I've written a long cranky political tract: Semi-Utopianism

[Ares Land]

I read through the whole tract -- it's interesting, well-written. Like other people commented, it's mostly things I agree with

A few remarks though:
- On dystopia in science-fiction -- it's not just doomerism (though doomerism is an aspect of it), but also a factor of fiction writing. In fiction, you need some sort of problem to solve and in science-fiction a sense of cosmic sale; going full dystopian is an answer to that. Though I think it's the easiest path and I'm personally a bit bored of the relentless grimdark. (It's also surprisingly difficult to write a dystopia. I did enjoy the Hunger Games, but the protagonists starts out starving with a starving father in a depressed mother in a depressing starving industrial town, after which things get worse. It's hard not to roll your eyes.)

Instead, they have sometimes argued that all kinds of institutions - education, the media, academia, the public authorities - should be as value-neutral as possible.

Yes - 80 years after Popper correctly described the paradox of tolerance, apparently we have collectively decided to ignore it entirely.

On conservatives vs. sex, drugs and rock'n'roll: it's hard to find a conservative that's really anti sex these days. I think the discourse is more honest now: it's about controlling women.

the way conservatives and right-wingers love to talk about
“freedom” [...] it simply doesn’t make sense for right-wingers to claim that they’re for freedom. On most of the really important issues where the Left and the Right disagree, the Left (except for some parts of the Far Left) wants people to have more different options to choose from, while the Right wants to make people do things in one specific mandatory way[...]

Ah, yes, the right has learned, at least since Reagan and Thatcher, and probably earlier, to use and abuse the word 'freedom' for fun and profit. And look at what the far-right has done with freedom of speech!
I've come to think, though, that no political faction is free from the impulse to enforce one mandatory way, alas. It's not just the far left -- or maybe it depends on how far you place the far left?

On the various problems with right-wing economics ideas -- it's a chapter I largely agree with. What I'd argue a bit about is -- I don't think there's a really a theory of capitalism. I think you mostly use the Chicago School as representative - but how representative is it? Social democrats, Christian democrats, various assorted Keynesians are, I suppose, capitalists too (at least according to anti-capitalist) -- but they'd dismiss the Chicago school as cranks.

On contractors: some of what you describe falls under privatization (which sometimes works, let's be fair, but often doesn't, see British train lines) and public procurement.
Public procurement is something I have a bit to say about (part of my day job in a public institution is to deal with private subcontractors):

No, they just have to convince specific politicians to keep confirming their contracts. They don't have to do that by providing high
quality. They can promise the politicians low costs, which, of course, automatically means not putting all that much money into their product. They can simply bribe the politicians. They can be the politicians' cousins. They can send the most physically attractive of their women employees to the straight men among the politicians. There are many ways. Few of which involve being serious about high quality. For a contractor business, the general public, to which it is supposed todeliver goods or services, is a captive audience

The rules for public procurement under which I have to work (the same rules apply to Germany - these are largely EU rules transposed in various national laws) are actually (and fortunately) stringent and enforced. Which doesn't mean they aren't abused or violated on occasion!
Public procurement is a civil servant's job -- politicians typically aren't typically involved closely (see the caveat above about occasional abuses, though).
The applicable law is mostly designed, in the EU, to promote competition on the free market (somewhat at the detriment of quality). As a government (or département, Land, public institution) employee, you can of course be serious about high quality. But the past of least resistance goes to choosing whichever option is cheaper.
Several drawbacks:

• Low quality. As a NASA astronaut once quipped, most of the time you sit on a pile of lowest bidders.
• This may contradict the first point, but the government (or other public institutions) consistently overpays.
• The bureaucracy, oh god, the bureaucracy

Many of the jobs that are subcontracted could be done in-house. Why hire a company to build software for you when you could hire developpers at a fraction of the cost? And sometimes we do. But it runs contrary to the common idea that the government is huge money-guzzling beast that needs to be starved. It's also difficult to hire people (I like working for the public sector. But I also get way less than I could in a regular company.)
Contractors were all the rage from the 90s to the 2010s. I think we still rely on these way too much. But not everything can be done in house (a small town will have a software project maybe once or twice in five years -- if it hires coders, what do they do in the interval?)
All in all: contractors, overused but not entirely evil.

Finally there's the question of whether a state contractor business should be called a "business" in the first place. After all, its money still comes from the state's budgets.

For some reason, the 'free market' thing is quietly dropped when it comes to those juicy government contracts (see also: NASA and Elon Musk)

More comments later on!

[Raphael]

I read through the whole tract -- it's interesting, well-written. Like other people commented, it's mostly things I agree with

Thank you!

I've come to think, though, that no political faction is free from the impulse to enforce one mandatory way, alas. It's not just the far left -- or maybe it depends on how far you place the far left?

Fair enough.

On contractors: some of what you describe falls under privatization (which sometimes works, let's be fair, but often doesn't, see British train lines) and public procurement.
Public procurement is something I have a bit to say about (part of my day job in a public institution is to deal with private subcontractors):

No, they just have to convince specific politicians to keep confirming their contracts. They don't have to do that by providing high
quality. They can promise the politicians low costs, which, of course, automatically means not putting all that much money into their product. They can simply bribe the politicians. They can be the politicians' cousins. They can send the most physically attractive of their women employees to the straight men among the politicians. There are many ways. Few of which involve being serious about high quality. For a contractor business, the general public, to which it is supposed todeliver goods or services, is a captive audience

The rules for public procurement under which I have to work (the same rules apply to Germany - these are largely EU rules transposed in various national laws) are actually (and fortunately) stringent and enforced. Which doesn't mean they aren't abused or violated on occasion!
Public procurement is a civil servant's job -- politicians typically aren't typically involved closely (see the caveat above about occasional abuses, though).
The applicable law is mostly designed, in the EU, to promote competition on the free market (somewhat at the detriment of quality). As a government (or département, Land, public institution) employee, you can of course be serious about high quality. But the past of least resistance goes to choosing whichever option is cheaper.
Several drawbacks:

• Low quality. As a NASA astronaut once quipped, most of the time you sit on a pile of lowest bidders.
• This may contradict the first point, but the government (or other public institutions) consistently overpays.
• The bureaucracy, oh god, the bureaucracy

Many of the jobs that are subcontracted could be done in-house. Why hire a company to build software for you when you could hire developpers at a fraction of the cost? And sometimes we do. But it runs contrary to the common idea that the government is huge money-guzzling beast that needs to be starved. It's also difficult to hire people (I like working for the public sector. But I also get way less than I could in a regular company.)
Contractors were all the rage from the 90s to the 2010s. I think we still rely on these way too much. But not everything can be done in house (a small town will have a software project maybe once or twice in five years -- if it hires coders, what do they do in the interval?)
All in all: contractors, overused but not entirely evil.

Interesting, that's very useful background information!

Finally there's the question of whether a state contractor business should be called a "business" in the first place. After all, its money still comes from the state's budgets.

For some reason, the 'free market' thing is quietly dropped when it comes to those juicy government contracts (see also: NASA and Elon Musk)

Yes, the highest paid government employee in history.

[Ares Land]

On economic proposals:
- I'm not against the wealth cap, really. But as a first step? The obstacles (I think you listed all of them) feel overwhelming at this stage. Even getting a modest wealth tax looks terribly difficult now.
As a rough guess, maybe 20% of the population holds strong anti-billionaire views... but the percentage never seems to get high enough to translate into effective politics. I don't know why. Maybe it's because billionaires are very remote. Elon Musk is a very remote villain (the actual villains in your life are middle managers -- maybe an executive)
- UBI is similarly a hard sell. It was seriously discussed here in a presidential campaign 10 years ago. It's similarly a hard sell: too leftist for right-wingers, not the right kind of leftists for left-wingers. But I'd love to see it discussed seriously again.
Another idea I feel is important is the state as an employer of last resort. (The idea that, even in periods of unemployment, there should be enough public sector jobs to compensate.

On Mamdani's public supermarkets: they feel like a gimmick, but really I don't know. I don't live in New York, maybe they're necessary. The idea of having public and private alternatives in a given sector feels right though. (We have that in radio and television here, as in most European countries. It works very well.)

On leftist jargon: the left is enamored with jargon. It's an old tradition, and I think the origin of it is a very old inferiority complex among Marxists. Back in the day when Marxists were considered rabble, and the left hardly better -- and conservatives felt that they alone understood economics, law and the machinery of state. I think left-wingers tended to overcompensate, to demonstrate that they, too, had a deep understanding of social structures.

On crime: I mostly agree with you. Some disagreements though...
In rich, western European countries, people - voters appear extremely concerned with crime... while crime is about at an all time low. People can in fact become increasingly concerned even when the government is actually doing a pretty good job about it -- we can't yet eliminate theft, or murder entirely, you see. This leads to support for extremely regressive measures, entirely uncalled for.
As it happens, I ran across a comment on Bluesky: 'media [gives] politicians a pass on issues their party typically does well on ' https://bsky.app/profile/hikoukihikouki ... 5tlccxc2e . As it happens, this has a self-fulfilling effect. Right-wing parties don't do any better on crime than left-wing ones (in my experience, both sides tend to do about the same anyway) -- but somewhat right-wing failures don't get commented on.
That paradox is extremely difficult to navigate. The corollary, of course, is that left-wing politicians, who aren't born yesterday, should be aware of this and just figure out how to navigate it.

I feel sex work should be illegal. I also feel some drugs should be illegal (weed should be legal of course, but not crack). In both cases, this is extremely difficult to handle -- but it being difficult doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. On that point, I agree that drug use is primarily a medical problem and that sex workers should not be prosecuted.

[bradrn]

On Mamdani's public supermarkets: they feel like a gimmick, but really I don't know. I don't live in New York, maybe they're necessary. The idea of having public and private alternatives in a given sector feels right though. (We have that in radio and television here, as in most European countries. It works very well.)

An argument I’ve heard against them is that, being statutorily required to sell food at a lower-than-market price, they would undercut any nearby grocery stores and thereby become a monopoly in any particular area, possibly leading to food shortages. It seems like a reasonable argument to me.

(Clearly this doesn’t apply as directly to radio or TV stations, but I’m not quite sure why. Perhaps it’s because viewership is not zero-sum, or because profits are not directly linked to daily viewership in the way that grocery stores require daily customers.)

[Ares Land]

An argument I’ve heard against them is that, being statutorily required to sell food at a lower-than-market price, they would undercut any nearby grocery stores and thereby become a monopoly in any particular area, possibly leading to food shortages. It seems like a reasonable argument to me.

(Clearly this doesn’t apply as directly to radio or TV stations, but I’m not quite sure why. Perhaps it’s because viewership is not zero-sum, or because profits are not directly linked to daily viewership in the way that grocery stores require daily customers.)

It certainly could be a problem, at least on paper. In practice, if I understand the plan correctly, there's going to be one grocery store per borough. I don't think that's enough to affect the market that badly.
I'd also suggest that market prices in NYC are perhaps not as low as they should be; if so, grocery stores could probably find ways to lower their prices, which is I think part of the thinking behind the proposal.

Personally, I feel that if New Yorkers can't afford groceries, the issues is that the wages are way too low. But of course Mamdani can't do anything about that.

This is an issue for radio and TV stations as well! The debate is framed very differently, of course, because the public TV and radio stations came first (there was, in fact, a state monopoly) and private broadcast came later.
The market is heavily regulated. One way the issue of private-public competition is handled: what TV and radio actually compete for is advertisement revenue; public stations are restricted on how much commercials they can air.

[Ares Land]

Another market where the public and private sector coexist is housing. There's of course a very long list of objections to public housing. But public housing will keep going, because the private sector looks utterly unable to provide for actual housing needs. (I used to live in Paris, where public housing is essential because who the fuck is able to pay that much in rent?. Here in semi-rural France it's better but public housing is still necessary because there's a whole lot of low-paying jobs.)

I don't think housing should be entirely public either, because it turns out the public sector can't provide housing either; but the problems are different. All in all having two kinds of actors, both incompetent but in different ways sorts of fixes the issue, somewhat.

[Raphael]

This is an issue for radio and TV stations as well! The debate is framed very differently, of course, because the public TV and radio stations came first (there was, in fact, a state monopoly) and private broadcast came later.

That is, in much of the world. Not in the US.

[WeepingElf]

This is an issue for radio and TV stations as well! The debate is framed very differently, of course, because the public TV and radio stations came first (there was, in fact, a state monopoly) and private broadcast came later.

That is, in much of the world. Not in the US.

And at least here in Germany, the programming of public stations is noticeably better than that of the private stations, by a rather clear margin.

[Raphael]

This is an issue for radio and TV stations as well! The debate is framed very differently, of course, because the public TV and radio stations came first (there was, in fact, a state monopoly) and private broadcast came later.

That is, in much of the world. Not in the US.

And at least here in Germany, the programming of public stations is noticeably better than that of the private stations, by a rather clear margin.

Well, by the standards of you, me, or more generally, the kind of people most likely to sign up for places like the ZBB, that's probably the case in most places that have both substantial public and substantial commercial TV and radio, but people like us are often untypical in various ways.

[Ares Land]

Well, by the standards of you, me, or more generally, the kind of people most likely to sign up for places like the ZBB, that's probably the case in most places that have both substantial public and substantial commercial TV and radio, but people like us are often untypical in various ways.

Here in France, public radio and TV do pretty well I think. France Inter (a mainstream radio station) has the widest audience. The BBC has a large audience as well.
I don't know about Germany; the one German TV Channel I know of is Arte (French-German really), and it's indeed more niche. But having TV programming that wouldn't be commercially viable is also what the public sector is for.

[alice]

But having TV programming that wouldn't be commercially viable is also what the public sector is for.

Cue right-wing whinging: "why do we give the BBC public money to make programmes that nobody watches?"

[Raphael]

But having TV programming that wouldn't be commercially viable is also what the public sector is for.

Cue right-wing whinging: "why do we give the BBC public money to make programmes that nobody watches?"

Why do we pay the rich dividends to buy yachts that nobody sails on?

(Addressed at those whingers, not you.)

[Travis B.]

On that note, I always wonder how you are supposed to pronounce whinge. Allegedly it's /wɪndʒ/ or, to Scottish people, /ʍɪndʒ/, but frankly I don't recall ever hearing anyone actually say that -- even in the British TV I watch.

[bradrn]

On that note, I always wonder how you are supposed to pronounce whinge. Allegedly it's /wɪndʒ/ or, to Scottish people, /ʍɪndʒ/, but frankly I don't recall ever hearing anyone actually say that -- even in the British TV I watch.

I’ve never heard of it being anything other than /wɪndʒ/.

[Travis B.]

On that note, I always wonder how you are supposed to pronounce whinge. Allegedly it's /wɪndʒ/ or, to Scottish people, /ʍɪndʒ/, but frankly I don't recall ever hearing anyone actually say that -- even in the British TV I watch.

I’ve never heard of it being anything other than /wɪndʒ/.

The word in NAE is /waɪn/.

[bradrn]

On that note, I always wonder how you are supposed to pronounce whinge. Allegedly it's /wɪndʒ/ or, to Scottish people, /ʍɪndʒ/, but frankly I don't recall ever hearing anyone actually say that -- even in the British TV I watch.

I’ve never heard of it being anything other than /wɪndʒ/.

The word in NAE is /waɪn/.

Yes, and whine is /waɪn/ in my English too. But whinge is a different word.

[Travis B.]

I’ve never heard of it being anything other than /wɪndʒ/.

The word in NAE is /waɪn/.

Yes, and whine is /waɪn/ in my English too. But whinge is a different word.

Which is practically nonexistent in NAE, to the point that for a long time I thought it was just a strange spelling of whine, akin to how hiccup was nonsensically spelled "hiccough".

[Raphael]

Bumping this question from the original post:

I'm thinking about getting myself an archive.org account and posting it there, too. Does anyone know about any potential pros and cons of that?

[Raphael]

OK, I've jumped into the icy water and posted it on archive.org : https://archive.org/details/semi-utopia ... oposal-1.1

[rotting bones]

For what it's worth, Laura K. Field, author of Furious Minds, agrees with this positive, values-oriented approach to liberalism.

Edit: The problem is that people don't listen to goodness. If holding values is the only way forward, that limits our options.