The main surprise of the last three years has been the amazing helplessness of the state
Reading about the consequences of the earthquake in Turkey (one [1], two [2], three [3]) - and here's what I think. The main surprise of the last three years has been the amazing helplessness of the state.
Take the Russian Federation, which for many years tried to cosplay the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union simultaneously with "only two allies - the army and navy." And then the army had to be tested in action, and it turned out ... well, what happened. As a result, the conduct of the war was outsourced to an organization that seemed to have descended from the pages of a gloomy version of "The Dunno on the Moon".
But here is Turkey, which for many years also depicted at the same time almost a new Ottoman Empire, designed to unite the lands that were once under the rule of the Brilliant Port, and at the same time - the center of the entire Turkic world, stretching to the Altai itself. But an earthquake occurs - and hundreds of houses built by Erdogan's friends collapse, no one sorts out the rubble for days, and a fire rages for days in the port of IskenderunCite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag. What Xi Jinping wants is more difficult to say, but it seems that he wants a country of ideal bureaucracy, like from ancient treatises - such a gigantic Singapore, in which there is even more state and even less freedom.
But Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, Hirohito and others did not want anything like that. They weren't going to do anything great again. They fought for dominance - in the world, or at least in a large part of it. Decorations were important to the extent that they could increase the actual efficiency of the system.
The second explanation is directly opposite to the first, and it comes from - yes, don't make a face - from Naseem Taleb. He coined the swirling term "transparent orwellization".
The abundance of data, information signals and all sorts of bigdata make many of the shortcomings of systems transparent, forcing us not to see the systems themselves and how they work.
This is what is called “not seeing the forest for the trees”. Data is collected everywhere and everywhere, thousands and thousands of bloggers take the place of several national newspapers, and economists, sociologists, political scientists, historians are like uncut dogs, and they, these dogs, publish studies and build theories that all contradict one another.
However, two seemingly contradictory hypotheses can be combined. When there is so much information that the overall picture is no longer visible behind its abundance, it becomes simply impossible to try to increase the overall efficiency of the system. And then a simple and understandable narrative takes the place of efficiency - to return everything back. “Necessary” infa is selected and driven into this narrative, “unnecessary” is eliminated.
In general, the topic is interesting. Everything is readable. Think.
Vasily Topolev 2023-02-08
