Infinity16

I am well aware. I was just offering my own opinion on the subject.

I don't see a reason to be proud of the place I just so happened to be born in. Besides, if you ought to be proud of what your country has done well in, should you also not be ashamed of what your country has not done well in?

Crazy how Brazil, a country that was a military dictatorship at one point, has now become something that the US can envy. Bolsonaro, the Donald Trump of Brazil, attempted his own version of Jan 6 and is now serving a 27 year sentence for it. Now personally, there should probably be more than 27 years for attempting a coup to overthrow democracy, but it certainly beats being allowed to run again.

My main thing is that profit should come from labor and capital as opposed to land. Since nobody made land, making a profit from it is rent-seeking in the original and literal sense (rent is literally profit from land). Landlords are parasites.

A personal interest of mine is looking into the implications that spiral dynamics has for society and government. A big limitation that tier 1 stages have is the assumption that everyone should just leapfrog to their stage. A key example is El Salvador. A decade ago, this country had a homicide rate of over 100 per 100,000. To get a sense of how outrageously high that is, the US is at 5 per 100,000 overall and St. Louis, the worst American city, was at 43 in 2025. Going back to the previous decade, the worst ever would have been Camden at around 80. The overall rate of El Salvador a decade ago would make it more akin to Mexican cities on the dangerous side such as Tijuana. El Salvador's violent death rate was second to none in the western hemisphere, being dominated by gangs such as MS-13. Everything changed once Bukele became president in 2017. He ran on a platform of making the country safe. He notably ran as a third party candidate, representing Nuevas Ideas (literally new ideas). After becoming president, he implemented a seven phase plan to cleanse the nation of gang violence. Each of these phases were kept secret until they were announced: Increased police presence and cut off all contact between prisons and the outside world Expanded community efforts and scholarships to prevent youth from joining gangs Increased police presence even further and militarized the police. Deployed the military into gang-heavy areas Issued mass arrests for anyone so much as bearing gang tattoos Focused on the root causes of poverty in hopes of keeping them from turning to crime Has yet to be announced as of June 2025 Each spiral stage has a different reaction to Bukele's policies. It's first worth mentioning that the nation-state embodies stage blue principles. This means that societies with lots of red and purple (such as those in Africa) will result in weak governments with lots of corruption. For a stable government, a society that respects the golden rule (introduced at blue) is mandatory. El Salvador had enough people at stage red to make it one of the most dangerous nations on Earth. Individuals at stage blue LOVE Bukele. This stage's main value is self control, with all other values being downstream of it. Self control brings forth rule of law which is necessary for the orange value of individual freedom. It therefore seems to be the reverse of the Benjamin Franklin quote, meaning that ridding society of security results in neither freedom nor security. Those at orange and green question whether the end justifies the means. This is a fair point to make because Bukele has been undermining the country's civil liberties. Furthermore, the justice system has recently adopted the principle of "guilty until proven innocent". It also seems that Donald Trump has taken inspiration from Bukele, adopting the same principle for undocumented immigrants. In tier 2, you realize that El Salvador is under circumstances that are different from rich countries with lots of orange and some green such as the US, Canada, and Sweden. As noted in Why Nations Fail, Latin America developed institutions that were less conducive to modernization than the Anglican offshoots. This difference can be seen within the US between the north and south. There were various differences that led the north to climb higher on the spiral than the south. The northern economy was more dependent on capital vs land for the south. This resulted in better infrastructure The northern labor force consisted of free people who could change jobs if they so wished The north had higher literacy rates The south also prohibited educating slaves for fear that they would use it to challenge the legitimacy of slavery. The northern class system afforded better social mobility than the southern class system which offered almost none Southern chivalry, a stage red value, was common amongst the elite The factors that applied for the south also applied to Latin America. Even to the present day, most of these countries primarily export primary sector goods such as natural resources and crops. Meanwhile, the Anglican offshoots have economies that focus very little on agriculture or resource extraction and much more on industry and services. According to the authors of Why Nations Fail, Mexico has extractive institutions whereas the US has inclusive ones. Stage orange flourished better in Western Europe and the Anglican offshoots than in other parts of the world. And while Latin American countries have liberal values on paper, corruption is a major problem in that part of the world. This is not to mention the numerous coups, occasional civil wars, and organized crime that is endemic in Latin America. This is a long way of saying that the US has things which can be taken for granted that El Salvador did not. Civil liberty cannot exist without rule of law. This is also to say that Donald Trump is a detriment to the US. Donald Trump is in stage red Perhaps the reason why the US has done better than Latin America comes down to a respect for written and unwritten rules as per stage blue. Every president since Nixon has disclosed tax returns and sold assets (or placed then in a blind trust) prior to assuming office. But it was never a written rule, so Trump did neither of those things. And when it came to written rules, Trump pushed boundaries. After leaving office, he took classified documents to his Florida residence with the justification being that since he was president, it wasn't illegal for him to do so. In his second term, Trump has effectively restored the 'spoils system' that was ended after President Garfield got assassinated. This indicates that he values loyalty more than competency Trump has also been accused of instituting a "pay-to-play" administration Then you have Trump calling the 2020 election results illegitimate. The only explanation that I feel needs to be added is the reason why Trump did that. Simply put, whereas blue, orange, and green represent conventional morality and fear hypocrisy the most, red is preconventional and fears weakness the most. In other words, Trump's ego wouldn't let him admit defeat because defeat makes him a loser. Authoritarianism is not the way forward for the US. The US has a small bit of red but is mostly blue and orange with green emerging. A leader in stage red chipping away at civil liberties is going to be a setback. Corruption is not endemic in the US (at least not on the national level) like it was in El Salvador. Trump is also making corruption worse. Authoritarianism may be beneficial to a country with lots of survival values but is unnecessary for one with lots of self-expression values. In summary, there are times when in countries that are low on the spiral, well-managed authoritarianism can be beneficial in establishing order. However, it should be prevented in countries that do not have a lot of stage red or purple. The authoritarianism in the US is a result of orange and green, being deemed by the stage blue evangelicals as worldly and woke respectively.

What makes Bukele authoritarian is not the high incarceration rate (by that logic, the US is the second most authoritarian country in the world) but rather the fact that due process has taken a back seat. The presumption of innocence is the cornerstone of the liberal justice system. Yet in El Salvador, one can be arrested for so much as having a gang tattoo.

I honestly think that people at stage green could be making better arguments for why we should do away with capitalism. Most of the arguments can be resolved with unions, social spending, and regulation. The substack article below tackles something more fundamental. https://substack.com/home/post/p-163414870 This link on Substack is about the limits to growth. Basically, some experts at MIT have calculated that capitalism is going to lead to a global cataclysm if the economy does not shift from growing forever into something more sustainable. The main benefit of capitalism is that competition makes the best businesses win out. But this also is the weakness of capitalism as it makes the system unsustainable. Businesses are incentivized to keep on growing and growing. Systems thinking demonstrates that nothing can grow forever. I might also add that economic models typically assume that people are "rational actors". For anyone familiar with spiral dynamics, this is all stage orange. There is an underlying assumption that the best way to organize a society is via individualistic competition. Here is another substack article by Devon Price, a stage green trans man who wrote a very good article on the limitations of stage orange: https://drdevonprice.substack.com/p/can-you-be-transgender-autistic-and-pro-capitalism-eadff262db9d

I have a completely different perspective. Quite a lot of groups are tribal and closed off. The real reason for antisemitism is because when the Roman Empire became Christian, the Jews were the one group that did not convert. This made them into an other for everyone else.

Here's a group that advocates listening to people from the other side as a means of getting through to them https://www.joinsmart.org/ I call this a tier 2 way because what separates tier 2 from tier 1 is that it's not judgemental. Beige, purple, and red make up pre-conventional morality which is only focused on the self. Blue, orange, and green make up conventional morality which abides by the golden rule, but is judgemental. Yellow and turquoise represent post-conventional morality.

Honestly, he was probably never stage green. You can easily pretend to be part of a stage that you are not.

Probably quite a few cases are genuine, but this guy is definitely a grifter.

Nope, because that is a negative claim. To understand why burden of proof is on a positive claim and not a negative one, Betrand Russell suggested that there was a teapot too small for telescopes to see, orbiting between Earth and Mars. Because the teapot is too small to be spotted by telescopes, the teapot's existence is unfalsifiable.

Honestly though, I shouldn't use future tense because it is happening in the present. It is an economic philosophy called georgism. It's named after Henry George, an American who lived during the 19th century. He noticed that in spite of industrialization increasing productivity, there was still a lot of poverty. In some cases, it was worse, as he noted that poverty was worse in New York City, the richest city in the world back then, than in California. He wrote a book called Progress and Poverty which hypothesized that the cause was in land. Now according to economics, there are three factors of production - land, labor, and capital. Profit from the three is rent, wages, and interest respectively. Land is natural resources Labor is work done by people Capital is anything manmade, especially with the purpose of making goods and services Now most schools of economics do not make any distinction between land and capital since both can be owned. The neoclassical school considers all factors of production to be capital while the marxian school focuses on labor and its relationship with land/capital. Henry George wrote Progress and Poverty. In it, he blamed land as a factor of production for poverty. Unlike Marx, he did not view capital as contributing to the exploitation of the working class. Rather, he believed that both labor and capital were being undermined by land. The main cause of this being land speculation. Back during his day, the railroads were being built and land nearby increased in valuation. This meant that those who owned the land nearby could sell at a profit without contributing anything to society. Furthermore, especially in big cities, land speculation can constrain the supply of land, raising the cost of living. To fix this problem, George proposed the land value tax. This meant that the government was supposed to be a landlord, charging market rent for plots of land. This would discourage land speculation and encourage landowners to put plots of land to its most efficient use. The revenue was also to be distributed as a universal basic income. In the late 19th century, the idea of Henry George led to the single tax movement and became very popular. In fact, he ran for NYC mayor twice. Upon his passing in 1897, the funeral of Henry George had over 100,000 attendees, making it one of the largest funerals in the US at the time. However, the single tax movement fell into obscurity by the mid 20th century.

I think you make a good point about capitalism. For most of recorded history, monarchism was a ubiquitous form of government. But eventually, monarchism fell by the wayside as people moved up the spiral. Indeed, it can be thought of like a spectrum. As for an ideal tax policy, I think the best way is to do a land value tax (LVT). It's similar to a property tax except it only taxes the plot of land. This is an important distinction because otherwise, development would just occur wherever the property tax is lower. The LVT would have many benefits but the relevant one is that land cannot be brought out of the country, unlike labor and capital. Severance tax is also good and it may discourage excessive extraction at sufficiently high amounts. Good point! Certain political systems require society to be at a minimum of a certain level of consciousness. For example, democracy naturally develops at stage orange, but it requires a society at least at stage blue because democracy breaks down when people don't follow the golden rule. The environment can easily be saved with a sufficiently high carbon tax and severance tax, but that would make goods more expensive, which would piss off everyone in the lower stages. I suppose with a good enough PR campaign, all of the liberals could be brought onboard. But we all know that the right will make this a culture war issue.

Anger comes from the ego. Moving up the spiral makes your ego less quick to be defensive. People at red are quick to anger should they not get anything they want. Nothing is their fault and their whole lives revolve around being at the top of the social hierarchy. At blue, the ego loves a structured environment. What wounds the stage blue ego is not criticism of the self but rather criticism of the structure. The stage blue ego cannot stand to see people break social rules. One of these things is challenging authority. In addition to the ego is the id. If you don't move through a stage very thoroughly, desires from that stage can take the form of the id. For example, children can have imaginary friends and be afraid of the dark, well after moving past purple.

This is a low conscious way of viewing the world. Stage red favors retribution as a means of justice. Stage blue looks down on revenge, but still favors punishment. That teacher was no higher than stage blue. I don't sympathize with this teacher at all, no more than the white teacher who was screaming at her (entirely black) class for apparently failing. She said, "GET AN EDUCATION. BUT YOU WANT TO BE A BROKE ASS N***ER WHO IS GONNA GET SHOT". She didn't choke anyone but she said the n-word with a hard-R.

That might be a good place to start. Obviously, the surest way to help the environment is decarbonization which may involve regulation, carbon tax, or cap and trade. In regards to resource overconsumption, I'm not sure what can be done other than trying to help our stage orange societies move up to green and realize that there's more to life than materialism. As for how to do that, the least we can do is to vote for candidates who will bring us closer (or at least not further) to that goal. Maybe it would also be worthwhile to volunteer for environmentalists groups and to make donations. What I described above may not happen within a realistic timeframe, so it may be worthwhile also to learn how to survive a future with a damaged environment.

Yeah, rape only matters when the perpetrator is a migrant.

NGL, each character from the Boondocks represents a specific stage.

I think declining fertilit rates are a sign that a country's society is heading into orange. You see, that is the stage at which women start to think about career prospects as opposed to just childbearing. Surely some couples will still have children but others will not have any, dragging down the fertility rate. You will notice that for the US, the baby boom ended with the second wave of feminism.

Because if there is strong evidence that porn is harmful, that will presumably lead to more government regulation. This is what happened with tobacco.

I definitely agree. None of us know what a stage turquoise society would look like or how it would interact with a post scarcity society.

I was just thinking of this lovely gem from Isaac Arthur a bit ago In this video, he speculates on what will we do with our lives once AI can do everything for us and technology can give us everything such as perfect bodies and lots of material wealth. The question is what purpose will there be in life Isaac Arthur is asking this from a stage orange perspective. This is important because stage orange eliminates the sense of belonging that previous stages held and makes achievement the main purpose in life. On a sufficiently long timescale, achievement as a purpose becomes unsustainable because a post scarcity society will have achieved everything. This got me thinking that higher stages would operate better on stages above orange. Green or even the tier II stages would be better suited for a post scarcity society, especially one in which people can live forever. Stages below orange abide by survival values which would be of no use to a post scarcity society. Meanwhile, stage orange is of the mindset that struggle is necessary for living a fulfilling life.

Because I don't want arbitrary laws and I want to preserve personal freedoms. When the burden of proof gets shifted, bad things happen. "These people must be witches because they couldn't prove that they weren't" "Communists must have infiltrated out government. There is no proof to the contrary" "We should keep an eye on those Muslims. Just to be safe, of course" "Iraq must have weapons of mass destruction because there's no proof that there isn't" Shifting the burden of proof also leads to conspiratorial thinking. You can't understand how a tragedy happened, so there must have been a conspiracy behind it. No thought is given to how plausible the conspiracy is.

Sure it does. Most legal systems around the world make use of burden of proof.