Great post. I was thinking along the same lines regarding natalism: the more it gets associated with strongman regimes and traditionalist aesthetics, the less children there are actually going to be. If it becomes "cringe" to want children or to want progress, we're cooked.
It's a little complicated, because tradwife influencers are actually popular. It is just that their version of traditionalist aesthetics seems like a harmless and rather cool lifestyle choice, not associated with things like banning abortion. Cool in the way The Shire is cool, the charm of the simple calm anxiety-free life.
So one needs to be careful what kind of traditionalist aesthetics. The inquisitorial is very bad, but he hobbit like is good.
Banning abortion is not harmful. Murder is harmful. When women are permitted to self-govern you get feminist nonsense. Obviously the problem is that women are permitted to vote at all. First society that throws off the arrogance of western women will dominate for the next few hundred years. My bet is on eastern Europe.
I want everyone <100 IQ sterilized. They are unfit to inherit a sophisticated future. Many of these women are just parroting the lib-tard social script & are the wrong people to have abortions, along with their other bad decisions. Minorities, leftists (mutants) & poor whites need easier access to abortion.
While I'm all for eugenics... some one has to man the powerlines and clean the sewers. What we need is to reevaluate whether democratic systems are a good idea. I think that maybe monarchy is the way to go. (Real monarchy like Oman or Thailand, not BS monarchy like the UK).
No one with a below 100 IQ can man a power line competently. Anyone who has had to deal with a low IQ tradesman knows how difficult it is to get good work done. Infrastructure is collapsing in part because of demographic decline. Rural areas are almost entirely a net loss on society very sad. We need less people going to these stupid colleges & more higher IQ craftsmen IMO.
I don’t think mass sterilization is humane enough but encouraging the above voluntarily is doable. We need an empire size military & security state in the modern world practically speaking. The USA is one. The EU could be another. Regardless of the system details much of the state will function the same. People are not going to accept monarchy but will support ending immigration now if they can see the consequences.
I wonder if natalism is doomed to exude these off-putting aesthetics. Even worrying about the fertility crisis is liable to kick up some backlash. Advancing overtly natalist policymaking or cultural shifts without accumulating handmaiden/gooncave vibes is a tightrope walk at best.
Natalism that is based on empowering high iq working women and making it easier for them to have kids, like in Israel, is the way to kids. We need more paid maternity leave by the government (think like a year of it), which subsidizes rich working women to have kids. Income tax cut per kid like in Hungary is a good policy.
In this book "The Genius of Israel", there is an anecdote about women in high-tech being encouraged by their bosses to have tons of kids. Employers make it easy and high-status for working women to have tons of kids, and having kids is considered high-status. They don't have huge maternity leave or income tax cut per kid (at least not yet) but they have a culture that celebrates successful professional women having lots of kids.
It's not a left-right issue. Shikma Bressler, a successful physics professor at Weizmann and the leader of the anti judicial reform protest, one of the most prominent center-left and secular activists in the country, has FIVE kids. She is a secular woman.
There is literally one country in the world where seculars have high fertility and it’s a based right wing ethnostate in a constant state of war with barbarians that surround it.
Also the dictionary definition of "ethnostate" is a state that restricts citizenship to people based on ethnicity. Israel is a based right wing ethnonational democracy, like Japan. If Japan was in a constant state of war with a bunch of Arab terrorists, do you think it would have a TFR of 2 among seculars? If Israel made peace, would it have a TFR of 1.2 among seculars?
I don’t know how war would affect Japan, they haven’t had one since 1945 and it’s essentially illegal.
Israel’s struggle for existence has made it more pro fertility, since it saw more future citizens as existential. Probably because they are so outnumbered.
But war could in theory do the opposite. South Korean officials responded to threats from the north by trying to lower fertility, since it juiced economic growth in the short run.
I think it also helps that being anti-Israel has always been seen as “left coded”, and as such patriotism has a right coding. Not just in western cultural contexts, but literally the Soviets supported the Arabs.
In Korea patriotism was more associated with the west and modernity, which fifty years ago meant lower fertility relative to Asian norms.
In general I’m not really optimistic about East Asian fertility trends. There was a piece somewhere I read that went into but Asians may literally just fail at modernity. They aren’t breeding anywhere under any circumstances. They are a very different from us.
But you note below that in fact it’s a cultural issue (in their case, for survival), *not* a government-mandated benefits one or a subsidization one.
I happen to disagree with you on government mandates, including here, but agree with you on the tax policy. But that’s mostly irrelevant. Israeli fertility is decidedly NOT evidence for more government interference in the free market.
I was saying that the government should pay for the leave, NOT the business. If the business has to pay, they have an incentive NOT to hire women of childbearing age. This is dysgenic and bad, because it means that a woman who does tubal ligation and then announces it will have an advantage in the job market. If no one pays, this is also bad and dysgenic, and means a successful career woman won't have as many kids. Having generous maternity/paternity leave also sends a cultural message that children are valued. I would guess that all else equal it does increase TFR, but maybe only 0.1-0.2 or something.
Tax cut is very good, agree on that.
I generally am very pro free market. But intervening to produce more productive taxpayers in the future seems appropriate.
MANDATING that businesses give the leave is bad. Mandates are not pro-abundance.
I am with you if you want to give economic incentives to women to have more children, certainly as part of a two parent home. By combining a tax credit and a tax deduction, it makes it more valuable to higher income couples.
So let the government *pay* a woman, but do not mandate the leave. Let consenting adults - the woman and her employer - determine what is best, rather than mandating something.
OK sure, in that case of course I agree. If the woman and employer both want the woman to have a leave, the government should pay for the leave and not the employer. So the employer does not have perverse incentives.
But I agree, the mandate is wrong. If the women and employer are both workaholics and like having babies in the office, sure, it's a free country. I don't think I ever said otherwise.
Yes. Natalism will always be a traditionalist position... because preserving human existence is a traditionalist position. Feminism is a force of destruction, and definitionally anti-natalist because women are small-minded. They cannot govern themselves.
Liberal women are the most miserable, & have the highest rates of SSRI abuse, “therapy” & childless regret. I see them in their 30s on dating apps & just angry & miserable. They can’t find a liberal man worth a shit, & hate what they really want.
It’s sad because a lot of them are actually attractive & just intelligent enough to fall for lib-tard BS. Had they been given a better social script they would birth a new generation of artists & engineers. Instead we’re left with lower IQ religious mods with no creative spirit having an above replacement birth rate + mass 3rd world immigration.
My impression is that most people tend to say the economy is the main reason people are having fewer children. But this common wisdom seems to have been questioned more and more, recently, for a number of reasons, e.g. that economic incentives by governments don't really work, or that people had more children in the past when they were poorer. So instead cultural explanations are being put forward somewhat more often now.
There can be infinitely many cultural explanations and they're hard to get right, and the one about right-wing aesthetics is only one. I don't actually think it's that important as a cultural force to explain fertility *now* (compared to e.g. the demands of safetyism for parents), but it's plausible that it could grow into one.
Feminism and "female empowerment" directly correlates to reduced birth rates. It seems to be fundamental that when women are permitted to behave like trash, they stop having children. It's fortunate because strong societies will eliminate weak ones. The question is whether your grandchildren (if you have any, probably not) are going to be traditional Christian House-wives or if they're going to be in the harem of an islamic jihadist. Your choice.
If you value weakness so much then consider the Christian origins of our weakness worshiping culture. The Vatican is in direct support of the mass migration invasion of our lands in the name of compassion. George Floyd was treated as a scape goat for “America’s original sin” of racism. Supreme Court justice ACB & speaker of the house MAGA Mike both adopting <100 IQ African children - literal human trafficking. These are not good examples of a healthy and confident mindset but rather one of guilt ridden white people virtue signaling their nation’s suicide.
Once white people become a hated minority in the counties their ancestors founded, the counties will decay violently along racial lines & you will ever have political power again & be at the mercy of your enemies no matter how much the Bible tells you to love them.
A literal suicide cult in the name of compassion. Life is survival of the fittest not the most compassionate. If you choose heaven over your children’s survival that’s on you.
Being positive only goes so far if you deny reality of nature. Weakness is pathetic.
Women & men will behave better when they see a future worth living for. Nobel animals don’t breed in captivity. Being “trad” is just well behaved domestication.
Great piece. One thought on the pro-market piece being associated with the right - whatever it is the modern right is becoming, it is becoming less pro-market. One reason pro-market sentiments "are already in peril across the Western World" is because the postliberal / Gooncave right has added their hostility to markets to voices from the anti-market left, to form a sort of new big government / anti-market consensus. Even though being pro-market has historically been a feature of the right, the pro-progress crowd may actually find that focusing on pro-market talking points is a good way to differentiate itself from the postliberal gooncave right.
Agreed, I think it's a marriage of convenience due to their mutual enemy of wokeness - the silicon valley right because of wokeness' impact on pro-market policies and the populist right because of wokeness' impact on family and community. If wokeness were to be defeated, their economic differences would spill over and break up the partnership. JD Vance is a weird marriage of the two but is not indicative of a deeper partnership imo
The only real not libertarian economic policy I can think of is tariffs. But tariffs are pretty normal. We had 30-50% tariffs most of our countries existence.
If I called the tariff a VAT, because that's what its going to amount to, a VAT on cheap Chinese stuff, people would be falling all over themselves to talk about how a VAT is a super rational tax that should replace the income tax. A 10% tariff would raise $300B in revenue, 20% twice that. Sure there would be some substitution effects but not that much. That's a ton of money you don't need from some other source.
I think it all just comes down to tariff = racist in leftist minds.
So outside of tariffs, which don't affect SV that much, how does the right threaten Silicon Valley? They don't want to regulate them. They don't want to tax them. They seem pretty bitcoin friendly.
I could maybe see the case the the right will end some tax breaks for blue states (SALT), but then you can just move HQ to Austin like Musk.
No, that already happened with Thiel in 2017. Anti-wokeness isn't why Marc Andreessen is voting for Trump. It's really the other way around because wokeness is just a social annoyance for most people in Silicon Valley. What's driving them to the GOP is needs of low taxes and lots of energy. The former was constant but Democrats now have to go after capital tax rates since they've promised to keep most people (under 400K household) safe from increased income taxes. The latter is new; crypto and AI require a lot of power. Guess which party is fine with opening up a natural gas plant for cheap stable power?
Because the Populist Right is still on the Right and tariffs aren't the end of the world. What the left wants to do economically could actually kill Silicon Valley, its already made California a trash heap.
2 groups want a society that isn't a garbage communist hellhole, those two groups form an alliance against evil small-minded bigots who want to destroy society. Pretty simple to me.
The "free market" is a mixed economy where self-righteous bureaucrats micromanage every aspect of human life. No wonder people are sick of it. This type of behavior is common when women are permitted out of the kitchen to shit up society rather than play their roles as home makers.
I saw that movie about Reagan. OK, not a great movie, though as somebody who grew up in the 80s (and who voted for Reagan in my first Presidential election ever), it did induce some nostalgia and warm feelings.
What struck me about it was that Reagan, like Trump, as often viciously attacked. But he had two things going for him. One was a certain grace, an ability to deflect with humor and wit, rather than anger. Like his famous "I hope you're all Republicans" referring to the medical staff at GWU when he was about to go in for surgery after being shot.
The other is a sense of optimism and hope. Sure, he called the commies the Evil Empire; he could be strong and angry. But he believed in America and its future, and he projected that uplifting vision. He wasn't angry all the time.
Trump’s campaign recently ran Reagan’s “Are you better off now than you were four years ago” speech in an ad. It didn’t make me change my mind about the current candidates, but the difference in tone and delivery, when compared with his other ads, was striking.
When I think about how someone like Robin Hanson still falls into the bad guy category from the POV of Women, despite being a totally efette, aloof and polite nerd with not a UFC bone in his body, I'm not sure how much this is really going to make a difference. Not without sacrificing intellectual integrity and free-roaming curiosity.
Like trumpian aesthetics repel a lot of educated men, too.
I don't think Bryan Caplan repels women. I think robin Hanson has attracted their ire due to the rape piece. I like Robin, so I don't agree with his semi cancellation, but I still think one can avoid broadly as a movement talking about rape etc
Caplan repelled my gf years back, but that was when he had that bad haircut.
Anyway I think another problem is the way the media can manufacture goon-ness in an instant, if it wants. JD Vance was not a goon, as far as anyone could tell, until he was tapped by Trump to VP. Being personally a family man and demonstrably having attracted a seemingly good woman made no difference.
The cat lady comment was unfortunate, but in general I suspect if you knew JD Vance, you'd probably like him. JD Vance has a fairly compelling personal story. Unfortunately, you're right -- he's so tied in with a certain internet culture that he doesn't communicate it particularly well.
They didn't make him out to be a goon as defined in your original article, but he was painted as misogynist and this was broadly effective. Granted, Obama's political talent helped here, but in my opinion wasn't necessary. The reality is that any randomly chosen man, regardless of political affiliation, can be portrayed as low-status and shamed and this will have at the bare minimum a modicum of effectiveness in the modern media environment.
I remember him being depicted as a school bully. Some kind of Yearbookgate. But yea Romney was difficult to pin with goon, if only because he's so handsome and as close to Don Draper as Republicans will probably ever get.
I would never vote for Romney because he gifted his children $150 million tax free at the same time my parents were trying to figure out how to not get in trouble for sending me a few thousand a month to help out with my daughters medical issues, unemployment, divorce, and so on. The main problem with him is that he has no clue what life is like for people who lack his privilege - worse yet he has no idea that he has no clue. A general lack of empathy is a bigger red flag for most women than misogyny is.
In fact, the media did indeed try to paint Romney as an evil male. And that was back in the pre-Trump era when they ostensibly still had some principles.
Ruxandra, IMO in the case of Vance [not my favorite Republican, btw] you are painting him with the leftist media’s broad brush, and he is at minimum a lot closer to Robin Hanson than to the “Gooncave”.
Also there's a difference between a movement that wants to have broad appeal and maybe research things like how to make science better vs an intellectual space for social science
By the way, I went back and looked at the Robin Hanson Rape/cuckoldry articles, which I remember being controversial, and I have to say that if I were a female human, I'd find him quite creepy. I'm a guy and I thought it was creepy! Who the hell uses "gentle silent rape" in a non-ironic way? Weren't we supposed to think that the coma rape of The Bride in Kill Bill was horrific, and worthy of lethal retribution?
You forget that “nice guys” aren’t always so nice in private. Calling verbal abuse a “thought experiment” is a common strategy of the stealth Gooncave.
That was just literally one essay. Hanson is the textbook autistic type who sometimes steps on people's toes out of obliviousness. His idea was to demonstrate the absurdity of redistributing money by offering a Modest Proposal of redistributing sex and the satirical intent was generally missed.
Eventually feminism will be crushed because it's a toxic ideology that makes people miserable. The real question is how long it'll be before women lose the franchise at this point, because it'll be very easy to point to the 1970s to 2020s and say "this is what happens when they're let loose"
Spot on. Let me emphasize the role and danger of bitterness even more. It is a disease that eats reasoning faculties and inhibits effective action. While it can bond groups of people together, it only does so around a negative. A group formed around it will block and delay, but rarely outmanoeuvre their opponents.
And it is off-putting to normal, functional people with something going on in their lives. No matter if originating form a bitter old couple, a political party or any other group of people.
Elon Mus is an example of what you are worried about. He spearheaded the BEV revolution and could be an ambassador of progress for the elites that are generally anti-progress: Progressive, environmentally conscious liberals. Perhaps sell them spaceflight too. Instead he scares them away with edgy social media posts and partisan politics.
An important lesson from this is: Stick to the mission and focus on what is truly within your circle of influence. If you are pro-progress and pro-market, focus on those topics. You may have strong opinions on cultural and foreign politics, but entering those arenas will jeopardize your core mission.
> Elon Mus is an example of what you are worried about. He spearheaded the BEV revolution and could be an ambassador of progress for the elites that are generally anti-progress: Progressive, environmentally conscious liberals. Perhaps sell them spaceflight too. Instead he scares them away edgy social media posts and partisan politics.
Well, more likely he does what he does because a) he is repulsed by the regressive, anti-free speech woke left that dominates Dem politics right now, and b) he is well aware that the GOP, even with Trump at the head, is the party that can actually deliver pro-abundance policies for the country.
Just because convincing elites is Ruxandra’s and your cause celebre doesn’t mean it is - or should be - Musk’s. I’m glad he’s more interested in free speech and pro-abundance policies now, rather than focused on winning over midwit elites.
Perhaps he thinks what kind of progress is more important than progress of any kind by all means, especially if the latter is merely understood as more tech and trinkets (and doesn’t include moral, social, and political betterment)
“Instead he scares them away with edgy social media posts and partisan politics.”
🙄
How dare he enable a platform that is pro free speech and does not parrot leftist political talking points and censor and fact-check “inconvenient truths” like all the other good-big-leftist platforms.
The *nerve* of the man to infuse the culture with social commentary and “partisan” politics that is not leftist, indeed!
The nerve of the man to allow free speech on social media, rather than speech that is of benefit only to leftist politicians!
Do you *truly* not understand that you reveal yourself to be a hopelessly anti-abundance, anti-free speech PARTISAN when you claim that it is Musk alone who is engaging in partisan politics?!?!?!?
Musk is a tech visionary and builder, that is his strength.
Twitter is a distraction.
Re his opinions, nothing wrong with free speech. He should be allowed to say what he does. But please understand that sharing an interview of a revisionist historian painting Churchill as the main bad guy in WW2 and the mass exterminations of the Nazis as unplanned accidents with the comment "interesting" will raise eyebrows with a lot of people.
This has nothing to do with abundance and everything to do with stupid culture war debates and edgy history takes.
This is a good post. I would go further than Trump and say whether abundance rises or falls will probably rest on Congress at least as much as the personality of the US Presidency. Worship of the Presidency has encouraged both parties to avoid a competitive bloodletting in the primary season by either lying about the 2020 election or lying about the mental state of the man who won the 2020 election. But at the same time, the Presidency is what makes American national politics coherent to many people who don't follow it closely.
It's hard for them to follow what the parties are for without clear leaders regularly in the media. So I think the biggest obstacle for abundance is the flood of sensationalism. You have thoughtful center-left policy writers calling for an all of the above energy permitting strategy, and meanwhile this is where a center-left politician who scores flat in the middle[1] of the Democratic party is on that very same permitting; calling it evil and Project 2025.[2] Trump is a flatly bad person to make leader of the United States, but he is a better abundance agenda guy by this low standard. The question is how to get the good leaders and good agenda together.
I agree! But I also think that culturally, it matters what elites believe in. So Trump hurts pro-markets in a sort of diffuse way, by associating it with the ick in the minds of elites.
If elite refers to a social station and not a quality or characteristic of an individual…then I don’t think there’s a tension.
“Elites” are still just people and people live in specific communities/social contexts. And the prevailing mores, beliefs, group aesthetic preferences inform a lot of what we take on. In that framing, elites are still fish swimming in water they’re probably not anymore cognizant of than anyone else.
(I think that’s part of the point Ruxandra was getting at; regardless, I personally think that’s descriptive of reality)
I concur with your description of reality, to be clear.
But I also think
a) the snark in my sentence is *totally* justified in this case,
b) the substance of my sentence is indeed accurate, and
c) unless the U.S. goes down a path even more socialist than Western Europe (which I unfortunately now acknowledge is indeed a non-zero possibility at this point), it is very likely an accurate forecast of the long run outcome for people who stubbornly hold such a view.
Now Ruxandra argues, and I mostly agree, that elites, especially leftist elites, are mostly lazy virtue-signaling folks, and thus won’t hold such anti-abundance views if they get the right signals from other elites.
But that just reinforces points a) and b)…
You and Ruxandra are, inadvertently or not, making the Brian Chau point that most “elites” are actually midwits…
Agree - very well articulated. I'm curious though why you captured only one fringe, it appears to me that there are similar factors at the one end of the spectrum too. The nature of grievances is different but that fringe also thrives on selective hearing.
Oh yeah. Well, in my original piece that I quote here I talked more about the other fringe, but I think Republicans have a bigger problem right now when it comes to elites and having a bad image
Pro-progress has already failed in the current environment (in the US at least) as evidenced by the two major political parties. So I actually think that appearing as something disagreeable, and catering to disagreeable people is a worthwhile endeavor right now, because those are the people who are the likeliest to combine a willingness to try something new and the dedication to put in the work to see if it is something that will succeed. Musks success at Tesla, SpaceX, etc. and the way he is acting now come from the same source, and it is one that probably already rejected upper middle class values of safetyism. Status does not flow from taking risks right now, and that seems like the main problem. Trying to appeal to a risk averse mainstream seems unlikely to make this better.
Maybe I am seeing things inaccurately, but if the mainstream is risk averse and conformist, and the people who try genuinely new and different things are disagreeable, it seems like promoting progress among normies will necessarily entail raising the status of disagreeable people. So I don’t see how promoting progress can avoid gooncave aesthetics. Granted that gooncave aesthetics can embrace anti-progress, like Trump and Vance. But progress seems to require jerks, and to promote progress entails allowing jerks more freedom and more status. I’m not saying that the appeal of progress cannot be broadened, just that it is difficult, and that however it happens I don’t think tinkering at the margins or taking mainstream approaches are going to work. The whole problem is that mainstream, normie sensibilities are anti-progress. So you either have to change those sensibilities, which is difficult and involves changing those preferences, not appealing to them, or you need something like WW2 and Sputnik and nuclear weapons to frighten them so much that they see more safety in change then in stasis.
Your post underscores another reason to take the car keys from Trump: because the stench of his movement is undermining their best ideas (natalism, progress, borders, etc). Great post. https://jeffgiesea.substack.com/p/harris-trump-debate
Fully agree with the Ick/Gooncave arguments shared by you and Richard Hanania. Appealing to women is a disciplining function and necessary for any mainstream political project. On a personal level, I've completely run out of patience for chud/gooncave behavior. The challenge is that the supply chain of ideas often emanates from fringe circles, and an implication of your line of thinking may be to sanitize certain spaces. The question I find myself asking is, what do we lose when we shut down the gooncave? I don't have an answer at this point.
I see little value in reducing people to stereotypes so you can create a narrative. It might let you make judgements but the whole thing is a house of cards.
“Whatever happens in this election, I hope that the next president will pursue a pro-abundance agenda and will enact policies aimed at fostering as opposed to inhibiting scientific and technological progress.”
You say this somewhat indifferently, but as you acknowledge / all-but-acknowledge in your piece, the (imperfect) pro-abundance agenda exists *only* on the right in the U.S. today. The center-left no longer controls the Dem party, nor Dem party policies, and border czar Kamala Harris has never been center-left in her political career.
The Democrat party is no longer the party of Bill Clinton. The fact that the largely anti-abundance Obama (“Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness”) seems in comparison to be fairly reasonable compared to those in control of Democrat party policies should make this abundantly (pun intended) clear.
Yet your piece clearly comes across as “well, we need to (or at least really should) vote for Kamala, then cross our fingers and hope against hope that she becomes pro-abundance.”
So while the piece *seems* well-written - as almost all of your pieces I’ve read actually in fact *are* - its message is muddled.
pro-market positions, which are already in peril across the Western World, have been traditionally associated more with the right. As I detailed in another piece, most people, including elites, passively adopt views that are considered popular in their circles, based mainly on vibes. It is no longer respectable in many educated circles to identify as a Republican. And everything they stand for, including good things, like pro-market positions, risks going down with them in the eyes of the educated elites. We must not let these be tainted by the aesthetics of the Gooncave and become casualties of whatever it is that the modern right is becoming. I think in the short term at least, the future of how pro-tech/pro-market positions are seen by the elite will depend on the ideological fight that is happening between the centre-left (as exemplified by pro-markets followed by redistribution commentators like Ezra Klein1 or Matthew Yglesias) and the more degrowth enamoured part of the left, which rejects market forces by principle. If you think this is not important, I am telling you, as an European: it is!
I am making it clear that the right is tied to pro market positions and because they are losing the elite I'm afraid pro market positions are gonna lose with the elite even further. Basically, I don't really care for a lot of what right wingers care about (immigration restrictions, abortion etc) and I do care abt markets. I think trumpism repels elites and because markets are associated with right wing, they are losing ground with the elites too by association.
I genuinely don’t know enough about kanala’s specific policies and I hear very contradicting accounts from various ppl as to how pro growth she would be and what the exact implications of her policies would be. I must say that I am worried though
In general, I don't know enough abt specific politicians. The way I model intellectual movements is re their influence on elites because that's what I can observe. I think this has downstream impacts on politicians in years if not decades (eg Obama is a result of intellectual movements started earlier than the 2000s.)
I'm talking here about pro free markets/ progress as a cultural movement first and foremost and what aesthetics it should adopt. As opposed to which politician it should align itself with or whatever
Fair enough. But this piece a) ventures into political tactics suggestions (most of which I agree with, FWIW), and b) political associations. You spend most of the piece talking about the problem of the Gooncaves, while talking very little about the problem of “well meaning” elitists supporting clearly anti-abundance policies and politicians.
If you were talking to “your base” on the political right, that would be fair enough, imo.
But since you seem to indicate that “your base” is elite, educated women, imo you have done a net disservice to the pro-abundance agenda, as you seem to justify votes for the anti-abundance agenda based on aesthetics, and based on the right coalition including Gooncavers.
By contrast, you never explicitly mentioned the at least equivalent problem that voting “center-left” means voting for a coalition that at barest minimum includes rabidly anti-abundance socialists and Marxists in it.
In fairness to you, perhaps most of my criticism truly is based on that last paragraph “Whatever happens…” and the first 8 words in particular. Remove that paragraph, and I have at most minor displeasure with an otherwise quite reasonable piece.
My base is not really educated women. What I hope is that elites (and a part of those are women + elites in general are more pro women) don't fall prey to anti market ideas even more than they have and actually become more pro abundance etc. I'm talking here about a cultural movement that might have political outcomes in a decade from now.
If you pay attention to my piece, I don't talk at all about who you should vote for or how good trump's policies are, but the aesthetics of Trumpism as a cultural movement. And I'm saying these are bad aesthetics if pro progress wants to win in the long run in the minds of the elite.
There is nothing inherently incorrect about what you wrote.
But timing is everything. Timed now, in the run-up to a general election, it serves a net negative purpose for the pro-abundance cause as written. Because it focuses on the negatives of the right coalition (more so even than those of the Trump campaign, actually), and very little on the negatives of elites explicitly backing what is clearly an anti-abundance party.
Timed a year ago during primary season, or 2 months from now - say after an election won by the non-abundance left - it would be far less problematic. And inarguably net pro-abundance.
"Elites" aren't a single blob. They can disagree about things just like the rest of us. If you want to move things in a pro-market trajectory, the only way that will happen is to support elites (or counter-elites, if you prefer to think of it that way) who are pro-market against elites that are anti-market. Pro-market elites are people like Elon Musk. All of them are considered right of center at this point. The establishment "uniparty" people, Joe Biden and George Bush and Liz Cheney and Kamala Harris, these are probably the people you have in mind when you say "elites," based on this piece.
It's fine to tell the pro-market side not to be stupid. But you also need to be clear about which side you're on and that people should support that side against the side that hates markets and explicitly wants government to swallow them up as much as possible (i.e. the left). The only way markets get freer is if Elon Musk gains more power relative to government bureaucrats. The only political path for that is through the right, whatever other problems it might have. You will never convince Kamala Harris to become pro-market.
It is easy enough to look up her record on positions. It is easy enough to find what she said during the 2019 residential primary campaign.
I *am* genuinely shocked that you have heard anything from *anyone* you consider credible that she has any “pro-growth” in her at all, as that is quite literally non-existent in her track record.
The best one could hope for is “well, she doesn’t have any real positions whatsoever, she just says and does whatever is necessary to advance politically, and so once she is president, if pro-growth policies seem to her to be in her political interest, she will go there.”
That’s the very best case. The far more likely case is that she will go with the instincts that have served her over the years, and choose the further left position because she takes less political flack from within her coalition if she does that.
Well yeah she doesn't strike me as someone who's very driven by her own ideas or has a set of policies she actually believes in. So I think it could go either way.
But in any case, I think where you're mistaken is that you think I'm talking here about a political movement and I'm talking more about a cultural/ intellectual one. I think cultural/ intellectual movements come way before political ones. Eg degrowth started in the 70s.
Also, one could vote for Trump and still believe that a cultural pro progress movement should rhetorically distance itself from him. I actually think this is the most sensible position
But even if that comes through elsewhere in your writings, it surely does NOT come across in this piece, and in fact the opposite comes across when reading the final paragraph.
‘ I think where you're mistaken is that you think I'm talking here about a political movement and I'm talking more about a cultural/ intellectual one. ’
If that is indeed the case - and I believe you 100% that that is your overarching agenda - this piece is badly organized as such. Because you start it and make points mostly about the political right movement of the moment.
And of course there’s also the reality that we are now less than 60 days from a major election - the one time where foci on what movements could and should do are misplaced, and it’s about making the best choice amongst the actual choices. So had you written this piece a year ago, then [other than the problematic final paragraph, which would actually work just fine if you replaced “election” with “nomination”], I would enthusiastically support the piece.
But I'm using the political right not to discuss policies but aesthetics and strategy of winning over elites. Nowhere do I discuss specific policies or what would be good to happen concretely in the next 4 years at a policy level. I'm talking about how to not lose the elite which is what the right wing movement is doing!
Ok, fair enough. As I said, the crux of my problem is with your last paragraph, where to me it is clear that you are implicitly letting the elites who are your base off the hook for voting anti-abundance primarily on the basis of a) aesthetics, and b) in-group virtue signaling.
Great post. I was thinking along the same lines regarding natalism: the more it gets associated with strongman regimes and traditionalist aesthetics, the less children there are actually going to be. If it becomes "cringe" to want children or to want progress, we're cooked.
Yup, this is a really good point about natalism. Something that a lot of the pro-natalists on the right don’t understand.
Trash humans tend not to produce children. This is fortunate as the trash only lasts one or two generations.
It's a little complicated, because tradwife influencers are actually popular. It is just that their version of traditionalist aesthetics seems like a harmless and rather cool lifestyle choice, not associated with things like banning abortion. Cool in the way The Shire is cool, the charm of the simple calm anxiety-free life.
So one needs to be careful what kind of traditionalist aesthetics. The inquisitorial is very bad, but he hobbit like is good.
agreed
Banning abortion is not harmful. Murder is harmful. When women are permitted to self-govern you get feminist nonsense. Obviously the problem is that women are permitted to vote at all. First society that throws off the arrogance of western women will dominate for the next few hundred years. My bet is on eastern Europe.
Is this thread a meme trying to prove the point of Ruxandras original post?
Lmao that was my thinking. The guy wrote 14 replies like that in the span of 4 mins
I want everyone <100 IQ sterilized. They are unfit to inherit a sophisticated future. Many of these women are just parroting the lib-tard social script & are the wrong people to have abortions, along with their other bad decisions. Minorities, leftists (mutants) & poor whites need easier access to abortion.
While I'm all for eugenics... some one has to man the powerlines and clean the sewers. What we need is to reevaluate whether democratic systems are a good idea. I think that maybe monarchy is the way to go. (Real monarchy like Oman or Thailand, not BS monarchy like the UK).
No one with a below 100 IQ can man a power line competently. Anyone who has had to deal with a low IQ tradesman knows how difficult it is to get good work done. Infrastructure is collapsing in part because of demographic decline. Rural areas are almost entirely a net loss on society very sad. We need less people going to these stupid colleges & more higher IQ craftsmen IMO.
I don’t think mass sterilization is humane enough but encouraging the above voluntarily is doable. We need an empire size military & security state in the modern world practically speaking. The USA is one. The EU could be another. Regardless of the system details much of the state will function the same. People are not going to accept monarchy but will support ending immigration now if they can see the consequences.
I wonder if natalism is doomed to exude these off-putting aesthetics. Even worrying about the fertility crisis is liable to kick up some backlash. Advancing overtly natalist policymaking or cultural shifts without accumulating handmaiden/gooncave vibes is a tightrope walk at best.
Natalism that is based on empowering high iq working women and making it easier for them to have kids, like in Israel, is the way to kids. We need more paid maternity leave by the government (think like a year of it), which subsidizes rich working women to have kids. Income tax cut per kid like in Hungary is a good policy.
What is Israel doing?
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-779090
In this book "The Genius of Israel", there is an anecdote about women in high-tech being encouraged by their bosses to have tons of kids. Employers make it easy and high-status for working women to have tons of kids, and having kids is considered high-status. They don't have huge maternity leave or income tax cut per kid (at least not yet) but they have a culture that celebrates successful professional women having lots of kids.
It's not a left-right issue. Shikma Bressler, a successful physics professor at Weizmann and the leader of the anti judicial reform protest, one of the most prominent center-left and secular activists in the country, has FIVE kids. She is a secular woman.
Nice
There is literally one country in the world where seculars have high fertility and it’s a based right wing ethnostate in a constant state of war with barbarians that surround it.
Is that the reason though? There is another theory: https://nonzionism.com/p/why-is-israel-fertile
Also the dictionary definition of "ethnostate" is a state that restricts citizenship to people based on ethnicity. Israel is a based right wing ethnonational democracy, like Japan. If Japan was in a constant state of war with a bunch of Arab terrorists, do you think it would have a TFR of 2 among seculars? If Israel made peace, would it have a TFR of 1.2 among seculars?
I don’t know how war would affect Japan, they haven’t had one since 1945 and it’s essentially illegal.
Israel’s struggle for existence has made it more pro fertility, since it saw more future citizens as existential. Probably because they are so outnumbered.
But war could in theory do the opposite. South Korean officials responded to threats from the north by trying to lower fertility, since it juiced economic growth in the short run.
I think it also helps that being anti-Israel has always been seen as “left coded”, and as such patriotism has a right coding. Not just in western cultural contexts, but literally the Soviets supported the Arabs.
In Korea patriotism was more associated with the west and modernity, which fifty years ago meant lower fertility relative to Asian norms.
In general I’m not really optimistic about East Asian fertility trends. There was a piece somewhere I read that went into but Asians may literally just fail at modernity. They aren’t breeding anywhere under any circumstances. They are a very different from us.
But you note below that in fact it’s a cultural issue (in their case, for survival), *not* a government-mandated benefits one or a subsidization one.
I happen to disagree with you on government mandates, including here, but agree with you on the tax policy. But that’s mostly irrelevant. Israeli fertility is decidedly NOT evidence for more government interference in the free market.
I was saying that the government should pay for the leave, NOT the business. If the business has to pay, they have an incentive NOT to hire women of childbearing age. This is dysgenic and bad, because it means that a woman who does tubal ligation and then announces it will have an advantage in the job market. If no one pays, this is also bad and dysgenic, and means a successful career woman won't have as many kids. Having generous maternity/paternity leave also sends a cultural message that children are valued. I would guess that all else equal it does increase TFR, but maybe only 0.1-0.2 or something.
Tax cut is very good, agree on that.
I generally am very pro free market. But intervening to produce more productive taxpayers in the future seems appropriate.
MANDATING that businesses give the leave is bad. Mandates are not pro-abundance.
I am with you if you want to give economic incentives to women to have more children, certainly as part of a two parent home. By combining a tax credit and a tax deduction, it makes it more valuable to higher income couples.
So let the government *pay* a woman, but do not mandate the leave. Let consenting adults - the woman and her employer - determine what is best, rather than mandating something.
OK sure, in that case of course I agree. If the woman and employer both want the woman to have a leave, the government should pay for the leave and not the employer. So the employer does not have perverse incentives.
But I agree, the mandate is wrong. If the women and employer are both workaholics and like having babies in the office, sure, it's a free country. I don't think I ever said otherwise.
Yes. Natalism will always be a traditionalist position... because preserving human existence is a traditionalist position. Feminism is a force of destruction, and definitionally anti-natalist because women are small-minded. They cannot govern themselves.
lol your mind must be really big, dude
Liberal women are the most miserable, & have the highest rates of SSRI abuse, “therapy” & childless regret. I see them in their 30s on dating apps & just angry & miserable. They can’t find a liberal man worth a shit, & hate what they really want.
It’s sad because a lot of them are actually attractive & just intelligent enough to fall for lib-tard BS. Had they been given a better social script they would birth a new generation of artists & engineers. Instead we’re left with lower IQ religious mods with no creative spirit having an above replacement birth rate + mass 3rd world immigration.
America is a nation of newcomers, shit for brains.
The real Great Replacement is, like, what happened to your game?
I think this article and your comment might be giving too much credit to these right-wing asthetics and not enough to economics (possibly).
Though culture does have a massive impact.
My impression is that most people tend to say the economy is the main reason people are having fewer children. But this common wisdom seems to have been questioned more and more, recently, for a number of reasons, e.g. that economic incentives by governments don't really work, or that people had more children in the past when they were poorer. So instead cultural explanations are being put forward somewhat more often now.
There can be infinitely many cultural explanations and they're hard to get right, and the one about right-wing aesthetics is only one. I don't actually think it's that important as a cultural force to explain fertility *now* (compared to e.g. the demands of safetyism for parents), but it's plausible that it could grow into one.
That's a very good point. It's a problem I'm keeping an eye on as there's a lot of pressure building up for a solution without anthing viable yet.
It's cringe to want or believe in anything other than your own immediate self-interest. If being "cringed" at cooks you, you were already cooked.
Feminism and "female empowerment" directly correlates to reduced birth rates. It seems to be fundamental that when women are permitted to behave like trash, they stop having children. It's fortunate because strong societies will eliminate weak ones. The question is whether your grandchildren (if you have any, probably not) are going to be traditional Christian House-wives or if they're going to be in the harem of an islamic jihadist. Your choice.
This is a perfect example of the over-the-top, misogynist rhetoric that pro-progress and pro-natalist folk need to avoid
Oh and as a practising Christian: "the strong will eliminate the weak" is completely opposite to Christ's teachings.
If you value weakness so much then consider the Christian origins of our weakness worshiping culture. The Vatican is in direct support of the mass migration invasion of our lands in the name of compassion. George Floyd was treated as a scape goat for “America’s original sin” of racism. Supreme Court justice ACB & speaker of the house MAGA Mike both adopting <100 IQ African children - literal human trafficking. These are not good examples of a healthy and confident mindset but rather one of guilt ridden white people virtue signaling their nation’s suicide.
Once white people become a hated minority in the counties their ancestors founded, the counties will decay violently along racial lines & you will ever have political power again & be at the mercy of your enemies no matter how much the Bible tells you to love them.
A literal suicide cult in the name of compassion. Life is survival of the fittest not the most compassionate. If you choose heaven over your children’s survival that’s on you.
Being positive only goes so far if you deny reality of nature. Weakness is pathetic.
Women & men will behave better when they see a future worth living for. Nobel animals don’t breed in captivity. Being “trad” is just well behaved domestication.
It already is unfortunatly, or else we wouldnt be discussing natalism at all.
Great piece. One thought on the pro-market piece being associated with the right - whatever it is the modern right is becoming, it is becoming less pro-market. One reason pro-market sentiments "are already in peril across the Western World" is because the postliberal / Gooncave right has added their hostility to markets to voices from the anti-market left, to form a sort of new big government / anti-market consensus. Even though being pro-market has historically been a feature of the right, the pro-progress crowd may actually find that focusing on pro-market talking points is a good way to differentiate itself from the postliberal gooncave right.
Thanks. Yes I agree
Opinion on Industrial Policy? Its not "pro-market" but might be a good thing if well thought out.
The nascent partnership between the Silicon Valley Right and the Populist Right is especially tough to square on this point.
Agreed, I think it's a marriage of convenience due to their mutual enemy of wokeness - the silicon valley right because of wokeness' impact on pro-market policies and the populist right because of wokeness' impact on family and community. If wokeness were to be defeated, their economic differences would spill over and break up the partnership. JD Vance is a weird marriage of the two but is not indicative of a deeper partnership imo
What economic differences specifically?
The only real not libertarian economic policy I can think of is tariffs. But tariffs are pretty normal. We had 30-50% tariffs most of our countries existence.
If I called the tariff a VAT, because that's what its going to amount to, a VAT on cheap Chinese stuff, people would be falling all over themselves to talk about how a VAT is a super rational tax that should replace the income tax. A 10% tariff would raise $300B in revenue, 20% twice that. Sure there would be some substitution effects but not that much. That's a ton of money you don't need from some other source.
I think it all just comes down to tariff = racist in leftist minds.
So outside of tariffs, which don't affect SV that much, how does the right threaten Silicon Valley? They don't want to regulate them. They don't want to tax them. They seem pretty bitcoin friendly.
I could maybe see the case the the right will end some tax breaks for blue states (SALT), but then you can just move HQ to Austin like Musk.
No, that already happened with Thiel in 2017. Anti-wokeness isn't why Marc Andreessen is voting for Trump. It's really the other way around because wokeness is just a social annoyance for most people in Silicon Valley. What's driving them to the GOP is needs of low taxes and lots of energy. The former was constant but Democrats now have to go after capital tax rates since they've promised to keep most people (under 400K household) safe from increased income taxes. The latter is new; crypto and AI require a lot of power. Guess which party is fine with opening up a natural gas plant for cheap stable power?
You gotta defeat not just wokeness but the economically socialist, anti-abundance left that also has huge power in the Dem coalition right now.
The fight is between self-righteous managerial bureaucrats who want to micromanage every aspect of human life and literally every one else.
Because the Populist Right is still on the Right and tariffs aren't the end of the world. What the left wants to do economically could actually kill Silicon Valley, its already made California a trash heap.
“The nascent partnership between the Silicon Valley Right and the Populist Right is especially tough to square on this point.‘
Yeah, it really isn’t.
The Dem Party today is anti-abundance but pro-cronyism.
The highly imperfect GOP is more pro-abundance, more pro opportunity for the little guy.
It ain’t more complicated than that.
2 groups want a society that isn't a garbage communist hellhole, those two groups form an alliance against evil small-minded bigots who want to destroy society. Pretty simple to me.
The "free market" is a mixed economy where self-righteous bureaucrats micromanage every aspect of human life. No wonder people are sick of it. This type of behavior is common when women are permitted out of the kitchen to shit up society rather than play their roles as home makers.
I saw that movie about Reagan. OK, not a great movie, though as somebody who grew up in the 80s (and who voted for Reagan in my first Presidential election ever), it did induce some nostalgia and warm feelings.
What struck me about it was that Reagan, like Trump, as often viciously attacked. But he had two things going for him. One was a certain grace, an ability to deflect with humor and wit, rather than anger. Like his famous "I hope you're all Republicans" referring to the medical staff at GWU when he was about to go in for surgery after being shot.
The other is a sense of optimism and hope. Sure, he called the commies the Evil Empire; he could be strong and angry. But he believed in America and its future, and he projected that uplifting vision. He wasn't angry all the time.
Trump’s campaign recently ran Reagan’s “Are you better off now than you were four years ago” speech in an ad. It didn’t make me change my mind about the current candidates, but the difference in tone and delivery, when compared with his other ads, was striking.
When I think about how someone like Robin Hanson still falls into the bad guy category from the POV of Women, despite being a totally efette, aloof and polite nerd with not a UFC bone in his body, I'm not sure how much this is really going to make a difference. Not without sacrificing intellectual integrity and free-roaming curiosity.
I see your point but Robin Hanson isn't generally considered a charismatic movement builder by anyone. Also, I don't think its quite the same thing
Like trumpian aesthetics repel a lot of educated men, too.
I don't think Bryan Caplan repels women. I think robin Hanson has attracted their ire due to the rape piece. I like Robin, so I don't agree with his semi cancellation, but I still think one can avoid broadly as a movement talking about rape etc
Caplan repelled my gf years back, but that was when he had that bad haircut.
Anyway I think another problem is the way the media can manufacture goon-ness in an instant, if it wants. JD Vance was not a goon, as far as anyone could tell, until he was tapped by Trump to VP. Being personally a family man and demonstrably having attracted a seemingly good woman made no difference.
JD Vance repeats verbatim anon twitter points. I agree he has a beautiful family but he's very online and that seeps through his speeches.
I don't think the media could have made Romney into a goon.
I think the media can turn anyone into a goon.
The cat lady comment was unfortunate, but in general I suspect if you knew JD Vance, you'd probably like him. JD Vance has a fairly compelling personal story. Unfortunately, you're right -- he's so tied in with a certain internet culture that he doesn't communicate it particularly well.
This is why it is important to have good relationship with the media, which means pro-progress must wear liberal clothes.
"Binders full of women?"
https://www.npr.org/2017/04/12/523631697/the-boston-globe-obtains-mitt-romneys-binders-full-of-women
but of course The Media is Basically Honest and Good… 🙄
They didn't make him out to be a goon as defined in your original article, but he was painted as misogynist and this was broadly effective. Granted, Obama's political talent helped here, but in my opinion wasn't necessary. The reality is that any randomly chosen man, regardless of political affiliation, can be portrayed as low-status and shamed and this will have at the bare minimum a modicum of effectiveness in the modern media environment.
Dude they literally made Romney a goon. Binders full of women and basically calling him Hitler.
I remember him being depicted as a school bully. Some kind of Yearbookgate. But yea Romney was difficult to pin with goon, if only because he's so handsome and as close to Don Draper as Republicans will probably ever get.
I would never vote for Romney because he gifted his children $150 million tax free at the same time my parents were trying to figure out how to not get in trouble for sending me a few thousand a month to help out with my daughters medical issues, unemployment, divorce, and so on. The main problem with him is that he has no clue what life is like for people who lack his privilege - worse yet he has no idea that he has no clue. A general lack of empathy is a bigger red flag for most women than misogyny is.
“I don't think the media could have made Romney into a goon.”
They sure did try. Besides focusing on “binders full of women”, they said he was mean to the family dog…
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/02/political-punch-dogs-against-romney-democrats-say-unleash-the-hound
In fact, the media did indeed try to paint Romney as an evil male. And that was back in the pre-Trump era when they ostensibly still had some principles.
Ruxandra, IMO in the case of Vance [not my favorite Republican, btw] you are painting him with the leftist media’s broad brush, and he is at minimum a lot closer to Robin Hanson than to the “Gooncave”.
Also there's a difference between a movement that wants to have broad appeal and maybe research things like how to make science better vs an intellectual space for social science
Do most women even know who Robin Hanson even is?
No lol
By the way, I went back and looked at the Robin Hanson Rape/cuckoldry articles, which I remember being controversial, and I have to say that if I were a female human, I'd find him quite creepy. I'm a guy and I thought it was creepy! Who the hell uses "gentle silent rape" in a non-ironic way? Weren't we supposed to think that the coma rape of The Bride in Kill Bill was horrific, and worthy of lethal retribution?
No but I bring him up to illustrate that even a nice guy who's the furthest thing from Andrew Tate can be goonified
Well, yes if they write about “gentle silent tape.”
Yep. A fleeting thought experiment is enough. No need for "bitter anger" and "hostility"
You forget that “nice guys” aren’t always so nice in private. Calling verbal abuse a “thought experiment” is a common strategy of the stealth Gooncave.
Thought experiments have *always* been stealth ways of hurting people, that's why I don't support them.
That was just literally one essay. Hanson is the textbook autistic type who sometimes steps on people's toes out of obliviousness. His idea was to demonstrate the absurdity of redistributing money by offering a Modest Proposal of redistributing sex and the satirical intent was generally missed.
Eventually feminism will be crushed because it's a toxic ideology that makes people miserable. The real question is how long it'll be before women lose the franchise at this point, because it'll be very easy to point to the 1970s to 2020s and say "this is what happens when they're let loose"
Spot on. Let me emphasize the role and danger of bitterness even more. It is a disease that eats reasoning faculties and inhibits effective action. While it can bond groups of people together, it only does so around a negative. A group formed around it will block and delay, but rarely outmanoeuvre their opponents.
And it is off-putting to normal, functional people with something going on in their lives. No matter if originating form a bitter old couple, a political party or any other group of people.
Elon Mus is an example of what you are worried about. He spearheaded the BEV revolution and could be an ambassador of progress for the elites that are generally anti-progress: Progressive, environmentally conscious liberals. Perhaps sell them spaceflight too. Instead he scares them away with edgy social media posts and partisan politics.
An important lesson from this is: Stick to the mission and focus on what is truly within your circle of influence. If you are pro-progress and pro-market, focus on those topics. You may have strong opinions on cultural and foreign politics, but entering those arenas will jeopardize your core mission.
> Elon Mus is an example of what you are worried about. He spearheaded the BEV revolution and could be an ambassador of progress for the elites that are generally anti-progress: Progressive, environmentally conscious liberals. Perhaps sell them spaceflight too. Instead he scares them away edgy social media posts and partisan politics.
YES!
Well, more likely he does what he does because a) he is repulsed by the regressive, anti-free speech woke left that dominates Dem politics right now, and b) he is well aware that the GOP, even with Trump at the head, is the party that can actually deliver pro-abundance policies for the country.
Just because convincing elites is Ruxandra’s and your cause celebre doesn’t mean it is - or should be - Musk’s. I’m glad he’s more interested in free speech and pro-abundance policies now, rather than focused on winning over midwit elites.
Perhaps he thinks what kind of progress is more important than progress of any kind by all means, especially if the latter is merely understood as more tech and trinkets (and doesn’t include moral, social, and political betterment)
“Instead he scares them away with edgy social media posts and partisan politics.”
🙄
How dare he enable a platform that is pro free speech and does not parrot leftist political talking points and censor and fact-check “inconvenient truths” like all the other good-big-leftist platforms.
The *nerve* of the man to infuse the culture with social commentary and “partisan” politics that is not leftist, indeed!
The nerve of the man to allow free speech on social media, rather than speech that is of benefit only to leftist politicians!
Do you *truly* not understand that you reveal yourself to be a hopelessly anti-abundance, anti-free speech PARTISAN when you claim that it is Musk alone who is engaging in partisan politics?!?!?!?
Musk is a tech visionary and builder, that is his strength.
Twitter is a distraction.
Re his opinions, nothing wrong with free speech. He should be allowed to say what he does. But please understand that sharing an interview of a revisionist historian painting Churchill as the main bad guy in WW2 and the mass exterminations of the Nazis as unplanned accidents with the comment "interesting" will raise eyebrows with a lot of people.
This has nothing to do with abundance and everything to do with stupid culture war debates and edgy history takes.
This is a good post. I would go further than Trump and say whether abundance rises or falls will probably rest on Congress at least as much as the personality of the US Presidency. Worship of the Presidency has encouraged both parties to avoid a competitive bloodletting in the primary season by either lying about the 2020 election or lying about the mental state of the man who won the 2020 election. But at the same time, the Presidency is what makes American national politics coherent to many people who don't follow it closely.
It's hard for them to follow what the parties are for without clear leaders regularly in the media. So I think the biggest obstacle for abundance is the flood of sensationalism. You have thoughtful center-left policy writers calling for an all of the above energy permitting strategy, and meanwhile this is where a center-left politician who scores flat in the middle[1] of the Democratic party is on that very same permitting; calling it evil and Project 2025.[2] Trump is a flatly bad person to make leader of the United States, but he is a better abundance agenda guy by this low standard. The question is how to get the good leaders and good agenda together.
[1] https://voteview.com/person/21303/jared-huffman
[2] https://x.com/ThomasHochman/status/1833891437735264383
I agree! But I also think that culturally, it matters what elites believe in. So Trump hurts pro-markets in a sort of diffuse way, by associating it with the ick in the minds of elites.
…at some points elites aren’t very “elite” if they can be persuaded that pro-market is “ick” because of Trump, no?
If elite refers to a social station and not a quality or characteristic of an individual…then I don’t think there’s a tension.
“Elites” are still just people and people live in specific communities/social contexts. And the prevailing mores, beliefs, group aesthetic preferences inform a lot of what we take on. In that framing, elites are still fish swimming in water they’re probably not anymore cognizant of than anyone else.
(I think that’s part of the point Ruxandra was getting at; regardless, I personally think that’s descriptive of reality)
I concur with your description of reality, to be clear.
But I also think
a) the snark in my sentence is *totally* justified in this case,
b) the substance of my sentence is indeed accurate, and
c) unless the U.S. goes down a path even more socialist than Western Europe (which I unfortunately now acknowledge is indeed a non-zero possibility at this point), it is very likely an accurate forecast of the long run outcome for people who stubbornly hold such a view.
Now Ruxandra argues, and I mostly agree, that elites, especially leftist elites, are mostly lazy virtue-signaling folks, and thus won’t hold such anti-abundance views if they get the right signals from other elites.
But that just reinforces points a) and b)…
You and Ruxandra are, inadvertently or not, making the Brian Chau point that most “elites” are actually midwits…
Agree - very well articulated. I'm curious though why you captured only one fringe, it appears to me that there are similar factors at the one end of the spectrum too. The nature of grievances is different but that fringe also thrives on selective hearing.
Oh yeah. Well, in my original piece that I quote here I talked more about the other fringe, but I think Republicans have a bigger problem right now when it comes to elites and having a bad image
Pro-progress has already failed in the current environment (in the US at least) as evidenced by the two major political parties. So I actually think that appearing as something disagreeable, and catering to disagreeable people is a worthwhile endeavor right now, because those are the people who are the likeliest to combine a willingness to try something new and the dedication to put in the work to see if it is something that will succeed. Musks success at Tesla, SpaceX, etc. and the way he is acting now come from the same source, and it is one that probably already rejected upper middle class values of safetyism. Status does not flow from taking risks right now, and that seems like the main problem. Trying to appeal to a risk averse mainstream seems unlikely to make this better.
I think these ppl will always be pro progress the question is how to widen the appeal
Maybe I am seeing things inaccurately, but if the mainstream is risk averse and conformist, and the people who try genuinely new and different things are disagreeable, it seems like promoting progress among normies will necessarily entail raising the status of disagreeable people. So I don’t see how promoting progress can avoid gooncave aesthetics. Granted that gooncave aesthetics can embrace anti-progress, like Trump and Vance. But progress seems to require jerks, and to promote progress entails allowing jerks more freedom and more status. I’m not saying that the appeal of progress cannot be broadened, just that it is difficult, and that however it happens I don’t think tinkering at the margins or taking mainstream approaches are going to work. The whole problem is that mainstream, normie sensibilities are anti-progress. So you either have to change those sensibilities, which is difficult and involves changing those preferences, not appealing to them, or you need something like WW2 and Sputnik and nuclear weapons to frighten them so much that they see more safety in change then in stasis.
Your post underscores another reason to take the car keys from Trump: because the stench of his movement is undermining their best ideas (natalism, progress, borders, etc). Great post. https://jeffgiesea.substack.com/p/harris-trump-debate
Fully agree with the Ick/Gooncave arguments shared by you and Richard Hanania. Appealing to women is a disciplining function and necessary for any mainstream political project. On a personal level, I've completely run out of patience for chud/gooncave behavior. The challenge is that the supply chain of ideas often emanates from fringe circles, and an implication of your line of thinking may be to sanitize certain spaces. The question I find myself asking is, what do we lose when we shut down the gooncave? I don't have an answer at this point.
what great ideas have emerged from the gooncave?
I see little value in reducing people to stereotypes so you can create a narrative. It might let you make judgements but the whole thing is a house of cards.
Who am I reducing to a stereotype?
This is a genuine question I'm not being facetious
Gooncave
🙏🏻
😍😍😍
You have the right aesthetics. We ladies need to step up and impart our aesthetics on the progress movement
“Whatever happens in this election, I hope that the next president will pursue a pro-abundance agenda and will enact policies aimed at fostering as opposed to inhibiting scientific and technological progress.”
You say this somewhat indifferently, but as you acknowledge / all-but-acknowledge in your piece, the (imperfect) pro-abundance agenda exists *only* on the right in the U.S. today. The center-left no longer controls the Dem party, nor Dem party policies, and border czar Kamala Harris has never been center-left in her political career.
The Democrat party is no longer the party of Bill Clinton. The fact that the largely anti-abundance Obama (“Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness”) seems in comparison to be fairly reasonable compared to those in control of Democrat party policies should make this abundantly (pun intended) clear.
Yet your piece clearly comes across as “well, we need to (or at least really should) vote for Kamala, then cross our fingers and hope against hope that she becomes pro-abundance.”
So while the piece *seems* well-written - as almost all of your pieces I’ve read actually in fact *are* - its message is muddled.
This is the key part
pro-market positions, which are already in peril across the Western World, have been traditionally associated more with the right. As I detailed in another piece, most people, including elites, passively adopt views that are considered popular in their circles, based mainly on vibes. It is no longer respectable in many educated circles to identify as a Republican. And everything they stand for, including good things, like pro-market positions, risks going down with them in the eyes of the educated elites. We must not let these be tainted by the aesthetics of the Gooncave and become casualties of whatever it is that the modern right is becoming. I think in the short term at least, the future of how pro-tech/pro-market positions are seen by the elite will depend on the ideological fight that is happening between the centre-left (as exemplified by pro-markets followed by redistribution commentators like Ezra Klein1 or Matthew Yglesias) and the more degrowth enamoured part of the left, which rejects market forces by principle. If you think this is not important, I am telling you, as an European: it is!
I am making it clear that the right is tied to pro market positions and because they are losing the elite I'm afraid pro market positions are gonna lose with the elite even further. Basically, I don't really care for a lot of what right wingers care about (immigration restrictions, abortion etc) and I do care abt markets. I think trumpism repels elites and because markets are associated with right wing, they are losing ground with the elites too by association.
I genuinely don’t know enough about kanala’s specific policies and I hear very contradicting accounts from various ppl as to how pro growth she would be and what the exact implications of her policies would be. I must say that I am worried though
In general, I don't know enough abt specific politicians. The way I model intellectual movements is re their influence on elites because that's what I can observe. I think this has downstream impacts on politicians in years if not decades (eg Obama is a result of intellectual movements started earlier than the 2000s.)
I'm talking here about pro free markets/ progress as a cultural movement first and foremost and what aesthetics it should adopt. As opposed to which politician it should align itself with or whatever
Fair enough. But this piece a) ventures into political tactics suggestions (most of which I agree with, FWIW), and b) political associations. You spend most of the piece talking about the problem of the Gooncaves, while talking very little about the problem of “well meaning” elitists supporting clearly anti-abundance policies and politicians.
If you were talking to “your base” on the political right, that would be fair enough, imo.
But since you seem to indicate that “your base” is elite, educated women, imo you have done a net disservice to the pro-abundance agenda, as you seem to justify votes for the anti-abundance agenda based on aesthetics, and based on the right coalition including Gooncavers.
By contrast, you never explicitly mentioned the at least equivalent problem that voting “center-left” means voting for a coalition that at barest minimum includes rabidly anti-abundance socialists and Marxists in it.
In fairness to you, perhaps most of my criticism truly is based on that last paragraph “Whatever happens…” and the first 8 words in particular. Remove that paragraph, and I have at most minor displeasure with an otherwise quite reasonable piece.
My base is not really educated women. What I hope is that elites (and a part of those are women + elites in general are more pro women) don't fall prey to anti market ideas even more than they have and actually become more pro abundance etc. I'm talking here about a cultural movement that might have political outcomes in a decade from now.
If you pay attention to my piece, I don't talk at all about who you should vote for or how good trump's policies are, but the aesthetics of Trumpism as a cultural movement. And I'm saying these are bad aesthetics if pro progress wants to win in the long run in the minds of the elite.
I paid close attention to your piece.
There is nothing inherently incorrect about what you wrote.
But timing is everything. Timed now, in the run-up to a general election, it serves a net negative purpose for the pro-abundance cause as written. Because it focuses on the negatives of the right coalition (more so even than those of the Trump campaign, actually), and very little on the negatives of elites explicitly backing what is clearly an anti-abundance party.
Timed a year ago during primary season, or 2 months from now - say after an election won by the non-abundance left - it would be far less problematic. And inarguably net pro-abundance.
I see. Well, thanks.
I wrote it now because the debacle that was the debate reminded me of how bad these ppl are at aesthetics so it was fresh in my mind.
I think I have far more influence with the ppl involved in various part of progress movements than ability to sway Americans' votes
"Elites" aren't a single blob. They can disagree about things just like the rest of us. If you want to move things in a pro-market trajectory, the only way that will happen is to support elites (or counter-elites, if you prefer to think of it that way) who are pro-market against elites that are anti-market. Pro-market elites are people like Elon Musk. All of them are considered right of center at this point. The establishment "uniparty" people, Joe Biden and George Bush and Liz Cheney and Kamala Harris, these are probably the people you have in mind when you say "elites," based on this piece.
It's fine to tell the pro-market side not to be stupid. But you also need to be clear about which side you're on and that people should support that side against the side that hates markets and explicitly wants government to swallow them up as much as possible (i.e. the left). The only way markets get freer is if Elon Musk gains more power relative to government bureaucrats. The only political path for that is through the right, whatever other problems it might have. You will never convince Kamala Harris to become pro-market.
It is easy enough to look up her record on positions. It is easy enough to find what she said during the 2019 residential primary campaign.
I *am* genuinely shocked that you have heard anything from *anyone* you consider credible that she has any “pro-growth” in her at all, as that is quite literally non-existent in her track record.
The best one could hope for is “well, she doesn’t have any real positions whatsoever, she just says and does whatever is necessary to advance politically, and so once she is president, if pro-growth policies seem to her to be in her political interest, she will go there.”
That’s the very best case. The far more likely case is that she will go with the instincts that have served her over the years, and choose the further left position because she takes less political flack from within her coalition if she does that.
Well yeah she doesn't strike me as someone who's very driven by her own ideas or has a set of policies she actually believes in. So I think it could go either way.
But in any case, I think where you're mistaken is that you think I'm talking here about a political movement and I'm talking more about a cultural/ intellectual one. I think cultural/ intellectual movements come way before political ones. Eg degrowth started in the 70s.
Also, one could vote for Trump and still believe that a cultural pro progress movement should rhetorically distance itself from him. I actually think this is the most sensible position
Now here we agree about 99%.
But even if that comes through elsewhere in your writings, it surely does NOT come across in this piece, and in fact the opposite comes across when reading the final paragraph.
‘ I think where you're mistaken is that you think I'm talking here about a political movement and I'm talking more about a cultural/ intellectual one. ’
If that is indeed the case - and I believe you 100% that that is your overarching agenda - this piece is badly organized as such. Because you start it and make points mostly about the political right movement of the moment.
And of course there’s also the reality that we are now less than 60 days from a major election - the one time where foci on what movements could and should do are misplaced, and it’s about making the best choice amongst the actual choices. So had you written this piece a year ago, then [other than the problematic final paragraph, which would actually work just fine if you replaced “election” with “nomination”], I would enthusiastically support the piece.
But I'm using the political right not to discuss policies but aesthetics and strategy of winning over elites. Nowhere do I discuss specific policies or what would be good to happen concretely in the next 4 years at a policy level. I'm talking about how to not lose the elite which is what the right wing movement is doing!
Ok, fair enough. As I said, the crux of my problem is with your last paragraph, where to me it is clear that you are implicitly letting the elites who are your base off the hook for voting anti-abundance primarily on the basis of a) aesthetics, and b) in-group virtue signaling.
related https://thecritic.co.uk/against-gorpcore/
There's a major breach of Substack etiquette in this essay:
In the paragraph on free markets you say "as I detailed in another piece..." but the sentence doesn't include a link to the other piece!
Unacceptable ;)
corrected
This is a great piece.
Thanks!
You have supported the woman with your words, you may have a crumb of attention.