In the past year or so, we’re seeing a re-branding or transformation of NRx…less Nietzsche’s ubermensch as embodied by John Galt (and the Californian ideology) and more like Oswald Spengler or Pat Buchanan. Maybe the old, pre-2014 NRx may have put too much emphasis on capitalism, individualism, and technology and not enough on culture and identity politics, as man lives not within his mind but as part of a social order and culture. Maybe this is a step in the right direction to broadening the appeal of NRx…idk, I kinda like the ubermensch version of NRx more.

Brett Stevens of Amerika.org writes:

Libertarianism tends to collapse under this contradiction. They know liberalism is bad, but want to follow its same method: “Everyone is free and equal, and stuff magically works out through Social Darwinism even though most people are idiots!”

And from Collectivism vs. Capitalism:

By the same token, I find the reliance on absolute capitalism as a motivator to be unworkable, which is why I am not a libertarian. Libertarianism always shifts leftward because it is based in the egalitarian idea of “Everyone do what they want, and the best will magically rise to the top.” This is far from true, as any look at the most popular movies, music, art and novels will show us. Instead, pure capitalist societies are a race to the lowest common denominator and, like socialism, they replace the idea of a purpose to the civilization with the idea of it facilitating individuals. This is also bad

A common criticism of Hollywood is it produces mass-consumption dreck, and maybe there is some truth to that, but these movies are also very profitable, allowing studios to fund potentially unprofitable movies for a more sophisticated palate.

Capitalism is the opposite of egalitarianism, if we go by the Wikipedia definition of egalitarianism:

….is a trend of thought that favors equality for all people. Egalitarian doctrines maintain that all humans are equal in fundamental worth or social status, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Is Bill Gates or Elon Musk of the same worth or social status as a laborer? I think not, as the former produces more economic output indirectly than the latter and thus is rewarded with more money and prestige. Maybe culturally we’re seeing regression, but the arrow of technology always points forward, thanks in part to capitalism, which creates economic incentives to innovate.

Maybe there is confusion over libtertarianism and, related, classical liberalism. Classical liberalism is

not the same as welfare liberalism, although they are often merged the umbrella of ‘liberalism’ or ‘progressivism’.

Although the founding fathers may be in the same vein as Lockean ‘progressives’ – but, as I explain, today’s welfare/SJW liberals bear no resemblance to the Lockean progressives of yesteryear, and the founding fathers were were critical of democracy, too. The point is, I’m seeking a middle ground between the House of Stuart, The Constitutional Convention, and the Pre-WW2 America – but we keep the technology and rollback the liberalism.

Attacks on libertarians may amount to a strawman, mainly because there are few true anarcho-capitalists (David D. Friedman is one of the few); instead, partial libertarianism tends to dominate, which combines free market capitalism with some sort of watchman/guardian state. ‘Free and equal’ means equal opportunity within the rule of law, where each man can compete to the best of his abilities. It doesn’t have to mean equal outcomes or that all men are created equal.

And It’s true most people are ill-informed of the issues and will vote to enlarge the welfare state for personal gain at the expense of the productive, which is why democracy is so harmful.

This is why a theology-based approach generally focuses, as Plato did, on the difference between good and bad. His moral statement — “good to the good, and bad to the bad” — is roughly paralleled in Christ and anticipated in the Hindu scriptures.

America was conceived through Christian doctrine – that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. I, and maybe some other libertarians and reactionaries, reject the idea that all men are created equal; genes make some better than others upon conception, and this is manifested in real life through the differences of socioeconomic outcomes between individuals and groups – Social Darwinism.

I don’t see how a ‘theology-based’ approach is congruent with the HBD and economic positions of NRx. That doesn’t mean Christianity can’t exist in an NRx-state, but it should probably not be the guiding principle. The delineation between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ may be genetic. With recent advances in biotechnology, scientists are finding genetic correlations for virtually all behaviors and attributes, whether it’s criminality, obesity, alcoholism, or intelligence.

From Citadel Foundations, Is Technological Responsibility Possible?

I’d propose the answer is not as easy. It seems self-evident that the death of entropic Liberalism will end in catastrophe rather than transition. There are ethnic, religious, military, and economic factors which ensure this on a global scale, which both enhance dangers and spread them over wide areas.

Some on the ‘alt right’ associate technology with liberalism, arguing that the convergence of technology and capitalism may be disrupting the old social order, making society more liberal, godless, and materialistic (Materialism).. But, on the same token, liberals often blame technology for displacing jobs and creating wealth inequality.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1907-1912, materialism, defined as “a philosophical system which regards matter as the only reality in the world [...] denies the existence of God and the soul”.[19] Materialism, in this view, therefore becomes incompatible with most world religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. In such a context one can conflate materialism with atheism.[

You can see how this would conflict with with the more theocratic variants of The Right, who tend to be critical of laissez faire capitalism…

But I believe optimism over technology is compatible with NRx.

Reactionary modernism is an example of how reactionary ideals and modernity can coexist:

Reactionary modernism is a term first coined by Jeffrey Herf in his 1984 book, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich, to describe the mixture of “great enthusiasm for modern technology with a rejection of the Enlightenment and the values and institutions of liberal democracy” which was characteristic of the German Conservative Revolutionary movement and National Socialism.[1] In turn, this ideology of reactionary modernism was closely linked to the original, positive view of the Sonderweg, which saw Germany as the great Central European power neither of the West nor of the East.

From Wikipedia on Luddites:

The movement can be seen as part of a rising tide of English working-class discontent in the late 18th and early 19th century. An agricultural variant of Luddism, centering on the breaking of threshing machines, occurred during the widespread Swing Riots of 1830 in southern and eastern England.[7] [b] The Luddites’ goal was to gain a better bargaining position with their employers. They were not afraid of technology per se, but were “labour strategists”.[11]

The origin of the left-right divide dates back to King Louis XVI :

In the 1790s, King Louis XVI was fighting with the Legislative Assembly. Like our modern-day House of Representatives, seating in the French Legislative Assembly was arranged based on political affiliation. The King sat in front of the assembly. To his right sat the conservative Feuillants who backed the king and believed in a constitutional monarchy. To his left sat the liberal Girondists and radical Jacobins who wanted to install a completely democratic government.

The left has always been about the tyranny of the proletariat, whether it’s the October Revolution, the French Revolution, or anti-industrialization. The attack on technology is part and parcel revolutionary of nature, generally motivated by leftist redistributionist/collectivist ideals of the worker or proletarian rising against some sort of oppressive masterclass. And maybe some of this populist revolutionist thought may have bled into NRx.

But modern liberalism – as characterized by the misandry bubble, the SJW movement, and leftist indoctrination in the schools and colleges – is a better target than technology and capitalism. There are enough enemies on the left already.

Some also argue that technology and capitalism is the antecedent of radical liberalism or that the two are always linked, but as I show in the article about reactionary modernism – as well historical examples such as the Flavian dynasty of the Roman Empire, and 20th century America (specifically, before the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment) – it doesn’t have to be that way. The Flavian dynasty, which was slightly more ‘moderate’ than Julio-Claudian dynasty that preceded it, helped restore stability Rome after turmoil following the suicide of Nero. Even the Roman Republic forbade women from voting.

Citadel continues,

What does the aftermath look like? Unknown. It seems that technology could fall prey to the survival instinct. Can factories be maintained when civil order unravels?

But, as Steven Pinker showed in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature the historical trend has been towards less violence, possibly due to technology and trade acting as an economic incentive against violence.

A recent paper The Industrial Peace: Schumpeter, Conflict, and the Investment-War Tradeoff agrees:

Citadel continues,

Can companies justify continuing the production of goods to populations in no position to buy them?

This argument comes up a lot. Capitalism makes things cheaper and better, examples being TVs and computers. Because inflation is so low in America, it’s easy for people to afford stuff, even if real wages are stagnant. If corporations observe consumption is falling, they may respond by lowering prices, which lowers profits, and eventually GDP falls and the result is a recession. But corporate profits are at record highs. Consumer spending is at record highs in spite of record high wealth inequality:

Even if the growth rate of US consumer spending is declining, foreign consumption is enough to compensate.

Somehow capitalism keeps working, despite the critics.

4) All technologies should be passed through a moral lens. Just because we can do something, does not mean we should, and rather than viewing morality as the Modernist views it, a series of values judgments based on our subjective feelings, we should see it as a rigid guide with profound consequences for violation, not just for individuals, but societies at large.

Capitalism may be the best ‘moral lens’. Technologies that are unpopular die in the marketplace. And who should make these decisions as to which technology is moral or not? Consequentialist applications of technology can indirectly save and improve lives. For example, such as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which in the long-run indirectly created peace and saved US lives by abruptly forcing the surrender of Japan.