The end of democracy

...as a horny if virgin teenager you might have entertained delusions of "totally destroying cunt" once you get your true self or whatever. With any luck you did get to see that no - try as you might, cunt will be still there when you're done, and done you will be. In between these two fundamental distractions, the life of the peasant flows in a very strict servitude to the problem of scale : his work proceeds linearily, for that lovely but ultimately brief interval before fatigue kicks in ; meanwhile the land proceeds by the square. Taking one step delineates an area a quarter as large as taking two steps does. Due to this squares problem, it makes relatively little difference that Joe tires after a hundred and Moe after a hundred nine, and so it is throughout : the extra nine isn't likely to figure much in Suzy's estimation of either of them (and so the natural harem can be flattened into a very contrived "traditional marriage"), nor does the extra drop drunk make any visible difference in the barrel, and so politics proceed on a fundamental basis of equality and equanimity : have ye enough drink and then have ye enough words. And then go home.

On the other hand, bravery is exactly opposite of this. Giving a man ten coins instead of one does not make that man a hundred times as likely to stand fast ; nor even ten times, and perhaps not even as much as the one. A single, bravest knight pays more than the whole sum of his inferiors together, because of exactly inverse geometric rules involved in warfare - which is fundamentally why jousting competitions were a big deal, but speedfarming competitions never interested anyone.

This settles feudalism : on one hand each peasant's exactly fungible with each other peasant, whereas one single faithful knight's not to be traded for the whole world. As a direct result of this situation in the field, the political forms are absolutist monarchy, and the religion is monotheistic and so on.

But time goes on, and lo! The industrial revolution is upon us.

On one hand working, as opposed to farming, is still a deeply equalizing experience, but the drivers have now slightly changed. It's no longer the silent ground, stalking the lone worm, waiting for him to tire of his toil, biding its time to sneak up behind him and swallow him whole. Instead the machine now awaits a moment's inattention to chomp down just a part, while hunger and disease dance a merry jig in the corners. The reward for performance has also changed slightly - it's not quite but almost linear, a worker twice as skilled is just about twice as valuable.

On the other hand being a merchant is much less demanding than being a knight. Addition and multiplication can be learned, and so can the whole trade. It does require a lively mind and a ready capacity for attention in the knaveii, but then again these are much more common than bravery and valor are - demanding virtues most expensive and difficult to train.

This settles "modernity", or however you wish to call it, the last half millenium or so, give or take : on one hand the proletariat is slightly less fungible than the peasants were ; on the other hand merchants are slightly more fungible than the knights were. As a necessary result societal mores do allign closer to the values of the peasant, and further away from the values of the knight. More equality, less meritocracy, more "humanity", less "cruelty", more "respect", less "honor", socialism (however you would double-speak it, nazism, communism, democracy, all the same) follows necessarily.

It is important to note here that this is to no degree "revolutionary", in no sense novel, and by no measure anyone's merit. Water finding a new level should you incline the bucket does not result in identifying rando H2O molecules to credit with "having led the wave" or "discovered the new level". For one thing, they didn't discover anything, they were, like their obscure equals, randomly distributed within a spray. Some section thereof was later cemented by events, but to pretend relationship between this happenstance and the happenstancers is ridiculous. I understand you're desperate to make a name for yourself because you imagine that you may thus escape military service - please understand this makes no differenceⁱⁱⁱ.

But lo! Changes are afoot!

Industry is quite obviously well over^iv and in that process the world has changed quite substantially.

On one hand, the social media [l]user no longer has any value or utility, and with that certainly no power whatsoever. Incapable to survive on his own, let alone produce any sort of surplus, he is fungible to a degree flesh and blood peasants of yore never were : barely a row in a database somewhere, much closer to the stuff of daydreams than actual reality.

On the other hand, being a content producer^v is incredibly difficult and incredibly rare. Not only can it not be trained, not even to the modest degree bravery and valor could be trained into the knight, but it exhibits a very active antieconomy of scale! To illustrate this concept - admitting for a second that the nameless ability in question is one and measurable by a scalar - it is the case that a group of ten producers each worth 10 units of productive worth will output LESS than a group of three producers each worth 12 units of productive worth. Yes, 3 * 12 = 36 is more, much more actually, than 10 * 10, because in this field multiplication is a very different beast than the quaint operand you're used to from your merchant class. As counterintuitive as all this may sound^vi, it is nevertheless the sad state of affairs : give me three decisive men and I can overturn a world that millions of derps can't otherwise keep functioning.

And so, to keep it short and sweet : I will by my own hand abolish democracy, and through no sort of "civil war". The simple workings of economical attrition will suffice. By the blessing of the trite yet incontrovertible fact that you - all of you - can not keep up with us^vii, a precious few of us, your world will come undone. All we have to do is reject most of you, systematically, and keep working. Delusions as to how anyone could in any manner oppose this^viii, or that the evolution in question is anything but nude, rude and unavoidable historical necessity may taste sweet, but other than that taste produce no further fruit. You will go where the level goes and that's all there is to it.

Note that I take no merit in any of this. Figuring out which way the wind blows does not make one a "wind magician" or anything of the sort. I understand you're used to hearing a different melody from your traditional shamans and whatever elses, but really, wouldn't you say it's time you grew up already ?

The future will be decentralized, free, and religious.