Why the Left undermines Progress
And why the progress that "Progressives" desire leads to the opposite
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.
See also my other articles and podcasts on Ideology:
Why Ideologies Threaten Progress (Part 1 of 3-part podcast series)
Where do ideologies come from? (podcast)
Why ideologies fail (podcast)
As a reminder, the Five Keys to Progress (the necessary preconditions for material progress) are:
Decentralized political, economic, religious, and ideological power.
At least one high-value-added industry that exports to the rest of the world.
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
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
Will make industrialization in developing nations impossible (unless they use other energy sources)
Is completely unnecessary.
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.
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:
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.
See also my other articles and podcasts on Ideology:
Why Ideologies Threaten Progress (Part 1 of 3-part podcast series)
Where do ideologies come from? (podcast)
Why ideologies fail (podcast)
The above is an excerpt from my book From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity’s Greatest Achievement. You can purchase discounted copies of my book at my website, or pay full prize at Amazon.