Phew! That was a lot of reading... and worth the slog. Being a stubborn dyslexic, I fought my urge to give up. So, you had me when I got to:
"The question is: “Should people govern themselves, or should experts manage them?”
People want to feel like citizens. They don’t want to be managed. The American experiment is an experiment in self-government. Technocracy says, “Vote for the best philosopher kings.”
Bingo. I got it and didn't feel stupid any more. I actually felt good that in my own way, you and I were in many ways on the same page!
My midwest, (fly-over-state) values focus on simple, common language, in-person (more kinesthetic, less virtual), steeped in nature. Not exactly your post's focus... and, not out of your focus, either :)
Thanks so much for your thoughtful, insightful and wake-up perspectives. Good Thanksgiving feast for thoughts!
This might be one of the most beautiful comments I’ve ever received in response to my work. I mean that. And I am grateful you found value in persevering through my prose.
Thank you very much for this, Mike. It really helped me understand why the first impulse of all these "reasonable liberals" when they lose an election is to try to decide which disfavored group they can throw to the wolves. This time around it seems to be trans people, because Trump made a hullabaloo about demonizing them and he won, so the optimal choice is to dial away from giving them dignity and agree they're the problem. And so you get the Gavins and the Petes triangulating towards the exact amount of rights we're willing to let them have without scaring off the white working class or whatever, rather than just maintaining the value that all people deserve dignity and a chance to contribute to society.
But I’m glad that MAGA no longer wins by running ads demonizing trans people. In Virginia the democrat Spanberger won the governor race by a pretty large margin even though her opponent ran the same they them ad Trump spent so much money on. I think if we focus on addressing dispossession and the related issue of affordability then we will win!
“The phenomenon driving populism isn’t material deprivation—it’s social dispossession.”
I think this is one of the most important essays I’ve read this year. I cherish your insight and ability to step back and objectively parse through what many would consider air-tight thought-processes. I think you are absolutely correct here, and you surprised me by going down a completely different path than I was expecting after reading the title. I am gratefully enlightened.
By the way, Pauline Borsook, who wrote “Cyberselfish” in the early ‘90’s says:
“Silicon Valley … thought people could be, and indeed should be, programmed just like a computer. “Techno-libertarianism,” had no time for the messy realities of being human.”
I think that describes how people like Teixeira think.
The paternalistic worldview and patronizing answers of those in power is nauseating. It’s so clear why the dispossessed have-nots are attracted to both Bernie and Trump. To “everyday” people the power brokers are just far away and superfluous.
Well put! Squashable ants. When you don’t do your own shopping, bill paying, or budgeting, and you don’t have to choose which needs (not wants) to fund every month, you simply just won’t get it. Let them it cake mentality.
Yes, it seems like those inclined towards technocracy are simply focused on learning how to sound populist. One worry I have is that technocratic systems may, ironically, further incentivize the masses to be steered by rhetoric, identity, and loyalty—rather than enabling the majority to question evidence and posit their own lines of reasoning. It's one thing when qualified experts gatekeep by sharing their evidence-backed arguments, but it's another thing when they push others' voices out of the discussion merely because those individuals lack credentials or the same expertise. It is harder to control/sway people who are aware of logical fallacies and rhetorical persuasion tactics, and easier if the epistemic responsibilities are given to a smaller group of people. Ideally, we'd make a stronger effort to improve the epistemic skills of our society as a whole.
Also, piece reminded me of an article I read by Steven Aoun on a Joe Rogan debate, which looks at a similar problem from the media side, on what happens when discourse becomes mainly performative, and persuasion from authority tries to replace actual understanding. I found it to be an interesting take:
I don’t know when it started. I have for a long time now been antagonized by Tiexiera. Two things have bothered me: his utter reliance on polls, as if they provide infallible insight into reality, oblivious to the fact that answering a poll-taking analyst’s questions is nothing like voting; the fact that everything he has written, at least from the time I started reading till a couple—three? or four?—years later I quit, is a repetition, seemingly verbatim, of the same message: Democrats are fucked; they don’t have a clue. How does he know? Because some high proportion of working class Americans respond disapprovingly when he asks their opinion of Democratic policies.
I have been particularly antagonized by his reliance on polling data as a basis for formulate responses to climate change. Never mind what climate scientists think. It’s an optional niche cultural issue. Requiring no urgent response. One that should take a decided back seat to economic growth. Oblivious to the possibility, as China seems to understand, that responding to climate change could contribute to economic growth. Don’t electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, and charging stations have to be manufactured, installed, and maintained? Joe Biden understood that. Unfortunately he didn’t do enough to help dubious sectors of the voting public understand.
I suspect Donald Trump doesn’t pay much attention to Tiexiera, but he seems to agree that climate change is a cultural obsession of the radical left. To the point that he has gone about canceling all of Biden’s investments in climate infrastructure, ceding climate-related manufacturing China. The subsidy that encouraged purchase of electrical vehicles that Trump cancelled was subsidized development of American EV manufacturing capacity. When Chinese EVs gain purchase on the American market it will likely be the end of the American auto industry. And the jobs it provides to working class Americans. So much for Tiexiera’s wisdom about climate change. And economic growth.
For a while I had a question about your criticism of technocratic approaches to policy development: presumably proposals of technocrats and small “d” democrats, e.g., related to economic growth, will overlap; when they do how are we to distinguish between them?
I think I have answered the question for myself. The issue is not distinguishing between proposals. It is how proponents advocate for them. Technocrats will have white papers and cite research. Small “d” democrats will spend time with voters. Lots of it. They will listen to them. They will enter into colloquy with them. They will adjust their advocacy to accommodate voters’ concerns.
Technocrats assume they know what responses to their questions mean: responding to climate change has low priority. But why? What if is linked to economic growth? What about the consequences of failing to respond?
We need politicians who can simply say: "Look people, here is what the science says. Here are the trade-offs. Only a fool would do nothing about this. So let's all put on our big-girl and big-boy pants and have national conversation about the work that needs to be done to secure the blessing of liberty for future generations".
I’d say for this to happen, you have to speak to people as equals, and that can’t be just “speaking their language,” which is just dressed-up marketing, à la trying to use Walz like some sort of RealPlayer skin for technocratic condescension. It requires a complete ontological shift and a reckoning with classism that’s on par with anti-racism and feminism and disability justice.
The problem that Trump was able to capitalize on was that people knew that it was their oppression being called out, but not the oppression maintained by the caller-outers. Mamdani is a threat not because he is representative of the DSA, but because he’s not: he embodies anti-classism far better than folks who use anti-racism or climate activism or even economic justice as tools of class repression and exclusion. In order to talk to regular folks you have to be able to genuinely look up to them, admire them, learn from them, and embrace being led by them: way more than just “respecting” them.
Bill could do it, Hillary couldn’t. Most black women in leadership seem to be able to do it, most white progressives can’t or won’t. And this problem transcends any liberal/progressive divides, too: the left and center-left are united in their fundamental belief that they’re better and know more than the folks who clean or build their houses, which is why blue collar folks make no distinctions between libs and progressives: as far as they’re concerned, when it comes to the relationship, there is no difference at all.
Haven't yet suppressed my gag reflex to read Teixera's new book, but remember that his earlier book on the demographics of immigration leading to a permanent democratic majority was so monumentally wrong on so many things that he sounds a lot like the neocon architects of the Iraq war who still pontificate on foreign policy and still believe they're the only serious thinkers around. You are one of the first people I've read who starts to actually explain the mindset of this useless centrist consutant class to me. You are admirably balanced--for me Teixera's past failures are utterly disqualifying.
Amen. I stopped reading Teixera's substack a couple of years ago. I understand why he focuses on dragging Democrats focus back to the "center", but he loses the forest for the trees in the process.
Teixera completely lost the perspective that Mike understands so well: the forest is an ecosystem where everything finds mutual balance with each other. That is the mindset of classical liberalism
I really like this analysis, and the way you link those three essentially Antidemocratic streams of thought together, Thank you for putting the effort into writing like this. I will say that Classical Liberal Democracy, though superior to every other form of political organization, does have tradeoffs. There are large concentrations of common belief that can make it difficult for those who do not share the belief to accept the outcome of the deliberative democratic process. I live in a very red county in NC, with a large population of people who support the preservation of the Confederate Monument in front of our County Government building that I don't support. That being said, I would not support any attempt to remove this monument unless a majority of County Commissioners were elected on a platform of removing the monument, which is unlikely. Someone I know who is right leaning and lives in a very blue city expressed similar frustration. We have to be willing to help people accept these tradeoffs.
“There are large concentrations of common belief that can make it difficult for those who do not share the belief to accept the outcome of the deliberative democratic process.”
how much of this is Billionaire bet hedging? the Know your enemy podcast has done a few episodes on how billionaire money backed think tanks, such as the Manhattan Institute, have catapulted obscure people, such as Charles Murray, into the spotlight. We know how Peter Theil and others launched JD Vance's career, and via the Claremont Institute, many others, including Charley Kirk. Reporting indicates how one billionaire, Robert Shilman, has launched Tommy Robinson into the UK mainstream. Is it a stretch to think that these same billionaires fund Technocrats like the people at Persuasion, Rudy Teixiera, Ezra Klein, etc to shift their support to when Far Right Populism becomes too unpalatable to the average voter?
Mike - when you said that Teixeira has been advising the democrats on how to win elections I stopped reading-because he is obviously part of the problem-the reason that the democrats keep losing elections is because they rely on so-called “genius consultants” to tell them what to do as a opposed to Mamdani who went out and talked to people and tailored his messaging to solve their problems-
if the democrats want to start winning elections they need to shit-can their “genius consultants” and listen to their constituents!
Excellent, thoughtful, totally on point. Straight to my great writing folder. I wish there were people like you in charge, discussing these issues, instead of figuring out how to bankroll a dead 90's movie franchise.
Teixeira and the rest of the crew at Persuasion claim to be liberals, but their platform positions, such as they are, suggest to me that they would have been more comfortable among Republicans until Trump took over the party. With no traction on the right, they now seem to think they can make more progress toward power by taking over the Democratic party. Once I realized what they really are, I simply wrote them off as boring and long-winded enemies of me and my people and I promptly unsubbed, but I fear they may find the party's leadership is much more open to their ideas than I am. Your critique of Teixeira's piece has helped me place Persuasion's noise in a more general context of technocratic authoritarianism, which is very clarifying and helpful. Thank you for your work here to dissect and dispatch them.
I would be somewhat more charitable than you. I still recognize these people as fellow liberals. I share their values and I am having a disagreement about method. Nothing I have said here should be interpreted as impugning the moral status of Teixeira or Persuasion. I wrote this in the liberal spirit of the pursuit of truth towards liberal values. Towards a greater good.
One aspect seems missing, acknowledging the fallibility of human nature. What motivates citizens when decency falls prey to racism, bigotry, misogyny and tribalism? When these base instinct overrule the hard won disciplines of cooperation, compassion and sacrifice then liberal democracy loses. My personal experience with MAGA is people who are economically stable, materially secure and have profited from the status quo, their place in the success ladder ensured. Fidelity to Christian Nationalism was a prominent determinant as well. Permission to despise the other for one reason or the other seems to cancel out the messiness of striving the good of the whole. The trump voters I know were in no way left behind. They denied their better angels and instead allowed their baser instincts to take priority often under the cover of its “God’s will!”
Phew! That was a lot of reading... and worth the slog. Being a stubborn dyslexic, I fought my urge to give up. So, you had me when I got to:
"The question is: “Should people govern themselves, or should experts manage them?”
People want to feel like citizens. They don’t want to be managed. The American experiment is an experiment in self-government. Technocracy says, “Vote for the best philosopher kings.”
Bingo. I got it and didn't feel stupid any more. I actually felt good that in my own way, you and I were in many ways on the same page!
My midwest, (fly-over-state) values focus on simple, common language, in-person (more kinesthetic, less virtual), steeped in nature. Not exactly your post's focus... and, not out of your focus, either :)
Thanks so much for your thoughtful, insightful and wake-up perspectives. Good Thanksgiving feast for thoughts!
This might be one of the most beautiful comments I’ve ever received in response to my work. I mean that. And I am grateful you found value in persevering through my prose.
Thank you very much for this, Mike. It really helped me understand why the first impulse of all these "reasonable liberals" when they lose an election is to try to decide which disfavored group they can throw to the wolves. This time around it seems to be trans people, because Trump made a hullabaloo about demonizing them and he won, so the optimal choice is to dial away from giving them dignity and agree they're the problem. And so you get the Gavins and the Petes triangulating towards the exact amount of rights we're willing to let them have without scaring off the white working class or whatever, rather than just maintaining the value that all people deserve dignity and a chance to contribute to society.
But I’m glad that MAGA no longer wins by running ads demonizing trans people. In Virginia the democrat Spanberger won the governor race by a pretty large margin even though her opponent ran the same they them ad Trump spent so much money on. I think if we focus on addressing dispossession and the related issue of affordability then we will win!
So true. It’s rather simplistic thinking, isn’t it?
“The phenomenon driving populism isn’t material deprivation—it’s social dispossession.”
I think this is one of the most important essays I’ve read this year. I cherish your insight and ability to step back and objectively parse through what many would consider air-tight thought-processes. I think you are absolutely correct here, and you surprised me by going down a completely different path than I was expecting after reading the title. I am gratefully enlightened.
By the way, Pauline Borsook, who wrote “Cyberselfish” in the early ‘90’s says:
“Silicon Valley … thought people could be, and indeed should be, programmed just like a computer. “Techno-libertarianism,” had no time for the messy realities of being human.”
I think that describes how people like Teixeira think.
Agreed!
This is one of your best. Though I’m somewhat optimistic that the technocrats of the left are more hated by the rank and file than they realize.
That is my hope
The paternalistic worldview and patronizing answers of those in power is nauseating. It’s so clear why the dispossessed have-nots are attracted to both Bernie and Trump. To “everyday” people the power brokers are just far away and superfluous.
When you live in a tower, people walking on the sidewalk look like ants.
Well put! Squashable ants. When you don’t do your own shopping, bill paying, or budgeting, and you don’t have to choose which needs (not wants) to fund every month, you simply just won’t get it. Let them it cake mentality.
Hence the worldview of "The Man in the High Tower" will often be opposed to that of the common person.
Yes, it seems like those inclined towards technocracy are simply focused on learning how to sound populist. One worry I have is that technocratic systems may, ironically, further incentivize the masses to be steered by rhetoric, identity, and loyalty—rather than enabling the majority to question evidence and posit their own lines of reasoning. It's one thing when qualified experts gatekeep by sharing their evidence-backed arguments, but it's another thing when they push others' voices out of the discussion merely because those individuals lack credentials or the same expertise. It is harder to control/sway people who are aware of logical fallacies and rhetorical persuasion tactics, and easier if the epistemic responsibilities are given to a smaller group of people. Ideally, we'd make a stronger effort to improve the epistemic skills of our society as a whole.
Also, piece reminded me of an article I read by Steven Aoun on a Joe Rogan debate, which looks at a similar problem from the media side, on what happens when discourse becomes mainly performative, and persuasion from authority tries to replace actual understanding. I found it to be an interesting take:
https://stevenaoun.substack.com/p/fear-factor?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Or… in the case of Thiel, learning how to sound religious.
Ha! 👍
I don’t know when it started. I have for a long time now been antagonized by Tiexiera. Two things have bothered me: his utter reliance on polls, as if they provide infallible insight into reality, oblivious to the fact that answering a poll-taking analyst’s questions is nothing like voting; the fact that everything he has written, at least from the time I started reading till a couple—three? or four?—years later I quit, is a repetition, seemingly verbatim, of the same message: Democrats are fucked; they don’t have a clue. How does he know? Because some high proportion of working class Americans respond disapprovingly when he asks their opinion of Democratic policies.
I have been particularly antagonized by his reliance on polling data as a basis for formulate responses to climate change. Never mind what climate scientists think. It’s an optional niche cultural issue. Requiring no urgent response. One that should take a decided back seat to economic growth. Oblivious to the possibility, as China seems to understand, that responding to climate change could contribute to economic growth. Don’t electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, and charging stations have to be manufactured, installed, and maintained? Joe Biden understood that. Unfortunately he didn’t do enough to help dubious sectors of the voting public understand.
I suspect Donald Trump doesn’t pay much attention to Tiexiera, but he seems to agree that climate change is a cultural obsession of the radical left. To the point that he has gone about canceling all of Biden’s investments in climate infrastructure, ceding climate-related manufacturing China. The subsidy that encouraged purchase of electrical vehicles that Trump cancelled was subsidized development of American EV manufacturing capacity. When Chinese EVs gain purchase on the American market it will likely be the end of the American auto industry. And the jobs it provides to working class Americans. So much for Tiexiera’s wisdom about climate change. And economic growth.
For a while I had a question about your criticism of technocratic approaches to policy development: presumably proposals of technocrats and small “d” democrats, e.g., related to economic growth, will overlap; when they do how are we to distinguish between them?
I think I have answered the question for myself. The issue is not distinguishing between proposals. It is how proponents advocate for them. Technocrats will have white papers and cite research. Small “d” democrats will spend time with voters. Lots of it. They will listen to them. They will enter into colloquy with them. They will adjust their advocacy to accommodate voters’ concerns.
Technocrats assume they know what responses to their questions mean: responding to climate change has low priority. But why? What if is linked to economic growth? What about the consequences of failing to respond?
We need politicians who can simply say: "Look people, here is what the science says. Here are the trade-offs. Only a fool would do nothing about this. So let's all put on our big-girl and big-boy pants and have national conversation about the work that needs to be done to secure the blessing of liberty for future generations".
I’d say for this to happen, you have to speak to people as equals, and that can’t be just “speaking their language,” which is just dressed-up marketing, à la trying to use Walz like some sort of RealPlayer skin for technocratic condescension. It requires a complete ontological shift and a reckoning with classism that’s on par with anti-racism and feminism and disability justice.
The problem that Trump was able to capitalize on was that people knew that it was their oppression being called out, but not the oppression maintained by the caller-outers. Mamdani is a threat not because he is representative of the DSA, but because he’s not: he embodies anti-classism far better than folks who use anti-racism or climate activism or even economic justice as tools of class repression and exclusion. In order to talk to regular folks you have to be able to genuinely look up to them, admire them, learn from them, and embrace being led by them: way more than just “respecting” them.
Bill could do it, Hillary couldn’t. Most black women in leadership seem to be able to do it, most white progressives can’t or won’t. And this problem transcends any liberal/progressive divides, too: the left and center-left are united in their fundamental belief that they’re better and know more than the folks who clean or build their houses, which is why blue collar folks make no distinctions between libs and progressives: as far as they’re concerned, when it comes to the relationship, there is no difference at all.
(Loving your work, Mike!)
Teixera’s output is an example of the poll-tested consultant spew; just he picks slightly different polls but always to comfort the donor class.
Haven't yet suppressed my gag reflex to read Teixera's new book, but remember that his earlier book on the demographics of immigration leading to a permanent democratic majority was so monumentally wrong on so many things that he sounds a lot like the neocon architects of the Iraq war who still pontificate on foreign policy and still believe they're the only serious thinkers around. You are one of the first people I've read who starts to actually explain the mindset of this useless centrist consutant class to me. You are admirably balanced--for me Teixera's past failures are utterly disqualifying.
Amen. I stopped reading Teixera's substack a couple of years ago. I understand why he focuses on dragging Democrats focus back to the "center", but he loses the forest for the trees in the process.
Teixera completely lost the perspective that Mike understands so well: the forest is an ecosystem where everything finds mutual balance with each other. That is the mindset of classical liberalism
Thanks Mike - very important
I really like this analysis, and the way you link those three essentially Antidemocratic streams of thought together, Thank you for putting the effort into writing like this. I will say that Classical Liberal Democracy, though superior to every other form of political organization, does have tradeoffs. There are large concentrations of common belief that can make it difficult for those who do not share the belief to accept the outcome of the deliberative democratic process. I live in a very red county in NC, with a large population of people who support the preservation of the Confederate Monument in front of our County Government building that I don't support. That being said, I would not support any attempt to remove this monument unless a majority of County Commissioners were elected on a platform of removing the monument, which is unlikely. Someone I know who is right leaning and lives in a very blue city expressed similar frustration. We have to be willing to help people accept these tradeoffs.
“There are large concentrations of common belief that can make it difficult for those who do not share the belief to accept the outcome of the deliberative democratic process.”
Yes, well put.
how much of this is Billionaire bet hedging? the Know your enemy podcast has done a few episodes on how billionaire money backed think tanks, such as the Manhattan Institute, have catapulted obscure people, such as Charles Murray, into the spotlight. We know how Peter Theil and others launched JD Vance's career, and via the Claremont Institute, many others, including Charley Kirk. Reporting indicates how one billionaire, Robert Shilman, has launched Tommy Robinson into the UK mainstream. Is it a stretch to think that these same billionaires fund Technocrats like the people at Persuasion, Rudy Teixiera, Ezra Klein, etc to shift their support to when Far Right Populism becomes too unpalatable to the average voter?
Mike - when you said that Teixeira has been advising the democrats on how to win elections I stopped reading-because he is obviously part of the problem-the reason that the democrats keep losing elections is because they rely on so-called “genius consultants” to tell them what to do as a opposed to Mamdani who went out and talked to people and tailored his messaging to solve their problems-
if the democrats want to start winning elections they need to shit-can their “genius consultants” and listen to their constituents!
If you stopped reading there, you may have missed some important points.
I read the whole article (whew) and glad I did - as always very thoughtful commentary
I’ll read the whole article in the morning 😉
I don’t think they should be shit-canned, but they shouldn’t be the only advisors and their input shouldn’t be elevated above all others.
Excellent, thoughtful, totally on point. Straight to my great writing folder. I wish there were people like you in charge, discussing these issues, instead of figuring out how to bankroll a dead 90's movie franchise.
Teixeira and the rest of the crew at Persuasion claim to be liberals, but their platform positions, such as they are, suggest to me that they would have been more comfortable among Republicans until Trump took over the party. With no traction on the right, they now seem to think they can make more progress toward power by taking over the Democratic party. Once I realized what they really are, I simply wrote them off as boring and long-winded enemies of me and my people and I promptly unsubbed, but I fear they may find the party's leadership is much more open to their ideas than I am. Your critique of Teixeira's piece has helped me place Persuasion's noise in a more general context of technocratic authoritarianism, which is very clarifying and helpful. Thank you for your work here to dissect and dispatch them.
I would be somewhat more charitable than you. I still recognize these people as fellow liberals. I share their values and I am having a disagreement about method. Nothing I have said here should be interpreted as impugning the moral status of Teixeira or Persuasion. I wrote this in the liberal spirit of the pursuit of truth towards liberal values. Towards a greater good.
One aspect seems missing, acknowledging the fallibility of human nature. What motivates citizens when decency falls prey to racism, bigotry, misogyny and tribalism? When these base instinct overrule the hard won disciplines of cooperation, compassion and sacrifice then liberal democracy loses. My personal experience with MAGA is people who are economically stable, materially secure and have profited from the status quo, their place in the success ladder ensured. Fidelity to Christian Nationalism was a prominent determinant as well. Permission to despise the other for one reason or the other seems to cancel out the messiness of striving the good of the whole. The trump voters I know were in no way left behind. They denied their better angels and instead allowed their baser instincts to take priority often under the cover of its “God’s will!”
I love how your essay on why you are a liberal gave me additional context for this article. You are truly taking us on a journey.