The thorny problem of violence, or the miracle of the talking ass.

Orlov has his fans in #b-aⁱ, and so he keeps getting linked. This is to no-one's detriment, I don't think, principally because whatever merits or dismerits the original text may have, the discussion it engenders is usually productive. In this case :

First, when empires start falling apart, this is manifested in a few ways. One is loss of control over the periphery, as a shrinking pool of resources is used to shore up the center. Another is loss of control over the use of violence, as a wide variety of violent entrepreneurs enter the scene and the center is forced to play them against each other and make deals with them.

mircea_popescu Anyway, I'd say I'm the poster child for Orlov's "violent entrepreneurs". It's not that I make an enterprise of violence, it's that I clearly and pointedly reserve the right to use violence without limit. In a sense, "entrepreneurs of violence" is just a particular facet of sovereignity. Orlov was in a room with a sovereign elephant and what he came out with was the trunk.

And as the unraveling progresses, the violent entrepreneurs develop agendas of their own, which, inevitably, involve having the cooperation flow the other way: instead of cooperating with those formerly in charge, they demand that those formerly in charge start cooperating with them. And it is here that the scene turns bloody.

mircea_popescu "The SEC wants to matterⁱⁱ, the SEC better get in the WoT". Hasn't turned bloody yet.ⁱⁱⁱ
undata Ah I understand; I took it as "violence start-ups".

mircea_popescu I dunno what he meant by it, but what he actually said does allow an interpretation that actually works, so. Benefit of the doubt. In any case, violence is not merely physical violence. Tim Swanson got bludgeoned into the dirt, what is that if not violence ?
asciilifeform Mr O is fixated on the 'elephant's trunk' because that was the organ he saw in action personally while visiting Russia in the '90s.

mircea_popescu Understandable.
asciilifeform In his words, approx., 'violent entrepreneurs are special and distinct in that they will work whether or not you pay them, whether they're paid simply determines whether they work with you or on you'.

mircea_popescu Exactly. See ? Sovereignty. "The country works whether it's your ally or your enemy, as what it does."

There tends to be a clean break with the old, collapsing society, which is motivated by money and prestige within society at large, because these entrepreneurial groups are motivated by honor and prestige within the in-group only.

mircea_popescu What is the WoT if not exactly that ? Guy pretty much has it, in the working parts.

diametric Stuxnet: Zero Victims - Securelist
mircea_popescu A they found the domains huh.

undata Iran to me is a great example of why strict authoritarian systems do not work. But to ask a different question, how do we end up with authorities who are rational?
mircea_popescu WoT ?^iv

asciilifeform Iran is a poor country, and, afaik, run by populistic idiots generously helped by foreign wreckers from half the globe.^v
mircea_popescu There's a much larger issue there. Iran is mostly ethnically Persian. The leadership, ethnically Arabic. On their own, the arabs are usually poor in Iran, therefore they depend on government dole. Exactly Manchuko scenario replaying itself, what used to be fearless warriors are now blind old dependants.

asciilifeform Interesting and it explains things.
undata My question is how a parasitic overclass is avoided if one is to believe in sovereignty and aristocracy?
mircea_popescu What's your definition of "parasitic" ? Mankind lives off the soil.

undata One that eventually wears out the thing underneath, leading to collapse. Maybe that's just the nature of it. I'm not convinced I'm asking the right question.
mircea_popescu Listen, until you start doing your own photosinthesis, you can be accused of being "parasitic". It's like accusing someone of US-"rape". Do they have a penis ? Well....

undata Sure, but there's a question of degree there.
mircea_popescu Yeah, and that question is called politics. The apportioning of penance among the universally guilty humans, aka the temproal role of the church, aka the first central government.

undata So the answer in Iran's case is "because an adjacent sovereign is not fit enough to destroy them?"
mircea_popescu They're just lazy and stupid. Could also say "they're letting the women lead much to their detriment". Middle easterners have this problem.

Some of the action is bound to be quite shocking; for instance, while the elites and the oligarchs themselves are rather well defended, at least initially, their children, ensconced in various elite schools, academies and universities, comprise a soft target, setting the stage for school take-overs, mass kidnappings and shootings of a very different sort from the ones seen to date.

mircea_popescu So Orlovs' prediction is that in the near future I will be able to order oligarch underage daughter prostitute to my hotel room in Odessa ?
asciilifeform Well sure, more like hotel in London.

mircea_popescu Why would I go to fucking London. I'd rather be the prostitute.
asciilifeform Idk why to go to London. Just following Mr. O's thoughts.
ben_vulpes At the risk of pointing out the obvious if you can afford the bundling and transportation, you could have them in Odessa.^vi

asciilifeform Odessa is under american occupation atm, afaik. (Well, more precisely, NATO's unofficial little shitgnomes).^vii
mircea_popescu Kinda my point. Ben_vulpes : yeah, but the idea is for it to be done for free. Generally, that's the formative experience of failure. When one's daughters are given away as mere worthless objects to they in the other system, because even as objects there they are still worth more than they'd be worth were they to stay in their parents' own system, much like infinitely little of something is still more than absolutely all of nothing whatsoever.^viii Which is, I guess, what "traditional marriage" is all about.^ix

There is such a thing as capitulation. In a market it's when the sellers lower their tail, and will take any offer to be rid of their worthless merchandise, whatever it may be. Any offer. That's capitulation, when the real estate agent isn't further putting up pretenses of "selectivity" and trying to govern your affairs by his ideas, when the paper holder isn't thinking of dividends anymore but of matchsticks and toilets. In a war it's when the purported "army" would take any terms, literally any terms. "Just make it stop, please, we beg of you, anything but make it stop". That's capitulation, and by that measure the US has not won a war since 1945 - but lost about a dozen. In a society capitulation is when people give their daughters away as slaves to better men of better societies.

There is no escape from the need for capitulation. For as long as the broken, the dysfunctional, the obsolete, the fiat faux miracles are not exactly and completely identified as worthless, not worth "very little", not epsilon, but exactly 0, education can not proceed. For as long as idiots expect to be explained what "the benefits" are to getting in the WoT, you know that somewhere there are some infants whose fate it is to be used as things, corned beef in penance for the intellectual sins of their fathers. Who don't even know it yet.

But in time, they will. They most definitely will.

1. I personally think he's an influence agent, for whatever that's worth. [↩]
2. Note the recent spate of imitators, presenting forged letters in their adolescentine attempts of maneuvering into the spotlight. Bearing in mind that children imitate the visible sorted by its apparent power, this spells bad news for the obsolete instutions. [↩]
3. In fairness, I did kill that derp, whatever his name was. [↩]
4. Yes, seriously. Read A complete theory of economics and What the WoT is for, how it works and how to use it. It's all there. [↩]
5. Reference being the sad story of Rhodesia. [↩]
6. Cheaper than you'd think, too. It is a shockingly unvariant truth across the endless seas of time that what you spent on the ass' ride is more than what it'd cost a determined party to ride the ass. I don't know if you're familiar with the Nasreddin Hodja figure, but he has a story about exactly this, except it's usually rendered for the needs of polite society as "teaching it to talk", and the ass as a literal ass.

   This is historically inaccurate. The historical accurate play pits an actual ass as in, a barely underage female, against one who would teach her not exactly to talk, but more properly said, to work. Talking, if you must, but talking like so :

   "I know it is the moon."
   "Nay, then you lie: it is the blessed sun."
   "Then, God be bless'd, it is the blessed sun: but sun it is not, when you say it is not; and the moon changes even as your mind. What you will have it named, even that it is; and so it shall be so for Katharina."

   And so : Nasreddin readily agrees to teach the ass to talk over some time and in exchange for less money than the ass' gilded covers would fetch in the open market. Because where she's going there's no further use for the gilded covers, and to sum it all up : your daughter's new car, 50k ; the total cost for me to kidnap her and use her, less than 50k ; your face when you finally figure priceless does not mean precious ? Fill in.

   It was the case that the vizier's daughter cost less to have than she cost the vizier to keep, it was true of Judah and Tamar, it's going to stay true up on the spaceships, it's just how it goes. [↩]

7. It's funny that the English propaganda machine is so very careful to discuss the other party to the conflict in exactly the terms that'd be best suited to a discussion of its own participation. [↩]
8. What would you think "loss" is ? Suppose you fall to the level where you have to pay another some of your stuff to get to keep the rest. This is already a complete fall, because once you have to it's no longer what it's supposed to be, and so the objection is not without merit. That I propose the tactical approach where a little territory is yielded into a no man's land so the city can be better defended in a well chosen ford may be acceptable, tactically, but it's still not a fundamental response on the level of the fundamental objection.

   Yet, falling doesn't end there, does it ? Not normally, once the slippery slope is crossed, the fall never ends. Suppose you fall further, so that how much you have to pay is no longer in your hands, but in the hands of "your representatives". And so well will they represent you that soon enough the proper question is no longer how much you pay, but how much you get to keep. Think that in the evil slave owning states of the Confederacy one paid about a dime out of a dollar they made, give or take. Think that in the best korea you currently inhabit, out of a dollar earned on your work by "the company", it will first pay itself a third, then out of the remaining 66 cents it will pay about 26 to the "healthcare" mafia, then of the remainder 50 cents about 30 in various taxes, then out of the remaining 20 cents you pay about 11 in income tax and whatnot, and then the remainder 9 you spend on things which carry various sales and consumption taxes. Indeed, the "evil" guys of two centuries ago paid a little more than you get to keep, and such a drastic reversal of fortunes, dear bums on the continent your fathers conquered, and in such a narrow timeframe should make it readily apparent why you'd best hate those evil guys. Because for as long as you hate them, you have plenty of emotional incentive to not understand just how shitty you have it and, god forbid, aspire to have it again, horror of horrors! Won't you think of the libertardism ?!

   Yet you can fall even further. You canfall so as to have to work each day to eat each day. And in point of fact, you have. So does it stop there ?

   Maybe there's further to fall. Maybe you can fall so far that putting your children in a basket and floating them off the river, at the mercy of whatever man or beast they might chance upon is actually a better fate than their continued existence as your pride and joy. Because you actually suck that badly, and because you have no sort of future - certainly no sort of future anyone'd want a part of, yourself included. This can never actually happen, can it ? It's never been the case ever, has it ?

   Of course not. With the general exception of all the time, this has never been the case nor will it ever be. [↩]

9. In reference to that entire pile of delusional lol. "Traditional" in what sense, "what I think my parents had going" ? Who ever knows what their parents had going, and how ? [↩]