perfidy

Devin's Hackertopia idea has got me thinking.

I think the biggest problem would be critical mass. If you don't get a sufficiency of smart, interesting people to move there; smart, interesting people won't move there. How do you bootstrap the process? Rather than planning a large community - start with the village and grow up from there.

If one could purchase a 160 acre plot in the adjacent to the middle of nowhere, it wouldn't cost that much. For example, this place:

Is located in Monroe County, WV, near I-64 and I-81, near the Virginia border. It costs $350k. Not an unreasonable sum, all things considered. A moderate amount of effort could produce a roughed out town square, a home, and the first building of the Hackiversity. Build a nice stone structure, fully wired, and set it up as a hacker space, and you might be able to get it started. Over time, the founders could sell plots out of the original 160 acres - reserving some for the university and some for the public square - to finance public works and to purchase nearby land for expansion.

New residents could buy into the municipal corporation, or not; buy land, or rent. Those who bought shares would have a hand in the governance as shareholders, and would share in the profits, if any.

If the university made a name for itself, the city could grow pretty rapidly.

Devin Finbarr has an excellent post up; Hackertopia: Creating a City as a Startup. This is not surprising. What's interesting is that Hackertopia is a more or less concrete idea for instantiating some reactionary/formalist ideas in the real world.

I like the idea. I think that if it could be created, it would be a nice place to live. The biggest problem I see with the proposal is that while the founders might be able to get out from under some state regulation and taxes, they're not going to be able to escape the fed. And while state regulations and taxes can be add to the burden of starting businesses, creating wealth, or just living your life - they are just the cherry on top of the Everest-sized ice cream sundae that is the Federal Government.

Federal taxes will weigh down every effort of the citizens of Hackertopia. Environmental impact statements and OSHA regulations will slow and hinder every business. And that's just the normal run of things. If certain elements in the government decided to not like Hackertopia, it would be far worse.

What would be needed would be a special economic zone, or the like, where existing federal regulations would not apply. And that is a highly dubious proposition, unless things get much worse.

Still and all, I could see how building a city like this would be for the good - it could at least be a place where most of the worst, localized excesses of democracy are limited. What Hackertopia most reminded me of is Precipice, a city in John Brunner's novel Shockwave Rider. It's a book well worth reading - and though the town in the novel is more of a libertarian utopia, it shares many characteristics with Devin's Hackertopia. But one of the key things that allowed Precipice to come into being is the big one, the giant earthquake that levels SF and is entirely beyond the capacity of the nation to recover from. A large swath of ruined California is effectively abandoned - a "paid avoidance zone" where the rule of the Federal government is light, because the cost of rebuilding the destroyed infrastructure is just too high. In this extra-legal zone, Precipice flourishes because it's economy and people are not warped by the heavy hand of increasingly deranged government.

While I haven't had a lot of time for writing in the last little while, I've been thinking about the wheres and whys of a reactionary experiment. Granted, we have some partial examples - Hong Kong before the takeover, Singapore, and so on. Chili under Pinochet.

It seems to me that part of the problem with the libertarian ideas that Aretae espouses - and which to a great extent I sympathise with - is that they don't take into account the monkeybrains aspect in regard to the politics. Economics - yes. But people are not comfortable professing loyalty to amorphous collectives operating for the common good. And certainly not to co-operative protection agencies and the like. The United States, and to a lesser extent other democracies, have gotten around this by creating a civic religion centered on constitution idolatry and the veneration of civic saints. This faith is failing now, and seems unlikely to recover, and certainly will not be replaced by un-coerced love for the bureaucratic state and its organs.

The idea of a monarch gives a human thing for people to latch on to, give their loyalty to, and to build community around. Providing you can get to the point where having a king seems like a good idea, and people have agreed that that particular guy is the one who should be king. A Moldbug-style neo-cameralist CEO probably wouldn't inspire that, unless it was Steve Jobs. To me, the idea of having a Calvin Coolidge sort of king - one who would not interfere in the economy, or in our lives, but would serve as a guarantor of order and prosperity; and at need a final arbiter of disputes - that would be best.

The color-coded terror alert level system has gone away. For years, perfidy proudly placed the current terror alert level prominently on the front page as a public service. Then we realized that it was all a crock of shit and canned it.

One last time, though, for old time's sake:

My father has impeccable timing. After moving every single thing that I own at least four times - from where it was to a box, the box to storage, storage to new house, box to its new home - Dad informs me that he needs help moving. I am so tired of picking things up and moving them that lifting my coffee mug to my mouth is aggravating. But, devoted son that I am, I will chip in for the big win, and move my Dad's crap, too this weekend.

The new place is slowly attaining a semblance of order. I have to say that shit-canning half your stuff makes the moving and unpacking process much easier. Having an office again is a real bonus too, and this week I get to put all my books in real, actual bookshelves!

I'm sure you will all be deeply interested to know that my neolithic herder diet is going pretty well. Last July, my pants were a verging on fatbody 44" waist. This last Black Friday, I stopped by the Eddie Bauer warehouse outlet store thingy in Columbus and (rather optimistically, I thought) picked a pair of 38" pants to try on. They were too big. I went back for a 36", and they were just right. Pardon my French, but holy mother of fuck, I just dropped eight full inches of waistline. I haven't been in a 36" since no one knew that Clinton liked getting BJs from pudgy chicks. And I still have another twenty pounds I want to lose. The Thanksgiving holiday was a minor setback, as far as the diet goes - what with all the stuffing, rolls, sugar cookies, pumpkin pie, und so weiter. But a few days of hardcore paleo should remove most of what I gained at the feast.

Aretae is suggesting a 100 push up challenge. I think this would dovetail nicely with the superslow that I've been doing. Aretae has a charming habit of answering questions that I haven't realized I needed to ask. The gym at my office sucks ass, really, and I don't want to keep spending money on something that sucks. I also don't want to spend money on a home gym, which would likely also suck, and be something I have to move in a couple years. What I need is a weight and equipment-less superslow workout scheme. The 100-pushup thing could be part of that.

What else is going on? There's been some interesting stuff on the internets. I can't remember what it was, but if you poke around I'm sure you'll find it.

[wik] Video no longer available, and sadly there's no context to even guess at what it once was.

[alsø wik] Is it proper to have a "wik" when there's no content before it?

[alsø alsø wik] Should this one be "alsø wik," and the one before be "wik?"

Well, I'm moved. Mostly. Still have some random crap to get out of the old place, but all the important stuff is in the new place, and all the furniture is where it is supposed to be. Lots and lots of unpacking left to do, of course, but the family is settling in in its new digs.

Cool thing about renting #1: it can be much cheaper. I just gave myself a $15000/year raise. Actually, more like a $21 k, because I'll actually keep all this money.

Cool thing about renting #2: other people fix things. This is a real time and aggravation saver.

And, I have about twice as much living space as in my previous mountain fortress, though the neighbors are much closer. Sigh. It about evens out.

The little girls do love the fact that they can now literally run in circles. I don't think they liked being forced to run from one end of the house to other and back.

After the unpacking is finished, I think I might actually start blogging again.

In the meantime, read Aretae, Foseti, Devin, Isegoria, Charleton, and Vox Day. Good stuff, there. I was particularly taken by Charleton's riff on Moldbug, here, and Foseti's review of "The Dark Side of the Left." Congrats, also, to Foseti on producing an heir.  Reactionaries need heirs.