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I think a lot of folks rightly observe and articulate the problems of modernity—atomized communities, deteriorating metabolic health, ever-more industrial consolidation, etc—and assume they result from the natural progression of a humanity imperfectly directed by a central planning authority.
In their view, fixing them requires a better authority rather than no authority at all. Examples: Wendell Berry advocates for price controls in agriculture and different types of price supports, many New Urbanists seek new/different land use prescriptions and federal infrastructure subsidies, etc.
My sense is they advocate for these things with a kind of resignation: "It's just too that bad people, if left to their own devices, can't freely collaborate toward a better world. It's just too bad that people must have some sort of authority giving them direction."
But the more I pick at any failure of modernity, the more it seems to me that it is precisely the authorities' inevitable misdirection that caused the problem. In the case of land use and the changing patterns of human settlement (an area about which I know more than a little) it seems so inescapably obvious nowadays that even those who are politically inclined toward central planning reluctantly acknowledge it. And the more I learn about agriculture, the more I see the same pattern repeating itself there.
So, I don't quite get the pessimism. We don't need to try to solve the unsolvable problem of creating a better authority. If someone hangs on to that as the necessary path, I can see why they'd be pessimistic; history shows us that can't be done!
But we can begin cutting Gordian knots. Ending intervention. Ending interference. Ending micromanagement. Ending central planning. Etc etc. When enough people appreciate that the central planners caused the problems, we will end the central planning. And more people appreciate that now than a decade ago. And more appreciated that a decade ago than the decade prior.
So while I hear weariness and pessimism in the voices of some wise and battle-scarred critics of modernity, I'm optimistic: The path forward seems so obvious to me, and every year that passes, it seems to become increasingly obvious to more and more people. Before one can walk the way, one needs to know the way.
Geoff Graham@ggraham
An excellent discussion with @GGunthorp on @DoomerOptimism about how our food system came to be what it is. So many parallels with our built environment. Sprawl didn’t “just happen”. Neither did industrial agriculture.
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