Gray Tribe

Somehow I absolutely love this most recent SSC post:

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/matt-yglesias-considered-as-the-nietzschean

I feel like the best of pre-2020 Scott is back. Also, his takedown of the first person to reply to him in the comments is just excellent.

It’s a good post.

I think we can add something to it by thinking at the tribal level, not just the individual level.

1) First, rightism is straightforward tribalism. They are for their tribe. So they are against everyone outside their tribe.

2) Leftism is backdoor tribalism. They are against bigotry. Also, everyone outside their tribe is a bigot! So they are against everyone outside their tribe.

3) This is how the rightist gets to National Socialism while the leftist gets to Socialism in One Country. The rightist invokes master morality to dominate. The leftist invokes slave morality to *dominate the dominators* — like the dictatorship of the proletariat. And then they also ruthlessly dominate.

4) The alternative to both rightism and leftism is actually internationalist capitalism, which has win/win baked into it.

5) So, merchant morality or founder morality is the positive-sum alternative to both master and slave morality. Yes, you do seek to win. But you only win if the other guy also wins.

Leftists are not Rightist. Rightist are not Leftists. But Merchants/Founders can be Leftists or Rightists. This suggests the Merchant/Founder morality occurs on a different axis and isn’t at all alternative.

I also have no idea what Merchant/Founder morality is exactly.