# The real meaning of conservative (Part 3 of 4)
Date: 2026-10-29
Next Part: https://disrael.github.io/blogs/raw/the-real-meaning-of-conservative.part4.md
Previous Part: https://disrael.github.io/blogs/raw/the-real-meaning-of-conservative.part2.md

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* Remote working — roughly 22% of the **entire** workforce as of early 2026, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. This is down from 42% during the pandemic and so is clearly a choice and not a necessity.
* Decision making without meetings — even when remote working is employed companies frequently insist on unnecessary live meetings
* Automated tax filing — In dozens of countries, the government citizens simply review a digital form and click “approve.”
* Port automation — In the United States, ports consistently rank among the least tech-integrated in the developed world.
* Prefabricated homes — building homes and apartment units on an indoor assembly line (modular or prefab construction) drastically reduces labor costs, material waste, and weather delays. While countries like Sweden and Japan build a massive share of their housing in factories, U.S. construction productivity has remained stagnant or declined for half a century.
* Old fashioned real estate sales — manual title searches, mandatory title insurance (an industry that barely exists outside the U.S. because most countries use state-guaranteed land registries), physical wet-ink signatures in many jurisdictions, in-person notaries, and 5% to 6% broker commissions protected by MLS gatekeeping.
* Paper in the office — the average American office worker still prints 10,000 sheets of paper per year (about 34 sheets a day), costing businesses roughly $800 per employee annually in paper, toner, and printer maintenance.
* FedAccounts — the Federal Reserve could easily give every citizen and business a checking account directly with the central bank, earning the exact federal funds rate.
* Public FedNow — Countries like Brazil (Pix) and India (UPI) built central bank-mandated, real-time public payment rails. A customer scans a QR code or taps a phone, and money moves instantly from their account to the merchant’s account 24/7/365 with zero or near-zero fees. The Federal Reserve finally launched FedNow in 2023, banks ensured it was built as a back-end interbank rail — not a consumer-facing app.
* Atomic ledger updates — The ACH network relies on 1970s-era batch file processing (NACHA files) because banks make billions on **the float** — holding your money in transit for 48 hours and earning overnight interest on it before delivering it.
* Equities clearing — basically atomic ledger updates for stock markets
* Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac direct to consumer mortgages — banks just resell to these agencies anyway and the IRS already has all of your info
* On-demand clothing — Roughly 30% of all clothing manufactured globally (around 30 to 45 billion garments a year) is never sold. America could use technology like [unspun](https://www.unspun.io/) and avoid that waste, retail stores, and have custom fit clothes.
* Medical billing automation — The U.S. employs roughly 10 administrators for every 1 physician. In many countries a doctor enters a diagnosis code and the claim clears automatically.
* Automated prescriptions — In the US a human must physically or virtually meet with the patient for 7 minutes to rubber-stamp a refill or read a lab result that is purely binary.
* Pharmacy dispensing — can be replaced by robots and mail-order fulfillment warehouses
* RFID over barcodes — instead of scanning bar codes everything could have an RFID for pennies more
* Education administrators — in U.S. universities, non-teaching administrative staff now outnumber faculty by 2-to-1. Some roles could be automated and others serve no purpose.
* AI in the classroom — American classrooms are not far off from Amish religious services in terms of unwillingness to let students self learn
* Legal work automation — State Bar Associations (which are run by lawyers) aggressively prosecute software companies under “Unauthorized Practice of Law” laws if a piece of software gives specific legal output without a human lawyer collecting a toll. Furthermore, ABA Rule 5.4 explicitly bans non-lawyers (like tech companies or outside investors) from owning or investing in law firms, specifically to prevent tech companies from disrupting legal services.
* Automated eye prescriptions — “which is clearer one or two?” has some small advantages over looking at an autorefractor hot-air balloon or barn. However smartphone-based refractive tech could test at home if it wasn’t banned for prescription use in the US.

But it’s not just a rejection of technology, there is also a willingness to invent bullshit jobs.

![Image](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/the-real-meaning-of-conservative-c008b547de.png)

### Can conservatism be patched?

There is no longer anyway for America to live “naturally” IE under conditions that bred Homo sapiens 300,000 to 200,000 years ago (or maybe much longer we don’t know for sure).

However the instinct to want to live like early humans, but also have technology is understandable — liking having your cake and eating it to.

> **The Hutterites:** Living primarily in the Great Plains of the US and Western Canada, Hutterites make the exact opposite trade-off from the Amish regarding technology versus economics. They practice **strict Christian communism** (all property, land, and income are held in common within a colony of 60 to 150 people, and everyone eats in a central dining hall). However, to support the colony, they embrace **cutting-edge industrial technology**, operating massive farms with GPS-guided combines and automated manufacturing facilities. They restrict *consumer and media* technology — banning television, radio, and unfiltered internet — to prevent individualism from eroding communal life.

Ignoring the Christian part and maybe worrying less about unfiltered internet does the Hutterite colony of 60 to 150 people, and everyone eats in a central dining hall work as a conservative patch? Note the size of a Hutterite colony is the famous [Dunbar’s number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number).

Some groups in a corporations have a very Hutterite feel to them — excluding management. However Americans switch jobs internally or externally every 3 or 4 years and so these groups don’t have the staying power of ones that typically changed once.

> Between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago, an early *Homo sapiens* typically traveled **50 to 150 kilometers (30 to 95 miles)** from their birthplace to find a mate, with outer social networks stretching up to **200+ kilometers (125 miles)** during periods of environmental stress.

Here AI, having read the above, argues patching is not practical:

> Why can’t we just form 150-person, high-tech guilds, eat in a central dining hall, automate away the bullshit jobs, and live like early *Homo sapiens* with fiber-optic internet?

> Because of two things: **exit velocity** and **the internet**.

> When an early human traveled 30 to 95 miles to find a mate and join a new band, it was a permanent, high-stakes transition. You couldn’t ghost your tribe every 36 months for a 15% title bump in the next valley. Because you were stuck with those 150 people for life, reciprocity wasn’t a lifestyle aesthetic — it was survival. If you hoarded meat or faked your competence, Christopher Boehm’s coalition-enforcement kicked in. In modern corporate “colonies,” if you get caught faking competence or poisoning the culture, you just update your LinkedIn and vest your stock options elsewhere. High turnover makes genuine egalitarianism impossible because nobody stays long enough to pay off their social debts.

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**[Continue reading Part 4 of 4](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/raw/the-real-meaning-of-conservative.part4.md)**