Yet Anoþer Yet Anoþer Attempt at a Better “Slouching Towards Utopia” Elevator Pitch, &

BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2022-06-16 Th

FIRST: Yet Another, Yet Another Attempt at a Better “Slouching Towards Utopia” Elevator Pitch

<https://bit.ly/3pP3Krk>

The long 20th century was the first whose history was primarily economic, with the economy not painted scene-backdrop but rather revolutionizing humanity's life every single generation with massive, creative and destructive, utopian and immiserating upward leaps in technology-driven productivity. Before 1870 humanity had thought that the big problem was that it could not bake a big enough pie: given limited technology and natural resources relative to population, human production could not be large enough for everyone to have enough. In the long twentieth century that constraint fell away. The pie could be baked. But better technology did not help solve the problems of slicing and tasting the pie: as of today, having enough remains out-of-reach for most of humanity. And those with enough have a hard time properly tasting it: many (most?) of them do not seem healthy, safe, secure, happy, or wise.

Only when the political-economic order was the post-WWII North-Atlantic social-democratic shotgun marriage of Friedrich von Hayek to Karl Polanyi, a marriage blessed by John Maynard Keynes—a marriage that itself has failed its own sustainability tests when it ran into the buzzsaw of the neoliberal challenge in the 1980s—has humanity been able to even slouch towards utopia. The explosion of our science and technological competence ought to have made our birthright. Yet we have, in many aspects, sold it for thin red-lentil stew.

Friedrich von Hayek—a genius, in some ways—was the one who most keen-sightedly observed that the market economy is tremendously effective at crowdsourcing solutions. The market economy, plus industrial research labs, modern corporations, and globalization, were keys to the cage keeping humanity desperately poor. Hayek drew from this the conclusion: “the market giveth, the market taketh away: blessed be the name of the market.” And he said that attitude was necessary to grasp as much of utopia as humanity could grasp. But humans disagreed. As genius Karl Polanyi saw, humans needed more rights than just property rights. The market’s treating those whom society saw as equals unequally, or unequals equally, brought social explosion after explosion, blocking the road to utopia.

Not “blessed be the name of the market” but “the market was made for man, not man for the market” was required if humanity was to even slouch towards the utopia that we ought to grasp with our technology. But how? Since 1870 humans—John Maynard Keynes, Benito Mussolini, Vladimir Lenin, and many others—have tried solutions, demanding that the market do less, or different, and other institutions do more, or other. Only government, tamed government, focusing and rebalancing things to secure more and different rights for more citizens, have brought the El Dorado of a truly human world into view. If electorates could choose such governments, slicing and tasting the pie ought to be problems as solvable as baking the pie turned out to be. But the twentieth century taught us—painfully—that that is not easy. And is it even possible?

As John Maynard Keynes wrote way back in 1924:

We lack, more than usual a coherent scheme of progress, a tangible ideal.... It is not necessary to debate the subtleties of what justifies a man in promoting his gospel by force; for no one has a gospel. The next move is with the head, and fists must wait...

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One Video:

Harry Kreisler & Perry Anderson: Anderson’s Intellectual Journey, & the Status of the Left <https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=jjTKsRfVM9Q>:

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One Image:

DRAGON chapter 1

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Very Briefly Noted:

• Bran Castle <http://bran-castle.com/>

• Martin Arnold: UK-EU Trade Falls Sharply as Brexit Disruption Starts to Bite: ‘German exports to Britain in January were down about 30 per cent year on year, continuing a trend of declining trade between the two countries since the Brexit referendum in 2016…. Separately, Italy last month reported a 38 per cent year-on-year drop in exports to the UK and a 70 per cent drop in British imports in January… <https://www.ft.com/content/5b8028a7-edaf-4488-8e96-3761ba8b015f?shareType=nongift>

• Rana Foroohar: Wishful Thinking on China Will Not Serve American Interests: ‘Why would such a large nation, with its own long history, rich culture, unique political system and enormous market, not create its own rules? It has done so, of course… <https://www.ft.com/content/ced6aa7c-9204-4336-bf8a-5bfe4dfecc24>

• Gillian Tett: What My Robot Mop Taught Me About the Future of Artificial Intelligence: ‘I returned home and discovered that one of my beloved… robo-mop[s] had rolled into the backyard, where it was diligently trying to clean the edge of the flower beds…. People like Schmidt… argue that AI will be a net positive…revolutionising healthcare, education and much else…. I’ll be keeping my patio door shut… <https://www.ft.com/content/4d82d813-8856-48af-a73b-f1eaaaf1689e>

• Joha Authers: Fed Brings Clarity to Markets: Inflation Is the Only Priority <https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-06-16/fed-brings-clarity-to-markets-inflation-is-the-only-priority?srnd=opinion#xj4y7vzkg>

• William Cohan: Larry Summers, Obama, & a Fed Counterfactual <https://puck.news/larry-summers-obama-a-fed-counterfactual/>

• Isaac Chotiner & Neal Katyal: Unpacking the Draft Supreme Court Opinion Set to Overrule Roe <https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/unpacking-the-draft-supreme-court-opinion-set-to-overrule-roe?link_id=6&can_id=7677eab49ead3f512fd881abc1a73475&source=email-the-neal-katyal-stop-embarrassing-yourself-2022-challenge-is-going-poorly&email_referrer=email_1535062&email_subject=the-neal-katyal-stop-embarrassing-yourself-2022-challenge-is-going-poorly>

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Twitter & ‘Stack:

• Matthew C. Klein: The Federal Reserve Brings the Pain: ‘For the first time since the introduction of covid vaccines, America’s central bankers believe that a price must be paid to bring inflation back under control…

The Federal Reserve Brings the Pain

• Timothy Burke: On the Brink of the Cornfield

The News: On the Brink of the Cornfield

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