Good guiding policies are not goals or visions or images of desirable end states. Rather, they define a method of grappling with the situation and ruling out a vast array of possible actions.

This law states that anything which aims to be a ‘regulator’ of a system needs to have at least as much variety as that system. In order to understand what that means, we need to get a short way into the theory of cybernetics. But for the meantime, for a sort of high-level metaphorical understanding, * think about how you steer various kinds of vehicles. A train can really only go forwards and backwards, so it only needs a single handle. A car can make turns, so its control system requires a steering wheel to represent the added dimension. And an aeroplane needs a joystick rather than a steering wheel, because it can make two kinds of turns. Let’s see where cyberneticians took this idea.

Which to be honest, is often all you really need in these contexts. The whole damn thing* in cybernetics is made of newspapers and high-level analogies. This isn’t computer science, where you can point to the states, bits and circuits on a piece of silicon.

Either a nation faces its uncomfortable truths, or it is overwhelmed by them; for there is a prophetic consequence in the perpetuation of lies, just as there is an unavoidable fate for all those who refuse to see.

There are some things on earth that are stronger than death. One of these is the eternal human quest for justice; a people cannot live without it, and in due course they will be prepared to die to make it possible for their children.

Fables are made of this.

1. Engineers vs. Lawyers

Looking at these two countries, I came to realize the inadequacy of twentieth-century labels like capitalist, socialist, or, worst of all, neoliberal. They are no longer up to the task of helping us understand the world, if they ever were. Capitalist America intrudes upon the free market with a dense program of regulation and taxation while providing substantial (albeit imperfect) redistributive policies. Socialist China detains union organizers, levies light taxes, and provides a threadbare social safety net. The greatest trick that the Communist Party ever pulled off is masquerading as leftist.

The fundamental tenet of the engineering state is to look at people as aggregates, not individuals. The Communist Party envisions itself as a grand master, coordinating unified actions across state and society, able to launch strategic maneuvers beyond the comprehension of its citizens. Its philosophy is to maximize the discretion of the state and minimize the rights of individuals.