don’t, though, and won’t even try.

Yes, let’s not exaggerate. Spanish corruption annoys voters. British corruption risks TEOTWAWKI.

But perhaps the limit is misleading?

Mortgage crisis. British corruption causes recessions. Almost everyone involved knew it was a scam, they were just trying to find a more gullible sucker. Eventually British style corruption will bugger the price system entirely.

But perhaps it’s a nice ride until then?

They knew thalidomide had issues and approved it anyway. Stuff like that happens all the time. See also: mercury-containing vaccines. In these cases, it’s not even definitely legal. See also: selective enforcement of laws on whites. (Except in New York.)

Returning to schools, do you know how textbooks are chosen? Legal bribes, mostly. That’s why they’re so expensive. As per government SOP, the more they spend on them, the less useful they are.

The point of public sector unions is to fund the Democrats. Most private unions too.

In terms of dollars, probably even in terms of %GDP, American spends more for purposes other than their public justification than any other nation. Except maybe Greece? Because they get to spend Germany’s money instead of their own?

Do you know about the Democrat insider trading problem? Sadly I lost the reference, but they get something like ten times the return as the market as a whole. (Republicans get merely three times.)

Have you had a drink with an entrepreneur recently? Doing business is illegal. At least, profitably doing business is illegal. The single most important skill for any entrepreneur, by far, is government connections so they’ll favourably interpret the regs for you. But you can’t bribe them to do that! That’s nice, I guess. What was Bill Gate’s antitrust suit about? He forgot to grease the right palms. Or perhaps he foolishly thought we still have rule of law. Fixed that right quick, he did.

Literally every institution I have data for is mainly corruption.

At least it’s predictable corruption. I don’t have to guess how much I’ll be jacked for, because it’s all aboveboard. Sort of. Except when I’m being jacked by proxy and it’s a 50-50 chance I’ll even notice. How much of the price of Windows is due to Gates’ bribes or submission rituals? It’s natural to blame the company when most of the time, it’s not the company’s fault at all.

It’s a good example of Moldbug’s anti-libertarianism principle. The king hates bribes too – because the want all that lucre for himself. In Spain’s empire, he was never strong enough to seize it. In Britain, his authority’s descendents have succeeded, that’s all.

One thing I like to do is figure out whether there is, in fact, any open-mindedness in my interlocutor, and whether they are arguing in good-faith, and willing to change their opinion upon exposure to evidence and logical counterargument. A good way to ‘test for the inevitability of Stage-X’ is to start out by asking “Tell me what it would take to change your mind.”

Usually you can’t get a clear answer. Which is strange.

I can very easily and readily tell you what it would take to change my mind – some high-variance test that had equal means. Or even, a high degree of variance-in-the-disparity-between-means as one compared different communities. If, say, controlling for every other variable, an evil Mississippi school showed a 3-SD ethnic difference, but a right-thinking Yankee school showed a 0.5-SD ethnic difference, that’d be great evidence that the evil Mississippi school is using its witchcraft black magic against these poor kids! I would expect such a result to be broadcast daily at the NYT with the volume knob turned to 11. But no, ~1SD everywhere you look.

Am I wrong to presume that when I can’t get an equally clear answer out of my counterparty that it’s because they are trying to avoid having their own BS exposed?

Sometimes I get something like, “A peer-reviewed paper in a top journal written by a top, credentialed PhD teaching at an elite University” And then I can show them the list of the references you kindly link to in your excellent articles.

And then there is the strange ‘moving of the goal-posts’. Well, well, but is that the consensus? Is that what everybody thinks?”

And I ask, “Well, wait a minute, what’s with this moving of the goalpost? Your standard of evidence for something that supports your view is one paper. You asked for something like that. When I produce several, they’re not enough. What’s enough?”

And the final answer is basically the near-complete consensus of the entire Academic Establishment.

When you say that there isn’t a single paper out there that gives results like the kind we would gladly change our minds were we to discover them, they start plunging into the depths of the dark forces of unfalsifiable excuses related to unmeasurable social influences.

You need some way to do bets or wagers and have people put their money where their mouths are.

At least with counting votes for elections, two parties that completely distrust each other can still agree to send their representatives to double-count – and watch each other count – every single ballot, with their lawyers present, and at the end come to almost exact agreement on the accurate result.

But there’s no way to get these people to agree to the rules for any process that would be the equivalent of ‘let’s put our cards on the table and settle this thing like men once and for all’.