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Ah, well, never the less
At least he's not suffering I suppose. His substack is cognitohazardously compelling reading. Reading "ponzi" as "capitalist" in his Titan implosion conspiracy article makes it surprisingly lucid. Might fuck around and become a submarine truther.
He seems weirdly hyper fixated on crypto and Ponzi schemes.
I don’t think he is using “ponzi scheme” as an analogy here. I think he literally thinks gross inequality is a product of Ponzi schemes.
Like, he views this as somehow a hack in the game rather than being literally what the game is.
And he views the elites as a shadowy cabal rather than an economic class with aligned self-interest.
I like a good conspiracy theory and sure there are indeed some cabals with outsized power and even some shady Epstein-Clinton shit and the weird cult of creepy transfuturist investment banker / child sex ring that built around MIT etc there’s a lot of wild shit that I think is basically true but I think it betrays him as fundamentally believing that the game should be fair if only we make everyone play by the rules rather than him believing the rules of the game themselves need to change.
Which makes him a lib who went down the trueanon rabbit hole without ever coming to understand the deep state and elite power structures as a product of class loyalty more than anything else.
More or less agree. Even a rudimentary understanding of Marxism should provide the "missing puzzle piece" for why everything is fucked and why every enterprise is engaged in a race to the bottom.
I will say I noticed that even through his lens, he recognises the inherent contradiction in operating economies and societies on infinite growth models in a finite planet. This obviously ties in to his ponzi scheme fixation as you noted.
I noticed he mentioned in one article being 'in IT' or similar. From my own techbro exposure to a highly venture capital involved environment, startups and shit like that, I can only speak for my own experience but it became literally unbearably obvious that I was spending my time building vaporware for sales and investor pitches rather than engineering actual solutions. Without a more comprehensive understanding of capitalism and economics, the Ponzi Scam would look like a pretty good 'best fit' model for understanding the fraudulent machinations of capitalists and capitalism more broadly. So yeah, I agree he does likely mean it in a literal sense, but from the perspective of a reformist liberal this would be a coherent (even accurate?) way of understanding why things are unraveling the way they are in late stage capitalism.
He does seem at one point at least to identify the entirety of capitalism as having effectively become a ponzi scheme. So his criticisms do seem to focus at times on the correct target, so to speak.
Also worth noting that he calls for revolution and an overthrow of the US government, to be replaced with "a government that serves all." I interpreted this in context as being seen as necessary at least in part to decouple capitalism and its interests from the system of government. This sticks out to me (along with more overt uses of the label 'fascism') as it reminds me of definitions I have read that identify the entanglement of capital and state as being critical parts of fascism. Some sort of revolutionary reformist type vibe.
It's just a shame he lacked the tools Marxism would have provided to not get so caught in the weeds and spooks. He was right there in the belly of the beast and ready to die for his cause.
The crypto fixation on the other hand, sheit. I've already written enough on this guy for now. RIP to a courageous poster regardless.