Builder state vs verbose state

What sets Elon Musk apart are his beliefs that our civilisation can expand, and that in this game of expansion, systems with open information channels outperform systems that have many rigid layers of hierarchy. In other terms, what sets him apart from most Western elites are his beliefs in growth and free speech.

For several generations, growth and free speech were the one thing most people in the West agreed on. But since the 1970s, the antigrowth and restricted speech position has gained much ground. The result? Take France, a leading builder of nuclear power generation capacity from the mid-1970s into the 1990s. Today, this country is a shadow of its former self, where people are reduced to hoping that the looming energy crisis will turn out to merely be a psyop. "The government wants to use this fake crisis to make it seem as if the worst had been averted thank to its prudent handling!" That is how the French are attempting to cope with the threat of impending rolling blackouts.

The reader may want to check out Yves Bréchet's recent deposition for more on the French "transition from builder State to verbose State." Verbosity and restricted speech indeed go well together, just as, I suspect, concision and plain language go well with free speech. This seems to have something to do with the information asymmetry inherent in oligarchic systems. Once a system gives up on growth, the oligarchic subsystems view the people as something that needs to be cannibalised in various ways – for survival reasons. Everything becomes more and more fake and verbose in these systems, while conspiracy theories on the hidden agendas of oligarchic subsystems proliferate. The artificial preservation of rigid layers of hierarchy replaces real expansion. One key marker of this historical pattern may be the multiplication of eunuchs.

The moral marker of this type of system is that harmful behaviours are viewed as an opportunity for personal profit or advantage, and not as a systemic risk. "People want to stop eating meat? Surely this will harm their health. But this more importantly means cheaper meat for me!" (may I remind the reader that the question is not which side is correct in this example.)

In such a system, truth is something divisive. "We can't say the truth about X because it would tear the people apart!" Such a way of thinking also reveals all higher truths in an oligarchic system to potentially be instruments used to divide the people for profit. The supralocal function of procedures is used as a tool to regulate the local function of the people. In an oligarchy, the extralocal function rules through verbose deception.

What sets Elon Musk apart then is that he believes truth can unite the people, like the Sky directly unites the steppe nomads. In oligarchic systems, the sky, or the climate, is an instrument used to divide and rule. For Elon Musk, "truth brings reconciliation."