Seasteading, Without That Warm Glow
24th September 2009
Mencius Moldbug is at it again.
While these organs are not monolithic or hierarchically organized, they somehow magically seem to always agree with each other. The Washington Post never gets into an organizational catfight with the New York Times, or Harvard with Stanford. This, of course, is because all are ticks on the same horse – Washington – and must gallop together.
The Cathedral indeed contains many shades. They are not shades of grey, however. They are shades of brown. A drop of wine in a barrel of sewage makes sewage; a drop of sewage in a barrel of wine makes sewage.
Why, exactly, are all civilized governments on earth run in the way they are? Because they are all run, more or less, by the New York Times. More precisely, they are run by civil servants, who were trained by professors, both of whose reward systems are administered by the New York Times. This is the direct path. On the indirect path, ten percent of the population reads the Times or a comparable highbrow organ; the other ninety gets its thought from more lowbrow intermediaries, who all read the Times and wish they worked there. Together, these paths form the Modern Structure, which if not indestructible is almost so.