Thread by @shadihamid

This is a worthwhile critique from @jbview of my latest @TheAtlantic piece (theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…)

Does it matter if Democrats' policies don't work? Some thoughts to follow 1/

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

I don't doubt @AOC thinks a 70% tax would work. But it might "work" from her standpoint even if it's bad for the economy in terms of traditional growth metrics—as long as it reduces income inequality. In other words, voters don't agree on what it means for something to "work" 2/

This is the fundamental weakness of technocratic politics: it presumes that a consensus can be reached through "rational" deliberation. But the question of what works or doesn't work is inextricably intertwined with values. It's not a straightforward cost-benefit calculation 3/

Center-left technocratic politics is basically tautological: it depends on its own starting assumptions to argue for "workability" or the preference of one policy outcome over another. If you don't share those starting assumptions, the arguments don't have much power 4/

Like pretty much everything else in life, then, there's no way to assess the merits of a 70% tax independent of our premises. So: it doesn't really matter what someone thinks about a 70% tax if you don't *also* know what their values or ultimate ends are 5/

Similarly, even if you agree Brexit will be bad for GDP growth and other economic metrics, it could still be entirely rational to *support* Brexit—if you hold other (intangible) things as more important, as @kyleworton says here:

https://twitter.com/KyleWOrton/status/1094260202298331136

6/

If your overriding policy preference is that Britain not be part of the EU (for presumably partly ideological reasons), then it makes a whole lot of sense to support Brexit, since the means match the ends rather well. On those terms, then, Brexit would be considered a success 7/