Your post got linked to in an ACX post, this is my comment from there.
"I've spent far too much time in online leftists spaces and the guys still discussing old-school Marxist economics are still mostly comp. sci. professors, physics students etc. But they're a tiny minority of leftism these days .
95%+ of modern leftists are new-left (i.e. woke to left-liberal), and new-left ideology, anti-racism/ anti-sexism, is much accessible/appealing to word-cells. Even most people who call themselves socialists are mostly the left fringe of the new-left.
If you just look at leftist who are most similar to the old left, i.e. pro-central-planning, maybe a bit tankie, or not that interested in social justice, those guys (they'll be almost all guys) will be mostly in STEM. But that's far too small a group to impact the science and engineering world as a whole anymore.
Another thing is that libertarianism is much more prominent and has replaced Marxism as the main highly systemising ideology people get exposed to in their formative years, and people can only fall into one nerd-trap."
I want to add that, from my point of view, the "new left" has a significant issue with the old Enlightenment project. The idea that "we (mostly Western or at least westernized) people have the best knowledge, and everyone else must learn this knowledge and live by it" appears completely colonialist to them. Additionally, the notion that "each voice is equal, and no one's opinion is superior to another," which some liberals hold, is not very compatible with a hard scientific worldview. (Probably, the more religion-accepting modern left views versus the old-school "no god is the only truth" stance also add some "anti-tech" points.)
Strong premise. My explanation is that yes the left has done a poor job of explaining their plan—honestly, a poor job planning.
At the highest level this is bc of an almost axiomatic commitment to the medium of text. Meanwhile, technocapital has been eating text, shape rotators by definition longer believe in it, and the world is increasingly amenable to this “post-textual” reason.
Fourcade and Healy’s new book nails this. The ordinal society constructed inductively by high-tech modernism. The decisive left-liberal sacrilege was getting rid of the SAT.
And also this mindset applied to gender/dating/mating is an absolute disaster.
Let's think about how many understandings of socialism were explicitly based on capitalist practice. Early 20th century, American businesses championed scientific management, Taylorism, and downplayed entrepreneurship and tacit knowledge and business sense. American agrobusinesses said agriculture is 10% farming and 90% engineering. The whole vibe of capitalism was Just Apply Science. Then why would owners be necessary? And it is not surprising the Soviets thought the state can do that Just Apply Science thing - Stalin was explicitly talking about learning American scientific management. All this happened BEFORE Hayek.
> But losing your job because car sales are down because other people lost their jobs because people had been lying and/or mistaken about how risky it was to own - brace yourself - claims on the income to claims on the income to claims on the income from housing sales - appears insane.
But Hayek was a big believer in the ABCT! Basically you are losing your job because the government printed too much money which got invested stupidly.
In 1924, economists could still viably argue that central planning—implemented intelligently—would generate superior economic growth and higher living standards than the non-rational “invisible hand” of broadly-free market forces. Many did. It was a reasonable perspective for empiricists and technocrats to hold and propagate at that time. In 2024, in the wake of the collapse of the USSR in ‘91, and the ongoing, disastrous foundering of the Venezuelan, Cuban, and North Korean regimes, any serious person concerned with optimizing for growth and living standards (especially without sacrificing basic negative freedoms, like the right to vote for one’s leaders or to joke about their impotence without being thrown into prison) no longer views socialist central planning as a reasonable, let alone desirable, economic paradigm. It has become an aesthetic, abstracted intellectual ideal longed-for only by abstracted, intellectual aesthetes in year 5 of their poetry PhD who have limited interest in whether it is actually a ~pragmatic~ means of ushering in an era of unprecedented human flourishing and achievement. Any empirically-minded person can now with high confidence assert that socialism is likely a dead-end and that the modern liberal democratic paradigm of regulated markets + social safety nets, weekends, worker’s comp, and all the other great innovations of the early socialists is our best bet. Sadly, it won’t guarantee that we are all happy, self-actualized little proles, but it is the only system that consistently endows us with the basic physical security / stability and freedom of gnosis to aspire to such for ourselves and our people.
I don't think I'll ever understand how people can simultaneously believe that
- Venezuela is socialist
- Norway is not socialist
- China is not socialist
- Socialism is when and only when you do Soviet-style central planning
Draw the line wherever you want - but draw *a* line. Either petrostates with generous welfare and extensive state ownership are socialist or they're not; either developmentalist regimes with market economies and weak property rights are socialist or they're not. You want to say we're all socialist now? Fine, I'll play along, I'm a "radical socialist" or whatever. You want to say socialism existed for exactly five minutes in 1920? Sure, fine, I guess I'm a "social democrat". But be consistent.
I am drawing the line at states that are explicitly self-described as socialist, and have mostly or exclusively-nationalized economies. One ~could~ conceivably number China among these states given the economic heft of its SOEs, though it has freer markets than the countries I listed and its self-described “socialism” has long been questionable and heavily caveated by the “with Chinese characteristics” its leaders like to tack on at the end of the descriptor. But Norway is a free market social democracy. Indeed, by some metrics of ease of doing business, regulatory burden, property rights, etc. it scores better than the USA. Aspiring to spread the Nordic model remains entirely reasonable (and, indeed, admirable) in 2024. If Norway is your lodestar, then you are a Social Democrat who believes in a robust social safety net supported by free markets and your adherence to “socialism” is merely aesthetic.
Perhaps 'socialist' is a more useful as a comparative adjective than 'socialism' is as a noun. I am more socialist than any Right-libertarian with whom I've communicated because I believe that the markets are not the sole necessary system of valuation, for example that some decisions should be made by a mechanism which at least aims for the assignment of equal weight to all adult citzens rather than one in which power is allocated by access to capital. (Most L.P. members also believe this to some extent: they don't want the existence of 'property rights' and The Non-Aggression Principle, both backed by State or State-authorised violence and its threat, to be matters left-up to any market. A Right-thinking anarchist might consider themself to be less socialist than that.)
> There is a possible world where the hot new thing is neoliberal - we’re living in it.
No, people have been complaining about neoliberalism for a LOOONG time.
> Sand Hill Road is the new heartland of American reaction
My understanding is that most VCs actually lean left, even if it might appear otherwise to you. There are political scientists who collect data on political leanings, and this post could have benefited from such data.
> the collapse of leftist sympathies among the “elites”, among the technical intelligentsia and the bright-eyed young things in Washington, has been profound
This is one of those claims that should have data backing it up.
> But memories are short
Indeed, which is why people got enthusiastic about Hugo Chavez' Venezuela well after the collapse of the USSR.
Great post. One thing I have been thinking about is recognizing right-libertarianism as, first and foremost, a cultural movement. This is well-explained in The Individualists by Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi. The Road to Serfdom, The Fountainhead, Bureaucracy and Omnipotent Government, and The Discovery of Freedom, were *all* published 1943-1944, functioning as knee-jerk reactions to the WW2 world-historic state-building.
A question: what do you mean by 'Bugman', I've seen it used on the Right for 'people who have no souls' by dint of race, ethnicity, or just disagreement wuth them, but I am very sure you don't mean that—is it a nickname for the likely next President (because that is who 'we' are)?
I am actually riffing on the right-wing use. "War of Resistance against (Bugman/Rightoid) Aggression" is hyperbolic sarcasm. My point is that the culture war is in fact very petty.
I think '2: The Bolsheviks screwed everything up forever' is stronger than was given-credit-for here: the Past is continually being reconstructed in the Present as needed by whoever is doing the reconstruction, from the stupidity of the likely next President's (because that is who 'we' are) getting mileage where he wants it by calling his opponent 'Comrade'—stupid though it is (because that is who 'we' are)—to the erudite-ish conflations of anything to the left of (and less racist than) the Von Meeskeit Institute with it. It's always there in the background of all the other reasons presented here, the super-heated old stove on the floor that we are told is the same as any other floor-model we might want to touch.
Your post got linked to in an ACX post, this is my comment from there.
"I've spent far too much time in online leftists spaces and the guys still discussing old-school Marxist economics are still mostly comp. sci. professors, physics students etc. But they're a tiny minority of leftism these days .
95%+ of modern leftists are new-left (i.e. woke to left-liberal), and new-left ideology, anti-racism/ anti-sexism, is much accessible/appealing to word-cells. Even most people who call themselves socialists are mostly the left fringe of the new-left.
If you just look at leftist who are most similar to the old left, i.e. pro-central-planning, maybe a bit tankie, or not that interested in social justice, those guys (they'll be almost all guys) will be mostly in STEM. But that's far too small a group to impact the science and engineering world as a whole anymore.
Another thing is that libertarianism is much more prominent and has replaced Marxism as the main highly systemising ideology people get exposed to in their formative years, and people can only fall into one nerd-trap."
I want to add that, from my point of view, the "new left" has a significant issue with the old Enlightenment project. The idea that "we (mostly Western or at least westernized) people have the best knowledge, and everyone else must learn this knowledge and live by it" appears completely colonialist to them. Additionally, the notion that "each voice is equal, and no one's opinion is superior to another," which some liberals hold, is not very compatible with a hard scientific worldview. (Probably, the more religion-accepting modern left views versus the old-school "no god is the only truth" stance also add some "anti-tech" points.)
Some nice bon mots in here.
Strong premise. My explanation is that yes the left has done a poor job of explaining their plan—honestly, a poor job planning.
At the highest level this is bc of an almost axiomatic commitment to the medium of text. Meanwhile, technocapital has been eating text, shape rotators by definition longer believe in it, and the world is increasingly amenable to this “post-textual” reason.
https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/sympathy-for-the-wordcel
Fourcade and Healy’s new book nails this. The ordinal society constructed inductively by high-tech modernism. The decisive left-liberal sacrilege was getting rid of the SAT.
And also this mindset applied to gender/dating/mating is an absolute disaster.
Let's think about how many understandings of socialism were explicitly based on capitalist practice. Early 20th century, American businesses championed scientific management, Taylorism, and downplayed entrepreneurship and tacit knowledge and business sense. American agrobusinesses said agriculture is 10% farming and 90% engineering. The whole vibe of capitalism was Just Apply Science. Then why would owners be necessary? And it is not surprising the Soviets thought the state can do that Just Apply Science thing - Stalin was explicitly talking about learning American scientific management. All this happened BEFORE Hayek.
> But losing your job because car sales are down because other people lost their jobs because people had been lying and/or mistaken about how risky it was to own - brace yourself - claims on the income to claims on the income to claims on the income from housing sales - appears insane.
But Hayek was a big believer in the ABCT! Basically you are losing your job because the government printed too much money which got invested stupidly.
In 1924, economists could still viably argue that central planning—implemented intelligently—would generate superior economic growth and higher living standards than the non-rational “invisible hand” of broadly-free market forces. Many did. It was a reasonable perspective for empiricists and technocrats to hold and propagate at that time. In 2024, in the wake of the collapse of the USSR in ‘91, and the ongoing, disastrous foundering of the Venezuelan, Cuban, and North Korean regimes, any serious person concerned with optimizing for growth and living standards (especially without sacrificing basic negative freedoms, like the right to vote for one’s leaders or to joke about their impotence without being thrown into prison) no longer views socialist central planning as a reasonable, let alone desirable, economic paradigm. It has become an aesthetic, abstracted intellectual ideal longed-for only by abstracted, intellectual aesthetes in year 5 of their poetry PhD who have limited interest in whether it is actually a ~pragmatic~ means of ushering in an era of unprecedented human flourishing and achievement. Any empirically-minded person can now with high confidence assert that socialism is likely a dead-end and that the modern liberal democratic paradigm of regulated markets + social safety nets, weekends, worker’s comp, and all the other great innovations of the early socialists is our best bet. Sadly, it won’t guarantee that we are all happy, self-actualized little proles, but it is the only system that consistently endows us with the basic physical security / stability and freedom of gnosis to aspire to such for ourselves and our people.
I don't think I'll ever understand how people can simultaneously believe that
- Venezuela is socialist
- Norway is not socialist
- China is not socialist
- Socialism is when and only when you do Soviet-style central planning
Draw the line wherever you want - but draw *a* line. Either petrostates with generous welfare and extensive state ownership are socialist or they're not; either developmentalist regimes with market economies and weak property rights are socialist or they're not. You want to say we're all socialist now? Fine, I'll play along, I'm a "radical socialist" or whatever. You want to say socialism existed for exactly five minutes in 1920? Sure, fine, I guess I'm a "social democrat". But be consistent.
I am drawing the line at states that are explicitly self-described as socialist, and have mostly or exclusively-nationalized economies. One ~could~ conceivably number China among these states given the economic heft of its SOEs, though it has freer markets than the countries I listed and its self-described “socialism” has long been questionable and heavily caveated by the “with Chinese characteristics” its leaders like to tack on at the end of the descriptor. But Norway is a free market social democracy. Indeed, by some metrics of ease of doing business, regulatory burden, property rights, etc. it scores better than the USA. Aspiring to spread the Nordic model remains entirely reasonable (and, indeed, admirable) in 2024. If Norway is your lodestar, then you are a Social Democrat who believes in a robust social safety net supported by free markets and your adherence to “socialism” is merely aesthetic.
Perhaps 'socialist' is a more useful as a comparative adjective than 'socialism' is as a noun. I am more socialist than any Right-libertarian with whom I've communicated because I believe that the markets are not the sole necessary system of valuation, for example that some decisions should be made by a mechanism which at least aims for the assignment of equal weight to all adult citzens rather than one in which power is allocated by access to capital. (Most L.P. members also believe this to some extent: they don't want the existence of 'property rights' and The Non-Aggression Principle, both backed by State or State-authorised violence and its threat, to be matters left-up to any market. A Right-thinking anarchist might consider themself to be less socialist than that.)
There are still a couple of people of people thinking about central planning that aren't poetry PhDs. I'm a complete philistine and I wrote this:
https://claycubeomnibus.substack.com/p/economic-calculation-in-the-rts-commonwealth
and there's Paul Cockshott's Towards a New Socialism.
> There is a possible world where the hot new thing is neoliberal - we’re living in it.
No, people have been complaining about neoliberalism for a LOOONG time.
> Sand Hill Road is the new heartland of American reaction
My understanding is that most VCs actually lean left, even if it might appear otherwise to you. There are political scientists who collect data on political leanings, and this post could have benefited from such data.
> the collapse of leftist sympathies among the “elites”, among the technical intelligentsia and the bright-eyed young things in Washington, has been profound
This is one of those claims that should have data backing it up.
> But memories are short
Indeed, which is why people got enthusiastic about Hugo Chavez' Venezuela well after the collapse of the USSR.
Great post. One thing I have been thinking about is recognizing right-libertarianism as, first and foremost, a cultural movement. This is well-explained in The Individualists by Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi. The Road to Serfdom, The Fountainhead, Bureaucracy and Omnipotent Government, and The Discovery of Freedom, were *all* published 1943-1944, functioning as knee-jerk reactions to the WW2 world-historic state-building.
This was an amazing post I just finished and will continue to mull over. I am glad I found you on ACX.
A question: what do you mean by 'Bugman', I've seen it used on the Right for 'people who have no souls' by dint of race, ethnicity, or just disagreement wuth them, but I am very sure you don't mean that—is it a nickname for the likely next President (because that is who 'we' are)?
I am actually riffing on the right-wing use. "War of Resistance against (Bugman/Rightoid) Aggression" is hyperbolic sarcasm. My point is that the culture war is in fact very petty.
I think '2: The Bolsheviks screwed everything up forever' is stronger than was given-credit-for here: the Past is continually being reconstructed in the Present as needed by whoever is doing the reconstruction, from the stupidity of the likely next President's (because that is who 'we' are) getting mileage where he wants it by calling his opponent 'Comrade'—stupid though it is (because that is who 'we' are)—to the erudite-ish conflations of anything to the left of (and less racist than) the Von Meeskeit Institute with it. It's always there in the background of all the other reasons presented here, the super-heated old stove on the floor that we are told is the same as any other floor-model we might want to touch.