On the Alchemy of Modern Political Journalism

How George Soros Conquers Public Knowledge

A reflexive environment is one where everybody has to talk about a certain thing. That thing is going to be very polarizing, and there are either going to be one, or two, right ways to talk about it. Usually they're going to be diametrically opposed to one another, and that means it's a dialectical weapon. 

When George Soros famously shorted the the pound sterling in like '92 or whatever, which led to him writing "The Alchemy of Finance" where he said that "Alchemy is not interested in truth like the scientific method, it's interested in operational success." The method he said that they used to do the Alchemy of Finance was reflexivity. The idea is that you start jinning up an idea and make the idea become true because everybody starts talking about it and believing it in a particular way. So "the current thing" takes place in a reflexive environment (often Social Media)

On "The Tragedy of the Commons" (Excerpt)

EROSION OF THE MYTH OF ADMINISTRATORS OF THE COMMONS

"Indeed, the process has been so widely commented upon that one writer postulated a common life cycle for all of the attempts to develop regulatory policies. The life cycle is launched by an outcry so widespread and demanding that it generates enough political force to bring about establishment of a regulatory agency to insure the equitable, just, and rational distribution of the advantages among all holders of interest in the commons. This phase is followed by the symbolic reassurance of the offended as the agency goes into operation, developing a period of political quiescence among the great majority of those who hold a general but unorganized interest in the commons. Once this political quiescence has developed, the highly organized and specifically interested groups who wish to make incursions into the commons bring sufficient pressure to bear through other political processes to convert the agency to the protection and furthering of their interests. In the last phase even staffing of the regulating agency is accomplished by drawing the agency administrators from the ranks of the regulated." [p.p. 60-61]