After Such Knowledge

This was written before I found fault with the Mad Arab with his Irish up and the Chinese Nostradamus, but it still holds up. Applebaum’s Autocracy, Inc. is not just a critique of global neoliberalism; it’s a diagnosis of what neoliberalism unintentionally cleared the runway for. In other words, autocracy in her telling is not the opposite of neoliberal globalization—it’s the mutation that grows inside its operating environment. Autocracy is not merely a reaction to neoliberalism, but what came in the wake of it. 🌐 1. Neoliberalism created the infrastructure Autocracy, Inc. exploits. Applebaum describes a world where authoritarian actors collaborate across borders through: - offshore finance   - private wealth management   - elite transnational networks   - deregulated information channels   - weak or captured institutions   All of these are products of the neoliberal order, not its negation. Neoliberalism’s core commitments—capital mob...

Not only is it possible to draw a connection between neoliberalism and foreign policy, the two have been structurally intertwined for decades. But the connection is often misunderstood because neoliberalism is usually framed as a domestic economic program rather than an international ordering principle. 🌐 How Neoliberalism Connects to Foreign Policy. 1. Neoliberalism as an International Ordering Project:Neoliberalism isn’t just about domestic deregulation or privatization. It also proposes a global system in which markets set the terms of international relations, not states.  States enforce and protect cross‑border private ordering (capital flows, property rights, trade regimes).  Globalization is treated as a humanitarian project—the idea that expanding capitalism lifts people out of poverty.   This is the core of what David Singh Grewal calls the geopolitics of neoliberalism.” 2. Foreign Policy as the Vehicle for Neoliberal Expansion: U.S. foreign policy, in parti...

When Usury Became Legal Under Paul Volcker, the Imperium Terminans Civilizationem Slouched Toward Bethlehem, Etc. True it is, interest‑bearing finance is a driver of the crisis, but it is not right that it is the root. Usury is one strand in a larger, interlocking failure of the modern economic order. The evidence we have — historical, religious, and economic — supports that high‑interest debt can destabilize societies, but it does not support the idea that interest alone explains our present breakdown. What monocausality does capture is the moral and thermodynamic dimension: debt claims that grow faster than the real economy eventually detach from productive reality. That’s where the “prophet‑engineer” voice is strongest. Across traditions and analyses, usury is consistently associated with several destabilizing effects: - Debt traps and immiseration — High‑interest lending creates cycles where borrowers cannot escape compounding obligations, reducing consumption and mobility.  - ...

  How seriously should you take the theory about Freemasons, Jesuits, and “Sabbatean Frankists” being behind the chaos? You can take the underlying anxieties and structural questions seriously, but you should not take the literal claim that Freemasons, Jesuits, or “Sabbatean Frankists” are orchestrating global chaos as a coordinated cabal. That part collapses under historical scrutiny, organizational reality, and the way complex systems actually fail. What is worth taking seriously is the pattern that such theories are trying to name: the sense that institutions are decaying, elites are unaccountable, and historical forces feel choreographed even when no one is in control. The danger is mistaking systemic failure modes for secret puppeteers. Why doesn’t the literal conspiracy framework hold? These groups—Freemasons, Jesuits, Frankists—have long been used as symbolic placeholders for anxieties about hidden power. But several structural problems appear when treated as real-world comm...