Linked in previous, worth a reprint.
Soft motors, soft governments
Following immediately on the Surace dystopia. When all the carefully designed feedback mechanisms of culture and government have been ripped out or paralyzed by the Goldman virus, is there any hope? Probably not, but here’s a half-formed thought.
Returning to an earlier realization, triggered rather strangely by the virtues of a cheap Chinese gadget.
It’s sort of like a junior version of a Dremel tool, but much weaker and slower. The weak motor is the key to its success, oddly enough. Just run the sander back and forth along the edge of each nail with a light touch, and it takes the nails down to a proper length and smoothness. Time 5 to 10 seconds per toe. No chance of damaging the skin; the small sander always stays on the target toe; and the weak motor stops when you dig a bit too deep. Foolproof and cootproof.
Soft motors can be an elegant solution. The old vacuum-powered windshield wipers had a similar self-limiting quality. In a light rain the wipers would wipe when there was enough rain to slide on, and would stop when (or where) the glass was dry. You couldn’t burn out the motor or blow a fuse by turning the knob when the wipers were frozen. No software or interrupting timer needed; just mechanical self-regulation.
In an electronic or mechanical system, there are two main ways to achieve self-control. Good systems generally use both methods where appropriate. One is feedback; the other is decoupling or softness. (Decoupling is less familiar than feedback. Think of a transformer or a limited-slip differential.)
The weak nail-grinder and the vacuum wipers are dumb systems. They have no CPUs, no mechanical or electric feedback. All they have is softness or weakness. But the softness serves the same purpose as intelligence or feedback. With the nail-grinder, softness prevents the grinder from damaging skin. With the wipers, softness saves the wipers from icy self-destruction and provides a “smart-like” response to rain.
Is there a way to soften or weaken the zero-feedback system of modern Western countries? A way to decouple the central money-generators and secret police from local layers? A way to interpose a high-hysteresis transformer or fluid coupling?
I don’t know, but it’s worth thinking about. In a historical sense, soft governments generally work better than “democratic” governments. In a “democracy”, leaders compete to win the prize of power, which means the winner is the most psychopathic, most manic, most powerhungry fucking bastard in the whole country. Soft monarchies or old worn-out authoritarian regimes have a wider variety of leaders because they’re selected by genes, not by fights. You get some powermad wackos but you also get some wise men and some ordinary men. Nominally they have strict rules, but practically they don’t give a shit unless you seriously and actively oppose them. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a government that just plain didn’t give a holy horseshit?
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The part about “democracies” rings especially loudly after 2020. The governments that abandoned the holocaust were mostly the soft “dictatorships” where people are accustomed to paying for government service. The craziest tyrannies were the “honest” “democracies” where retail money is strictly forbidden, so the only influence comes from the wholesale monsters like Bezos and Fink and Elon.
On the good side, the “Goldman virus”, QE and ZIRP, has been removed now. It still lingers in the nerves and muscles of the Tech Tyrants, but it’s fading fast without new nutrition. Many of the crazy schemes of corporations, and the part of Deepstate that works with corporations, are collapsing now. Bitcoin is no longer working as a sting, and the stung are being prosecuted. Governments have less bribe and blackmail power without the infinite fountain of free money, so some of the bribed courtiers are forced to regain sanity if they want support from real humans.
THANKS, POWELL!
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Footnote for accuracy: My animation of vacuum wipers in the Renault was wishful thinking because Renaults always had electric wipers. I did burn out the electric motor when the wiper was frozen by an ice storm in 1973.
Polistra's Mill 