Keeping up with the FITs, 5/5

N.S. Lyons on a new world order; Antonio Garcia Martinez clarifies the content moderation issue; Robert Wright hearts Rand Paul; Matthew Continetti, Yuval Levin, and Paul Ryan; Bill Gates is un-FIT

N.S. Lyons writes,

By “harmonizing” their approaches to regulation of the digital economy, the United States and Europe could begin to exert much greater control over how any company or organization offering digital services would be forced to operate in order to have access to the world’s largest market bloc – unless they wanted to bet on the smaller Chinese-led market bloc, which of course will have its own strict standards anyway. As long as Trans-Atlantis is not shy about excluding those who breach its standards, it can use its near-monopoly position to foster bloc-wide vertical integration of the digital economy just as it hopes to do with physical supply chains. This would of course have the advantage of allowing for greater informational and narrative control, in order to protect society from the scourges of disinformation and destabilization by reactionary elements. The EU’s huge new Digital Services Act, which was just passed on April 22 with the intention to force online companies to quickly remove “illegal content,” including “misinformation” and “hate,” in order to “ensure that the online environment remains a safe space” (as Ursula von der Leyen put it), could prove an influential model for such harmonization, since it has many American admirers. Perhaps it could soon be followed up with a harmonized Digital ID.

Such a vertically integrated system would help center and deepen public-private integration, in which the administrative state becomes the key patron bestowing the private sector with certain essential protections and benefits, and in exchange large private firms and the non-profits they help fund become the primary actors in advancing societal progress towards the greater good

This is a l-o-n-g essay. I am quoting from the section sub-headed “Greatly Resetting Your World Order.”

Lyons takes the view that the Russia-Ukraine war changes everything about the geopolitical system. I would caution that the war is not even over yet, and even if it does end or fade from focus, it will not be the last shock to hit the world.

Lyons himself writes,

the greatest danger of all for Trans-Atlantis: a seemingly complete inability of its leadership elite to grasp or reckon with – let alone address – glaring domestic weaknesses, or to prepare for pending crises that are staring them in the face and stamping at the dust like a giant grey rhino.

Antonio Garcia Martinez writes,

if you think the platforms should be putting their fingers on the scales and declaring this or that eruption of the collective hive mind to be acceptable (or not) for the sake of some greater good or capital ‘T’ Truth, then you’re on the anti-Elon/DiResta side of the debate. If you think that, conversely, we must put up with the Alex Jones bullshit for the sake of the greater good, you’re on the other side of the debate.

That’s it, that’s the real dividing line here. Quibbling over the precise content policy in the pro-content moderation view is just haggling over implementation details, and essentially ceding the field to that side of the debate.

Along those lines, apparently some folks are calling for advertisers to boycott Twitter now that Elon Musk owns it. What if a boycott gets rolling, and Twitter has to shut down? Fine by me. Sad for Elon, of course.

Robert Wright writes,

It’s a sign of how effective the code is becoming that Paul’s violation of it warranted a headline in the Washington Post: “Rand Paul says US backing Ukraine in NATO played role in Russia’s invasion.”

More evidence of the power of the code is that the Post reporter, Amy Cheng, felt compelled to assert in the first paragraph of the piece that Paul’s claim had been not only rebutted by Blinken at the hearing but “criticized by Russia experts.”

Since there were no Russia experts at the hearing Cheng was writing about, making this assertion required that she find one to quote. She settled on Alexander Vindman, the retired Army officer and former NSC staffer known for, among other things, full throatedly backing NATO membership for Ukraine ever since anyone can remember.

It’s not that Wright has been red-pilled. He does not really love Rand Paul. But Wright takes each issue as it comes, rather than relying on the heuristic that everything Rand Paul does is evil.

Matthew Continetti, Yuval Levin, and Paul Ryan talk about the past and the future of conservatism. I haven’t ordered Continetti’s book. I read a sample on Kindle, and it was not too my taste. He mentions too many random factions without explaining their ultimate significance, if any.

The discussion goes in the opposite direction. It emphasizes the centrality of William F. Buckley and his institution-building. It was much more than National Review, although that would have been plenty. They talk about the tensions in fusionism and the need to keep libertarians and cultural conservatives from warring on one another.

In 2016, I wrote in Paul Ryan for President. In the discussion , he stands up for what I think of as establishment conservative values, while recognizing that the establishment was in ill repute by 2016. I came away from listening to the discussion proud of my vote. Ryan strikes me as the one guy who wants to do something about what I think of when Lyons writes about “pending crises that are staring them in the face and stamping at the dust like a giant grey rhino.'“

On the other hand, Bill Gates keeps falling in my estimation. In the WSJ, Gates writes,

What we need is a well-funded global organization with enough full-time experts in all the necessary areas, the credibility and authority that come with being a public institution, and a clear remit to focus on preventing pandemics. I call it the GERM—Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization—team

GERM should be managed by the WHO, the only group that can give it global credibility, and it should have a diverse workforce, with a decentralized staff working in many places around the world. To get the best staff possible, GERM should have a special personnel system different from what most U.N. agencies have. Most of the team would be based at individual countries’ national public health institutes, though some would sit in the WHO’s regional offices and at its headquarters in Geneva.

I’m surprised he didn’t pick Davos. I wonder if in the last 15 years Gates has spent five minutes talking to anyone who isn’t a sycophant, an attendee of the World Economic Forum, or both.

For just about every star of Fantasy Intellectual Teams, a major question posed by the pandemic response is what to do about expert failure. It gets no mention in Gates’ essay.