Those seem like attempts to extend the useful life of the current regime by trying to organize around doing more of the things that originally won it legitimacy, rather than to productively criticize or supersede it. Sometimes you should patch up an old thing rather than buy a new one, sometimes this is false economy because the cost of upkeep is higher than the amortized cost of replacement, and sometimes you’re driving around in an explosive death trap or breathing mold every day making you sick when you should really just get a safe new car or house built from scratch.
I would put Tyler Cowen in the same category, accepting things like GDP as the best politically available target to organize around, but trying to persuade people to do good rather than bad things to raise the GDP.
Progressivism seems like a third degree simulacral procession from Whig Theory of History, which is at least a theory. Whig Theory of History relates to progress as a contingent claim to be asserted about aggregates, which is meaningful because it lawfully decomposes into constituent facts we care about. Progressivism seems to inherit the emotional loading of the term as a given and then situate intentions relative to it.
Progress Studies and Works in Progress seem to be relying on “progress” as something whose value & reality is uncontested even if its specific meaning is unclear and the rollout is uneven.
To what extent do you think this manifests in the progress studies movement, in the sense of the cluster(s) coordinated around https://rootsofprogress.org/ or https://worksinprogress.co/ ?
Those seem like attempts to extend the useful life of the current regime by trying to organize around doing more of the things that originally won it legitimacy, rather than to productively criticize or supersede it. Sometimes you should patch up an old thing rather than buy a new one, sometimes this is false economy because the cost of upkeep is higher than the amortized cost of replacement, and sometimes you’re driving around in an explosive death trap or breathing mold every day making you sick when you should really just get a safe new car or house built from scratch.
I would put Tyler Cowen in the same category, accepting things like GDP as the best politically available target to organize around, but trying to persuade people to do good rather than bad things to raise the GDP.
Are we sure that those are examples of progressivism rather than using the same word to describe themselves?
Progressivism seems like a third degree simulacral procession from Whig Theory of History, which is at least a theory. Whig Theory of History relates to progress as a contingent claim to be asserted about aggregates, which is meaningful because it lawfully decomposes into constituent facts we care about. Progressivism seems to inherit the emotional loading of the term as a given and then situate intentions relative to it.
Progress Studies and Works in Progress seem to be relying on “progress” as something whose value & reality is uncontested even if its specific meaning is unclear and the rollout is uneven.
I am not sure, which is why I asked Benquo for his take ¯\(ツ)/¯