I hope they’re right

[supergee]

The optimistic left

Comments

[arlie]

I think he's full of it.

Oh, parts of it resonate with me, but parts of it are BS. The author seems unaware of the changing nature of jobs in the US - ever increasing precariousness. More of the same kind of service oriented growth doesn't fix that. Sure, it's better to have 2 or 3 benefitsless part time jobs than no job at all. But there's a growing suckitude that he doesn't even recognize.

Likewise, he's lauding improvements in energy use patterns that strike me as too little, too late. Maybe the Selfish and Want-the-Apocalypse wings of the Republican party won't get all they want - which would be whatever makes them a short term buck and/or hastens the end-of-the-world foretold by their religion - but business as usual and/or weakened business-as-usual is not enough.

And finally, like most Americans, he seems to think of politics as a sports match. Rah! Rah! We have lots of supporters and our side will win real-soon-now. Frankly I don't care which party wins - I care what policies they enact. A winning Democrat party that's mired in business as usual wouldn't be something for me to celebrate. Likewise one that can't pass anything due to a no-compromise do-nothing opposition party.


Yes, some of the long term trends are less troglodytic than the current Republican party. But most of those are in the social arena, not economic. And while I applaud what social gains there have been, it's unclear to me that the status of women has improved since perhaps 1980, overall, and especially in tech, where it's been moving retrograde AFAICT.

Repeat after me: improvements in productivity mean nothing, if the gains from these improvements go to those already wealthy. He's got great faith in the Democrats improving redistribution once they finally get back in power, due to these demographic trends. Whereas I expect them to once again compromise on poor people in favour of identifiable minorities and/or their own big donors. A lot of people support the Democrats only because the Republicans are worse, and the Democrats seem to insist on taking them for granted, using their support, and never helping them. That's where I'd be, if I were a US citizen.

And then there's the whole issue of privacy, and overall influence of big tech companies on far too many aspects of daily life. That's a smoldering fuse, and no one in the US even wants to touch it. Meanwhile, google offers me a convenient subset of actual new stories, making it all too easy to live in a bubble, if Dreamwidth hasn't got me into that bubble all on its own.

Sure, optimism will gain more votes than pessimism. See "sports team" above.