I think there’s two edges to this sword. Engineering the solutions to problems can be complex and difficult, from the perspective of the bureaucrats assigned the work. Building out a rail network or setting up a central bank or establishing a universal protocol for data transmission has all sorts of challenges and nuances to it. And, as a result, people who demand large-scale, rapid reforms will often stumble over the finer details to inflict a great deal of unnecessary pain as a result.
But the broader policy questions are often more straightforward, once the propaganda has been pierced and the outcomes of given policies are made plain and apparent. You can see this most recently in the fight over AI Datacenter construction, which very nakedly benefits a handful of socio-economic insiders at the expense of virtually everyone else alive.
The twist is that outcomes of policies don’t accrue to everyone immediately on their implementation. So you can mystify the relationship between policy and outcome with effective propaganda. Trump can start a war with Iran, constricting international trade of fossil fuels, while displacing the blame for higher energy prices onto environmentalists who have been advocating de-growth and caps on consumption for decades. National media can blame the rise of domestic fascist politicians on insidious foreign actors, while the media infrastructure is gobbled up by domestic oligarchs and the national police are turned on hapless immigrant communities. Generational divides can be created and exploited among the working class, such that “The Boomers” or “The Millennials” or “The Alphas” are to blame for housing prices or wage stagnation or some culture-war bullshit distraction. And then you’ve got The Epstein Class pitting Youngs and Olds, Rurals and Urbans, Whites and Coloreds against one another when it comes time to pillage another tranche of social wealth or enclose another chunk of the commons.
Complexity can be manufactured in order to obtain consent for panaceas. And complexity can be introduced to foul up the public’s ability to see what is in their straightforward social interests.
If you ever look into how the Apartheid Government of South Africa functioned, one of their most powerful tools was to create increasingly thin micro-ethnicities and stack-ranking them in the legal hierarchy. The complexity of the apartheid system became its strength, as everyone was given a social cohort to stand atop (except the weakest and most vulnerable native peoples). Once the ANC peeled away those layers of complexity, the appeal of the Apartheid system collapsed.
I think there’s two edges to this sword. Engineering the solutions to problems can be complex and difficult, from the perspective of the bureaucrats assigned the work. Building out a rail network or setting up a central bank or establishing a universal protocol for data transmission has all sorts of challenges and nuances to it. And, as a result, people who demand large-scale, rapid reforms will often stumble over the finer details to inflict a great deal of unnecessary pain as a result.
But the broader policy questions are often more straightforward, once the propaganda has been pierced and the outcomes of given policies are made plain and apparent. You can see this most recently in the fight over AI Datacenter construction, which very nakedly benefits a handful of socio-economic insiders at the expense of virtually everyone else alive.
The twist is that outcomes of policies don’t accrue to everyone immediately on their implementation. So you can mystify the relationship between policy and outcome with effective propaganda. Trump can start a war with Iran, constricting international trade of fossil fuels, while displacing the blame for higher energy prices onto environmentalists who have been advocating de-growth and caps on consumption for decades. National media can blame the rise of domestic fascist politicians on insidious foreign actors, while the media infrastructure is gobbled up by domestic oligarchs and the national police are turned on hapless immigrant communities. Generational divides can be created and exploited among the working class, such that “The Boomers” or “The Millennials” or “The Alphas” are to blame for housing prices or wage stagnation or some culture-war bullshit distraction. And then you’ve got The Epstein Class pitting Youngs and Olds, Rurals and Urbans, Whites and Coloreds against one another when it comes time to pillage another tranche of social wealth or enclose another chunk of the commons.
Complexity can be manufactured in order to obtain consent for panaceas. And complexity can be introduced to foul up the public’s ability to see what is in their straightforward social interests.
If you ever look into how the Apartheid Government of South Africa functioned, one of their most powerful tools was to create increasingly thin micro-ethnicities and stack-ranking them in the legal hierarchy. The complexity of the apartheid system became its strength, as everyone was given a social cohort to stand atop (except the weakest and most vulnerable native peoples). Once the ANC peeled away those layers of complexity, the appeal of the Apartheid system collapsed.