Welcome to the Spreadsheet Regime
If “The Cathedral” is Yarvin’s ghost story about soft power, then Formalism is his cure: a world without argument, opinion, or mess — where power is cold, clean, and beautifully structured.
To Yarvin, democracy is broken because it’s too informal.
Too much noise. Too many people talking.
Too many feelings.
So he proposes a solution:
What if government was just… a really well-run company?
No elections. No compromises. Just formal contracts, hierarchical control, and a C-suite that never answers your emails.
Formalism is Yarvin’s attempt to rebrand authoritarianism as systems thinking.
The Core Belief: Power Should Be Clear, Not Good
In the Formalist worldview, the problem with politics isn’t corruption — it’s ambiguity.
Yarvin doesn’t ask:
“Who has power?”
“Should they?”
“How do we stop abuse?”
He asks:
“Can we make this chart cleaner?”
His dream is a society where everyone knows exactly who’s in charge, what their job is, and where your recourse is limited to reading the org chart and accepting your rank.
Democracy is “chaos.”
Authoritarianism is “clarity.”
Suffering is fine — as long as it’s procedurally documented.
Formalism in Practice (Or: Governance by Jira Ticket)
Let’s translate Formalism into everyday life:
You can’t vote on laws. But you can view the changelog.
You can’t protest. But you can submit a governance bug report (low priority).
You can’t unionize. That’s a TOS violation.
In Formalism:
A dictator is fine as long as he’s properly installed.
A coup is bad only if it breaks contract protocol.
A human rights violation is inconvenient but not illegal unless it voids the license agreement.
You are not governed. You are containerized.
The Fantasy of “Just Make It Legible”
Formalism flatters a certain kind of mind:
People who believe the world would be better if it just ran more like code.
People who are brilliant with abstractions but allergic to ethics.
People who love control systems but hate interruption.
It assumes that ambiguity is the problem — that oppression is just poorly structured governance, not the abuse of power itself.
But here’s the problem:
Power doesn’t become just because it’s clear.
A boot on your neck is still a boot, even if the policy doc is impeccably written.
Formalism's Real Use: Justifying Elitism
Formalism isn’t about justice.
It’s about efficiency — and efficiency always favors the already powerful.
Under Formalism:
Those with resources get to govern.
Those without get to be governed.
And everyone else is a resource to be optimized.
This is Silicon Valley absolutism — rule by metrics, dressed up as philosophy.
It says:
“Let’s remove politics”
but means:
“Let’s remove your ability to oppose power.”
It’s the ultimate CEO dream:
A nation with no customer complaints and no refund policy.
The Unspoken Terror Beneath It
Yarvin isn’t afraid of disorder.
He’s afraid of being questioned.
He wants a world where governance is above critique — because it’s formally correct, like a math proof or a UX diagram.
But people are not widgets.
Justice is not a schema.
And suffering can’t be versioned out with governance markup.
Formalism is not the end of chaos.
It’s the elevation of cruelty into an IT service.
TL;DR
Formalism is authoritarianism with a user manual.
It treats oppression like a feature request.
It’s for people who think Excel is more trustworthy than ethics.
It solves no problems — it just makes the problems look clean.