The fashionability of being uncompetitive. Because Reasons.

People – ever since we developed willful agency and recognised our finite existence, and thus extract ourselves from the jungle of animalistic ignorance – have developed increasingly nuanced systems and procedures for competing with one another.

We compete for resources of all description, and our veracity in this endeavour depends primarily on our geography, our personal inclinations, and the style at the time.i

By competing successfully, we’re able to demonstrate our fertility and our wealth, that is, our superiority. Manifesting this power through art, architecture, refined manners, children, enterprises, as well as the number and objective quality of our mates and companions, we seek to signal our importance in society. Certainly, anything that we can reasonably call ‘a civilisation’ displays a wider and more impressive array of such signals than do the tribal cultures that lack even the most basic chronology, but all cultures maintain a competitive element, something to separate the lemma from the palea, even if there are differences in the degrees of complexity involved.ii

This being said, not everyone has the capacity or the inclination to compete. Some people are not only incapable of fending for themselves, but they’re even perfectly content with their absence of gusto to the extent that it doesn’t result in their starving to death.iii

The vast majority of people are only motivated to compete to the extent that need to be. That is, when their incentives to compete are eroded by familial or state-backed safety nets, they don’t bother. I mean, why should they ? To what end ? This and this alone is what makes socialism such a counter-productive force in this world: it robs Peter to pay Paul so that Paul doesn’t have to try as hard. I mean, God forbid Paul fails !

If this sort of perversion persists, for lack of an extenuating (and iatrogenic) emergency, it seems inevitable that not competing would even become fashionable.

mircea_popescu: TBH, that is the only logical end game : US of Best Korea, where everything is banned not because they can’t afford anything, but for Ideological Reasons. Honest. I used to know poor people like that. All the things they couldn’t afford, they didn’t do not because they couldn’t afford them. But for Other Reasons.
asciilifeform:
We already have this. In slow motion.
mircea_popescu: Pretty much yeh.

So what do we see ?

We see vegans who are too “cool” to afford meat.iv
We see bicyclists who are too “cool” to afford cars.
We see renters who are too “cool” to afford buying.v

And so on and so forth, all of which is merely poverty masquerading as aristocracy. Because if it weren’t so cool to be poor, it’d have to be sad; and since you’re waaay too narcissistic to be sad, it has to be cool !

Because Reasons. Always, because Reasons.

___ ___ ___

  1. grandpa-simpson-onion-belt
  2. This is ultimately what determines that state of advancement of a culture and a society: it’s ability to deal with and appreciate complexity. Yes, it’s very impressive that children can draw pretty pictures, and with such colour and such verve, just as the Native Americans do, but both groups are in point of fact at an earlier stage of development, which is to say more primitive, than even a high school student who can solve basic differential equations.

    It matters not a whit whether “they ‘owned’ this land first” and whether you think that “they can teach us how to live sustainably” anymore than it matters what 6-year-olds want for breakfast. Of course they want frosted flakes every goddamned morning but if you put that kind of retardation on a pedestal, everyone and their mothers will,  by the end of the decade, have a noggin full dental caries, and, since kids hate the dentist, septicemia.

    So unless you’re unwittingly trying to solve overpopulation… Holy shit, you are !!!

  3. “Starving to death” also includes shelter, clean air, water, etc., all of which the modern socialist state is all too happy to provide. Oh, and if that’s not enough for you, there’s always free prescription drugs !
  4. The “inhumanity” of eating animals is little more than the “inhumanity” of being rich. “Oh, how terrible it must be!” Well, I’m not saying it’s guaranteed to be a bed of roses, but I’d certainly rather have the options and opportunities that wealth provides that not have them. Being rich can be all kinds of things in all kinds of places, whereas poverty is by definition the lack of things. I ask you, where’s the fun in a choiceless existence ?

    The “coolness” of not eating meat is exactly the recognition that you’ll never be a Brahmin. Of course cows are sacred, there aren’t enough of them to go around !

  5. Renting real estate, however, makes all kinds of financial sense. Buying a house is far from the Guaranteed To Double Your Money investment vehicle that most North Americans imagine it to be. Plus, renting an abode is more flexible and bears lower transaction costs should you decide to pick up and move to, say, Rio de Janeiro.

    Plus plus, sharing economy feudalism !

17 thoughts on “The fashionability of being uncompetitive. Because Reasons.

  1. We see vegans who are too “cool” to afford meat.
    We see bicyclists who are too “cool” to afford cars.
    We see renters who are too “cool” to afford buying.

    Hah! I ride a bike and rent exactly because the alternatives are cost prohibitive, but I’ll still pay 15 USD for a decent steak. And that’s unprepared from the market; not in a fancy restaurant. I was just crunching these numbers last night as I ate my very expensive home-cooked meal. My dinners cost something like 40 dollars if my time is to be considered valuable.

    • Pete D. says:

      Heh. I’m all for a nice home cooked meal, and I tend to prefer this avenue to an overpriced restaurant meal myself, but I dunno about your dinner at home costing $40. The ‘my time is worth xx per hour’ consideration is, globally speaking, a bit ridiculous.

  2. ‘Bed of roses’ actually sounds like a very painful thing…

  3. […] life as well. If this is too dim a perspective, you’re either hopped up on the Q or drinking the ‘because reasons’ kool-aid. Thinking that your life is better than it could ever otherwise be under any other system, even […]

  4. […] is a huge compliment. Nothing less. Whether it’s currently fashionable or not, being a cut above is where you, yes you! want to be, and any refutation to this fact […]

  5. […] of timeiv and therefore mentally persist in the Narnia wherein more social programs are more better because reasons and failing isn’t your fault. But whatever, “no one could’ve predicted,” […]

  6. […] the Swiss understanding of narcissism, principally to see how it compared with the North American interpretation daffodils, I delved into the sights and sounds of the light-hearted […]

  7. […] of the brave.” “Yada yada blah blah we’re the firstest bestest largest everest because reasons that don’t involve us being a plasticised two-bit knock-off of The Great Soviet Union, I mean […]

  8. […] But go explain to Taleb why he should stop wearing the facial hair style he does. Because why ? Reasons ? He got reasons […]

  9. […] to the advertising editor of Metro News Edmonton, will be deemed “inappropriate,” because reasons, namely the unspeakably unfair proposition that any independent modern woman would want a man to […]

  10. […] that’s one type of blinder, as embodied by Russ, where anyone can be anything because reasons, where words are bad mkay, and where black lives feelings matter, but we all have own […]

  11. […] as my personal rose-tinted lenses are so obfuscating that I’ll knowingly tolerate inferiority because reasons, the LS460L cleans up pretty nicely and is at least subjectively superior to the old Merc in […]

  12. […] Because i) God forbid people with multiple part-time jobs realise just how badly they’re being fisted by the theftocratic buttchuggers in Ottawa when they have to pay the whole lump sum of their “fair share” all at once in April, ii) God forbid that an employee earns interest, however modest in these hyperinflationary times, or makes an investment using their hard-earned monies before the taxman cometh, and iii) God forbid the CRA can actually be bothered to come up with an explanation other than “reasons.” […]

  13. […] constitution to act. That Jewish flesh is evidently – not theoretically and not “because reasons” – too weak to massacre its enemies, quite in spite of and very much contrary […]

  14. […] women-only clubs in the country. Though like Spa Lady, these are obviously less contentious.iii Because reasons. Because it’s exclusively whiny bitches who aren’t getting laid making all the […]

  15. […] well placed were these “for reasons” barricades. They were off on the side being ignored, just as they should be. The fuck […]

Leave a Reply to Blinders. | Contravex: A blog by Pete D. Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *