A more cynical view is that many progressives (often white and well-to-do) actually have a vested self-interest in preserving the status quo and only cosplay as champagne socialists to make themselves feel good and fit in to their social milieu.
“Checkism,” great coinage. I will be quoting that. You say that progressives need to start believing in progress. You’re totally right and all the points you make are excellent, but I think you underestimate that if progressives sincerely believed in progress, then they wouldn’t be progressives anymore. Like i’m thinking of what Hayek said that if socialists only learned economics then they wouldn’t be socialists. The reason progressives don’t believe in progress has to do entirely with their pathological hatred of capitalism and their proud belief that larger government can better provide for the common welfare than the free market. Unless their entire ideology were to go into reverse, progressives will continue to favor intuitively appealing schemes to use the blunt state to benefit the public, the state which only continually misallocates resources, stunts growth, constrains opportunity and concentrates wealth. They define progress differently from right brained people like us, progress to them is entirely moral and collectivistic in nature--it is punishing rich people and babysitting poor people, and to be able to say that by raising taxes and creating more opportunities NOT TO WORK that you care for people more. Progress to them is not about delivering real change, but to be able to say you care about people enough to use the state to bully the rich.
Noah, good piece. But I feel like you and others have been beating this drum for a while and I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone disagrees. I’d love you to publish an interview or guest response from someone at Roosevelt Institute or EarthJustice (or similar) who can at least make the best case for where they think you are wrong. I don’t expect to be convinced, but I would love to understand the other side of this argument.
Progressivism is a statement of identity and values, not an agenda for actual physical changes in the world. There’s a reason it’s mainly programmer-adjacent people on the internet (Noahpinion, Slow Boring, ACX, /r/neoliberal, etc) expressing frustration about the illogic in the nuts and bolts implementation of progressive policy: we’re the only ones whose social awareness is too dense to catch the games actually being played. Thinking progressives actually want lower housing prices or more frequent train service when they opine on urban policy is like thinking someone is actually attacking you when they’re playfully teasing.
Good piece. Having lived in CA and with most of my friends and my volunteering heavily intertwined with politicians and activist groups and government-funded NGO ecosystems, I see very little evidence that meaningful results are the objective of policies or policy positions, nor that these positions or priorities would ever be amended based upon the failure to achieve the supposedly desired results (nor if they proved to be harmful).
Being progressive is mostly about feelings, about being seen to have the right views, gaining the power to control, creating jobs for the right sort of people (being able to exclude or disenfranchise the wrong sort, or at least making them live in an environment in which they will be uncomfortable). As far as I have observed, it is not about results.
Not that politicians of any stripe are overly concerned with results. There are individual exceptions, and these exceptional people should be backed during the brief time period before they become co-opted.
While a Westerner now, I have relatives/family from the Northeast who were part of local urban machine politics. I was a big fan of Corey Booker in Newark because he actually wanted to bring investment to the city (rather than selling development rights to his girlfriend like his predecessor) and he wanted the school system to get better and be accountable (fewer results there). Once he got into the Senate he basically copied and pasted the Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer push emails and simply became a cookie cutter hack.
I have some hopes for a guy like Ro Khanna, but my guess is he is already on the precipice of being a cookie cutter hack who occasionally talks a good game but ultimately won’t go against the interests of the donors and activists.
Great article Noah, I started following because you articulate so well that the US needs an abundance mentality and techno optimism. Unfortunately when you combine this essay with your prior posting of "The Darkness" a depressing outlook. It is difficult to see how our country can change to become a nation of abundance for all our people. We will be locked in a battle of them against us until some catastrophe either economic or outside force (ie China) forces us to change.
I think Noah has skipped over a huge part which I call “pet-victim progressivism”.
It’s when progressives over index on caring about their pet victims (they prefer “marginalized groups”) and use them to justify stasis. You can see it with idiots whining about “gentrification”, endless handwringing over the environment (overlaps with checkism and NEPA) and the movement to shrug off public order issues in cities because their pet victims cause them. More broadly, it’s the stymieing of advancement for the median because their pet victims in some edge cases may be inconvenienced. The solution is to just stop caring about these groups, but it’s more of a mental issue that I call “protest disorder”.
This is great piece that really explains how progressive ideology is incompatible with actual progress, growth, abundance and human flourishing. I don’t understand how Noah who believes in all these outcomes continues to identify as progressive.
"[T]he success of the Chips and Science Act is threatened by a flotilla of unrelated objectives and unreasonable restrictions that Congress and parts of the administration have attached to the grant-giving process…
"Applicants [for government funding] will be evaluated based on their plans to “create opportunities for minority-owned, veteran-owned and women-owned businesses…and commit to using iron, steel, and construction materials produced in the United States.”
But this isn't part of a progressive checklist; this is the normal way federal government contracting works. The Buy American Act of 1933 (!) requires the federal government to buy American–made iron, steel, and manufactured goods wherever possible. Small businesses have gotten preferences since the Small Business Act of 1953. Minority business preferences emerged from legislation signed by Nixon in 1973. The Women-Owned Small Business program was started in 2000.
The problem with solar energy is that it just consumes way too damn much land for the amount of power you get from it. And that's not counting the massive infrastructure of transmission lines because it's so far away from.places that actually need the power or the special landfills we'll need to throw out the solar junk as the panels age and degrade. I realize this isn't the main point of the piece but we simply need a better solution there. Anything that needs the land and rare earth metal footprint that solar does simply cannot be environmentally friendly.
Thank you, Noah. This is well-argued piece that echoes Ezra Klein's similar observation a few months back. I think to enable this sort of change, the nation will need fresh language to get beyond "Regulation vs Deregulation." We will need to develop a new set of nimble rules that encourage and support dynamism and efficiency. The answer for Progressives is to talk about and implement "smart regulation" whose goal is to balance public safety and welfare against concern for progress, economic impact and efficiency, particularly with respect to time. After all, time is a finite resource for all humans. In short, don't let so called Conservatives own deregulation. Let's take an axe to all the piecemeal regulation of the past and build a new system that's simpler and better
Noah and others have been beating this drum for what seems like a decade now. At first I didn't want to accept it, but that didn't stop me from being quickly converted. It seems like zero progress has been made getting the story out. The "progressive" press could help.
A long time ago I used to regularly see articles asking why building in America was so expensive. It seems like when the answer turned out to be regulation, those articles stopped appearing. You'd think the right wing press would have been shouting it from the hill tops these last years, but they seem happy with the status quo as it makes it hard for the government to function well.
Standing ovation for this entire post, Noah. I agree 100%.
Can you please write another post that talks about what we, ordinary American voters, can do about it? We've got one major political party that mostly values what I value, but is inefficient for all the reasons you've outlined (the Democrats) and one major party that has been hijacked by the bat-guano wingnuts who are cool with violently overturning elections (the Republicans). What to do?
A more cynical view is that many progressives (often white and well-to-do) actually have a vested self-interest in preserving the status quo and only cosplay as champagne socialists to make themselves feel good and fit in to their social milieu.
Good one Noah! More of this.
Also - what do we do about it now?
“Checkism,” great coinage. I will be quoting that. You say that progressives need to start believing in progress. You’re totally right and all the points you make are excellent, but I think you underestimate that if progressives sincerely believed in progress, then they wouldn’t be progressives anymore. Like i’m thinking of what Hayek said that if socialists only learned economics then they wouldn’t be socialists. The reason progressives don’t believe in progress has to do entirely with their pathological hatred of capitalism and their proud belief that larger government can better provide for the common welfare than the free market. Unless their entire ideology were to go into reverse, progressives will continue to favor intuitively appealing schemes to use the blunt state to benefit the public, the state which only continually misallocates resources, stunts growth, constrains opportunity and concentrates wealth. They define progress differently from right brained people like us, progress to them is entirely moral and collectivistic in nature--it is punishing rich people and babysitting poor people, and to be able to say that by raising taxes and creating more opportunities NOT TO WORK that you care for people more. Progress to them is not about delivering real change, but to be able to say you care about people enough to use the state to bully the rich.
Noah, good piece. But I feel like you and others have been beating this drum for a while and I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone disagrees. I’d love you to publish an interview or guest response from someone at Roosevelt Institute or EarthJustice (or similar) who can at least make the best case for where they think you are wrong. I don’t expect to be convinced, but I would love to understand the other side of this argument.
Progressivism is a statement of identity and values, not an agenda for actual physical changes in the world. There’s a reason it’s mainly programmer-adjacent people on the internet (Noahpinion, Slow Boring, ACX, /r/neoliberal, etc) expressing frustration about the illogic in the nuts and bolts implementation of progressive policy: we’re the only ones whose social awareness is too dense to catch the games actually being played. Thinking progressives actually want lower housing prices or more frequent train service when they opine on urban policy is like thinking someone is actually attacking you when they’re playfully teasing.
I liked this even before reading. Title (+ subtitle) says it all.
Good piece. Having lived in CA and with most of my friends and my volunteering heavily intertwined with politicians and activist groups and government-funded NGO ecosystems, I see very little evidence that meaningful results are the objective of policies or policy positions, nor that these positions or priorities would ever be amended based upon the failure to achieve the supposedly desired results (nor if they proved to be harmful).
Being progressive is mostly about feelings, about being seen to have the right views, gaining the power to control, creating jobs for the right sort of people (being able to exclude or disenfranchise the wrong sort, or at least making them live in an environment in which they will be uncomfortable). As far as I have observed, it is not about results.
Not that politicians of any stripe are overly concerned with results. There are individual exceptions, and these exceptional people should be backed during the brief time period before they become co-opted.
While a Westerner now, I have relatives/family from the Northeast who were part of local urban machine politics. I was a big fan of Corey Booker in Newark because he actually wanted to bring investment to the city (rather than selling development rights to his girlfriend like his predecessor) and he wanted the school system to get better and be accountable (fewer results there). Once he got into the Senate he basically copied and pasted the Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer push emails and simply became a cookie cutter hack.
I have some hopes for a guy like Ro Khanna, but my guess is he is already on the precipice of being a cookie cutter hack who occasionally talks a good game but ultimately won’t go against the interests of the donors and activists.
Great article Noah, I started following because you articulate so well that the US needs an abundance mentality and techno optimism. Unfortunately when you combine this essay with your prior posting of "The Darkness" a depressing outlook. It is difficult to see how our country can change to become a nation of abundance for all our people. We will be locked in a battle of them against us until some catastrophe either economic or outside force (ie China) forces us to change.
I think Noah has skipped over a huge part which I call “pet-victim progressivism”.
It’s when progressives over index on caring about their pet victims (they prefer “marginalized groups”) and use them to justify stasis. You can see it with idiots whining about “gentrification”, endless handwringing over the environment (overlaps with checkism and NEPA) and the movement to shrug off public order issues in cities because their pet victims cause them. More broadly, it’s the stymieing of advancement for the median because their pet victims in some edge cases may be inconvenienced. The solution is to just stop caring about these groups, but it’s more of a mental issue that I call “protest disorder”.
A+++ writing by Noah here. I agree with every word.
This is great piece that really explains how progressive ideology is incompatible with actual progress, growth, abundance and human flourishing. I don’t understand how Noah who believes in all these outcomes continues to identify as progressive.
"[T]he success of the Chips and Science Act is threatened by a flotilla of unrelated objectives and unreasonable restrictions that Congress and parts of the administration have attached to the grant-giving process…
"Applicants [for government funding] will be evaluated based on their plans to “create opportunities for minority-owned, veteran-owned and women-owned businesses…and commit to using iron, steel, and construction materials produced in the United States.”
But this isn't part of a progressive checklist; this is the normal way federal government contracting works. The Buy American Act of 1933 (!) requires the federal government to buy American–made iron, steel, and manufactured goods wherever possible. Small businesses have gotten preferences since the Small Business Act of 1953. Minority business preferences emerged from legislation signed by Nixon in 1973. The Women-Owned Small Business program was started in 2000.
The problem with solar energy is that it just consumes way too damn much land for the amount of power you get from it. And that's not counting the massive infrastructure of transmission lines because it's so far away from.places that actually need the power or the special landfills we'll need to throw out the solar junk as the panels age and degrade. I realize this isn't the main point of the piece but we simply need a better solution there. Anything that needs the land and rare earth metal footprint that solar does simply cannot be environmentally friendly.
Progressives are right to resist it.
Thank you, Noah. This is well-argued piece that echoes Ezra Klein's similar observation a few months back. I think to enable this sort of change, the nation will need fresh language to get beyond "Regulation vs Deregulation." We will need to develop a new set of nimble rules that encourage and support dynamism and efficiency. The answer for Progressives is to talk about and implement "smart regulation" whose goal is to balance public safety and welfare against concern for progress, economic impact and efficiency, particularly with respect to time. After all, time is a finite resource for all humans. In short, don't let so called Conservatives own deregulation. Let's take an axe to all the piecemeal regulation of the past and build a new system that's simpler and better
Noah and others have been beating this drum for what seems like a decade now. At first I didn't want to accept it, but that didn't stop me from being quickly converted. It seems like zero progress has been made getting the story out. The "progressive" press could help.
A long time ago I used to regularly see articles asking why building in America was so expensive. It seems like when the answer turned out to be regulation, those articles stopped appearing. You'd think the right wing press would have been shouting it from the hill tops these last years, but they seem happy with the status quo as it makes it hard for the government to function well.
.
Standing ovation for this entire post, Noah. I agree 100%.
Can you please write another post that talks about what we, ordinary American voters, can do about it? We've got one major political party that mostly values what I value, but is inefficient for all the reasons you've outlined (the Democrats) and one major party that has been hijacked by the bat-guano wingnuts who are cool with violently overturning elections (the Republicans). What to do?