While I strongly endorse your conclusion, I am less sure that the populist right is currently more dangerous than the populist left. Many of the opinions of the populist left are endorsed by academics and mainstream journalist.
Because of this they probably seem less like conspiracy theories to you and more like respectable evidence based views.
These ideas include
(1) belief that current gender affirming medical care benefits children.
(2) belief that we can rapidly replace fossil fuels with mainly intermittant renewable energy and still have high quality lives.
(3) belief that Israel is a settler colonial apartheid state committing genocide.
I'm not sure that these particular ideas are very dangerous. Gender transition for children, even if we assume that it's always bad, affects only that small minority of people who are, or strongly claim to be, transgender or gender-dysphoric, & that only in those states which haven't banned or strongly restricted medical transition for children. Green energy's intermittence would be much less of a problem if supplemented either by recently-much-improved battery technology or by natural gas (& even most progressives/leftists acknowledge that total abandonment of all fossil fuels is neither technologically nor politically practical at present). The condemnation of Israel's history of colonization as such is indeed bad, & the accusation of genocide (rather than mere acceptance of high enemy-civilian casualties) is wrong, but I'm not sure that they have any immediate practical importance: the most the anti-Israel people are likely to be able to do is reduce US aid to Israel, & I'm not sure they have the influence to do even that on a large scale.
If asked to name the actually practically dangerous left-populist ideas, I would list:
- The inclination towards regulation or socialism as a solution to economic problems
- Blaming capitalism for problems (the scarcity of housing, the unique problems of the American health-insurance system) that are actually caused by an insufficiently free market
- Leftist resentment of the rich & big corporations as such
- Credulity toward accusations of racism on the basis of disparate impact
- Dislike of consistent law enforcement against crime
I am afraid the notion that batteries can somehow solve the problem of intermittancy is simply not based on an even vaguely realistic view of the energy return on energy invested in manufacturing solar PV panels and the batteries that would be required to back up a grid relying on solar PV. This is particularly the case for high latitude countries. It may well be the case that future technical breakthrough in solar PV and storage can enable solar PV to replace fossil fuels in low latitude countries, however we are nowhere near that at present with current technology. The fact that you have the views you have is an example of how extremely dangerous ideas promoted on the left have become mainstream.
Solar PV and wind and batteries are fantastic for many applications, but there is no way they can replace fossil fuels completely as an energy source. Not unless we accept huge a major drop in living standards.
While you are correct that medical transitioning of children affects a small number of people, there are other ideas promoted by gender ideologues which are dangerous to large numbers of people. One of these is the notion that biological sex in humans is no longer a useful category, and that we should instead focus on gender identity. These views are promoted in the top scientific journals and by faculty in major Universities. Ignoriing biological sex has enormous implication for public health, medical research, and the safety of women and girls. It impact the rights of homosexuals. Ironically it also impacts the health of transgender people. It is an insane radical left idea now in the mainstream.
We shouldn't even be trying to decide what should replace fossil fuels. That's the kind of thing markets are good at and central planning is very bad at. Instead, we should establish a carbon tax, probably starting at about $10/ton and ramping incrementally up, maybe $10/ton/year for the first decade or so, then increasing the pace after that, and equivalent carbon tariffs. And the taxes should be fully refundable, so that anyone who builds and operates carbon capture and sequestration systems can get paid. The latter point is *essential* because you're right that we'll never get to zero carbon emissions... and in any case zero emissions is insufficient. We actually need to get to *negative* emissions.
Then, let the market sort it out.
My guess is that where we'll land is that civilization is primarily powered by overcapacity intermittent renewables coupled with short-term (e.g. battery) and long-term (e.g. pumped hydro and similar) storage, plus geothermal (especially in higher latitudes), maybe some nuclear... and probably still with some natural gas backups.
Ground transport will migrate almost entirely to battery-electric. Air transport will be battery-electric for short hops, and hybrid for longer distances... and those hybrid jets will be burning fossil fuels because synthetic kerosene is way too expensive. All in all, I expect us to settle at annual global emissions of maybe 5-10% of where they are today, and to offset that with various forms of capture that equal maybe 25% of what we emit today, getting us to 15-20% net negative. We might need even more capture than that to head off the worst impacts.
But the point is that those guesses could be entirely wrong. One or two new technologies could radically reshape the whole picture, and the best way to proceed is by deliberately *not* picking winners and losers, but just structuring the financial incentives to orient the market towards achieving net-negative carbon, then let the market figure it out.
I agree we should use market mechanisms and a carbon tax, but there should be a level field from a regulatory point of view.
There is a huge disparity between regulation of pollution from burning fossil fuels and biofuels (mainly air pollution) and pollution from nuclear energy (radioactivity).
Our regulations value a life lost to air pollution at least 100 times less than a live lost radioactivity. For example exposure to the 'safe level' of PM2.5 particles increases mortality by 0.7%, whereas exposure to the 'safe level' of radioactivity increases mortality by at most 0.0055%.
Also, when air pollution safe levels are exceeded there is no panic, and certainly no evacuation. In contrast, when radioactivity safe levels are exceeded there is panic and often mass evacuation, which is usually unecessary.
Apart from limiting our ability to reduce C02 emissions, this regulatory disparity is lethal. Burning fossil fuels and biofuels kills over 4 million people a year, whereas nuclear waste from civilian power plants has never harmed anyone.
The worst nuclear accident in history killed far fewer people (<4000) than the worst energy accident, which killed ~150,000 (Banqiao Dam collapse in 1975).
That’s certainly valid, but I think it’s lower-priority than managing carbon emissions. I don’t think climate change is an existential threat to humanity… but it may well be an existential threat to technological civilization, and even if it’s not that bad, it seems all but certain to kill not millions, but billions, mostly through famines and wars.
If we have any political capital left over after addressing carbon emissions then we should look at those other issues, assuming they still exist. Cutting carbon emissions will also reduce other pollution from burning fossil fuels.
I am not sure what your basis is for thinking that human CO2 emissions could result in billions of people dying.
That is certainly not in any IPCC forecast that I have seen.
What would the mechanism be?
Please bear in mind that warming and increases in CO2 have so far been associated with global greening and record levels of agricultural productivity over the past 40 years. There is zero sign of agricultural collapse.
I think it is reasonable to worry about unpredictable effects ('tipping points') but, by definition, no one knows what these are or how likely they are.
There are many existential risks to humanity that rank significantly higher than climate change, at least according to experts that have studied this. I recomend the book Precipice by Toby Ord.
The highest risks include non-aligned artificial superintelligence and engineered pandemics.
The reason I am probably less worried about 'tipping points' than you are is that long term records show that global average temperatures and CO2 levels were MUCH higher than they are now in the past 500 million years, and no tipping points were crossed while complex life flourished. We are in an unusually cold period in planetary history with unusually low CO2 levels.
The risk of political turmoil is obviously worrying but this is far more likely, in my view, if the western elites succeed in imposing energy scarcity on their countries and other countries. A more sensible approach is to reduce fossil fuel use by making electricity cheaper, driving automatic electrification and developing cheap ways to replace fossil fuels in areas where electrification is difficult.
Nuclear energy could provide industrial heat and the components (e.g. hydrogen) needed to make synthetic fuels in ways that make them cheaper than fossil fuels. This does, however, require a reduction in the regulatory obstacles to nuclear energy.
Unfortunately so many people who claim to care about reducing CO2 emissions are opposed to nuclear energy or dont think it will be helpful.
That suggests they don't really care about reducing fossil fuels use.
The views of the populist left may be similarly dangerous to those of the populist right, however what makes the populist right more dangerous is that the populists are currently in charge of the Republican party, whereas they're more sidelined in the Democratic party.
Is it true that they are sidelined in the Democratic Party? When Biden was in charge all three ideas mentioned above drove or strongly influenced white house policy. It seems to be necessary to affirm view 3 to win a Democrat primary.
The first idea yes, but I don't see how you could say the same about the other two. While Biden's admin did encourage renewable energy, they did not do anything so radical on the subject that it's comparable to the extremism and corruption that Crazy Donald's administration is pursuing.
Wrong, the general ideas, Foundation concepts that the right does come from is exactly what needs to be rebuilding the country because they allowed it to to allow the country to wither and die and now their left wing is actually going to break up because they will never agree ever again in the next few years on so many substitutes that the Democrat coalition will not exist.
Ful immigrant groups will at some point reject the government's ability to govern them and actually declare selfed termination.
I could see a group of somalis doing it and in Minnesota and nothing will be done about it.
I am okay with that.
I think this is what the look of balkanization and the USA by over a slow long period of time will start to happen and be, immigration has actually created many of these problems and some of you are still talking like we're just in a different version of 1997
They are in no way sidelined in the Democrat party. Just look at Mamdani and the slate of Democrat candidates for the House that he pushed through. Same everywhere.
The Democrats you mention are exclusively from deep blue districts, whereas the Republican extremists are in the White House, being worshipped by the entire party. Extremists are absolutely more central to the Republican party than the Democratic party.
Arguing that the populist left is worse than the populist right obscures the way each drives the other to even higher levels of stupidity. Without the loony left Trump would still be a grifter without a high government office on his resume. Without Trump I the DSA would not be a thing.
You should add all the insane economic ideas in there, which are also largely entertained by so-called academics. Ideas that lead to mass poverty and starvation.
The populist left is also anti renewables. They are anti building anything except 100% owned by the government public housing and even then, only when it goes through 5000 layers of review.
The right is mindlessly opposed to renewables in general.
The only people who are actually pro building energy generating and transmitting sources in general - renewables, gas, nuclear, etc. are mostly center left and moderates.
(1) The right care for the right children can help. Of course giving the wrong care can be harmful. Any surgery is risky, for instance, and should have a higher standard of caution involved. But to throw out all gender affirming care would harm the kids who have real dysphorias.
(2) Renewable energy is great! Solar is trying better all the time. Maybe nuclear fusion is finally on the horizon. Maybe the danger is in trying to replace fossil fuels too quickly, and maybe you're right about that, I don't know what the typical leftist or leftist politician would recommend? I want more renewables but I don't want sudden negative shocks to our energy system.
That's right Iceman, we are dangerous. And these ideas are especially dangerous because they're true.
I mean let's just look at #2 for example. I keep hearing how we can't afford to replace fossil fuels, but then I see virtually everyone on the highway driving a vehicle that gets about a third of the mpgs a standard sedan gets. And when I was a kid, everyone drove those. It certainly seems to me like our quality of life would be just fine if people drove normal sized vehicles again.
There are ideas and there are actions. The populist right stormed the capitol during the certification of a presidential election and injured over 100 police officers. There is no analog on the left. Holler about BLM riots all you want, those do not directly threaten the core institutions of governance. That's the meta-issue that supersedes all else. If we lose basic democratic governance, all policy differences and discussions are rendered moot.
As far as I can tell what they were trying to do was stop certification because they believed, incorrectly, that there had been electoral misconduct/electoral fraud. There is no obvious way that their action could have overturned the result unless there was shown to be electoral fraud. At worst it would have delayed certification. The rioting was obviously wrong but the only person killed was one of the rioters. The Capitol police were thrown under a bus by the strange refusal of Nancy Pelosi to allow better security.
You seem to have forgotten what Democrats and their allies did before that election.
(1) Manufactured a hoax about Russian collusion in order to try to have trump impeached.
(2) Suppress the fact that Hunter Biden's laptop had some deeply compromising information about his corruption.
(3) Make huge efforts to convict Trump of multiple seperate charges in order to stop him challenging Biden.
(4) The Biden Administration colluded in suppressing politically-incovenient social media stories.
Seems to me those are pretty serious attacks on core institutions.
If and when Republicans do the same sort of things there are rightly a pretty strong reactions.
Apparently they are OK if they are trying to stop MAGA/Trump.
Wow Anton, you really let the mask drop. Russia Hoax! Hunter Biden!
You are the exact kind of person Richard Hanania is writing about: you're smart, no doubt about it, but you've let your brain become fried by conspiratorial nonsense.
Are you seriously denying that the Russian collusion story was largely fabricated. I was completely convinced that Trump had colluded with Russia, only to find out, that the evidence behind this claim was non-existant. This is the conclusion of official non-partisan investigations.
Are you also denying that there was a concerted effort to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story? Like you I was fooled by the briefings that the story was Russian disinformation, only to feel like a complete idiot when it was confirmed.
Seems to me you views are driven primarily by hatred of MAGA/TRUMP. I am certainly no fan of them and was a Democrat until they decided that Israel needs to be thrown under a bus.
Yes. It found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign an Russia.
Did you read the Durham Report? It concluded that the FBI investigation into Russian collusion should not even have been initiated.
The fact that you clearly don't understand the content of these important reports confirm to me that you did not read them or, if you did, you did not understand them. I suspect you adopted the Democrat interpretation of the the reports, which was a joke.
Your post is a masterclass in constructing straw men. I shall used it as teaching material.
We probably do live in different universes, at least at this moment. Me in a reality based one, which does not mind accepting facts that contradict my prior views, and a narrative based Universe, which you clearly inhabit, which is deeply resistant to evidence.
Don't feel bad. Most human beings, myself included, occupy a narrative based Universe most of the time. This is likely why humans made so little technical progress until around 250 years ago, despite our intelligence. It was only when ruling elites in one part of the world (mainly Europe and its offshoots) started tolerating novel ideas rather than suppressing them that space was made for the tiny number of innovators willing to focus on reality. The result was the industrial revolution and progress since then has been orders of magnitude faster than the previous 100,000 years.
The only reason the reality based world now has traction is that those elites that focus on it become militarily undefeatable.
Our deep instinct for narrative likely comes from the fact that human survival has long depended on belonging to and cooperating with a group. Hence our capacity to believe almost anything our group believes in, however absurd, and our instinct to ostracise those who challenge those beliefs, especially in our own group.
I would address your substantive points, but you didn't make any. All this is is name-calling bullshit. Were there any actual facts in dispute that you want to talk about? I started with the capitol riot. You seem to be assigning zero responsibility to the actual rioters for any of the actual harm done that day. Your entire narrative seems to be that these poor people just had to smash down barricades, injure police, and threaten lawmakers because the democrats made them do it. Oh, and also that Nancy Pelosi didn't deploy extra security.
Why do you think the riot was wrong? Just because these poor people were tricked by the democrats and the media? They're just victims?
Can you actually read? I made it perfectly clear that I think that the Jan 6 riots were wrong. What seems to fool you is that I provide context which you find difficult to digest. Not sure why. Possibly because you have a deep loathing for MAGA republicans and my post did not reflect the same loathing to your satisfaction?
To me, it seems like there is a natural message for a "tech right", to point out the ways in which traditionally right-wing ideas align with the tech industry. In particular, regulation. You can hardly build anything in California any more! Look at the YC companies and notice how many of them are doing hardware, but leaving California for the physical stuff. This is bad for California, bad for the country, bad for the sort of industries that make jobs for the middle class.
I feel like this is inspiring a lot of the tech right in practice - SpaceX, Tesla, and Anduril are all companies that have suffered a lot from California's anti-building-things rules. a16z invests in a lot of companies that have a physical presence. But, honestly, yeah, it isn't really showing up in their public messaging. I don't really know what's going on politically. What I wish would happen is that the "tech right" finds common ground with the "abundance" faction of the Democrats and we actually make it possible to build factories in California. I feel like Elon Musk could have more impact politically picking one cause that he knows well and is very correct about (how various California regulations are too nitpicky) and hammer on that rather than his current media strategy.
Yes I have a very California-centric view here. But still. Wouldn't you expect this to be the place where a tech right could have impact? There's hardly any "traditional right" left, at the state level at least.
I totally agree that the absence of institutional knowledge-seeking bodies can lead people to embrace whatever fringe quackery they hear online. It's also a bipartisan phenomenon, and I think you'll increasingly see it on the Left in this populist age.
To the extent that universities and newsrooms fulfill the role of institutional bulwarks for truth on the Left, it is only really in departments with a more fact-based epistemology (hard sciences, microeconomics, factual reporting instead of opinion). Other parts of those orgs are as bad as any online chat forum, their window dressing of respectability notwithstanding.
The Tech Right seems to have fallen prey to the combined forces of 1) cognitive dissonance, 2) audience capture / echo chambers, and 3) unjustified expertise transfer (being good at X does not actually make one good at Y). Politics is a natural magnet for all of these.
I think your overall point on the tech right is correct but I have the impression (maybe naively) that not all of them are equally bad. I think the partial counterpoint would be Joe Lonsdale who with Cicero has founded a relatively influential think tank that focuses on state-level policy (less sexy than federal policy) and the best attempt so far at creating a non-woke but smart educational institution with UATX.
This doesn’t disprove your point as Elon himself is obviously more important and Lonsdale’s social media posting is often not much better (maybe one or two cheers for Joe Lonsdale instead of the full three) but it’s maybe a sign that if encouraged to channel their energy into the right type of projects they can do better. Trying to create think tanks or universities can lead to better outcomes as Catturd doesn’t have anything to say about how to do that and they are forced just by the nature of the project to consult less idiotic sources of information or at least delegate to people who are capable of doing that.
Most people are conformists that think how their social group thinks. The impulse to fit into one's social group is likely deeply evolutionary in nature. I feel this impulse all of the time: when I read enough people say that something is true, I just begin to emotionally assume that it has to be true. Going against the group is deeply petrifying to me. I am also autistic, so if bucking the group is difficult for me, I can't imagine how difficult it feels for conventionally successful and socially integrated people. To counter this tendency in any political movement, you probably need to get people to socially disengage from their broader groups and form smaller ones: group chats, blogs with an abundance of contributors, a distinct name for the niche social subgroup being formed. The 'tech right' never did this: they just migrated to MAGA spaces and then got captured by the group norms and beliefs of MAGA.
Marc lost his way. I used to work closely with him, and he was one of the top 10 smartest guys I've ever met. Listening to him now is confusing, ive really tried to understand where he is coming from, I remembered the old times where his vision beat mine, but his thoughts, recommendations, just did not add up. Very sad , and very surprising.
"I agreed with many on the Tech Right that the political class had overreacted to the COVID-19 pandemic and that newly prominent left-wing ideas on topics such as race and sexuality were both misguided and dangerous for society. Yet I was never under the impression that this meant the MAGA movement or popular podcasts were more trustworthy than actual experts on most issues. "
This is far too understated. The problem is that so many of the "actual experts" are no longer any such thing. That's what happens when your credentialing institutions are captured by ideologues - they lose all credibility.
"To solve our problems, there is no hope other than rebuilding the political culture so it can incorporate criticism and feedback. As we enter the final years of the Trump era, what remains of our established institutions should reckon with how censoriousness and ideological extremism fueled a backlash, while their critics need to work to reform those institutions rather than become cheerleaders for populist ignorance."
I see a path forward with the media landscape. Academia will need a lot of drastic changes - but it is probably coming for them anyway.
"Elon Musk’s signature government initiative was horrifying to watch from the perspective of someone who actually believes in the mission of reducing the size and scope of government."
I don't know about this. It's not great that he reduced state capacity without reducing spending, but this is only horrifying if you think that the spending is bad, but the state capacity was good. If you think spending and state capacity are both bad, we have a glass half full situation. One way to try to reduce the size and scope of government is to starve it of funding, but another way is to fire the people and shut down the departments that are doing things. It's not exactly crazy to hope that reducing state capacity might reduce the appetite for spending and the size of government's role in the economy, though it might be mistaken.
I totally agree with you about politics around vaccination.
I guess I was not clear - I would never go to politician about any science issue…
My problem is with you, treating people who are skeptical about a number of vaccines - you treat us as dumb which I think is pretty pathetic…a large number of serious doctors are looking into this matter for serious reasons… truly scientific reasons…
Plus selling vaccination as something completely harmless is ridiculous and anti science by itself. I certainly agreed that it saves a lot of lives, but as mentioned before, there are very rear treatments in this world that have no side effects which should be studied and known
Generally, people go towards the social center of gravity. You put a tech geek in the room with Joe Rogan, Tucker, or Candice, guess what you get?
Put another way; does the Tech Right understand political philosophy? History? Do they have *any* moral grounding for their views?
Some do. But, I'm willing to bet, most don't. And it would be unusual if someone spending large amounts of time and energy on developing technology did. There are some brilliant people who know alot about everything, but that's not how most people work.
So you you stir in some tech geeks with hard core conspiracy nuts and religious zealots, even if the Tech Right doesn't "buy" it, I bet they at least stay quiet and get rowed along. Especially when the alternative they see is Democrats trying to destroy everything.
Cool and I think you mentioned that in earlier writing but not in this post: the right has a tendency to deify power and money, so the billionaires walked into crowds that saw them as gods.
After being vilified by your former milieu, and perhaps by your own guilt, that must have felt so exhilarating that they couldn't resist.
Few actually resist the intellectual and moral decay of crowds of sycophants. You have such crowds on the left, but they tend to idolise other things than money and power.
If the cost of being surrounded by asskissers is your grip on reality, well fuck reality.
I would argue that only thanks to antivaxxers I was able to find some serious medical researches about Covid vaccines and some in vitro results that would never be published by officials otherwise…I am not a fan at all of conspiracy theories but current environment in science world is dismal, absolutely politically motivated and not a “real science” at all.
So the bottom line - it is very distinguishing :) to despise antivaxxers but they at least allow critical thinking in science world
"But I thought smarter conservatives had been selected to at least some extent for their independence of thought..."
The opposite. "Independence of thought" to conservatives is the lobbyist's independence portrayed in "Thank you for smoking". It's the freedom to think incredibly stupid things because you're paid, threatened, or otherwise pressured to think them. It's the freedom of thought that made Chaya Raichik a top X poster or made RFK Jr. the HHS secretary. You're free to think however you like, as long as you think how we like.
If you want to know why the tech right went right, this quote from Marc Andreessen in an interview with Ross Douthat in January 2025 tells you why. Marc & Co. went to the White House in May 2024 to talk about AI and this is what the Biden aides and staffers told them:
"Yes, the national agenda on A.I. We will implement it in the Biden administration and in the second term. We are going to make sure that A.I. is going to be a function of two or three large companies. We will directly regulate and control those companies. There will be no start-ups."
No start-ups. Marc sontinues:
"And that’s the day we walked out and stood in the parking lot of the West Wing and took one look at each other, and we’re like, 'Yep, we’re for Trump.'”
You see, start-ups are religion for the tech bros. They have a saving faith that the meaning of life, the universe, everything, is start-ups.
While I strongly endorse your conclusion, I am less sure that the populist right is currently more dangerous than the populist left. Many of the opinions of the populist left are endorsed by academics and mainstream journalist.
Because of this they probably seem less like conspiracy theories to you and more like respectable evidence based views.
These ideas include
(1) belief that current gender affirming medical care benefits children.
(2) belief that we can rapidly replace fossil fuels with mainly intermittant renewable energy and still have high quality lives.
(3) belief that Israel is a settler colonial apartheid state committing genocide.
I'm not sure that these particular ideas are very dangerous. Gender transition for children, even if we assume that it's always bad, affects only that small minority of people who are, or strongly claim to be, transgender or gender-dysphoric, & that only in those states which haven't banned or strongly restricted medical transition for children. Green energy's intermittence would be much less of a problem if supplemented either by recently-much-improved battery technology or by natural gas (& even most progressives/leftists acknowledge that total abandonment of all fossil fuels is neither technologically nor politically practical at present). The condemnation of Israel's history of colonization as such is indeed bad, & the accusation of genocide (rather than mere acceptance of high enemy-civilian casualties) is wrong, but I'm not sure that they have any immediate practical importance: the most the anti-Israel people are likely to be able to do is reduce US aid to Israel, & I'm not sure they have the influence to do even that on a large scale.
If asked to name the actually practically dangerous left-populist ideas, I would list:
- The inclination towards regulation or socialism as a solution to economic problems
- Blaming capitalism for problems (the scarcity of housing, the unique problems of the American health-insurance system) that are actually caused by an insufficiently free market
- Leftist resentment of the rich & big corporations as such
- Credulity toward accusations of racism on the basis of disparate impact
- Dislike of consistent law enforcement against crime
Don't underr-estimate the anti-Israel left.
I am afraid the notion that batteries can somehow solve the problem of intermittancy is simply not based on an even vaguely realistic view of the energy return on energy invested in manufacturing solar PV panels and the batteries that would be required to back up a grid relying on solar PV. This is particularly the case for high latitude countries. It may well be the case that future technical breakthrough in solar PV and storage can enable solar PV to replace fossil fuels in low latitude countries, however we are nowhere near that at present with current technology. The fact that you have the views you have is an example of how extremely dangerous ideas promoted on the left have become mainstream.
Solar PV and wind and batteries are fantastic for many applications, but there is no way they can replace fossil fuels completely as an energy source. Not unless we accept huge a major drop in living standards.
While you are correct that medical transitioning of children affects a small number of people, there are other ideas promoted by gender ideologues which are dangerous to large numbers of people. One of these is the notion that biological sex in humans is no longer a useful category, and that we should instead focus on gender identity. These views are promoted in the top scientific journals and by faculty in major Universities. Ignoriing biological sex has enormous implication for public health, medical research, and the safety of women and girls. It impact the rights of homosexuals. Ironically it also impacts the health of transgender people. It is an insane radical left idea now in the mainstream.
We shouldn't even be trying to decide what should replace fossil fuels. That's the kind of thing markets are good at and central planning is very bad at. Instead, we should establish a carbon tax, probably starting at about $10/ton and ramping incrementally up, maybe $10/ton/year for the first decade or so, then increasing the pace after that, and equivalent carbon tariffs. And the taxes should be fully refundable, so that anyone who builds and operates carbon capture and sequestration systems can get paid. The latter point is *essential* because you're right that we'll never get to zero carbon emissions... and in any case zero emissions is insufficient. We actually need to get to *negative* emissions.
Then, let the market sort it out.
My guess is that where we'll land is that civilization is primarily powered by overcapacity intermittent renewables coupled with short-term (e.g. battery) and long-term (e.g. pumped hydro and similar) storage, plus geothermal (especially in higher latitudes), maybe some nuclear... and probably still with some natural gas backups.
Ground transport will migrate almost entirely to battery-electric. Air transport will be battery-electric for short hops, and hybrid for longer distances... and those hybrid jets will be burning fossil fuels because synthetic kerosene is way too expensive. All in all, I expect us to settle at annual global emissions of maybe 5-10% of where they are today, and to offset that with various forms of capture that equal maybe 25% of what we emit today, getting us to 15-20% net negative. We might need even more capture than that to head off the worst impacts.
But the point is that those guesses could be entirely wrong. One or two new technologies could radically reshape the whole picture, and the best way to proceed is by deliberately *not* picking winners and losers, but just structuring the financial incentives to orient the market towards achieving net-negative carbon, then let the market figure it out.
I agree we should use market mechanisms and a carbon tax, but there should be a level field from a regulatory point of view.
There is a huge disparity between regulation of pollution from burning fossil fuels and biofuels (mainly air pollution) and pollution from nuclear energy (radioactivity).
Our regulations value a life lost to air pollution at least 100 times less than a live lost radioactivity. For example exposure to the 'safe level' of PM2.5 particles increases mortality by 0.7%, whereas exposure to the 'safe level' of radioactivity increases mortality by at most 0.0055%.
Also, when air pollution safe levels are exceeded there is no panic, and certainly no evacuation. In contrast, when radioactivity safe levels are exceeded there is panic and often mass evacuation, which is usually unecessary.
Apart from limiting our ability to reduce C02 emissions, this regulatory disparity is lethal. Burning fossil fuels and biofuels kills over 4 million people a year, whereas nuclear waste from civilian power plants has never harmed anyone.
The worst nuclear accident in history killed far fewer people (<4000) than the worst energy accident, which killed ~150,000 (Banqiao Dam collapse in 1975).
That’s certainly valid, but I think it’s lower-priority than managing carbon emissions. I don’t think climate change is an existential threat to humanity… but it may well be an existential threat to technological civilization, and even if it’s not that bad, it seems all but certain to kill not millions, but billions, mostly through famines and wars.
If we have any political capital left over after addressing carbon emissions then we should look at those other issues, assuming they still exist. Cutting carbon emissions will also reduce other pollution from burning fossil fuels.
I am not sure what your basis is for thinking that human CO2 emissions could result in billions of people dying.
That is certainly not in any IPCC forecast that I have seen.
What would the mechanism be?
Please bear in mind that warming and increases in CO2 have so far been associated with global greening and record levels of agricultural productivity over the past 40 years. There is zero sign of agricultural collapse.
I think it is reasonable to worry about unpredictable effects ('tipping points') but, by definition, no one knows what these are or how likely they are.
There are many existential risks to humanity that rank significantly higher than climate change, at least according to experts that have studied this. I recomend the book Precipice by Toby Ord.
The highest risks include non-aligned artificial superintelligence and engineered pandemics.
The reason I am probably less worried about 'tipping points' than you are is that long term records show that global average temperatures and CO2 levels were MUCH higher than they are now in the past 500 million years, and no tipping points were crossed while complex life flourished. We are in an unusually cold period in planetary history with unusually low CO2 levels.
The risk of political turmoil is obviously worrying but this is far more likely, in my view, if the western elites succeed in imposing energy scarcity on their countries and other countries. A more sensible approach is to reduce fossil fuel use by making electricity cheaper, driving automatic electrification and developing cheap ways to replace fossil fuels in areas where electrification is difficult.
Nuclear energy could provide industrial heat and the components (e.g. hydrogen) needed to make synthetic fuels in ways that make them cheaper than fossil fuels. This does, however, require a reduction in the regulatory obstacles to nuclear energy.
Unfortunately so many people who claim to care about reducing CO2 emissions are opposed to nuclear energy or dont think it will be helpful.
That suggests they don't really care about reducing fossil fuels use.
The views of the populist left may be similarly dangerous to those of the populist right, however what makes the populist right more dangerous is that the populists are currently in charge of the Republican party, whereas they're more sidelined in the Democratic party.
Is it true that they are sidelined in the Democratic Party? When Biden was in charge all three ideas mentioned above drove or strongly influenced white house policy. It seems to be necessary to affirm view 3 to win a Democrat primary.
The first idea yes, but I don't see how you could say the same about the other two. While Biden's admin did encourage renewable energy, they did not do anything so radical on the subject that it's comparable to the extremism and corruption that Crazy Donald's administration is pursuing.
Wrong, the general ideas, Foundation concepts that the right does come from is exactly what needs to be rebuilding the country because they allowed it to to allow the country to wither and die and now their left wing is actually going to break up because they will never agree ever again in the next few years on so many substitutes that the Democrat coalition will not exist.
Ful immigrant groups will at some point reject the government's ability to govern them and actually declare selfed termination.
I could see a group of somalis doing it and in Minnesota and nothing will be done about it.
I am okay with that.
I think this is what the look of balkanization and the USA by over a slow long period of time will start to happen and be, immigration has actually created many of these problems and some of you are still talking like we're just in a different version of 1997
They are in no way sidelined in the Democrat party. Just look at Mamdani and the slate of Democrat candidates for the House that he pushed through. Same everywhere.
The Democrats you mention are exclusively from deep blue districts, whereas the Republican extremists are in the White House, being worshipped by the entire party. Extremists are absolutely more central to the Republican party than the Democratic party.
Arguing that the populist left is worse than the populist right obscures the way each drives the other to even higher levels of stupidity. Without the loony left Trump would still be a grifter without a high government office on his resume. Without Trump I the DSA would not be a thing.
DSA was already in full swing under Obama. Who was carefully nurturing it. At that point, Trump was not even a thought.
You should add all the insane economic ideas in there, which are also largely entertained by so-called academics. Ideas that lead to mass poverty and starvation.
The populist left is also anti renewables. They are anti building anything except 100% owned by the government public housing and even then, only when it goes through 5000 layers of review.
The right is mindlessly opposed to renewables in general.
The only people who are actually pro building energy generating and transmitting sources in general - renewables, gas, nuclear, etc. are mostly center left and moderates.
Alright I'll bite.
(1) The right care for the right children can help. Of course giving the wrong care can be harmful. Any surgery is risky, for instance, and should have a higher standard of caution involved. But to throw out all gender affirming care would harm the kids who have real dysphorias.
(2) Renewable energy is great! Solar is trying better all the time. Maybe nuclear fusion is finally on the horizon. Maybe the danger is in trying to replace fossil fuels too quickly, and maybe you're right about that, I don't know what the typical leftist or leftist politician would recommend? I want more renewables but I don't want sudden negative shocks to our energy system.
(3) That's inaccurate/harmful how exactly?
That's right Iceman, we are dangerous. And these ideas are especially dangerous because they're true.
I mean let's just look at #2 for example. I keep hearing how we can't afford to replace fossil fuels, but then I see virtually everyone on the highway driving a vehicle that gets about a third of the mpgs a standard sedan gets. And when I was a kid, everyone drove those. It certainly seems to me like our quality of life would be just fine if people drove normal sized vehicles again.
There are ideas and there are actions. The populist right stormed the capitol during the certification of a presidential election and injured over 100 police officers. There is no analog on the left. Holler about BLM riots all you want, those do not directly threaten the core institutions of governance. That's the meta-issue that supersedes all else. If we lose basic democratic governance, all policy differences and discussions are rendered moot.
So this both-sides equivocation is just hot air.
As far as I can tell what they were trying to do was stop certification because they believed, incorrectly, that there had been electoral misconduct/electoral fraud. There is no obvious way that their action could have overturned the result unless there was shown to be electoral fraud. At worst it would have delayed certification. The rioting was obviously wrong but the only person killed was one of the rioters. The Capitol police were thrown under a bus by the strange refusal of Nancy Pelosi to allow better security.
You seem to have forgotten what Democrats and their allies did before that election.
(1) Manufactured a hoax about Russian collusion in order to try to have trump impeached.
(2) Suppress the fact that Hunter Biden's laptop had some deeply compromising information about his corruption.
(3) Make huge efforts to convict Trump of multiple seperate charges in order to stop him challenging Biden.
(4) The Biden Administration colluded in suppressing politically-incovenient social media stories.
Seems to me those are pretty serious attacks on core institutions.
If and when Republicans do the same sort of things there are rightly a pretty strong reactions.
Apparently they are OK if they are trying to stop MAGA/Trump.
Wow Anton, you really let the mask drop. Russia Hoax! Hunter Biden!
You are the exact kind of person Richard Hanania is writing about: you're smart, no doubt about it, but you've let your brain become fried by conspiratorial nonsense.
Are you seriously denying that the Russian collusion story was largely fabricated. I was completely convinced that Trump had colluded with Russia, only to find out, that the evidence behind this claim was non-existant. This is the conclusion of official non-partisan investigations.
Are you also denying that there was a concerted effort to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story? Like you I was fooled by the briefings that the story was Russian disinformation, only to feel like a complete idiot when it was confirmed.
Seems to me you views are driven primarily by hatred of MAGA/TRUMP. I am certainly no fan of them and was a Democrat until they decided that Israel needs to be thrown under a bus.
Uh huh. Did you actually read the Mueller Report?
Yes. It found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign an Russia.
Did you read the Durham Report? It concluded that the FBI investigation into Russian collusion should not even have been initiated.
The fact that you clearly don't understand the content of these important reports confirm to me that you did not read them or, if you did, you did not understand them. I suspect you adopted the Democrat interpretation of the the reports, which was a joke.
You are not serious person. Don't waste my time.
So let me see if I've got this right...
1. The capitol riot was 'wrong', but only because it was based on faulty premises?
2. It was never a threat of any kind.
3. The negative consequences are actually the democrats' fault.
4. The bigger threat to democracy is the democrats.
I have that right? That's what you're saying?
We truly are living in different universes. Not sure how we're supposed to bridge that gap.
Your post is a masterclass in constructing straw men. I shall used it as teaching material.
We probably do live in different universes, at least at this moment. Me in a reality based one, which does not mind accepting facts that contradict my prior views, and a narrative based Universe, which you clearly inhabit, which is deeply resistant to evidence.
Don't feel bad. Most human beings, myself included, occupy a narrative based Universe most of the time. This is likely why humans made so little technical progress until around 250 years ago, despite our intelligence. It was only when ruling elites in one part of the world (mainly Europe and its offshoots) started tolerating novel ideas rather than suppressing them that space was made for the tiny number of innovators willing to focus on reality. The result was the industrial revolution and progress since then has been orders of magnitude faster than the previous 100,000 years.
The only reason the reality based world now has traction is that those elites that focus on it become militarily undefeatable.
Our deep instinct for narrative likely comes from the fact that human survival has long depended on belonging to and cooperating with a group. Hence our capacity to believe almost anything our group believes in, however absurd, and our instinct to ostracise those who challenge those beliefs, especially in our own group.
I would address your substantive points, but you didn't make any. All this is is name-calling bullshit. Were there any actual facts in dispute that you want to talk about? I started with the capitol riot. You seem to be assigning zero responsibility to the actual rioters for any of the actual harm done that day. Your entire narrative seems to be that these poor people just had to smash down barricades, injure police, and threaten lawmakers because the democrats made them do it. Oh, and also that Nancy Pelosi didn't deploy extra security.
Why do you think the riot was wrong? Just because these poor people were tricked by the democrats and the media? They're just victims?
Can you actually read? I made it perfectly clear that I think that the Jan 6 riots were wrong. What seems to fool you is that I provide context which you find difficult to digest. Not sure why. Possibly because you have a deep loathing for MAGA republicans and my post did not reflect the same loathing to your satisfaction?
To me, it seems like there is a natural message for a "tech right", to point out the ways in which traditionally right-wing ideas align with the tech industry. In particular, regulation. You can hardly build anything in California any more! Look at the YC companies and notice how many of them are doing hardware, but leaving California for the physical stuff. This is bad for California, bad for the country, bad for the sort of industries that make jobs for the middle class.
I feel like this is inspiring a lot of the tech right in practice - SpaceX, Tesla, and Anduril are all companies that have suffered a lot from California's anti-building-things rules. a16z invests in a lot of companies that have a physical presence. But, honestly, yeah, it isn't really showing up in their public messaging. I don't really know what's going on politically. What I wish would happen is that the "tech right" finds common ground with the "abundance" faction of the Democrats and we actually make it possible to build factories in California. I feel like Elon Musk could have more impact politically picking one cause that he knows well and is very correct about (how various California regulations are too nitpicky) and hammer on that rather than his current media strategy.
Yes I have a very California-centric view here. But still. Wouldn't you expect this to be the place where a tech right could have impact? There's hardly any "traditional right" left, at the state level at least.
I totally agree that the absence of institutional knowledge-seeking bodies can lead people to embrace whatever fringe quackery they hear online. It's also a bipartisan phenomenon, and I think you'll increasingly see it on the Left in this populist age.
To the extent that universities and newsrooms fulfill the role of institutional bulwarks for truth on the Left, it is only really in departments with a more fact-based epistemology (hard sciences, microeconomics, factual reporting instead of opinion). Other parts of those orgs are as bad as any online chat forum, their window dressing of respectability notwithstanding.
The Tech Right seems to have fallen prey to the combined forces of 1) cognitive dissonance, 2) audience capture / echo chambers, and 3) unjustified expertise transfer (being good at X does not actually make one good at Y). Politics is a natural magnet for all of these.
I think your overall point on the tech right is correct but I have the impression (maybe naively) that not all of them are equally bad. I think the partial counterpoint would be Joe Lonsdale who with Cicero has founded a relatively influential think tank that focuses on state-level policy (less sexy than federal policy) and the best attempt so far at creating a non-woke but smart educational institution with UATX.
This doesn’t disprove your point as Elon himself is obviously more important and Lonsdale’s social media posting is often not much better (maybe one or two cheers for Joe Lonsdale instead of the full three) but it’s maybe a sign that if encouraged to channel their energy into the right type of projects they can do better. Trying to create think tanks or universities can lead to better outcomes as Catturd doesn’t have anything to say about how to do that and they are forced just by the nature of the project to consult less idiotic sources of information or at least delegate to people who are capable of doing that.
Most people are conformists that think how their social group thinks. The impulse to fit into one's social group is likely deeply evolutionary in nature. I feel this impulse all of the time: when I read enough people say that something is true, I just begin to emotionally assume that it has to be true. Going against the group is deeply petrifying to me. I am also autistic, so if bucking the group is difficult for me, I can't imagine how difficult it feels for conventionally successful and socially integrated people. To counter this tendency in any political movement, you probably need to get people to socially disengage from their broader groups and form smaller ones: group chats, blogs with an abundance of contributors, a distinct name for the niche social subgroup being formed. The 'tech right' never did this: they just migrated to MAGA spaces and then got captured by the group norms and beliefs of MAGA.
Thanks for the explanation of how
Marc lost his way. I used to work closely with him, and he was one of the top 10 smartest guys I've ever met. Listening to him now is confusing, ive really tried to understand where he is coming from, I remembered the old times where his vision beat mine, but his thoughts, recommendations, just did not add up. Very sad , and very surprising.
"I agreed with many on the Tech Right that the political class had overreacted to the COVID-19 pandemic and that newly prominent left-wing ideas on topics such as race and sexuality were both misguided and dangerous for society. Yet I was never under the impression that this meant the MAGA movement or popular podcasts were more trustworthy than actual experts on most issues. "
This is far too understated. The problem is that so many of the "actual experts" are no longer any such thing. That's what happens when your credentialing institutions are captured by ideologues - they lose all credibility.
"To solve our problems, there is no hope other than rebuilding the political culture so it can incorporate criticism and feedback. As we enter the final years of the Trump era, what remains of our established institutions should reckon with how censoriousness and ideological extremism fueled a backlash, while their critics need to work to reform those institutions rather than become cheerleaders for populist ignorance."
I see a path forward with the media landscape. Academia will need a lot of drastic changes - but it is probably coming for them anyway.
"Elon Musk’s signature government initiative was horrifying to watch from the perspective of someone who actually believes in the mission of reducing the size and scope of government."
I don't know about this. It's not great that he reduced state capacity without reducing spending, but this is only horrifying if you think that the spending is bad, but the state capacity was good. If you think spending and state capacity are both bad, we have a glass half full situation. One way to try to reduce the size and scope of government is to starve it of funding, but another way is to fire the people and shut down the departments that are doing things. It's not exactly crazy to hope that reducing state capacity might reduce the appetite for spending and the size of government's role in the economy, though it might be mistaken.
I think it's bad to gleefully ruin people's lives.
Bleak.
I totally agree with you about politics around vaccination.
I guess I was not clear - I would never go to politician about any science issue…
My problem is with you, treating people who are skeptical about a number of vaccines - you treat us as dumb which I think is pretty pathetic…a large number of serious doctors are looking into this matter for serious reasons… truly scientific reasons…
Plus selling vaccination as something completely harmless is ridiculous and anti science by itself. I certainly agreed that it saves a lot of lives, but as mentioned before, there are very rear treatments in this world that have no side effects which should be studied and known
Generally, people go towards the social center of gravity. You put a tech geek in the room with Joe Rogan, Tucker, or Candice, guess what you get?
Put another way; does the Tech Right understand political philosophy? History? Do they have *any* moral grounding for their views?
Some do. But, I'm willing to bet, most don't. And it would be unusual if someone spending large amounts of time and energy on developing technology did. There are some brilliant people who know alot about everything, but that's not how most people work.
So you you stir in some tech geeks with hard core conspiracy nuts and religious zealots, even if the Tech Right doesn't "buy" it, I bet they at least stay quiet and get rowed along. Especially when the alternative they see is Democrats trying to destroy everything.
Cool and I think you mentioned that in earlier writing but not in this post: the right has a tendency to deify power and money, so the billionaires walked into crowds that saw them as gods.
After being vilified by your former milieu, and perhaps by your own guilt, that must have felt so exhilarating that they couldn't resist.
Few actually resist the intellectual and moral decay of crowds of sycophants. You have such crowds on the left, but they tend to idolise other things than money and power.
If the cost of being surrounded by asskissers is your grip on reality, well fuck reality.
I would argue that only thanks to antivaxxers I was able to find some serious medical researches about Covid vaccines and some in vitro results that would never be published by officials otherwise…I am not a fan at all of conspiracy theories but current environment in science world is dismal, absolutely politically motivated and not a “real science” at all.
So the bottom line - it is very distinguishing :) to despise antivaxxers but they at least allow critical thinking in science world
"But I thought smarter conservatives had been selected to at least some extent for their independence of thought..."
The opposite. "Independence of thought" to conservatives is the lobbyist's independence portrayed in "Thank you for smoking". It's the freedom to think incredibly stupid things because you're paid, threatened, or otherwise pressured to think them. It's the freedom of thought that made Chaya Raichik a top X poster or made RFK Jr. the HHS secretary. You're free to think however you like, as long as you think how we like.
Isn't this exactly what Corey Robin would have predicted?
If you want to know why the tech right went right, this quote from Marc Andreessen in an interview with Ross Douthat in January 2025 tells you why. Marc & Co. went to the White House in May 2024 to talk about AI and this is what the Biden aides and staffers told them:
"Yes, the national agenda on A.I. We will implement it in the Biden administration and in the second term. We are going to make sure that A.I. is going to be a function of two or three large companies. We will directly regulate and control those companies. There will be no start-ups."
No start-ups. Marc sontinues:
"And that’s the day we walked out and stood in the parking lot of the West Wing and took one look at each other, and we’re like, 'Yep, we’re for Trump.'”
You see, start-ups are religion for the tech bros. They have a saving faith that the meaning of life, the universe, everything, is start-ups.