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One of the most important political videos of 2025

aociswundumho

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This has been posted on the forum before, but I don't think it received the attention it deserves. It's really an awesome political video.

It's suppose to be about how liberal democrats make some changes and beat republicans. But what it's really about is the failure of central planning and regulation, and how damaging government regulation is to society.

It's 16 minutes long, so here are some timestamps:

0:00 to 1:52 Democratic states suck.

1:53 to 2:30 Dems will lose house seats and electoral college votes. Republicans should watch this part, it's great.

2:30 to 10:35 Left-wing government sucks so bad it can't even build a railroad line.

10:35 to 11:20 The imbecilic political left doesn't learn from its mistakes.

11:20 to 13:25 He overestimates Trump.

13:40 He demonstrates that he doesn't understand people who are more left-wing than he is.

I like this guy, btw. He'd be a libertarian if he didn't cling to those childish notions about the nature of the government.

 
bongsaway said:
Important video to who? The left, the left, the left, bad, bad, bad. Earth shattering.
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Ezra Klein is a smart progressive. He has correctly identified a huge problem with the party.
 
aociswundumho said:
I like this guy, btw.
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I don't. He apologizes for pointing out why dems fail, and why nearly all government projects invariably go over-budget, and are not completed on time. He just won't admit that some things should be done in the private sector, in a free market.
aociswundumho said:
He'd be a libertarian if he didn't cling to those childish notions about the nature of the government.
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I really disagree. Klein is MILES away from being a libertarian. IMO.

But thanks for posting the video - it is informative.
 
aociswundumho said:
0:00 to 1:52 Democratic states suck.
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Yeah, we are done here.

New England is orders of magnitude better than the Republican stronghold in the south of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Florida is looking to take their relative status as a functioning state and flush it down the toilet and join the CSA midgets.
 
There's far more too it than that, and it's worth a listen. His book goes into more detail, and it's less a "Democrats suck" narrative, but delves into how too much bureaucracy stifles progress. One of the arguments he makes is the Democrats have lost the ability to get things done and communicate those victories in part because of how difficult it is to get things done. This is an important point, because what Trump has been trying to do is present and communicate the exact opposite of that regardless of whether anything of consequence was actually completed. Klein makes a good argument about a path forward for Democrats, and in part says that a part of the problem is the party not realizing they have a problem.
 
ElChupacabra said:
and in part says that a part of the problem is the party not realizing they have a problem.
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That's exactly what it is. They want it to be difficult to build. They like the strict environmental laws that put the rights of mosquitos and frogs ahead of land owners. If it's union labor, they don't care if it cost a fortune.

This whole abundance thing would never be adopted by the typical liberal democrat.
 
Questerr said:
“Abundance” is just techbro Neoliberal Capitalism.
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Ezra Klein: "Can't we just go back to the neoliberal Clinton Economy of the 1990s when I was a kid watching Saturday Morning cartoons and listening to the Beastie Boys?"
 
Questerr said:
“Abundance” is just techbro Neoliberal Capitalism.
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Is the Democratic Socialism you advocate for truly any less technocratic?

Felis Leo said:
Ezra Klein: "Can't we just go back to the neoliberal Clinton Economy of the 1990s when I was a kid watching Saturday Morning cartoons and listening to the Beastie Boys?"
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Nothing wrong with wanting the peak of the Pax Americana back, even if it's an uninspired take.
 
Gozaburo said:
Is the Democratic Socialism you advocate for truly any less technocratic?



Nothing wrong with wanting the peak of the Pax Americana back, even if it's an uninspired take.
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Yes, but the Soviet Union can only collapse once and worldwide free trade expansion combined with taking advantage of the massive resource extraction from the former Eastern Bloc can happen only once. I just do not see how a nation de-regulates its way back to national prosperity without public investment.
 

Of course I agree and if you ask me, the United States now faces the same kind of ideological and cultural death the Soviets tangled with at the end of their empire albeit less severe given America's absurd economic and military hegemonic status.

The question is whether or not future political leaders and thinkers will be able to conjure a concept of the state that extends beyond abstract ideals (which no one believes at this point anyway) and some bourgeoise conception of a middle class where we have free healthcare for our pets, or something. I'm a bit of a pessimist and see us following a similar path to the Soviets where we'll continue to give our trust to anti-ideology nihilistic strongmen who are a stand-in for plutocrats to pick at the carcass of a dying empire.

Put that way, it makes being ruled by 160 IQ second generation Asian immigrant technocrats sound not-so-bad.
 
Gozaburo said:
Is the Democratic Socialism you advocate for truly any less technocratic?



Nothing wrong with wanting the peak of the Pax Americana back, even if it's an uninspired take.
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The issue isn’t the technocratic nature. The issue is the neoliberal capitalist part.

“Abundance” techbros want to just continue capitalist exploitation as if the last 30 years of the damage done by capitalism don’t exist.
 
Questerr said:
The issue isn’t the technocratic nature. The issue is the neoliberal capitalist part.

“Abundance” techbros want to just continue capitalist exploitation as if the last 30 years of the damage done by capitalism don’t exist.
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What damage *specifically* is that?

It’s not that I disagree necessarily, I’ve just spoken to a lot of socialist leftists and every time they seem to think some cool Nordic social programs would solve the fundamental contradictions in our civilization and frankly it comes across as less inspired than even the most banal elements of MAGA.
 
The problem with the Democrats lies in the party being such a top-down affair. Decisions are made by the elites and the rank and file see themselves as loyal subjects.
 

The massive exploitation of the third world, raping the environment of the planet for maximized short term profits, acting like infinite growth is possible on a finite world.

“Abundance” is another supply side tilt at windmills: “If we just cut taxes and deregulate more, and trust rich billionaires, surely everything will be perfect”
 
Questerr said:
The massive exploitation of the third world,
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This seems inevitable, particularly on a globalized planet. Lesser civilizations are always going to be subordinate to greater ones and - to our credit - that relationship has never been more altruistic. The mistake of washing our hands of governing the "third world" is obvious: in our absence China and Russia will just strip mine using neo-colonial corporations and PMCs.

Questerr said:
raping the environment of the planet for maximized short term profits
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Regrettable, but we've improved a lot in this regard. I'd contest the real issue is the potential full industrialization of east Asia (India) and Africa. These places have massive, growing populations and haven't fully industrialized. They're going to get awfully pissed when we tell them they don't get to use coal, natural gas, etc. like we were able to.

Further, if you believe in even conservative estimates about climate change, the full industrialization of these countries would result in the apocalypse. Do we cross our fingers for a wonder invention or conduct utilitarian mass slaughter?

Questerr said:
acting like infinite growth is possible on a finite world.
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This is maybe the one fair criticism you have. Obviously capitalism with have to contend with this but to be fair to the technocrats, they are. The more ambitious ones look toward the stars, others like Yang suggest UBI. The former sounds cool if your uber rich, the latter sounds cool if you want to live in absolute hell.

Questerr said:
“Abundance” is another supply side tilt at windmills: “If we just cut taxes and deregulate more, and trust rich billionaires, surely everything will be perfect”
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Obviously that's ridiculous, but I don't know that it's worse than, "If we just tax capitalists more, hyper-regulate, create more bureaucracies, and throw money at the poor and indolent, everything will be perfect."

To me, both are materialist approaches which don't sound very satisfying.
 

For **** sake, you buy into the “if you are poor, you must be lazy” capitalist meme.
 
aociswundumho said:
0:00 to 1:52 Democratic states suck.
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That is a grossly inaccurate summation.

This is an accurate summation:

0:00 to 1:52 Some blue states have a very high cost of living and many people cannot afford to live there
 
Questerr said:
For **** sake, you buy into the “if you are poor, you must be lazy” capitalist meme.
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It's not a meme, there's some truth to it, even if a bit crass.

Many poor people - I'd even say the majority - belong to a permanent underclass of unremarkable, low agency, low IQ people. Whether that is due to generational poverty, genetics, poor child rearing, or any number of policies is a hotly debated subject, but I'm not sure it matters for the discussion we're having.

Conservatives are directionally correct when they say that throwing money at the underclasses isn't going to do anything or, at the very least, it's not going to be anywhere near the best way of solving the problem, if it's solvable at all. I agree with you that capitalists are too rich and I probably agree on some level that social mobility could be improved, but I generally disagree that there is any easy way to extricate the permanent underclasses from their status as an underclass. So long as scarcity exists, an underclass will exist. We just need to find the most cost efficient way to make their lives not miserable.

In the meanwhile, I'm far more supportive of stabilizing and growing the existing middle class.
 
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