#to create a bureaucracy

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

I'm curious why you described Kafka as Austrian and I'd love to hear more about whether that was an identifier he used! I know he was born in the Austro-Hungarian empire and wrote in German, but I'd always understood that he identified as Czech and Jewish and that the Austrian part was incidental.

There's a bit of a linguistic thing going on here that I will do my best to explain:

"Austrian" in our current day means from the Republic of Austria which is more or less the former German-speaking Crownlands that formed a German republic after World War 1.

But "Austrian" as it was used in the 19th and 20th century meant the whole of the Austrian half of the Habsburg Monarchy. To be Austrian was to belong through citizenship and loyalty to the supranational state. It was not mutually exclusive with being German or Czech or Jewish. As someone born in Bohemia, Kafka was by citizenship Austrian. Czech and German are national or ethnic categories, I think I am imposing less on him by calling him by his supranational citizenship (at least until 1918).

It also connects him to the circles of Austrian (again, in the sense of the state) artists and writers who would have influenced him and who he would have influenced. For example, in the Wien 1900 exhibit in the Leopold Museum in Vienna he's included in part of the Austrian avant-garde alongside many other German, Jewish, Czech, Hungarian, etc. intellectuals.

As for the way that a multilingual person from Prague would have identified in the late 19th and early 20th century, it is really complicated. There was a lot of pressure to "choose a side" because of things like labeling your nationality on the census, when many people didn't necessarily fit in only one. "Most used language" is also a complicated question for bilingual people living in a multinational society. In Prague, for example, many Jewish people answered "German" on the census for a variety of reasons, but mostly to get more money allocated to "German" schools and such.

I strongly recommend Gary B. Cohens' The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861-1914 (2006) for a discussion on how complicated these identities can get.

Marsha L. Rozenblit's Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria During World War I (2001) is also very good for the discussion of how "Jewish" and "Austrian" were not always separate identities.

[brick-van-dyke]

As the US election closes in and the final states take to the polls, I want to remind people to turn out and protest.

Yep, protest. Strike, disrupt, be out there on the street regardless of who you voted for or who wins. I expect to see you all out there demanding; access to abortion nation wide, protections against discrimination, free universal healthcare, a free Palestine, anti war, prison abolition, to increase the minimum wage, and for a US free of the electoral college and that counts votes as votes.

Yes, you can say "you should vote for Harris" and do so as much as you like, but do not forget the power you have through your own everyday actions away from the polls and that of protesting. Do not use the excuse that your right to vote means it's somehow more foundational or important than the right to protest. You have the ability to create direct action and that is so so important, please don't just expect a rich representative to stick to their promises every time you vote; you have power too, never forget that.

This system will not change until we, the people, make it. There is NO representative that can ever change the system that allowed them in, and likewise; this system will never allow a candidate that would stop it from continuing and/or ensuring its designated purpose of oppression and subjugation. Resist, regardless of the results.

Long live the resistance.

[cinematicnomad]

I saw your post and I deeply empathize. There are many civil servants who want to do good for the American public and are still in our jobs. My hope is that enough of us manage to stick it out through the next 1000 work days (I counted.) I am very worried about all political appointees though.

i feel like the future is incredibly fucking bleak but this was a v nice message to receive. i hope there are good civil servants like yourself. honestly, the thing that's getting me through it right now is just reminding myself that i'm not alone in feeling like this and finding others who are just as horrified and outraged by what we're seeing. i read a good twitter thread earlier today about authoritarianism and how it comes to be and what to do in the face of it that was very terrifying but, somehow, by the end really validated the importance and necessity of loud, repeated, and unrelenting dissent.

"each time you stand up against authoritarianism & indecency is a time you throw a lifeline to those around you." like. that's what's getting me through today, and tomorrow, and probably the next four years. that there is value in me standing here and saying the simple fact that what trump and his ilk are doing is wrong. that's at least something to cling to.

[snakeeyesandangelfeathers]

I'm sorry but can we talk about how Love seems to be the moving force of the universe?

We know that the miracle Aziraphale and Crowley perform Together, even if it's just the tiniest bit of a miracle, is made an insane amount stronger, just because they worked Together and used their shared connection to perform it.

They didn't know this would happen. Nobody has ever tried it before, right? Imagine them using their shared Full power on purpose, and yes, these two could probably raise all the dead of the Earth and put them back to sleep, as long as they did it together.

We saw Beelzebub and Gabriel too, Singing together, showing their love in their own way, so much could Feel it in the air, having such a powerful connection that it made all the lights around them turn on.

Seems to me like the God designed her creatures this way on purpose, having them stronger when they are together, when they have a bond, they love each other, they work together, share a life and their own being with one another? Maybe because she was lonely and wished for her creatures to have someone they could share the joy of 'making a whale' with, with someone who would understand them?

So, if the angels and demons stopped fighting each other like dumb kids with toy soldiers and instead grew up and came to see this is what whey were meant to do, they would all become a whole lot more powerful (and happier), finding their soulmates and caring about each other, focusing on what truly matters.

[sketchehm]

Oooh I didn’t know Mojang could do that- meh I still think it would be okay! I feel like dreams their golden boy lol despite past things. They probably wouldn’t join to their own choices like you said :)

Yea, def the first time ever hearing about it! Komanche said Mojang is starting to step in with these things and he did sound like he was annoyed by it too haha

He's mentioned how he fought and advocated for a lot of people so they can join in meetings with both twitch and Mojang, so I appreciate his transparency with it all too!!

[talentforlying]

fun to think about the time that constantine went up to eden in the context of my good omens verse. imagine finding out this pasty british dickhead went and buried some of his hair in the sacred garden you used to protect.

[alignloadstar]

everyone come play in the roleswap au with me

[leafyeyes417]

Delivery

Danny really didn’t like the bowing and formality of being the Ghost King. Yes he had a lot of power but as long as you were decent he didn’t feel the need to exercise it. So Danny decided to disguise himself. His choice, a messenger.

He used to have only two forms, his human side and ghost side. Now he has four. A Royal form and his messenger form. His normal ghost form could now could be considered his comfy form, which he uses when he’s just hanging as friends.

Anyway what started the whole messenger thing was when he found out there was an entire room full of paperwork just relating to one guy. Like good for him in his Soul Evasion but not for the poor Ghost King. So he decided to return to sender.

Once in disguise (Thank you minor shapeshifting), he used a portal to get to the guys vicinity. Which happened to be in the middle of a Justice League meeting. Great. Okay Danny you got the bored look down, just do your supposed job.

“I’m looking for a…” he checks a clipboard he pulled out of nowhere. “John Constantine.”

He hears a curse to his left and glances over. Yep that’s the guy. Someone asks, “Why are you looking for him?”

Danny smiles blandly. “I need to deliver a package. It is quite large though so I will need a…” He glances at the clipboard again. “12 by 24 by 30 foot room to place it in.”

Constantine blinks confused. “But I didn’t order anything? Especially not from one of your kind.”

Danny nodded. “Yes this is a late return order I’m afraid. We finally got through some of the back log.”

Perturbed Constantine agreed and Danny was led to a place in the Watchtower after getting a signature for confirmation of delivery. Checking that the measurements were correct, Danny opened the portal and with a whomp the piles of paperwork landed in the room. Impressively none of the towers of paper toppled over, only swaying a little.

The heroes that had followed out of curiosity gaped. Constantine sputtered out a, “What the ‘ell is all this?!”

Danny gave a toothy smile. “This? This is all paperwork tied to you. The Ghost King decided that if you wanted to create so much paperwork then you can be the one to fill it out.” Ripping open another portal Danny waved and said his goodbyes. “Well my job is done. Bye!”

Once back in his keep he couldn’t keep himself from breaking out into laughter. It was so worth it to play messenger boy for that.

Later (not really a connected scene but had to share):

Danny floated into one of the Demon Princes receiving rooms. Constantine had gone through some of the paperwork and he needed to deliver the finished copies. Turns out being a messenger gave him a lot of wiggle room in going to new locations.

As Ghost King he would need to ask permission, get a bunch of gifts, etc etc. Messengers just needed a ‘hey I’m neutral and temporarily entering your territory’ and as long as Danny stayed out of restricted areas he had basically free rein.

Upon getting the sigil of confirmation from the Demon Prince he handed him the papers. The Demon frowned as he started reading and then snarled. “What is this?! That human’s soul was mine so why do I suddenly not have full claim?”

Danny shrugged. “I’m just the messenger but at a guess, the guy took advantage of the fact the bureaucracy was back logged and got some more deals. Heard the Ghost King is having him work through his own paperwork as punishment for making so much.”

Snarling and grumbling, the Demon shooed him away. He smirked. It was fun to see everyone react upon receiving bad news.

[atlas-of-a-human-soul]

As a doctor working in a country with universal healthcare, I genuinely can't get over this and so many other cases that came to light since the CEO's death. Universal healthcare is imperfect, as a doctor as well as patient I responsibly claim it is terrible at times, but at least you know you won't go bankrupt if you need medical help (in most cases) and if urgent you will certainly be seen by a physician and treated in a short time. I'm shocked every time I read these cases, and by cases I mean CASES cause all these should be cases in a court of law. If the system sucks and so many suffer, why is it still allowed to exist? I haven't seen much about protests since the shooting happened and media is suppressing every bit of information as they're trying to bury Luigi Mangione who allegedly committed this crime. I still hope there is a way to use the momentum to fight for your right to receive necessary medical care without fear of bankruptcy and Luigi's right to a fair trial. Innocent untill proven guilty, though so many seem to forget that.

[sbnkalny]

Bureaucracy,

birdshi

[luulapants]

Some of you are falling hard for the Trump/Musk anti-federal worker propaganda. I think part of the problem is that a lot of people genuinely don't know how the federal government works, so here's an overview on the intended and current state of the so-called fourth branch of government, the federal bureaucracy:

Executive agencies are considered to be within the executive branch, officially, but can only be created, disbanded, funded, and have new leadership appointed through congressional approval. Well, in theory that is.

The majority of staff in federal agencies are called "career staff" who are nonpolitical civil servants who do every kind of work you can imagine, from IT to accounting to scientific field work to livestock inspections to nursing at VA hospitals. They do not, typically, change from one administration to the next, which is essential to ensure the government is able to continue functioning without interruption. These individuals of course can and do hold their own political opinions, but there are stringent rules on how, when, and where they can express them. It is arguably the most racially diverse workforce in the country. Many are veterans, and many are disabled.

Each agency is headed by a political office appointed by the president and confirmed by Congress. This includes a Secretary or Administrator and all of their hand-picked office staff, who are called "politicals." However, even before Congress confirms the president's nominee, the president can appoint an interim leader with no approval, who has essentially all the same powers but can't hold the position for very long. In short, even in those offices where a leader has not been confirmed by Congress, they are being led by Trump appointees.

When Trump makes an Executive Order, those orders are immediately dispensed through the executive agencies, who must abide by the letter of the order. I saw someone say NPS was "complying in advance" by taking the T off LGBT, but these changes were made across all agencies in direct response to Trump's "Defending Women" order. Any career who did not follow this order would have immediately been fired with cause, no unemployment eligibility, and in the current environment we also know their position would be permanently dissolved.

This is what we're dealing with right now. Trump (and his puppet master Musk) do not have the authority to dissolve government agencies, but they are trying to gut them, harassing careers and making the public turn against them, conducting illegal firings, threatening them into resigning. When people leave, their positions will disappear. Their intent is to diminish the staff until the agencies are non-functional. That's why careers are picking their battles. We're holding on by our fingernails to keep federal agencies alive and functioning. We're in the midst of a hostile takeover, a literal coup of the US government.

Yes, it's awful the T was removed on the website. We don't want this. But I promise that is small potatoes compared to the other battles being fought. I have trans coworkers being forced back to the office and they don't know what bathroom they can use. Our personal information is being leaked to hate groups. Careers are getting threats and spam to their work and personal emails. Most of us expect to be illegally fired. Soon. Last week was the largest layoff in American history, and it's just the beginning.

Please support federal workers. We are under attack.

[harpy-eagle]

permit office my beloved <3

can't wait for it to create more hermit crime

[reasonsforhope]

"For the first time in 500 years, the European beaver has been seen in Portugal, a moment that one nonprofit has called “one of the most significant steps in the aquatic rewilding of Portuguese rivers.”

As GNN has reported in the case of the UK, there is no animal other than humans capable of engineering its natural environment at the same scale as the beaver, and it’s clearly this trait which has Portuguese ecologists jumping for joy.

Extinct in the small Iberian country since the 15th century, this large rodent has recently been reintroduced and restored in various parts of Portugal’s large neighbor. Gradually, signs began to appear that the beaver (Castor fibre) was progressively inching closer to Portugal, until recent camera trap footage confirmed the animal’s presence in the country.

“We’ve been on the lookout for this breakthrough for a few years now, and now we’re thrilled to confirm its return. The beaver is a natural ally in restoring the health of our rivers and wetlands and has a fundamental role to play in our river ecosystems,” says Pedro Prata, Team Leader at Rewilding Portugal.

Through its constant activity building dams, beavers transform landscapes into watery paradises for small fish, amphibians, invertebrates, insects, and birds. Their damning of rivers diverts water flow in various different directions, cuts channels for floodwater, and creates ponds and wetlands.

“We’re talking about a species that provides ecological services that no modern equipment can replicate with the same efficiency and scale, without costs and bureaucracy that can never be overcome. The beaver improves water quality, creates refuges for other species and helps us fight phenomena such as drought and fires,” emphasizes Prata.

Portugal suffers from both drought and wildfires, which the beaver’s impact can help prevent through the increased water retention in dryland soil, while the wetter lands beaver dams create act as natural fire breaks.

Beavers don’t only live in the forest, they will happily transform a desert river as well.

Rewilding Portugal, in an article celebrating the animal’s return, detailed how they have long since anticipated this arrival, and informed the relevant ecological authorities to prepare for the disruptive effects which beavers bring hand in hand with the positive ones.

France, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland have all had to cope with the occasional dam-bursting flood, or an agriculturalist complaining about their riverside plantations being damaged, or someone getting their trees gnawed down. They cope with it in different ways, which Rewilding Portugal say is a worthwhile accommodation for the benefits the beavers bring.

Previously, GNN reported that Rewilding Portugal have reintroduced European wood bison into the Greater Côa Valley ecosystem. As the beaver does in water, the bison does on land: engineering the landscape into a biodiverse and resilient patchwork of micro-ecologies."

-via Good News Network, June 18, 2025

[inhonoredglory]

Aziraphale’s Choice, the Job Connection, and Michael Sheen’s Morality

Update: Michael Sheen liked this post on Twitter, so I'm fairly certain there is a lot of validity to it.

I’ve had time to process Aziraphale’s choice at the end of Season 2. And I think only blaming the religious trauma misses something important in Aziraphale’s character. I think what happened was also Aziraphale’s own conscious choice––as a growth from his trauma, in fact. Hear me out.

Since November 2022 I’ve been haunted by something Michael Sheen said at the MCM London Comic Con. At the Q&A, someone asked him about which fantasy creature he enjoyed playing most and Michael (bless him, truly) veered on a tangent about angels and goodness and how, specifically,

We as a society tend to sort of undervalue goodness. It’s sort of seen as sort of somehow weak and a bit nimby and “oh it’s nice.” And I think to be good takes enormous reserves of courage and stamina. I mean, you have to look the dark in the face to be truly good and to be truly of the light…. The idea that goodness is somehow lesser and less interesting and not as kind of muscular and as passionate and as fierce as evil somehow and darkness, I think is nonsense. The idea of being able to portray an angel, a being of love. I love seeing the things people have put online about angels being ferocious creatures, and I love that. I think that’s a really good representation of what goodness can be, what it should be, I suppose.

I was looking forward to BAMF!Aziraphale all season long, and I think that’s what we got in the end. Remember Neil said that the Job minisode was important for Aziraphale’s story. Remember how Aziraphale sat on that rock and reconciled to himself that he MUST go to Hell, because he lied and thwarted the will of God. He believed that��–truly, honestly, with the faith of a child, but the bravery of a soldier.

Aziraphale, a being of love with more goodness than all of Heaven combined, believed he needed to walk through the Gates of Hell because it was the Right Thing to do. (Like Job, he didn’t understand his sin but believed he needed to sacrifice his happiness to do the Right Thing.)

That’s why we saw Aziraphale as a soldier this season: the bookshop battle, the halo. But yes, the ending as well.

Because Aziraphale never wanted to go to Heaven, and he never wanted to go there without Crowley.

But it was Crowley who taught him that he could, even SHOULD, act when his moral heart told him something was wrong. While Crowley was willing to run away and let the world burn, it was Aziraphale (in that bandstand at the end of the world) who stood his ground and said No. We can make a difference. We can save everyone.

And Aziraphale knew he could not give up the ace up his sleeve (his position as an angel) to talk to God and make them see the truth in his heart.

I was messed up by Ineffable Bureaucracy (Boxfly) getting their happy ending when our Ineffable Husbands didn’t, but I see now that them running away served to prove something to Aziraphale. (And I am fully convinced that Gabriel and Beelzebub saw the example of the Ineffables at the Not-pocalypse and took inspiration from them for choosing to ditch their respective sides)

But my point is that Aziraphale saw them, and in some ways, they looked like him and Crowley. And he saw how Gabriel, the biggest bully in Heaven, was also like him in a way (a being capable of love) and also just a child when he wasn’t influenced by the poison of Heaven. Muriel, too, wasn’t a bad person. The Metatron also seemed to have grown more flexible with his morality (from Aziraphale's perspective). Like Earth, Heaven was shades of (light?) gray.

Aziraphale is too good an angel not to believe in hope. Or forgiveness (something he’s very good at it).

Aziraphale has been scarred by Heaven all his life. But with the cracks in Heaven’s armor (cracks he and Crowley helped create), Aziraphale is seeing something else. A chance to change them. They did terrible things to him, but he is better than them, and because of Crowley, he feels ready to face them.

(Will it work? Can Heaven change, institutionally? Probably not, but I can't blame Aziraphale for trying.)

At the cafe, the Metatron said something big was coming in the Great Plan. Aziraphale knows how trapped he had felt when he didn’t have God’s ear the first time something huge happened in the Big Plan. He can’t take a chance again to risk the world by not having a foot in the door of Heaven. That’s why we saw individual human deaths (or the threat of death) so much more this season: Elspeth, Wee Morag, Job’s children, the 1940s magician. Aziraphale almost killed a child when he couldn’t get through to God, and he’s not going through that again.

“We could make a difference.” We could save everyone.

Remember what Michael Sheen said about courage and doing good––and having to “look the dark in the face to be truly good.” That’s what happened when Aziraphale was willing to go to Hell for his actions. That’s what happened when he decided he had to go to Heaven, where he had been abused and belittled and made to feel small. He decided to willingly go into the Lion’s Den, to face his abusers and his anxiety, to make them better so that they would not try to destroy the world again.

Him, just one angel. He needed Crowley to be there with him, to help him be brave, to ask the questions that Heaven needed to hear, to tell them God was wrong. Crowley is the inspiration that drives Aziraphale’s change, Crowley is the engine that fuels Aziraphale’s courage.

But then Crowley tells him that going to Heaven is stupid. That they don’t need Heaven. And he’s right. Aziraphale knows he’s right.

Aziraphale doesn’t need Heaven; Heaven needs him. They just don’t know how much they need him, or how much humanity needs him there, too. (If everyone who ran for office was corrupt, how can the system change?)

Terry Pratchett (in the Discworld book, Small Gods) is scathing of God, organized religion, and the corrupt people religion empowers, but he is sympathetic to the individual who has real, pure faith and a good heart. In fact, the everyman protagonist of Small Gods is a better person than the god he serves, and in the end, he ends up changing the church to be better, more open-minded, and more humanist than god could ever do alone.

Aziraphale is willing to go to the darkest places to do the Right Thing, and Heaven is no exception. When Crowley says that Heaven is toxic, that’s exactly why Aziraphale knows he needs to go there. “You’re exactly is different from my exactly.”

____

In the aftermath of Trump's election in the US, Brexit happened in 2018. Michael Sheen felt compelled to figure out what was going on in his country after this shock. But he was living in Los Angeles with Sarah Silverman at the time, and she also wanted to become more politically active in the US.

Sheen: “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it [meant] coming back [to Britain] – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.” In the end, they split up and Michael moved back to the UK.

Sometimes doing the Right Thing means sacrificing your own happiness. Sometimes it means going to Hell. Sometimes it means going to Heaven. Sometimes it means losing a relationship.

And that’s why what happened in the end was so difficult for Aziraphale. Because he loves Crowley desperately. He wants to be together. He wanted that kiss for thousands of years. He knows that taking command of Heaven means they would never again have to bow to the demands of a God they couldn’t understand, or run from a Hell who still came after them. They could change the rules of the game.

And he’s still going to do that. But it hurts him that he has to do that alone.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The meritocracy to eugenics pipeline

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PDX on Jun 20 at BARNES AND NOBLE with BUNNIE HUANG. After that, it's LONDON (Jul 1) and MANCHESTER (Jul 2).

It's kinda weird how, the more oligarchic our society gets, the more racist it gets. Why is the rise of billionaires attended by a revival of discredited eugenic ideas, dressed up in modern euphemisms like "race realism" and "human diversity"?

I think the answer lies in JK Galbraith's observation that "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

The theory of markets goes like this: a market is a giant computer that is always crunching all kinds of "signals" about what people want and how much they want it, and which companies and individuals are most suited to different roles within the system. The laissez-faire proposition is that if we just resist the temptation to futz with the computer (to "distort the market"), it will select the best person for each position: workers, consumers, and, of course, "capital allocators" who decide where the money goes and thus what gets made.

The vast, distributed market computer is said to be superior to any kind of "central planning" because it can integrate new facts quickly and adjust production to suit varying needs. Let rents rise too high and the computer will trigger the subroutine that brings "self-interested" ("greedy") people into the market to build more housing and get a share of those sky-high rents, "coming back into equilibrium." But allow a bureaucracy to gum up the computer with a bunch of rules about how that housing should be built and the "lure new homebuilders" program will crash. Likewise, if the government steps in to cap the price of rents, the "price signal" will be silenced and that "new homebuilders" program won't even be triggered.

There's some logic to this. There are plenty of good things that market actors do that are motivated by self-interest rather than altruism. When Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed their Pagerank algorithm and revolutionized internet search, they weren't just solving a cool computer science problem – they were hoping to get rich.

But here's the thing: if you let Larry and Sergey tap the capital markets – if they can put on a convincing show for the "capital allocators" – then the market will happily supply them with the billions they need to buy and neutralize their competitors, to create barriers to entry for superior search engines, and become the "central planners" that market theory so deplores. If your business can't get any market oxygen, if no audience ever discovers your creative endeavors, does it matter if the central planner who decided you don't deserve a chance is elected or nominated by "the market"?

Here's how self-proclaimed market enthusiasts answer that question: all Larry and Sergey are doing here is another form of "capital allocation." They're allocating attention, deciding what can and can't be seen, in just the same way that a investor decides what will and won't be funded. If an investor doesn't fund promising projects, then some other investor will come along, fund them, get rich, and poach the funds that were once given to less-successful rivals. In the same way, if Google allocates attention badly, then someone will start a better search engine that's better at allocating attention, and we will switch to that new search engine, and Google will fail.

Again, this sounds reasonable, but a little scrutiny reveals it to be circular reasoning. Google has dominated search for a quarter of a century now. It has a 90% market share. According to the theory of self-correcting markets, this means that Google is very good at allocating our attention. What's more, if it feels like Google actually sucks at this – like Google's search-results are garbage – that doesn't mean Google it bad at search. It doesn't mean that Google is sacrificing quality to improve its bottom line (say, by scaling back on anti-spam spending, or by increasing the load of ads on a search results page).

It just means that doing better than Google is impossible. You can tell it's impossible, because it hasn't happened.

QED.

Google wasn't the first search engine, and it would be weird if it were the last. The internet and the world have changed a lot and the special skills, organizational structures and leadership that Google assembled to address the internet of the 2000s and the 2010s is unlikely to be the absolute perfect mix for the 2020s. And history teaches us that the kinds of people who can assemble thee skills, structures and leaders to succeed in one era are unlikely to be able to change over to the ideal mix for the next era.

Interpreting the persistent fact of Google's 90% market-share despite its plummeting quality as evidence of Google's excellence requires an incredible act of mental gymnastics. Rather than accepting the proposition that Google both dominates and sucks because it is excellent, we should at least consider the possibility that Google dominates while sucking because it cheats. And hey, wouldn't you know it, three federal courts have found Google to be a monopolist in three different ways in just a year.

Now, the market trufans will tell you that these judges who called Google a cheater are just futzers who can't keep their fingers off the beautiful, flawless market computer. By dragging Google into court, forcing its executives to answer impertinent questions, and publishing their emails, the court system is "distorting the market." Google is the best, because it is the biggest, and once it stops being the best, it will be toppled.

This makes perfect sense to people who buy the underlying logic of market-as-computer. For the rest of us, it strains credulity.

Now, think for a minute of the people who got rich off of Google. You have the founders – like Sergey Brin, who arrived in America as a penniless refugee and is now one of the richest people in the history of the human species. He got his fortune by building something that billions of us used trillions of times (maybe even quadrillions of times) – the greatest search engine the world had ever seen.

Brin isn't the only person who got rich off Google, of course. There are plenty of Googlers who performed different kinds of labor – coding, sure, but also accountancy, HR, graphic design, even catering in the company's famous cafeterias – who became "post-economic" (a euphemism for "so rich they don't ever need to think about money ever again") thanks to their role in Google's success.

There's a pretty good argument to be made that these people "earned" their money, in the sense that they did a job and that job generated some money and they took it home. We can argue about whether the share of the profits that went to different people was fair, or whether the people whose spending generated that profit got a good deal, or whether the product itself was good or ethical. But what is inarguable is that this was money that people got for doing something.

Then there's Google's investors. They made a lot of money, especially the early investors. Again, we can argue about whether investors should be rewarded for speculation, but there's no question that the investors in Google took a risk and got something back. They could have lost it all. In some meaningful sense, they made a good choice and were rewarded for it.

But now let's think about the next generation. The odds that these billionaires, centimillionaires and decimillionaires will spawn the next generation of 1%ers, 0.1%ers, and 0.0001%ers are very high. Right now, in America, the biggest predictor of being rich is having rich parents. Every billionaire on the Forbes under-30 list inherited their wealth:

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/forbes-billionaires-under-30-inherited-203930435.html

The wealthy have created a system of dynastic wealth that puts the aristocratic method of primogenitor in the shade. Every scion of every one-percenter can have their own fortune and start their own dynasty, without lifting a finger. Their sole job is to sign the paperwork put before them by "wealth managers":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/19/dynastic-wealth/#caste

Yes, it's true that some of the very richest people on Earth got their money by investing, rather than inheriting it. Bill Gates's investment income growth exceeds even the growth of the world's richest woman, L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, who never did anything of note apart from emerging from an extremely lucky orifice and then simply accruing:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-21st-century/

But Bill Gates's wealth accumulation from investing exceeds the wealth he accumulated by founding and running the most successful company in history (at the time). Doing work never pays as much as allocating capital. And Gates's children? They can assume a Bettencourtian posture on a divan, mouths yawning wide for the passage of peeled grapes, and their fortunes will grow still larger. Same goes for their children, and their children's children.

Capitalism's self-mythologizing insists that the invisible hand owes no allegiance to yesterday's champions. The mere fact that the market rewarded you for allocating capital wisely during your tenure does not entitle your offspring to continue to allocate wealth in the years and centuries to come – not unless they, too, are capital allocators of such supremacy that they are superior to everyone born hereafter and will make the decisions that make the whole world better off.

Because that's the justification for inequality: that the market relentlessly seeks out the people with the skill and foresight to do things and invest in things that improve the world for all of us. If we interrupt that market process with regulations, taxes, or other "distorting" factors, then the market's quest for the right person for the right job will be thwarted and all of us will end up poorer. If we want the benefits of the invisible hand, we must not jostle the invisible elbow!

That's the justification for abolishing welfare, public education, public health, affirmative action, DEI, and any other programs that redistribute wealth to the least among us. If we get in the way of the market's selection process, we'll elevate incompetents to roles of power and importance and they will bungle those roles in ways that hurt us all. As Boris Johnson put it: "the harder you shake the pack the easier it will be for [big] cornflakes to get to the top":

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/28/boris-johnson-iq-intelligence-gordon-gekko

Which leaves the servants and defenders of the invisible hand with a rather awkward question: how is it that today, capital allocation is a hereditary role? We used to have the idea that fitness to allocate capital – that is, to govern the economy and the lives of all of the rest of us – was a situational matter. The rule was "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations": "The first generation makes it, the second generation spends it, and the third generation blows it."

That's the lesson of the rags to riches story*: that out there, amongst the teeming grubby billions, lurks untold genius, waiting to be anointed by the market and turned loose to make us all better off.

In America, these stories are sometimes called "Horatio Alger" stories, after the writer who penned endless millionaire-pleasing fables about urchins who were adopted by wealthy older men who saw their promise and raised them to be captains of industry. However, in real life, Horatio Alger was a pedophile who adopted young boys and raped them:

https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/horatio-alger-hundred-year-old-secret/

Perhaps your life was saved by a surgeon who came from humble origins but made it through med school courtesy of Pell Grants. Perhaps you thrilled to a novel or a film made by an artist from a working class family who got their break through an NEA grant. Maybe the software you rely on every day, or the game that fills your evenings, was created by someone who learned their coding skills at a public library or publicly funded after-school program.

The presence among us of people who achieved social mobility and made our lives better is evidence that people are being born every moment with something to contribute that is markedly different, and higher in social status, than the role their parents played. Even if you stipulate that the person who cleans your toilet has been correctly sorted into a toilet-cleaning job by the invisible hand, it's clear that the invisible hand would prefer that at least some of those toilet-cleaners' kids should do something else for a living.

And yet, wealth remains stubbornly hereditary. Our capital allocators – who, during the post-war, post-New Deal era were often drawn from working families – are now increasingly, relentlessly born to that role.

For the wealthy, this is the origin of the meritocracy to eugenics pipeline. If power and privilege are inherited – and they are, ever moreso every day – then either we live in an extremely unfair society in which the privileged and the powerful have rigged the game…or the invisible hand has created a subspecies of thoroughbred humans who were literally born to rule.

This is the thesis of the ultra-rich, the moral justification for rigging the system so that their failsons and faildaughters will give rise to faildestinies of failgrandkids and failgreat-grandkids, whose emergence from history's luckiest orifices guarantees them a lifelong tenure ordering other people around. It's the justification for some people being born to own the places where the rest of us live, and the rest of us paying them half our salaries just so we don't end up sleeping on the sidewalk.

"Hereditary meritocracy" is just a polite way of saying "eugenics." It starts from the premise of the infallible invisible hand and then attributes all inequality in society to the hand's perfect judgment, its genetic insight in picking the best people for the best jobs. If people of one race are consistently on top of the pile, that's the market telling you something about their genomes. If men consistently fare better in the economy than women, the invisible hand is trying to say something about the Y chromosome for anyone with ears to hear.

Capitalism's winners have always needed "a superior moral justification for selfishness," a discreet varnish to shine up the old divine right of kings. Think of the millionaire who created a "Nobel Prize sperm-bank" (and then fraudulently fathered hundreds of children because he couldn't find any Nobelists willing to make a deposit):

https://memex.craphound.com/2006/09/07/nobel-prize-sperm-bank-human-tragicomedy-about-eugenics/

Or the billionaire founder of Telegram who has fathered over 100 children in a bid to pass on his "superior genes":

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/26/tech/pavel-durov-telegram-profile-intl

Think of Trump and his endless boasting about his "good blood" and praise for the "bloodlines" of Henry Ford and other vicious antisemites:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/22/trump-criticized-praising-bloodlines-henry-ford-anti-semite/5242361002/

Or Elon Musk, building a compound where he hopes to LARP as Immortan Joe, with a harem of women who have borne his legion of children, who will carry on his genetic legacy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/business/elon-musk-children-compound.html

Inequality is a hell of a drug. There's plenty of evidence that becoming a billionaire rots your brain, and being born into a dynastic fortune is a thoroughly miserable experience:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#affluenza

The stories that rich people tell themselves about why this is the only way things can be ("There is no alternative" -M. Thatcher) always end up being stories about superior blood. Eugenics and inequality are inseparable companions.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/20/big-cornflakes-energy/#caliper-pilled

[heyitschartic]

I do think it would be a really good idea for a story to have a sort of 40k world where technology and religion have created this unholy bureaucracy of super soldiers, priests, and engineers. Except in an effort to both keep the emperor in control and create a bureaucratic class of workers, the echelon of generals are all women, with the thought that they would never be strong enough to overthrow the emperor and the bureaucratic class are all men forcibly feminized into women, with a similar idea but also the concept similar to the imperial Court that they would care more for the country than continuing their own legacy. This is further spread into a technical class of holy engineers and a bureaucratic class of priestesses.

This of course does not work out like that and the Emperor is eventually overthrown in a bloody civil war and the various planets and systems split into an unholy group of alliances and backstabbing each with their own rules. Like a Warring States period, but spread out over Galaxies.

The forced feminization is an integral part of this though and non negotiable.