His primary unusual theses seems to be:
- the American revolution and the consequent proliferation of democracy was, net, a bad thing,
- the modern liberal orthodoxy is not only a church, but simply the same historical church, evolved.
- Colonialism was net fabulous for the governed peoples.
- The solution is to reorganize nations as corporations.
- Civilization is better than other choices (tribalisms, native cultures) for human wellbeing
- Capitalism (not corporatism/fascism/corporate or crony capitalism) is better for human wellbeing
- Liberalism is necessarily increasing
- Libertarianism is 100% impracticable politically, though it would be nice.
I ask now...how radical is this position?
4 is becoming a standard position among the public-choice aware libertarians. 1 is widely accepted by any member of civilization, east or west, who isn't a multiculturalist. Fukuyama advocates this as well, basically. 2 is so simple as to brand the deniers ignorant. C is hard to deny on merits, though there's huge literature attempting it. And 3 isn't that far out there.
So what really are Mencius's points of departure from the libertarian mainstream. Points A,B, and D. D is a solution to problems recognized in 3 and 4. A is a value statement, which loudly acknowledges the costs of democracy, which are well known mostly as the insights of public choice economics. And finally B. B has two parts. B1: liberalism acts just like a church, wiuth religion-like orthodoxy and crusades against the infidel. Anyone who is not a liberal either thinks this already, or will on reflection find it not a surprising thesis.
This leaves Mencius's only unusual thesis as: The church of liberalism is a direct, continuous, non-radical descendent of the early american church.
Cool, interesting.
Is it really this simple, or am I missing something?
UPDATE: Corrected spellings on Mencius, as per a commenter's correction.
3 comments:
You mean "Mencius" Moldbug.
For a reference to the meaning of this name, see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencius
My error. Thanks, Houston.
Now apply the same method to Ayn Rand!
(What was UNIQUE in her understandings?)
Especially for big-picture, all-over-the-place opiners like MM & AR, what most matters is often: the package, the presentation, the parallels drawn. A worldview, above and beyond scattered insights (insights that by themselves may or may not be unique...uniqueness as a property often depending crucially on HOW MUCH shared CONTEXT *waves talisman!* we require two insights to have in common before we judge them identical).
(heh, my word verification: eingat. gotayn?)
Post a Comment