What's wrong with the Abundance™ agenda & worldview?
Admittedly, it's basically an updated 1990's Clinton/Blair "Third Way™".
Of course it doesn't really specifically or explicitly help the American, immigrant, or Global poor.
Except, insofar, that Socialism & Communism don't work but Capitalism & Markets actually do work.
As for the "Wealth Gap", הַקִּנְאָה וְהַתַּאֲוָה וְהַכָּבוֹד [(the vices of) Jealousy, Lust, & (Desire for) Respect] are perennial problems causing immeasurable suffering & death. But that doesn't mean that we should act upon them.
I don’t think anything is wrong with the abundance agenda per se but I argue we are entering an era where capitalism will no longer work for the a large group of U.S. citizens or will be severely hampered. There is something of a power law in economics whereby over an extended period of time wealth accrues in a very small number of individuals. I don’t know when (maybe 100-200 years) we will need to come up with a post capitalist system, to me this is inevitable.
IMO, It’s not that capitalism (as it was before ww2 in America, and I'm not saying that is be all end all or that nothing else is possible, or maybe even something that literally no one ever thought of before) inevitably stops working for people, it’s that when markets are centralized, legal-institutional diversity is eliminated, and elite collusion is protected by captured governance structures, then capitalism loses its internal feedback loops. From the 1830s through the 1930s, America avoided this problem by maintaining redundant, regionally varied political economies, capitalism worked better because it wasn’t monopolized. The current “failure” isn’t capitalism per se; it’s the replacement of real market structures with extractive, centralized simulations
1) What exactly do you mean by "where capitalism will no longer work for the a large group of U.S. citizens"?
2) What exactly is the problem with a "wealth gap" or individual wealth accrual in a situation where the lower classes are better off than they otherwise would be?
Both of your questions have the same answer, I believe we will enter an economic reality where material conditions for the bottom half of society stagnate or reverse while the top 1% accelerate wealth accruals
Again, I’m very happy to be proved wrong and obviously anti-capitalists have always predicted the end of capitalism but I think there is a perfect storm brewing
IMO, the “wealth gap” matters not as envy fodder, its extreme form is actually just another pathology of a deeper disease, the same centralized economic structures (which by the way are not "free market" but rather a variant of central planning) structural inequality eliminates pathways for broad-based prosperity and civic participation. Historically, when American parties were decentralized and civic participation was high, working-class and immigrant groups used their own economic and political tools to advance materially—up to and including restraining wealth concentration regionally. Once those tools were dismantled post-WW, the promise that "everyone is better off anyway", while true once when it was said (they took old Democratic Party talking points and turned them on their head and made them invalid!!), increasingly hollow.
You're mistaken because you're assuming that restraining wealth concentration and maximizing economic growth are mutually exclusive, but in the Old Republic, they weren't. Between the 1830s and mid 20th century, decentralized democratic institutions, succh as diffused and deliberately redundant economy, local capital structures, string local governments, and a variety of others that went along with lower case "d" democratic decision making processes, enabled immigrants and working-class Americans to rise economically while limiting elite concentration regionally. Wealth was intentionally and structurally distributed through tools like the Independent Treasury System, state-level S&Ls, and local public finance mechanisms and even the early version of the fed which was decentralized with variably regional monetary policies all the while maintaining the local capital structures (which lasted until the Neoliberal Era). This system inhibit growth, it created far more of it, with economic dynamism spread across dozens of regions, industries, and communities, leading to one of the most productive eras in American history. Centralization post WW2 removed those tools and concentrated both wealth and decision-making, which is why the gap now represents structural exclusion, not just statistical imbalance
Centralized government and economics weren't really an option until the twentieth century for obvious technological reasons so your arguments are wavering into the silly.
Hi, in my personal opinion, you’re overlooking how the original lowercase "d" democratic system helped immigrants not by abstractly “believing in markets” but by designing structurally competitive, decentralized financial and civic ecosystems. Local capital diffusion, intra-party policy competition, participatory municipal governance, and protected civic forums empowered immigrant neighborhoods to grow and evolve on their own terms. That system was capitalist and market-based, but it was profoundly different from today’s centralized, exclusionary, and passive model. Immigrant uplift wasn’t charity, it was structurally enabled economic and civic inclusion, and that was all enabled by an economy that produced a huge amount of diversified economic growth and opportunity throughout most areas in the country, this is because the old Democratic Party really actually was aa lowercase "d" democratic party, mass member, locally anchored, deeply participatory, and those were enabled by it existing in a system, which it originally designed, that was a economically, politically, scientifically, and governmentally decentralized with deliberate redundancy in each of those spheres.
The mainstream consistently fails to grasp how serious the opposition to Israel is among anyone who isn't an evangelical dispensationalist Christian over age 60. Because all they watch are CNN and Reuters.
Republicans under age 50 switched to majority opposition to Israel months ago, let alone now. And that's Republicans. Society wide Israel is fucked. They will never return to the graces of the American people, and being pro-Israel is completely toxic for any politician going forward, except those in Texas districts.
The economic side of things is interesting, but this is why he won. Go and watch the debate with Cuomo, it's embarrassing.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I've seen takes on Mamdani that make his potential election sound like the ushering in of a Utopia. I've also seen people claim that if he is elected mayor it will be a catastrophic nightmare. Personally, I want him to be elected just to see what happens.
But the lowest income voters didn't go for Mamdani--they went for Cuomo, bigly. IMO this win has a lot more to do with the cultural drift of younger, more educated New Yorkers than a proletariat revolt.
The economic message aside, I’ll grant that you make a point. He won because he was Muslim. I’ll bet he got every voting age Muslim (overall Muslim population is about 700k). He also got a huge turnout of young non Muslim voters including many Jews who were happy with his criticism of Israel which included saying that Israel should NOT be a Jewish state and he would arrest Netanyahu if and when he comes to NYC as a war criminal. The implications for his win are very dark. He is a practicing Muslim. When Islam is empowered in the public space it inevitably leans in to its particularly anti liberal, misogynistic, supremacist teachings. How long before we hear the call to prayer (the adnan) ring out five times a day as in the case in every large city in the UK including LONDON. This in the most Jewish of cities outside Israel. In addition, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party will take this win as a template for victory in 26’ and 28’. It will be a disaster. AOC could not win a statewide race in NY let alone nationally. Sorry, this is grim and if it sounds racist of me so be it. I don’t care about race. I do care about religious ferver. We’re already struggling against right wing Christianity in America. We don’t need to enter in to a struggle with another evangelistic faith that is still living in medieval times and is antithetical to Western Civilization.
It always makes me laugh how people accuse Islam of being 'medieval' while simultaneously believing that their 3000 year old book justifies the existence of their militant ethnostate.
Certainly their are far right Christian’s whose belief system resides in the medieval. It’s just not comparable when you view the practice of global Islam. No where near it.
I think extrapolating NYC’s politics to the US stage at this point in our cycle is a little aggressive. A large chunk of this guys coalition are college educated high earners who already practice some form of socialism with their parents subsidizing a material share of their rent. Mamdanis policy of “rent freeze” will only apply to rent stabilized units and will jack up pricing on FM units, thus exacerbating affordability issues. I think NYC’s unique affordability challenges and zohran’s marketing caused this, it’s not going to spread like wildfire. Inevitably, if he wins, we’ll go down the Portland, LA, Detroit, route and the ppl who voted for him will move to midwestern suburbs and become centrist dems while the ppl stuck in NYC will feel these policies for a long time.
There are three expressions of Socialism in the world today: Communism, Islamism, and Globalism. The US has been infiltrated by all three masquerading as the Democrat party.
All of this free stuff is financed by the money printer. But when the money printer stops working and is replaced by Bitcoin, there won't be anymore free stuff
Your piece is good! but, just imo, its gapped cuz it misses the deeper historical arc: the postwar Democratic Party did not simply drift or realign, it transformed structurally. From the 1830s to the 1930s, it was a lowercase "d" democratic party, mass member, locally anchored, deeply participatory, and those wre enabled by it existing in a system, which it originally designed, that was a economically, politically, scientifically, and governmentally decentralized with deliberate redundancy in each of those spheres. But after WW2, under immense elite and institutional pressure (both public and private), it shed this identity, gradually becoming a lowercase "t" technocracy party, professionalized, centralized, and elite-led. This shift wasn’t just ideological; it was architectural. The transformation removed the mass-participatory infrastructures that had historically allowed working-class, immigrant, minority communities, and other, (including weller off ones) to shape their material conditions directly through party engagement.
Youre conflating very different political and structural regimes. Slavery was a super serious flaw, but the Old Republic's decentralized democratic system never fully extended to the South, which functioned under what was effectively a different oligarchic plantation regime. As for the New Deal, while it did centralize some federal functions the fact of the matter is that the system remained a thoroughly politically, economically, governmentally, and scientifically decentralized system (only 6% of americans owed income tax in 1939!), and most of its stuff, like WPA, CCC, etc., actually worked through the remaining decentralized civic and economic systems. Many of its successes came from empowering localities, civic organizations, and community-based institutions. The Great Society, on the other hand, emerged as that old system was already collapsing under mounting centralization pressures. It became part of the transition to the neoliberal era, not a continuation of the Jacksonian or prewar decentralized democratic model who would have found most of its key features anathema. So nones of these contradict the transformation I mentioned, they either lay outside its functioning zone, or occurred towards the end of the phase space within which it was dismantled as part of the new system
In what ways? There are many flaws, contradictions, and bads I can acknowledge. Nor am I saying they were some universal be all and end all. I'm saying that (and this links to your other recent comment I just replied to) that described themselves as technically-mechanically democratic and they were a democratic party. But the key things is they proved that system design is a choice that isnt bound by universal laws, in your other comment you stated that it was just a feature of tech, but I assure you that turns not to be true, in fact they had to defeat many of the same args that we hear today (or especially in the 90s) about how tech advance has made this form of arraignment inevitable, and the arraignment America was to receive was strikingly close to what we have now nationally and globally, it wasnt tech, it was design, they proved a different systems are quite possible
What's wrong with the Abundance™ agenda & worldview?
Admittedly, it's basically an updated 1990's Clinton/Blair "Third Way™".
Of course it doesn't really specifically or explicitly help the American, immigrant, or Global poor.
Except, insofar, that Socialism & Communism don't work but Capitalism & Markets actually do work.
As for the "Wealth Gap", הַקִּנְאָה וְהַתַּאֲוָה וְהַכָּבוֹד [(the vices of) Jealousy, Lust, & (Desire for) Respect] are perennial problems causing immeasurable suffering & death. But that doesn't mean that we should act upon them.
I don’t think anything is wrong with the abundance agenda per se but I argue we are entering an era where capitalism will no longer work for the a large group of U.S. citizens or will be severely hampered. There is something of a power law in economics whereby over an extended period of time wealth accrues in a very small number of individuals. I don’t know when (maybe 100-200 years) we will need to come up with a post capitalist system, to me this is inevitable.
IMO, It’s not that capitalism (as it was before ww2 in America, and I'm not saying that is be all end all or that nothing else is possible, or maybe even something that literally no one ever thought of before) inevitably stops working for people, it’s that when markets are centralized, legal-institutional diversity is eliminated, and elite collusion is protected by captured governance structures, then capitalism loses its internal feedback loops. From the 1830s through the 1930s, America avoided this problem by maintaining redundant, regionally varied political economies, capitalism worked better because it wasn’t monopolized. The current “failure” isn’t capitalism per se; it’s the replacement of real market structures with extractive, centralized simulations
1) What exactly do you mean by "where capitalism will no longer work for the a large group of U.S. citizens"?
2) What exactly is the problem with a "wealth gap" or individual wealth accrual in a situation where the lower classes are better off than they otherwise would be?
Both of your questions have the same answer, I believe we will enter an economic reality where material conditions for the bottom half of society stagnate or reverse while the top 1% accelerate wealth accruals
Again, I’m very happy to be proved wrong and obviously anti-capitalists have always predicted the end of capitalism but I think there is a perfect storm brewing
Than you'll probably be factually wrong, if only because of technological advancements.
🤞
IMO, the “wealth gap” matters not as envy fodder, its extreme form is actually just another pathology of a deeper disease, the same centralized economic structures (which by the way are not "free market" but rather a variant of central planning) structural inequality eliminates pathways for broad-based prosperity and civic participation. Historically, when American parties were decentralized and civic participation was high, working-class and immigrant groups used their own economic and political tools to advance materially—up to and including restraining wealth concentration regionally. Once those tools were dismantled post-WW, the promise that "everyone is better off anyway", while true once when it was said (they took old Democratic Party talking points and turned them on their head and made them invalid!!), increasingly hollow.
I literally have no idea what you're talking about.
What years?
Which immigrants were limiting wealth concentration?
And how was this restraining wealth concentration not simultaneously limiting economic growth?
You're mistaken because you're assuming that restraining wealth concentration and maximizing economic growth are mutually exclusive, but in the Old Republic, they weren't. Between the 1830s and mid 20th century, decentralized democratic institutions, succh as diffused and deliberately redundant economy, local capital structures, string local governments, and a variety of others that went along with lower case "d" democratic decision making processes, enabled immigrants and working-class Americans to rise economically while limiting elite concentration regionally. Wealth was intentionally and structurally distributed through tools like the Independent Treasury System, state-level S&Ls, and local public finance mechanisms and even the early version of the fed which was decentralized with variably regional monetary policies all the while maintaining the local capital structures (which lasted until the Neoliberal Era). This system inhibit growth, it created far more of it, with economic dynamism spread across dozens of regions, industries, and communities, leading to one of the most productive eras in American history. Centralization post WW2 removed those tools and concentrated both wealth and decision-making, which is why the gap now represents structural exclusion, not just statistical imbalance
Centralized government and economics weren't really an option until the twentieth century for obvious technological reasons so your arguments are wavering into the silly.
Hi, in my personal opinion, you’re overlooking how the original lowercase "d" democratic system helped immigrants not by abstractly “believing in markets” but by designing structurally competitive, decentralized financial and civic ecosystems. Local capital diffusion, intra-party policy competition, participatory municipal governance, and protected civic forums empowered immigrant neighborhoods to grow and evolve on their own terms. That system was capitalist and market-based, but it was profoundly different from today’s centralized, exclusionary, and passive model. Immigrant uplift wasn’t charity, it was structurally enabled economic and civic inclusion, and that was all enabled by an economy that produced a huge amount of diversified economic growth and opportunity throughout most areas in the country, this is because the old Democratic Party really actually was aa lowercase "d" democratic party, mass member, locally anchored, deeply participatory, and those were enabled by it existing in a system, which it originally designed, that was a economically, politically, scientifically, and governmentally decentralized with deliberate redundancy in each of those spheres.
The mainstream consistently fails to grasp how serious the opposition to Israel is among anyone who isn't an evangelical dispensationalist Christian over age 60. Because all they watch are CNN and Reuters.
Republicans under age 50 switched to majority opposition to Israel months ago, let alone now. And that's Republicans. Society wide Israel is fucked. They will never return to the graces of the American people, and being pro-Israel is completely toxic for any politician going forward, except those in Texas districts.
The economic side of things is interesting, but this is why he won. Go and watch the debate with Cuomo, it's embarrassing.
Agreed being non-Zionist or being anti the government of Israel is no longer considered political suicide
Nice piece. Seems like a reasonable descriptive overview.
"For the first time in a long time, the Democratic party has no central vision of the future.⁷ [Happy to go much, much deeper on this.]"
Please do! What do you think is the right path forward? Yang-style monthly basic income?
I truthfully have no idea, I meant going deeper on the how of the Democratic Party ending up here and the deeper structural reasons as to why.
Alright. Fair enough :)
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I've seen takes on Mamdani that make his potential election sound like the ushering in of a Utopia. I've also seen people claim that if he is elected mayor it will be a catastrophic nightmare. Personally, I want him to be elected just to see what happens.
He won because the current primary system is the most retarded way to pick candidates that any government has yet conceived.
Happy you made money off socialism;
But the lowest income voters didn't go for Mamdani--they went for Cuomo, bigly. IMO this win has a lot more to do with the cultural drift of younger, more educated New Yorkers than a proletariat revolt.
It might be a matter of perception though. One doesn't need to be proletarian to want free stuff.
The economic message aside, I’ll grant that you make a point. He won because he was Muslim. I’ll bet he got every voting age Muslim (overall Muslim population is about 700k). He also got a huge turnout of young non Muslim voters including many Jews who were happy with his criticism of Israel which included saying that Israel should NOT be a Jewish state and he would arrest Netanyahu if and when he comes to NYC as a war criminal. The implications for his win are very dark. He is a practicing Muslim. When Islam is empowered in the public space it inevitably leans in to its particularly anti liberal, misogynistic, supremacist teachings. How long before we hear the call to prayer (the adnan) ring out five times a day as in the case in every large city in the UK including LONDON. This in the most Jewish of cities outside Israel. In addition, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party will take this win as a template for victory in 26’ and 28’. It will be a disaster. AOC could not win a statewide race in NY let alone nationally. Sorry, this is grim and if it sounds racist of me so be it. I don’t care about race. I do care about religious ferver. We’re already struggling against right wing Christianity in America. We don’t need to enter in to a struggle with another evangelistic faith that is still living in medieval times and is antithetical to Western Civilization.
He’s a secular Muslim, I’m pretty sure he was raised atheist.
I believe you’re misinformed. He’s presented to the NY community of Muslims as one of them, religiously.
I followed his campaign quite closely and not once heard him discuss Islam.
I hope I’m wrong.
It always makes me laugh how people accuse Islam of being 'medieval' while simultaneously believing that their 3000 year old book justifies the existence of their militant ethnostate.
Certainly their are far right Christian’s whose belief system resides in the medieval. It’s just not comparable when you view the practice of global Islam. No where near it.
I think extrapolating NYC’s politics to the US stage at this point in our cycle is a little aggressive. A large chunk of this guys coalition are college educated high earners who already practice some form of socialism with their parents subsidizing a material share of their rent. Mamdanis policy of “rent freeze” will only apply to rent stabilized units and will jack up pricing on FM units, thus exacerbating affordability issues. I think NYC’s unique affordability challenges and zohran’s marketing caused this, it’s not going to spread like wildfire. Inevitably, if he wins, we’ll go down the Portland, LA, Detroit, route and the ppl who voted for him will move to midwestern suburbs and become centrist dems while the ppl stuck in NYC will feel these policies for a long time.
$65M to children, young adults, whomever. Seems like he is all about Identitarianism and the big money that comes with it
Probably because the Imams in the mosques did a good job. That's Muslim Brotherhood for you
Numbers do not show this….
There are three expressions of Socialism in the world today: Communism, Islamism, and Globalism. The US has been infiltrated by all three masquerading as the Democrat party.
Bitcoin fixes this:
All of this free stuff is financed by the money printer. But when the money printer stops working and is replaced by Bitcoin, there won't be anymore free stuff
Your piece is good! but, just imo, its gapped cuz it misses the deeper historical arc: the postwar Democratic Party did not simply drift or realign, it transformed structurally. From the 1830s to the 1930s, it was a lowercase "d" democratic party, mass member, locally anchored, deeply participatory, and those wre enabled by it existing in a system, which it originally designed, that was a economically, politically, scientifically, and governmentally decentralized with deliberate redundancy in each of those spheres. But after WW2, under immense elite and institutional pressure (both public and private), it shed this identity, gradually becoming a lowercase "t" technocracy party, professionalized, centralized, and elite-led. This shift wasn’t just ideological; it was architectural. The transformation removed the mass-participatory infrastructures that had historically allowed working-class, immigrant, minority communities, and other, (including weller off ones) to shape their material conditions directly through party engagement.
You seem to have forgotten Slavery, The New Deal, & The Great Society.
Youre conflating very different political and structural regimes. Slavery was a super serious flaw, but the Old Republic's decentralized democratic system never fully extended to the South, which functioned under what was effectively a different oligarchic plantation regime. As for the New Deal, while it did centralize some federal functions the fact of the matter is that the system remained a thoroughly politically, economically, governmentally, and scientifically decentralized system (only 6% of americans owed income tax in 1939!), and most of its stuff, like WPA, CCC, etc., actually worked through the remaining decentralized civic and economic systems. Many of its successes came from empowering localities, civic organizations, and community-based institutions. The Great Society, on the other hand, emerged as that old system was already collapsing under mounting centralization pressures. It became part of the transition to the neoliberal era, not a continuation of the Jacksonian or prewar decentralized democratic model who would have found most of its key features anathema. So nones of these contradict the transformation I mentioned, they either lay outside its functioning zone, or occurred towards the end of the phase space within which it was dismantled as part of the new system
I'm just pointing out that by obsessing over the subtext of the historical Democratic Party, you're ignoring the text.
In what ways? There are many flaws, contradictions, and bads I can acknowledge. Nor am I saying they were some universal be all and end all. I'm saying that (and this links to your other recent comment I just replied to) that described themselves as technically-mechanically democratic and they were a democratic party. But the key things is they proved that system design is a choice that isnt bound by universal laws, in your other comment you stated that it was just a feature of tech, but I assure you that turns not to be true, in fact they had to defeat many of the same args that we hear today (or especially in the 90s) about how tech advance has made this form of arraignment inevitable, and the arraignment America was to receive was strikingly close to what we have now nationally and globally, it wasnt tech, it was design, they proved a different systems are quite possible
Because of nigger worship
I’m curious what informs your opinions on the matter. Surveys? Intuition based on following the news/social media? Something else?