Drawing from "The Sovereign Individual," the argument is that welfare states function like companies that serve their employees (politicians, bureaucrats) rather than customers (citizens). They sustain power by creating a dependent underclass for votes and taxing a productive elite for capital.
Tom Bilyeu concludes from extensive experience that 98% of adults are behaviorally "baked" by their late teens. Their core character is fixed, making radical, self-driven transformation exceedingly rare and challenging the efficacy of most external intervention efforts.
AI is not inherently centralizing or decentralizing; it's both. It can create the ultimate surveillance state for elite control while also empowering solo entrepreneurs to build multi-million dollar businesses with minimal capital, creating a significant economic paradox.
The ruling "laptop class" isn't composed of the most intelligent people (150+ IQ) but rather the "midwits" (around 110 IQ) who excel at social games and navigating bureaucracy. This challenges the meritocratic assumption that pure intellect dictates power and leadership.
Ted Kaczynski's manifesto argued that technology robs humans of the "power process"—the innate need to overcome challenges. This creates a void that leads to societal pathologies like depression and directionless activism as people seek surrogates for lost meaning.
A powerful personal AI wouldn't be an oracle but an "argument simulator." It would pit AI agents from different models, countries, and ideological leanings against each other on a given topic, allowing the user to witness a comprehensive debate and judge the truth for themselves.
Populist movements are often driven by a collective intuition that the system is rigged, not by complex intellectual analysis. People can viscerally "feel" when they're being taken advantage of, demonstrating a form of societal awareness that can precede formal critique from the educated class.
Instead of relying on slow government action, society can self-regulate harmful technologies by developing cultural "antibodies." Just as social pressure made smoking and junk food undesirable, a similar collective shift can create costs for entrepreneurs building socially negative products like sex bots.