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Hypothesis: late-modernist progressivish neoliberalism a la Obama is actually the best philosophy of governance possible today. Anything better for the population will be rejected, anything more popular will be worse.
This thought is mostly inspired by @mgurri's must-read book.
This thought is mostly inspired by @mgurri's must-read book.
Gurri notes the failures of high modernist projects throughout the 20th C. (c.f. Seeing Like a State). At the dawn of the 21st, these failures aren't only obvious but impossible by governments and authorities to suppress in the decentralized information landscape of the internet.
These visible failures don't engender humility and lower expectations, they mostly engender nihilist antagonism as can be seen in every popular protest movement from 2011 till today. People simultaneously chant "The authorities are evil!" and "Please save us, o authorities!".
Institutions like the Democratic Party, the NY Times, the Ivy League etc grew for decades in the protective shade of information monopolies. But today nothing has a chance to grow as big in power and reputation without being squashed by too much public visibility.
This also creates a coordination problem for talent. A thousand of the best citizen-journalists could easily replace the Times, but how do you get them onboard with your project when it's just starting? Same for other legacy institutions.
So the best people leave government/media/academia for small projects and startups, while the legacy institutions, staffed by the last believers, stagger along like zombies weighed down by the anger and expectations of the public. The result is @DouthatNYT's decadent society.
If this story is true, what does it suggest we do? Probably to vote for Biden while also building a life and a community that does not depend on institutions, and does not rely on any part of the government getting any better before getting much much worse.
If you're waiting for your city to reform zoning, for the government to provide affordable healthcare, for the Federal Reserve to stabilize prices and employment, for your alma mater to recover its reputation, for journalists to report truths... you may be waiting for a while.
I'm not sure how to synthesize @davidshor who wants to keep Democrat educated experts in power because populism is worse, @balajis who wants to kick them all out and replace them with utopian technologists, and @sonyasupposedly who wants to ignore them all and softrly secede.
