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Comment by antattack | Hacker News Reader

From the blog:

"Three policy proposals:

    A 500% tax on advertising. It’s a zero sum game with no benefit to society. If you are paying for eyeballs, you pay a 500% tax. Force companies with these trash addictive business models to find a way to work for the average person, not pimp them out.
    1% tax on the full amount of every trade. Fuck off worthless HFT mega brain drain. Fuck off short termism in markets.
    Separation of church and state. And that includes Harvard, Yale, and all the others. No funding, no loans, no Title IX BS. Separate!"

I'm curious what event or thought process made #3 appear on the list.

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I think he's using "church" to mean any institution that's not the state itself. Which is a quite a stretch.

Less likely, it could be some weird comparison of the Ivy League to some special priesthood that gets you extra privileges.

Crunchier still, it might be an attack on secret societies like Skull & Bones.

Whatever it is, it seems very confused.

Most of the Ivy League, in addition to being the "Ivy League", were all founded as Christian institutions and have deep ties in their upper hierarchy due to theologians within the University having significant influence on their board of governors.

I'm also curious, what has Title IX got to do with the rest? It has nothing to do with churches, does it?

I assume he is a Men's Rights activist.

Post author is ranting incoherently, but Title IX is a legit minefield; in particular, its implementations at universities have been pretty problematic. The root of the cause is a notorious "Dear Colleague" letter that came out in the early Obama administration. Due process around sexual misconduct allegations suffered greatly as a direct result of what it asked universities to do.

Aside from individual opportunities for unfairness, it turns out when schools have policies that can get you fired or expelled without a chance to defend yourself (let alone have an attorney) then this gives rise to abuses of the system — many of the same kinds of abuses with similar unfortunate racial impacts that we see when off-campus justice systems are abused.

Ironically, many of the successful lawsuits about unfair expulsions are themselves Title IX lawsuits.

For some introductory coverage see also: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/title-ix-sexual-misconduct-on-c...

Wokeism shows all the hallmarks of a cult or organized religion, and it's being spearheaded by academia:

- Strict adherence to dogmas (_eg all whites are racist, not dating trans is transphobic_), under penalty of excommunication (_banished from academia and/or society_).

- Dissent is not permitted (_if you deny it, you must be racist/bigot/transphobic_).

- Cult of the leader as individual (_eg BLM founders, the Squad_), while at the same time arguing the group is paramount.

- Sacraments (eg _struggle sessions, street performances_).

- Colleges as main places of cult. Pilgrimages to holy places (_eg police brutality incidents_).

- Saints (eg _George Floyd_).

Academia is funded by the state via:

- Grants to projects not necessarily resulting in any benefit, apparent or not, to society. Projects lead by professors not teaching.

- Loans to students, knowing well many won't be able to pay in years, if at all, which end in the pockets of colleges.

He is referring to Moldbug's idea of the Cathedral. I'd link to some texts but I don't want to get banned so you'll have to search for yourself.

I looked into it. Moldburg rants against 'established universities and established press', does not assign importance to their faith affiliation so that's not it. If I had to guess #3 is probably tied with #1 and him not being in the 'circle of trust'.

Personally, and I have no idea how to implement this, I think any charity that attempts to influence the political opinion of its members should lose their charitable status.

In the UK, Eton, the most expensive, exclusive public school in the country, is a charity, largely because it was set up to educate the poor, something it hasn't done, modulo a few bursaries, for some time. That needs to end.

Perhaps it's a reference to the Yale and Harvard Divinity Schools? Federal school funding paying for things like this, then that leads to... anti-sexual discrimination rules being enforced?

I am now very interested in what event happened as well.

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