A claim in the Guardian that we’re all being condescending when we claim that varied progressive policies – akin to those being put forward by Alexandria Ocasio Cortez – are unworkable. The thing is though, some ideas put forward by such progressives are unworkable. As are all sorts of other ideas of course.
For example, we cannot gain both local power without long distance trade and also renewable power without fossil fuels or nuclear. Because renewables are inherently intermittent and the only way that we can deal with that is flatten out that variance over large – very large – geographical distances. We thus must have long distance trade in power if we are to ditch fossil and nuclear.
As long as women make different choices about the arrival of children over work than men do we’re never going to get rid of the gender pay gap.
No one has ever managed to have a functional large and centralised state. There are large states – the Nordics come to mind in GDP share at least – but they are decentralised. There are centralised states- the Feds in DC are very much more of government than the states or counties are. But that’s not a large state as with the Nordics.
Fill in your own examples of things that don’t work here. Of any flavour or vanity of political outlook.
So this is an odd complaint:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]It’s a shame Ocasio-Cortez didn’t reference ‘centrist dads’ in her speech, as I reckon the British insult could do with being popularised in the United States. Despite this omission, however, the congresswoman was spot on. On both sides of the Atlantic, the “meh” is worshipped while progressive politics are condescendingly dismissed as unworkable.[/perfectpullquote]Why shouldn’t we condescend when people propose gibbering idiocy?
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Like, say, the Green New Deal. Absolutely every economist who has worked on the subject says that if we are to do something about climate change then we don’t have some centralised plan about which technologies the taxpayer is going to have to cough up for. That’s just not the correct way to gain the necessary changes in society. The progressives want to have a centralised plan about which technologies the taxpayer is going to have to cough up for.
We should dismiss this is gibbering idiocy. And condescend as we do so.
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To not hoot, holler and guffaw at the nonsense springing from these authoritarian socialists is to give them a sliver of legitimacy. Their ideas do not deserve that sliver of legitimacy. Call it condescending if necessary.