Sabrdance

Ezra keeps going on about this idea of finding a "vision of the Good" for liberalism. Very conservative concern! He says that the main criticism of Abundance is that it was all about getting people more stuff and that it lacks a vision of the Good. And, fair enough, I don't disagree with that. I think that's a perennial problem of liberalism, and I don't think Klein would disagree with that either. And maybe he's right that empirically it was the main critique from people who engaged with the book. But, again, my critique is that Democrats now and in any plausible foreseeable future cannot embrace the many good ideas in his book because their explicit, fundamental strategy is to turn their party, and eventually America, into an ethnic patronage machine, and that's incompatible with the sort of supply-side policies he likes. I would like to see him engage *that* critique. The philosophical critique is in some ways too easy.

It's just interesting that say, early modern Venice had a homicide rate through the roof, but modern Venice, full of agnostics and lapsed Catholics has a super low violence rate. They must have just recently converted...