Devon_Eriksen_

Scifi Author, Engineer, Sharpshooter, part-time Dæmon Prince of Tzeentch. Not a cat.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

Short answer: no.

Long answer: nnnnnnnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooo.

Detailed answer:

To get into orbit, you need to follow a curved path.

First you need to go up. This isn't to get to space, or because orbits can only happen high up. Orbits can theoretically happen at any height.

In practice, you need to go up because you don't want to run into stuff that's near the ground... bushes, trees, mountains, buildings, Mark Cuban, and, most importantly, air. These things will all slow you down.

And you need that to not happen, because the next step is to go sideways fast. Really fast. No, faster than that.

You need to go sideways so fast that when you fall towards the ground again, you miss.

That's what an "orbit" is. You fall and miss the whole damn planet.

Then you keep swinging around in a circle, missing the planet forever.

What this means is that no matter how hard can throw, you can never throw anything into orbit. It has to steer. Which means it has to provide its own thrust.

Which means a rocket.

So, no, a satellite cannot be sent into orbit (which is where satellites go), from the surface of the planet (which is what we are talking about) without a rocket.

Or the best alternative to a rocket, which is a better rocket.

Can you throw things into space like this? Absolutely. From our moon. Or Mars. Both of which are noted for not having much atmosphere to slow your projectile down.

From Earth? I wouldn't recommend it.

It would be like sitting at the bottom of a well trying to throw rocks out.

When the well is full of water.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

There's an old joke about a policeman stopping a drunk who is searching for his lost car keys under a streetlamp.

He dropped them somewhere two blocks away, but the light is better over here.

Fighting marxism with superpacs, NGOs, and social media is a great way to lose slowly.

Why?

Because the real war is upstream.

The real war is fought in the culture.

People show up to politics, show up to the voting booth, show up to social media, with their opinions already formed by the shows they grew up watching, and the books they grew up reading.

The culture war for the mind of young Elon Musk was not won by a hundred million dollar superpac — it was won by a twelve-dollar Heinlein novel.

Because of that victory, the tech right understands the value of rockets.

But it has yet to fully grasp the value of Heinleins.

Big Tech stood by silently while the "Big Five" Manhattan-based publishing industry withered on the vine and its corpse was skinsuited by marxists.

And now, decades later, they are trying to build AI and go to space, while scratching their heads wondering why no one outside El Segundo and the Bay Area seems to understand their vision of the future, and just wants to steal all their stuff to pay for more Pepsi and Doritos.

You can stare all day and the rock-bottom awful marxist DEI slop that emerges from Hollywood and Manhattan these days and think that there's no way the left can win with this garbage.

But armchair warriors discuss tactics, while professional soldiers study logistics and supply.

No matter how bad woke media becomes, creating an alternative still costs money.

If a right-wing author has to self-publish, pay for his own cover artist, and market his own novels, while some lefty MFA from Bryn Mawr can pen a novel about having a lesbian affair with her professor's wife, and get a six figure "fellowship" for selling a few copies, and I wish I was making that up, then what this means is that left wing art is effectively free, or negative cost, to make.

Currently, the culture war is being fought on behalf of the right by broke middle class writers and artists, who have to fund themselves, bootstrap style, while their enemies own all the institutions and distribution networks.

It doesn't matter how poor your enemies' tactics are, if your soldiers have to buy their own uniforms and rifles.

When they lose, and they will unless the Tech Right starts helping, then the marxists are going to throw you in prison and take all your shit.

Don't want that to happen?

Fine.

Then you have to actually become a conservative, instead of just playing one on social media because you don't wanna pay more taxes.

You have to actually believe in the cause and contribute to the fight.

And it starts with art, culture, and stories.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

Picture all of humanity, for all of human history.

Draw a box around European people. That's 10%.

Now draw a smaller box, inside that box, around the ones born after WW2. That's 25% of 10%.

Now draw a smaller box, inside that box, around the ones born in Western Europe, Australia, the United States and Canada. That's 50% of 25% of 10%.

Now draw a smaller box, inside that box, around the upper and middle classes. That's 50% of 50% of 25% of 10%.

Now, cover the smallest box in painter's tape. Carefully. You may need to cut the tape to fit. It's 0.625%

Got it all covered up?

Good.

Now spray paint everything else, all 99.375%, bright red. Get your stencils out while you wait for it to dry, and paint on the red area, in the biggest, heaviest, blackest block letters that will fit, the following phrase:

RACISM AND SEXISM

Let it dry. All the way. Be sure. Don't walk on the wet paint.

Now peel the painter's tape, carefully, and with a very sharp pencil and a ruler borrowed from your friend Mr. Wittgenstein, draw a line down the middle of the unpainted box, separating the left half from the right.

Now stand on the right half of that box. You may have to place one foot on top of the other.

Do not allow your toes to touch the red area. The red area is bad.

Recite the following mantra:

I am a conservative.

I am conserving the right half of this box.

I am a moral conservative, and I will conserve the right half of this box without touching the wicked red zone outside, for it is RACISM AND SEXISM.

I will forswear all knowledge, tradition, and scholarship from outside the box, and study no lesson learned there, for therein dwells the corrupting power of RACISM AND SEXISM.

I am a conservative.

Repeat this three times.

If man named Chesterton comes along and tries to build a fence in the red area, you should immediately kick it down, because it is RACISM AND SEXISM.

If he asks you what RACISM AND SEXISM are, and how they are defined, and how we are to know they are bad, consult the man standing in the left half of the box to explain it for you.

And remember to give Mr. Wittgenstein back his ruler.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

This is because Big Tech has done a terrible, bottom-tier job at explaining their plans and vision to the public and generating buy-in.

This is not merely because of lack of social skills, but because so many of them are wealthy autists, who have been surrounded for decades almost entirely by those who work for or do business with them.

And they resent having to do the work to influence others with persuasion rather than purchase.

Many of them do not fully grasp, on an emotional level, that the success of their visions and project is not dependent on the lack of outside interfere, but on genuine widespread understanding and alignment.

They imagine themselves to be heroes in an Ayn Rand novel. But they recapitulate Ayn Rand's basic error of attribution.

The Great Work is not built by the Great Man alone. No man can build anything bigger than himself without others who share his vision.

The Great Work is built by the Great Man and his Expert Team...

in the Permissive Environment.

Think of it multiple ways.

Think first that Elon Musk built 80% of the world's lift-to-orbit capacity. This is true.

Then think that Elon Musk's team, executing his plan, built 80% of the world's lift-to-orbit capacity. This is true as well.

Then, finally, think, America built 80% of the world's lift-to-orbit capacity, using ONE Elon Musk.

And this, also, is true.

Think how many Elon Musks Europe would need. A hundred? A thousand?

Now imagine how many South Africa would need.

The answer is "enough to seize the country by military force".

Those who have a vision of the future must share it in a way that can be understood and accepted. So they have a place to build.

They cannot shirk this responsibility. They cannot simply punish those who do not agree by "going Galt".

You are not Atlas. You do not hold up the sky.

You merely have a dream of reaching beyond it. And dreams are meant to be shared.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

Dear Habitual CNBC Viewers:

This is all 100% correct. For your own sake, please stay away from Tennessee.

Don't even drive through. You're liable to be stopped at a KKK checkpoint, where anyone with dark skin will be enslaved and put to work in the cotton fields, and all teenage girls will be forcibly married off to redneck hillbillies who can only communicate by firing shotguns in the air and yelling "yeee-haw!"

Also, weed and abortions are illegal here, and church attendance is mandatory, as is machine-gun ownership.

Contrary to popular belief, we don't beat homosexuals to death here, but that is only because we have run out of homosexuals. Conjugal relationships with farm animals, however, are a normal and accepted practice.

Also, we don't have any electricity, running water, or internet service.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

But don't you understand?

There was a way. There was always a way.

We had it within our grasp, because we had already grasped it. The childhoods that you and your daughter had were available because you and your daughter had them.

All that the Boomers, and their parents, the eldest of the post WW2 generations, had to do was...

Nothing.

Just live in the paradise that their ancestors won for them, and make the minimum, the bare minimum, of effort that would have been required to actually sustain it.

That's all.

Just keep things the way they were.

But they couldn't handle that. Their fathers and grandfathers, the heroes that won WW2, made them jealous.

They wanted to be heroes, too.

So, for the sake of their own egos, they had to become Social Justice Warriors. They had to be Champions of Progress and Change.

They had to see the world they inherited as a pile of problems to be solved, rather than a pile of solutions to be cherished and preserved.

So they could feel like they were doing something important.

Almost all of the elder generations, even the ones who call themselves conservative and vote republican, are, in truth, socialist liberal progressives. Because they looked at paradise, and wanted to fix it instead of protect it.

That's why the "republican" option was Reagan, the gun-ban guy, the social-welfare guy, the kiss-up-to-the-commies guy, the amnesty-for-foreign-invaders guy.

Reagan, the Hollywood liberal, the Obama of the 80s, instead of Joe McCarthy, Barry Goldwater, and Pat Buchanan.

Teens can't have a summer job because elders had to be Third-World Compassion Heroes, and give us Hart-Cellar and eleventy-billion barbarians who don't care about civilization, but will work cheap.

Teens can't have a car because elders had to be Climate Emergency Heroes and give us emissions control laws and Cash for Clunkers.

Teens can't have safe schools to learn at, because elders had to Anti-Racist Heroes and made it illegal to exclude violent thugs from our school districts. Just because those thugs generally come color-coded for your convenience.

Teens can't have safe public spaces to hang out in, because elders had to be Compassion for the Underclass Heroes, and release violent savages into society, again and again, with a lecture and a slap on the wrist.

Teens can't have a healthy economy to inherit, because elders had to be Equality Heroes and make sure every corporation that actually did anything useful was punished for not being Diverse, Equitable, and Inclusive enough to suit the ideal universe that exists only in their heads.

Teens can't have dates, because elders had to be Anti-Sexist Heroes, and let feminists spend forty years diminishing the social value of men, until you had to a be a billionaire rockstar adventurer to avoid being an unsexy loser by default.

Teens can't even be fit, healthy, and pretty, because elders had to be Sex Equality Heroes, and move women into the corporate workforce in droves, leaving children to be fed by corporate industrial slop factories.

Teens can't have sane, well-adjusted, unspoiled girlfriends and wives, because elders had to be Champions of Sexual Freedom, and normalize unlimited female promiscuity, all in exchange for the largely unfulfilled promise of a little unshaven free-love yeti snatch.

And worst, of all, the crowning irony, the final dead hamster in the water pipe, is that all of this would be fixable, perhaps in three to five election cycles...

Except.

Except the elders don't understand that any of this of this is happening.

They haven't had a child in the household since 1997. They haven't looked for an entry-level job since 1973. They haven't gone on a date since 1981. They haven't been laid off... ever.

They are safe with their paid-off houses and their investments and their pensions from 45 years at the same company and their social security and their medical plans.

It's affecting the youngest generations first and worst. While the elders sit on their cruise ship, surveying the short with binoculars, wondering who all these ragged distressed looking people standing on the shore are.

And why they are holding signs that say "HELP", "THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT", and "YOU STOLE THE LIFE I WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE".

Then they shrug, conclude that these must be the whiny losers, and everyone further inland is probably just fine, and everything is fine, because they fixed everything and they are all heroes, and the Summer of Love was the end of the Problematic Era of History and the beginning of the Great Enlightenment.

And when I am 74 years old, and the elders are all safely tucked into their cemetery plots, I will be torn apart by an angry mob for having white hair, and therefore being "one of them".

And the mob will not care that I didn't get to cast a vote until 1992, for the Man Who Predicted All Of This.

He called it the "giant sucking sound".

Which is apt because it's why everything sucks now.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

I like it when my enemy is eager to die. That means he and I have the same goal.

Islam has been trying to invade the West since Anno Domini 711.

And the West's great weakness has never been unwillingness to die. When the guardians of the West had to die to defend Europe, they faced death willingly. More of them in antiquity, less of them today, but ability to absorb causalities has never been our problem and never will be.

Our problem is not unwillingness to die. Our problem is unwillingness to kill.

This is why the current Muslim invasion of Europe is leaving its AK47s at home.

It's a tactic. They have discovered that rifles are a liability, and they are better off without them.

Why?

Because the rifle increases our willingness to kill them more than it increases their ability to kill us.

The tactics have changed, but the war is the same.

We're not at war with Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, Al-Shabaab or JNIM. We're at war with Islam.

It's the same war we've been waging since 711. They want to kill, enslave, or forcibly convert us, and we don't want that.

That's what a war is, guys.

You may not like that. Doesn't matter. We are not talking about what "should" be. We are talking about what is.

We don't get decide or not if we are at war with Islam, because Muslims have decided they are at war with us.

We are better at fighting wars than they are. Because we are better at hurting people than they are. So if we are willing to hurt them, we win.

If we continue trying to not-hurt them, we lose. Because that's not how you fight a war.

It really is that simple.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

Frank Herbert is a tragic figure in the history of science fiction, because he tried to write a terrible book and accidentally wrote a great one.

He spent the rest of his life fuming because people liked the great book he wrote instead of the terrible one he tried to write.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

If you like scifi…

If you are sick of stories of dystopian whining and post-apocalyptic despair…

If you're wondering what the hell happened to the industry that gave us Neuromancer and The Mote in God's Eye and Dune…

Then I made you something nice
https://t.co/MYegvgCzCa

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

In every great success story you'll ever read or watch, there's always a worst moment.

A dark night of the soul.

It's that moment when you want to give up, not because you can't bear the pain, but because the pain feels meaningless. Because you think there's nothing but more pain ahead, and failure on the other side of it.

And every person you ever heard this kind of story about ... kept going. If he hadn't, there would be no story to tell.

The most rare and precious commodity in that great success story isn't intelligence or talent. Yes, you need them. But they aren't the neck of the bottle. They aren't the rarest thing.

The rarest thing is what kept those men going.

People call it courage, or will, or persistence, or discipline.

And you've heard it called all these things in feel-good stories, that people find uplifting because they tell a nice little story about how anyone can choose to be successful. You've heard it called these things in motivational speeches from guys who make you feel like you could charge through a wall, until a week passes and they realize they haven't told you step one in how to develop any of these character traits.

So I don't like to call it courage. Or will. Or persistence. Or discipline.

I don't think of it that way.

I call it hope.

Hope isn't a habit, or a character trait, or a skill. It's a belief. A belief that if you keep going, there's a good chance that all work will pay off, and all the pain will be worth something. A belief in a light somewhere at the end of that tunnel.

And beliefs, unlike character traits, can be instilled.

Hope comes from a lot of different places. A track record of success. A father who always believed in you. A mother who will love you no matter what. Faith that somewhere, there's a god who is looking out for you. A team or a tribe or an entire society that has your back.

Doesn't matter where that belief comes from. Doesn't matter if it's rational or silly. Doesn't even matter if it's true.

What matters is that it sustains you. It keeps you working and struggling and enduring, because you don't think your suffering is meaningless.

This is what you have to teach your children. Hope.

You can't make them smarter. Or prettier. Or more charismatic. Maybe you can't even make them tougher.

But you can make them believe in the possibility of success.

Because if there's one thing our civilization and species needs, it's more stories like this one to tell. As many as we can get.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

It's because of the basic psychologies of fascism and communism.

Fascism is a disgust spiral, whose basic commandment is "thou shalt not be worse than me." It starts out with anti-smoking campaigns and burning child pornography, and ends up disappearing anyone who doesn't mow his lawn.

Communism is an envy spiral, whose basic commandment is "thou shalt not be better than me." It starts out targeting captains of industry and genius intellectuals, and ends up disappearing anyone who wears glasses, which create the suspicion that he might have read a book once.

This is why people with communist psychology (the left) equate clean streets with fascism.

Leftists can't keep their streets clean and their lawns mowed, but instead of the psychologically healthy response of being slightly embarrassed and resolving to do better, they decide that anyone in a nice neighborhood is a fascist who needs to be exposed and purged.

You, oh right-wing conservative, watching this video clip, think that leftists are accidentally pointing out the benefits of fascism.... i.e. that people can have nice things.

But if you understood communist psychology, really understood it, you would realize that the mowed lawns, clean streets, and neatly-groomed people are actually another accusation.

Not only are they racists, complains the narrative, they have nicer houses and neighborhoods than you. How dare they?

How dare they not be surrounded by trash and graffiti?

How dare they not be awoken at 3 AM by their drunk neighbors blasting loud music?

Who do they think they are, some sort of superior race?

You don't notice that accusation because you are not the target audience. The target audience is people prone to destructive envy, and the goal is to recruit them to communism.

They don't care if you think this points out the benefits of fascism, or even just the benefits of racism. Because you are not prone to destructive envy, so they can never recruit you anyway.

And it makes no difference if you point out that the end result of this is that every neighborhood is covered in trash and graffiti.

That's what commies want.

Why? Because their neighborhoods are always going to be messed up no matter what ideology is in control. Fascism, communism, liberalism, objectivism, doesn't matter. They are not disciplined enough to do battle with entropy through sustained effort, and not creative or intelligent enough to do battle with entropy through innovation.

But if their house is inevitably going to be surrounded by mountains of trash, just because of who they are, then the greatest comfort they can aspire to is a world where your house is surrounded by trash, too.

This is why communism ruins everything, and why communists cannot be dissuaded when you point this out. Ruining everything for anyone who's better off is what they want.

The trick is to get them to realize that communism allows anyone who is even worse off than they to ruin whatever they still have. Which isn't easy, because if they were smart enough to easily understand this, they wouldn't be surrounded by trash in the first place.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

Any time a professional author talks about prose, he runs the risk of being swarmed by Prose Weenies.

Pose Weenies are to professional fiction authors what foodies are to professional chefs, a sort of trickle-down art snob who can't actually make the magic happen himself, but who gives himself airs anyway, because he thinks he "appreciates" the art in some special way that others don't.

The purpose of prose is simply to tell a story. It can be beautiful, or not, poetic or not, creative or not, but all of these things are not benchmarks of artistic achievement at all.

They are choices the author makes to draw the reader into what's going on.

Let's look at some examples. All of these lines mean pretty much the same thing on the surface: "The woman was very beautiful."

But they say so in different ways.

“She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.” — JD Salinger

This line creates the character. He's a romantic. In fact, he's a simp. He worships a woman he doesn't even know, mentally assigning her a central role in his universe, merely because he's attracted to the way she looks.

He most likely has Madonna-Whore Syndrome, the informal name for a disease a man gets where he can't sexualize any woman he loves, and can't love any woman he sexualizes.

"It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window." — Raymond Chandler

This lines shows the character's mental state. He reacts with lust, but feels slightly defensive about it. So he makes an excuse... hey, even a bishop would break character for this one, so what do you expect of me, eh?

"Posthuman. A genetwist. And an obvious one. She looks like someone stuffed a magic fairy princess into a tailored gray business suit, complete with sensible skirt." — Devon Eriksen

This paragraph creates the setting and the character.

First, I introduce the idea that people can be genetically altered on purpose in this universe.

Then I describe her beauty, but create a contrast with the seriousness of her presentation, to create an incongruous effect. She's not only beautiful, she's designed to be beautiful, on purpose, but she's dressing to downplay this, to be taken seriously instead of desired.

So which one of these lines is "best"?

A Prose Weenie will argue with other Prose Weenies about which of these lines has the best imagery.

But authors will spot this for a trick question. They're all good because they tell the story, and they can't be measured against each other because they're telling different stories.

Bad prose would be "The woman was very beautiful." Because it doesn't do any of that work.

What kind of prose is "good" depends entirely on what you're trying to do in the story.

Are you writing a dull, workmanlike character? Use dull, workmanlike prose to describe what he sees around him.

Are you writing a young rich sensitive idler with lace on his shirt cuffs? Go mad with the similes and metaphors. Make them overwrought on purpose.

Just about everything an author can do is a tool is his toolbox, and the mark of a real craftsman is that he knows how and when to use each one of his tools.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

When you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

I don't know who actually rules Britain, not for sure, but whoever they are, there is a consensus among them that Britain is to be a third world nation, and its primary religion is to be Islam.

All other explanations are implausible.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

Leftists love the term "democracy".

They want you to think it's sacred, flawless, and unquestionable. They want you to be shocked and horrified every time anyone questions it, or points out its obvious flaws.

Why?

Because if they can make you think consensus is unquestionable, all they have to do is create the illusion of consensus.

Control the social media website. Stuff the ballot box. Flood the television with lies.

Notice, here, that leftist fellow traveler Yann LeCun doesn't bother to defend democracy, or even define it. He doesn't deal with the fact that the word or concept of democracy is not even mentioned, not even once, in the foundational documents that form the basis of American law.

He doesn't talk about those things because he doesn't want you to think about those things.

He doesn't want you to ask "What kind of democracy, exactly?"

He doesn't want you to ask "Is democracy really want we want, or is it simply a means of creating a just and free society? And what if it doesn't?"

He doesn't want you to ask "Hey, wait a minute, aren't lynchings and gang rapes the ultimate form of democracy?"

No, he just wants you to clutch your pearls, shriek "oh my ears and whiskers" and follow him down onto the fainting couch.

He wants you to worship the word democracy. Not to think about the concept.

This is the same game that they played with the word "racism".

First they interpreted the word as "genocidal hate". Then they used this notion to turn the word into a symbol of pure evil. Then they reinterpreted the word to mean "White people having any ingroup preference." But they still want you to treat this as pure evil.

The Athenians only gave the office of "voter" to native Athenian men who did military service.

This was democracy. It was by definition democracy. Because "democracy" is nothing but the word Athenians invented to describe it.

But now, if you suggest that we do as the Athenians did, or something like it, the left screams "you hate democracy!"

It's a word game.

You have to remember that the left is not trying to persuade you. They are trying to trick you.

You have to remember that words mean things.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

The vote is neither a right nor a reward nor a privilege.

It is an office.

This is Heinlein's point.

One who wields force on behalf of the state is an "officer".

He is not someone who has been rewarded with the power to wield violence. Nor is he someone who wields violence as a right or privilege, because he has no right whatsoever to do so beyond the exact scope of his duties.

Wielding this violence is his job. His office. And he is appointed to that office by reason of being qualified and verified according to a set of criteria.

And if wielding discretionary violence on behalf of the state is an office, so is deciding the policies and guidelines which define the scope of that officer's duties.

Thus, representative is also an office.

And if representatives are elected by vote, and are ultimately to be accountable to voters, then to be a voter, to be a member of the "demos" from which the word democracy derives... that, too, is an office.

There can be no question that the cutesy phrases modern leftists use to describe the vote, such as "exercise your rights", and "make your voice heard" are illegitimate and unjust.

To vote is to exercise control over the actions of others, and no one has a right to a "voice" in what others do.

The only legitimate reason for that control is to restrain others from anti-social action, which is a practical necessity, not an individual right.

Thus, the vote is an office, which must be held by those who are qualified — proven capable and willing to set aside their own interests and exercise power solely on behalf of the group.

This is Heinlein's point, elegantly and irrefutably argued.

This is why Heinlein is the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, and it is also why leftists hate him.

Because what is leftism?

It is a rebellion against civilization itself, motivated by the desire to tear open and loot the storehouse, to gut the accumulation of stored effort, wisdom, and self-control, the inheritance of all future generations, in an orgy of hedonistic consumption.

Leftism is the rats convincing the farmers that cats are fascists.

But just as cats were necessary for creating civilization, the officers of the demos, the citizens who can put aside their own desires and act in the interest of the republic, are necessary for preserving it.

The majority of the human race cannot or will not see beyond their own desires for more wealth, more pleasure, more status, and less work. They must be restrained even by the most libertarian of civilizations, because without that restraint, there is no civilization, and without civilization, no liberty.

America would be better off with only 10,000 voters, vetted for intelligence, prosocial attitudes, loyalty or America, and skin in the game. Perhaps even 1,000 would suffice.

Failing that, pretty much any test of competence, loyalty, or worth applied as a filter on the vote would improve America immensely. Net worth, ability to pass an algebra or reading comprehension test, anything.

The Constitution has no language forbidding any prerequisite for voting, other than sex, race, or the payment of a poll tax.

But first we must tear down the delusion that the vote belongs to everyone. Heinlein got us started.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

The problem with universal suffrage is that the more technologically advanced a civilization becomes, the smaller the fraction of people there are in it with the native intelligence to understand how it works.

When the majority of humanity was employed in whacking at the dirt with a pointed stick, and the height of technology was a slightly better pointed stick, anyone with a triple digit IQ could understand what was going on.

Now, we have things like stock markets, the internet, transportation infrastructure, and the Linux kernel, but most people who vote are unable to conceive of these as anything but large piles of chocolate coins, or something else they can put their mouths.

Because that's how the average monkey interacts with money. They stack the blocks, the research assistant gives them a token, they exchange the token for a banana.

It's no good trying to explain to the monkeys what supply chain is, or how a trillion dollars worth of rockets can't magically be converted into a trillion dollars worth of bananas just because they're both measured in dollars, as if a six-foot man and a six-foot plank of wood were interchangeable.

Finding a slightly different explanation, or getting the monkeys to sit still and really listen, doesn't really help.

Because the problem isn't just that the monkeys aren't paying attention. The problem is that the monkeys are monkeys.

Their brains simply don't have the developmental capacity to grow the neural connections they would need in order to grasp and manipulate the concept.

In the long term, this is why universal democracy is doomed. Because societies that let retards vote will fail, and be replaced by those that don't.

You may think that we, as a society, face a great variety of problems. We do not. We have only one. Retards. Every other problem we have is downstream from their inability to understand the consequences of their political opinions.

But to fully grasp the implications of this, you have to understand that the definition of "retard" changes over time, as technology advances, because the IQ level required to grasp what's really going on gets steadily higher and higher.

Eventually, the category "retard" grows until it includes the average person.

This has already happened.

Nick Knudsen isn't dumber than the average guy. But the average guy, the 100 IQ salt of the earth guy that's sitting on the next bar stool over, can no longer understand the modern economy. And this isn't correctable, because the problem isn't ignorance, it's complexity.

You can't make Nick Knudsen smarter by telling him things. You can't even make him less ignorant, because the bare facts aren't believable to someone who doesn't have the framework to understand how they fit together.

The people who understand what's going on are so much smarter than him that he doesn't even think they sound smart.

He thinks they sound crazy.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

I once had a moneyed right winger set up a conference call with me to "see what he could do to help me out".

Halfway through the discussion I realized he was offering me a loan. At double digit interest.

Don't try to play "patron of the arts" if you're having to nickel and dime people even broker than you.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

Ancient democracy worked. Modern democracy fails slowly.

Why?

Because they have different conceptions of what it means to vote.

In modern political philosophy, the vote is an individual right, and the purpose of voting is to resolve conflicts of interest.

This is why the rhetoric around voting uses feel good phrases like "make your voice heard". It is your voice, your vote, and it belongs to you to do as you please with.

Thus, within modern democracy, there is no philosophical basis for gatekeeping the vote.

And yet, unqualified voters clearly exist.

Here, in this picture, of this news article, we see an unqualified voter. "How did this happen?" asks Unqualified Voter, while wearing a pin that reads "I voted for this to happen."

Unqualified Voter lacks either the intelligence, or the objectivity, to connect vote with consequences of vote.

Modern democracies last until the percentage of Unqualified Voters reaches some mathematical threshold at which the polls no longer serve as a check against official corruption and incompetence.

Now, all of this makes sense to most liberals and other proponents of modern democracy, if they are intelligent enough. They pretend not to understand it, but they do. They are simply unwilling to address it, because their philosophy of individual human rights allows for no solution.

So when you point it out to them, they simply call you a fascist (or "woke" when "fascist stops working through overuse), and kick the can down the road, hoping that their high-minded classical liberal civilization will collapse in their grandchildren's lifetime instead of their own.

They call this process "empathy".

But, even if you are not a liberal, what philosophical position is there that even allows this problem to be fixed?

What is there, other than a right, for a vote to even be?

Well, ancient democracies had a solution. To understand it, we must turn to the greatest of modern philosophers: Robert A. Heinlein.

“When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.”

And there you have it.

The solution is a nutshell.

Voting is not a right. Voting cannot be a right. Because voting is wielding state-sanctioned violence.

And if everyone has the inalienable right to wield violence, for their own ends, then what you have, my friends, not a state at all. It is the absence of a state.

It is purest anarchy.

Universal suffrage is anarchy by proxy, because both give total power to the largest organized mob.

So if voting is not a right, what is it?

Once again, we turn to Heinlein, who provides us with the only tool we need.

If voting is wielding state violence — and the state must wield violence, or it cannot enforce its decrees — then what do we call someone who wields violence on behalf of the state?

Officer.

We call him "officer".

And if wielding violence on behalf of the state is an office, wielding violence through the state can be an office as well.

This is the secret of ancient democracies, and why they were stable.

They regarded "voter" as an office.

Modern democrats misconstrue this. They say that ancient democracies "disenfranchised" women and racial minorities.

This is false. In an ancient democracy, there was no such thing as "disenfranchise". Because to "disenfranchise" means to deny the right to vote. And there is no such right.

Instead, ancient democracies enfranchised people. They appointed them to the office of "voter".

And the official responsibility of the office of voter isn't to vote your own interest, it's to vote your idea of the interest of the republic.

The point of the ancient democracy isn't to make the acts of the state reflect the will of the majority — it is to crowdsource policy between prequalified decision makers. This guards against decision-making by individual bad actors.

Ancient democracies typically appointed voters based on some combination of the following filters:

- male
- free (if slavery existed)
- race native to the region
- military service
- level of wealth
- ownership of real estate

Modern liberals and social democrats will argue that these are not "fair", singly or in combination.

They do not understand that fairness is not the goal. The goal is to establish and preserve a stable, peaceful, prosperous, just, and advancing society.

(And if you think that fairness and justice are the same thing, you are an Unqualified Voter.)

We can argue endlessly, and I'm sure people in the comments will, about what the ideal set of filters is. Modern societies would have the capability to test IQ and correlates to IQ, psychological personality models, etc.

But the important thing to understand is that this is beside the point.

The ancient filters were neither optimal nor fair. But they worked. And they worked because the whole point of these filters isn't perfection or fairness at all. It's to prevent a critical mass of Unqualified Voters.

That's all.

When only men voted in the United States, the federal budget was almost always balanced. Was that fair? No. But it worked.

When only white people voted in the United States, the federal budget was almost always balanced. Was that fair? No. But it worked.

When only property owners voted in Rhodesia, Rhodesia was stable, wealthy, and peaceful. Was that fair? No. But it worked.

Which is why it's totally believable that Heinlein's fictional society in "Starship Troopers", where only military veterans may vote, is stable, prosperous, and just. Would that be fair? No. But it would work.

If one of these unfair filters, or something like it, were imposed in the United States tomorrow, it would probably only take a few election cycles to balance the budget again.

Would that be fair? No. But it would work.

But, as @elonmusk recently discovered from painful personal experience, there is no way to balance the federal budget under conditions of universal suffrage.

It simply cannot be done.

The Unqualified Voters will never stop voting themselves handouts, whether they take the form of welfare, USAID, social security, medicare, portions of a bloated military budget spent in their state or congressman's district, whatever.

They will never stop, because an Unqualified Voter either does not connect his vote for personal interests to their collective consequences, or does not care.

And the second harsh reality is that there is no political solution to a critical mass of Unqualified Voters.

Once Unqualified Voters have enough political power to prevent Qualified Voters from imposing a filter — whether it be as crude and ancient as "male property owner only", or as modern as "pass a basic algebra test and maintain a specified minimum net worth" — the federal budget will never be balanced again.

They won't let you do it. And under universal suffrage, they can always stop you.

This leads to a certain unavoidable conclusion.

But you are not ready for that conversation yet.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

Elon, this is the moment where you're supposed to wise up and abandon classical liberalism.

If you let takers vote, they will not only take more and more, they will make it more and more rewarding to be a taker, and they will convert more and more makers into takers, forever.

Until the makers cannot carry the takers any more.

Universal suffrage leads to universal suffering.