Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 Profile picture
Sep 18, 2020 11 tweets 4 min read Read on X
1/One reason I really liked Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower" was because the protagonist responds to her chaotic, disintegrating society by thinking about...SPACE EXPLORATION.

When things are at their worst, it's time to get utopian.

amazon.com/Parable-Sower-…
2/So here are some examples of people who are thinking big, utopian ideas even in these dark, chaotic times.

One is @mattyglesias, with his call for a much bigger America.

amazon.com/One-Billion-Am…
3/Another is @jdcmedlock, with his calm, clear vision of an ultra-simple social democracy based on simple universal programs, simple universal taxes, and a sensible mixed economy.

4/A third is @IDoTheThinking, with his vision for a transformed American urbanism focused on density, diversity, and depolicing:

5/Another is @KateAronoff, who is relentless in her fight for a Green New Deal.

theintercept.com/2018/12/05/gre…
6/And another is @drvox, who can be dark and pessimistic on Twitter, but whose Vox columns lay out bold and optimistic plans for decarbonizing our country and the world.

vox.com/energy-and-env…

vox.com/energy-and-env…
7/And @ramez, the most relentless techno-optimist I know.

rameznaam.com/2019/04/02/the…
8/These are examples of "definite optimism" -- not general optimism that things will work out for the better, but specific plans, proposals, and ideas for MAKING a much better world.
9/As our society crumbles around us, focusing on these utopian visions is NOT a distraction or an indulgence -- it's a way of motivating ourselves to unfuck the world right now.

Like Lauren Olamina in Parable of the Sower, we've got to keep looking up at the stars.
10/We can't view ourselves as desperately shoring up a crumbling order, hopeful of preserving a diminished, shrunken form of what we had before.

We have to know that we're fighting for something much BETTER than we ever had before.

(end)
Oh, and I only gave six examples, so please respond to this thread with other examples of people dreaming big utopian dreams right now.

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More from @Noahpinion

Mar 24
Comparisons between the Cultural Revolution and the Woke Era get laughed at. The Woke Era didn't use violence, of course. But the *motivation* of people wanting to overturn social hierarchies, especially students wanting to overturn academic hierarchies, is recognizably similar.
In 2010s America, there was a widespread desire to overturn local social hierarchies -- the classroom authority of teachers and professors, the cultural power of entertainment stars, the authority of nonprofit execs and heads of civic organizations.
In 1960s China, overturning local hierarchies happened via physical mob violence. In 2010, it happened through online mobs destroying people's reputations on social media. Obviously, the second is far preferable to the first. This is why economic development is good!
Read 10 tweets
Jan 19
Here are some countries that did catch up to other countries.

Poland caught up to Portugal: Image
South Korea caught up to Japan: Image
Ireland caught up to the UK

(graph ends before major Irish tax shenanigans begin) Image
Read 13 tweets
Jan 10
This thread asks how we should deal with inborn inequality, and concludes that the best solution is noblesse oblige.

I think the best solution is public goods.
Public goods have two advantages:

1. They engender material equality more efficiently than any other economic intervention, and

2. They create an equality of respect, through the habit of mutual use.
Although rich people may pay more for a train or a park, when they ride the train or walk in the park, they are equal in social status to everyone else on the train or in the park.

This creates a feeling of equality throughout society.
Read 6 tweets
Dec 7, 2023
1/Here's a thread in which the Economist's Mike Bird tries to rebut my recent post about decoupling. I think this thread is useful for understanding why the doubters are making the mistakes that they're making.

Let's go through it!
2/Here was my original post. I've updated it with a response at the bottom.

noahpinion.blog/p/stop-saying-…
3/Here's @Birdyword's first mistake. To say there's a "case for doubt" means that there's a possibility that decoupling isn't happening.

But just look at FDI into China. It just went negative for the first time in recorded history. That's definitely real. That is decoupling!
Image
Image
Read 14 tweets
Nov 20, 2023
Illegal immigration went into reverse for over a decade, but as of 2021 it's positive again.

pewresearch.org/short-reads/20…
Image
Just over 1 out of 5 U.S. immigrants are unauthorized, according to Census data. Image
Illegal immigration from Mexico continues to go in reverse.

The typical unauthorized immigrant is no longer Mexican. Image
Read 8 tweets
Oct 31, 2023
The reason Israel's bombing campaign in Gaza is bad isn't because civilian casualties are never acceptable when fighting against evil, but because bombing Gaza seems like it will not actually do much to eliminate Hamas, and will simply kill civilians for no purpose.
"The Allies leveled German cities, Hamas are as bad as Nazis, thus it's OK to level Gaza" ignores the fact that even if strategic bombing had been as effective as people thought (note: it wasn't), leveling Gaza will not produce a WW2-like outcome.
"The ends don't justify the means" should apply to the actual outcome, not just the goal you have in your head.

If the outcome is "everyone just keeps on hating each other and fighting forever", then no, the ends do not justify the means.
Read 9 tweets

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