From "WHY THE AGE OF AMERICAN PROGRESS ENDED/Invention alone can’t change the world; what matters is what happens next" By Derek Thompson (The Atlantic).
Cities and states run by Democrats have erected so many barriers to construction that blue metro areas are now where the housing crisis is worst. The five states with the highest rates of homelessness are New York, Hawaii, California, Oregon, and Washington; all are run by Democrats. Meanwhile, it is often left-leaning environmentalist groups that use onerous rules to delay the construction of wind and solar farms that would reduce our dependency on oil and gas.
The left owns all the backpack pins denouncing the oil industry, but Texas produces more renewable energy than deep-blue California, and Oklahoma and Iowa produce more renewable energy than New York. One possible explanation is that progressives have become too focused on what are essentially negative prescriptions for improving the world, including an emphasis on preservation and sacrifice (“reduce, reuse, recycle”) over growth (“build, build, build”).
At the extreme, this ascetic style leads to calls for permanent declines in modern living standards, a philosophy known as “degrowtherism.”...
Lots more in that article. I just wanted to quote the bit about "degrowtherism." I don't think I've seen that word before, but here's Wikipedia article "Degrowth," which is full of things that have been very familiar for a long time. Excerpt:
The contemporary degrowth movement can trace its roots back to the anti-industrialist trends of the 19th century, developed in Great Britain by John Ruskin, William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement (1819–1900), in the United States by Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), and in Russia by Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)....
In 1968, the Club of Rome, a think tank headquartered in Winterthur, Switzerland, asked researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a report on the limits of our world system and the constraints it puts on human numbers and activity. The report, called The Limits to Growth, published in 1972, became the first significant study to model the consequences of economic growth....
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In fairness, they want everybody else to be all ascetic, while they themselves enjoy the benefits.
I have written it before, and will no doubt write it again in the future- if we had to build the interstate highway system today from scratch, it would take 500 years and cost 50 quadrillion dollars, if it got finished at all.
Progressives have never been for progress. They and evangelicals are diverged from the same pietist origins. In the 1920s, the Progressives split and took up Marxism instead of Christianity as their dogma. What we are seeing now is the end of Progressive with Christianity underpinnings.
And Mises may have thought the antidote was reason, but Progressive have nearly succeeded in ending the Age of Reason.
"The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau, what an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight for!
"Against all this frenzy of agitation there is but one weapon available: reason. Just common sense is needed to prevent man from falling prey to illusory fantasies and empty catchwords."
von Mises, Ludwig (1945). Bureaucracy
I am surprised The Atlantic is allowed to publish such red-pill, heretic ideas.
Polis delivered a BS rhetoric filled speech where he peppered it all with the promise of "freedom" - and then went on to explain, in his deceptive rhetoric, how everyone should live in high density housing - or modular housing - built with heavy government bureaucratic constraints that cost consumers more...and take away freedom.
Green energy will save the day if its forced on us.... with freedom and stuff.
Any sane person knows that the advantages of economic growth far outweigh the disadvantages.
Conservation? Rich, economically developed countries worry about conservation. Poor countries don't give a shit. They can't afford it.
Regression to the mean.
After a generation or two of births, leftist cultures become de facto hybrid left and right cultures. They maintain leftist / change /revolution imagery but become rock-solid in opposition to actual changes. See all 20th Century Communists. See France. See UK. See the blue USA cities and states.
The left become alternative traditionalists because many feel they've reached an optimal solution and "moving forward" in any direction would be inferior to where they now stand. This happens in every country and every era. The fatal weakness on the left is that many don't understand they are now conservatives and fight the wrong opponents or defeated opponents from a prior generation. They are then infiltrated by opportunists and psychopaths and wolves in sheep's clothing and oligarchs who easily fool the ignorant idealists.
"Against all this frenzy of agitation there is but one weapon available: reason. Just common sense is needed to prevent man from falling prey to illusory fantasies and empty catchwords."
What von Mises missed is that about half the population prefers emotions to reason and enjoy placing their faith in those comfortable fantasies and catchwords.
Repeal the 19th.
With his comparison between refusing mRNA shots and impeding public works projects, especially in light of questions about the efficacy of the former, Thompson conflates individual choice with collective decision-making.
Most organizations succeed in advancing their primary interest, and perceptions of failure are almost always a case of the outside viewer having a mistaken view of what that primary interest actually is.
People flying private jets to Davos don't care about Texas energy policies per se, but they care very much about the filthy proles having access to private vehicles, climate controlled private homes, and access to beefsteak.
The Progressive desires to maximize the misery, demoralization, detachment and humiliation of the Heritage (actual) American. By this measure every policy they enact succeeds, and every "unforeseen consequence" is at best a feature or at worst an acceptable byproduct in pursuit of the primary goal.
Why the age of American progress never ended.
Progress is an [unqualified] monotonic process.
This is exactly why I call “progressives” Regressives (TM) because they not only want to roll back the actual progress that we have made, but they are trying to reinvent the one political party system that was the basis of the now defunct Soviet Union. For example, they want “equity” in public schools and universities where the laziest student has with the over achieving students brought down to their level. This means there is no incentive for anyone to succeed and be creative. A good example of this type of marxist system is that the Soviet Union didn’t do as much innovation as the West and its Capitalistic system in advancing technology. As a result, the Soviets invested a lot of energy in industrial espionage in order to steal technology from the West. Even then, they didn’t create as good a product in many cases (ie, the technology behind nuclear power plants didn’t have as much safeguards as the West and we ended up with Chernobyl). Their aerospace technology came directly from captured German equipment, scientists, and engineers after World War 2. Their first nuclear bombs technology were stolen by their undercover agents within our Manhattan Project.
The people running Davos, with many of our U.S. Regressives(TM) attending (like John Kerry), want a worldwide marxist system in place under their control. I shudder to think what happens to our world if this comes about…🤬
Nice catch on the prescient von Mises quote. I have not seen a better synopsis of the fatuously misnamed "progressives".
"[S]ome Democrats—many of whom call themselves progressives—have in meaningful ways become anti-progress..."
Have become, or have long been?
Anyway, the advantage of being Progressive is that, under prog hegemony, you get to define what Progress is--namely, whatever it is that you want. More deficits and debt? Progress! Sticking with social programs from the 1930s and 1960s? Progress. Reducing the West to shared poverty for the sake of the climate? Progress. Women's equality in sports? Progress. Forcing women to accept men in women's sports? Progress. Etc.
Progressives, with very few exceptions, are people who have never built or made anything. For that reason they do not value those who do. They live in a world of theory which is all in their imagination. The whole Green thing is an example. Many of them lack the math skills to understand why their dreams are unrealistic. The World Economic Forum types include some who know the green thing is bullshit but they plan to use it.
From the Wikipedia article on Degrowth:
The main argument degrowth raises is that an infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally contradictory to finite planetary boundaries.
This is the essence of the fundamental flaw of the degrowth ideology. The bulk of economic growth is not about consuming more resources, but improving efficiency - ie, doing more with less.
Several years ago the Coyote Blog had a post about how economic growth makes things cheaper over time. A commentor asked why a new 20-something Nissan 300ZX cost ~$45,000 dollars, where his 1980 300ZX "sports car" cost only $17,800 new.
For my own amusement, I looked up the performance metrics of a 1980 ZX - acceleration, braking, skidpad, etc - and looked for comparable numbers among Nissan's 20-something offerings. The match? A $9,998 base price Nissan Versa - which wasn't trying to be a performance car. And it offered other features that the older car didn't have, such as anti-lock brakes, better stereo, etc. Just as importantly, modern manufacturing techniques means that the Versa used less materials and man-hours to build as well.
Warren Meyer (Coyote Blog) wrote about this a number of years ago:
"In fact, here is a sure fire test for a progressive. If given a choice between two worlds:
1. A capitalist society where the overall levels of wealth and technology continue to increase, though in a pattern that is dynamic, chaotic, generally unpredictable, and whose rewards are unevenly distributed, or...
2. A "progressive" society where everyone is poorer, but income is generally more evenly distributed. In this society, jobs and pay and industries change only very slowly, and people have good assurances that they will continue to have what they have today, with little downside but also with very little upside.
Progressives will choose #2. Even if it means everyone is poorer. Even if it cuts off any future improvements we might gain in technology or wealth or lifespan or whatever. They want to take what we have today, divide it up more equally, and then live to eternity with just that. Progressives want #2 today, and they wanted it just as much in 1900."
Obama - "you didn't build that"
Well OK then, boomer.
Progressive is marching in place, like feminism.
They have to write this schlock. They have no saleable skills.
in Most ways, america's left are the retro reactionaries
they want to return the world to 1848.
Back when people didn't know how Marxism would work out
Back when blacks in american (and serfs in europe) were in the chains of involuntary servitude
Back BEFORE the republican party
Back when THE COOLEST THINGS.. Were the Railroad, and horsies. But MOST people walked.
Back before suburbs, back before cars, back before cute girls in miniskirts
The Left want to destroy everything Good (re: miniskirts) about the world.. The left are EVIL!
JK Brown said...
Progressives have never been for progress. They and evangelicals are diverged from the same pietist origins. In the 1920s, the Progressives split and took up Marxism instead of Christianity as their dogma
i'm currently reading the book The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class by Frederick F. Siegel. He shows how (post wilson and WWI) Progressives threw any Christianity and became the 20th century's Leftists (which Now call themselves Progressives again, because most people have no knowledge of What the original Progressives wanted.
His gist is that 19th century Progressives wanted to raise people UP, out of poverty and drunkenness,
and INTO the middle Class.
20th century Leftists, on the other hand.. HATE the middle class.
They "ACT" like they are against the upper class, but Siegel shows that Authoritarianism and Elite rule;
is EXACTLY what they wanted. From Sinclair Lewis, to '60's radicals; their hatred is towards the middle class. The petty bourgeoisie .
It's an interesting read.
"relatively ancient technology like nuclear power"
Do I feel a pivot on the way?
Deny your sex, deny your gender, and I will no longer... Wrong thread.
In a land of fluidity... Yeah.
“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”
- William Shakespeare
Show me your principles! Your unambiguous self.
"relatively ancient technology like nuclear power"
Photovoltaic panels, and wind turbines, too, functional, productive within a limited and fleeting range, redistributed as a blight upon land and sea. In our greenness, we called it Green with homophonic pride and prejudice.
Come on, man. Progressives have been regressive back to the 18th-19th centuries for decades now.
gilbar said...
You might be interested in what Murray Rothbard said on the matter. He did both in some old lectures on the Civil War now on Youtube, but also in his forward to a book by Lysander Spooner. His pietists of the mid-19th century, exemplified by the Fire and Brimstone abolitionist preacher, became the Progressives of the late 19th century.
"Most pietists took the following view: since we can't gauge an individual's morality by his following rituals or even by his professed adherence to creed, we must watch his actions and see if he is really moral.
"From there the pietists concluded that it was everyone's moral duty to his own salvation to see to it that his fellow men as well as himself are kept out of temptation's path. That is, it was supposed to be the State's business to enforce compulsory morality, to create the proper moral climate for maximizing salvation. In short, instead of an individualist, the pietist now tended to become a pest, a busybody, a moral watchdog for his fellow man, and a compulsory moralist using the State to outlaw "vice" as well as crime."
https://mises.org/library/lysander-spooner-libertarian-pietist
gilbar said...
His gist is that 19th century Progressives wanted to raise people UP,
Siegel is probably right to a degree though it sounds as if he's really steelmanning the Progressive's argument. They walked hand-in-hand with the Eugenicists back in the day, and would probably have been just as happy to have the non-bourgeoise simply disappear. Three generations of imbeciles was enough.
The Davos crowd are the new nobles, they want to re establish European Royalty. They want YOUR kids to have a bad education while their kids go to private school. Less competition from the non elite graspers. Europe is run by families. Businesses are privately owned and the family carefully controls them so that they will make the family rich in perpetuity.
Nobles and serfs, but in public they try to act nicely to the plebes. It’s no mystery why they hate America and love China. If it were not for the dirty little people they could live nicely with their fellow elites while the masses are kept at a subsistence level.
What do the nobles call Harvard grads? The help. Why does America have so many lawyers? Because here, you can oppose the legal system. Britain was an empire stealing from the poor of other countries, but more so stealing from their own poor.
As with de-policing, no-bail and homelessness the most shocking thing to me about the Democrat anti-growth agenda is its success as a political strategy. Lowering the reliability of electric and water and gas systems in Blue states and cities (like exploding crime and filth) never seems to generate an electoral backlash. If anything, turning cities into third world shitholes seems to entrench Democrat rule all the more firmly. The whole premise of democracy going back to Athens is called into question.
Progressives are anti-growth because their ideology is rooted in Soviet disinformation efforts, which were designed to hinder growth among enemies of the Soviets.
Is that the difference between Soros and Musk?
"2. A "progressive" society where everyone is poorer, but income is generally more evenly distributed. In this society, jobs and pay and industries change only very slowly, and people have good assurances that they will continue to have what they have today, with little downside but also with very little upside." (emphasis added)
Even that mediocre goal is unobtainable. We either progress or regress. Stasis is unstable; like balancing a pencil on its point.
Related, my wife is ill so I went grocery shopping for the first time in years, today. Holy crap! Sky high prices and patches of bare shelves everywhere. It didn't used to be like this. We are regressing. It doesn't have to be this way.
They're very progressive.
We're just not understanding to what objective they want to progress.
True feudalism has never been tried.
Progressives do value certain kinds of growth. They favor the growth of government. They are okay with the growth of administrators in colleges and universities, which fuel ever growing tuition. They oppose the growth of economic activity, I suppose, because they hate capitalism on principle and long for socialism. They are also fine with the growth of the surveillance state and the growth of censorship. In general they value growth in endeavors they approve of, which in a way is understandable.
Well...I would have liked to read through that article, but since I cannot, I read through all of the comments and there were plenty of good ones here.
All that comes to my mind when someone speaks of the grinding down of our society, the lack of industry- or industriousness- is that somewhere...Ayn Rand is laughing. And I have to say, I read her voraciously years and years ago. And after all these years, I've watched more and more of the characters from her main novels come to life before me. And the policies that come out of Washington DC surely could have been something out of Atlas Shrugged. And indeed, Atlas is shrugging now heavily. From San Francisco to Paris, Beijing to Tehran, New York to LA, London to Brussels to Davos, where even a John Kerry gets to speak. I've read, heard, and seen Ayn Rand mocked for decades. Yet her books have seemed to be a very prescient tale of our recent and present world.
We have a clamoring- by our leaders no less- for Equity, which is a standard so low and evil in it's makeup that those proposing it surely must know they are proposing the end to their society. At least as we knew it. Equity is a race to the bottom. To make everyone equal to the least productive, or the least capable. It is a manipulation of outcomes to bring a perceived 'equality'. It is the death of individual achievement, the death of a free and productive society. "Harrison Bergeron" in real life. Joe Biden, who I'm sure has never read "Harrison Bergeron", let alone Hayek, or Von Mises or Rothbard or Friedman is so sure of this New Thing he and his administration have spread across all sectors of our life, that he beams with pride every time he talks about it. He's such a doltish character and so right as the one to be the face of the lowering of society.
I'm rambling here, so I'll just cut myself off. There's much more to be said, but I'll have to fine my own space to put it.
Scratch the surface of a progressive and you'll find a fascist. Someone who insists that YOU must obey the progressive dogma or be punished.
Progressives are neobararbarians. They support the criminal over the citizen, want to confiscate guns, lower the DUI alcohol level to 0.05% but at the same time won't prosecute drunk drivers and insist the drunk drivers have little punishment if they are convicted. They want more and more government and higher and higher taxes. More red tape. More restrictions on speech that offends them. They want to restrict energy supplies so we live in the dark and cold.
Neobarbarians are the enemies of civilization. The Goths, Franks, Vandals, etc. took down the Western Roman empire with weapons. The neos use smears, lies and government to do that.
Forward!
… into the past.
Progress!
… In a retrograde direction.
Free enterprise is the biggest driver of innovation. The original progressives wanted checks on the market. They weren't entirely wrong. There was and is a case to be made for limiting pollution, knowing what's in the food we eat, getting quack medicines off the market, preventing investment fraud, and keeping scenic spots from being despoiled.
In the 30s, private enterprise didn't bring prosperity, so the government stepped in. Keynesian theory and the demand for large public works in less developed parts of the country, as well as the self-interest of those in government also fueled the trend. In war and in peace the government undertook massive projects that did further innovation and invention, which contributed to economic growth and prosperity.
By the 1970s growth and development started to look like a questionable or bad thing to American elites. The country had already built its dams and highways and bridges. In the eyes of intellectuals, mass prosperity and consumerism weren't good things anymore. Progressives turned hard against construction projects and against innovation in general. With a growing economy and a growing population and a limited land area, there was some sense in that, but restricting growth and development was combined with a NIMBY, I've got mine attitude.
Progressives believe that we are richer than we need to be or deserve to be, and that the task now is to regulate and redistribute the national wealth. They don't understand that in a competitive world, that wealth can disappear quite quickly, especially if taxation and borrowing get out of control. Affluent progressives pursue their own self-interest and kick away the ladders that could bring others up to their standard of living, and they feel righteous about doing so.
Temujin @ 6:12: Good ramble. Agree that Ayn Rand saw (and showed) the pathology very clearly. Her books are awkward, obvious, almost cartoonish, long-winded: and yet absolutely penetrating and unforgettable. I guess that comes from having suffered years of grinding and deliberate immiseration in early Soviet Russia — the mind is purged of all illusion.
After more than a few years on the planet, I have lost interest in fancy deconstruction of the Progressive grift/religion. It’s just evil. Simple as that.
Lurker21 said...
Progressive have no idea how wealth is made. They are firm believers in what I call, "Rusty's Peasant Theory of Economics". Which states," If you have more than I do, you stole it."
Lurker21 @ 7:53. Bingo.
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