Failing to aprehend the problem

I listened to Yasha Mounk & Chris Rufo get into it today on the Free Press podcast.

I've written about Mounk's /posts/cancel-culture-mad.html

The broader problem is this: on issue after issue, be it DEI, the disasterous polices that have devestated San Francisco & Portland, or the latest New York Times headline, bright thinkers approach it as if we collectively are in a graduate seminar somewhere. They seem to understand the problem as a group of people coming together in good faith to solve the problem at hand, and so simply laying-out the evidence will suffice to persuade their opponents to try a new approach.

The latest example of this is Don’t San Francisco–ize Clean Energy by Christopher Elmendorf. he is concerned that "Many environmentalists, civic groups, and sympathetic lawmakers fail to recognize that demanding too much community input and legal review has a downside." Given that these practices persist, and and that, presumably their practitioners are rational… perhaps they don't see them as downsides? Strangely, he appreciates the benefits to them: "In San Francisco and elsewhere, projects to develop much-needed housing fail not just because neighboring homeowners are empowered to nitpick tiny details, but also because local officials indulge countless interest groups seeking commitments to hire union workers and local residents, developer-paid “community benefits” such as parks and transit improvements, below-market-rate housing units, cash donations or no-cost leases for local nonprofits, and so much more."

01/28/24 18:51