Moldbug’s solution to the moron problem

There are a large number of people who have no jobs, who make their living by voting left. Many of them, mostly the males, entertain themselves with arson, assault, and burglary, though we are seeing overweight women engaged in such manly pursuits with increasing frequency, though for the females the major recreation seems to be engaging in unprotected sex with males who demonstrate their superior manliness by mugging and arson.

Moldbug discusses solutions to this problem, as did I, People of Negative Economic Value, and Red in a comment

Many of these, particularly the whites, are people who could get a job if the alternative was sufficiently dire. Some of them are too stupid to get a job, and some of them are too badly behaved to get a job, even if the alternative is starvation or dire punishment they will not respond to incentives.

The inherently badly behaved, the undeserving poor, are an easy problem, since no one feels bad about killing them off, except those that want their votes. Until recent times, even the most tender hearted progressive societies had a rule that after a certain number of minor crimes, the punishment would escalate, rapidly escalating to execution. Almost everyone felt good about that, and almost everyone still would feel good about that, though they hesitate to say so out loud.

But what about the deserving poor, people of negative economic worth, who are nonetheless decent people?

Idleness destroys, makework degrades, the more so if it is obvious makework, such as digging ditches with a spoon. In his article, Moldbug suggests that much of the modern economy, for example the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE) economy, propped up by moving Mestizos into middle class houses with loans made by the fed, loans that will never be paid back, is makework, corrupting and destroying. Most of our suppose Real GDP, which Moldbug calls Fudged GDP, is makework, of negative value. See a devastatingly accurate depiction of the FIRE economy, a value subtraction industry.

Some forms of makework, however, are arguably not exactly makework. Moldbug suggests handmaking wooden toys, and artisanal slow food production. This is somewhat similar to Red’s suggestion, forcibly ship them into something like monasteries, were they are forcibly provided not only with meaningful work, but with meaning, purpose, and community, with a human existence in a world where it is not economically efficient for some people to have a human existence, and where merely keeping unproductive people alive like pets in a no kill shelter gives them the freedom to make choices that deny each other a human existence.

The fact that he, and we, are discussing how problems are to be solved after this equality and fraternity silliness goes away, indicates rising confidence, perhaps induced by accelerating leftism. Since things are getting worse ever faster, something has bust soon, hence people are giving serious thought as to how to solve things in ways that would have been considered sane and reasonable several centuries ago, in a world whose social order would have been considered sane and reasonable several centuries ago. It is not that we are any closer to a solution, but that the problem is getting worse so much faster, that the other side of the crisis has to be in sight.

As I said earlier, if you are in bus moving at high speed, and the driver is blind and insane, the bus will stop eventually..

28 Responses to “Moldbug’s solution to the moron problem”

  1. Trini says:

    poiltics always does. According to Pareto, poiltics is essentially always an elite preserve. I agree. The average net worth of members of the U.S. Senate – whether Democrat or Republican – certainly supports his point.Moreover, the distinction between Brahmin and Optimate has been noted and thought worthy of comment by other observers. One such is Robert Frank, author of the recent book “Richistan: A Journey through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich.” Frank observes that”Richistan is… a country of deep divisions. The relatively homogeneous culture of Old Money – with its boarding schools, social clubs, cultural institutions and sporty nicknames – has become atomized. Richistanis are far more diverse in terms of age, race, gender, and geography, with a rising new generation of young, wealthy liberals squaring off against older-line Republicans.”The most surprising divide in Richistan, however, is between wealth levels. Just as the wealth disparities have grown between Richistan and the rest of the United States, they’ve also grown within Richistan, creating a new kind of upper-class warfare between the haves and the have-mores.” (p. 7)Frank divides the subjects of his investigation into four categories by order of magnitude: Lower Richistan is comprised of those having net worths between $1 and $10 million, Middle Richistan those between $10 million and $100 million, Upper Richistan those between $100 million and $1 billion, and finally the most exclusive enclave, Billionaireville. He points out that “Lower Richistanis are conservative in their poiltics, A majority of them voted for George W. Bush in the 2004 election, saying he was the best candidate to help improve their personal financial situation. They’re also strong advocates of abolishing the estate tax, since most would be targets.” (p. 9)On the other hand,”Middle Richistanis are… more liberal than the Lowers. Most middle Richistanis voted for John Kerry in the last presidential election, even though they said Mr. Bush would be better for their personal financial situation.” (p. 10)Frank comments that among those with net worths above $25 million, the number of inherited fortunes drops off sharply. Furthermore, “Among the nation’s richest 1 percent, inherited wealth accounted for only 9 percent of their combined total net worth in 2001, down from 23 percent in 1989. Only a third of the nation’s richest 1 percent have received any inheritance or gift, down from more than half in 1989.” (p. 107)His chapters “Barbarians in the Ballroom: New Money vs. Old” and “Move Over, Christian Coalition: The New Political Kingmakers” are illustrative of the differing social and political attitudes amongst the elite. Frank’s reportage paints a picture that will be familiar to any reader of Pareto or Mosca, namely that of a declining older elite (“lions”) pitted against a rising new one (“foxes”). To be sure, these do not correspond exactly to MM’s Optimates and Brahmins. Frank’s “Lower Richistan” encompasses not only the Optimate heirs to old money but successful small businessmen and professionals, whom MM would identify as belonging to the upper stratum of his Vaisya caste. Frank’s “Middle Richistan,” on the other hand, includes only a part of MM’s Brahmin caste. The latter is swollen with academic, journalistic, and governmental types who do not necessarily have net worths between $10 and $100 million. What emerges, however, is a rough correspondence between present elite poiltics and the court vs. country parties that long characterized British poiltics. A handful of Whig magnates along with their trusted minions at the courts of the first two Georges were opposed in their day by a Tory party made up mostly of high churchmen, lesser peers, and the smaller landed gentry. This division is reflected in this year’s presidential poiltics. McCain is clearly an optimate – the son and grandson of admirals, wed to a wealthy beer heiress. One is reminded of Admiral Lord Keith, a naval hero of the Napoleonic wars, who married Hester Thrale, the daughter of a rich brewer. Obama, on the other hand, is an exemplary Brahmin, having risen on the basis of academic credentials, political machinations, and the patronage of inhabitants of Frank’s Middle Richistan, such as Tony Rezko, or the San Francisco crowd before which he made his notorious comments about those de9classe9 folk who clung to guns and religion.Whether Frank’s middle Richistanis will persist over the long term in their support of left-wing poiltics remains to be seen. In his chapter “Aristokids,” Frank writes that”…most millionaires today plan to leave at least 75 percent of their estates to their children. The number is highest for families with households worth $25 million or more, disproving the widely held notion that wealthier families are more likely to leave a greater share to charity.”The old writers on heraldry used to distinguish between those who had arrived at the “port of gentility” – i.e., those who, having acquired a noble feu and being granted arms, were considered “gentlemen of coat-armour” – and those who had been armigerous for three or more generations, who were “gentlemen of blood.” It will be interesting to see if the grandchildren of today’s rich radicals do not become tomorrow’s aristocratic reactionaries. In due time the atomization of today’s upper class may be followed by a congelation into a common elite culture after the three generations it takes to make gentlemen of blood. And what sort of rising elite faction will then challenge it?

    • peppermint says:

      (1) tl;dr
      (2) “far more diverse in terms of age, race, gender, and geography, with a rising new generation of young, wealthy liberals squaring off against older-line Republicans” in particular is gauche
      (3) did you know that gauche means left?
      (4) McCain is a Jew-owned cuckservative, like Winston Churchill
      (5) your failure to adapt to modern forms of textual layout like paragraphs and your failure to adapt to modern forms of assessment like cuckservative and Jew-owned are related
      (6) this is a picture of you: http://imgur.com/dfw3Tys

  2. […] angling, it conveys the basic reality of the situation adequately. It’s not exactly ‘the moron problem‘, but it’s not exactly different, […]

  3. Robert in Arabia says:

    Hitler had admirable and practical solutionsm that ended the depression in three years. This is why Stalin’ s allies destroyed Germany.

    • jim says:

      I don’t think so. Hitler cured the depression with fiscal stimulus, a drop in the real value of wages, and putting people into the army. His economic theory was predicated on war: Print money to build weapons and hire soldiers, and then if they win, victory will ensure the money is worth its face value.

      This in fact worked. He conscripted a bunch of people into the army: Poof, unemployment solved. He then marched that army into the Rhineland: Poof, more production and taxpayers to ensure that the freshly printed money was worth what it was supposed to be worth.

      However, persistent application of that theory was apt to tick people off. You could do it once, you could do it twice, you could do it three times, but eventually …

      • K says:

        Could it be that, in converse, the depression was deliberately engineered by the politicians to consolidate power and make excuse for their grand plan of society and conquer?

  4. Ian says:

    My suggested solution: all government assistance that is a sign failing at life and not bad luck or old age (ie EBT/Snap, Section 8, and public housing but not medicare or social security) lasts a maximum of six months per every ten year for each individual. After that, recipients need to decide – either get off the dole, or else be sterilized (along with all of one’s offspring) and receive cradle-to-grave housing, food, transportation, and spending money provided for them by the government.

    Result: those that can work, do work, and the useless and parasitic do not reproduce. This results in an eventual rise in average IQ and productivity-per-worker, and an eventual drop in government spending (debt), population (housing costs), unemployment, and crime.

    • Ian says:

      Oh, and

      > The inherently badly behaved, the undeserving poor, are an easy problem, since no one feels bad about killing them off <

      Obama is obviously much more intelligent, diligent, honest, hard-working, and fair than such people, but one of the worst things about him is the racial loyalty he feels to a significant fraction of them.

    • jim says:

      Contrary to Moldbug, stupid people can get jobs at decent pay if they are reliable. If you can tell them to do some simple task, such as pick up the trash, and know that it will be done, they get paid quite well. The problem is people that are stupid and unreliable, since they need supervision, and the cost of supervision is likely to exceed their value.

      But, being unreliable is not really a crime worthy of execution, etc.

      What such people need is a disciplined structured environment where discipline is enforced, and enforced using methods sufficiently direct, crude and coercive as to get the attention of someone with low IQ and short time preference. Many unemployable people could become employable with politically incorrect methods of training.

      • Ian says:

        Sailer has said for years that elites throw up restrictive cultural forms (monogamy, norms/laws around drug use, etc) so that they can have fun, not noticing the impact that such extreme freedom has on those less intelligent and with less impulse control.

        • jim says:

          I would trace this all the way back to Cromwell and Barebones parliament – divorce, desecration of marriage, and higher female status goes all the way back.

          Authorizing, and then encouraging, female hypergamy started under Cromwell. Victorianism resumed the trend by promulgating the official theory that women did not need any supervision or encouragement to keep their legs closed, while beastly evil men needed to be forced to keep their pants buttoned.

          Subsequently, the elite supposedly revolted against victorianism by noticing that women were not naturally inclined to keep their legs closed, but this is a continuation of the trend started under Barebones parliament, not a reversal, a reverse in tactics in pursuit of the same objective: Less sex for non elite males, more sex for elite males.

          To say the same thing more briefly, I think the Puritans and all the numerous Puritan descended ideologues have always been in favor of social decay.

          During the Victorian period Puritan descended religious and political movements created a huge number of institutions to “reclaim fallen women” – by protecting them from material hardship or public shame. The wording sounds dreadfully puritanical, the supposed aim sounds extraordinarily old fashioned, but the method sounds familiar.

  5. […] posed by “people of negative economic value” (or, with his signature delicacy, ‘the moron problem’.) It’s a running theme with Moldbug too, and he’s now gone epic on […]

  6. VXXC says:

    BTW and O/T – here is the History of the last 50 years – from FBI Senior citizens scam warnings..

    “People who grew up in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s were generally raised to be polite and trusting. Con artists exploit these traits, knowing that it is difficult or impossible for these individuals to say “no” or just hang up the telephone. ”

    50 years ago is when they should have hung up the phone on Americas elites, and started hanging them from lamp poles.

  7. VXXC says:

    You underestimate our working class, the American working class.

    Remember they quite define their value and worth through work, the mass destruction of which ranks amongst our elites greatest crimes. Also one of our elites greatest poles of profit whilst it was being accomplished.

    The greatest crime of it’s Rulers against the Americans was and is the Morgenthau plan applied to America, mainly the Rust Belt but also any other productive centers of manufactures. Camden NJ and now California come to mind.

    All that America uses can be produced quite economically here – and of course people are still using those goods, like the good were talking on – quite economic if you don’t have a predatory USG smashing it all down. USGs left arm of taxes and hostile regulators is well known, the right arm is so called Free Trade.

    In sum let’s normalize our economy, apply the laws concerning crime, end welfare except for the truly needy [special needs and physically/mentally incompetent] and I think you’ll see most “prole” dysfunction vanish.

  8. asdf says:

    I can think of several tasks that I would like to have done by others, but I would not hire someone to do them because they cost more to guard then they produce.

    Take simple household chores. Anyone can do them. However, they aren’t worth the $20+ an hour that I assume credible labor would cost. It’s worth $5/hour, but at $5/hour I’d be too afraid the person would steal from me or committ violence against me.

    • jim says:

      I suspect that anyone of demonstrable good character can get a decent wage, that even low IQ people who are enthusiastic about doing their jobs can get a decent wage in various activities that are computer resistant.

      In which case, very few deserving poor, not a problem, contrary to Moldbug.

      Send the undeserving poor to Siberia. Forget to send them warm clothing.

      On the other hand, reading old books, I see societies with minimal welfare complaining that they had a big problem with the deserving poor. But perhaps, as Carlyle suggests, they were deliberately inefficient about sorting out the deserving from the undeserving poor.

    • Thales says:

      Huh. I pay $20/hour for ~3 hours of household cleaning every two weeks. I also pay $60/month for basic gardening. These are the working poor, the upper-crust of the deserving poor as demonstrated by their ability to hold down a job.

      Are there deserving poor who cannot hold down jobs? Probably, but how does one sort them out? They cannot all be shipped to monasteries.

      • Alrenous says:

        Feckless but not actually criminal. Can’t hold down job because they fail to show up, not because they stole the fax machine. Very small population.

        It is hard to act responsibly without practice, and hard to get practice when there’s no consequences or even rewards for irresponsibility.

        • jim says:

          Feckless but not actually criminal. Can’t hold down job because they fail to show up, not because they stole the fax machine.

          That lot, we should send off to the monastery to be coercively taught responsibility.

        • Thales says:

          Not sure of the exact size of that population, but it’s at least a large as the number of people receiving permanent disability SSI, where the disability is being mal-educated and of low intelligence (i.e.: unemployable). My guess is 3x to 5x that number.

      • asdf says:

        Yes, I do this as well. However, we are talking about a very limited number of hours. I could not afford to have, say, a full time personal assistant at $20/hour (or at least it wouldn’t be worth it). So clearly the limited demand of myself and people like me is not enough to bring down the unemployment rate.

        • Thales says:

          Agreed. In theory, one could hire a full-time housekeeper at $2/hour, but today any person hired for that amount could not be trusted. Also, the Cathedral has made that illegal.

  9. Red says:

    When the leftist singularity consumes itself we need people something ready to pick up the pieces. These people must understand the true history of the age and what true human nature is to be effective. For a long time I had hoped this would be a religious movement of some sort because nothing motivates and binds people together quite as well religion. A religion lead by people who understand human nature and who are filled with the true knowledge of the ages would be a mighty force for order. However, watching today’s religions overflowing with progressive corruption it seems likely that they would just run with their own slightly less screwed up version of progressiveness and ultimately usher in a dark age of destruction.

    Now it may be that dark ages are required to reset things properly. I’m not entirely sure. But I do know one thing for sure: The true knowledge of the ages must be preserved in an uncorrupted form and the true history of this age saved to warn future generations. What people like Jim, Moldburg, and many others are doing is unearthing the true knowledge of our forefathers and telling the true history of this age. Even as we face a very bleak future at least we finally begin to understand the past and the present. And in that understanding there lies a glimmer of hope.

    Moldburg’s suggestion of creating an antiversity version of wikipedia could be one of the most useful acts in history if it’s ever under taken. It might shorten future dark ages and allow people to learn from hard found human truths for all ages to come. No more stumbling around blindly not knowing what is true or not merely from our own experiences, but having a source that gives each generation of truth seekers, engineers, and builders a step up from the last. I hope it can be done before the fall and the next dark age.

  10. anonymous says:

    For the most part, “prole” whites aren’t not working because the welfare is too good, they’re not working because companies are specifically discouraged from hiring them.

  11. Handle says:

    Almost every “ready, willing, able” person can be put to work doing “more security” of some low-level, just-barely-living-wage sort. It feels “important”, it doesn’t take much talent or education, is hard to automate, and is infinitely expandable. If you honestly think of anywhere else to put a guard, then start making buddy teams.

    What you do with the irremediable incorrigibles, well, it seems we’ve mostly settled on long-term incarceration, unfortunately.

    • jim says:

      Markedly more productive than a Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate sector funded by the fed making loans to mestizos that will be unlikely to be repaid, in that it will produce some value, and unlike racially correct loans, not subtract any value.

      However, though a security guard can be as dumb as a post, the job requires courage, good character, calm, and good humor.

      But it suggests a general principle that jobs that are at least somewhat productive, not mere makework, and not computerizable, can be found for all good people – that the deserving poor should be rare.

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