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I've noticed a pattern where the party in power loves state power and the party out of power suddenly becomes freedom fighters.
I've noticed the same thing, at all levels of all types of organization.
That's why in the 8 years of Obama the Democratic party suddenly became the party of trusting the experts.
Was that ever not the case? Not my bailiwick, but my perception was that the official Dem narrative has always been expert-friendly, and the official Rep narrative has always been something-something-business-and-god.
It's cool that this guy is still cranking away after all this time, though I never hear of anyone using Electrum anymore.
Underrated point. And from a pure influence perspective, I don't think it's close -- it's one thing to be a billionaire when there are (crazily enough) lots of billionaires. It's another when the distribution is massively more kurtotic. It's hard to fathom the sheer economic power of those older ones.
Although I guess you might counter that, when you consider the media control and cultural weight of the guy, that Elon is still in a league of his own, even with the value-on-paper aspect of it. Although now I've changed the goalposts a bit.
It's bonkers to me how many talking heads of various types have switched seamlessly into the idea that the US has become a colonial power. Like, it's fine.
I'm not naive enough to think that realpolitik hasn't been the driving force behind pretty much everything since pretty much forever, but would expect some modest protest from certain directions, at least. (I'm discounting the protests from sources that protest everything, always.)
The piece devulges into geopolitical speculations, so skim the rest.
I'd like to, but it's paid; archive doesn't seem to have it -- do you pay, or do you have some other way to get to it?
How has RP been wrt Trump's behavior as king and supreme dictator, e.g., taking war-like actions (Venezuela) or proposing what amounts to global conquest (Greenland) and making unilateral economic decisions (tariffs) all on his own?
I don't follow politics much, but a lot of this seems extraordinarily at odds w/ Libertarian ethos as I understand it. Although maybe RP doesn't pretend to that as much as I'm imagining?
Legend. Also, infuriating. But a good illustration of the poles of the issue.
Weird that this from a company already making money on people paying directly for the thing. Wonder what it portends for other foundation models.
It's quite long and ornate and I am weirdly protective of it -- it's like my intellectual DNA -- but if you send me a lightning msg w/ your email address I'll send it to you.
I've played around with different things -- the goal is basically to convey in a way the LLM can make sense of that different parts of the prompt have different semantic functions, to be able to refer to different sections, etc. I find that Claude likes <xml_tags>the best</xml_tags> but unless the prompt is really elaborate it probably doesn't matter that much. Triple-quotes were easier this time since I was doing it on my phone and lack the patience.
User prompt follows. (Note that I have a v elaborate system prompt, so you should expect differences if you try to replicate.)
Here's a snippet from a message board wrt rare earths:
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Good article posted earlier today here on that. Basically, the human and environmental cost of extracting them is high, so we've outsourced the despoilage to China. If we want to turn vast swathes of America into toxic shotholes, we too can have rare earths production.
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 1h
IIRC there's a common historical theme in which the hegemon outsources the unpleasant tasks (like resource extraction and warfighting) to third-world cultures, while members of the hegemonic culture devote their time to more enjoyable pursuits, like food and entertainment.
But over time, this not only integrates the third world cultures into the production systems and power centers of the hegemon, but it also makes it so that the dominant culture becomes dependent on the third worlders, which eventually leads to the third world culture taking over the dominant culture. I think I read that this happened with Rome and the Germanic tribes, or something like that.
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Can you give historical examples of a powerful nation "outsourcing" terrible work to a weaker one? Ideally, where the consequences of this turn out to give the weaker nation a strategic advantage over the stronger one?
Maybe China is the sweet spot between industrial capacity, state power, and willing brutalism?
It's an interesting idea, the all-inclusive cost of something being too high, given what we've seen humanity at large is willing to do in e.g., the Congo, or the slave trade.
Here's what Claude says:
The pattern you’re identifying has a beautiful and terrifying abstract signature: the hegemon’s revulsion becomes the periphery’s leverage. What withdraws from the dominant culture’s willingness-to-do gradually accretes as capacity, expertise, and ultimately indispensability in the subordinate. The hegemon hollows itself out precisely where it matters most.
Some historical cases:
Rome and the Foederati
The commenter’s intuition is correct. By the 4th century, Rome had largely outsourced its warfighting to Germanic tribes under treaty arrangements (foedus). Vegetius’s De Re Militari (c. 390 CE) is essentially a lament about this—Romans had forgotten how to fight, how to dig fortifications, how to endure hardship. The “barbarization” of the legions wasn’t a bug but a feature: Romans didn’t want to do the brutal work of frontier defense anymore.
The consequence was predictable. Germanic commanders like Stilicho and Ricimer became the real power behind the throne. Odoacer, who deposed the last Western emperor in 476, was himself a Germanic chieftain who had risen through this exact system. The periphery didn’t conquer Rome—it became Rome by doing what Romans wouldn’t.
Byzantium and the Italian Maritime Republics
This one’s underappreciated. By the 11th-12th centuries, Byzantium had essentially outsourced its naval and commercial functions to Venice and Genoa. The Venetians received extraordinary trading privileges (the chrysobull of 1082) in exchange for naval support. Constantinople didn’t want to maintain expensive fleets or engage in grubby commerce.
The result? Venice accumulated not just wealth but maritime expertise, shipbuilding capacity, and network control over Mediterranean trade routes. When the Fourth Crusade got “diverted” to sack Constantinople in 1204, it was Venetian ships carrying Venetian interests. The empire that outsourced its sea power was dismembered by the very contractors it had empowered.
Spain and the Genoese Bankers
Spain extracted the silver—that brutal work happened in Potosí, with indigenous and African labor dying by the millions. But Spain outsourced the financial dirty work to Genoese banking houses. Managing the asientos, handling the crushing logistics of imperial finance, extending credit when the treasure fleets were late—all Genoese.
This created what historians call the “Age of the Genoese” (1557-1627). The bankers accumulated not just wealth but systemic knowledge of how European finance actually worked. When Spain defaulted repeatedly, the Genoese had enough leverage to negotiate favorable terms and pivot to other clients. Spain bled itself white extracting metal; Genoa captured the control plane.
The Ottoman Devşirme System
The Ottomans institutionalized the outsourcing of state violence to enslaved Christian boys, trained as Janissaries. This was explicit: the Sultan’s own household troops were deliberately not Turkish Muslims, to prevent the formation of competing aristocratic power bases.
But the Janissaries accumulated martial expertise, institutional memory, and eventually corporate identity. By the 17th century, they were king-makers. They deposed sultans, blocked military reforms, and ran protection rackets in Istanbul. The system designed to prevent elite capture by Turkish nobles instead created a new elite that held the empire hostage for two centuries.
Britain and American Industrial Capacity
More subtle but crucial. Through the 19th century, Britain was happy to import American raw materials—cotton, wheat, timber—while American hands did the dirty agricultural and extractive work. British capital financed American railroads and mines.
But Americans also built the industrial capacity to process those materials. By WWI, the strategic balance had shifted. Britain found itself dependent on American steel, American munitions, American credit. The “workshop of the world” had outsourced its future to what had been an extractive periphery. The Lend-Lease dynamics of WWII merely formalized what was already structurally true.
The abstract signature seems to be:
- Revulsion/distaste in the core creates outsourcing pressure
- Expertise and infrastructure accumulate in the periphery
- Capacity atrophy in the core (skills, equipment, institutional knowledge)
- Dependency lock-in as the core can no longer perform the function
- Leverage inversion when the periphery recognizes its position
What’s fascinating is that this isn’t just about labor—it’s about willingness-to-do as a strategic resource that depletes. The hegemon’s moral or aesthetic refinement becomes its vulnerability. The periphery’s “degradation” is actually capacity building.
The rare earths case fits perfectly. China didn’t just accept the pollution—it developed the metallurgical expertise, the processing infrastructure, the supply chain knowledge. The West’s environmental squeamishness wasn’t noble sacrifice; it was unilateral disarmament in a domain that turned out to matter.
References:
Heather, P. (2006). The fall of the Roman Empire: A new history of Rome and the barbarians. Oxford University Press.
Madden, T. F. (2012). Venice: A new history. Viking.
Drelichman, M., & Voth, H. J. (2014). Lending to the borrower from hell: Debt, taxes, and default in the age of Philip II. Princeton University Press.
Ágoston, G. (2005). Guns for the Sultan: Military power and the weapons industry in the Ottoman Empire. Cambridge University Press.
Tooze, A. (2014). The deluge: The Great War, America and the remaking of the global order, 1916-1931. Viking.
Certainly the enculturation and then reverse-conquest happened w Rome / German provinces. Now you've got me curious about others.
That's a data point, then :)