Cybernethics / Cybernéthique

Excellent politique, administrateur exécrable. En tant qu'homme politique, notre président est hors pair. Et c'est exactement pourquoi en tant qu'administrateur, il prolongera et accentuera l'oppression pesant sur les créateurs et la ruine du pays.

Sarkozy est un excellent homme politique. Il sait placer ses amis et ses ennemis, créer de la popularité, du consensus, former des alliances, concilier des opposants, récompenser ceux qui lui apportent un soutien, punir ceux qui le lui ont refusé. Il maîtrise la politique, cet art du possible. Du politiquement possible, s'entend...

A critic of Moldbug's views contested that Universalism fails to actually denote anything coherent, because there is no well-defined set of beliefs that can be unequivocally associated to said Universalism. But that's missing the point.

Universalism, despite its claims to the contrary, is not a rational philosophy; it is an emotional religion. And so, its basics tenets are not concepts that can be rationally articulated; they are anchors that are emotionally expressed. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Democracy, Universal Rights, Peace, Love, Everyone, People, etc. -- all these are the Good Things, but not in any rational concept, always as emotional anchors, as Sacred things beyond discussion.

Libertarian Socialists believe in the world being organized in "freely organized" collectives of some kind. (Socialists in general vye for collectives maintained by force if need be.) But if that were all there was to it, well, we're already there, and everyone including all conservatives wholly approve. The world is already organized into "natural collectives", called families, with one-person families of bachelors being a degenerate case.

Oh, but this is certainly not what the Libertarian Socialists imagine. They imagine large collectives made of lots of people, that may or may not have sexual relations and children. As a Heinlein fan, I will certainly not object to the idea of large families, and as a libertarian, I don't think I have anything to say about who has sex with whom and children with whom inside a family that isn't mine. And so there again, the specificity of the socialist "collective" lies in the political norms relating the "collective" and its actual and potential members or non-members, and to other collectives.

Can a member have any kind of commerce with a non-member, or do you have to be members of the same collective so as to cooperate with each other or otherwise go through hierarchical channels? Yay for promoting cooperation. How does one become member of a socialist "collective"? can one leave afterwards and divorce from his family? or is the whole scheme some kind of an oppressive caste system? Can members split over some issue? can they form a schism? how do you divide existing resources? can one make a schism of one, and which part of the resources does he get? Can one leave for another collective? can one enter any existing other collective? can one found a new collective if none exists that suits him? including a one-person collective called "invididual"? Can a collective reject applicants or does it have to accept the first come parasite and treat him as well as those who work hard, and as those who worked hard in the past to get the collective where it is? How are conflicts settled between a collective and an individual? is a collective politically sovereign over its members to the point of exacting punishment and death on those who would reject its terms? What if the member says that he represents the collective and all the other ones are the schismatics who reject the proper collective will? Is there a justice system outside of this collectivist construction?

How do collectives interact with each other? With a collective of collectives, etc., in a hierarchical order? If collectives cannot disassociate, then the topmost collective is indeed a State, and the Libertarian Socialist chimera is indeed but another Totalitarian Socialist State in disguise (as attempted in Spain). If collectives can disassociate, then these collectives are with each other in a Capitalist order, where collectives trade with each other. If furthermore individuals can secede and become their own "collective", we have a full Anarcho-Capitalist order, and the Libertarian Socialist chimera is but distracting ramblings on top of an Anarcho-Capitalist society. If on the other hand individuals cannot secede, then indeed each Libertarian Socialist collective is a State, these States span the world, and Libertarian Socialism is but distracting ramblings on top of the usual Statist Oligopoly, to be recomposed after an optional bloody revolution.

Whichever way you split things, Libertarian Socialism has nothing new to propose in terms of political norms.