Moloch & Our Systems Of Bad Incentives

How bad system design incentivizes destructive behavior and creates cultural decline.

The God Moloch.

Set Your Pulse: Take a breath. Turn your attention to your body and release any tension. Breathe slowly into the area of your heart for 60 seconds, focusing on feeling a sense of ease. Stay connected to your body as you read. Click here to learn why we suggest this.

---

The debate over whether our world is driven by inherently bad individuals or flawed systems is ongoing. Many people hastily label those in power as "evil," hoping to simplify complex issues and find easy solutions.

However, this perspective is neither helpful nor accurate. Our world is intricate, and to create a better one, we must first understand its complexities.

One of the primary functions of Collective Evolution is to re-examine the design of our society, ultimately dispelling the illusions about how things work.

As I wrote in "So You Defeat The Great Reset: Then What?":

Breaking The Illusion is coming to terms with the fact that our existing systems are not what we think they are. That what we believe about them is typically gleaned from years of propaganda and stories that act as wool pulled over our eyes so we cannot see or question the truth of what they are.

We learn The Illusion from family, friends, society, traditions, school, media and government. It is the world we are told to accept. "This is how it works and how it is." It's true that The Illusion is just a story, but it's a powerful one that permeates our consciousness and our body. It's built right into our nervous systems.

The good news is humans made up our society based on the culture and worldview we hold and uphold. To change it, we have to crack open that illusion to start wondering what else there can be.

Examples: The story that mainstream media will tell you the truth is part of The Illusion. Believing that the government is operating in your best interest is part of The Illusion. Believing that pharmaceutical companies put safe products over their own profits is part of The Illusion. You get the picture. People believe in a society that doesn't do what it says it does.

When we break the illusion, it doesn’t mean that those doing bad things are evil. Some may act out of trauma, selfishness, or disconnection (sociopathic behavior), but our system also incentivizes these behaviors by design.

The God of Moloch & Bad Incentives

The ancient god Moloch, according to the Hebrew Bible, rewards child sacrifice with victories in warfare.

Scott Alexander has written about Moloch as a metaphor for bad incentives and negative sum games within societal systems. Essentially, the ‘demon’ Moloch produces systems where participants are encouraged to engage with bad incentives, and thus sacrifice other values (ethical, environmental, social etc) to win the game within the system – in this case of life.

Usually, this means acting against their long-term interests in order to achieve short-term benefits. The collective outcome is worse than if participants cooperated or acted ethically.

In my essay on "The Race to the Bottom Trap," I discussed how such systems reward destructive behavior, forcing everyone to play or lose the game.

For instance, if one country develops heavy weapons, others must follow suit to avoid losing in warfare. They may not want to create weapons, but they do so to keep up. This is evident throughout human history and is exacerbated by systems that incentivize sociopathic leaders with a lust for power.

Politicians are incentivized in the short term to be elected and stay in power rather than act for the common good. Systemic incentives push them to lie, deceive the public and instead cater to powerful funders.

This is why it's so perplexing to me that so many are allergic to the idea that conspiracy largely exists in our world. Given game incentives that reward secrecy and advantage, it’s incredibly reasonable to expect power-hungry individuals will conspire. From false flags that begin wars to big pharma profiterring models, there is an incredible amount of evidence to support conspiracy.

To those who need a wake up call: our world incentivizes conspiracies - secret plans without public knowledge for the benefit of a few - deal with it. And no, this doesn’t mean everything David Icke, Alex Jones or Stew Peters says is right.

This dynamic extends beyond politics and world leaders as well. Authors and 'spiritual gurus' often fall into these traps too.

Many popular authors and 'spiritual teachers' buy thousands of their own books to become New York Times Best Sellers, or they purchase streams on Spotify to help their podcasts appear successful.

This tactic builds their social status and influence. You’d be shocked at how common this practice is. One entrepreneur, for instance, sells ‘you can too’ courses on entrepreneurship and becoming rich. He conveniently doesn't disclose his tactics in rising to success and fame though.

This game degrades our information commons, much like how heavy polluters degrade the environment for short-term power and financial gains.

Those without money to buy their way to the top often feel worthless or struggle to survive in their field as a result. As well, those with ethics who refuse to play the game are pushed down algorithm ranks, making their content less visible and ultimately leading them to other jobs.

This leads to cultural decline. Those willing to engage in race-to-the-bottom behavior become influential, dictating culture. This isn’t new, but it’s certainly at its highest levels of gross-ness today.

Many of these people aren't inherently bad or intend to destroy things; they are driven by short-term incentives to win. Stopping their behavior to do what’s better would cause them to lose the game.

There’s Little Place for Quality

My own personal experiences with this dynamic are intimate to my journey.

Back in the height of Collective Evolution’s growth, we would have counterparts who would steal everyone else’s content, put it on their own website, and play the social media game to make about $1 million a year for a single person running a website.

These creators were proud of this behavior, often telling us how much they were making yet never responding to our emails and messages about their false content or how their behavior would one day lead to censorship and regulation. We have seen censorship coming since 2013.

I saw these creators’ behavior as a natural emergence of bad system design and bad incentives, coupled with unconsciousness.

If you live in a world where you need money to survive, and you are rewarded with money for doing shady things, people will do those shady things often. If you are unconscious and don’t choose to break the cycle, you feed into it.

At the height of CE in 2016, after building for 7 years, we began being censored and demonetized as independent media was growing too big and having a huge impact on narratives in what was once a purer system of reach on social media platforms.

Plus, a lot of false content was being created by other websites I mentioned above. I can see how in the eyes of system controllers and those wanting a better information commons, something needed to be done to quell the ACTUAL fake news. The problem was, that any look-alike websites went down too, and it was an opportunity to push faith back to mainstream outlets who were misleading people in their own right through system dynamics.

Fiduciary Responsibility & Moloch

Given that mainstream media companies (driven by incredibly powerful people) and social media companies (driven by incredibly powerful people) have a fiduciary responsibility to make the most money for their shareholders as possible, they are incentivized to change their algorithm to maximize profits.

For us, we became a very successful company by using Facebook wisely and paying creators to produce good content. In the process, we never had to pay Facebook, only our employees. This is a bad model for Facebook financially so they cut our reach to incentivize us to pay for reach as that’s what is best for their shareholders.

Further, they began to fact check us unfairly as this helped powerful people who were losing their monopoly on narrative and thus power and profit.

We had been creating cutting-edge content around consciousness, emerging science, transformation, new system design, health, and more since 2009.

This content not only upset the existing narratives out there that keep powerful people powerful, but our reach was greater than much of the mainstream media they owned and profited from in many ways - including through narrative control.

If capitalism was fair, I would have had the freedom to create my company, grow it ethically, and pay my employees based on the rewards we receive from our audience. Instead, the incentive to win creates space for others to destroy people like us at all costs. Remember, CEOs are legally bound to these outcomes via fiduciary responsibility.

This means they are incentivized to create lies, and deceit, and manipulate algorithms to destroy those doing good things while protecting themselves.

For example, if creating news that is heavily exaggerated and false around the dangers of independent media helps make more for their shareholders, they are legally OK to do this and are incentivized to do it.

Further, social media companies spend millions figuring out how to get people addicted to their platforms instead of being informed by them as THAT’S what is most beneficial to shareholders. Feeds are then filled with useless addictive content instead of useful content.

Protect power and narrative incentive: check!
Make money for shareholders at the cost of good people: check!

The Takeaway

Part of navigating The Shift (metacrisis) is to better understand our system. We need to delve into its complexities beyond notions of "good and evil." As our cultural ability to hold complexity grows, we develop a consciousness capable of supporting deeper change.

As a final note, for those who have been wondering, we have stepped away from creating the rate of journalistic content we did in the past for a few reasons:

1. We lack the funding we once had due to the dynamics described above. We refuse to exploit public attention for a paycheck. If a visionary funder is interested in supporting us, please reach out! We still believe our style to be cutting edge and much needed.

2. The social media and news industries reward creators for dramatic, misleading, and/or biased content - essentially noise - leaving little room for integrity. We choose not to participate in this behavior.

3. Social media is crucial for news and media success. To keep up, content must be posted daily, often in the form of memes that mock opposing ideas or simply make fun of people for popularity. Again, behavior we don’t want to participate in.
   
   Have you noticed how much YouTube and Instagram content is just about calling people NPC’s or memes making fun of ‘other people?’ It’s a plague at this point lol

Despite these challenges, more people are awakening to these dynamics. I don't write this to create hopelessness but to change how we participate. Now, I focus more on creating educational content about transformation and writing essays on system redesign. I aim to provide stability in chaos and help others build resilience.

Ultimately, there are ways to engage without succumbing to harmful incentives, thus contributing positively to the world without adding to the problem.