Exposure

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- HL Menken

Fail-safe

The rule that human beings seem to follow is to engage the brain only when all else fails - and usually not even then. -- David Hull

Cost-effective

Mutually costly-signaled reality is reality we can rely on. -- Sister Y ‏@TheViewFromHell

Truth

It is hard for a falsehood to be consistent. As time goes by, more inconsistencies accrue. The matter is worse if lies interact with each other. Sooner or later something must give. If that didn't happen, truth wouldn't be important.

Expectations

Ethics is a symptom of the economic progress that came from the extraction of cheap energy. This progress, and the wealth it provided, allowed society to accept the costs of harm reduction and the social securities that we are used today. Perhaps there's some inertia about the current mores that will resist some change, but the tap of cheap energy is closing. Don't expect much about the ones with power.

Tricks

The trick is to fix the problem you have, rather than the problem you want. -- Bram Cohen

Eating the World is not Enough

People assume that capitalism is a system defined by markets and trade. But these pre-existed capitalism by thousands of years. What distinguishes capitalism is that it is organized around perpetual expansion and accumulation, which is euphemistically referred to as "growth". This requires:

• enclosure to generate proletarianization
• artificial scarcity to generate competitive productivity
• an extractive relationship with nature and labour to enable surplus accumulation
• "frontiers" where nature and labour can be cheapened and costs externalized

Such a system is incompatible with ecology, and  incompatible with any vision for a world that's free of poverty, exploitation and structural inequality.  We need to have an open conversation about whether such a system is actually worth clinging to in the 21st century. -- Jason Hickel