Why the Left undermines Progress

And why the progress that "Progressives" desire leads to the opposite

Mar 21, 2024

In my book series and this Substack column, I have made the claim that:

The material progress that humanity has experienced is the single most important fact of our time. It is so important that we must fully integrate it into our worldview.
The Five Keys to Progress are the necessary preconditions for that progress, and How Progress Works explains the daily human behaviors that create progress once those five keys evolve.
The continuation of the progress into the future is largely dependent on the extent to which those Five Keys to Progress are maintained.
For the last 150 years, the United States has played an indispensable role in global progress, so protecting the Five Keys in the USA is particularly important.
Progress comes from society, not from the government, but bad government policies can do a great deal to undermine progress (and unfortunately they have).

In this article, I want to show how some currently popular ideologies on the Left do great damage to current and future material progress.

The goal of Equality

Almost all thinkers on the Left have a goal that approximates the ideal of Equality. More specifically their preferred outcome is Equality of Outcome. While some phrase this as Equality of Opportunity, they typically believe that substantial differences in outcome are clear evidence that Equality of Opportunity has not been achieved. Others on the Left embrace the concept of Social Mobility, but this goal has similar problems. So in the end, those on the Left always come back to some sort of Equality of Outcome.

The further Left a person is, the more quickly they want to move towards Equality of Outcome. Those on the Left-wing typically want Equality now, while the Center Left typically want to move in a more egalitarian direction via decades of economic and social reform.

Those on the Left also vary in the means to achieve these goals. The revolutionary Left wants to seize power through a violent revolution to establish an economic order that leads to Equality. Far more commonly in the West, Center-Leftist wants to tax those with above-average income and wealth to pay for expansion of government social programs, such as pensions, health care, education, and poverty reduction.

While there are clearly variations within ideologies of the Left, I would argue that if a person does not believe in any form of Equality, then they cannot be a Leftist of any sort.

Compassion without caring about Results

I believe that this belief in Equality comes from a compassion for the less fortunate and a desire to help them. Those on the Left are upset by the Cosmic Injustice that some are born into circumstances that lead them to have less than others. They are driven by compassion and have a hard time understanding why others apparently lack that compassion.

I can understand that. Compassion is a wonderful thing between family and friends. It is an emotion that binds us together. Unfortunately, the concept is not applicable to government policy.

The problem is that most thinkers on the Left combine this Compassion with a lack of concern for Results. This is a fatal weakness as it is very hard to sculpt public policies that have the desired results without experimentation. The reality is that most public policies fail to achieve the desired results. This is what policy wonks call the “Iron Law” of policy evaluation. If an ideological movement is not concerned first and foremost with Results, then that movement is very unlikely to achieve their desired goal. Failure will be the inevitable result.

This is why most people on the Left continue to support policies long after they have clearly failed. All failure is seen to be solved by doubling down and trying harder. More likely, they see the failure as opposition from political forces who they deem immoral, stupid, or corrupt. No amount of failure on the part of their preferred policies causes them to fundamentally rethink their first principles.

The Left has hit a dead end

I believe that the Left has hit a dead end. Because of their non-rational nature, all ideologies are destined to fail because they come into conflict with material reality. A similar occurrence happened to the Communists in the 1980s.

I believe that the Center-Left hit a similar dead end in 2008 with the global economic recession. So that I am clear on my terms, by “Center-Left” I mean:

Social Democratic parties in Europe
Labor parties in the Anglo world
Democratic and Liberal parties in North America.

The economic recession made clear a fundamental contradiction within the ideologies of the Center-Left:

They claim to support the material interests of the working class, poor, and racial minorities.
Those groups benefit far more from long-term widely-shared economic growth than from government programs to redistribute income.
Those government programs rely on revenue generated by a capitalist economic order.
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.

The goal should be Progress and Upward Mobility, not Equality

A major goal of my Substack column is to transform the Left as it now exists. Until they do so, I will be happy to support anyone with common goals. I believe that:

Equality is impossible to achieve, and any attempt to do so will do more harm than good.
The material standard of living of a person is primarily determined by the overall wealth of the society that they live in (not the percentage of income or wealth of the society that the individual has). This is exactly why material progress is so important.
When we look at human history, there is a huge amount of evidence that this goal is possible and that it benefits the masses.
Therefore, if you want to help those who have less, you need to promote long-term economic growth. This will do far more for those who have less than any conceivable government redistribution.
This does not mean that those who support material progress should ignore the distribution of the gains from economic growth. We should embrace the goal of a prosperous working class. This will come partly from economic growth and partly from reducing the cost of essentials, such as food, housing, health care, energy, and transportation.
A market-based economy is far more likely to achieve this than the government. In fact, government policies have done much to increase the cost of these essentials (as we will see below).
Whether this goal moves to greater or lesser equality is irrelevant.
Supporters of progress should also promote a clear pathway that enables youths from low-income families to enter the prosperous working class.
The two goals listed above are what I call Upward Mobility. I have written many articles on policies that will help to achieve this goal.

In the rest of this article, I will explain why the policies of the Left (in this case the Democrats in the United States) undermine material progress. In another article, I explain why other policies implemented by the Democrats undermine Upward Mobility.

See also my other articles and podcasts on Ideology:

You might also be interested in reading my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:

As a reminder, the Five Keys to Progress (the necessary preconditions for material progress) are:

I have already written a large number of articles on each of these five keys, so I will not explain why they are important here. Instead, I will explain why policies of the Left in the United States are unintentionally (and sometimes intentionally) undermining the necessary preconditions for present and future material progress

Key #5: Widespread use of fossil fuels

The single greatest threat to future material progress is Green energy policies. Barring a breakthrough in energy technology, widespread use of fossil fuels is an essential precondition for present and future material progress (and by the way, I propose a way to achieve that technological breakthrough).

Virtually all ideological groups on the Left make it a goal to phase out fossil fuels within decades. Most embrace the goal of global Net Zero by 2050. The policies to achieve Net Zero by 2050:

Have clearly failed to lower global carbon emissions. Global carbon emissions are far higher today than in 1990.

Will cost tens of trillions of dollars (spending is now over $1 trillion per year and growing)
Will have only a tiny effect on future global temperatures (i.e. far less than one degree)
Will inevitably fail to get anywhere Net Zero by 2050 or any other year (unless there is a global catastrophe such as an asteroid impact or they concede the use of other energy sources)
Will slow down and potentially choke off economic growth in wealthy nations
Will particularly hurt the poor, working class, and racial minorities in those nations because they spend a much higher percent of their income on energy
Will make it far more difficult for developing nations to industrialize (unless they use other energy sources)
Is completely unnecessary because there are much better options.

Worse, supporters of the Green energy transition are completely unwilling to acknowledge failure regardless of results. This is a common problem with ideologies.

Fossil fuels are critical to progress and economic growth because of their incredible energy density and the fact that they are affordable, easily stored and transported, reliable, controllable, and easy to scale to fit needs. And because of these characteristics, their geographical limitations are radically less than virtually all other energy sources.

Quite simply the prosperous world that we live in today would not have been possible without the widespread usage of fossil fuels. Without industrial technologies powered by fossil fuels, most nations would still be living at the same standard of living as they did in 1500: i.e. desperate poverty for virtually everyone but a few elites and a few lonely commercial cities.

To continue material progress, we need abundant, affordable, and secure energy. Unfortunately, the Green energy transition does the opposite. Fortunately, there is an alternative energy policy that embraces the concept of human material progress and includes the following goals:

Create an energy system that is abundant, affordable, and secure. This will keep human material progress going. This should include both wealthy and developing nations.
Mitigate the negative side-effects of that progress on the natural environment. This includes carbon emissions, air pollution, water pollution, wild habitat destruction, extinctions, and human health concerns.

Key #3: Decentralization of power

The second greatest threat to future material progress has been the relentless centralization of government over the last 60 years. The vast majority of that growth has been:

Parties of the Left creating new social programs that have failed to promote Upward Mobility
Unaccountable bureaucrats with Left-of-Center politics implementing new regulations that slow down economic growth.
Parties of the Right doing nothing to reverse those trends once elected. They typically focus on cutting marginal tax rates, which only increases the deficit and debt.

In particular, the federal government in the United States and European Union in Europe has greatly increased their power. I believe that this centralization has undermined the ability of local government and non-government institutions to implement the small-scale experimentation that is necessary for material progress.

This current over-centralization is a radical departure from the first 150 years of American history. Until 1930, virtually all government took place on the local and state level. Outside of the military and the post office, the federal government played very little day-to-day role in people’s lives.

The American political system was based on the concept of federalism. Most power resided with state and local governments, and it was expected that they would each experiment with different policies based on local conditions. When a policy proved successful, it was quite likely that other neighboring districts and states would learn of the results and copy them. Gradually, what worked would spread from state to state and policies that were not perceived to work as well would not.

Today, the United States and Europe run the risk of undoing a significant amount of progress that came from their earlier decentralization of political power. While it is tempting to force the supposed “best” solution onto a large number of people, it is usually far better to allow a great deal of experimentation at the local level. When local governments implement different policies, this gives everyone the ability to assess the outcomes of those policies.

If the policy works well on the local level, then other localities will probably copy it. If the policy fails or causes significant negative side-effects, then other localities will avoid copying it. All that is needed is an open mind, clear metrics, transparency and a willingness to copy the successful policies.

Elites within centralized political institutions have strong personal, financial, and ideological interests that bias their decisions. Even when they arrive at the best solution, the situation can change substantially over time, making the solution less than ideal at a later date.

Rapid technological innovation virtually guarantees that most bureaucratic decisions will become obsolete within a generation. But once a policy is enacted, bureaucratic and political forces make it very difficult to modify or eliminate obsolete policies.

Everywhere we see centralized bureaucrats creating an artificial uniformity that makes it very difficult to assess the results of policies. Supposedly these bureaucrats are experts in their field, but unfortunately, they implement policies that have impacts far beyond their field of expertise. When they make a bad decision, it can be very hard to know if their policy is to blame for bad results because there is no variation in policies. It is only with a diversity of implemented policies that we are able to identify which policies function best.

As these bureaucrats have gradually moved left of center in their politics, this has meant that policies of the Left are implemented regardless of public opinion, results, or election results. We have unintentionally evolved a new elite that extracts resources from the masses and uses those resources for their own purposes. Worse, those bureaucrats are almost immune to the results of those policies.

The United States needs to rediscover the benefits of federalism by:

Key #1: Productive agriculture

It is a very popular trend among college-educated voters of the Left to reject modern agricultural technologies and practices to embrace what is “natural.” This is the agricultural version of Green energy policies. One can see this in the preference for “Organic foods” and strong moral opposition to:

Synthetic fertilizers
Synthetic pesticides
Synthetic herbicides
Genetically-modified organisms
Aquaculture
Agriculture research on the above
Tractors fueled by petroleum (which must be eliminated to achieve NetZero).

Taken together, this is an attempt to roll back agricultural technologies and practices to before the Industrial Revolution (or at least the more recent Green Revolution).

As long as these preferences remain a niche market among affluent consumers in wealthy Western nations, it is probably a fairly harmless consumer fad. Unfortunately, the trend is moving past that point. The entire concept of Sustainable Development has been endorsed by the United Nations and most economic institutions. Developing nations, in particular, are under strong pressure to embrace those agricultural practices.

Organic foods are a clear example of a status product. Affluent people are always looking to purchase products that differentiate themselves from the masses visually and morally. Now that industrial farming techniques have made food so inexpensive that the poor and working class can easily afford it, status-seeking affluent people look for the most costly alternatives.

By purchasing organic foods, Leftist consumers who are repelled by the idea of conspicuous consumption can effectively consume conspicuously and feel good about it. Ironically, few organic lovers realize that these products contain pesticides, just different ones that are no safer nor better for the environment.

Nor do they think through the consequences of more expensive food on the poor. Because organic farming is inherently less productive than modern alternatives, organic food is always more expensive. This may not be a problem for affluent shoppers who want to make a moral statement with their purchases, but it does matter for poor people who desperately need affordable food. If the current consumer preferences of the affluent become the entire market, this will raise food prices and hurt the poor.

Organic foods are almost always more expensive than non-organic foods because the growing process is less productive. Organic foods simply require more land per unit of food than non-organic foods. While it varies greatly by the food type, organic foods typically range from 10% to 50% less productive. This results in higher food prices (Applied Methodology).

Higher food prices may not matter very much to rich Westerners of the Left, but they can be devastating to the poor in developing nations. Those people typically spend a far higher percentage of their total income on grains.

Perhaps the most effective measurement of the standard of living of a person or nation is the percentage of annual spending that is devoted to grains, such as wheat, rice, and corn. Very poor people have historically devoted upwards of 50% of their spending to grains.

As very poor people in developing nations increase in wealth, they spend more on other types of foods that are less energy dense, more expensive, but tastier. People in wealthy nations spend a very small portion of their total spending on grains or any other type of food for that matter.

And these Leftist shoppers delude themselves if they think that they are helping the environment. The biggest threat to the environment is not urban sprawl, pesticides, or GMOs; it is farm acreage. Farms destroy land that could otherwise be devoted to natural habitat. Farm acreage is essential to our survival and prosperity, but we should try to limit the impact of farm acreage on natural habitats. Increasing agricultural productivity is the key to doing so.

Environmentalists should be in favor of increased farming productivity above all else. Nothing else humans do has a more negative effect on the natural environment than agriculture. As farms have become more productive in wealthy nations, farmers have effectively abandoned the least productive soil allowing it to turn back into natural habitat. This is good. This is what environmentalists and eco-friendly shoppers should want, but the consequences of their misguided views create the opposite.

Key #2: Cities

Voters and intellectuals on the Left are not opposed to cities. In fact, the vast majority of them are stridently in favor of urban life. But the Left has strong moral preferences for certain types of cities that have serious negative side effects on the working class and poor. In particular, they want dense cities.

Today, “sprawl” is perceived as a bad thing, particularly by those on the Left. Sprawl is typically defined as the spreading of urban developments onto undeveloped land near the city. This trend is almost universally derided by those on the Left as a bad thing that undermines our quality of life and our natural environment. Promoting density and limiting sprawl is now considered one of the most critical goals of urban design.

Trade-based cities require housing for people to live, and affordable housing has become a serious problem in well over a dozen metro areas on the Pacific Coast and Northeast. Virtually all of them are dominated by Democratic voters, Democratic politicians, and Left-of-Center urban planners.

Housing inflation is a relatively new phenomenon. Until 1970, housing prices did not vary much from the core rate of inflation. This made housing affordable across the nation.

A useful means of measuring housing affordability is the ratio between the median cost of a house and the median family income within that metro. In 1969, virtually every metro in the United States had a ratio of 3.0 or less. The national average was 1.8 (Antiplanner, 2020). At that point, housing in the United States was affordable everywhere, even in the wealthiest cities.

Then, in the 1970s, something began to change radically. In a few key metro areas, housing prices began to increase far more rapidly than median family incomes. Those areas are larger and wealthier urban areas:

Pacific coast
Northeast

Virtually all of them are what we now call “Blue States.” In those states, urban planners, state legislatures, and local governments implemented a series of reforms that drove up the prices of land and housing to unaffordable levels:

Urban containment zones that effectively prohibit builders from expanding outward as demand for housing increases.
Environment review laws that made it very expensive to construct housing in certain areas
Historical preservation rules, which made it extremely difficult to replace older buildings
Government-mandated “Affordable housing” that is anything but affordable.

Virtually every one of these rules was implemented by planners and politicians who were Left-of-Center in their politics. Other pre-existing policies also drove up housing prices.

A dense web of state and local zoning rules that drove up construction time and costs.
A tax system that rewards land owners for keeping their urban properties empty or underdeveloped until they can cash in on rising housing prices.

Now admittedly, some Left-of-Center YIMBYs now rightly oppose many of those policies and seek to remove them. YIMBYs miss the fact that those rules originally came from similar-minded urban designers who sought to force density in a previous generation. Ironically, progressive urban reformers are often campaigning against the very rules that were implemented by previous generations of progressive urban designers who were trying to limit sprawl.

Until we give up on the Leftist idea of forced density and fighting sprawl, we will never have affordable housing in our most prosperous metro areas. Fortunately, there are alternative housing policies that can create affordable housing.

Key #4: Export Industries

The Left is not inherently hostile to export industries, but the indirect effects of their policies make export industries less competitive, including:

A vast web of regulations that increase the cost of labor and capital.
Higher energy prices, due to Green energy policies.
More expensive housing making it harder to attract workers to the most prosperous metro areas, due to “anti-sprawl” housing policies.
More expensive food (which indirectly increases labor costs), due to Green agricultural policies.
Higher corporate taxes
An education system that promotes academic knowledge over practical trade skills.
Hiring, firing, and promotions based on DEI rather than Merit.
An immigration policy based on family reunification of recent immigrants (legal and illegal) rather than skills.

When taken as a whole, they make it far more difficult for export industries to compete globally. This undermines long-term economic growth.

All of the above hardly exhausts the list of policies implemented by the ideological Left that undermine material progress, but they are some of the most important.

Why this matters to the entire globe

If the United States were just another nation, all of this might not matter so much. But the United States is far from just another nation. Since about 1870 the United States has been indispensable to material progress. For the last 150 years the United States:

Has been on the leading edge of technological innovation, first in manufacturing, but more recently in digital technology. Only the UK and Germany have rivaled the US in this area.
Has had stronger economic growth for a very long period than almost every nation in the world. It was not until after 1990, that East Asian nations surpassed American records in long-term economic growth.
Because of the above, the United States served as an example of a market-based economy in alternative to traditional economies and socialist economies.
Has served as a model and protector of Liberal Democratic governance.
This long-term economic growth enabled the United States to build a powerful military that made nations experiencing progress more powerful militarily than predatory empires. This is in great contrast to the previous 10,000 years of history when predatory agricultural empires dominated.
In the 20th Century the United States was willing to use its military to protect much of the world from predatory empires in World War I, World War II and the Cold War.
After its victories in World War II and the Cold War, the United States did not attempt to establish its own empire as virtually every other victorious power in the past sought. Instead, the United States established a global trade system that encouraged political elites around the world to choose economic development over military conquest. Without this choice, the amazing economic growth since 1990 would not have been possible.
Since 1973 the United States has served as the single largest export market for the rest of the world.

Particularly since 1946, the United States has been indispensable to global progress. Based on the current state of the world, I do not see another nation that can possibly take its place, so any slowing of American economic growth affects the entire world.

And it gets worse, much worse

So far in this article, I am only talking about misguided policies of the Center-Left that have been implemented in wealthy Western nations. If we add on authoritarian and totalitarian Leftist regimes in other nations, the negative effect on material progress is much worse.

There is another path

At some point, those who uphold the Center-Left and the Left in the United States and Europe are going to have to recognize that their more than two centuries of effort to transform societies for the better have failed to achieve the desired results. Rather than doubling down on failed ideological visions, the Left needs to embrace what has already worked to increase the material standard of living of the masses.

The Left needs to help the working class, poor, and racial minorities by embracing a Progress-based reform agenda focused on the following principles:

Promote long-term economic growth.
Create a prosperous working class.
Promote a clear pathway that enables youths from low-income families to enter the prosperous working class.
Focus relentlessly on results; experiment in a controlled way; do more of what works; do less of what does not work.
Reform the political process to make all the above possible.