Ep. 378 Pushing Back Against Curtis Yarvin’s Literal Call for Government Slavery
Bob responds to Curtis Yarvin’s commentary on the H1B visa argument among conservatives, wherein Yarvin actually advocates government slavery as the solution to America’s woes.
Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest:
- Curtis Yarvin’s substack post and the YouTube version.
- Bob’s analysis (part 1 and part 2) of the Yarvin vs. Dave Smith debate.
- Bob’s critique of Milton Friedman on overstating the benignity of trade deficits.
- Bob’s interview of Mark Thornton on the inefficiency of slavery, and the related critique of reparations.
- Help support the Bob Murphy Show.
About the author, Robert
Christian and economist, Chief Economist at infineo, and Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute.
Thank you for handling an intrinsically difficult bit of argumentation. You untangled a Rube Golberg-style narrative.
Like other writers who fall in love with their too-clever-by-far, or artful, expressions (G.K. Chesterton does this ad nauseam), Yarvin makes understanding his thoughts difficult for many readers–including me. After spending decades doing marketing writing, I learned to express myself with as little friction as possible between the text I write and the reader’s brain; you have mere seconds to communicate something in an ad or marketing narrative. Artful cleverness can be entertaining if your audience has adequate leisure and you really have something important to say, but in Yarvin’s case, the questions and possibility of erroneous assumptions about his meaning put a roadblock in his attempts at communication.
It’s like Bob watches a particular city gang shooting at children riding school buses, from a particular school, on a particular holiday, every year.
And Bob comes trundling along, offering up an analysis like “These completely generic, random individuals from no identifiable ideology, common origin or identity, shooting at school busses for profit, over an extended period of time, incurs negative externalities because children eventually get hurt. I am genuinely baffled at this criminal enterprise of raiding busses that hardly yields any loot for the perpetrators.”
It’s like, what do you say to a guy like that? i
Is it really serving a good purpose if you have to self-censor the important observations?
Yarvin isn’t making mistakes. Krugman wasn’t making mistakes. Daszak, Baric, Kadlac weren’t making mistakes. Moses Mordechai Levi wasn’t making mistakes.
How about whites stop accepting the subverted definition of ‘nation’ for starters.
Yarvin knows exactly what the true definition is and fires an obvious curveball definition, which Bob completely whiffs at as it sails over the plate, bounces off the catcher’s helmet and knocks
out ninety-thousand more from our next generation.
Steee-RIKE!
It is descriptively true that people are slaves of the government, no matter how liberal it is. That is not going to change by denying it. No one wants to be a slave. Nothing would advance anarchism more than Yarvin’s view becoming mainstream because that would make people seriously ask what it takes to be free, if liberalism is not how.
It is never well-defined who is a slave and who is part of the ruling class. Anyone who feels it is worth saying anything about politics must believe he is close to the latter. There is always competition for power. More people understanding political realism would heighten this competition immensely. Anarcho-capitalism provides new ways of resolving such conflict
It is descriptively true that people are slaves of the government, no matter how liberal it is. That is not going to change by denying it. No one wants to be a slave. Nothing would advance anarchism more than Yarvin’s view becoming mainstream because that would make people seriously ask what it takes to be free, if liberalism is not how.
It is never well-defined who is a slave and who is part of the ruling class. Anyone who feels it is worth saying anything about politics must believe he is close to the latter. There is always competition for power. More people understanding political realism would heighten this competition immensely. Anarcho-capitalism provides new ways of resolving such conflict.
Yarvin is attempting to describe an impossible system where everyone is a slave, but strangely no ruling class exists. He pretends that “The State” is some kind of floating brain, disconnected from the human condition and looking down from above, bestowing gentle and beneficent guidance.
It is yet another resurrection of the “Wise Overlord” fallacy … he has conveniently swept under the rug the fact that every government consists of flesh and blood people (usually those people who are particularly attracted to power) plus institutions. Thus, slavery invariably means a human master ruling over another human … there is no floating “Wise Overlord” and there never will be. Those institutions of government are designed to prevent power hungry individuals from being able to have too much influence … therefore the ruling class are kept occupied constantly watching over each other’s shoulders, and stabbing each other from behind.
When government decisions do get made, the best you can hope for is some kind of compromise which won’t be great, but might be an incremental improvement. Often it turns out worse than before and results in constant back and forth as various factions get the upper hand pushing their ideological peccadillos. Worst case the restraint of the state institutions reaches breaking point, the looters take over … and you get the mix of greed and power which has got us into trouble so many times before.
Somebody needs to take Yarvin’s keyboard away; he’s drunk.
But more seriously, I’m wondering if he has some kind of mental disorder – not because of the content, but just seeing the way his thinking proceeds. Sometimes you’ll see these essays from people who you later learn were schizophrenic or bipolar or whatever. There’s a certain quality to how their thought comes out in text that’s hard to describe, but I get similar subtle vibes from this. I’m not going to assume anything, but I wouldn’t be totally surprised if years from now we find out that Yarvin has not been well.
Good point. When writing is as convoluted as Yarvin’s, you get the impression that they can’t make a point simply and clearly. The internet is choked with such stuff. If I can’t glean what an article is about within a few seconds (a thesis), I suspect that the “writer” is going to meander through a lot of muck; by the end of it, I’ll wish I’d never wasted my time reading it.
Even as we speak, the next generation of AI is being trained on the collected works of Curtis Yarvin.
One has to wonder, if Yarvin’s silliness is correct, why was everyone poor as dirt until “liberalism” came around? If he thinks living the life of a hunter gatherer is so great, he can go do it any time.
Excellent analysis, Bob! Thanks for this.