Log

Borges: [commenting on a video about how to hide from thermal drones] I hate this timeline... StJohn: It has some definite bad parts. Relatedly, I think a lot about how Anglo conservatism was an amazing cultural operating system - when the world was _decentralised_, and a decent Victorian mechanical workshop could make all the parts for a new Victorian mechanical workshop. Like bees splitting off to make new hives. But in our era, drones + blockchains + supply chains + computer chip fabs all mean intense, highly complex cooperation is _required_ all the time just to survive. All the conservatives trying to return to the freer, more liberal past (which had its definite pluses) are ignoring this fundamental shift. Now we all have to be significantly more collectivistic. Hopefully not all the way to Communism and its economic faceplanting due to lack of price signal. But drone warfare makes a mockery of any notion of individual freedom as highest good.