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The future Liberals want by Noah Smith on substack. It’s not that interesting a vision really: the future of the West is highly diverse, urban, self-expressive (trans accepting), and abundant with oh thanks an olive branch for conservatives.
I think the bizarre thing about this is that Noah — as woke, neolib as it comes — felt the need to write this at all. Everyone knows this is the vision; it’s all we hear about! Conservatives all know that this is what is on offer if society remains on autopilot towards the future too.
What strikes me about it is a vision of total anomie and dissolving of any sense of common culture and this is supposed to be good. Each nations singular (or maybe 2-3 tops) religion replaced by anything or nothing. Each national ethnic group replaced by a multicultural hodge podge with inclusion and acceptance for all. Diversity of income (inequality). Imagine there are no countries…
I can’t help wonder what families are supposed to be like in this vision — or indeed if they really exist. Is a world of radical self invention fuelled by technology compatible at all with human flourishing as its always been known: freedom to choose the burdens we bear for maximum meaning. What if blank slatism wasn’t a description of the world, but a challenge!
It just all seems so ugly. Most people have poor taste so radical self invention will be mostly just ugliness like architecture ripped from its patrimony and place. If politics ultimately springs from aesthetics, this liberalism is eventually doomed (but not before it wins and destroys what little of left of pre-modern life).
I read the article and it is a tour de force in using lots of words to say very little. I suppose it is a bit idealistic (albeit in an utopian way I don't think is plausible), but it is simultaneously lacking any substance. Suburbs with lots of trains and buses? Sure. How? A bus route that serves 3 people a day is a massive waste, and is what subsidized busing in the suburbs actually looks like. Diversity? I see people of races doing things of all sorts, how are you going to overcome fundamental differences? Is it going to be reparations forever? Then say that. Say what you mean, not nothing and lovingly allow your fellow travelers insert their utopian dreams into it.
You do get walkable commuter suburbs in older cities like toronto, montreal, where there's a grid and busses or streetcars just go through every part of the city in a more or less straight line and its really intuitive to just go north or south...
But the thing is you can't control who's entering your neighborhood and everyone walks down every single street to get everywhere.
Toronto has a murder rate of 2 per 100,000 the richest city in America... DC its 16 per 100,000. even with drug problems and homeless people etc, wealthy proffessionals are fine living in "Inner Suburbs" of cities like toronto, because even though you get crazies shouting down your street at 2am... the police will respond to noise complaints and it probably won't escalate beyond that.
To have the same security in the US you either need to build your city in the most hostile manner to exclude anyone who doesn't own a car, or you'd need ruthless public or private security enforcement... that either puts people away a long time, or is violent enough in the immediate enforcement they don't come back.
Even in Canada with a 1-2% black population there are endless stories of how "disproportionate" police enforcement on the black population is... in the US? with 13% of the population being black? you can have hostile unwalkable suburbs, "White flight", or what would look like and open race war to keep those cities livable for professionals with kids.
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I noticed he also skipped over explaining how his dream city wouldn't be a techno-panopticon hellscape. Except unlike the Chinese one with the totalitarian AI censorship presumably focused entirely against people who complain about all the used needles and shit in the streets, or who ask each other in hushed voices why their children's kindergarten Diversity lessons have to involve so many penises.
Indeed, how does his vision deal with any of the maladies that modern suburbs were created to workaround?
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Or people who oppose the mandatory monthly jabs required to live in the city.
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