Sunday, October 3, 2021

Crypto-Locks vs. Home Forge

Made fun of Moldbug enough. Let's mock his detractors now.

Allegedly you can make a gun in your basement, so locking the official army's weapons is useless.

This isn't relevant even if it's true. Nobody is going to make their own gun if the government is handing out free guns, locked or not.

Even if they were willing to make their own guns, in violation of Gresham's Law, the fact of putting some resistance in the way would be helpful, most likely helpful enough to justify the lock costs. Also if someone is making guns in their basements en-masse, it's hard to keep quiet about it. Mass action is not stealthy.

Finally, it's not true. Yes, you can make a hand cannon in your basement. Absolutely. You cannot make an assault rifle in your basement. Even the simple, reliable AK-47 has over six dozen individual parts. Moldbug commentators were suggesting that folk who can't even assemble Ikea furniture are going to make these things? The 80% lower is a phenomenon for a reason: it gets you out of making the gun, except for one part. The AR-15 doesn't have hundreds of parts or anything, but it's very much not something you do yourself.


If Moldbug got his crypto-locks, only genius rebels would even manage to have bolt-action rifles. Not to mention all the trucks and APCs and mortars and artillery...


P.S. Of course Moldbug overlooked the fact that Americoids can't rebel in the first place. There's already a government app for that.

4 comments:

Arqiduka said...

IIRC the idea wasn't to prevent leaderless rebellion, bur dissuade factions within the elite from fomenting rebellion. When lead by the able, any people is quite capable of rebellion.

Alrenous said...

Nowhere in my post did I mention leaderless rebellions. I should not have to mention this.
ctrl-f "resistance" to see where I already addressed that point

Arqiduka said...

Hm, so how to interpret your PS? That even when provided with elite leadership americanoids won't rebel? If so, disagree, there's no people so inveterate that they won't be led to fight.

Alrenous said...

It doesn't need to be interpreted. It says what it says: Americoids won't rebel. There's any number of possible reasons for this. Pick your favourite.