Funny that Elon and his sycophants would refer to the rest of us as “takers.” This coming from the guy who’s been handed billions of dollars of taxpayer money to start and run businesses that fail profitability for decades. And the only reason that Tesla is profitable now is because of a government program that allows the company to sell carbon credits. And where does a portion of the money for this program come from??? Oh, that would be from all of us “takers”. Our taxpayer dollars. Hypocrisy of the billionaire class, and their shills, knows no bounds.
Isn't it just as plausible that the self-interest of merchants was a gentler master than the passions of princes because merchants were many and had minimal power by comparison to the princes? Did any of the early theorists of state imagine the local dry goods trader having resources comparable to those of a princely state?
The German merchant families, the Fugger and Welser, were so rich that they gave the candidate for the imperial throne of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation so much money that he could buy the imperial titles from the six electors.
And the medici’s bought the papacy, didn’t they? In which case, i would update my question to “how could the early theorists of state have been so naive about the relationship between concentrated wealth, however accumulated, and power as to think merchants would rule any better than princes?”
In his book *The Passions and the Interests*, A. O. Hirschman describes how the heroic ideal increasingly fell into disrepute from the 15th century onwards. The model of the heroic warrior was replaced by that of the rational statesman. Nevertheless, rulers were still assumed to act under the sway of "passions." The merchant, by contrast, is guided by interests rather than "passions." Enlightenment philosophers posited that "doux commerce" (gentle commerce) would pacify the passions and emotions, thereby fostering both internal and external harmony.
When I was about 10, I asked my father, then a successful lawyer and later a judge and U.S. Congressman, where kings came from. His answer: They were the biggest robbers.
What in God's name happened to Tyler Cowen? He's trivializing fascism.
Musk is literally a mass murderer. Musk, Thiel, and friends are literally attempting to dismantle democracy. The Ellisons, The Murdochs, Bezos are literally undermining independent journalism.
And there's Marc Andreessen, he of the "techno-optimist" persuasion, again calling for clearing the runways for unabated technology piloted by these same deranged princes and merchants, but not for their own self-delectation and omnipotence, rather for the greater good of society, something-something. Andreessen is trying to establish himself as a/the philosopher par excellence of techno-feudalism, but Thiel has done him one better, as the more menacing if not disturbingly eccentric "whisperer" to the Valley's great and good.
Musk, Zuckerberg, Altman, et al, are the amoral avatars of runaway capitalism, and who are now using portions of their Croesus-like wealth to buy politicians, up to and including presidents, to ensure their primacy in a grossly inequitable world, full stop.
He had multiple toddler temper tantrums because he was told the JE class were not allowed any more stolen models from my field until they stopped sending violent men to injure us. If the Bay Area was not permitted to keep wealth predicated on sex trafficking and had to pay emotional damages to victims, their entire ecosystem would collapse overnight. One of the individuals you mentioned obsessively stalked me so intensely that he disturbed the individuals protecting JE. There is an entire section of the unreleased JE files of witnesses and members of JE’s circle complaining he is a creepy grifter.
I have always thought that, if anything, Trump's followers are more deranged than his critics. So, who is really suffering from TDS the most? It seems this can be applied to billionaires, too.
Interesting article. Eccentric, weird or not, I call it Excessive Wealth Wasting Disease. Symptoms: unmitigated greed, lust for power, self-fulfilling feedback loops, utter lack of empathy. Prognosis: Deadly for humanity
There is a Thai saying,"at high tide, fish eat ants. At low tide, ants eat fish." If we have the will and the courage to do so, we can restrain the billionaire class. Interestingly, Thiel has moved to Argentina. Perhaps he knows low tide is coming.
"Bringing together Tim’s ideas with deranged billionaire syndrome helps clarify how the stripping of restraints can combine with circumstances to produce a more generalized frenzy."
I loved this line, because it's exactly what I've been trying to express. Though it's not only tied to the individual billionaires, but the kingdoms (tech companies) they control.
The complete erosion of friction and restraints on tech power concentration, coupled with the unique dependencies these systems create, will do unimaginable harm to humanity if we idly sit by and let it happen.
How odd that bold, objective independent thinker Tyler Cowen has failed to grasp that the people said to have "Trump Derangement Syndrome" (a meme spread to bold objective independent thinkers by a Russian disinformation campaign) have been proved right. By modeling his epithet on a theory proved to be wrong, he is practically telling you that he is also wrong.
Was it George Will or Bill Safire who spent the ‘90s and ‘00s doubting climate change and derogating climate scientists as “cassandras,” when the whole point of the myth is that Cassandra was right?
It's incredibly ironic that TE卐LA was spiraling down the drain, and the only thing to save it was a huge loan from the Obama administration. Otherwise, none of us would even have heard of Mu卐kRat. He'd be a nobody.
$NAME Derangement Syndrome implies that opposition to $NAME is irrational without ever having to make that case. Its an incredibly lazy sneer at best, and interesting its become a goto insult for our leaders. Perfectly in character for Cowen.
Once upon a time it was conventional Silicon Valley wisdom that the skill set of a Founder (risk-taking, charismatic leadership, intense focus on growth at any cost) were a poor fit for leading a "mature" established company. If you were IBM stability was a virtue protecting your dominance and reputation. The norm was to hand over the reins once some target was reached, leaving the Founder wealthy and free to go Innovate elsewhere.
There's a fundamental disconnect between our notorious Founders and any specific company. Musk is the exception that proves the rule since the vsluation of his companies has nothing to do with their performance or stability. The rest are simply private investment banks with delusions of greatness because of their power based on their wealth and the mythology of themselves as Founders, innovators, disruptors whose bets always pay off in the end so proven correct about everything. They will cling to this story until they die, they have nothing else.
All this is possible because people voluntarily disconnected their BS detectors. They want what they want, and in the worst ways. This is the same behavior you see from cult members when their leader's prediction of the End of the World proves wrong. They just move the goalposts.
It is too painful to face that they were wrong, so they don't.
The will to believe is powerful.
You put your life's savings into vaporware? You bought underwater "home sites" in Florida? Your pastor raided the church treasury and ran away?
And as you suggest, sometimes people have no plan B. Then they pay the price. And often the bad guys escape. This is the rough "justice" of our world. It "works" just like our "free markets."
Sometimes it is not the children who got spoiled, but the parents.
Despite Thiel saying that as kings, they will reap the benefits but have to live with the consequences of failure. The Silicon Valley oligarchs don't suffer the consequences as they have special voting shares that always keep them in power no matter what their failures are. Example one - Zuckerberg. Failure after failure, but he cannot be removed from controlling his company. Musk has done the same with his SpaceX flotation.
In her highly recommended book *The Entrepreneurial State*, economist Mariana Mazzucato describes how the American state—through a long-term, strategically oriented research and development policy—laid the foundations for today’s successful tech companies.
Without the American state, there would be no Intel, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, Tesla, or Palantir.
Funny that Elon and his sycophants would refer to the rest of us as “takers.” This coming from the guy who’s been handed billions of dollars of taxpayer money to start and run businesses that fail profitability for decades. And the only reason that Tesla is profitable now is because of a government program that allows the company to sell carbon credits. And where does a portion of the money for this program come from??? Oh, that would be from all of us “takers”. Our taxpayer dollars. Hypocrisy of the billionaire class, and their shills, knows no bounds.
Isn't it just as plausible that the self-interest of merchants was a gentler master than the passions of princes because merchants were many and had minimal power by comparison to the princes? Did any of the early theorists of state imagine the local dry goods trader having resources comparable to those of a princely state?
There's the East India Company for example, which definitely rivaled state power.
Didn't the state dissolve the EIC when its power became too much of a liability?
The EIC became powerful enough to cause the Sepoy Rebellion, but not powerful enough to suppress it. Oops.
The German merchant families, the Fugger and Welser, were so rich that they gave the candidate for the imperial throne of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation so much money that he could buy the imperial titles from the six electors.
And the medici’s bought the papacy, didn’t they? In which case, i would update my question to “how could the early theorists of state have been so naive about the relationship between concentrated wealth, however accumulated, and power as to think merchants would rule any better than princes?”
In his book *The Passions and the Interests*, A. O. Hirschman describes how the heroic ideal increasingly fell into disrepute from the 15th century onwards. The model of the heroic warrior was replaced by that of the rational statesman. Nevertheless, rulers were still assumed to act under the sway of "passions." The merchant, by contrast, is guided by interests rather than "passions." Enlightenment philosophers posited that "doux commerce" (gentle commerce) would pacify the passions and emotions, thereby fostering both internal and external harmony.
When I was about 10, I asked my father, then a successful lawyer and later a judge and U.S. Congressman, where kings came from. His answer: They were the biggest robbers.
And murderers.
What an odd endorsement of Libertarianism
I reached the same conclusion in a Twitter thread in 2021 where I labeled billionaire derangement charismatic epistemology.
https://books.venkateshrao.com/twitterbook/read/chapters/chapter_1421268674313220102.html
A clever turn of phrase! Can I nominate another, drawing from cognitive psychology? "Dunning-Krugerrand Effect."
What in God's name happened to Tyler Cowen? He's trivializing fascism.
Musk is literally a mass murderer. Musk, Thiel, and friends are literally attempting to dismantle democracy. The Ellisons, The Murdochs, Bezos are literally undermining independent journalism.
He's busy lusting after an AI actress.
https://www.thefp.com/p/my-favorite-actress-is-not-human-tilly-norwood-artificial-intelligence
Thiel has persuaded Argentina's Millei to create an "AI state". What could possibly go wrong? If Millei succeeds, we will find out.
And there's Marc Andreessen, he of the "techno-optimist" persuasion, again calling for clearing the runways for unabated technology piloted by these same deranged princes and merchants, but not for their own self-delectation and omnipotence, rather for the greater good of society, something-something. Andreessen is trying to establish himself as a/the philosopher par excellence of techno-feudalism, but Thiel has done him one better, as the more menacing if not disturbingly eccentric "whisperer" to the Valley's great and good.
Musk, Zuckerberg, Altman, et al, are the amoral avatars of runaway capitalism, and who are now using portions of their Croesus-like wealth to buy politicians, up to and including presidents, to ensure their primacy in a grossly inequitable world, full stop.
They've been smoking their own dope way too long. There is no polite way of saying this.
And don't forget their numero uno "philosopher" Curtis Yarvin, aka, Mencius Moldbug.
He had multiple toddler temper tantrums because he was told the JE class were not allowed any more stolen models from my field until they stopped sending violent men to injure us. If the Bay Area was not permitted to keep wealth predicated on sex trafficking and had to pay emotional damages to victims, their entire ecosystem would collapse overnight. One of the individuals you mentioned obsessively stalked me so intensely that he disturbed the individuals protecting JE. There is an entire section of the unreleased JE files of witnesses and members of JE’s circle complaining he is a creepy grifter.
I have always thought that, if anything, Trump's followers are more deranged than his critics. So, who is really suffering from TDS the most? It seems this can be applied to billionaires, too.
Interesting article. Eccentric, weird or not, I call it Excessive Wealth Wasting Disease. Symptoms: unmitigated greed, lust for power, self-fulfilling feedback loops, utter lack of empathy. Prognosis: Deadly for humanity
There is a Thai saying,"at high tide, fish eat ants. At low tide, ants eat fish." If we have the will and the courage to do so, we can restrain the billionaire class. Interestingly, Thiel has moved to Argentina. Perhaps he knows low tide is coming.
"Bringing together Tim’s ideas with deranged billionaire syndrome helps clarify how the stripping of restraints can combine with circumstances to produce a more generalized frenzy."
I loved this line, because it's exactly what I've been trying to express. Though it's not only tied to the individual billionaires, but the kingdoms (tech companies) they control.
The complete erosion of friction and restraints on tech power concentration, coupled with the unique dependencies these systems create, will do unimaginable harm to humanity if we idly sit by and let it happen.
Elon could buy control of the Senate. Is that a "Taking"?
How odd that bold, objective independent thinker Tyler Cowen has failed to grasp that the people said to have "Trump Derangement Syndrome" (a meme spread to bold objective independent thinkers by a Russian disinformation campaign) have been proved right. By modeling his epithet on a theory proved to be wrong, he is practically telling you that he is also wrong.
Was it George Will or Bill Safire who spent the ‘90s and ‘00s doubting climate change and derogating climate scientists as “cassandras,” when the whole point of the myth is that Cassandra was right?
He is certainly bold in admitting he is lusting after an AI actress because AI actresses are virgins.
https://www.thefp.com/p/my-favorite-actress-is-not-human-tilly-norwood-artificial-intelligence
It's incredibly ironic that TE卐LA was spiraling down the drain, and the only thing to save it was a huge loan from the Obama administration. Otherwise, none of us would even have heard of Mu卐kRat. He'd be a nobody.
$NAME Derangement Syndrome implies that opposition to $NAME is irrational without ever having to make that case. Its an incredibly lazy sneer at best, and interesting its become a goto insult for our leaders. Perfectly in character for Cowen.
Once upon a time it was conventional Silicon Valley wisdom that the skill set of a Founder (risk-taking, charismatic leadership, intense focus on growth at any cost) were a poor fit for leading a "mature" established company. If you were IBM stability was a virtue protecting your dominance and reputation. The norm was to hand over the reins once some target was reached, leaving the Founder wealthy and free to go Innovate elsewhere.
There's a fundamental disconnect between our notorious Founders and any specific company. Musk is the exception that proves the rule since the vsluation of his companies has nothing to do with their performance or stability. The rest are simply private investment banks with delusions of greatness because of their power based on their wealth and the mythology of themselves as Founders, innovators, disruptors whose bets always pay off in the end so proven correct about everything. They will cling to this story until they die, they have nothing else.
All this is possible because people voluntarily disconnected their BS detectors. They want what they want, and in the worst ways. This is the same behavior you see from cult members when their leader's prediction of the End of the World proves wrong. They just move the goalposts.
It is too painful to face that they were wrong, so they don't.
The will to believe is powerful.
You put your life's savings into vaporware? You bought underwater "home sites" in Florida? Your pastor raided the church treasury and ran away?
And as you suggest, sometimes people have no plan B. Then they pay the price. And often the bad guys escape. This is the rough "justice" of our world. It "works" just like our "free markets."
Sometimes it is not the children who got spoiled, but the parents.
Despite Thiel saying that as kings, they will reap the benefits but have to live with the consequences of failure. The Silicon Valley oligarchs don't suffer the consequences as they have special voting shares that always keep them in power no matter what their failures are. Example one - Zuckerberg. Failure after failure, but he cannot be removed from controlling his company. Musk has done the same with his SpaceX flotation.
They have become "Mad Kings".
This kind of self delusion, aka madness, would be really funny if it weren't so dangerous.
In her highly recommended book *The Entrepreneurial State*, economist Mariana Mazzucato describes how the American state—through a long-term, strategically oriented research and development policy—laid the foundations for today’s successful tech companies.
Without the American state, there would be no Intel, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, Tesla, or Palantir.