Well, sure. Trying to plan events at incomprehensibly large scale is like that, as the 20th century collectivist states failed largely in consequence of too late discovering. You have to retain a sense of scale in these things, not to say humility. Meanwhile, cannabis legalization in the US proceeds apace as a fifty-state patchwork, with simple possession still a major felony some places, while commercial distribution in others is a wholly legitimate storefront affair, and someone will eventually reap a small political windfall through federal recognition of the situation in being. No one is really planning anything. It is the assumption someone must that I'm criticizing, because for all the decades of planning indulged by the interminable old-times legalization advocates, their desideratum in practice looks nothing like they ever came close to seriously imagining or predicting.

To his dubious credit, I think Yegge has in the interim learned this lesson, possibly at the cost of some others. Looking at his "Gas Town" makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck, not least for that I once had ferrets and I know what chaos they embody and wreak (and how f—ing expensive they are!); I'm sure he was intentional in his choice of the metaphor, but he's always been one of those for whom consensus reality and good sense are likewise mostly optional. So in entire fairness I have to admit I really can't see any just criticism that he's planning too much these days. But the value in such a swing from one extreme to another, versus something more closely resembling moderation, charitably has yet to be demonstrated.

(As a programmer of both fintech and actual finance experience, btw, it's very comical to me to see the Big Design Up Front approach being applied in this way to this specific example, precisely because it so little resembles how anyone genuinely approaching the task does so. It is very much how I would expect the Google of 2009 to look at things. It isn't that much like how a bank or a startup does. But I said I wasn't going to beat up on old work, and I can't pretend I had so broad a perspective myself so long ago.)

Good points.

I was similarly appalled and shocked at Gas Town. Maybe something like it is the future, but I really didn't expect Yegge to be a genAI booster.

If Gas Town has "the Quality Without a Name," I will eat my hat.

https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/tour-de-babel