Great review. I'm going to have to read this book. I really thought I had finally beaten academic consensus (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/17/learning-to-love-scientific-consensus/) with my neoprogressivism take, but I should have known. I really like your hard questions! They're clear and do get at knotty issues with the Abundance agenda. Some thoughts.
For 1, I wonder how much of this is based on age demographics. With the Baby Boom generation, American age demographics have gotten more and more top-heavy, with seniors and older people being a larger proportion of the country. I think there are strong reasons to believe that older people have less upside for getting new things and more downside for losing old things, and also may be more risk-averse and nostalgic (can expand on this if it's not clear). Will these change as Boomers die? I don't know the stats on this.
It has been reported that the youth (Gen Alpha and such) report feeling that community engagement is less important and making money is more important. This has generally been reported as a bad thing (understandably), but isn't another way of looking at this Gen Alpha wanting to take the Hamiltonian bargain instead of the Jeffersonian? Hamiltonians say "we'll make you rich, but let a centralized decision-maker do the policy while you run around making money" while Jeffersonians say "you'll all have rights and take part in decisions."
For 2, I think this is really important, but not necessarily fatal. There are consistent studies showing that people feel better after having their case heard in court even if they didn't win, so voice is not nothing---people can feel better about being heard (this academic review of the literature is just the first thing that popped up when I searched for something like this: https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev.lawsocsci.1.041604.115958). Now, courtrooms have a lot of history and cultural symbolism backing them up on this matter---"having your day in court" is an idiom for a reason. I'm not sure how well other agencies can do it, but there are definitely ways for it to work. The main problem with voice and veto is probably a vocal minority, silent majority issue. I am really skeptical about this part, though, and my thinking is sometimes that maybe the lesson from Robert Moses is just to make better decisions? Like maybe it's just we need to substantively make better decisions and trying to solve it by process is wrong. Matt Yglesias also has a good post about how many of Robert Moses's general principles were just bad from a modern economic point of view: https://www.slowboring.com/p/robert-mosess-ideas-were-weird-and.
For 3, I think Dan Davies is talking really interesting stuff in Back of Mind and in his book The Unaccountability Machine on management cybernetics and organizational decisionmaking. He's had some recent posts about how information processes in government action and how they turn into corruption. I also am reminded of Matt Levine, who writes Money Stuff, where I think one of his lines is something like "the efficient level of fraud is not 0."
Before my very late reply to this comment, I want to say that I like your Neo-Progressivism label. The real test of whether this moment deserves that name is if real political coalitions can be made and real state capacity-boosting civil service reform can happen, a la the original Progressive Era. It's all still an open question, as you can see by various people's reactions to the recent Abundance convention in DC. Some, like Josh Barro and Jerusalem Demsas, love it. Others, not so much. So for now it's a bit of an aspirational name, but I share the hope!
Anyway, responding to your comment:
1) The age hypothesis is interesting. I've been thinking lately that status quo bias is part of a law-of-nature-esque aversion to change, but it may be more contingent than that.
2) I agree that people like to be heard and in some sense this is an end in itself. Also agree about the Robert Moses stuff, including the Yglesias post you link.
I also think that people read Moses wrong because of the mystique (and wonderful writing) of The Power Broker. Moses was implementing his era's version of smart urban renewal policy and most cities around the country were doing the same thing. Harland Bartholomew was my city's Moses and was part of a bipartisan consensus, appointed to Federal committees by Hoover, FDR, and Eisenhower. Urban planners all over the country implemented similar policies. As you say, the problem is that the ideas were bad!
You make a good case that it’s completely implausible that progressives will get around to building things. Indeed, they can’t stomach being mean and asserting the interest of the majority (in your post, you showed a strong pro-minority bias, if you noticed). Thus, they can’t “sacrifice” anybody- and therefore, nothing will be built by progressives. The whole “abundance” fad is a good diagnosis, but is DOA as a program.
By other political groups, perhaps: for instance, one that would emphasize “greatness” and was willing to show a mean streak.
I think there are big coalitional issues here, though I do think that your response is a bit wishing for a different MAGA movement (or leader) than actually exists. I get why that is the right wing hope for the good that can come from Trump, but the Actually Existing MAGA Movement isn't the kind of "principled commitment towards clear and consistent goals, to hell with what other people think!" Except maybe on tariffs? And there the goal is just bad.
I do, myself, hope that some people with more focus and who share my political goals take the lesson from him that "you can just do stuff," for lack of a better phrase, but there are big cultural issues to overcome there.
I was reading something recently (and I can't remember where or the details) about an "Abundance-themed" conference having its share of right-of-center attendees. It would be ironic if the idea were taken up (effectively) by the Right. With the sort of political scrambling we've seen lately (statist Republicans, MAGA crunchy moms, etc.), who knows what kind of recombinations are possible?
Nonetheless, I agree with you that the MAGA movement is not pointing in that direction in its current incarnation. Though I think that it will outlive the current administration.
Great review. I'm going to have to read this book. I really thought I had finally beaten academic consensus (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/17/learning-to-love-scientific-consensus/) with my neoprogressivism take, but I should have known. I really like your hard questions! They're clear and do get at knotty issues with the Abundance agenda. Some thoughts.
For 1, I wonder how much of this is based on age demographics. With the Baby Boom generation, American age demographics have gotten more and more top-heavy, with seniors and older people being a larger proportion of the country. I think there are strong reasons to believe that older people have less upside for getting new things and more downside for losing old things, and also may be more risk-averse and nostalgic (can expand on this if it's not clear). Will these change as Boomers die? I don't know the stats on this.
It has been reported that the youth (Gen Alpha and such) report feeling that community engagement is less important and making money is more important. This has generally been reported as a bad thing (understandably), but isn't another way of looking at this Gen Alpha wanting to take the Hamiltonian bargain instead of the Jeffersonian? Hamiltonians say "we'll make you rich, but let a centralized decision-maker do the policy while you run around making money" while Jeffersonians say "you'll all have rights and take part in decisions."
For 2, I think this is really important, but not necessarily fatal. There are consistent studies showing that people feel better after having their case heard in court even if they didn't win, so voice is not nothing---people can feel better about being heard (this academic review of the literature is just the first thing that popped up when I searched for something like this: https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev.lawsocsci.1.041604.115958). Now, courtrooms have a lot of history and cultural symbolism backing them up on this matter---"having your day in court" is an idiom for a reason. I'm not sure how well other agencies can do it, but there are definitely ways for it to work. The main problem with voice and veto is probably a vocal minority, silent majority issue. I am really skeptical about this part, though, and my thinking is sometimes that maybe the lesson from Robert Moses is just to make better decisions? Like maybe it's just we need to substantively make better decisions and trying to solve it by process is wrong. Matt Yglesias also has a good post about how many of Robert Moses's general principles were just bad from a modern economic point of view: https://www.slowboring.com/p/robert-mosess-ideas-were-weird-and.
For 3, I think Dan Davies is talking really interesting stuff in Back of Mind and in his book The Unaccountability Machine on management cybernetics and organizational decisionmaking. He's had some recent posts about how information processes in government action and how they turn into corruption. I also am reminded of Matt Levine, who writes Money Stuff, where I think one of his lines is something like "the efficient level of fraud is not 0."
Before my very late reply to this comment, I want to say that I like your Neo-Progressivism label. The real test of whether this moment deserves that name is if real political coalitions can be made and real state capacity-boosting civil service reform can happen, a la the original Progressive Era. It's all still an open question, as you can see by various people's reactions to the recent Abundance convention in DC. Some, like Josh Barro and Jerusalem Demsas, love it. Others, not so much. So for now it's a bit of an aspirational name, but I share the hope!
Anyway, responding to your comment:
1) The age hypothesis is interesting. I've been thinking lately that status quo bias is part of a law-of-nature-esque aversion to change, but it may be more contingent than that.
2) I agree that people like to be heard and in some sense this is an end in itself. Also agree about the Robert Moses stuff, including the Yglesias post you link.
I also think that people read Moses wrong because of the mystique (and wonderful writing) of The Power Broker. Moses was implementing his era's version of smart urban renewal policy and most cities around the country were doing the same thing. Harland Bartholomew was my city's Moses and was part of a bipartisan consensus, appointed to Federal committees by Hoover, FDR, and Eisenhower. Urban planners all over the country implemented similar policies. As you say, the problem is that the ideas were bad!
You make a good case that it’s completely implausible that progressives will get around to building things. Indeed, they can’t stomach being mean and asserting the interest of the majority (in your post, you showed a strong pro-minority bias, if you noticed). Thus, they can’t “sacrifice” anybody- and therefore, nothing will be built by progressives. The whole “abundance” fad is a good diagnosis, but is DOA as a program.
By other political groups, perhaps: for instance, one that would emphasize “greatness” and was willing to show a mean streak.
I think there are big coalitional issues here, though I do think that your response is a bit wishing for a different MAGA movement (or leader) than actually exists. I get why that is the right wing hope for the good that can come from Trump, but the Actually Existing MAGA Movement isn't the kind of "principled commitment towards clear and consistent goals, to hell with what other people think!" Except maybe on tariffs? And there the goal is just bad.
I do, myself, hope that some people with more focus and who share my political goals take the lesson from him that "you can just do stuff," for lack of a better phrase, but there are big cultural issues to overcome there.
I was reading something recently (and I can't remember where or the details) about an "Abundance-themed" conference having its share of right-of-center attendees. It would be ironic if the idea were taken up (effectively) by the Right. With the sort of political scrambling we've seen lately (statist Republicans, MAGA crunchy moms, etc.), who knows what kind of recombinations are possible?
Nonetheless, I agree with you that the MAGA movement is not pointing in that direction in its current incarnation. Though I think that it will outlive the current administration.