Good article. I'd also mention that in regards to the CHIPs Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, there were large amounts of small print DEI provisions which have utterly stillborn the initiatives.
I'm all for a more competent state bureaucracy, the consultancy industry is an absolute leach on state productivity and projects like HS2, with so much red-tape, consultations, cost-benefit analysis, environmental impact assessments, legal appeals, and an ultra-fragmented industrial base, ended with the scheme being nothing less than a 'national humiliation'. However, there's a difference between infrastructure projects like that and subsidising whole industries.
To build a 'new fusionism' that could find widespread support I think this industrial policy focus is largely a dead end. We should instead do neoliberalism properly, like Singapore or Estonia.
Lind might be right, although granted for the wrong reasons. The smart way to tackle wokeism is to use a non obvious way. A way that cannot be resisted because it does not directly confront. Direct confrontation is what the wokeists thrive on - it's playing their game. Have a think about this instead:
I posit that there is a strong correlation between extended low interest rate environments and loose/weak thinking (see also Japan for an example in a non Judeo Christian society). Many poorly conceived ideas get given life when money is cheap. Raising rates to where they should be (probably 6-8%) - an leaving them there for 5 - 10 years, would result huge amounts of malinvestment going bust.
How doe this relate to Wokeism? I say it's one of these poor ideas that has received investment because of cheap money. How? One huge sink of malinvestment is our university system - which also happens to be the the pipeline / source of pretty much all our woke friends. Watch as the whole university system implodes - and then suddenly we have a clean sheet and green fields on which to build new institutions.
Only once the woke tap has been turned off at source - the universities - is it worth doing the other more 'confronting' things like repealing legislation (quietly and without announcment) etc. Otherwise you are simply bailing out a leaking boat with a spoon. Cut off the head.
But then what about the economic chaos and loss of jobs I hear you cry! Well that's what an industrial strategy is for isn't it?
As for interest rates, that would be a neoliberal/monetarist measure rather than a Michael Lind-style national Keynesianism. Japan's 'Lost Decades' is exactly what happens when 'industrial policy' goes wrong, you just go deeper and deeper into debt as zombie companies are kept alive. However, I do think we need to reduce the presence of central banks, to make them only lenders of last resort rather than fountains of the economy.
We would need both so called 'Keysian" and "monetarist" measures to get out of this mess. That's the beauty of the problem we are being posed - we have to start treating ideas like tools to be used as appropriate to each circumstance - instead of as identities we cling to.
Is what you're saying here that being pro-contraception, pro-gay marriage and pro-abortion are woke positions?
I see Wokeism as something much more recent, and those questions as settled in the UK. Questions of hormones for children, trans women in sports, that sort of thing are open questions. But being publicly against gay marriage or contraception in 2024 is going to do harm to any of your other causes.
I consider gay marriage a humiliating symbol of Woke metapolitical victory and deconstruction of a functional society. I don’t care how popular is; it must go, that can be gradual, for instance ‘marriage privatisation ‘, but it is non-negotiable.
Interesting! I'd love to respond in more detail, but I don't find it very persuasive.
I think you're using sort of pseudo-religious reasoning, even though you claim not to be religious.
What does it mean to say "the civilizational purpose of marriage is towards reproduction; not exclusively, but it is the reason why the institution exists."? If there's no religious beliefs being snuck in, then I can't make any sense of the idea of a civilisational purpose.
If you're not religious, then aren't we just monkeys on a rock in space, acting in accordance with evolutionary instincts? If one day some monkeys came up with marriage, and later some other monkeys came up with homosexual marriage, in what sense is the former in accordance with our civilisational purpose, but the latter isn't? How do you determine things that are correct or incorrect, without a God to decide our purpose?
If your appeal is just to time (marriage was exclusively heterosexual for a long time, so that must be right) then I'd put to you the many, many practices that existed for a long time but are now widely considered barbaric - like slavery, or human sacrifice.
That's an aside, though. The main thing I want to say is in response to your last point - "I don't care how popular it is; it must go".
I would say in return "I don't care how important you think it is - that question is settled". Get used to living in a world that didn't develop in the direction you wanted it to. Because that development has already happened. Very few people, anywhere in the Western world, want to re-open that battle.
Typical LGBT smugness. Using postmodern deconstruction and insidious social signalling to humiliate and demoralise all who oppose you.
I’m not going to stop advocating for something I believe is important just because you try to demoralise me, this posture only makes me more adamant to push you off you pedestal. If I lose, I lose, but I’m not going to quit.
People like you are false allies, and to be honest, I hope you are made to feel as uncomfortable and as unwelcome as possible so you get out, and return to your natural home; the Woke left.
"People like you are false allies, and to be honest, I hope you are made to feel as uncomfortable and as unwelcome as possible so you get out, and return to your natural home; the Woke left" - this is a pretty strong reaction to what I said, and you've offered nothing in response to the substance of what I said.
It seems like you've projected onto me, someone you know almost nothing about, a bunch of beliefs and motives that you don't like. But without understanding what those beliefs are, it's hard to disagree.
The motives are easier, though. You claim I'm trying to demoralise you, you think I'm trying to humiliate you, you think I'm trying to perform social signalling - but I have no idea who you are, and we're on a thread with ten total comments (eleven now), of which you and I have contributed seven. This isn't battle for the heart of the country, there is no crowd to signal to, and I have absolutely no motive to humiliate or demoralise you.
You're correct that any talk of an industrial strategy is pointless with our current combo of high energy prices and Deliveroo Britain. But my only question would be how do we get lower energy prices (in a reasonable time frame) without large state intervention? Its a question I am stuck with :3
I'd argue it requires the Government to get out of the way a lot more - overturn the ban on fracking, review the vastly higher safety standards for nuclear builds, and reduce the power of NIMBY groups in opposing electrical infrastructure
But doing all that probably counts as intervention...
Germany appears to have quite a productive smaller scale manufacturing capacity. One thing I understand they require is that all boards of a particular size have to have one employee representative and that this dissuades a Dyson-style move of moving production overseas. I also saw a chart recently (Twitter) on comparative numbers of robotic production levels by country. China - with relatively cheap labour costs anyway was miles ahead. The UK barely featured. This is also something that could benefit our productivity. Finally, I'd be interested in how Russia under heavy sanctions managed to massively increase its productive capacity and whether the chosen areas are producing very inferior products when considered on the global stage.
Good article. I'd also mention that in regards to the CHIPs Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, there were large amounts of small print DEI provisions which have utterly stillborn the initiatives.
I've gone off all this talk of 'industrial policy' since it seems to be a deflection from tackling Wokeism. I previously liked Michael Lind, but his article here basically telling the right to 'give up' on anti-Wokeism revealed to me that he is a fake ally. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2024/01/15/gop-donald-trump-abortion-evangelical-christians-primary/ (disable Javascript or go archive.ph)
I'm all for a more competent state bureaucracy, the consultancy industry is an absolute leach on state productivity and projects like HS2, with so much red-tape, consultations, cost-benefit analysis, environmental impact assessments, legal appeals, and an ultra-fragmented industrial base, ended with the scheme being nothing less than a 'national humiliation'. However, there's a difference between infrastructure projects like that and subsidising whole industries.
To build a 'new fusionism' that could find widespread support I think this industrial policy focus is largely a dead end. We should instead do neoliberalism properly, like Singapore or Estonia.
Lind might be right, although granted for the wrong reasons. The smart way to tackle wokeism is to use a non obvious way. A way that cannot be resisted because it does not directly confront. Direct confrontation is what the wokeists thrive on - it's playing their game. Have a think about this instead:
I posit that there is a strong correlation between extended low interest rate environments and loose/weak thinking (see also Japan for an example in a non Judeo Christian society). Many poorly conceived ideas get given life when money is cheap. Raising rates to where they should be (probably 6-8%) - an leaving them there for 5 - 10 years, would result huge amounts of malinvestment going bust.
How doe this relate to Wokeism? I say it's one of these poor ideas that has received investment because of cheap money. How? One huge sink of malinvestment is our university system - which also happens to be the the pipeline / source of pretty much all our woke friends. Watch as the whole university system implodes - and then suddenly we have a clean sheet and green fields on which to build new institutions.
Only once the woke tap has been turned off at source - the universities - is it worth doing the other more 'confronting' things like repealing legislation (quietly and without announcment) etc. Otherwise you are simply bailing out a leaking boat with a spoon. Cut off the head.
But then what about the economic chaos and loss of jobs I hear you cry! Well that's what an industrial strategy is for isn't it?
You're right on universities. Oren Cass and American Compass have some great ideas on this, and it's my favourite part of this 'NatCon Economics'.
https://americancompass.org/policy-brief-self-financing-by-colleges/
https://americancompass.org/policy-brief-banning-bachelors-degree-requirements/
https://americancompass.org/workforce-training-grant-policy-brief/
As for interest rates, that would be a neoliberal/monetarist measure rather than a Michael Lind-style national Keynesianism. Japan's 'Lost Decades' is exactly what happens when 'industrial policy' goes wrong, you just go deeper and deeper into debt as zombie companies are kept alive. However, I do think we need to reduce the presence of central banks, to make them only lenders of last resort rather than fountains of the economy.
We would need both so called 'Keysian" and "monetarist" measures to get out of this mess. That's the beauty of the problem we are being posed - we have to start treating ideas like tools to be used as appropriate to each circumstance - instead of as identities we cling to.
Is what you're saying here that being pro-contraception, pro-gay marriage and pro-abortion are woke positions?
I see Wokeism as something much more recent, and those questions as settled in the UK. Questions of hormones for children, trans women in sports, that sort of thing are open questions. But being publicly against gay marriage or contraception in 2024 is going to do harm to any of your other causes.
Pro-abortion and pro-contraception, no. Pro-gay marriage, yes.
My reasons are here:
https://anglofuturistmag.substack.com/p/why-i-wont-stop-talking-about-gay?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
I consider gay marriage a humiliating symbol of Woke metapolitical victory and deconstruction of a functional society. I don’t care how popular is; it must go, that can be gradual, for instance ‘marriage privatisation ‘, but it is non-negotiable.
Interesting! I'd love to respond in more detail, but I don't find it very persuasive.
I think you're using sort of pseudo-religious reasoning, even though you claim not to be religious.
What does it mean to say "the civilizational purpose of marriage is towards reproduction; not exclusively, but it is the reason why the institution exists."? If there's no religious beliefs being snuck in, then I can't make any sense of the idea of a civilisational purpose.
If you're not religious, then aren't we just monkeys on a rock in space, acting in accordance with evolutionary instincts? If one day some monkeys came up with marriage, and later some other monkeys came up with homosexual marriage, in what sense is the former in accordance with our civilisational purpose, but the latter isn't? How do you determine things that are correct or incorrect, without a God to decide our purpose?
If your appeal is just to time (marriage was exclusively heterosexual for a long time, so that must be right) then I'd put to you the many, many practices that existed for a long time but are now widely considered barbaric - like slavery, or human sacrifice.
That's an aside, though. The main thing I want to say is in response to your last point - "I don't care how popular it is; it must go".
I would say in return "I don't care how important you think it is - that question is settled". Get used to living in a world that didn't develop in the direction you wanted it to. Because that development has already happened. Very few people, anywhere in the Western world, want to re-open that battle.
Typical LGBT smugness. Using postmodern deconstruction and insidious social signalling to humiliate and demoralise all who oppose you.
I’m not going to stop advocating for something I believe is important just because you try to demoralise me, this posture only makes me more adamant to push you off you pedestal. If I lose, I lose, but I’m not going to quit.
People like you are false allies, and to be honest, I hope you are made to feel as uncomfortable and as unwelcome as possible so you get out, and return to your natural home; the Woke left.
"People like you are false allies, and to be honest, I hope you are made to feel as uncomfortable and as unwelcome as possible so you get out, and return to your natural home; the Woke left" - this is a pretty strong reaction to what I said, and you've offered nothing in response to the substance of what I said.
It seems like you've projected onto me, someone you know almost nothing about, a bunch of beliefs and motives that you don't like. But without understanding what those beliefs are, it's hard to disagree.
The motives are easier, though. You claim I'm trying to demoralise you, you think I'm trying to humiliate you, you think I'm trying to perform social signalling - but I have no idea who you are, and we're on a thread with ten total comments (eleven now), of which you and I have contributed seven. This isn't battle for the heart of the country, there is no crowd to signal to, and I have absolutely no motive to humiliate or demoralise you.
strong agree / great read.
You're correct that any talk of an industrial strategy is pointless with our current combo of high energy prices and Deliveroo Britain. But my only question would be how do we get lower energy prices (in a reasonable time frame) without large state intervention? Its a question I am stuck with :3
There’s no short-term fix: we in Europe have completely screwed things up. Certainly, it will require a high level of state intervention to solve.
I'd argue it requires the Government to get out of the way a lot more - overturn the ban on fracking, review the vastly higher safety standards for nuclear builds, and reduce the power of NIMBY groups in opposing electrical infrastructure
But doing all that probably counts as intervention...
Germany appears to have quite a productive smaller scale manufacturing capacity. One thing I understand they require is that all boards of a particular size have to have one employee representative and that this dissuades a Dyson-style move of moving production overseas. I also saw a chart recently (Twitter) on comparative numbers of robotic production levels by country. China - with relatively cheap labour costs anyway was miles ahead. The UK barely featured. This is also something that could benefit our productivity. Finally, I'd be interested in how Russia under heavy sanctions managed to massively increase its productive capacity and whether the chosen areas are producing very inferior products when considered on the global stage.