Reply to The Atlantic on SF: is DC too a failed city or about to be one?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
problem 2 - utopia policies

The problem with the policies that SF tried like so many other liberal policies is the outcome is utopia which can never be achieved when you add in real people in the real world.  Programs that address poverty, education, health - billions of dollars have been poured into them over many years but very few have ever produced results. Heck even Head Start isn't really helpful. The past 20 years have brought an explosion of technology growth that was not experienced ever. The speed of change and the rapid rise of technology made obsolete many employment sectors at one time in a very short span of time.  Even more jobs could and will eventually be eliminated.  But 20 years isn't even long enough for one generation to have come and gone. So programs are going to be needed to prop up the current generation and the next to just give them the basics. And yes the dreaded "personal responsibility" is going to have be considered because as technology becomes even more pervasive more, more responsibility is shifted to the individual and away from institutions. No longer will someone be able to say I didn't know or couldn't get access. Technology eliminates a gatekeeper and when the gatekeeper is gone the responsibility shifts.[/quote]
+1 Yep.. I said this before.

Progressives are a bit too polllyanna.  Their ideas are  like a utiopia commune -- great in theory, but doesn't actually work. Why? Humans.

When the pendulum swings too far right, guess what happens... it then swings too far left. On and on, until, it swings back to the middle.  That's what we need.. the middle.[/quote]

I would also argue that their ideas often don't work because they don't think about process AT ALL.  They don't think about unintended consequences, or about how something would work in practice, or about how much it would cost.[/quote]

I'm not sure they think about process any less than Republicans. The problem is that they are more effective in getting their policies in place than Republicans, and their policies impose more new requirements on areas that impact people. And the policies are increasingly very knee-jerk and based on rigid notions of "safety" or "anti-racism" as opposed to being truly informed by research and data.  That's precisely how we ended up with school closures.  And of course, Democrats have their interest groups they have to feed just like any other political party. [/quote]
Exactly. The best conservative corollary I can think of is abstinence only education. Just all ideology - draped in a veneer of technocratic buzz words - and no evidence of effectiveness for a lot of progressive policies. The worst part is that there does not seem to be them rigor in academia for evaluating the effectiveness of these policies as there are for conservative policies. [/quote]

I feel like there should be a camp that emulates Marxist demagoguery meetings of oppressive left states (like former USSR) that prospective politicians must attend before someone proudly declares themselves progressive and foists idiocy on others. Radical centrism here.[/quote]

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