The Left's definition of "progress" is not progress at all

Three trends of "progress" over the last 60 years, and why they each have differing impacts on society.

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Material progress is a controversial topic. I have written a large number of articles on the evidence that material progress exists. I am very careful to clearly label “progress” as the:

“the sustained improvement in the material standard of living of a large group of people over a long period of time.”

Despite the mountains of evidence of human material progress, I often get a response that goes something like this:

Oh, yeah. What about <insert negative event or trend>?
How can you possibly believe in progress when <insert negative event or trend> is going on?

Typically, this is because the person has not thought really deeply about what material progress is, how much life has changed for the masses, or even understand what I mean by the term “progress.” I have noticed that most of these critics are either:

• On the political Left, who are concerned about the continued existence of Equality or degradation of the natural environment, which are topics that have nothing to do with material progress. They appear to have a moral worldview that says that these other factors are more important than material progress. And the Left typically defines the term “progress” as the implementation of more government policies that they like.

• On the political Right, who are concerned by what they perceive as negative cultural trends over the last 60 years, such as:

  • Increased government spending and regulations (which the Left defines as “progress).”

  • Increased federal deficits and debt

  • Decline of marriage and the nuclear family

  • Decline in religious observance and patriotism

  • Increased public approval of behaviors that they perceive as immoral, such as criminal activity, pre-marital sex, drug abuse, abortion, homosexuality, trans, etc.

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Three trends of “progress”

I believe that there have been three powerful trends over the last 60 years that have caused countless repercussions on American society. Each has been labeled as “progress" by some ideological groups. Bundling them all together under one term, unfortunately, causes a great deal of confusion as to what “progress” actually is:

1. The dramatic increase in the material standard of living of the masses.
   Since I have written dozens of articles on this topic, I will say no more about this trend here. Typically, most people recognize this as “progress” unless they are hard-core Green activists who care only about protecting the natural environment.

2. The rise of a collection of Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies in wealthy Western nations starting in the late 1960s. This trend is almost universally labeled as “progress” by the Left and strongly opposed by the Right.
   These ideologies include:

   1. Liberalism (here, I am using the American definition of “Liberal,” which is now largely synonymous with “Progressive.”) John Rawls is probably the best defense of this ideology.

   2. Greens, environmentalists, climate change activists

   3. Feminists (or more specifically “Second and Third Wave Feminists”)

   4. Critical Theorists and the Woke

   5. Multiculturalists

   6. Pro-immigration activists

   7. LGBTQ activists

   8. and a whole series of other popular Left-of-Center movements.

3. The concentration of the believers of those Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies among those with four-year college degrees who dominate the middle and upper levels of virtually all American institutions (and the lower levels in many of them). This has effectively meant that the attitudes of the Professional Class (the de facto upper class) are increasingly forced on the rest of the population. This trend is almost universally labeled as “progress” by the Left and strongly opposed by the Right.
   This has created a popular backlash that some call “Populism.”

I believe that Trend #1 makes almost all of us better off, while Trends #2 and #3 make most of us worse off.

Unfortunately, those who uphold Left-of-Center ideologies typically label “progress” as increases of what they like (i.e. Trends #2 and #3). In particular, they focus on increased government interventions intended to create greater Equality in society. So many people identify all three trends as “progress.”

In reaction to that false label of “progress” hostility towards Trends #2 and #3 by the Right (and to a lesser extent by the Center) has mistakenly been focused on Trend #1. Because many Left-of-Center activists have adopted the label “Progressive,” a significant amount of the skepticism and hostility towards Trends #2 and #3 has mistakenly been directed against the concept of “Progress.”

What is progress?

For the record, I use a working definition of “progress” that deliberately avoids defining the term in a way that embeds ideology into it.

“the sustained improvement in the material standard of living of a large group of people over a long period of time.”

To be more clear, I often use the term “human material progress” as opposed to the short-hand term “progress.” Using this more objective definition that focuses on material progress, we can see that the Left-of-Center “progress in Trends #2 and #3 actually undermine human material progress.

The result of Left-of-Center “progress”

Policies and practices implemented by supporters Left-of-Center ideologies have seriously undermined the material standard of living of the working class by undermining the Five Keys to Progress, which I believe are the fundamental precondition of human material progress. These negative results include:

• Driving up the cost of food in an effort to make agricultural practices “sustainable,” which undermines the First Key to Progress: a highly efficient food production and distribution system.

• Driving up the cost of housing in an effort to combat suburban sprawl, which undermines the Second Key to Progress: trade-based cities.

• Over-centralizing power in the federal government, which undermines the Third Key to Progress: Decentralized political, economic, religious, and ideological power.

• Slowing down economic growth with a vast web of federal and state regulations and corporate taxes, which undermines the Fourth Key to Progress: high-value-added industry that exports to the rest of the world.

• Driving up the cost of energy in an effort to reach Global Netzero by 2050, which undermines the Fifth Key to Progress: widespread use of fossil fuels.

• Driving up the cost of health care by substituting mandatory health insurance instead of market exchange and transparent prices.

• Undermining merit-based hiring, firing and promotion practices with affirmative action and DEI. This undermines both the competence and legitimacy of all our institutions.

• Plus plenty other negative results.

Can we unbundle the trends?

Now there are some conservatives who claim that Trends #2 and #3 are a direct outcome of Trend #1, so we must either:

• Support all three trends, or

• Oppose all three trends.

Those conservatives emphatically oppose all three trends.

There are others on the Center-Left who argue exactly the opposite. Trends #1, #2, and #3 are bound together, so they believe that we should support all three trends.

I must admit that this claim is a very hard claim to argue against. We cannot run a controlled experiment on American society to see if material progress always leads to an upper class that embraces Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies and forces those views on the rest of society via government programs and regulations.

While I absolutely agree that material prosperity enabled Left-of-Center ideologies, particularly among the professional class, I do not believe that material prosperity makes increased belief in Left-of-center ideologies inevitable.

I believe that we can have increased material progress and abundance without the dominance of Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies. Indeed, I think this is exactly where we are headed, but it is very unclear what world view is going to replace the current Left-of-Center ideologies.

My hope is that it will be the progress-based perspective, but I admit that this is less likely than other future outcomes.

Ideologies tend to over-reach reality

In previous articles, I argued that ideologies are based on non-rational psychological impulses. The goal of those who invent and follow ideologies is the transform society. Many ideologues claim that they have unlocked the keys to doing so. Many ideologues also claim that their views are based on science, logic, and reason (rather than non-rational psychological impulses).

Because of their nature, ideologies can be very attractive to people with certain psychological temperaments. Those supporters are fooled into thinking that their views are based on science, logic, reason, and an objective view of reality. In fact, the opposite is true.

Because of their very nature, almost all ideologies are destined to fail, because their assumptions come into conflict with material reality. I believe that we are seeing this process unfold today with the ideologies of the Left.

The Left has hit a dead end

I believe that the Left, particularly the Center-Left in wealthy Western societies, has hit a historical dead end. The evidence is clear in the voting results in the vast majority of wealthy Western nations over the last decade.

So that I am clear on my terms, by “Center-Left” I mean:

• Social Democratic parties in Europe

• Labor parties in the Anglo world (UK, Australia and NZ)

• Democratic and Liberal parties in North America.

This is not the first time that an extraordinarily influential ideology has collapsed due to its conflict with material reality. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, one of the two dominant ideologies on the Left, Communism, was finally forced to confront material reality.

Largely because of the inability of Communist ideals to create long-term economic growth, Communist regimes all across the world collapsed. Without economic and military subsidies from the Soviet Union, they simply could not endure. As Karl Marx himself would have put it, the economic system collapsed due to its own internal contradictions.

Support for Communist parties across the world has almost been eliminated and all Communist regimes that still exist are either:

• Trapped in desperate poverty (North Korea, Laos and Cuba), or

• Following economic policies that more closely approximate capitalism (China and Vietnam).

I believe that the Center-Left hit a similar dead end in 2008. The economic recession made clear a fundamental contradiction within the ideologies of the Center-Left:

1. They claim to support the material interests of the working class, poor, and racial minorities.

2. Those groups benefit far more from long-term widely-shared economic growth than from government programs to redistribute income (with the big exception of retirees).

3. Those redistributive government programs rely on revenue generated by a capitalist economic order.

4. The policies of the Left, either intentionally or more typically unintentionally, undermine long-term economic growth.

In other words, the core assumptions of the Center-Left were based on non-rational psychological assumptions that conflict with material reality. It was inevitable that the Center-Left would eventually bump up against material reality.

They finally did so in the 2008 recession. Since then, the economies of most Western nations have had almost flat economic growth as measured by changes in per capita GDP. The United States is the only country that has been spared economic stagnation over the last 15 years.

A vast social experiment

The rise of Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies over the past 60 years has been a vast social experiment in reforming the foundations of human flourishing. These ideologies aare fundamentally based on the assumption that:

• Unhappiness and lower material standard of living is due to the persistence of Inequality (or Oppression) and

• Using the power of government to remove the foundations of Inequality and Oppression will lead to greater happiness and prosperity for all.

I think that it is pretty obvious to those on the Right and most of the Center that this assumption is simply not true.

Bad assumptions lead to bad results (and, unfortunately, also an unwillingness to accept the consequences of those bad results).

We need a new perspective that is based on a more accurate understanding of the interaction between human psychology, human actions, and material reality. This is particularly true for teenagers and twenty-something adults who are making critical Life Choices that will set their trajectory of the rest of their lives.

The human brain did not evolve for abundance

The fundamental problem is that the human brain did not evolve for happiness and appreciation for living in a world of abundance and progress. Nor did it evolve to solve problems in complex modern societies.

The human brain evolved to enable our Hunter-Gatherer ancestors to survive and reproduce on the African Savannah. This world was full of daily threats to survival.

Anyone who focused on appreciating their lives would soon get eaten by a predator, attacked by a stranger, or starve. Anyone who was relentlessly focused on threats to their survival was more likely to survive long enough to pass on their genes to the next generation. This way of thinking was very useful for our distant ancestors, but it causes serious cognitive biases in the modern world.

Humans have evolved with a brain that responds well to threats, and the media, social media, political activists, interest groups, and political candidates have gotten really good at manipulating us with exaggerated threats. In fact, this has become their business model. They keep doing it because it works. This business model generates viewers, votes, and money: critical resources that these individuals and institutions need to maintain their success.

Getting past cognitive biases

Getting past these cognitive biases is not easy. An entire new sub-discipline of psychology called “Positive Psychology” has emerged to understand and treat similar conditions.

Many positive psychologists recommend Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (or CBT) as a way to overcome these cognitive biases. According to the official American Psychological Association (APA) website, there is strong evidence that CBT leads to “significant improvement in functioning and quality of life.”

According to the APA, CBT consists of the patient:

• Learning to recognize one’s distortions that are creating problems, and then to reevaluate them in the light of reality.

• Gaining a better understanding of the behavior and motivation of others

• Using problem-solving skills to cope with difficult situations

• Learning to develop a greater sense of confidence in one’s own abilities.

CBT also has the benefit of treating a wide range of problems, not just one. It is useful for treating serious mental illness as well as the far more common “worried well.” I would argue that those who are skeptical and opposed to progress are a substantial portion of the “worried well.”

I believe that the skeptics and opponents of progress are suffering from many of the cognitive biases that can be compared to the mindset of people who benefit from CBT. I am claiming that the fundamental principles of CBT can be applied to more intellectual endeavors like the study of progress. Learning to “recognize one’s distortions that are creating problems”, “learn problem-solving skills” and “learn to develop a greater sense of confidence” are exactly what the Western world needs right now in abundance.

The study of progress is a functional equivalent of CBT. The study of progress is akin to self-therapy at scale for the “worried well.”

Left-of-Center ideologies are “reverse CBT”

Unfortunately, Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies have the opposite effect of CBT. In the next paragraph, I will add quotation marks where Left-of-Center ideologies directly conflict with what the APA says are the advantages of CBT.

Left-of-Center ideologies:

• Create moralistic camouflage so people fail to “recognize one’s distortions that are creating problems.” They call reality “blaming the victim.”

• Preach assumptions that give individuals a worse “understanding of the behavior and motivation of others.”

• Preach that the failings of individuals are due to society, whether inequality or oppression, so individuals are helpless to lift themselves up.

• Give zero “problem-solving skills” to their followers, except that they must become political activists to change society.

• Undermine a “sense of confidence in one’s own abilities” by saying that society is the problem.

All of these are exactly the opposite of what CBT and Positive Psychology teach us. And it is the opposite of what virtually every traditional philosophy or religion teaches us.

What do they teach us about how we should live our life?

If you doubt the above, ask yourself, what are the keys to having a happy and successful life according to the dictates of Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies?

The closest that I can see is “go to college.” This is not terrible advice. The “go to college” advice does work fairly well for reasonably cognitively talented young people, but it is not very useful advice for most young men and women. And even for cognitively talented young people, going to college alone is not sufficient to a happy and successful life.

If you take the assumptions of Left-of-Center ideologies seriously as a guide to life, one must conclude that young people should engage in continuous political activism until we finally achieve a world of Equality and no Oppression. Sorry, but that is terrible advice for young people. The more youths follow that advice the less happy and successful they will be (except for maybe a tiny minority who become well-paid career politicians).

And given that the Left has been trying to achieve Equality for over 200 years without success, it is frighteningly naive to believe that we will get there any time soon. So even if the impossible is achieved some time in the distant future, the Left-of-Center guide to life will lead to wrecked lives.

Left-of-center ideologies ignore Individual Agency

The problem is that all Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies focus overwhelmingly on massive societal forces or demographics that cause Inequality or Oppression. They completely ignore what an individual can do to make their life better. In other words, they ignore Individual Agency.

A key tenet of individual success and happiness is to focus on what you have control over and adapt to what you cannot. But Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies on what individuals do not have control over and claim that collective action to overcome those factors is far more just than adapting to those forces.

Let me give an extreme example to make my point obvious. Human freedom is heavily constrained by:

• Gravity

• The biological needs to:

  • breath oxygen

  • eat food

  • drink water

  • regularly poop and pee

  • devote roughly 8 hours per day to sleep

As a society, we can either:

1. accept those realities and adapt to those constraints or

2. we can constantly rage against them as an Injustice.

No sane person would claim that the latter is preferable. In this domain at least, we are all conservatives.

The reality is that all individuals must adapt to our material circumstances even when those constraints seem morally unfair. It is the adaptation to material reality that enables us to live better lives, not changing that material reality.

We need a new perspective

I believe the time is ripe for a new perspective to replace the failed Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies. And I also believe that current Conservative views are not a solid foundation for doing so because they do not embrace the concept of human material progress. Indeed, the current Left-Right polarization actually undermines the possibility of a new perspective arising.

Conservatives are correct in their belief that the Left is wrong and leads to very bad individual and societal outcomes. Conservatives, however, cannot give coherent policies and values to replace what the Left is undermining. This is why once conservative parties get elected, they tend to accomplish very little (except perhaps cutting taxes).

And it must be based on the concept of material progress

I believe that the Progress-based Perspective is what is needed. If you are not familiar with it, you should read the linked article, but I will briefly summarize here.

I argue that we need a Progress-based reform agenda focused on the following principles:

1. Promote long-term widely-shared economic growth.

2. Create a prosperous working class.

3. Promote a clear pathway that enables youths from low-income families to enter the prosperous working class.

4. Focus relentlessly on results; experiment in a controlled way; do more of what works; do less of what does not work.

Economic growth certainly enables a prosperous working class and a clear pathway that enables youths to enter that class. But economic growth is not sufficient to get there.

And also on Upward Mobility

Living in a society that is experiencing Progress is necessary, but it is not sufficient for upward mobility for the individual. By definition, Progress is about a large percentage of people within a society, but that still potentially leaves behind a significant percentage of people. Those people typically are the poor, working class, and racial minorities. The concept of Upward Mobility is about lifting up their material standard of living over the course of their working lifetimes.

An individual living in a society that is experiencing Progress must choose through their own actions to participate in the progress that surrounds them. It cannot be given to them by outside actors (unless their family is rich and willing to support their children forever).

And it must acknowledge genetic inequality

The abilities of a person vary greatly by genetics, family upbringing, individual values, culture, luck, and other factors, but very few of those factors make it impossible for a person to participate in the progress that surrounds them.

Genetic variation between people makes Equality beyond Equality of Legal Rights impossible, but it does not mean that we are all doomed to perpetual poverty. The history of material progress proves this is not true.

The goal should be to leverage the resources that we do have (genetic, culture, natural resources, energy, technology, skills, organizations, and capital) to create long-term widely-shared economic growth. It is inevitable that some people will contribute far more to that endeavor than others. Therefore, it is entirely moral that those individuals keep a significantly higher share of the gains of material progress that they played an important role in creating.

And that does not mean that the poor, working class, racial minorities, women, and developing nations miss out on the benefits of progress. Indeed, those groups likely benefit more because of how bleak their existence was before material progress evolved.

So modern societies leverage existing and inevitable inequalities into material progress that benefits almost all of us.

And obsession with Equality is the enemy of Progress.

And acknowledge the limits of redistribution

No amount of government social programs can substitute for that lack of participation in society. Therefore, government programs should reward and enable actions to help oneself, not unintentionally reward failure.

And the importance of Life Choices

A Progress-based perspective must also acknowledge that youths make key Life Choices that dramatically impact their future standard of living and life satisfaction. And the collective Life Choices of our youths dramatically impact our society’s future progress and cultural reproduction.

Unfortunately, youths do not intuitively know what those correct Life Choices are, so we must guide them morally. Contrary to what many Post Modern Left-of-Center activists think, this is not oppressing them or diminishing their potential. It is passing on the learning of previous generations on how to lead successful and satisfying lives to the next generation.

The age between 14 and 30 (which I call “youths” or “young people”) is a critical period in an individual’s life where one is required to make Life Choices about the following:

1. Education

2. Job Skills

3. Criminality and violence

4. Sexual activity and contraception

5. Relocation to regions with greater economic opportunities

6. Occupation and work effort in the occupation

7. Marriage

8. Having children and parenting

All youths, regardless of class, race, gender, and other demographic characteristics, are confronted with the same choices. The only exceptions are youths with very rich parents who are willing to support their children financially for their entire lives.

The above life choices made between the ages of 14 and 30 set young people on a “life trajectory” that determines the probability of achieving a relatively high material standard of living after age 30.

While there are no guarantees in life, making good life choices dramatically increases the chances of success and happiness compared to making bad life choices. No government programs can fully undo the damage to the individual and society that occurs from those bad choices.

Humans, particularly young people, often copy the behavior of the people around them. This means that it is far easier for youths from upper-income families to make the right choices than it is for youths from lower-income families.

And the importance of Values

Young people often fail to realize the full consequences of those choices so they need moral guidance from adults and institutions. We need a clear and realistic message, based on social science, that explains the importance of these Life Choices and how to make them correctly.

Many of these Life Choices also require money that young people, particularly those who come from lower-income families, do not have. Society has an incentive to not let those relatively small financial barriers lead to bad choices that affect all of society.

For progress to continue into future generations, a reasonable percentage of adults must have children, and we should put those children in the best possible position to promote Progress for society and Upward Mobility for themselves.

Though there are no guarantees in life, but the government should ensure that adults who have made reasonable efforts on their own behalf should have a “living wage” regardless of their abilities.

This creates a social contract that society makes with young people: “If you make the right choices, we will ensure that you make a living wage for you and your family.” A minimum number of right choices should include:

1. A full-time worker in the family

2. Marriage between the biological parents

3. Having children to ensure the survival of our society and then teaching those children the principles listed above.

We need massive political change

Everything that I wrote above was considered common sense 60 years ago. And it was considered common sense in any dynamic society of the past.

Unfortunately, the rise of Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies is based on different assumptions. And many of their followers are hostile to this traditional wisdom. Others are just worried that the traditional wisdom is too judgmental or not inclusive enough.

Now if these were just isolated outsiders on the outskirts of our institutions, this would not matter. But the Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies dominate most of our institutions, and many members are very hostile to competing world views.

We cannot achieve a new, healthier Progress-based perspective that works as long as Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies dominate our institutions. This is particularly true of the federal government.

How does the second Trump administration affect these trends?

I have no idea what the second Trump administration will produce, but at least it is likely to be a temporary pivot away from Trends #2 and #3 above. It might even be a permanent pivot.

I seriously doubt that the Trump administration will endorse my Progress-based agenda, particularly the concept of Upward Mobility. Most likely, the United States will have to stumble from one failed experiment to another until we finally get to something at actually works.

But I do believe that the tides have turned.

The long increase in the influence of the Left-of-Center over American institutions is stalling, and working-class voters are in revolt against it. I am confident that the incorrect assumptions of the Post-Modern Left-of-Center ideologies will cause it to collapse as a viable worldview.

As Winston Churchill once said:

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Winston Churchill, The Lord Mayor’s Luncheon, Mansion House, November 10, 1942

It is up to us to determine what replaces this failed experiment.

I see human history as a constant trial-and-error by a supremely intelligent species with powerful cognitive biases in an increasingly complex world where cause and effect are difficult to determine. It is our fate to constantly experiment with using technologies, skills, and organizations to push against the limitations of the material world that we live in. And it is our fate to come up with world views that convince us that we have finally unlocked the key to happiness and success.

Because most experiments fail compared to all the previous successful experiments and our worldviews are based on non-rational psychological impulses, human societies often go in the wrong direction. Sometimes entire human societies go in the wrong direction for generations, until the bad results become obvious. Some societies never realize the problem and are erased from existence.

But humans do have the capacity to learn. A big part of “learning what works” is the gradual elimination of “what does not work.” And fortunately, there are always individuals willing to rethink our old assumptions and push on in a new direction.

So far over the last 10,000 years, humanity has stumbled its way to the right choices. I am still confident that we will do the same during our lifetime. But I know that it will not be easy and it will be highly contested, and perhaps violent.

It is going to be a wild ride!

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