boomer delusions

one of the difficult things about tech morons is

they think that misinformation is a demand problem

and they are not exactly incorrect because people believe whatever the frick they want to believe.

...

the problem with this line of thinking is pretty specifically that it's an inappropriate application of a mental model. not everything is a market.

Not everything is a market.

see the way these frickers think is heartbreakingly limited. linear. broken.

they believe that people have ideas, transmit ideas. that ideas win in a 'marketplace of ideas.'

these are not wholly incorrect mental models. they just have their limits, and their limits are hit pretty quick.

(these people will also tend to believe that people have or attempt to have logically consistent positions. this is how they get broken when they interact with politics, which is largely a matter of feelings, not logic.)

being by general principle darwinian thinkers, they will also tend to believe that the 'best' ideas win, or that 'winning' defined by 'popularity' is to be assumed to be idk one of those evolutionary fitness things.

so not only are they misapplying economics to ideas and rhetoric and discourse

they're also misapplying evolutionary theory.

It's the sort of confusion that could only exist in a free market neoliberal democracy. Because the authoritarian past isn't very far behind us.

An authoritarian society is one in which you are killed for believing something that the monopoly-of-ideas does not want you to believe. You cannot speak ill against the King or you will simply be killed.

And if the King believes something stupid or wrong, that is enforced on everyone regardless of whether there's 'demand' for it.

The marketplace of ideas, then, rests on a stupid notion: that humans exist in some sort of abstract relation with ideas.

Some ideas come from different places. If we're going to strain this broken metaphor further, let's do it: there are brands of ideas, and state-sponsored brands have a certain power through their official nature.

you should be very, very afraid when an authoritarian tyrant enforces his delusion from an official position

and a lot of these tech bros go "it's a demand problem, these people just want to believe whatever delusions come out of Trump's mouth."

It's just that if Fox News acts and speaks officially, and Trump acts and speaks officially, more people are going to treat whatever blanket lies which emerge as normal.

You don't just give up on a drug distribution network because 'it's a demand problem.' You arrest and prosecute the cartels, you disrupt their leadership. (Of the things the incoming administration might do, breaking the power of the Mexican cartels wouldn't concern me.)

And don't get me wrong, the liberal media has a perilous relationship with truth and facts. Its own biases.

But there's a difference between bias, and outright fabrication.

Trump lost in 2020. That's a fact. It's a fact which the authoritarians are already trying to clamp down on. Telling this truth will become more and more difficult to do.

Because when a King cannot be criticized, the Demand for his misinformation goes way up. An authoritarian tyrant is a monopolist in the marketplace of ideas.

And the same people who decried the 'orwellian' nature of the people who wanted you to use pronouns are suspiciously silent on Trump appointees being unable to speak the truth about Trump's election loss in 2020.

So here we are. Prepare for things to get much, much worse.

We failed. We didn't get the boomers out of power.

The only good boomer is a boomer who leaves public office.

If Trump is made president, our government has no legitimacy anymore, but in that lack of legitimacy there is a power vacuum.

Just because John Roberts said some words doesn't mean Trump is not an oathbreaker. He deserves death, but I would have taken banishment from power.