Your gateway to endless inspiration
What I really object to... is that there is a rhetoric out there of trying to convince people that they’re insufficient and that everything should be the private property of a small number of people for this reason when in fact, if it was really the case that those few people were so important, and great, and powerful, they wouldn’t need to have all this rhetoric to convince other people of it. People would just see it, they would get it. If there were really a few X-Men floating around, it would be manifest to everyone. In fact, those X-Men wouldn’t even need everyone else. They would do the Atlas Shrugged thing like go off, do whatever you want, and have no connection to the outside world. If you’re really that great, just do it, and stop bitching, and trying to convince everybody else that they’re inadequate, and stupid, and useless, and that you’re the elite. Fine. That doesn’t bother anyone if you want to go do that, but don’t take as private property all the stuff that was produced in this society that we created. Go off on your own with nothing into the forest and build this great Atlantis that you’re capable of doing, and that no one else can do. Great. Honestly, if there were a bunch of X-Men, they would do that. They wouldn’t bother with everyone else. They’d just go off into outer space and do their own thing. That’s not what’s actually going on. What’s actually going on is that there’s this elite of people who’s trying to use rhetoric to dominate others, and to take the collective work that others have done, and expropriate it to themselves. I think that’s nonsense.
Glen Weyl Radical Institutional Rerforms Podcast on 80,000 Hours