I have decided to give up writing for Corrupt because of "other commitments". Specifically, marketing one of my bands is becoming more time-consuming and taking up just about all my "fart around on the Internet" time. Such marketing is really pretty boring, but attractive young women really like this particular band, so that's not a hard decision, is it?

I can already hear the cheers, but before you get too far in your celebrations - I'm not planning to disappear completely, I'm probably still going to make the odd post every few months or something. It'll probably be about sports, "the arts community" or nerds.

I thought about finishing this post with Trae's track "Asshole", but I'm too much of an optimistic and happy guy to really want to depart on such a note. Sure, I'm an asshole by nature, but a happy one. So, instead, here is something positive and inspiring.

Alex writes that "the real virus with libertarianism is tragedy of the commons". Nah. The real problem with libertarianism is the kind of people it appeals to. C. Van Carter put it best when he wrote that "libertarianism is applied autism", but if you need it spelled out in more detail, here's Kathy Shaidle:

Most libertarians I've met are twitchy overgrown adolescents who are one step up from Trekkers on the appealing personality scale. They are curt, bitchy, brittle and huffy. When you're around a libertarian, it's always Thanksgiving dinner and they're the teenaged cousin with the giant anime collection who's read one book too few and stays coiled in his chair, waiting to blurt out some "shocking" comment he thinks is ahead of its time but is actually two hundred years old, in a boorish, loudmouth Penn Gillette way.

I just don't like them. They bug me.

It doesn't matter if libertarians are right about freedom, Austrian economics, and everything else. Neither they nor their ideas will ever have any influence or power anyway. Even people who agree with them will resist joining them, and there's always the sneaking suspicion that unhappy people with below-average social skills are inaccurate in their understanding other people and society... so you can't really trust their advice, can you?

Watch the below rap video on the subject of economics, ideally with the sound off. It's the reason I got to thinking about all this.

The Hayek character has no confidence and no swagger, and he ain't much to look at, either. Girls aren't into him. Maybe the real F.A. Hayek was like that, and the real John Maynard Keynes was a handsome ladies' man, I don't know. But do you really have to make it that painfully obvious in your propaganda video? Especially considering this is rap which has no use for losers, values swagger and allows a lot more blatant self-aggrandizement than other music genres (probably the main reason why I love working in the hip-hop scene - I don't have to be subtle). A lot of money went into this video, and it's done quite well, but that money is pretty much wasted because "we are a bunch of losers with sound arguments" is not a good message to send to anyone except, well, losers.

André Gide liked to scandalize enquirers by saying: "Je ne suis pas tapette, monsieur, je suis pédéraste!" ("I am not a fairy, Sir, I am a pederast!") In a similar spirit I am sometimes tempted to assert: "I'm not really a conservative — more of a reactionary." It's not true, though. I wonder if it really can be. It is all very well to speak of standing athwart history crying "Stop!" but history will not stop, and there are some respects in which even the most sincerely conservative of us would not wish it to.

John Derbyshire asks a good question - how can one claim to be a reactionary in today's world? There are good reasons why reaction is tempiting and we might want the world to be like it used to, at least in some ways. One recent GNXP post describes how many of our instincts are poorly adapted to living in a free economy and electing our rulers - an idea I've mentioned before. That doesn't necessarily mean we should live in a world like the one we are adapted to, though - a few days earlier another post on GNXP reminded us of how that world really sucked in a lot of ways compared to what we have today. That makes for some chaos and confusion, but I'd rather deal with that and (to pick an easy example) be able to eat five kilos of meat a week, you know? It sure as hell is worth it.

I do like to call myself a reactionary, though. I like to complain about the American Revolution and the October Revolution in the same breath. That doesn't mean I want to live in the world before the American Revolution, but I think a world in which the rebels lost that one would be a better world. I might not be a "true" reactionary, then, only a political one. As Mencius Moldbug once wrote, "I feel no hesitation in informing you with absolute confidence that the common concept of progress, which perhaps you are operating under, is a lie and a delusion and a snare. At least inasmuch as that term applies to the problem of human government, and not physics, oil painting, or backgammon. There is no reason to think the political designs of 2007 are any better than those of 1907, 1807, or 7."

I like progress. I like the modern world. I just don't like progress in politics, that's all. I don't think there's any contradiction there. After all, many of the most progressive progressives are extremely reactionary when it comes to everything except politics.

One of the less important side effects of the tragic earthquake in Haiti is that the word "voodoo" is popping up in the press more than usual. Or is it? Nowadays the Western press seems to spell it "voudou" instead. Steve Sailer suspects that it's intended to keep us masses ignorant of inconvenient facts. I disagree, though. When it comes to guessing the motivations of progressives, I would like to add something to Napoleon's famous maxim - never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by changing fashions.

The reason why journalists and other elite types are starting to use the word "voudou" is to let us know that they read enough newspapers and hang out with enough of the right people to know what the latest trendy spellings are, and also to let us know that they care about other cultures enough to use native spellings instead of Anglicized ones. They used to accomplish this by referring to Peking as "Beijing", but now that everybody does that (except for Chinese restaurants) it no longer sets you apart from the herd, so they need to find some new words to do the job. It's no different than the shifts in fashionable teenage slang, really, and is the exact same reason why they suddenly started referring to health care as "healthcare".

Progressivism really makes much more sense as a method of signaling than as an ideology, doesn't it?

All that stuff about being true to yourself, authentic etc. does contain a grain of truth after all. Sure, I play music "like most people take out the mail, or pour milk on their cereal, or pump gas" and will play just about any style, even music I'm not interested in ever listening to. That means I can play a lot more than people who are picky about only playing styles they like, make more money, meet more interesting people, learn more etc. Who wouldn't want all that?

In one way, though, playing something which accurately reflects your life and personality does have a benefit. The women who are into that music tend to be much better candidates for meaningful long-term relationships. They aren't horribly disappointed when they find out that you aren't really the avant-garde drone pop kind of guy who thinks more listenable music is beneath him.

So if you're like me and usually playing in four-five different bands (six at the moment), it's good to make one of them something that's all about things that are important to you and make up big chunks of your life. It's worth it even if other bands you could play in instead are better in other ways.

I guess what I really need is to find a way to put these two things together...

That could be a tall order... but if I could pull it off I'm sure I'd meet the perfect woman, or even quite a few of them.

Over at Deadspin, Will Leitch writes that he can't understand Kurt Warner, but is inspired by him anyway. He's writing about Warner the way one might write about a Shakespearean hero, which I think makes a lot of sense.

Warner doesn't confound me, though. I can understand him because except for being really good at a really well-paying job (and yeah, that's pretty important), he's a lot like me. The one thing I can add to this is that you don't have to have especially strong religious beliefs to be that way. I don't, but I'm still never "nervous in an existential way" because I just find those existential questions completely uninteresting.

Yeah, a lot of people say all that makes me shallow or horrible or evil or whatever, but I sure as hell would never trade it for being deep. I know some deep people, and being deep seems like a horrible annoyance. But maybe I'm missing something. Do deep people enjoy being deep?

Being a racist is hard; sometimes it seems that just about the whole world is dedicated to opposing you, and never shows any mercy. But finally there is some good news! My favorite progressive is getting tired of beating up on you, and is calling for the NFL to get rid of the Rooney rule which, in short, requires NFL teams to interview at least one minority candidate for certain job openings. He doesn't want to replace it with something that will result in more real job interviews for minority candidates instead of the sham interviews common today, but just plain get rid of it altogether. Easterbrook writes: "The rule did its job, and now can be retired."

Maybe this is the start of a trend. Maybe more and more progressives will decide that fighting racism is so twentieth-century and that you really don't even make a good punching bag anymore. You can hope so...

In two seemingly unrelated posts, Sofia wonders if environmental orthodoxy seems to be self-contradictory, while Alex observes that leftist ideology is good for your self-esteem. I think the former flows directly from the latter.

Most ideologies are a way of describing how the world works and how it should be run. They provide their followers the opportunity to gain power and prominence when they succeed in ruling some part of the world. If your faction loses the civil war or the election, though, you pretty much get nothing out of being a member. Progressivism is unique in that its positions are not a worldview but a set of signals. By taking progressive positions on various issues, you let others and yourself know that you're smart, compassionate, classy and so on. Just about any progressive position is much easier to explain in terms of signaling than in terms of philosophy or politics. For example, the support for mass immigration makes you seem compassionate towards peasants from poorer countries and smart and skilled enough that they won't compete for your job. Sure, your own underclass will pay for your compassion, but that's OK - you can then signal compassion for them by supporting education. That might seem contradictory or ineffective, and that might be true if we thought of this as policy goals. When understood as signaling, though, these positions are coherent and effective.

That's why progressivism is so popular and victorious - it helps its followers gain status even when it doesn't achieve crap or makes the world a worse place. Of course it's not quite that simple. Sooner or later even the peasants figure out that caring about Brazilian rainforests is nice - anyone under the age of 30 probably learned about that in school, plus we have big TVs with all those nature channels. Caring about it does you little good when everyone else cares, too, so status-seeking progressives must constantly find new issues to support. Again, this is where mass immigration is the perfect progressive issue - because your own peasants suffer most of the negative consequences, it'll take them a longer time to get around to supporting it compared to some foreign rainforests that won't affect their lives much.

The upside of this constant forward movement is that unlike status-signaling fashion in clothes and cars, progressivism is not a cycle. That's good - otherwise progressives would impose prohibition on us every 20 years...

That's basically why progressivism succeeds, why it must keep progressing, and why it's ultimately not self-contradictory. But isn't this post full of hypocrisy? I mean, given the understanding that progressive views are good for one's status, why am I so reactionary? It's certainly not integrity, honesty or principle.

We know how financial bubbles work, and I've been thinking... can there be such a thing as a prestige bubble? Here is the scenario: some group of people gains status beyond what they are actually worth, expectations grow unrealistic, more and more social and political capital is invested in these status-boosting games, and then the whole thing collapses as everyone laughs at the naked emperors. It's basically a bubble in investments denominated in the fuzzy currency of social status. I could argue that investment bankers have gone through such a bubble in recent years.

I know some people have suggested that there is a financial bubble growing right now in the field of education. Even the Chronicle of Higher Education has published an article which pretty much says that the educational sector with the most influence on social policy - graduate school in the humanities - is not just a bubble but an outright pyramid scheme. I suspect that there might be an even more important prestige bubble happening to the prestige of an Ivy League degree. Here are a few quotes from posts Arnold Kling has made this week:

I think that people can legitimately complain that the educated class that dominated Wall Street and Washington first made the mortgage mess and then railroaded through a bailout in which a transfer of wealth from main street to Wall Street was marketed as a benefit to main street. The educated class is losing the respect of the rest of America for reasons that are well deserved.

Harvard types believe that they are smarter than markets. And, at this moment in history, the Harvard narrative is that the financial crisis was caused because of blind faith in markets regulating themselves. According to this narrative, the election was a mandate to Harvard to deal with huge market failures in finance, health care, aggregate demand (hence the stimulus), and climate/energy. Based on this narrative, Harvard is absolutely committed to expert control over the economy

That certainly sounds like the status of "Harvard types" - people educated at the best American universities - is inflated, and being furiously inflated further. These are the people who, in practice, rule the world. What if the bubble pops and their status quickly sinks to the level of, say, computer programmers before bottoming out? I'd say "sinks to the level of fry cooks", but that would just be wishful thinking on my part...

I greatly prefer reading about sports to reading about music, but I dig Stuff You Will Hate. In a recent post, Sergeant D mentions in passing that some of the bands he used to like years ago didn't use microphones to amplify vocals because that would be "elitist". Some of the commenters confirm this, and also add that some of these bands would also refuse to play on raised stages. But what they did was roll around on the ground crying.

These comical trends never caught on widely, but people still remember them years later. That bit with the microphones is a particularly goofy kind of fake humility. Audiences want you to be better than them anyway, but they do want to identify with you on some level. If you want to be closer to them, a microphone is very helpful in getting there. Bing Crosby was probably the first person to really figure this out and use amplification effectively to reduce some of the gap between the performer and the audience. After all, amplifying your voice allows you to use the same voice tone and dynamics that you would if you were in a small room with the listener - the equipment will project your voice and make you heard.

Opera singers don't use microphones. Of course there's a tremendous upside to having such physically powerful voices that they can be heard in the back row without amplification over an orchestra, and they are the core of opera, but it's silly to suggest that opera singers are closer to the audience or less elite than a microphone-user. Stuff like this is why I'm such a big proponent of learning from the best of the past even if you find it completely boring - this bit of idiocy could have been avoided if these kids had understood opera and Bing Crosby a little better. Bing Crosby is relevant to screamo bands.

If you thought I hate smart people (which isn't really true; I just don't want to be ruled by smart, educated people who have class), read this post by Sonic Charmer. He (?) does a good job of defining who these Smart People are, and why being ruled by them sucks.

I don't have much to add, though another of the posts about Smart People reminded me of an old saying: "A gentleman never talks about money - a gentleman simply has it". I'm not a gentleman and don't ever plan to be, but I think the world would be a hell of a lot better if polite society applied that rule not to money but to brains.

HT: Ilkka Kokkarinen

Back when I was living in the American Southwest, I knew a man who went into politics. He ran for the local school board, won the election, and gave up in disgust after one term. What turned him off was the decision-making process - he said the most important factor in all the decisions was not making sure the kids got a good education or that the teachers were happy, but that the schools would avoid lawsuits.

This struck me as strange for two reasons. One, he was a university professor, so he should have had some clue about how educational institutions are run. Two, school districts don't really need to fear lawsuits, do they? I mean, it's not like the local schools can be actually driven out of business by a lawsuit. The law requires them to exist and educate, so even the most hideously expensive lawsuit's costs will just get passed on to taxpayers one way or another. That's not the disaster it would be for a privately owned business that would have to pay with its own money. Besides, many lawsuits aren't aimed at wringing out money but at forcing schools to change some policy or another. However annoying that might be, it can't be much less annoying than preemptively changing the policy in advance of a potential lawsuit.

I finally was able to make sense of this after thinking about the theory that the main value of education is not learning but signaling that you were smart enough to get into a good school and hard-working enough to finish it.

Lawsuits don't really threaten schools' existence or ability to educate, but they do look embarrassing on the news. If the purpose of your school is to give its students the ability to say that they went to a good school, a string of lawsuits just will not do. Remember that this is America, where government-run schools don't have the status that religious or private ones do - only homeschooling, GED or dropping out are worse for your status than a public school education.

The school board was doing the logical thing in a world which values going to a good school more than it values what you learned there. Looking at the politics of education more broadly, we also see why progressives love education so much. After all, if education is mostly about signaling how smart, hard-working and classy you are, and progressivisim is all about signaling about how smart, good and classy you are, they are a natural match. No wonder educational institutions end up filled with and run by progressives.

Too bad I can't ask the former school board member what he thinks of this hypothesis - he died years ago.

The slab of meat I roasted on Christmas day turned out very well, so I'm sharing the recipe. It was inspired by all the dried fruit showing up at the farmers' markets in December.

Take about 1,5 kg of pork loin (with bone) and rub it with salt and cayenne pepper. Coarsely chop a couple dozen almonds and spread them on top, then pile on a half dozen figs cut in half, eight pitted dates, a dozen pitted prunes, and a handful of cranberries. Heat up an oven to 150 degrees C, and when it's almost hot heat up some olive oil in a small pan. When the oven and the oil are both hot, stick the meat in the oven and dump the oil on top of it. When it's been roasting for about two and a half hours, sweep all the fruit (but not all the nuts) off into the sauce and crank up the temperature to about 180 degrees. If you've got room in your oven, add a small pan with some potatoes cut into quarters and rubbed with oilve oil, salt, paprika, cayenne pepper, rosemary and crushed allspice.

After another half hour or so, both the meat and potatoes should be ready and tender. Cut the meat into thick slices, fish the fruit out of the sauce, and pile some of it on top of each slice.

As an aside, it's amazing how in the two decades since the collapse of socialism in my part of Europe, dates have gone from being a hideously expensive rarity that you might see once every few years to something commonly available year round and costing no more than our own domestic prunes.

As an aside in a movie review, Ricky Raw mentioned that he doesn't care for men's rights advocates:

I’ve been trying to preach to guys out there about how to be stronger, better men and there seems to be a lot of readers who instead take my writings as license to blame women for everything under the sun and whine and wallow in self-pity. It sickens me. I talk about the damage radical feminism has done to male identity as a means to an end, and that end is to grow into better men. But many guys out there miss the point and want to remain exactly the same and instead make whining about radical feminism and emasculation the end game. They worship the scars they received from rejection, emasculation, heartbreak, divorce court and don’t make any effort to heal and grow stronger. I especially find this among people who find my blog from reading Men’s Rights blogs and as a result make the mistake of thinking I’m a fellow Men’s Rights Advocate (I’m not. In fact my attitude toward the Men’s Rights crowd is pretty similar to Roosh’s).

That got me thinking... I don't much care for that stuff either, though my reasons are different.

Sure, a lot of anti-feminism comes down to wanting to favor loser guys at the expense of normal guys, and that I will never understand. I can understand, though, why some guys complain about having to pay massive child support, getting screwed in divorce court etc. That stuff causes a ton of harm. Still, I could never bring myself to argue that those child support and divorce laws should be changed. The reason is I understand what they're for and who they're aimed at.

Child support isn't needed to keep children from starving; children in this country haven't starved due to poverty in decades. It's needed to keep guys like me from having a dozen children with a dozen different women. Punitively expensive divorce is there to keep guys like me from divorcing a woman when her attractiveness declines faster than mine, and replacing her with a younger equivalent. Sure, I could complain that I want to have lots of children with lots of different women, and trade wives for a younger model every five years, but I have to admit that the fact that I can't afford either makes society more stable and makes the world a better place.

I guess in the old days we had social sanctions against these kinds of behaviors, but that isn't going to work anymore, and we need something else in place. Having the government make my desires very expensive seems to be the solution we've arrived at. Of course this is unfair and a lot of relatively innocent guys get hammered by these laws. Their lives are ruined as collateral damage. There probably is a better way of accomplishing the same thing, though I wouldn't count on the old social sanctions making a comeback - the old equilibrium can never be stable in an era of condoms, vacuum cleaners and washing machines. So, I don't have any ideas and for the time being I'm willing to put up with the current laws as better than any other option.