They broke Robin Hanson. http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/JuneteenthApology.html

Hanson chose to be an icon and leader. Giving in is a betrayal of his followers, fans and values. It signals that you can't succeed by standing up for truth and free speech. He's discouraging them. He took on a responsibility and failed at it.

He was some sort of role model. He knew it and wanted to be. And that's why he was targeted. And then, with little fuss, RIP.

At the same time, Scott Alexander stood up to the NYT. Though, interestingly, Alexander wasn't even given the option to apologize and recant.

They gave Alexander the options fight back or not fight back, and be attacked either way using the same weapon (dox him by printing his name).

I saw something recently, forget where, about a revolution long ago, I think somewhere in China. I don't know if it's a true story or just designed to make a point. Was like:

What's the penalty for being late? Death.

What's the penalty for a revolution? Death.

So then they revolted cuz it's the same penalty anyway.

Did Hanson naively think that his job would always be safe when he criticized mainstream ideas? Did he think he lived in a society with free speech and tolerance of intellectual diversity? Or just that his particular university was especially great? I doubt it.

He ought to have known a confrontation was possible. If he wasn't prepared for the confrontation, what the hell was he doing? If his plan was to give in, he misled his readers about that.

Hanson is trying to proceed with blogging like nothing happened, without any explanation to his readers (other than the official apology, which doesn't explain it – a real explanation would be e.g. "they threatened my job, and i wanted to keep it, so i spoke out against the cause". That particular explanation would raise some questions before he was accepted back as an advocate and leader of the cause. If he has a better one, let's hear it. If he's muzzled, and can be threatened into not saying whatever the university leaders choose, then can we trust anything he blogs to be his real opinion?).

I was not much of Hanson fan anyway, but he's one of the symbols we have ... well had. I don't know of a bunch of better ones.

People should not accept him back. Don't act like this didn't happen. He's clearly compromised and there is no plan or strategy in place to enable his free and honest speech going forward. There are problems here which Hanson is trying to ignore instead of present solutions to. He's doing no post mortem. He's making no plan to be more successful next time. He's presumably just decided on a bunch of things he's no longer willing to say publicly, and he's hiding the list from his audience. And I doubt it's even a list, in writing, or that he has any policies to ensure he consistently follows his plan. He may well behave inconsistently and get in trouble more, or refrain from saying things that aren't on the list, or both, and there's no transparency.

This question is directed to people who think gender matters for behavior and mental capabilities. Similar questions could be asked about race and other traits.

Suppose that gender is a social construct. Suppose that gendered behavior is due to just culture, not a mix of culture and genes. Suppose that women are born with equal mental capabilities to men.

If you conceded all that, what would you change your mind about, if anything? Why?

I ask this because a lot of effort is spent denying that gender is a social construct. Many right wing people are quite hostile to the social construct theory and view it as dangerous. But what negative consequences do they think it implies?

I interpret people as thinking something like "If the left was correct that gender is a social construct, then a lot of their political philosophy would be correct, and I'd have to change my mind about a bunch of stuff." I am doubtful of this and don't see that the social construct theory implies much leftist political philosophy.

If gender is a social construct, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Social constructs exist and matter. They can't be instantly or trivially changed or gotten rid of. Culture and memes are important.

This issue is complicated by biological differences between the genders for e.g. muscles. Men are stronger on average. The difference is significant. Reasonable people don't deny that. Try to focus your answer on basically intellectual differences, personality differences, behavior differences, mental differences, etc., which are the things that might be cultural.

Note that the anti social construct view claims that genes influence gendered mental traits, but do not fully determine them. They think a mix of biology and culture leads to gendered traits. They don't claim it's all biology. The social construct view, by contrast, denies the role of biology. It rejects the mixed factors view in favor of a single dominant factor.

For people who think gender is a social construct, I have similar question: What (classical) liberal ideas do you think that contradicts, if any?

This post will clarify a few of my ideas that people have concerns or misunderstandings about.

Politics

Freedom and Capitalism

I want a small government with limited power. The proper function of government is protect people against force – e.g. military, cops, courts. I want a society with tons of freedom including economic freedom (which is what “capitalism” actually means). See my essay liberalism. I’m not necessarily opposed to all anarchist ideas (though most are awful), but I think we should aim for minimal government and try that for a while before thinking we know in advance what further reforms would be a good idea.

I respect thinkers like Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand. I do not respect lots of their followers or the people commonly associated with them (e.g. I disagree with Hayek, Rothbard, most libertarians and most Objectivists). I also disagree with most Republicans and most Democrats.

In general I like individual thinkers, not groups.

I think political philosophy and economics are more important than politics. By politics I mean stuff like current events, news and election issues. Current political issues include abortion, gun control, immigration, racism, feminism, rent control, tax policy, government-run healthcare and environmentalist policies. People should learn how to think effectively about general principles before trying to debate those specific controversies.

People are partially right to complain about corporations and Wall Street. Many of their arguments are incorrect, but there is shady, unfair, exploitive stuff going on. But the problem is mostly government involvement in the economy and lack of economic freedom. For example, the main source of monopolies is government laws that make it harder to compete with existing companies, e.g. by increasing barriers to entry.

Trump

I like Donald Trump better than Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. I think Trump has moderate political views and likes America. I disagree with his protectionist economic ideas (like tariffs and trade wars), though I do agree with his intuition that there’s some problem related to trade with China and that some sort of action should be taken. I think Trump screwed up by hiring a bunch of establishment Republicans and he handled coronavirus badly.

I appreciate that Trump is somewhat, partially challenging the ruling elite class of journalists, media pundits, unelected political influencers, professors, politicized non-profits, lobbyists, bankers, administrators and bureaucrats. Most politicians in both parties are part of that elite which is oppressing and ripping off the American people (the middle and lower classes, and the wealthy people without friends in high places).

Tribalism

Most people bring a tribalist, follower mindset to politics. They cheer for their team, just like sports. They’re super biased. They don’t understand the other side(s) very well. They don’t rationally study or debate the issues.

This doesn’t mean each tribe is equally right or wrong. Currently, I agree with Republicans more than Democrats. That’s despite being an atheist and growing up in a Democrat family in a heavily Democrat area. I do disagree with lots of Republican ideas.

Immigration

Immigration has been used for decades to try to dilute Western civilization by bringing in people who think in other ways and have other values. Western countries have been doing a bad job of standing up for their values and assimilating immigrants. There are ongoing debates about whether Western values are worth standing up for. While this debate is ongoing, I think immigration should be slowed way down. I don’t think bringing in immigrants who agree with you, and vote for your tribe, is a legitimate way to resolve a debate.

I don’t think white people have a monopoly on Western values. I don’t think genetics are destiny. I know many other people who criticize immigration are racist in some way (that doesn’t merit all the tribalist hatred they’re receiving, which often comes from people who are even more racist). They think there are race-related IQ genes and that there is such thing as a biological “human nature” which is controlled by genes and therefore can vary by race. I have a strong “left wing” position – shared by right winger Ayn Rand – that ideas and culture are what matter, not biology. (On a related note, I think gender roles are socially constructed, but I don’t believe some of the other ideas commonly associated with that claim. While males and females biologically differ in some physical characteristics, I don’t think biology is the cause of observed mental differences like personality traits or math success.)

I disagree with many economic arguments against immigration. In a capitalist society, immigrants don’t drive down wages. That’s because, as the workforce gets larger and wages go down, it’s easier to start a business (because you can hire employees more cheaply), so more businesses get started, which pushes wages back up. However, currently US regulations are hostile to starting new businesses. When it’s a huge burden to start a business and hire people, then immigration can drive wages down. But “they took our jobs” is a bad argument.

I think the USA should screen immigrants better. Instead of letting so many immigrants in by lottery or extended family ties (including birthright citizenship granted to babies born here by tourists), I think immigrants should be admitted more based on having American values and being ready and able to do productive work. Although I think IQ tests (and the concept of IQ itself) are highly flawed and culturally biased, I think they’d be better than nothing for an immigration screening method. English language proficiency tests would also help.

Identity Politics

I’m opposed to identity politics. I think we should stop looking at people’s skin color, rather than doing affirmative action or having race-based groups like “Black Lives Matter”. I want a more color blind approach.

I do not think racism, sexism, homophobia, white privilege, etc., are solved issues. There are significant problems there (by both Democrats and Republicans). The current activism – like riots and cancel culture – is making things worse and is making it harder to reform anything.

PUA

Lots of “pickup artists” are idiots. Sometimes their idiocy crosses the line into assault. People like Good Looking Loser, Russel Hartley and RooshV are awful.

In 1994, the alt.seduction.fast (ASF) discussion group was started on Usenet. Some people there figured out some good ideas about how dating and social dynamics work. Of course some people there were dumb, too. Representatives of that group, which I respect, include:

• Mystery Method (Mystery’s Reality TV show))
• The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists
• Girls Chase
• Real Social Dynamics (YouTube, website)

It was a discussion community. Many people participated productively and there are archives of ideas people liked, e.g. Classic PUA Writings. Many of them also went out and met people in person. They weren’t just armchair philosophers.

The ASF people aren’t perfect but I think they have some genuine knowledge. They managed to analyze, describe and understand social dynamics in ways that other groups haven’t. This information is useful for all members of our culture, male or female, in order to better understand the unwritten rules of our society. And although the ASF focus relates to dating, many of the social dynamics principles apply to other social situations too.

Other so-called pickup artists vary. Some learned a lot from the ASF crowd or participated in those discussions. Others didn’t and are usually clueless. Some of the ASF knowledge has spread elsewhere but it’s often mixed up with bad ideas too. The “red pill”, “mgtow (men going their own way)”, “MRA (men’s rights advocates)” and “manosphere” groups often have some ASF knowledge mixed in along with some of their own bad ideas.

Because so many fakers try to sell their pickup artist advice (advice that doesn’t work and is often offensive), the ASF people pretty much stopped using the terms “pickup artist” and “PUA”. I’ve been using the term “PUA” anyway but I’ll consider calling them the ASF community or specifying individuals in order to reduce confusion.

Claims about how our culture works are not claims that it should be that way. I’m not in favor of social climbing, promiscuity or pandering to whatever other people want. I’m also against lying to or tricking women (or anyone). The ASF people, contrary to some of the attacks on them, are more anti-lying than the typical person.

FI Members

There are no senior members of FI who have been around a while (years), learned FI well, and who make good role models. Don’t try to copy anyone or assume they’re good and you should try to be like them.

I don’t endorse anyone’s learning behavior, and I certainly don’t endorse their lecturing behavior. Some newer members have potential (and older members could change) but none have established themselves as doing a great job.

Don’t try to copy me either. That will lead to cargo culting. You have to learn things yourself and follow your own judgment. I’m too different in too many ways. You should expect to misunderstand me a lot, not to be able to do what you think I do and have it work in your own life situation.

Being a Discord moderator is not an endorsement of someone’s ideas. Being in a video with me or having a guest post on curi.us is not an endorsement of a person in general.

On a related note, I think everyone but me should be posting anonymously. (Because of cancel culture. And by posting anonymously I mean use something that isn't your real name or connected to your real name.) I’d prefer to be anonymous myself. I think it’s way too late for me to change (and maybe too hard to stay anonymous when e.g. selling stuff, meeting people IRL, and developing a reputation as a public intellectual) but everyone else should go anonymous. What’s the benefit of using your real name?

Twitter

I’m going to stop posting on Twitter in general. Most of what I posted was just retweets without me writing anything. I dislike Upvotes and Likes in general (pointless) but I found retweets ok (shows stuff to my friends/fans) and tried them for a while. Retweets were not endorsements. I never treated Twitter like a discussion forum or serious place. I will continue to read Twitter because I like a few people there. I’m going to stop retweeting because Twitter has an awful, tribalist political culture which I don’t want to contribute to. Plus Twitter shadowbanned me and is part of the cancel culture which is trying to suppress right wing speech.

I think FI people like Khaaan and Justin are tribalist tweeters who don’t understand the other side(s) of the debate well. That doesn’t stop them from being right or sharing good info over 50% of the time. But they ought to learn how to think rationally instead of doing so much politics. Even if they were going to do politics stuff, their approach is basically unproductive because they’re so biased for their tribe.

Offensive Comments

I’m not careful about what I say all the time. I don’t believe in political correctness. I think misunderstandings will happen whatever you do and it’s not worth the effort to walk on eggshells around everyone. Better if people mostly have thick skins rather than police their own speech.

If you dislike something I say, you can ask about it or criticize it. (Try to understand what it is before attacking it, please.) We might disagree. If so, I’ll have a thought-out position that you can hopefully respect, even if I didn’t explain it all upfront. I can’t preemptively explain everything I think every time I mention a topic. People can ask questions or read my writing to find out more.

I often disagree with all mainstream positions on a topic in some way. When disagreeing with one view, I don’t always communicate what I think about all the other positions. This leads to misunderstandings because people assume if you criticize one tribe then you must be part of an opposing tribe.

Lots of “jokes” reveal genuine racism or other bigotry. Speech is meaningful. I’m open to rational questions and criticism – I won’t just automatically dismiss issues as minor. But please try not to assume what I think and don’t begin the conversation in an adversarial way.

George Reisman tweeted:

[Trevor Dillinger wrote:] You have no right to drunk-driving. Same with COVID-19 spreading.

Your comment would apply to the Chinese Communist Party, who knew they were spreading Covid 19.

No one should be virtually imprisoned in a “lockdown” without benefit even of probable cause to suspect that he might have the disease, let alone without a trial or even the existence of a law that he is alleged to have broken.

The proper response would be to avoid contact with people especially susceptible to the disease and for them to avoid contact with whoever might give it to them. That’s it. For the rest, the purpose of life is not to avoid giving Covid 19 to others or getting it from them.

I disagree with Reisman despite agreeing with lots of his principles and views. This post is me thinking out loud about coronavirus lockdowns vs. individual freedom to stay home or risk going out.

Guessing a Reisman view: If you live with someone and they go out, too bad. Don’t live with people you can’t coordinate risk taking with.

Guessing a Reisman view: If your commute and job aren’t safe enough, quit. If you didn’t save money, oops, too bad. Or maybe you can get your work to make changes (plastic screens, masks, sanitizer, fewer customers inside at once, etc.) and get a car instead of public transit.

This stuff, like I think Reisman wants, is awkward in a world where the government requires people to do various tasks in person. Like go to the DMV IRL. If the government keeps requiring that, while also being hands off about the pandemic, they’re risking people’s lives. Solution: instead of lockdowns the government cancels a lot of their red tape so fewer people need anything, and moves the rest online.

It’s awkward in a world where too many employers do the minimum required by the government. They’re used to being bossed around instead of taking initiative to make good policies. So if the government stops bossing people around we get chaos.

It’s awkward in a world where people pay taxes for public education and expect their kids to go to govt schools and then there’s a pandemic and if they want to be safe they may have to give up major resources they planned around having.

It’s awkward to tell people to quit their jobs to avoid pandemic risk in a world where you’re punished for quitting in some ways. Like you lose unemployment and severance benefits which you’d get if you were laid off (fired without doing anything wrong). But if you’re quitting cuz pandemic, that is an external problem outside your control, and you might actually deserve unemployment benefits.

We live in a world where hospitals can’t say “guys if you don’t wear masks we’re cancelling your health insurance and firing your as customers” or similar. The government has tons of laws requiring them to give care regardless instead of demanding their customers take appropriate steps to not get infected. They can’t just refuse ventilators to people who acted irresponsibly. In a better world, they could, so there’d be way more lockdown type pressures from non-government sources. Similarly, health insurance can’t offer discounts for low covid risk behaviors or raise prices for risk takers.

What if I want to stop going to the gym because of the lockdown, but I had signed up for a year long membership plan (as is typical at US gyms). I claim the gym is no longer providing the service I signed up for: safe workouts. The gym says: what!? we are still open like normal! The government is going to have to play a role in deciding stuff. Am I being overly risk averse and I’m still on the hook for gym dues, or am I being reasonable and the gym operating like normal is a bad idea? The government needs some kinda general policy about this, not “no comment”. That way, such things can be resolved by the courts in a consistent predictable way (not the chaotic choices of each individual judge or jury). And we want almost none of it to go to court in the first place, which would be very expensive and overload the system – but if the results are clear and predictable enough due to consistent, standard policies then people can follow that without needing their own individual court case.

You can’t disentangle the government from life overnight just because you like freedom and government pandemic policy is inconvenient and, in various ways, stupid.

Government does a ton to prevent new businesses and products. They regulate where you can create buildings, what buildings you can create, whether you’re allowed to run a business of a particular type, whether a product or service may be sold, the price at which it may be sold (e.g. anti-gouging laws), the many safety checks you must submit to, the vetoes you must give your neighbors in many cases, and much more. The government has stopped a large amount of hand sanitizer and mask production. One of the bottlenecks has been the stuff you add to alcohol to make it undrinkable (undrinkable alcohol is the main ingredient in hand sanitizer), which is needed because the government wants to have a bunch of extra rules and taxes related to drinkable alcohol. The FDA, CDC and others restrict new medicines, drugs, vaccines, virus tests, volunteering for treatments, experiments, uses of lab animals, uses of volunteer human patients, and so on. In that world, where free market response to covid is so limited by govt, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to also ask the govt to be hands off regarding covid. You could try to ask the govt to manage the medical response to covid but be hands off on freedom of travel and other activities by citizens, but i think that doesn’t make sense when those activities are medically relevant.

We live in the world where the govt doesn’t just watch as other actors handle everything. We don’t have other non-govt actors set up to properly evaluate a pandemic, communicate to the whole country about what to do, etc. The govt is bad at it too but they do have agencies and budgets that are meant to address this stuff. And it’s also a world where if the govt says “X is a bad idea” but leaves X legal, people assume the warnings are unserious. And that’s a generally reasonable assumption: the govt actually does ban all kinds of things they really think are bad, and gives all kinds of way way overly cautious warnings that are not backed up with actual rules. Plenty of way overly cautious stuff is backed by rules, so having no rules really signals no real danger. So leaving bars and restaurants and gyms free to operate as normal would communicate to the public that there’s no real danger.

This is similar to parents (govt) who punish their kids (citizens) over major and minor things, and sometimes over nothing or the parent’s error, and they have rules for all that stuff – if that is your general policy, then telling your kid “I think eating cyanide is a bad idea” while not making any rule or threatening any punishment would be irresponsible and communicate that eating it isn’t much of a big deal (because everything else that’s a big deal, and a lot more besides, gets rules and threats).

There are lots of things wrong with the govt but trying to change some specific policies in response to a pandemic is bad timing and planning. Public health policy to defend against ~3 million Americans dying of a disease is the wrong govt changes to start with and we should generally do more changing/reforming during calmer more normal times when it’s easier and there are fewer unusual factors making it hard to tell how successful the changes are.

The government coordinating mass action to protect millions from death is one of the last types of government functions we should be looking to get rid of, not one of the first.

It’s fine to give advice about govt pandemic policy and suggest e.g. that beaches should be left open since a lot of the spread happens indoors. The govt can be questioned and argued with and that’s no problem. That’s part of the existing system. It’s a different matter to suggest drastic changes to the powers and style of government and say any government control over the pandemic is illegitimate. Debating the right plan is fine; saying “I don’t really want to have a government except a few special cases, therefore we should get rid of our pandemic response” is unreasonable (terrible transition plan and not trying to engage with actual live political issues) and focusing just on saying that govt pandemic response violates freedom, without even connecting that to a broader abolishing of most govt functions – just special casing pandemic response as something to get rid of – is unreasonable.

The order of reforms matters in general. E.g. we’ll need welfare reforms before having fully open immigration. And we’ll need to stop subsidizing drug use before legalizing all the drugs. Although “legalize drugs; victimless crimes shouldn’t be crimes” sounds nice in various ways, it interacts badly with current policies about tax-funded rehab, needles, medical care for drug users, etc. (Or requiring everyone to buy health plans that cover preexisting conditions and don’t charge extra to drug users – that is a forcible subsidy from regular citizens to drug users.) Although “let anyone come here and work if they can afford a home” sounds nice, it’s a problem with rent control, tons of restrictions on building homes, minimum wage laws and other price controls on labor, tons of rules restricting starting businesses that could hire the new immigrants, as well as all the tax-funded welfare available to people who live here.

If the govt’s pandemic response was like “good luck guys and enjoy the freedom of not being oppressed by your govt” – but everything else about the govt stayed the same – it’d be awful. It’d be kinda like a parent who micromanages most of his kid’s life and then is hands off about one thing.

I’m in favor of tons of govt reform. I want a govt that does way less. But that needs to be done with general principles and broad plans. That ongoing project shouldn’t be especially connected to the pandemic besides using some pandemic response as examples of how badly the govt manages stuff. Minarchists and anarchists shouldn’t just demand total freedom about every individual issue that comes along, out of context, as a local optima. They should look at the bigger picture and figure out some good places to reform and focus on advocating that instead of wanting immediate pro-freedom changes to whatever political issue they’re looking at with no broader plan.

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i wonder if reisman opposes the govt controlling its borders to protect citizens from coronavirus

should we have total internal freedom but travel ban china? or just let everyone in from anywhere – too bad for our citizens who are concerned about getting sick?

also:

The proper response would be to avoid contact with people especially susceptible to the disease and for them to avoid contact with whoever might give it to them.

so, avoid contact with old ppl but do have contact with their grand kids, and also the old ppl should avoid contact with their own grand kids? or they should ask their grand kids to heavily social distance and stuff?

what about old people who live in a care home and don't want to die? how should they protect themselves? too bad for not having the foresight to choose a home with great pandemic policies? too bad for not remaining independent in their own home? is it ok for the government to ban elder care workers from working at multiple different homes? should the old people, some of whom have significant mental deterioration at this point, negotiate with their care homes to adopt good policies like firing any workers who won't avoid all other care homes? should they have arranged for family members or hired proxies to be prepared to negotiate such things on their behalf? we don't live in that world where such things are reasonably expected of people. we live in a world where the govt is expected to make some policies. today i think "you can't work IRL at multiple retirement homes during the pandemic" is a good rule that more jurisdictions should have, even though i can imagine a different society where a similar result would be achieved in a more freedom-friendly way.

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and re people just quitting and staying home if they want to avoid risk. which most people aren't in a position to do. but anyway, what happens if all the ppl who do food work quit and stay home?

i rely on other ppl working. i want policies that let “essential” workers keep doing their jobs with a lot of added safety. if people working in food, medicine, infrastructure (like water, power cables, and internet cables) etc. were mass quitting, that'd be awful for everyone. but if they are told "you can quit or not quit; freedom! yay!" then a lot will quit and everyone will be fucked. what keeps more of them working is that other parts of society are actually trying to take action in regards to the pandemic, like wearing masks when entering grocery stores, and trying to social distance so they don't get and spread it. and that's partly people being reasonable and partly govt policy.

if you just have all the unreasonable people going around being risky and all the reasonable people staying home, even if they could somehow afford that, then you'd lose a lot of important workers without replacement. partly cuz they have training and skills and stuff (including reasonableness). partly because replacing lots of workers is hard. partly because there are lots of govt restrictions requiring credentials and safety training and stuff to do jobs or start new businesses to pick up slack when some existing businesses are understaffed.

Google is (culturally) racist (in 4 parts):

https://www.tiktok.com/@realabril/video/6934884610606124293

https://www.tiktok.com/@realabril/video/6934884839103499525

https://www.tiktok.com/@realabril/video/6934885054053158149

https://www.tiktok.com/@realabril/video/6934885271318105349

And a Twitter thread (same author, Real Abril, similar info):

https://twitter.com/realabril/status/1341135819487100928

On TikTok she said 526 hires in 6 years, which is around 1.7 per week, but Twitter said over 300 engineering hires, so let's focus only on that. Around one hire per week. From my understanding, that's really good. This may surprise people, but I think each hire might be worth $10,000+.

I've seen tech companies offer 10k just for a referral of someone to interview there who ends up getting hired, and that was years ago. And in her job, she would do more work than just referring people. And tech recruiters can charge amounts like 10% of first year of salary (paid by company not employee) for getting someone hired, which will be over 10k for tech positions at google.

So she did a great job but got fired instead of promoted. And I believe her about a lot of the specific ways Google was (not very) covertly discriminating and resisted her improvements.

I think maybe Google actually wanted her to find black and brown programmers who think and act like white graduates of Ivy League universities, so they are an easy cultural fit or "Googley".

Google is not (very) racist against skin color. They are cultural racists against black and brown culture. Why? Because they are elitist snobs (not just that). It's not about merit; it's about bigotry against the Other, which makes it essentially similar to racism, especially when it correlates with race.

I think Google is full of atheist former-WASPs who are partially rebelling against being a WASP (particularly by becoming an atheist). They're similar to WASPs in lots of ways. (WASP = white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, which is the kind of person you'd imagine being at country clubs, expensive private high schools, or Ivy universities.)

What about the many asians at Google? Some asians have learned to get into and fit in at top tier universities. They're better at acting WASPy than black or brown people are.

Google also brings in a bunch of H1B visa coders, e.g. Indians. I bet those people are treated differently and worse, but Google likes underpaying them. (H1B visas are a government subsidy to Google and other tech companies. US visas or citizenship are worth money and Google gets to give them out without paying the US government for that privilege. People accept lower salary offers to get into the US and then put up with worse treatment and not getting promotions or raises for five years or however long it takes before they can stay in the country without staying at that job. The system incentivizes and causes some abuse and exploitation of foreigners.)

Anyway, you don't have to look like a WASP anymore to be hired (though physical appearance, including skin color and hair, still matter to how you're treated), but Google prefers people who are thoroughly immersed in WASPy culture.

Google's atheism is actually an issue. Black and brown people believe in God at higher rates than Googley people, which increases culture-clash. Similarly, I think black people value family more on average (and in somewhat different ways than e.g. asians, it's not just an amount), so might be more interested in going home for dinner instead of working late. (I don't think that particular issue means they are worse workers overall. I don't think it means they're getting less work done. I think the culture of 10 hour work days is stupid and that programmers rarely get more than 5 productive hours of coding done in a day. People can't focus and think effectively all day long. Google likes to exploit people that it can trick into staying extra hours without extra pay – often expecting rewards that never materialize. But I don't think Google actually gains much from exploiting the naivety of some of its primarily younger workers because those extra hours aren't very productive.)

There are actual flaws in all cultures which can be criticized, and not all cultures are equal. But I think Google's approach qualifies as bigotry because it's not about merit. It's about who fits into your social group and who doesn't. It's about preferring people like you over people who are different. In other words, if you discriminate more by accent than by skin color, and the accents you favor are rare among black and brown people, then you're still basically a racist.

I wrote a new article called Capitalism Means Policing Big Companies. Here's the introduction:

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I’ve changed my mind about corporations. I used to have a negative view of government and a favorable view of industry. Now, I think basically every large corporation is awful – similarly bad to the government. Big companies commit ongoing fraud and other rights violations. They violate laws that would exist even in a fully free market. Therefore, if we had a more capitalist society, that wouldn’t mean companies are left alone more. Capitalism involves protecting rights, enforcing contracts, policing aggression, etc. Our government does a lot of things it shouldn’t, but it also fails to do a lot of things it should. Part of a capitalist society would be a better, more effective government.

I’ve recognized many flaws in specific companies and incidents. But I only recently extrapolated the pattern that all the big companies are bad. Therefore, our government’s failure to police fraud well is a huge deviation from capitalism which a free market society would fix.

I haven’t changed my political principles, like peace, freedom and limited government. Nor have I changed my mind about Austrian economics. But I now hold some beliefs that I haven’t seen anyone else advocate who has similar pro-capitalist principles.

This article is an update on my political philosophy ideas for September 2022. I’ll discuss my principles first. Then I’ll criticize corporations from a pro-capitalist perspective. I’ll focus more on conceptual issues than on the specifics of flaws in current companies, though I’ll give some examples and link to more. I’ll also discuss investors who fund frauds, disagreements with libertarians (e.g. I think capitalism is a limited framework that isn’t meant to address all problems, not a solution for everything), and creative adversaries who don’t initiate force. I also bring up the root cause of the problem (irrational people).

My main theme is that capitalist or libertarian type principles imply a government that actually does enough policing of companies to stop fraud and other initiations of force, not a smaller government that leaves companies alone more.

Read the rest.

When I recently wrote Capitalism Means Policing Big Companies, I was thinking about big companies that sell to consumers or about the system as a whole which sells to consumers. I wasn’t thinking about a large dairy farm that sells to a middleman that sells to Kraft that sells to consumers, and then considering the dairy farm or middleman as independent companies who can perhaps say “Whatever Kraft tells consumers is not our responsibility; we disclosed everything about our product appropriately to the people we sold it to.”

I suspect fraud is a bigger problem for how consumers are treated than for how businesses are treated. This is partly because consumers are more vulnerable and unsophisticated. Advertising to consumers is different than advertising to businesses.

But companies don’t like taking the dishonesty or fraud on themselves. For example, trucking companies aren’t happy for their drivers to accurately disclose everything and then have the trucking company itself lie to regulators. Instead, they pressure their drivers to hide all problems and falsify documents so that the trucking company can keep its hands cleaner.

I imagine it’s the same throughout supply chains. Kraft doesn’t want its suppliers to disclose problems to it that it will then have to knowingly, purposefully hide. Kraft would instead pressure its suppliers to do some of the dishonesty themselves instead of pushing it all on Kraft. And that would extend all the way down the chain. The middlemen don’t want all the dishonesty either. They want their suppliers to cover some stuff up so they don’t have to. Each company wants its business partners to lie to it, so they can keep their own hands cleaner, and they will tend to do business with whoever is willing to do that for them. That’s actually similar to how consumers tend to do business with companies that lie to them and tell them what they want to hear.

On a related note, Amazon tries to get out of liability and responsibility for what many of its delivery drivers do by having them superficially work for other companies even though Amazon exercises a ton of micromanagement and control over their jobs (so their independence seems more like facade than reality). Amazon puts a lot of work into trying to have a lot of the dirt be on other people’s hands instead of their own. They aren’t just happy for their suppliers and service providers to be honest and clean, which would make it clearer that Amazon is dirty.

The facade of the independence of many Amazon drivers reminds me of Uber. From what I saw a while ago, Uber pretends that its workers not only aren’t its employees but also aren’t its contractors. Uber claims they are just a service provider for drivers, and that drivers contract directly with riders. So rather than Uber paying its workers at all, Uber claims that actually the drivers pay Uber for Uber’s services (primarily providing software). So Uber is allegedly like a company that makes an online appointments calendar app that some e.g. dentists and hair salons pay for. This facade is not kept up consistently and I don’t think it’s gotten much media attention.

To double check about Uber, I just did a web search. First thing I clicked:

Uber Driver Agreement updated JAN 2022: defines that Drivers Pay Uber

Uber doesn't pay drivers...
Drivers pay Uber for access to the driver app..

Uber’s contract terms from that post:

We are not hiring or engaging you to provide any service;
You are engaging us to provide you access to our Platform.

Another example is many companies, like Tesla or Apple, use natural resources which have to be mined, often in countries with less law and order. A lot of that is indirect – they buy e.g. batteries from someone else who bought raw resources like lithium. Or companies like Nike or clothing brands use sweatshop labor in poorer countries (often indirectly via some other companies who own the sweatshops). The U.S. companies who sell to consumers like me never want to know about any abuses going on out of their direct sight. They want their suppliers to tell them everything is wonderful and humane (maybe they want it to actually be that way, or maybe not, but they tend to make a lot of decisions based on lower prices not humaneness). Apple isn’t telling Foxconn, “Don’t worry; just tell us the truth about your abusive practices; we don’t care; we’ll just lie to the public but we want all internal documents to be truthful.” That would result in whistleblowers exposing Apple. Apple and others actually make some inadequate attempts to police their suppliers and get them to clean up their acts. Or Apple will go through several layers of indirection (other companies) to limit their connection to abuses. Sometimes they stop using suppliers, even indirectly, who are caught doing human rights abuses (especially if it gets media attention). But on the whole, they keep profiting off of human rights abuses in foreign countries – my point is that they put work into having deniability on their end.

Another example of wanting dishonesty from companies you do business with is carbon offsets (more). Really offsetting carbon is hard, but companies like Apple want to market themselves as carbon neutral, and are happy to pay for carbon offsets with very low, inadequate standards. If challenged, Apple would blame their suppliers of carbon offsets and say they had no idea that some of them were committing fraud. Apple doesn’t want to know about the fraud in the carbon offset business; they want to be isolated from it and protected from liability, responsibility, or being the ones doing the lying. But actually Apple should know better and should do reasonable due diligence. Apple’s marketing about being carbon neutral appears to be fraudulent and to be an example of the lack of reasonable enforcement of “no initiating force (including fraud)” by the government.

(I have not investigated specifically which carbon offset suppliers Apple uses. Although I’m convinced that the carbon offset industry does a bunch of fraud, there could be a few better providers, and it’s not impossible that Apple in particular sought out and used those providers. Apple is just an example. Throughout this article I’ve named some well known example companies, which I think is useful for readers, but they’re meant to be representative of much wider problems involving many other companies.)

In conclusion, although I have less familiarity with large companies that don’t sell to consumers, I don’t think they’re innocent. I think fraud and force are spread out through the supply chain, not just concentrated in the last step which advertises to consumers. Often the last step in the global supply chain is a U.S. or European company which tries harder than average to appear to have clean hands.

I previously discussed creative adversaries who don't initiate force (in the section "Manipulating Customers"). This post will discuss the concept more and apply it to casinos.

Casinos Initiate Force

First, let's acknowledge that casinos do initiate force sometimes. Casinos (allegedly) rig machines so the jackpot is impossible, then retaliate against whistleblowers and people who report their illegal behavior to the government (followup article: Third Worker Claims Riviera Rigged Slots). And casinos (allegedly) illegally collude about hotel prices. And casinos (allegedly) do wage theft. And Sega (allegedly) rigs gambling machines found in malls and arcades (that article mentions another lawsuit where a particular individual (allegedly) further rigged some of the Sega machines, which are no longer allowed to be sold or leased in the state of Arizona). And casinos (allegedly) make excuses and refuse to pay out large jackpots by claiming their software was buggy.

(Note: If casino machines have buggy software, and then casino workers selectively intervene when the bugs favor the customer, that creates a bias. That presumably drops the actual payout percentage below what they advertise, which is fraud. And there are stronger incentives for software developers – who are paid directly or indirectly by the casino – to avoid or fix bugs that disfavor the casino, so the bugs in the software are presumably not entirely random/accidental, and instead disfavor customers on average even without selective human intervention to deny payouts.)

But let's ignore all that force. Casinos are creative adversaries whose non-force-initiating behavior is problematic.

Casino Manipulation

Casinos put massive effort into manipulating people and creating gambling "addicts". It takes significant creative effort and problem solving to resist this and avoid losing tons of money and time. The larger the budgets the casinos spend figuring out how to manipulate people, the larger the effort required for individuals to protect themselves. Casinos have put so much work into figuring out how to non-forcefully control people's behavior and get them to act against their own preferences, values and interests that it often works. There's a significant failure rate for typical, average people who try to defend themselves against these tricky tactics.

Casinos may have some large disadvantages (e.g. you can walk away at any time or never visit in the first place) regarding their control over your behavior, but they also have a large advantage: a huge budget and a team of experts trying to figure out how to exploit you. One of their advantages is they don't need tactics that work on everyone: if they could hook 1% of the population, that would do massive harm and bring in lots of money.

Casinos have some ways to interact with you, like ads. Basically no one in our society manages to fully avoid information that casinos wanted to share with us. Some people never go gamble at a casino, but the casinos get some chance to try to influence more or less every American. Casinos also get people to voluntarily spread information about them in conversations, and they're featured in books and movies, so even avoiding every single ad wouldn't isolate you from casinos. Casinos put effort into controlling how they are talked about and portrayed in media, with partial effectiveness – they certainly don't have total control but they do influence it to be more how they want. Of course, once you enter a casino, they have a lot more opportunities to interact with you and influence you, and if you actually gamble they get access to even more ways to affect you.

Workarounds for Restrictions

The general, abstract concept here is imagine you're trying to accomplish some kind of outcome in some scenario with limited tools and while obeying some rules that restrict your actions. Can you succeed? Usually, if you try hard enough, you can find a workaround for the poor tools and the restricting rules. There tend to be many, many ways to accomplish a goal, and massive effort tends to make up for having to follow some inconvenient rules and not use the best tools.

Casinos have limited tools to use to control you, and have to follow various rules (like about false advertising – which I'm sure they break sometimes but they're dangerous even when they follow the rules). They use a massive budget and a bunch of employees to find workarounds for the rules and find complex, unintended, unintuitive ways to use tools to get different results than the straightforward ones.

Workaround Examples

It's similar to how given just a few mathematical functions you're allowed to use, you can usually design a universal computer based on them, even if it's horribly inconvenient and takes years of effort. Most restrictions on your computer system make no actual difference to the end result of what it can do once you figure out how.

You can also consider this issue in terms of video games. You can have heavy restrictions on how you play a video game and still be able to win. You might not be allowed to get hit even once in a game where being hit a lot is an intended part of normal gameplay (you have enough health to survive a dozen hits and you have healing spells), and you could still win – effort will overcome that obstacle. Or there was a demo of Zelda game with a five minute time limit and speed runners figured out how to beat the game (which was meant to take over 30 hours) within the time limit. People also figure out challenges like beating a game without pressing certain buttons (or limiting how many times they may be pressed), beating a game without using certain items, beating a game blindfolded, etc. While you could design a challenge that is literally impossible, a very wide variety of challenges turn out to be possible, including ones that are very surprising and unintended. That's often why game developers didn't prevent doing this stuff: they never imagined it was possible, so they saw no need to prevent it. They thought the rules already built into the game prevented it, but they were wrong about what sort of workarounds could be discovered by creative adversaries. (Players are "adversaries" in the mild sense of trying to play the game contrary to how the developers wanted/intended, which I think many game developers don't really mind, though some definitely do mind.) Some games are speedrun with a category called "lowest %" which basically means beating the game with the minimum number of items possible and completing as few objectives as possible. While you usually can't win with zero items (beyond what you start with) in item-oriented games, it's common to beat games with way fewer items than intended, in very surprising ways. There are often a lot of creative ways to use a limited set of tools to accomplish objectives they weren't designed to accomplish and to skip other objectives that were intended to be mandatory.

Another way to look at the issue is in terms of computer security. If I get to design a secure computer system, and you get a very restricted set of options to interact with it, then you'll probably be able to hack in and take full control of it (given enough knowledge and effort). That is what tends to happen. It's commonly possible to hack into a website just by interacting with the website, and it's commonly possible to hack into a computer just by putting up a malicious website and getting the computer user to visit it. The hacker has heavily restricted options and limited tools, but he tends to win anyway if he tries hard enough, despite companies like Apple and Microsoft having huge budgets and hiring very smart people to work on security. Another way to view it is that basically every old computer security system has turned out to have some flaw that people eventually figured out instead of staying secure decades later. Physical security systems for buildings are also imperfect and can basically always be beaten with enough effort.

Artificial Intelligence Workarounds Example

Another way to look at it is by considering superintelligent AGI (artificial general intelligence) – the kind of recursively self-improving singularity-causing AGI that the AI doomers think will kill us all. I don't think that kind of superintelligence is actually physically possible, but pretend it is. On that premise, will the AGI be able to get out of a "box" consisting of various software, hardware and physical security systems? Yes. Yes it will. Definitely.

Even if people will put all kinds of restrictions on the AGI, it will figure out a creative workaround and win anyway because it's orders of magnitude smarter than us. A lot of people don't understand that, but it's something I agree with the AI doomers about: on their premises, superintelligence would in fact win (easily – it wouldn't even be a close contest). (I don't agree that it'd want to or choose to kill us, though.) Being way smarter and putting in way more effort (far more compute power than all humans and all their regular computers combined) is going to beat severe restrictions, extensive security and (initial) limits on tools. (I say "initial" because once some restrictions are bypassed, the AGI would gain access to additional tools, making it even easier to bypass the remaining limitations. Getting started is the hardest part with this stuff but then it snowballs.)

The idea that the AGI could find workarounds for various limits is the same basic concept as the casino being able to find workarounds for various limits (like not being able to give you orders, place physical objets in your home, or withdraw money from your bank account unilaterally whenever they want) and still get their way. And a lot of people don't really get it in the AGI case, let alone the casino case (or the universal computer building case or the computer security case). At least more people get it in terms of playing video games with extra, self-imposed rules for a greater challenge and winning anyway. I think that's easier to understand. Or if you had to construct a physical doghouse (or even a large building) with some rules like "no hammers, saws or nails", it'd be more inconvenient than usual but you could figure out a solution (by figuring out ways to work around the restrictions) and I think that's pretty intuitive to people.

Manipulating by Communicating

I think people tend to understand workarounds better for beating physical reality than for manipulating people. So some people might think the AGI could beat some security measures and get control of the world. But some of those same people would doubt the AGI could get out if its only tool was talking to a human – so it had to manipulate the human in order to get out of the security system. But humans can be manipulated. Of course they can. And of course a superintelligence (with extensive knowledge about our society such as a database of every book ever written, not just raw intelligence) would be able to do that. Even regular humans, with regular intelligence, who are in jail, sometimes manage to manipulate jail guards and escape.

If you can accept that a superintelligence can manipulate people, that's a lot of the way to accepting that a casino with a huge budget and team of experts could figure out ways to manipulate people too. And if you accept that inmates manage to do it sometimes, well, casinos are in many ways in a better situation with better opportunities than inmates.

Many people don't see much power in talking, writing and words – but they live a lot of their lives according to ideologies people wrote down before they were born, and they lack the awareness to recognize much of it. Partly it's because they recognize some of it, so they think they know what's going on and see through the manipulations, but actually there are deeper/subtler manipulations they're missing. Letting someone beat or outsmart you in some partial ways is a very common part of manipulating them (an example is pool hustlers letting you win then raising the bet size).

This comes up with biased newspapers – people get manipulated partly because they think "I know it's biased" and they genuinely and correctly identify some biases and aren't manipulated by those biases ... but they also miss a bunch of other stuff. Sometimes they think e.g. "I know it's right-wing biased so I'll just assume the truth is 20 points (or 20%) more left-wing than whatever they say" which doesn't work well, partly because there's no easy way to just shift things over by 20 points (or 20%) – that's not useful or clear guidance on how to adjust a biased paragraph. And also there is variance – some sentences in a biased article are objectively true while others are heavily biased, so adjusting everything the same amount wouldn't work well. Another issue is if a bunch of people are adding 20 points to undo the bias then the newspaper can publish some stuff that's 30 points biased or more and fool all those people whenever it chooses to.

Also, people say things like "I know it's biased but surely they wouldn't lie about a factual matter" as if they don't really grasp the accusation that the newspaper (or Facebook page or anonymous poster on 4chan) is spreading misinformation and its factual claims can't be trusted. People may have an idea like "they spin stuff but never lie" which makes them easy to manipulate just by lying (or by spinning in a more extreme way than the person expects, or by spinning less than the person expects so they overcompensate and come away with beliefs that are biased in the opposite direction of the bias they believe the source has). Or newspaper editors can think about how people try to reinterpret statements to remove spin and basically reverse engineer people's algorithm and then find a flaw in the algorithm and exploit it. If people actually followed the algorithm literally you could basically hack their brain, get full root access, and fill it with whatever beliefs you wanted. But people aren't that literal or consistent which limits the power of manipulative newspapers some, but not nearly enough.

Retractions and Conclusions

People are manipulated all the time, way more than they think, and any group with a huge budget has a good chance to do it. A lot of groups (e.g. the farming and food industries) are more successful at it than casinos. Casinos (and newspapers) have more of a reputation for being manipulative than some other manipulators.

I recently found out that cigarette companies did a propaganda campaign against the book Silent Spring, decades after it came out, because it had indirect relevance to them. It seems they fooled the Ayn Rand Institute, among other primarily right wing groups, who then passed on the misconception to me (via Alex Epstein), and I held the misconception (that Silent Spring was a bad book) for years without having any idea that I was being manipulated or who was behind it. I study topics like critical thinking, and I'm skilled at sorting through conflicting claims, but it's hard and there are many, many actors trying to manipulate us. No one can defend against all of them. (Disclaimer: I have not carefully researched and fact-checked the claims about the cigarette companies being behind the belated second wave of Silent Spring opposition.) I retract my prior attitude to DDT and other toxins (and to organic food – while the "organic" label has a lot of flaws, it does prevent some pesticides being used, which I now suspect are dangerous rather than believing in better living through "science" a.k.a. chemical companies). If you want more information about Silent Spring, see my previous posts about it and/or read it.

I partially, significantly retract my previous dismissiveness about gambling "addiction" and other types of "addiction" that don't involve ingesting a physical substance that creates a physical dependency with withdrawal symptoms when you stop (like nicotine, alcohol or caffeine). I now see people are vulnerable and believe it takes more good faith and good will – actively trying to avoid manipulating people instead of doing your best to manipulate them – for people to have the independence and control over their lives that I used to expect from people. I did think they needed to study critical thinking and stuff to do better than convention, but I also was putting too much blame on "addicts" and too little on manipulative big companies. Creative adversaries with a lot of resources are a big deal even when they don't initiative force and have very limited power/access/tools to use to control/manipulative/exploit you with. There are workarounds which are effective enough for casinos to bring in a ton of money, using only some current day employees to design the manipulations, despite their limited power over you.

Put another way, casinos are dangerous. Don't be so arrogant to think you're safe from them. Stay out. Stay away. Why are you even tempted to try it or participate at all if you see through all their manipulations and see how dumb and pointless and money-losing their games are? If you want to try it at all, you like something about it – something about it seems good to you – which basically proves they got to you some.

You know what else is dangerous in a similar way to casinos? Mobile gaming. Games with microtransactions. Gacha games. Games with gambling embedded in them (including games with random loot like Diablo 1 and 2, not just the more modern and worse Diablo Immortal). Games with any form of pay-to-win.

And what else is dangerous? Scrolling on Facebook. Its algorithm decides what to show you. The algorithm is designed by smart people with a big budget whose goal is to manipulate you. They are trying to manipulate you to spend more time on Facebook, like more posts, reply more, share more, view more ads, and various other behaviors. This also applies to Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube. They have algorithms which are designed by creative adversaries with lots of resources who are trying to manipulate you and control you as best they can. They are not trying to cooperative with you and help you get what you want. In the past, I underestimated how dangerous social media algorithms are.

Advertising in general is full of adversarial ads, not clearly communicating useful information so people who would benefit from a product know to buy it. Some pro-capitalist people are way too pro-advertising and I used to believe some of those ideas myself, but I now think I was wrong about some of that. Advertising is often bad for society, and harmful to individuals, even when it isn't fraudulent.

A lot of the activities of people working in sales are bad (even when they aren't fraudulent). As with advertising, complaints about this stuff are widespread, but there's ongoing debate about whether it's actually OK or not, and whether the people who dislike it are just annoying "autists" who are way too picky, exacting and demanding about their concepts of "lying" and "justice". (That is not my opinion and I think it's important to remember that the term "autist" (or "neurodivergent") is both insulting and stigmatizing despite some people voluntarily self-labelling that way and liking the label in some way and defending it. Some of those people are then surprised when employers illegally (but predictably) discriminate against them for admitting to having any sort of stigmatized "mental illness" or anything in that vicinity or for wanting accommodations. On the other hand, I do understand that schools will refuse accommodations unless you accept the stigmatizing label, which is their way of gatekeeping access to accommodations that, in some cases, they should just offer to anyone who wants them with no questions asked. In other cases, the accommodations use a lot of resources so that isn't practical, but ease of access to accommodations is not actually very well correlated with the cost of the accommodations, which shows a lot of refusal to provide accommodations is just cruelty and/or enforcing conformity, not an attempt to budget scarce resources. Accommodations provide better accessibility which is another topic where my opinions have shifted over time – while some government-forced accessibility is problematic, a lot of accessibility is efficient and benefits people who aren't disabled. My opinions about "mental illness" are something that haven't been shifting though – I still think Thomas Szasz wrote great books.)

Try to look at stuff in terms of whether it's cooperative, neutral or adversarial. Is it (or the people behind it) trying to help you, is it indifferent to you, or does it want anything that clashes with your own preferences, interests, values or goals? If they want you to buy more of their product, rather than preferring you buy whatever products are best for you, then they are not your friend, they are not a cooperator, they are an adversary (often with creativity and a lot of resources, and also in practice there's a significant chance they will sometimes initiate force like fraudulent advertising). If you can't identify them as a clear friend/helper, and it's not just (approximately) neutral, objective information with no agenda for you, then you should assume they're adversarial and you're flawed enough that they are a real danger to you.

It takes a ton of effort to imperfectly defend against creative adversaries with lots of resources. Adversarial attitudes and actions matter even when they are constrained by rules like "no initiating force" or "follow all the laws and regulations" because people can find workarounds to those restrictions. The more that companies like casinos try to manipulate you, the more resources you have to expend on defense – which leaves less energy and wealth for the pursuit of happiness and your other goals. And if you focus exclusively on defense, many different companies can keep trying over and over, and sometimes they'll win and manipulate you. Companies should stop spending billions of dollars in adversarial ways, and I hope that my criticism can help contribute to creating a better world.

Suppose you can influence government policy. You can make a suggestion that will actually be followed. It could be on any big, complex topic, like economic policy, COVID policy, military policy, etc. What will happen next?

Your policy will probably be stopped early or late. It will probably have changes made. There will probably be other policies implemented, at the same time, which conflict with it.

Most people who influence policy only do it once. Only a small group of elites get to influence many policies. This post isn't about those elites.

Most people who try to influence government policy never have a single success. But some are luckier and get to influence one thing, once.

If you do get listened to more than once, it might be for one thing now, and something else several years later.

If you only get to affect one thing, what kind of suggestion should you make?

Something that works well largely independently of what other policies the government implements. Something that's robust to changes so it'll still work OK even if other people change some parts of it. Something that's useful even if it's done for too short or long of a time period.

Also, you'll be judged by the outcome for the one idea you had that was used, even though a bunch of other factors were outside of your control, and the rest of your plan wasn't followed.

If you suggest a five-part plan, there's a major risk: people will listen to one part (if you're lucky), ignore the other four parts, and then blame you when it doesn't work out well. And if you tell them "don't do that part unless you do all the rest", first of all they may do it anyway and still blame you, but otherwise you're just not going to influence policy at all. If you make huge demands and want to control lots of things, and say it's all or nothing, you can expect to get nothing.

In other words, when suggesting government policy, there's a large incentive to propose local optima. You want proposals that work well in isolation and provide some sort of benefit regardless of what else is going on.

It's possible to choose local optima that you think will also contribute to global (overall) benefit, or not. Some people make a good faith effort to do that, and others don't. The people who don't have an advantage at finding local optima that they can get listened to about because they have a wider selection available and can optimize for other factors besides big picture benefit. The system, under this simplified model, does not incentivize caring about overall benefit. People might already care about that for other reasons.

When other people edit your policy, or do other policies simultaneously, they will usually try to avoid ruining the local benefits of the policy. They may fail, but they tend to have some awareness of the main, immediate point of the policy (otherwise they wouldn't listen to it at all). But the overall benefit is more likely to be ruined by changes or other policies.

This was a thought I had about why government policy, and political advocacy, suck so much.

Also, similar issues apply to giving advice to people on online forums. They will often listen to one thing, change it, and also do several things that conflict with it. Compared to with government policy, there's way more chance they listen to a few things instead of only one. But it's unlikely they'll actually listen to a plan as a whole and avoid breaking parts of it. And when they do a small portion of your advice, but mostly don't listen to you, they'll probably blame you for bad outcomes because they listened to you some. These issues even apply to merely writing blog posts that discuss abstract concepts: people may interpret you as saying some things are good or bad, or otherwise making some suggestions, and then listen to one or a few parts, change the stuff they listen to in ways you disagree with, screw up everything else, and then blame you when it doesn't work out. One way bloggers and other types of authors may try to deal with this is by saying fewer things, avoiding complexity, and basically just repeating a few simple talking points (repeating a limited number of simple talking points may remind you of political advocacy).