I'm forming a theory on how the pernicious influence of the new left is a unifying explanation for these types of traps. But I don't have a theory for why housing and transportation are more amenable to progressive policy nerds. - ThreadSky

struthious.bsky.social • 34 days ago

I'm forming a theory on how the pernicious influence of the new left is a unifying explanation for these types of traps. But I don't have a theory for why housing and transportation are more amenable to progressive policy nerds.

Reposted from Leif Hancox-Li, PhD

There’s a constellation of problems. Tankie is part of it; there’s also moral purity and not being policy nerds . That’s why I prefer transportation policy and housing policy-focused groups .

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tashenubaste.bsky.social•34 days ago

Housing and transportation seem like problems with simple solutions that don't require much thought.

zoesamuel.bsky.social•34 days ago

YMMV, but in my xp it's a combo of it being:
-slow, so selecting for those who can handle incremental change
-unsexy, so unappealing to grandstanders
-complex, thus requiring homework, which introduces nuance
-exists in reality: concrete, steel, engineering. Utopian ideas don't survive first contact

zoesamuel.bsky.social•34 days ago

Also, you see real-world results in your little corner of the world. Patriarchy or crony capitalism are global, so daunting to the point of paralysis, so victories feel insignificant. With housing/transpo, wins are visible, and also stickier. Good law can die on a dime; good infrastructure less so.

agtmadcat.bsky.social•34 days ago

A thoughtful analysis, thank you!

jenka.bsky.social•34 days ago

I came here to say, "It's practical."

zoesamuel.bsky.social•34 days ago

Right. The cause of choice for people who want to actually get shit done.

jenka.bsky.social•34 days ago

But more so, dirty and unappealing to people only concerned with the abstract notions of purity.

jenka.bsky.social•34 days ago

Also

https://bsky.app/profile/mattdargay.bsky.social/post/3ln7mf3s6y22b

ohdeerthermos.bsky.social•33 days ago

I think there's less room to be "positively antisocial" in housing and transportation. A lot of spaces are tolerant of antisocial behavior if it's done with the correct invocation/to the correct people

stork-sculpture.bsky.social•34 days ago

At best, most of the academic field is watered-down sociology and architecture and at worst just a bundle of opinions and notions (treating Jane Jacobs and Jan Gehl as dogma). Most working planners I know say 5% of their education was useful for work, tops

stork-sculpture.bsky.social•34 days ago

Urban planning background here. A lot of academics in said field have never read a pro forma, never calculated the risk to any given project factoring in interest rates and pop growth, never done an LoS analysis, are uninterested in fare service recovery, and generally how anything actually works

left-semi-join.bsky.social•34 days ago

It's a few years old at this point, but I think @alonlevy.bsky.social captured this pretty well in his article about why the new left has been so hostile to the Sewer Socialism types, and I think those folks have ended up in the YIMBY circles. https://pedestrianobservations.com/2016/10/26/sewer-socialism-or-sewer-neo-liberalism/

diacriticaz.bsky.social•34 days ago

Yeah no, this is actually describing the problem I'm describing without realizing it: that when technical expertise leads you to a heterodox conclusions, some leftists act like you've betrayed the movement.

diacriticaz.bsky.social•34 days ago

(sorry, only just noticed that this isn't in the thread I'm referring to, just QTed into it)

diacriticaz.bsky.social•34 days ago

But that's entirely distinct from moderation.

struthious.bsky.social•34 days ago

I think where they are linked is that since the non-sewer socialists are not receptive to these views, the technical experts gravitate towards the 'moderate' camps.

struthious.bsky.social•34 days ago

(technical experts and anyone left-ish who trusts technical experts)

diacriticaz.bsky.social•34 days ago

Very true, I mean I call myself a "left-YIMBY" (and don't get me started on the history of YIMBYism as originally an explicitly leftist movement), and that means having constant arguments with both socialists who think building houses is anathema and YIMBYs who think it also applies to stadiums.

alonlevy.bsky.social•34 days ago

*their

left-semi-join.bsky.social•34 days ago

My apologies!

bedubble.bsky.social•34 days ago

Perhaps because housing and transpo are less abstract and more local (yes, there are national-level topics).

Advocating for a bike lane or increased transit frequency or reasoning is actionable: your city council manages bike lanes and zoning… but not the global system of capital.

bedubble.bsky.social•34 days ago

*rezoning

dasdoak.bsky.social•34 days ago

Housing still attracts left-nimby-ism with a wholesale rejection of any new development that isn't affordable housing or that might possibly make a developer money.

Hell, with transit there are often accusations that bike lanes are harbingers of gentrification and so must be opposed.

dasdoak.bsky.social•34 days ago

I think the big difference is that the fools and people acting in bad faith are much easier to pick out in the transit and housing space, because they are arguing "nothing can change ever" in a situation that is clearly fucked.

apparatchikwannabe.bsky.social•34 days ago

this type of low level policy is where the rot that pervades
modern “leftism” is plainly visible, because the stances you highlight are all just extrapolations of their beliefs, it’s just that this is what putting their beliefs into practice has to look like

struthious.bsky.social•34 days ago

yeah I didn't meant that there aren't terrible housing activist groups, but that it's easier to find a sane space. upthread (prior to quoted tweet) I was lamenting how as a queer person I don't seek out queer spaces anymore b/c of the expectations of your politics in those spaces

dasdoak.bsky.social•34 days ago

Yeah and, as I said, I think the availability of those sane spaces is at least partially because - once you actually try to address problems - the cranks get weeded out.

That being said, those cranks are still definitely present in the less... professionalized spaces; NUMTOT is a mess these days.

struthious.bsky.social•34 days ago

Sorry to hear that about NUMTOT

dasdoak.bsky.social•34 days ago

A bunch of people were happily posting articles to NUMTOT about Pew's recent study on single-stair; the *overwhelming* response was opposition to single-stair on the basis that "any deregulation must inherently be bad" - I lost my temper at one of the guys in that thread, and am not proud of it.

sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com•34 days ago

one thing i've been struck by is how, for instance, "police abolition" can mean three radically different things to different people--abolish the police, fund social services, or vigilante justice. but by never talking about policy detail, you can keep all those people in the same tent

vala.wtf•33 days ago

i've thought a bit about how a lot of online left-wing communities hold beliefs that are superficially similar but actually contradict each other if you reason through them fully. and conversely, how those same communities reject those same beliefs if they're phrased or framed differently

vala.wtf•33 days ago

i think what it comes down to is that much of the online left is a subculture rather than a political movement, defined primarily by social signifiers rather than any coherent beliefs. as the right has become more deranged and lost more and more people, those people join existing lefty communities

vala.wtf•33 days ago

however, those people aren't really united by much other than being one of the many minorities that the right despises. they have very different sets of beliefs, most of them don't *have* deeply-held beliefs on most political topics that are regularly brought up, and a lot of it is repeating slogans

vala.wtf•33 days ago

you'd think a big-tent group united by a common enemy (the conservatives who treated them like garbage) would get a lot done, but either through algorithmic manipulation or just wreckers learning how to game the system, they all think the actual common enemy is the liberals

vala.wtf•33 days ago

this leads to some really weird stuff--for instance, people believing that the mythical white rural working-class man is one bernie rally away from storming the winter palace while the cringe resistlib wine mom is complicit in the evils of the american empire

sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com•33 days ago

very much the conclusion i came to here

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/in-praise-of-wokeness/

sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com•34 days ago

and in particular this lets you play the social justice game more effectively, because *you* never get tied to a single policy (which will inevitably have tradeoffs), and can instead slip between postures as needed

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/in-praise-of-wokeness/

sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com•34 days ago

but then in stuff like housing and transportation there's been far more of a push to actually talk turkey and propose specific policies, and that tends to weed out the posers--or at least, reveal them for what they are (nimbys)

struthious.bsky.social•34 days ago

Yeah this seems to be an emerging theme in the discussion. See also https://bsky.app/profile/lastpositivist.bsky.social/post/3lna2ds67fs2t

roland00.bsky.social•34 days ago

god, why is everyone making me think of Aristotle in the last 24 hours. I do not like him *laughs*

the initial thought was Samantha doing a good podcast episode 👍 with Neon-Liberalism

which caused my brain to think in “drive theory” including the annoying greek guy w/ 4 different types of “Whys”

snarkranger.bsky.social•34 days ago

the actual execution of any policy in the real world requires difficult trade-offs, problematic compromises, and understanding the realities of implementation. by contrast, it's very easy to write a paper in which our society simultaneously abolishes crime, poverty, and capitalism.

struthious.bsky.social•34 days ago

Since this is going viral by “new left” I don’t mean whatever contemporary leftism is but this thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Left

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