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27 sats \ 1 reply \ @optimism 12h \ on: The Archipelago econ
There's something that I agree with as there is, in this whirlwind of text including the previous article he linked to in the beginning (Detachment Theory), one thing that I would say is not an entirely wrong observation:
I think he's right about the narrative being tailored to the expectations of the narrators. I also think that it's nothing special, because that's what narratives always do - if it didn't need that, no narrative would be there. It's simply human nature to try and make sense of things we know today and come up with supporting arguments why our plan is supposed to deliver us our intended outcome. There is always a measure of confirmation bias involved in this; after all, we are biased towards our plan succeeding.
Many people I know including myself stack sats and as a consequence start thinking deeper about and being attracted to (often cherry-picked) austrian economic principles and this is exactly because we need to put the situation we find ourselves in into context; a context that is contrary to the fiat world we see around us but we resist through the sats we stack. If there were no schools of thought opposing the world we live in we'd have a much harder time validating the plan that drives our choices.
Because I think at least that part is right I'm looking forward to the promised next article about the SBR and I hope I will feel a little more content afterwards; most of this article nor the preceding one made an impression tbh, because it's full of what I think I can safely call non sequitur - as pointed out in the other comments.
I think he's right about the narrative being tailored to the expectations of the narrators. I also think that it's nothing special, because that's what narratives always do - if it didn't need that, no narrative would be there.
This, to me, is what is so interesting about this.
Everyone's head is a teeming hive of beliefs about the world that constitute an implicit (and sometimes explicit) Theory of Everything. I won't claim to know what the Platonic Libertarian believes, exactly, but the actual examples I meet in the flesh (including online) often exhibit exactly the ideological structures Scott describes: that the atomic unit of the human animal is the individual, and society is built up of aggregates of individuals, who attach voluntarily from their natural isolated state, and if we could only construct our laws and institutions up from that premise, a Utopia is sure to emerge.
Scott (and anthropologists, sociologists, and neuroscientists, among others) have gone on to refute the "individual primacy" belief set; and yet it is foundational in much political thought, as the essay demonstrates. This is not to say such a framework doesn't have its uses, but we ought to know where the system departs from reality, since, as you say, this worldview will be the lens through which everything is interpreted.
If you build your house on a swamp, look out.
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