Category Archives: Web Article Review

the dark enlightenment part deux

Continuing my thread on the so-called dark enlightenment, the term was actually coined by a British philosopher named Nick Land, following up on Curtis Yarvin’s ideas. From Wikipedia:

Land’s work with CCRU, as well as his pre-Dark Enlightenment writings, have all been influential to the political philosophy of accelerationism, an idea resembling that of the “fatal strategy” of “ecstasy” in the earlier work of Jean Baudrillard, where “a system is abolished only by pushing it into hyperlogic, by forcing it into an excessive practice which is equivalent to a brutal amortization.”[citation needed] Along with the other members of CCRU, Land wove together ideas from the occult, cybernetics, science fiction, and poststructuralist philosophy to try to describe the phenomena of techno-capitalist acceleration.

Okay, up to this point it all sounds at least Singularity-adjacent. Now, I thought the Singularity was just good clean science fiction fun. But somehow the ideas have seeped into right-wing thinking. Anyway, Nick Land is the guy who came up with the term The Dark Enlightenment and wrote a long online manifesto called…The Dark Enlightenment. Now, before I link to I have to say this contains some racist ideas, so I link to it in the same spirit I might link to something like Protocols of the Elders of Zion or Mein Kampf – you can read it for historical/academic interest and to try to understand what might have been going through the diseased mind of the person who wrote it. Again, the reason this matters is that it seems to have influenced individuals with some power over all our lives, possibly including Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and J.D. Vance. So without further ado, here is the link. [2/5/26 update: I have removed this because it is on a malware watchlist. It is not too hard to find with a web search.]

[tick tock tick tock time passing]

I skimmed through the thing. And mostly it is just…dumb. It’s an endless word salad of very loosely related ideas and free association. Amid the racist drivel about IQ and eugenics there are some ideas about city-states run by corporate boards of directors, in which citizens are free to shop around for a jurisdiction that suits them.

There is some cheerleading for Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore. I lived in Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore at the very tail end of his life, and I read his very long book From Third World to First while I was there. I also read William Gibson’s essay Disneyland with the Death Penalty in the Singapore national public library and nobody beat me up. That would have been around 2012 or so, and from what I have heard that book would not have been available and might even have gotten me in trouble even 15 years earlier. Anyway, about Lee Kuan Yew – he imprisoned some political opponents without trial and controlled the way his people were allowed to dress and act up to a point. But overall, in my view, he was a selfless person who had the welfare of his people in mind in all his decisions and actions. He believed strongly in what you might call “meritocracy” in a dictionary sense, where policies were designed by economists and lawyers and politics was not allowed to get in the way of these policies. He provided housing and education for all his people. He cracked down vigorously on any form of organized crime. And he cracked down on any form of racist speech and put strong policies in place to protect ethnic and religious minorities, which in Singapore means people of Indian and Malay descent, who are largely but not all Muslim. To this day, as far as I know, there are no statues of Lee Kuan Yew because he did not want there to be.

But there are not going to be many leaders as selfless as Lee Kuan Yew. For every Lee Kuan Yew there are going to be a million mediocre leaders and maybe a Hitler or Stalin if we are unlucky. Ordinary people given the kind of power he wielded are going to be corrupted, and genocidal psychopaths are going to do mass murder. His sometimes brutal embrace of economic theory and evidence-driven policy is completely opposite the made-up, corrupt, fantasy-based shooting from the hip we are seeing from the Trump administration in 2025. If Singapore is the Dark Enlightenment, Donald Trump is a dark lump of shit spiralling around a clogged drain.

So a quasi-libertarian city-state run by a board of directors on a floating island or, exercising my imagination here, a space station someday? Maybe. Turning existing large countries with democratic or at least (small R) republican governments into these city-states. No, this is pure fantasy and not even the “common sense” variety. It makes no sense. If we want citizens to be “shareholders”, focus on policies that promote economic growth, institute a value added tax with minimal loopholes, and then return that value to the shareholders in the form of either cash or services. There is no practical alternative to majority rule with the human rights of minorities protected. If we are worried about the majority making bad decisions, educate the people. In the U.S. at the moment we are going 180 degrees in the wrong direction.

What is the “dark enlightenment”?

I could probably spend a few posts on this one, but basically I don’t think there is a coherent ideology here. But of course, when it comes to politics, that doesn’t really matter. What matters much more is who is motivated by a set of loosely related, sometimes contradictory semi-ideas, how powerful the motivated people are, and what actions they choose to take. And as you may see if I really get into it, some of the people potentially motivated by this mess of ideas include Elon Musk and J.D. Vance.

Let’s start with Curtis Yarvin, aka “Mencius Moldbug”. Here is how a July 2024 Politico article describes him:

Yarvin doesn’t hold any official title or office — he is an ex-computer programmer turned blogger, having first risen to prominence on the online right in the 2010s while blogging under the pseudonym “Mencius Moldbug.” But he’s often cited as the “house philosopher” of the New Right, chiefly for his promotion of the “neo-reactionary” (or “NRx”) movement…

Like Deneen, Yarvin and his NRx followers reject the quest for “progress” as the core of political life. As Yarvin told Vanity Fair in 2022, “The fundamental premise of liberalism is that there is this inexorable march toward progress. I disagree with that premise.” Instead, Yarvin believes that American democracy has denigrated into a corrupt oligarchy, run by elites who strive to consolidate their power rather than serve the public interest. The solution, Yarvin argues, is for the American oligarchy to give way to a monarchical leader styled after a start-up CEO — a “national CEO,” [or] what’s called a dictator,” as Yarvin has put it — who can de-bug the American political order like a computer programmer de-bugging some bad code…

Vance has said he considers Yarvin a friend and has cited his writings in connection with his plan to fire a significant number of civil servants during a potential second Trump administration.

But get into the Wikipedia entry on Yarvin and there is some darker stuff.

Yarvin has been described as a “neo-reactionary”, “neo-monarchist” and “neo-feudalist” who “sees liberalism as creating a Matrix-like totalitarian system, and who wants to replace American democracy with a sort of techno-monarchy”.[11][12][13][14] He has defended the institution of slavery, and has suggested that certain races may be more naturally inclined toward servitude than others.[3][15] He has claimed that whites have higher IQs than black people, and opposes US civil rights programs.

Yarvin has influenced some prominent Silicon Valley investors and Republican politicians, with venture capitalist Peter Thiel described as his “most important connection”.[16] Political strategist Steve Bannon has read and admired his work.[17] U.S. Vice President JD Vance “has cited Yarvin as an influence himself”.[18][19][20] Michael Anton, the State Department Director of Policy Planning during Trump’s second presidency, has also discussed Yarvin’s ideas.[2] In January 2025, Yarvin attended a Trump inaugural gala in Washington; Politico reported he was “an informal guest of honor” due to his “outsize[d] influence over the Trumpian right”.,,[21]

Yarvin argues for a “neo-cameralist” philosophy based on Frederick the Great of Prussia’s cameralism.[43] In Yarvin’s view, democratic governments are inefficient and wasteful and should be replaced with sovereign joint-stock corporations whose “shareholders” (large owners) elect an executive with total power, but who must serve at their pleasure.[40] The executive, unencumbered by liberal-democratic procedures, could rule efficiently much like a CEO-monarch.[40] Yarvin admires Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping for his pragmatic and market-oriented authoritarianism, and the city-state of Singapore as an example of a successful authoritarian regime. He sees the US as soft on crime, dominated by economic and democratic delusions.[39]

The guy doesn’t seem like a nice guy to me, but I will at least say on his behalf that he has publicly renounced racism and anti-Semitism.

It’s not too hard to imagine the so-called “tech bros” thinking that an artificial intelligence could serve as a benevolent dictator. But even if we had a robot dictator, some human or group of humans would have to initially decide the ground rules for “benevolence”.

what’s new with humanoid robots?

ChatGPT, Co-Pilot, and Claude may have helped me speed up some computer-based work tasks over the past year or so, but they still can’t clean my bathroom. This is what I really want to see to believe the robot era has really arrived. This article reads like a press release, but Nvidia says it has an “open-source, pretrained but customizable foundation model that’s designed to expedite the development and capabilities of humanoid robots”. So that’s something, but I am not hopeful it will be cleaning my bathroom or doing my dishes in 2025.

comparing MAGA to European right-wingers

This (paywalled) Financial Times article compares survey results in the World Values Survey by political party. What is really striking to me is that the U.S. right is off the scale compared to the German, French, or Italian “far right” parties we are hearing about in the news. I didn’t dig into all the details but if this is a survey of the public based on their stated party affiliations, it is possible the right-wing politicians in Europe are much farther right than their respective publics. It is also interesting that this result shows the German right as left of center, while the Australian, French and UK left are right of center. So I am taking all this with somewhat of a grain of salt without understanding all the details, but still it shows that survey responses of the U.S. public identifying with MAGA are way out there.

house sale price premiums by month and city

Zillow has some data on how much above average home prices are by month of the year and by US city. In general, prices are higher by about 1-3% in March-June. I assume this has something to do with the U.S. school year. It may be somewhat of a self fulfilling prophecy though. Last time I was in the home buying market, which was almost exactly 10 years ago, I started looking for listings in January, but there really was nothing to look at until March. So people in my city (Philadelphia) don’t start listing until March, and by the time you go through the process it seems like most closings are going to be in the May-June time frame (precisely when mine was). I wonder if refinancings show up as home sales in this data though, or if they have some way of knowing when the properties actually change hands. That could skew the data because people can refinance any time of year, and they are likely to refinance when interest rates are relatively low and prices therefore relatively high.

defensive gun use

Rutgers has some facts and figures on defensive gun use in the United States. It is worth noting that “use” includes simply showing or telling someone you find threatening that you have a gun.

  • People who have experienced gun violence or know someone who has experienced gun violence, including suicides, are more likely to own guns.
  • 8.3% of people who own guns have used them at some point. 4.7% showed the gun to someone, 3.8% told someone they had a gun (and they really did), 1.1% said they fired but not at a person, and 1.2% said they fired at a person.

The article doesn’t really come out and say it, but the gist is really that people who own guns are at greater risk of being harmed by guns than people who do not. This is counterintuitive and very few people are swayed by evidence these days, of course. The policy prescription: “Of primary importance will be efforts to shift the narrative around firearms to deemphasize DGU as a common outcome. In doing so, policy efforts can be decoupled from efforts to prioritize safety through a lens of self-defense and instead center on efforts to reduce the risk of injury and death associated with firearm access.”

how a US-Iran war could escalate

Here I will risk covering a fast moving current event. If I am right, I get to say I told you so as the world goes down in flames. Here is a scenario envisioned in one random blog post:

  • The US bombs Houthi military targets (and civilians) in Yemen – happening now, March 21, 2025.
  • Houthis attack US naval ships with missiles and drones (happening now) and achieve some damage (hasn’t happened yet).
  • The US blames the attack on Iran.
  • The US attacks Iran.
  • Iran attacks US bases, oil and gas infrastructure in surrounding countries such as UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.

It’s not mentioned in this article, but I have seen elsewhere, suggestions that Trump might consider low-yield nuclear weapons. I can also imagine a scenario where, in the fog of war, Israel initiates a nuclear attack and claims it is pre-empting an Iranian nuclear attack.

Let’s hope none of this comes to pass. It would result in enormous loss of life, possibly cause a world-wide recession, and unleash the nuclear genie that has been successfully bottled up since 1945.

some policies to combat inequality

This article in the blog Urbanomics has some ideas on what can be done to combat rising inequality. The blog is India focused, but the suggestions are more or less general.

  • Increase minimum wage.
  • Increase labor’s bargaining power “through institutional (unions, workplace management councils, etc.) and regulatory measures. At some time in future, broad caps on the salary and compensation ratios across levels becoming a norm cannot be ruled out.”
  • Stop exempting gig and contract work from various laws and policies [things like not requiring the entity hiring them to provide health care and other benefits?]
  • Labour-intensive sectors should become the focus of industrial policy. Scarce resources should not be wasted on low-labour-intensity sectors like semiconductor fabrication or data centres… internships, apprentices, reduction in EPF and other costs, wage support for new entrants, industrial policy support through employment generation-linked incentives, etc. [this one is more in a developing country context I suppose]

All this seems…complicated…to me. But maybe these are politically feasible policies. Simple but maybe politically infeasible policies would be to just raise taxes on the rich and powerful and redistribute the proceeds to the masses, as cash, services directly provided by the government, or services indirectly subsidized by the government. In the U.S., perhaps taxes wouldn’t have to be raised as much as we think if we shifted away from some of the massive hidden subsidies we already have – low capital gains tax rates, the cap on social security payroll taxes, deduction of mortgage interest, the 30-year fixed rate mortgage, gas taxes that support highways but not public transportation, and many others. All of this would be politically difficult, of course. But with the Democrats seemingly having become the party of no big ideas, perhaps there is not so much to lose if somebody were to start proposing some.

The Garden of Earthly Delights

I took a required art appreciation class in high school before moving on to a STEM degree and career. In a previous lifetime (also known as high school and college) I was somewhat of a decent amateur musician. So my knowledge and interest in visual art is pretty limited. But I was always fascinated by Hieronymus Bosch. This is a nice video explaining what we know about The Garden of Earthly Delights. It turns out we know surprisingly little about the motivation and intended message of the painting. Which I suppose is okay, since if a visual artist wanted to use a bunch of words to explain their intended message, they would be a writer instead. I always thought the most obvious interpretation is about original sin, where Adam’s interest in Eve leads to all kinds of debauchery for mankind later on which we all get punished for. But another interpretation apparently is that if there had been no original sin, then the debauchery itself could be sort of an alternative heaven. I don’t know, the first interpretation seems more likely to me. Considering this was medieval Spain we are talking about, I kind of think he was testing the boundaries of how mischievous he could be without getting burned at the stake.

total factor productivity

This is mostly a review for yours truly, partly as I am pondering whether there is any economic theory or strategy that could justify the Trump federal budget cuts and tariffs. My verdict: no, I don’t think so, I think they are based on simplistic ideas: linear, short-term, misguided thinking about the national debt and trade deficits. Anyway, here are a few quotes from the IMF:

It’s a measure of an economy’s ability to generate income from inputs—to do more with less. The inputs in question are the economy’s factors of production, primarily the labor supplied by its people (“labor” for short) and its land, machinery, and infrastructure (“capital”). If an economy increases its total income without using more inputs, or if the economy maintains its income level while using fewer inputs, it is said to enjoy higher TFP…

Recent IMF research shows that TFP growth has slowed around the world since the global financial crisis. In low-income developing countries, it has come to a virtual standstill in recent years…

TFP is higher in countries where the average worker has more years of schooling, the quality of education and training is better, and the workforce is healthier. These advantages enable the average hour of work to generate more economic value added—in addition to improving the quality of life more broadly…

So what can advanced economies do? First, they should “do no harm,” by avoiding policy mistakes, such as permitting a decline in market competition, with powerful firms using their monopoly positions to stifle entry and innovation, or reverting to costly trade protectionism. Beyond this, policymakers should craft regulations that tap the possible productivity benefits of recent innovations in green technology, information and communications technology, and artificial intelligence. They should also tackle remaining barriers restricting the opportunity for women and minorities to bring their talents and innovative potential to all sectors of the economy.    

So, a long-term strategy to boost productivity and national wealth could be to invest in childcare and education (the people who will come up with tomorrow’s innovations, and also their parents who can’t come up with today’s innovations because they are too busy), research and development. The current U.S. administration is cutting all these things. Investing in infrastructure and physical capital also helps if you have underinvested in it in the past – there is a diminishing return to these investments, but the U.S. can’t be anywhere near the diminishing return. It also makes sense to invest in a counter-cyclical strategy – more when private sector unemployment is higher and less when it is lower.