2018-10-05: Čtyřicáté Výročí v Moc Bezmocných

Václav Havel would have turned 82 today were he still alive. One might be tempted to believe in divine grace based on the fact that he died well before he could witness the circus Zeman and Babiš have been perpetuating on the Czech people over the last several years (not to discount the shenanigans of ODS or ČSSD). This month also marks the fortieth anniversary of Havel writing Power of the Powerless. Its message is just as applicable today throughout the United States, the EU, PRC, and other nations that have been moving towards greater repression. If you have not read it, you can obtain the full-text here.

The Parable of the green-grocer reminded me of a logic puzzle I read. Randall Monroe of XKCD did a write-up of the puzzle. To summarize the puzzle: on an island where people must not know their eye color, a seer announces that they see at least one person who's eyes contain a specific color. If someone is knowledgable of their eye color, they must exile themselves as soon as possible. Given there are no mirrors and no-one else has told anyone else their eye color, and all inhabitants of the island have perfect rationality/reasoning, there is actually a logical answer to how the inhabitants behave. I remember a similar puzzle involving "Pirates' Gold" from my college days that requires using a similar technique to solve. Both are worthy of a future post's worth of investigation.

One may wonder how a riddle and an essay on the sociology of feigning allegiance to a broken system are related. "But each person knows everyone else's eye color. How is that the same as only knowing if you're for or against the system?" You're thinking too small. Instead consider the answer to the riddle: what may seem like spontaneous order or a miracle may in fact just be rational behavior in the right circumstances. It's the kind of thing that makes you appreciate the thought that goes into a piece of media like Death Note

"OK but no-one's being jailed yet for failing to signal, not in the West at least." That's definitely so. Havel spent 4 years in jail after publishing Power of the Powerless. Compared to that, losing your job is trivial. Oh and some Scottish shitposter got fined for... shitposting. Your graduate studies may also come into jeopardy if you share the wrong ideas (not even advocate, but just share, as say opposition research). But all of those are again, trivial compared to jail.

The memo is old news. While the sources it cites are mostly accurate, they were not entriely supportive of the arguments made in the memo (You can read the unadulterated version here). The bigger error in all of this though, is to think Google has *your* interests in mind. Where *your* represents left-leaning person that supports some type of economic reform or revolution.

So why do I bring up Power of the Powerless and juxtapose it with the recent wave of social pressure to conform to progressive viewpoints? Here's a thought experiment: Go to your favorite forum, and try to perform an Ideological Turing Test (for either side, in this case) for supporting/not-supporting California SB-826. If you support it, consider the following tiers of counterargument when pretending to be a conservative:

Tier 1: HURR DURR, WOMEN ARE ACTUALLY ST00PID

Tier 2: The market is already putting pressure towards this, but regulation would force firms that were having difficulty into relocating or trying to skirt around it.

Tier 3: Consider public choice theory (Another thing that gets shat on and censored) can also apply to corporate governance. Companies have no disincentive now to expand their board of directors. Boards of directors are already notorious for rubber-stamping excessive pay packages to executives. Many executives serve as directors or officers on the boards of other companies as well. All this legislation will do is provide a back door method for the female associates of current executives to quid-pro-quo raises for eachother(Consider this in the context of what I wrote last week.)

Feel free to use the tier 3 argument. Note that tier-3 is sexist when not viewed in a cynical sense, since one could interpret it as women lacking agency and just serving their husbands (As opposed to the cynical, House-of-Cards/Bonnie-and-Clyde view that both partners are crooks). Watch however, as it gets shut down for being as sexist as a tier-1 argument. Then weep in six months when more female legislators start serving on boards and nothing has fundamentally changed for the better. Hey! At least that boot stomping on your face forever is now a stilletto! Maybe it can pierce your fucking skull and you can finally get that sweet relief you wanted!

Either way, the clock continues ticking. Soon we'll know when to leave together

2018, Fr8train

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.