Policy Centrists: Balancing Moral and Economic Issues

Liberals vs. leftists once again, with the principal conclusion being that trying to find and join your tribe by shouting online—Schmittian picking-an-enemy as the core of your identity—is no way to go through life, son. Nor is artfully screenshotting in order to make sure your readers do not see the sentence just below the ones you quote.

In which we discuss the positions of “Brianna”, Matt”, and “Ezra”—who are SubTuring concepts in our minds with whom we have parasocial relationships, and are not real persons named Brianna Wu, Matt Yglesias, and Ezra Klein—on where the boundary is between the decent, realistic, progress left on the one hand, and people who need to get a clue and stop making own-goals on the other.

Background:

Key Insights:

* No Schmittposting— trying to find and join your tribe by shouting online—Schmittian picking-an-enemy as the core of your identity—is no way to go through life, son.

* Nor is artfully screenshotting in order to make sure your readers do not see the sentence just below the ones you quote.

* Don’t pick bad and stupid ends to advocate for—anarcho-pastoralism, the elimination of the United States or America, abolishing police, abolishing prisons, degrowth, destroying statues of Ulysses S. Grant, calling for the cancellation of Abraham Lincoln.

* Do think, always: will this post advance humanity’s collective smartness as an anthology intelligence?

* Don’t call for throwing public money at nonprofits in urban America.

* Advocate for a political focus on social issues only when they are ripe—when the pro-freedom and pro-flourishing position is genuinely popular.

* But the Democratic Party and the left can and should focus on both economic and social issues—and should be smart about doing so.

* Blue-state politicians should be willing to press the envelope on social issues—witness Gavin Newsom as mayor of San Francisco on gay marriage.

* Purple-state politicians should stress that this is a free country for free people, which means:

* economic opportunity…

* social freedom—you should be able to live your life without the government harassing you, and without neighbors and merchants harassing you by refusing service when their job is to serve the public…

* collective wealth…

* collective concern—global warming may not be so bad for you in the medium-run, but it is a serious medium-run problem for those SOBs in Florida and Louisiana, and for rural communities at the wildfire edge…

* Red-state politicians need our thoughts and prayers.

* Policy analysts and legislative tacticians should design and implement policies that are:

* successes…

* visible, perceived successes…

* that build coalitions by the wide of visible distribution of their benefits…

* but that do not allow individual coalition partners to become veto point owners: seats at the table, yes; dogs in the manger, no…

* Left-wing think-tanks should not take money from “leftists” who want to use procedural obstacles to block green investments in their backyards.

* Hexapodia!

References:

* Preliminary Food for Thought for Þe “Hexapodia” Taping:

* Brianna Wu: ‘There’s a huge schism… Policy Leftists and Infinite Leftists…

* Matt Yglesias: The two kinds of progressives: ‘Moralists vs. pragmatists…

* Ezra Klein: The Problem With Everything-Bagel Liberalism: ‘Cost, not just productivity, is a core problem for the U.S. semiconductor manufacturing industry…

* Brad DeLong: Pass the Baton…

* Noah Smith: Our climate change debates are out of date…

* Noah Smith: Degrowth: We can't let it happen here!…

* Noah Smith: ‘Once you realize that the animating drive of all NIMBYism on both the left and the right is to be able to live in perpetually-appreciating single-family homes with no poor people nearby, everything they say becomes instantly comprehensible and intensely boring.

* Rocket Podcast

+, of course:

* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0/mode/1up>