It's all defection

The games not fair, and you don’t have to play

Systems work when people believe in them. People believe in them when they benefit from them. People benefit from them when the good feelings they get from putting into them and the material benefit they get out of them balance out. It’s not a zero sum thing, as we all weigh things differently so it’s possible for everyone to think they are getting a good deal, or at least accept that their bad deal is in a fair game.

It’s not a fair game. For how long, I don’t know and no one cares. Hearing a feminist dismiss some objectively horrific feminist thing because in the 1970s Mastercard had a ‘no fat chicks allowed’ sign, or race grifters bring tell you not to put a murderer in prison because they weren’t allowed to visit some midwestern city in 1940 after sundown, or a baby boomer tells you they need to cancel property taxes and increase old age security spending because your great grandfather had to live in a shack in the 1920s so stop complaining about your avocado toast lifestyle.

These aren’t real arguments. They don’t even make sense. They are appeals to emotions, to fair play, to bully. A shaming tactic to skew the good feelings to balance against the lack of material gain that systems have now. And they have to, there’s nothing that materially benefits a taxpaying, native, law abiding man, and no one else can offer anything but shame, so they can take it away and pretend it’s a spiritual benefit.

Original sin, as a negotiating strategy.

And people can’t articulate it, but they kind of know. So what do you do to navigate this zero sum pillage?

Defect.

I’m not giving a call to action, I’m describing what is already happening. After all, what is the Red Pill, but an attempt to navigate a skewed sexual market (as in a system of people making decisions in their own interest, not as in prostitution) based on the assumption that women are insincere and zero-sum actors?

“Well, Rian. I am a woman and I am not like that!“

I believe you. It’s also easier to make an exception for you on a date than it is to crack down on someone who takes advantage of you. Relax, this ain’t about you. You’re the honest broker in a cartel, and being ignorant of that only helps the cartel.

Or, take money. Cash is fake. It’s only value is that the government accepts it for taxes … and they have a military to back it up. Everything is a scam, everything is enshitification. Financialization is a series of legal scams. So what do you do? Defect. Crypto currencies are a short against the economy, but not against collapse. That means defectors expect Goldman Sachs to steal money from the economy, governments to money print the economy, but not quite believe the grid is going down. It’s specific, a defection.

Zoomers are racist and antisemitic and don’t care because they are defecting against social norms. Of course, kids always defect against their parents, that’s how they find their identity. Except zoomers are in their 30s now. They are older than the men who got back from WW2, who were, ironically enough, equally racist and antisemitic and know immigration ruined the country. If they were defecting against the olds they would be doing something new. No, this is a defection because the system only knows how to create a problem (shame) and then sell the solution (no shame) instead of material benefit to opting into a system.

The newest example is in Canada, where our supreme court agreed that a good chunk of Vancouver actually belongs to the natives we stole the land from. This had the effect of making everyone who lived in that areas real estate dropping to 0. banks won’t finance them, they can’t sell, and could arguably be kicked out by force. This is their system, and in return they get to feel better about the sin of colonialism.

Add shame (colonist!) then remove material benefit (private property) in exchange to remove shame (you’re not racist anymore). And then, they defect.:

If this is all native land, then by what right does the government have to charge me property taxes?

I’m Canadian, we have a fine tradition of dragging our feet as a means of protest. Malicious compliance, defection, dragging your feet, making it cost. I’m not tell you to do it, I’m telling you more people are doing it, and in any system that has collaborators and defectors, if you get enough defectors, then defecting becomes the reasonable response, and collaborators get screwed.