Post on 14-Jan-2017
YOU ARE NOT A LOTTERY TICKET.HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD, STARTING NOW.
Social Change
What life do you want to live?
What world do you want to live in?
YOU ARE NOT A LOTTERY TICKETTHESE ARE MEANINGLESS
YOU ARE NOT A LOTTERY TICKETTHESE ARE MEANINGLESS
YOU ARE NOT A LOTTERY TICKETTHESE ARE MEANINGLESS
YOU ARE NOT A LOTTERY TICKETTHESE ARE MEANINGLESS
YOU ARE NOT A LOTTERY TICKETTHESE ARE MEANINGLESS
You Are Not a Lottery Ticket
Individuals are not determined by statistics. Life is not left up to chance.
You don’t need to be lean, you don’t need to pivot.
Thiel on startups. Us on life.
You Are Not a Lottery Ticket
Definite Indefinite
Optimist United States, 1950-1970
United States, present
Pessimist China, present Europe, present
You Are Not a Lottery Ticket
Definite Indefinite
Optimist Hegel, Marx Nozick, Rawls
Pessimist Plato, Aristotle Epicurus, Lucretius
SOCIETIES ARE NOT CIVILIZATION VINSTITUTIONS MATTER, BUT ARE NOT DESIGNED
Societies Are Not Civ V
Your life is not up to chance, it takes design. BUT…
Societies Are Not Civ V
Your life is not up to chance, it takes design. BUT…
This applies to all people in an order.
Societies Are Not Civ VIndividual lives are complex to plan for outsiders.
Societies are aggregates of individual lives.
Ridiculously difficult to plan.
Spontaneous Order vs Rational Constructivist Order
Societies Are Not Civ V
Libertarians get a bad rap for leading people to believe that we are opposed to planning.
The more the state plans, the more difficult planning becomes for the individual. — Hayek
I don’t want to do nothing. There’s plenty to do.
The question I ponder is who plans for whom? I don’t want to do nothing. There’s plenty to do.
The question I ponder is who plans for whom? I don’t want to do nothing. There’s plenty to do.
Do I plan for myself? Or leave it to you?
The question I ponder is who plans for whom? I don’t want to do nothing. There’s plenty to do.
Do I plan for myself? Or leave it to you?
I want plans by the many, not by the few.
Where Will You Live? 4 Options For Your Society
Society Individuals
Spontaneous Order
Constructivist Order
Definite Any technological revolution
Space-race USSR Modern-day
China
Indefinite Great Stagnation United States
European Welfare Nightmare
Where Will You Live? 4 Options For Your Society
Society Individuals
Spontaneous Order
Constructivist Order
Definite Any technological revolution
Space-race USSR Modern-day
China
Indefinite Great Stagnation United States
European Welfare Nightmare
How Will You Live? 4 Options For Your Life
SocietyYou
Spontaneous Order
Constructivist Order
DefiniteCapitalist,
Entrepreneur, Innovator, Passionate
Professional
High-ranking Government
Official, Smashed-Dreams Peon
IndefiniteListless Worker
(See: Office Space)
Low-ranking Government
Drone, Welfarist
Where Are We Today?
Society Individuals
Spontaneous Order
Constructivist Order
Definite Any technological revolution
Space-race USSR Modern-day
China
Indefinite Great Stagnation United States
European Welfare Nightmare
How Did We Get Here?How did we go from the Industrial Revolution and the Tech Boom to the Great Stagnation and Office Space?
Blame our parents?
You Are Not a Lottery Ticket
The strange history of the Baby Boom produced a generation of indefinite optimists so used to effortless progress that they feel
entitled to it. Whether you were born in 1945 or 1950 or 1955, things got better every year for the first 18 years of your life, and it had
nothing to do with you. Technological advance seemed to accelerate automatically, so the Boomers grew up with great expectations but
few specific plans for how to fulfill them. Since tracked careers worked for them, they can’t imagine that they won’t work for their
kids, too.
Peter Thiel, Zero to One
How Did We Get Here?How did we go from the Industrial Revolution and the Tech Boom to the Great Stagnation and Office Space?
Blame our parents? Law/Legislation?
How Did We Get Here?How did we go from the Industrial Revolution and the Tech Boom to the Great Stagnation and Office Space?
Blame our parents? Law/Legislation? Culture?
The Biggest Threat to Liberty: Compulsory State Schooling
Recall the society matrix. Where do schools fall?
Where Will You Live? 4 Options For Your Society
Society Individuals
Spontaneous Order
Constructivist Order
Definite Any technological revolution
Space-race USSR Modern-day
China
Indefinite Great Stagnation United States
European Welfare Nightmare
Where Will You Live? 4 Options For Your Society
Society Individuals
Spontaneous Order
Constructivist Order
Definite Any technological revolution
Space-race USSR Modern-day
China
Indefinite Great Stagnation United States
European Welfare Nightmare
Where Will You Live? 4 Options For Your Society
Society Individuals
Spontaneous Order
Constructivist Order
Definite Any technological revolution
Space-race USSR Modern-day
China
Indefinite Great Stagnation United States
European Welfare Nightmare
The Biggest Threat to Liberty: Compulsory State Schooling
Compulsory state schooling (“public education”) is the product of an entirely constructivist mindset.
The Scientific Management of Everything and Prussian Collectivism
Can we compare 1850 to 1920? To 2015?
Indefinite schooling.
The Biggest Threat to Liberty: Compulsory State Schooling
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Address to the German Nation, 1807: “By means of the new education we want to mould the Germans into a corporate body, which shall be stimulated and animated in all its individual members by the same interest. … If you want to influence [the student] at all, you must do more than merely talk to him; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than you wish him to will.”
The Biggest Threat to Liberty: Compulsory State Schooling
Fully schooled society.
School-creep.
School vs. education
E.g., Pre- and Post- government schooling MA.
Three Ways Out
Cultural / Legal / Individual
Which do you control?
Three Ways Out
Cultural / Legal / Individual
Which do you control?
Living Free
Now: Living with Definite Optimism for a Spontaneous Order.
Living With Definite Optimism
What life do you want for yourself? What future do you want to build? Do you have to deschool yourself?
How can you most efficiently get there?
Go and build it.
Living Free
Now: Living with Definite Optimism for a Spontaneous Order.
The future: Raising Free People.
Raising Free People
Home education
Sudbury schools
Private schools
Thousands of other options crowded out by the government monopoly on schooling.
Further ReadingZero to One, Peter Thiel (w/ Blake Masters), 2014.
“Cosmos and Taxis,” FA Hayek, from Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Vol. 1, 1973.
Weapons of Mass Instruction, John Taylor Gatto, 2009.
The Underground History of American Education, John Taylor Gatto, 2003.
Free to Learn, Peter Gray, 2013.
Contact Me
www.discoverpraxis.com
www.zakslayback.com
@zslayback
zachary@discoverpraxis.com