Egregoros

I've never heard of this, but I'm open minded. Can you give me a simple example?

It should be something that's *obviously* dumb, not like where technology changed and up-ended an industry, because in that case it's very rational to think the technology is going to flop - until it doesn't. And it shouldn't be just one company manager going nuts because that has been known to happen from time to time, but what we're seeing here is an entire economy losing their collective minds...

@cjd @Kalogerosstilitis2RevengeoftheJunta @valleur @pepsi_man Of course there was a lot more going in the background than what's recorded officially. But it is a classic example.

Vladimir Lenin left Switzerland and traveled through Germany in April 1917 inside a famous "sealed train" orchestrated by the German government to destabilize the Russian Empire during World War I. Germany's ultimate goal was to spark political chaos in Russia, forcing them to withdraw from the war and freeing up German troops to fight on the Western Front.

Sending Lenin into Russia with a train load of cash definitely backfired for Germany - and it might even be considered bad strategy - but it's not self-evidently stupid. Causing chaos for a geopolitical adversary is a legitimate wartime tactic, people do it with the intention of improving their own situation. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Owning property in San Francisco and letting the place go to shambles and your property values go down the toilet has no possible path to "and then we win"...

@cjd @valleur @Kalogerosstilitis2RevengeoftheJunta @pepsi_man Yes.

Someone in this thread, maybe you, described these people as midwits who got lucky.

If you've ever been around homeless and criminals you will run into people who made choices that are inexplicable. The consequences of their choices are obvious but they went ahead anyway. Granted they often are stupid or damaged in some way. But even having a normal or above average intelligence does not seem to protect some people from the exact same self destructive behaviour. It's just built into us.

This is from observation. I can't explain it. Many of us have family member who do this.

Just getting lucky and landing in a big pot of money does not protect you from doing the same.

@cjd @valleur @Kalogerosstilitis2RevengeoftheJunta @pepsi_man It could be insularity leads to it to. Consequences take time to develop and they do not feel the consequences themselves directly anyway. The French royalty and aristocrats leading up to the French Revolution would be an example. Things reach a tipping point and then everything changes.

If we lived far longer than we do, say with a thousand or five thousand year lifespan, where many of us would have personally known Plato, St. Augustine, Locke and Marx, and all the lessons from and personally experienced political success and failures during that time, we would be a far different species.

But a 70 year lifespan locks us into the same repeated cycle of success and failures over those thousands of years instead. It's innate. It's our curse and destiny.

To my knowledge, the veracity of Tulip Mania has recently been called into question (re: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-tulip-fever-180964915/ ) but speculative bubbles are a known thing.

Everyone acting in his own self-interest can lead to the price of an asset going way beyond what is rational based on supply and demand. However, they're still acting in their own self-interest.

What's happening now, in Hollywood, NYC, San Fran, etc, is people doing things that make no logical sense from the perspective of self-interest - so this is another beast...

@cjd @valleur @Kalogerosstilitis2RevengeoftheJunta @pepsi_man Thank you, will be checking that out.

I was thinking about it in the sense of rich people and school of fish line of reasoning. Tulips aside, isn't the point that the logical sense goes out the window in any bubble or when certain actors get large enough to unduly influence the market? DEI incentives have been very strong for some time, mainly in the form of GSE-criteria when applying for financing from Blackrock and the like. Considering that there are commissars (DEI-officers etc.) ensuring enough money is wasted, I'd say it's by now at knee jerk reaction level to make decisions that are obviously detrimental to business, ones own or more generally, as long as wahmen, gays, niggers or gayniggers seemingly benefit.

There's two different things:

1. Bubbles, in these everyone is acting rationally - because it's rational to think you're gonna buy the thing before it goes up and then sell it to the next guy - and HE's the irrational one... They're tricky because every actor is rational but the net sum is irrational. But they're pretty much the only thing that has this weird emergent irrationality and this is an OOOOOOLD problem.

2. DEI / ESG / Blackrock - indeed, if Blackrock just announces that they're going to give away free money to anyone who shoots themselves in the foot (they're believed to be basically a front for the US Treasury), then people will indeed line up to at least LOOK like they're shooting themselves in the foot.

Perhaps it's possible that the USGOV has it's fingers so deep into every part of the economy that EVERY industry is basically On The Dole, getting money printer cash in exchange for kowtowing to whatever hidden power there is behind the president. If this is it, then surely it isn't THE president, because it has survived multiple changes of administration...

@cjd @valleur @Kalogerosstilitis2RevengeoftheJunta @pepsi_man As far as I understand it's not so much giving away free money, but granting highly favourable loans, i.e. putting any promising enterprise in their pocket, thus creating and maintaining the paradigm of DEI-madness. Not falling in line with this agenda ensures that instead, your less successful competitors do. Which is scary enough to ensure compliance from most, without any direct intimidation. I'm sure you can see where this leads.
Furthermore, in my experience; modern business has become so warped that instead of growing organically, aspiring entrepreneurs spend a lot more time trying to attract outside capital, rather than developing their product/service and a solid customer base. This means that if they get off the ground the company is already in such a state that they must pursue these loans, lest they get sued, as Henry Ford was in his day.

It must be a really rich offer, because we have seen that these policies DO catch up with these companies and they DO end up going out of business.

I mean if taking the deal means you'll be ruined later, then not taking the deal MUST mean you'll (pretty much certainly) be ruined right away.

Interestingly though, Elon has never mentioned any kind of secret offer like this - despite talking a whole lot of shit on his instance... It's reasonably clear that his companies are not "taking the offer", so I'm somewhat inclined to believe his perspective that this is all down to a "mind virus" ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@cjd @valleur @Kalogerosstilitis2RevengeoftheJunta @pepsi_man It's not secret, as usual it's all done in the open but not advertised to normies. ESG did not get popular on its own merits, obviously, since as you say, on its face it is extremely bad for business. But it was the only way to to qualify your company for those favorable loans.

I don't know nearly enough about Elon and his funding to comment, alrhough the mind virus is clearly a factor. Your typical businessman is probably not very susceptible to it. But if you force him to let in a bunch of blue haired crazies to take charge of his HR while also tying his profit directly to the amount of browns in his employ, well, I'd say his immune response will be severely dampened.