WELSH CHILDREN TO BE WEANED ONTO BUGS - REPTILEAN ELITES SUSPECTED

OMG! It's true! We're all going to be forced to live in pods and eat bugs! 

Here is the "proof" from the Independent: 

Edible insects: Scientists plan to feed primary school children locusts and mealworms to make the UK greener

Edible insects are highly nutritious and have a much smaller carbon footprint than conventional meat, scientists says

Children are to be fed bugs as part of a plan to get a new generation to switch from meat to insects – and persuade their parents to follow their lead.

Pupils at four primary schools in Wales are to be offered insects to eat as part of a project to gauge children’s appetite for “alternative protein” such as crickets, grasshoppers, silkworms, locusts and mealworms.

Researchers hope their findings will give clues as to how best educate children on the environmental and nutritional benefits of edible insects across the UK, and potentially overseas – and, in turn, their parents, as the world looks to help the environment by cutting meat consumption.[...]

A 2020 study estimated that 9 million European consumers had eaten insects in 2019, and forecast that this would increase to 390 million by 2030, according to the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed (IPIFF), the insect production charity.

Yes, this has Klaus Schwab and the WEF's fingerprints all over it. In fact, it must have been part of the recent Davos discussions, where it presumably got OK'ed by the Rothschilds, possibly after a Satanic orgy hosted by "spirit cooking" high priestess Marina Abramović. 

But seriously, you can see how the conspiracy nuts are going to have a field day with this one. 

But, what is a comparatively sane person to make of this?

Well, it's all part and parcel of a globalised World. What is really being normalised here is not some Satanic vision cooked up by evil billionaires, but just the Third World, where bug eating has always been a thing, and overpopulation. 

Also, it's probably getting some impetus from "signally" White people. In the past, any "progressive" middle-class White person could stand out from the crowd by taking "woke" positions on race, LGBTQ, or the environment, but now almost everybody in advanced countries is so woke on all these issues that it is getting harder and harder to "signal" how special and progressive one is. Bug eating may provide a new opportunity for that. In that sense it's a godsend for a certain kind of eager White person.

As for me and the stubborn working class masses, we'll be sticking to our bacon, sausages, and eggs no matter how many roaches our highers and betters recommend we chow down on, and I suspect they will too. 

RUSSIA DEVELOPS NEW DOOMSDAY WEAPONS

Geopolitical commentator Caspian Report reviews Russia's increasing acquisition of doomsday weapons. Was it's invasion of the Ukraine essentially a move to defend its doomsday weapons from a theoretical "First Strike" by NATO?

PUTIN BACKS DOWN ON SOUTH OSSETIA REFERENDUM

US-support for Georgia has increased in recent years.

Russia has apparently backed down on holding a referendum in the occupied territory of South Ossetia, which is still internationally recognised as part of Georgia. The referendum was to be on whether South Ossetia would become a part of Russia or not.

As reported by The Moscow Times:

The leader of Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia on Monday scrapped plans to hold a referendum on joining Russia which his predecessor had scheduled for July 17.

South Ossetia was at the center of the Russian-Georgian war in 2008 after which the Kremlin recognized the territory as an independent state and stationed military bases there.

In a decree issued Monday, the Moscow-controlled enclave's president Alan Gagloev invoked "uncertainty of the legal consequences of the issue submitted to a referendum."

The decree also stressed "the inadmissibility of a unilateral decision of a referendum on issues affecting the legitimate rights and interests of the Russian Federation."

Let's just be clear here: the sole leader of South Ossetia is Vladimir Putin and no one else. Any referendum that took place there would be meaningless, as Putin would simply rig it to get the result he wanted, even if 99% voted the other way. So, what this means is that Putin has effectively backed down. The only question is why.

It could be fear of Turkey, which would view the act of Russia annexing South Ossetia negatively. Putin is also hoping to leverage food and agricultural imports from Ukrainian ports to push Turkey into reducing sanctions on Russua.

It could also be because the outright annexation of Georgian territory could provoke the Georgian military to resume the 2008 war, with Russia's army greatly weakened and fully deployed elsewhere.

Since 2008, the Georgian military has been extensively re-equipped and may be ready for a re-match. If so, now would be the perfect moment. Yes, it looks like the Ukraine isn't the only NATO-backed state on Russia's borders.

THE END OF CITIZENSHIP

Luke Ford comments on vouch nationalism, the psychology of a spree shooter, Putin's invasion of the Ukraine, globalism, and Hollywood.

ALTERNATIVE VERTICAL

by Colin Liddell

At first you put up with it because it’s there, but after a while it starts to get on your tits and become more and more irritating: Left-this, Right-that, New Left-this, Alternative Right-that, blah blah blah, etc. etc., ad infinitum – yawn!

It all goes back to the French National Convention (or something) back in the days of the Revolution – Google it; I can't be bothered – when, I guess, all the troublemakers sat on the left side of the hall (But whose left? Their left or the usherette’s left?) and all the mild-mannered twats with a soft spot for the king sat on the right.

I've seen something like this before when I was teaching at a dysfunctional Japanese co-ed public school. All the lads sat on the side of the class near the door and all the lassies sat by the windows. To the boys the door represented "freedom" and a valuable extra few seconds out of the classroom when the bell rang. To the girls the windows were an important source of illumination to be used in complex make-up operations sometimes carried on during actual lessons on desks that were way too small for their cosmetic paraphernalia and their textbooks.

It only strikes me now that, from my point of view, the right side was nearer the light and the left side closer to the toilets!

I suspect the French National Convention (or whatever) that gave us these hallowed terms – Left and Right – was rather like this. Maybe the aristos with their paradoxical mixture of syphilitic, pock-marked skin and powdered vanity shunned the windows, while the bookish bourgeois types that drove the revolution preferred to sit in the light so they could swot up on Voltaire and Rousseau in between debates on the price of cake.

Whatever the exact facts, I’m pretty sure that the genesis of these terms was not exactly edifying or meaningful.

Why did they catch on and why have they subsisted now for over two centuries? This is probably due to a combination of the enormous "soft power" of La France and the mainly traditional rightist force of blind, dumb habit, but I also think each side has actually developed a liking for its sidist denomination.

The Rightists are happy to be "in the Right" (sigh, groan) and to have the idea of cack-handed sinisterism appended to their opponents; while the Leftists like the sense of danger, wildness, unpredictability, and mild disability that their sidist denomination connotes and evokes. Also a lot of them probably are Left-handers, who were radicalized at an early age by door handles (such is the triviality of most people’s political orientation!).

Anyway, the terms Left and Right have served the world of politics and ideology extremely badly, and led to endless political confusion. Examine the history of the National Socialists, the Soviet Union, the Neo-Cons, Communist-stroke-Fascist China, and the British Conservative (sic) Party to see how easy it is to confuse the terms Left and the Right. Such confusion is inevitable because there is nothing intrinsically different or qualitative about what are simply relative terms (who’s left, who’s right?).

I think a solution for this ancient problem can be found by switching to a less relativistic vector and one that has its basis in the eternal verities of mathematics, namely the concepts of VERTICAL and HORIZONTAL. By replacing 'The Right' with 'The Vertical' and 'The Left' with the 'The Horizonatal,' an enormous gain in clarity is achieved. If the Right Wing has an essence that most can agree on, it is hierarchy, natural inequality, meritocracy, and aspiration to the sacred, in other words a sense of the vertical. Likewise the essence of the LEFT, when it isn't forming itself into elitist revolutionary cliques preparing for heroic military conquest, has been an all-embracing egalitarianism and anti-hierarchical tendency, essentially a horizontal value.

So, let us consign LEFT and RIGHT to the dustbin of history, where they belong, and instead start thinking VERTICALLY and HORIZONTALLY. You know it makes sense!

In related news, men are vertical, women are horizontal, and each craves the opposite.

Published a long time ago at another site.

THE GREATEST LIE OF THE 20th CENTURY

So much political and metapolitical debate today is founded on lies and distortions. Perhaps the greatest lie of the 20th Century was the lie that Germany was unfairly victimised by the Allies after WWI, supposedly leading to hyperinflation, the rise of Hitler, and WWII. This lie has been frequently resorted to by Neo-Nazis, Hitler apologists, and others to promote their sterile ideas and false narratives. But instead of the "Carthaginian Peace" claimed by the Bloomsbury economist John Maynard Keynes and amplified by Hitler, the Treaty of Versailles was actually an example of great diplomatic leniency, as YouTube historian TIK demonstrates in this video.

BEING RIGHT FOR THE RIGHT REASONS

Sick burn!

by Colin Liddell

It should be clear by now to the more intelligent among you that memes just promote weak analysis and ultimately poor ideas. 

Take this meme for example. Yes, it really highlights how dumb liberals are -- hur-de-hur!

No, not really. You just feel that way because you are already on the "muh guns" team. 

Like most memes, it's a trite oversimplification of an issue that just plays to the Red Team vs Blue Team dynamic and "emopolitikal" polarisation that has undermined our political culture in the West, but especially in America. 

The fact is the Ukraine is in the process of being invaded by a rather large army, so people being armed to the teeth makes sense even to the most rabid anti-gun nut. Also it's unfair on Democrats. Apart from a few low-hanging-fruit loonies, the most that Dems are pushing for are a few restrictions on guns that they are unlikely to get anyway. I guess they are mainly doing that to look good to their voter base.

Nothing substantial is likely to get done on this matter -- and  many others -- because both sides are increasingly enslaved to "echo chamber" and "purity spiral" thinking. A lot of this is undoubtedly thanks to our crappy meme culture, although there is always the possibility that one side might overwhelm the other eventually through sheer demographics: either Dems importing more voters or Conservatives pumping out more sprogs -- or simply through the country becoming more enclaved into majority Blue and Red areas.
 

The fact is there are good reasons to be against guns and bad reasons.

There are also good reasons to be for guns and bad reasons.

But what seems to be happening now is that people are for and against various things increasingly for the wrong reasons. This too is the result of our crappy meme culture.

The most important thing to bear in mind is not having the right ideas/beliefs/opinions, but to have them for the right reasons. Unless your reasons are good, you are going to go off the rails at some point and start having the wrong ideas/beliefs/opinions.

Being for guns because it "triggers" the liberals or because you hate Ukraine is deeply moronic, but that is literally what the meme is promoting. Likewise being against guns because some mentally fucked-up teenager might use them to blow away a classroom of kids, or because you think gun owners need them as penis substitutes is equally dim.

Instead both sides should be for or against whatever they are for or against for the right reasons.

For example, Conservatives should realise that allowing nutcases/ disturbed teenagers to get their hands on guns plays into the hands of their opponents. Who knows, the next outrage may kick off a blanket ban. Conservatives, therefore, to ensure the existence of a healthy gun culture should support sensible measures to limit gun ownership to the more sane and mature members of society.

There are a number of measures that could achieve this from age limits (say 25 and above) to Luke Ford's recent suggestion that gun owners get a set number of people to vouch for them.

Likewise, leftists wishing to ban guns need to look at the very real reasons why people in America feel they need high-powered weaponry.

Maybe it has something to do with (a) the incompetence and anarcho-tyrannical cowardice shown by the law enforcement staff at the scene of the latest massacre, (b) the anarchy and crime that other Leftist-supported ideas and causes, like BLM, leads to, and (c) the fear that people harbour against an establishment that seems occasionally willing to trample on their fundamental freedoms.

If Leftists really want to achieve more gun control, maybe these are the issues they should be dealing with first. After all you're not ever going to ban guns in America unless you fundamentally change it first. 

Now, back to the sensible, mature, high-level, intellectual debate...

 

DARK CELEBRATION: REMEMBERING ANDREW FLETCHER

Richard Wolstencroft joins Pilleater to discuss and pay tribute to Andrew Fletcher of the influential 80s electronic band, Depeche Mode, who recently passed away from "natural causes" at the age of just 60. Will the death of Fletcher, who acted as the band's linchpin, mark the end of the music legends.

ABORTION: OPENING UP THE MAIN CRACK IN AMERICA

Audio version

Also available on BitChute, YouTube and Odysee.

The wedge issue to end all wedge issues?

by Edwin Oslan

The bastards finally did it! They blew it up! After the Supreme Court proved how ineffectual they are during the 2020 election, giving us the impression that they stick with the status quo and only rule on cases which 90% of Americans agree on anyway, or just don’t care about, they went and flipped, or at least plan to flip, the 49 year old decision that codified the supposed “right” to have an abortion into federal law; and the only Supreme Court decision most people under 35 have even heard of.

Let’s get one thing out of the way; if you’re someone who considers yourself only “fiscally conservative” -- as in, you’re a GOP member who doesn’t care about abortion, gay marriage, young people smoking pot, illegal immigration, jobs being outsourced to China, leftist cancel culture at big tech, and you’re liberal on everything else -- your arguments have been rendered null and void.

Trump’s installation of three socially conservative judges onto the Supreme Court makes you just as complicit in the overturning of Roe V. Wade as if you were a member of the Westboro Baptist Church. I hate to say it like that, but that’s just how it is; you could be a totally free-wheeling, drinkin’, druggin’, slut-screwin’ party animal who just voted for Trump for “fiscal” reasons, but you’re effectively on the same side as all the disparate Christian groups that the left lump together as the “religious right.”

If you’re okay with that, as I am, then congratulations! Aside from the visceral thrill of watching the usual gang of blue-haired land whales and pussy-hat-wearing soccer moms flipping out, reversing Roe V. Wade is the social equivalent of ripping a Band-Aid off an enormous bloody gash and pouring rubbing alcohol all over it. It’s the political equivalent of tearing the floorboards out of a house and cleaning out all the rot, debris, and termites underneath. Regardless of how the 2022 midterms turn out – and I still believe they’ll turn out fairly well for Republicans – reversing Roe V. Wade had to be done in order to bring the “culture war” to a head.

I still maintain that Democrats can lower taxes to zero, close the border, make it mandatory to attend church every Sunday, and insist that every American household keep firearms; but JUST as long as they remain the “pro-choice” party, while the Republicans are the party that, at the very least, looks disdainfully on abortion, the Democrats will always keep their core base of voters, primarily women and overly sympathetic liberal men.

The Democrats can suck up to minorities, gays, and transsexuals, they can push for electric cars, offer to pay off student debts, threaten to take away all the guns, and erect all the holy George Floyd shrines they want, but these are disparate issues that really only concern the leftist and progressive wing of the party. The only thing uniting the Nancy Pelosi sect and the “squad” is abortion, and without it, they have nothing.

Since women’s lib, abortion has been perceived as the final failsafe which allows women the ability to have sex without consequences. If the condoms and pills fail, and for some reason, a woman fails to obtain the easily obtainable morning after pill, then she can just get an abortion, and it’s like nothing ever happened. Any of those other extenuating circumstances like rape or incest which were used to push the abortion agenda are just that; extenuating circumstances and are thus negligible.

Whether abortion is morally wrong or, more specifically, whether abortion is murder is an entirely different matter and one which I find rather boring; after all, for every charge that abortion is murder, one could counter by asking if it’s not justified to commit such a murder if the mother was addicted to crack. So I’m just gonna leave that one alone and say that the main reason women have abortions is simply because they don’t want to have kids. 

And I think abortion is so central to the Democratic Party at this point that it’s perfectly fair to refer to it as the Abortion Party. That’s why this issue stings so much to liberals and leftists, and why all the leftist infighting, while amusing to watch, adds up to nothing when the quintessential liberal issue is now in question. There’s also the background concern that, if the Supreme Court can flip Roe V. Wade, then they can just as easily flip any other decisions they’ve made in the past and fundamentally reshape the country in all kinds of ways leftists find icky. They could just as easily reshape the country the other way as well, but we’ll save that topic for another time.

Think of all the wars we could have
fought if we didn't have abortion.

Of course, in practice, as anyone familiar with civic issues understands, nullifying Roe V. Wade doesn’t make abortion “illegal.” It just brings the decision back to the States. Obviously, the big concern is that women living in deep red states will immediately be denied access to an abortion and be forced to jump in their Teslas and bolt for blue states to avoid derailing their ultra-important HR careers talking down to people who do real work. On the contrary, I wouldn’t put it past Gavin Newsome to make abortion laws so lax in his state that they’ll allow a mother to donate her newborn baby to a ritual satanic sacrifice; which, of course, will be protected under “religious freedom.”

Other than the question of gas mileage, the abortion debate really is just a matter of perception and optics. After all, if you’re married with a family or if you can’t get laid, or if you’re menopausal, or you just never plan on having an abortion, the abortion debate is pretty irrelevant to you.

As such, I hear concern from some on the right/GOP claiming that overturning Roe V. Wade will inevitably reverse all the gains the Republicans have made recently and cause them to lose in the mid-terms; if only because certain hardcore pro-life Republicans won’t be able to keep their yaps shut and will immediately push for federal abortion bans or really harsh draconian punishments for anyone who either gets or gives an abortion. I see this mainly as either the talk of the demoralized or of people who grew up in prior generations where abortion was a much more pressing issue; the so called “abortion wars” are over, and statistically fewer people are in favor of abortion than they were in previous generations.

That might have to do with how the abortion discussion magically shifted from “safe, legal, and rare” to:

“Wowee, zowee! I’m on my twenty-seventh abortion! Aren’t you proud of me? You better be, you misogynist pig!”

Also, the quivering fear that some dopey Republicans will inevitably say something cringe-worthy and stupid – and they probably will – doesn’t take anything else going on in the country at the moment into consideration, and makes it seem as though abortion is the only thing on Americans’ minds at all times.

This is the era of Joe Biden, a man who has dementia, who wants to send $40,000,000,000 of taxpayer money to Ukraine, who is causing gas prices to skyrocket, who won’t allow oil contractors to drill, who is pushing for “clean energy” “solutions” that most people can’t afford, who refuses to even address the surge of illegal aliens at the border, who is causing disruptions in the supply chain, leading ironically to shortages in baby formula, and who stopped construction of Trump’s border wall, which costs eight times less than how much money Biden wants to send to Ukraine.

We’re on the cusp of stagflation, skyrocketing inflation, and foreclosures, and Americans will vote for more of that because abortions? Does that make any sense? I know the vast majority of people are uneducated rubes and bumpkins, but what happened to, “it’s the economy, stupid!”? Is it only the economy, stupid, when Roe V. Wade doesn’t get reversed? 

Don’t get me wrong; overturning Roe v. Wade has given the Democrats an issue to rally behind, sure. Furthermore, the early leak of this decision was probably done to ignite those “fiery but mostly peaceful protests”, and to intimidate a judge or two to reverse course. In all honesty, when Danny-Elfman-lookalike-with-a-wig Jen Psaki encourages “mostly peaceful” protests outside of judges’ homes, I get the impression she’s hoping some unhinged psycho will take out one of the judges; and then, after a couple of weeks of disingenuous mourning, they replace that judge with another progressive, tipping the majority back the other way. After all, nothing outside of removing one of the judges will change their decision. It’s a done deal.

And, while the leaker of the SCOTUS decision should be dealt with just because, ya know, you’re not supposed to do stuff like that, it’s probably better that the decision did leak two or so months ahead of its official announcement, since it was going to happen anyway, and now the shock won’t be as severe. And now Republicans have some time to strategize and do some damage control. Also, people forget, the midterms are in six months; in this wacky, unpredictable environment, who knows what the hell can happen? Joe Biden might stroke out by then. Wouldn’t you think having Kamala Harris as President would guarantee the Republicans a default victory? Doesn’t every President lose his congress to the rival party in the midterms anyway?

But, regardless of how the midterms go, how does this shake out in the long run? With 26 states set to enact “trigger laws” that immediately make abortion illegal or more restrictive, I think this will also “trigger” the much needed political balkanization between two sides whose differences cannot be reconciled. The red states will get redder as liberals refuse to relocate to them no matter how bad California, New York, and Oregon become, while hardcore progressives and SJW types living in red states will simply either move out of them or be driven into little pockets of obscurity. Furthermore red states will be seen as too retrograde and reactionary for middle of the road liberals and RINOs to move to as well. 

Is this where we are heading?

And those dejected Democrats who began voting Republican for lack of any other choices, but who still have some blue-state residue will be forced to do some major soul-searching about how important abortion really is to them. Are they willing to entirely divorce themselves from the leading issue of the Democratic Party in order to enjoy the guns and low taxes that are part and parcel of living in a red state; or is abortion so important to them that they’d rather live in a blue state, which will inevitably be driven further to the left, forcing them to endure rising crime-rates, gay and transsexual pride parades, stupidly high taxes, long waiting periods for guns, super-expensive electric cars, one-room pod apartments, and all-you-can-eat bug buffets? 

I know my thesis sounds rather reductive, and there will be outliers; after all, if you’re in a red state that borders a blue state, and you’re just a hop, skip, and a jump away from an abortion clinic, then you get your cake and get to abort it too. Though I hear talks that Greg Abbott plans to make interstate abortion travel a crime too, so who knows? But, in the end, is not the loss of abortion access worth the other perks of living in a safe and prosperous red state?

Some losses to consider, which I’m not trying to trivialize, effect those involved in the arts and entertainment industries, along with more progressive leaning corporations. I can imagine in the near future Bruce Springsteen refusing to perform in “pro-life states.” I can imagine controversy being generated over artists and musicians who make tour stops in these red states; the way Sabbath got shit for playing in South Africa in the late 80s, and how Nick Cave and Public Image Ltd. were criticized more recently for doing shows in Israel. 

I can imagine there being major conflicts over red states offering killer tax incentives for Hollywood studios to make movies in their states, and those studios having to decide whether to save money or appease progressives. I can imagine overly privileged actors, writers, directors, and producers having massive strikes against studios that decide to make movies in red states. I can imagine a major Hollywood studio starting to film a picture in Texas only to eat the cost of the project halfway through due to pressure from progressives. I can imagine corporations in general having to make some big decisions about which states they should set up shop in; or what kind of ad campaigns to run in different states.

And, I can imagine states starting to develop their own local cultures devoid of big corporations and the major entertainment industry. I can picture left-leaning corporations staging “starve-out” campaigns, where they refuse to deliver their goods to red states, forcing those states into creating their own local economies and only networking with other red states. I think the abortion issue has the potential to drive progressive universities out of red states, leaving a vacuum for all-new merit-based universities to take their places. And, if internet providers decide to pull their bases of operation out of red states, then that could allow those states to build their own internet as well. 

They don’t call abortion a “wedge” issue for no reason. And no matter how many people think it just shouldn’t be, because there are more important concerns, like the economy, immigration, outsourcing of jobs, aggressive leftist censorship, and the overall fundamental push for "Great Reset" scenarios, the fact remains that there are those who feel abortion is “murder” and others who feel abortion is “freedom.” These sides cannot be reconciled; you’re either for abortion – and, yes, if you’re “pro-choice”, you’re for abortion – or you’re against it.

And, if you live in one of the states which errs on the side of being against abortion, then you might just see one less Starbucks on your block. What a loss. Can you survive?

VOUCH NATIONALISM

by Luke Ford

I want to start something new.

This is my gift to the world on my 56th birthday.

I propose that if you want to legally own a gun, the easiest way for you to do this would be to to have ten law-abiding adults with spotless records (including when they were minors) vouch for you. If you choose not to go this way, the state can come up with more onerous rules to incentivize people to form and maintain ties with upstanding citizens if they want certain privileges.

If you want to have a kid with generous support from the state, you should have to have ten law-abiding adults vouch for you and your spouse.

If you behave badly with a gun, or your kids behave badly so that they become a burden for the state, those who vouched for you should have to pay a stiff price.

If you want to have kids without anyone vouching for you, you should have to pay an extra $10,000 a year in taxes as social insurance.

When I renewed my passport in Australia, I had to get a fair dinkum Australian who was not family to vouch for me.

We’re too individualist a society. We need to go in a more corporate direction. Vouching might be the way to go. If people don’t want to get the required number of vouches, then they should have to endure the onerous consequences.

If you want to drive a car, you should have to get ten adults with clean records to vouch for you, and if you become a social hazard, those who vouched for you should be on the hook to clean up the mess.

Big cities may want to up vouch requirements given that anti-social behavior, particularly with guns and cars, may have more devastating effects on more people than those who live in isolated areas.

With vouch nationalism, people will be strongly incentivized to build and maintain ties with others. People should be allowed to withdraw their vouches at any time (and thus reduce the penalty that accrues to them if those they vouched for behave badly), and so people will be incentivized to get many people to vouch for them and stay vouching for them when the vicissitudes of life cause original vouchers to drop away.

Perhaps this could apply to livestreaming and posting on the major social media platforms. If you want to livestream on Youtube, for example, you should have to have a certain number of adults with clean records vouch for you.

Perhaps there should be whole swathes of society that you can only enter if you have ten vouches behind you. Perhaps locales should be allowed to set a minimum number of vouches to enter. Perhaps you should have to have 25 vouches to enter Manhattan or 15 vouches to fly to Los Angeles. Imagine how awesome it would be to go on vacation to a place that requires 30 vouches. It would be a touch of heaven. Knowing you were in a city that required a high number of vouches, you could walk around at night, and leave your phone on the beach when you go swimming. You’ll feel more incentivized to build social trust and social cohesion and social capital. You might even feel like volunteering.

I was inspired to this line of thinking by a May 26, 2022 essay in The Atlantic:

How to Fix Twitter—And All of Social Media:

My purpose here is to point out a logical third option, one that can and should be tested out on a platform such as Twitter. In this approach, a platform would require users to form groups through free association, and then to post only through those groups, with the group’s imprimatur…

Platforms like Facebook and Reddit have similar structures—groups and subreddits—but those are for people who share notifications and invitations to view and post in certain places. The groups I’m talking about, sometimes called “mediators of individual data” or “data trusts,” are different: Members would share both good and bad consequences with one another, just like a group shares the benefits and responsibilities of a loan in microlending. This mechanism has emerged naturally to a small degree on some of the better, smaller subreddits and even more so on the software-development platform GitHub. A broader movement incorporating this idea, called “data dignity,” has emerged in spots around the world, and in nascent legal frameworks. My proposal here is to formalize the use of data trusts in code, and bake them into platforms. 

Groups, as they appear on existing platforms, can be of any size. Some number in the millions. The sort of groups I have in mind would be much smaller as a rule. The point is that the people in the groups know one another well enough to take on the pursuit of trust and quality, and to rid their groups of bots. Perhaps the size limit should be in the low hundreds, corresponding to our cognitive ability to keep track of friends and family. Or maybe it should be smaller than that. It’s possible that 60 people, or even 40 people, would be better. I say, test these ideas. Let’s find out.

Whatever its size, each group will be self-governing. Some will have a process in place for reviewing items before they are posted. Others will let members post as they see fit. Some groups will have strict membership requirements. Others might have looser standards. It will be a repeat of the old story of people building societal institutions and dealing with unavoidable trade-offs, but people will be doing this on their own terms.

What if a bunch of horrible people decide to form a group? Their collective speech will be as bad as their individual speech was before, only now it will be received in a different—and better—social-cognitive environment. Nazi magazines existed before the internet, but they labeled themselves as such, and were not confused with ambient social perception.

We perceive our world in part through social cues. We rely on people around us to help detect danger and steer attention.

 

Also published at LukeFord.net