There have always been Kochs and Soroses.
What’s new post 1960 is:
1. Massive increase in the college-educated.
2. Women getting educated and entering the workforce in large numbers.
What’s new post 1960 is:
1. Massive increase in the college-educated.
2. Women getting educated and entering the workforce in large numbers.
These are the real problems we face. Not "wokeness" (basically just a nouveau slur).
More educated people aren't a problem, this has driven the greatest economic boom in history. It has driven the greatest reduction in interpersonal violence in history. Education is an unalloyed good. Political, cultural and economic equality for women and however many other categories of people you want to add to that list are unalloyed goods.
The problem is that all rewards are distributed to the top, because of the dominance of a small number of evil men over our political and economic system since about 1980. That is why competition to become an elite is so intense: only elites benefit from the current system. It is why we cannot get Democrats to govern properly, and why Republicans govern only with malice.
I'm a pretty liberal guy, but I'm seeing a rash of articles talking about some real harm wokeness has been causing lately when taken to an extreme. For example:
- California pushing new math framework that recommends no Algebra before Grade 9 in the name of racial justice. This is bordering on Harrison Bergeron territory.
- UC schools eliminating SAT as admission criteria, which is used to disproportionally hurts Asian applicants.
- Elite colleges like Harvard making their admissions less meritocratic and trying to limit Asian and Jewish admissions in favour of White, Black and Hispanic admissions. This is reminiscent of adding extra-curriculars to discriminate against Jewish students in first half of 20th century.
- Cancel culture taking things too far.
There should be enough places to live built as there are humans.
I wouldn't exactly call your typical middle class home owner an elite. Would you?
> There should be enough places to live built as there are humans.
We have the technology to build high and stack apartments, and the wealth to afford it. In many places, we just don't have the regulatory environment to do so legally.
The broken regulatory environment that exacerbates the problem is a consequence of elite competition: government not working for the public is caused by being captured by narrow interests, who work to corrupt its purpose.
The (upper) middle class homeowners who don't want apartments built nearby? They are, for various reasons, better represented by local governments than people who want to do new things. I agree that the concept of "elite" doesn't cover what's going on here, but there are echoes, because power is a spectrum.
That's the point I actually wanted to make.
Alas, not necessarily. Normal voters are perfectly capable of demanding broken stuff all by themselves. Voters (somewhat rationally!) behave like idiots.