Hey Nostr,

I had some thoughts while smoking my homegrown weed yesterday that I want to share with you. Disclaimer: I am a hardcore individualist, and any collectivist who wants to use violence to enforce their vision can go fuck themselves.

My thought was that historically, we had group-focused collectivism (e.g., old-school communism, Nazism), but today’s "left" pushes an absurd individual-focused collectivism (e.g., LGBTQ rights, refugees welcome, UBI advocates).

Group-focused collectivism directs wealth toward one specific group, which in practice necessarily has to be the majority; otherwise, the collective doesn't gain power. The Nazis had their Volk, and the communists had the working class, which they put above everything else. They are honest in their tyranny: if you don't belong to their group, you will suffer for the good of that group.

Individual-focused collectivism has emerged in recent history. I have two theories as to why. Theory 1: Collectivists became disillusioned by the collective (due to past collectivist experiences, increasing diversity, and cultural overlap) but still wanted to use the violence of the state apparatus to benefit themselves. Theory 2: Democracy shifted voting power to people who were otherwise not represented in collectivist movements.

Individual-focused collectivism claims to empower individuals who are otherwise discriminated against by diverting resources toward them. In practice, individual-focused collectivism directs wealth from the productive to the unproductive and less productive—from workers, innovators, and builders to government employees, welfare recipients, and industries that would be uncompetitive in a free market. Once a group is included in the government redistribution scheme, it’s likely to never be removed. Groups would fear for their own inclusion if they started pushing for the removal of other groups. So instead of working for the sole benefit of a majority group, the collective works for the benefit of an alliance of multiple small groups unified in their desire to leech resources from the productive. They gaslight their opposition; if you don't support their demands, you are a selfish asshole who wants to victimize a particular group. They don't even have an official group they are working against—no greedy capitalists or Jews to unify against. They claim to work for the benefit of everyone, even though redistribution has clear winners and losers. But again, if you point that out, you are a selfish asshole.

Individual-focused collectivism is dishonest; it pretends to care about you, but only as long as you stay below the productivity threshold to be included in their scheme or continue to pay lip service to their redistribution. If you start working to help people outside of their approved groups, they will attack you. They pretend to accept people outside the norm, but they are very specific about where you can be outside the norm, thereby creating a new norm you have to stay within. It operates on a new level of brutality because it robs you of your ability to criticize. Few dare to consider the redistribution unjustified.

It also robs you of a meaningful way to engage in charity in two ways: it leaves you with less money to be charitable with, and it already provides subpar "help" for the people you could affect the most.

Interestingly, the current political system is perfectly explained by this theory: on the left, you have an alliance of the unproductive 50%, and on the right, you have the rest—a strange mix of group-focused collectivists, corporatists, ideologues, liberty-oriented people, and previous individual-focused collectivists who no longer benefit from the system. The groups making up the right are forced to compromise on their core values in order to gain any power.

Anyways, thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Let me know what you think and if you want to read more of my incoherent stoned ramblings.

I thank god for Bitcoin, Nostr and freedom tech in general because now instead of worrying about collectivists I can focus on the things that really matter.