What we need is a great shrink in regulatory and court overview. I want to greatly reduce the market size and opportunity for the various NGO's and do-gooders to impose stasis on society.
By the way, we are driving a great extinction event at this point. The endangered species act is moot. Realistically, the idea of maintaining existing relatively unchanging wilderness areas is effectively moot as well. Massive climate change is essentially unavoidable. We are going to need to help species relocate and ecosystems adapt. Trying to preserve what is is a lost cause. it is just that the dying is not over yet. We need to worry about what can, could, and will be. And we have whole organizations devoted to fighting battles that have already been lost. Frankly, most of the NGO and environmental organizations.
I live in the Pacific NorthWest, and I like the forests here. But the forests that are here now will not be the forests that will be here a century from now. I rather suspect the forests a century from now in this area will be more like the forests of Central and Northern California. As our current forests burn, we should be starting to bring in plants that are more appropriate for the changing conditions.
The warming is going to do in the Salmon and Steelhead trout in this area as well as further south The survivors will migrate further north to northern British Columbia and Alaska. I see no point taking down dams for a few decades of salmon spawning before the water warming eliminates the salmon in the area. There may be valid reasons to take down dams, such as being filled with sediment, but the NGO's are being blindly romantic and wasting money that could be much more productively spent elsewhere.
Good point I think that a lot of environmentalists are alarmists that have no idea of cost benefit analysis regarding the environment vs the economy and the impact on people
Are we seeing what Ayn Rand describes in her book "Atlas Shrugged" coming true? Producers on strike. Not even consciously. We are seeing the unconscious withholding of our faculties to produce for one reason or another. All as a consequence of the welfare state. This does not bode well for the future. Take care.
The author writes “A return to New Deal liberalism would require more than policy tweaks. It would require a different coalition—one where the interests of hardhat union workers trump those of environmental NGOs.”
This is very true. I am a New Dealer and would like a return to something like that. To do this Democrats need to get a dispensation like FDR did. As for what is a dispensation see here:
You write "It is the inevitable consequence of the political realignment that made liberalism the tribune of a highly-educated legal and managerial class."
But why did this happen?
“beginning in the 1960s, that base began to erode. As the Democratic Party embraced civil rights, environmentalism, and antiwar activism, it alienated large segments of its white working-class coalition.“
This isn’t true. Check out the red versus the + symbols in this figure. The red shows non-college (WC) dem vote minus college dem vote. It remained positive throughout the sixties., not shifting down until 1972. Note that the white minus non white measure shifted done after 1964, probably because of Civil Rights. It was non-working class whites who left the party because of Civil Rights. The red symbols bounced up to parity in 1976 before going negative for good.
Now a big part of this Democratic unforced error was Democratic support of the Vietnam War. It played a significant role in turning working class voters against Democrats. But had Democrats paid attention to the gold reserve they would be unable to have their war AND the programs they wanted. They would have to choose instead of taking the easy way out and doing both.
What we need is a great shrink in regulatory and court overview. I want to greatly reduce the market size and opportunity for the various NGO's and do-gooders to impose stasis on society.
By the way, we are driving a great extinction event at this point. The endangered species act is moot. Realistically, the idea of maintaining existing relatively unchanging wilderness areas is effectively moot as well. Massive climate change is essentially unavoidable. We are going to need to help species relocate and ecosystems adapt. Trying to preserve what is is a lost cause. it is just that the dying is not over yet. We need to worry about what can, could, and will be. And we have whole organizations devoted to fighting battles that have already been lost. Frankly, most of the NGO and environmental organizations.
I live in the Pacific NorthWest, and I like the forests here. But the forests that are here now will not be the forests that will be here a century from now. I rather suspect the forests a century from now in this area will be more like the forests of Central and Northern California. As our current forests burn, we should be starting to bring in plants that are more appropriate for the changing conditions.
The warming is going to do in the Salmon and Steelhead trout in this area as well as further south The survivors will migrate further north to northern British Columbia and Alaska. I see no point taking down dams for a few decades of salmon spawning before the water warming eliminates the salmon in the area. There may be valid reasons to take down dams, such as being filled with sediment, but the NGO's are being blindly romantic and wasting money that could be much more productively spent elsewhere.
Good point I think that a lot of environmentalists are alarmists that have no idea of cost benefit analysis regarding the environment vs the economy and the impact on people
Are we seeing what Ayn Rand describes in her book "Atlas Shrugged" coming true? Producers on strike. Not even consciously. We are seeing the unconscious withholding of our faculties to produce for one reason or another. All as a consequence of the welfare state. This does not bode well for the future. Take care.
The author writes “A return to New Deal liberalism would require more than policy tweaks. It would require a different coalition—one where the interests of hardhat union workers trump those of environmental NGOs.”
This is very true. I am a New Dealer and would like a return to something like that. To do this Democrats need to get a dispensation like FDR did. As for what is a dispensation see here:
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/the-importance-of-a-political-dispensation
Here is how FDR did it
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-the-new-dealers-gained-the-ability
And some idea on how one might start
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/why-neoliberalism-should-be-replaced/comments
But first I need a miracle, a Republican willing to destroy his party by crashing the economy as Hoover did.
You ask for a miracle, I give you Donald F. Trump and his Libertarian Day!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlC0yEH1uUc
You write "It is the inevitable consequence of the political realignment that made liberalism the tribune of a highly-educated legal and managerial class."
But why did this happen?
“beginning in the 1960s, that base began to erode. As the Democratic Party embraced civil rights, environmentalism, and antiwar activism, it alienated large segments of its white working-class coalition.“
This isn’t true. Check out the red versus the + symbols in this figure. The red shows non-college (WC) dem vote minus college dem vote. It remained positive throughout the sixties., not shifting down until 1972. Note that the white minus non white measure shifted done after 1964, probably because of Civil Rights. It was non-working class whites who left the party because of Civil Rights. The red symbols bounced up to parity in 1976 before going negative for good.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1a31cf92-e1da-478b-b134-79f6e8af3e61_615x255.gif
See this post for more on this evolution
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/political-evolution-in-the-us
It was Democratic policymakers who abandoned the working class in the early 1960’s not the reverse.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-the-new-deal-order-fell
Now a big part of this Democratic unforced error was Democratic support of the Vietnam War. It played a significant role in turning working class voters against Democrats. But had Democrats paid attention to the gold reserve they would be unable to have their war AND the programs they wanted. They would have to choose instead of taking the easy way out and doing both.
I touch more on this issue here:
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/what-is-the-democrats-problem
I welcome a discussion on this issue.