Fair enough. I get overwhelmed by all the ethical questions that come with being in the real world.

My partner outsourced most of that mental work and focused on trying to be a good person from moment to moment. I think she would’ve broadly agreed with you from a karma standpoint.

It looks you’re coming at this in bad faith, so I’ll ignore you.

For anyone else reading, the CIA version basically revises “brutal dictator” to “brutal ‘captain of a team’.”

As long as they punch down and kiss up to the right people, assholes can usually reduce “tit for tat” to “tit for slap-on-the-wrist”.

I agree you that they are more likely than not to produce a suboptimal future.

I just disagree with the premise that “winning less” is the same as tit for tat.

Tell me if I’m wrong, but I think tit for tat was written from the perspective of nation vs nation decision-making.

It assumes you have roughly equivalent power, i.e. person vs person or business vs business.

I don’t think it applies in person vs boss, or mom 'n pop shop vs international conglomerate.

OP’s saying that neoliberals and the CIA were/are contradicting each other, not that Stalin was a good guy.

I was going to say The Matrix was ackshually a closeted trans allegory, but it turns out it’s both (but also, whatever you want it to be, kinda).