Slightly Reduce Fear and You Win Back The West (Pt 2 of 2)

Overview of a Potential Anti-Social Credit System aka 'Civil Support Network'

Update: It appears that for some people if this is read on a desktop, a part of the site that should be at the bottom of the screen obstructs some of the text toward the top of the page. THE ELITES don’t want you to know how to beat them, but this is easily circumvented by reading on your phone.

It hasn’t been long, but let’s quickly set the table anyway:

Dissenting voices across the country are being silenced via the credible threat of financial ruin and/or social ostracization. This occurs because an intolerant minority uses its control of institutions to coerce the non-institutional majority into reluctant compliance.

Fearing punishment, the vast majority of people dissent privately- that’s why they’re called the Silent Majority- and they live vicariously through the small handful of people willing to dissent publicly. Because they threaten the narratives justifying institutional behavior and start to give silent people ideas, this latter group is the prime target of Cancellation and other efforts to remove their voice from the public square.

As it stands, the only way for the masses of normal people to support the small subset willing to speak on their behalf are through platforms that continue to cut financial lifelines to individuals and groups deemed problematic.  This has been fairly effective- in wars of attrition, no one can hold out forever.

All right then- since the threat of choking off resources is how institutional players coerce uncooperative citizens, all citizens who dissent privately or publicly must form a network that provides the ability to both proactively allocate resources to those at risk of punishment as well as execute responsive measures like coordinating resources to victims of Cancellation with comparable speed to how they were taken. The public must be able to adequately subsidize the risks of those who publicly dissent by reliably mitigating the costs of doing so. If the silent majority can harness their numbers to provide fuck you money to the fraction among them willing to say “fuck you” without fear of reprisal, then both groups can work in tandem to defeat their mutual aggressors.

In theory, a free speech mutual aid network would function as a type of modern militia- a standing, swarming force to protect free thought in the digital age. Don’t get carried away with the terminology- depending on who’s reading this, you can put your badge or your tricorn hat away. I simply mean the threat to people’s freedoms isn’t armies (yet), it’s social channels and economic sustenance. The second amendment protects you from men with guns; nothing protects you from activists with personality disorders. We don’t have the energy or virtue for a militia anyway- too lazy, too risk-averse. So how does a lazy, risk-averse population fulfill the same duties as one? By sitting on their asses and subsidizing someone else’s risk without engaging in any themselves. Want change, but too cowardly? Stay locked in your apartment forever while contributing to a crowdfunded shield of your favorite parasocial relationship that says all the things you’re too scared to and give them greater freedom of action via the security you’ve provided. Then tell your friends you were bravely fulfilling your duties as a member of the “Civil Support Network”.

Potential Applications & Effects

Let’s start with the proactive measures i.e. Networked Insurance since crowdfunded insurance doesn’t really exist yet. On a broad level, this would be a commitment to donate to someone if certain parameters came to pass, such as getting de-platformed or losing their sponsors. The recipient articulates which scenario they’d like to insure against, and it is agreed upon by all parties beforehand. If the event comes to pass, they execute their policy, and only then would the funds be transferred to them. In theory, this would enable anyone to leverage their social connections to form a de facto insurance policy customized to their needs and reduce any coercive power held over them. This new method of patronage benefits donors and recipients alike- donors don’t have to add yet another charge to their list of recurring payments and recipients get to monetize a greater percentage of their followers. I can’t become a Patron of everyone I like- I have to draw the “worthy of subscription” line somewhere. But supporting people I enjoy in their time of need against a future attack by everything I hate? You bet your ass I’m pledging to a hell of a lot more people than I do at the moment. Would probably be willing to throw $20 instead of $5 actually, as a hypothetical future expense feels less “real” to me.

The most obvious and immediate beneficiaries of this would be creators and influencers since they already have the numbers to generate significant levels of protection, but the Commit-Fulfill model could still be utilized by those who don’t have a mass of followers on standby. Smaller creators with aligned interests could pool smaller donation totals so at least one of them is protected rather than zero. Internet communities could do the same thing and would only require very small donations due to their size.  A mutual aid mechanism applied to colleagues or associates who share dissenting views within hostile professional environments could create a type of Decentralized Autonomous Union (DAU). Many occupations already pay union dues for protection if their relationship with their employers deteriorates- this is the same concept, just operated by the employees directly to address 21st-century threats to job security in a dynamic, democratic fashion while cutting out 20th-century bureaucratic middlemen taking a piece of the pie in the process. This model could also be utilized by emerging dissident networks outside of The System, as said System doesn’t tend to play nice with those who find happiness outside of its psychological walls.

This is to say nothing of the “responsive” crowdfunding measures that can be easily layered on top of it. Conventionally, this would look like GoFundMe or GiveSendGo, just with a convenient head start. Unconventionally (and by “unconventional” I mean “rare/nonexistent” not “technologically tricky/difficult” ), you could send out an alert to everyone in the network to maximize what’s able to be raised. Or an alert to the Network if you have another cancellation-adjacent emergency, such as getting devastated on social media for some controversy or accusation- like a digital distress beacon for people getting socially torpedoed and are isolated psychologically instead of physically. The human brain simply is not wired to have thousands of people out-grouping them simultaneously, and it doesn’t take many counter-examples to make a difference. For the larger incidents, the response could even influence the ensuing narrative in those critical opening moments when it’s being formed.

What would this accomplish? By tilting the incentive landscape away from cowardice and towards courage, you weaken the forces that got us into this situation and make the world more fertile for the emergence of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. When one purposefully contributes to an environment in a manner that makes a terrorist act statistically more likely to occur without being directly responsible, it is called “stochastic terrorism”. By intentionally facilitating conditions that make dissent statistically more likely to occur, one would be performing stochastic courage. Even the mildest uptick of courage shouldn’t be underestimated- take thirty seconds to consider the collective downstream effects of Jordan Peterson saying “No” four years ago. Since this is one of them, any benefits that come from this are partially owed to that single event. The reason that had the impact it did was because at some level, people didn’t know refusing was actually an option- now their cowardice couldn’t be rationalized away, it was physically proven on video. Corrupt authority hates public dissent for good reason- because anyone who witnesses it has an entirely new field of possibility open in their heads. Fields of possibility that improve their circumstances and not necessarily the circumstances of the ones responsible for trying to smother their brains.

Collective Action & Positive Feedback Loops

Beyond that, once a network self-selected on the basis of protecting and restoring others’ livelihoods is in place, the possibilities become much more expansive. One major problem under constant deliberation is finding a way to connect the millions of disenfranchised Americans locked out of their own institutions by a hostile Regime, and then create new institutions so they have sufficient resources to flourish instead of being slowly starved out. Everyone wants this to happen: Right-leaning businesses and artists are financially vulnerable, Right-leaning consumers want to give their money to non-Woke art and businesses that don’t hate them. There is money to be made and happiness to be had, the problem is just finding each other- the Left coordinates easily via its grip on every major institution, while the Right is more populous but scattered (note: “Right” in this case means both people objectively on the political Right and anyone else who has retained any sense of normalcy/individuality/agency).

It’s a typical collective action problem: you can’t just snap your fingers and say “Hey everyone, get in the same network so you can share resources.” What you need is an excuse- a sufficiently motivating premise that gathers them in the same network to begin with that can be leveraged for further action after its formation. I’d like to introduce a concept of John Robb’s called a “Plausible Promise”- a conceivable goal that unites various factions in a conflict to drive an open source insurgency against a mutual enemy, usually based on a negation, a “No!”. Perhaps the most widely opposed thing in the country- and absolutely the most motivating thing to the Right- is Cancel Culture. Therefore, the broadly popular goal based on a “no” is the Negation of Cancel Culture (not to say there isn’t room for improvement in the marketing, I know “Cancel Culture” is getting a bit long in the tooth as it is).

Do you understand how much people who have had every other avenue of protest blocked from them will like this? Every time Americans are given an opportunity to rebel against the system, they take it and run with it as far as they possibly can. Everyone knows this rage is going to go somewhere, so we might as well channel people’s desire to destroy their enemies into something productive like supporting their friends (this is the first step to destroying their enemies, anyway). Negate Cancel Culture can take the same energy that elected Trump and just direct it economically instead of politically- until 2024, preventing the ruling class from destroying people you like is the greatest victory you can claim.

Through no fault of their own, the American people find themselves surrounded by enemies. If they want to survive long enough to launch a counterattack, they’ll need to form a phalanx. Even the most blackpilled should have it in them to survive out of spite- hell, think of it as Malice’s “Spite Funding” on a massive scale. Additionally, while participation in a hypothetical Civil Support Network would be an act of dissent itself, the fun part is that since the function of such a network would be to generate the security necessary for further dissent to take place, the demand for dissent will also drive the supply of it. What happens when a population is given a taste of what they’ve been deprived of along with the ability to give themselves more of it? Maladaptive consensus and overbearing censorship are driven by positive feedback loops; in theory, we should be able to create a similar effect in the opposite direction.

The model we’ve discussed so far is the basis to establish this effort. However, the Commit-Fulfill model used for Cancellation Insurance could also be used for positive actions, not just offsetting negative events. Everyone is waiting for someone to be the spark of positive change (“Somebody do something!”) but no one wants to engage with the risks of doing it- people on the fence could just use a bit of a push (obviously nothing illegal, that goes without saying). This way, the Network protects people who are already doing something and incentivizes others to join them. Aside from the whole rebel angle which I’ve admittedly beaten to death, governments used to commission great works of art- our government/cultural gatekeepers are incapable of doing so, but the population represented within the network can commission what they want to see and fund what they’ve been denied for decades. There are countless types of productive transactions that could occur between individuals, businesses, and other organizations once they are in the same ecosystem, and I think we have the justifying premise to get them there.

Creating the Future Means Surviving the Present

To be sure, there is already a collection of efforts to bring such a network into existence already. New Founding’s goals certainly appear to overlap with some of this, while groups like EXIT are trying to reduce exposure for individuals who simply cannot exist within Corporate America any longer. While this emerging network of more adaptive institutions are being built, it is mandatory to cultivate an environment that’s survivable enough to actually finishing building them. If our house is burning down, we need to make sure the people capable of building new houses aren’t killed by debris on the way out- if that happens to improve the asabiyyah of the participants in the process, all the better.

This mission to “escape” isn’t just political, it’s happening on many fronts simultaneously: those in the crypto movement are trying to escape the financial system, audiences and creators are fighting against legacy media for information and sensemaking, dissenting scientists fight for their lives against malignantly consensus-driven 3-letter agencies, and academics who value intellectual inquiry are trying to wriggle their way out of that ideological straightjacket we call the university system as people who should be in literal straightjackets drive it into the ground.

Everywhere you look, the story is the same: The builders of the 21st century are trying desperately to escape the clutches of the winners of the 20th. Entrenched institutional players attack any emerging competitor out of self-interest to the detriment of the rest of the species. The emerging competitors are superior across the board; if they weren’t, the dominant structures wouldn’t have to devote all their time and energy to destroying their lives.

What I’m proposing would be a force multiplier to any effort seeking to displace existing models whose obsolescence was temporarily masked by their resources and ultimately betrayed by their hostility to the people they were meant to serve. Your enemies have invested trillions of dollars into manipulating the playing field because if they let up even a little bit, you win. They know it, now you do too. However, if we’re going to create a better world, surviving the current one is a prerequisite.

CLOSE

There are some obvious questions that come up when reading this:

• How does this not get Canceled?

• How do we avoid incentivizing fraud or other moral hazards?

• What role does crypto have to play?

• How do you incentivize the first wave of people to form the foundation of the network?

I have several ideas, with confidence levels ranging from near certainty to informed speculation. I will not be sharing them here. I’ve spent many hours poring over these questions, and there are many fascinating possibilities to answer them- however, some things are just not my area of expertise. If any of the above is your area of expertise, I’d like to talk. If none of them are but you have another skill or resource you think would be of use, I’d like to talk. If you just find the possibilities of this rough overview I’ve provided intriguing and would like to help in general, I’d like to talk to you as well. Feel free to either email or DM me if you fit any of those descriptions.

It’s time to get to work. Western Civilization is collapsing, we’re entering a sci-fi dystopia of unimaginable horror, and the wicked are praised while the decent are persecuted. Be grateful you live in such momentous times where your contributions become all the more meaningful. You don’t choose the age you’re born into, you conduct yourself to the best of your abilities so you can hold your head high when it’s time to depart it. Unreasonable challenges aren’t some superfluous burden; they’re baked into the terms of existence. Transmuting shit into gold and pain into splendor is what human beings do. Welcome to American Alchemy.