Samantha Hancox-Li’s analysis offers an illustrative case of how political action can become paralyzed when symbolic virtue signaling overtakes structural governance. Her essay documents, with precision and sobriety, the functional consequences of a political culture increasingly focused on emotional expression rather than material effectiveness. It provides a valuable empirical snapshot of a deeper structural crisis.
I agree that the Democrats need to actually do things on the state level, but with anything related to Abundance theory I really need to hear specific examples of who is getting kicked out of the tent (if that is even possible.). When we talk about things in a vague way like this, without attaching names of politicians, it's hard to figure out what your visions is. The Michigan Democrats are very different than Minnesota Democrats in how they govern, but they're both purple state Democratic parties.
102K in a state of like what? 45 million? There's a political sorting going on, people who love Trump are leaving California for Idaho and Texas. Trump got more votes in California than any state in the US in 2020, I don't want to spend time looking up 2024. This is a separate issue than what is going on with Democratic governance. The people leaving California aren't leaving because they want a more generous social safety net. Affordable housing is probably the single biggest issue for middle of the road voters and NIMBY policies are why, not bad Democratic politicians
That's true but we can't keep with this circular firing squad that if only Democrats would provide more left wing policies it would solve everything. People were mad in 2024 about gas prices and eggs, and are still mad about housing costs. Medicare for All doesn't address any of that
I also think the Dems have gone too far left in certain cultural areas. This business of permitting biological males to compete in women’s sports is an example.
It doesn’t affect many people but it was a popular Republican talking point.
I don't know how we overcome the perception on this, but it's like 14 people nationwide. And I would wager that almost every Republican super upset by this never paid attention to girls sports prior to 2016
I forget the exact numbers but at every level talent weighs way more heavily, children's soccer everyone plays, middle school less people make the team, high school even less people make the team, by college it's really been sorted. Also parents freak out way more about children's games than they do about college.
Also Harris didn't run on any kind of transgender kids in sports policy. It was just a smear. Leave the poor kids alone is the most you could say about what Democratic policy is. I can't imagine the social cost of dealing with gender identity, especially right now, but it's not small
It’s more than 14 although it’s not a large number. I’m not talking about children, I’m talking about adult males, who are bigger and stronger than females.
Lia Thomas was a mediocre swimmer competing with men but was a champion competing with women. This is deeply unfair to women.
It's the voters. It's not a top down issue. San Francisco protecting it's "historic laundromat" and shutting down a new mid rise apartment tower because it would cast shadows an hour or so a day on a school playground isn't happening because out of control city bureaucrats are ignoring the will of the people
Californians are very liberal on social issues. They are deeply conservative on housing. They're happy to support all kinds of things as long as those things don't make their neighborhood change ever. They're not going to shift their views on property if Democrats get more left wing. I'm leaning on California because the author called it out but it's housing everywhere, that's the problem. Nobody is moving to Texas because they're upset at Democrats
Nobody is moving to Texas in quest of high-density urbanism;. Sneer at "NIMBYs" to your heart's content, but the real problem is that California (a viuctiom of its own success) has become too crowded.
A half acre of land in Brooklyn will cost $2 - $10 million dollars. Whether you are a developer or a taxpayer, affordable housing simply has nothing to do with NIMBY. There is just no room to build.
I hate that you tar all Democrats with the same brush. Bernie Sanders is not afraid of power nor would AOC be, if she had power. When Bernie was mayor of Burlington, he created the Champlaiin Community Land Trust, that now manages 3000 units of housing that is affordable in perpetuity. That bis 7.6% of housing in Burlington. And it gets a little bigger every year.
Building housing is no solution if it is all market rate, which is nearly all of what the Yimbys are in support of.
Finally, Bernie was on a path to win the Democratic nomination in 2020, when nearly all of the Democratic conspired to block him. Not only would he have won, we would be celebrating his second term now.
San Francisco has issued thousands of market rate housing permits and rates have stayed really high. In fact, whenmarket rate housing is built, rates go up in nearby buildings.
San Francisco issued 16 housing permits in 2024. That's far from thousands. It has a long way to go before it becomes as cheap as Dallas or Austin. It sounds like a lot more red tape needs to be cleared. San Francisco is a hub of industry, it should have a huge, rapidly changing skyline like on of those newly rich Chinese cities.
Don't get me wrong, affordable and market rate housing are both good. They should build whatever is easier. What's important is to build.
You don’t address civil rights here. How do people whose very existence is dependent upon the outcomes of elections—I am one of those people—put aside their existential concerns for a possible winning strategy.
Can you see how hard it is not to focus on the genocide and instead pour yourself into nuts and bolts issues?
From the perspective of true allies (as opposed to, say, the Seth Moultons and Gavin Newsomes of the world), it’s the same calculus.
In short, voting to get the trains to run on time is all very well and good except that the tracks are always laid on top of our backs.
I address civil rights explicitly. They are mentioned in the piece. This is one area that Democrats are leagues ahead of Republicans. But I do not believe that there is some tradeoff between civil rights and building housing. We can do both.
The Trump campaign operated from the perspective that denying people civil rights was job one and there was no job two. That’s how movements based on hate work. This is not to say we can’t outperform that message with effective people focused initiatives, as team AOC/Bernie are showing.
You have some valid points, however, you are also using a VERY broad brush to tar and feather Democrats. You used a comparison of California and Texas to make several points. I want to clarify one comparison in particular. You stated the following:
"Texas, home to oil, gas, and cowboys, is also building vastly more green energy than crunchy hippie California." Yes, currently Texas is the national leader in NEW construction of renewable/green energy. However, here are the facts about the existing infrastructure and production of renewable energy for the two states:
California – 54% of their power generation is from renewable energy.
39% of their energy comes from natural gas.
They are the national leader in SOLAR power production.
NOTE: California is on track to achieve their goal of 60% emission-free energy by 2030.
Texas – 25% of their power generation is from renewable energy.
50% of their energy comes from natural gas.
They are the national leader in WIND power production.
NOTE: Texas has a plan to be 28% renewable power generation by 2030.
It's important to give full and transparent facts, especially when comparing two states that are at almost polar opposite ends of the political spectrum. I understand your points about mistakes and questionable decisions and policies undertaken by Democratic leadership over the years. However, regarding the abortion issue, the difference between Texas and California is STARK:
TEXAS - The law prohibits almost all abortions, with exceptions only to save the life of the pregnant patient or to prevent serious and permanent impairment of a major bodily function. Individuals who perform or induce abortions face civil and criminal penalties, including potential imprisonment and fines.
CALIFORNIA - Abortion is legal in California up to the point of fetal viability, and the state has laws and initiatives in place to ensure access to abortion services. California's constitution explicitly protects the right to reproductive decisions, including abortion.
We are in very, VERY strange and dangerous times and I believe communication honestly and accurately is critically important if we are to regain the trust and votes of those who felt the Republicans and, most important of all, a convicted felon, liar and sexual predator offered a better future.
One thing I'd like to wonder out loud to you and others - is why is it always "YIMBYism" - right there, in the name - to put something into an existing backyard? Even under the "abundance" banner, it seems like it boils down to jamming rowhouses in an urban center.
For once, I'd like to see a blue state decide to build up new communities - if we're already to the stage of cutting red tape, why can't we incorporate some new townships or whatever and give Americans what they really want: a nice new home in a subdivision, or the ability to build a new home easily on some land? Abundance is nice, but we also need to answer: an abundance of what?
It's telling that the blue tribe are the urbanites, because so many of these arguments seem to focus on increasing access to services and housing in city centers. I'm a little over my skies in a discussion like this, but look at those fast-growing red states. The new housing is, if I'm not mistaken, basically sprawling out the metro area of cities like Dallas - not jamming more people within the city limits. That's what people want - a house with a deck and a lawn, not loft-space in an old downtown factory building.
Maybe more of the blue discourse on YIMBYISM / Abundance / name-of-the-moment is treating down my purposed path, but I've found most of what I read is either too vague or uses examples from the author's own life, which usually boil down to fights over bike lanes or subway lines.
"I’d like to finish with a point that is perhaps controversial and unoriginal but needs to be hammered home; it should now be crystal clear that Democrats are steadily alienating male voters – mostly white ones, but increasingly many who are nonwhite. This is dismissed as “misogyny” by many Democrats and there is certainly plenty of that. But when one gender and one race is singled out as the source of all that is evil and nothing that is good in a nation that they themselves were instrumental in building (to say the least), members of that group can become disheartened. No one wants to be a member of a party that considers him the enemy. I must say that I share this feeling (I have never oppressed anyone). For me, no amount of frustration with Democrats would ever make me vote for human beings as despicable as Donald Trump and his brownshirts. But clearly, tens of millions of men -- white, black and brown – overcame whatever distaste for Trump they might have had and did just that."
Seems to me a crucial social difference is that when conservatives are mad at R politicians, they...vote for them anyway. When (name the group) are mad at D politicians, they don't. And Rs can keep their eyes on a goal for 30 years, while Ds get distracted by squirrels.
A story for you - My wife has a friend who was elected to the city council. Murph, that's her name, has this perspective. "I have potholes to fix. They are not Republican potholes or Democrat potholes. They just need to be fixed." Murph is a pragmatist. We need more citizens like Murph. Democrats, as you suggest, are more interested in virtue signaling than they are in fixing potholes. However, Trump's followers are no different. Transgender issues, immigration and foreigners ripping us off are tiny virtue events that are magnified by the power hungry. Like our current president. Those of us still occupying the middle ground must forgo the emotional gratification of supporting the oppressed. The oppressor/oppressed ideology tore up Columbia University, The Bronx Defenders, Russia, Cuba, currently the Republican Party and soon it will tear up the United States. A concerned and informed citizenry is essential as the founders of the country declared. We need to get back to building a future for ourselves as opposed to what my kids have noted "Trump is trading honeybees for cockroaches".
"We Democrats...want to believe that we have the sane policies..."
The only policy that I have seen from the Democratic Party since 2016 is "We're not Trump." You have no policy about the staggering income inequality. You have no policy about the homeless crisis, while there are millions of empty houses and apartments across the US. You have no policy about the Israeli IDF training police departments across the country.
Literally the majority of the article was about the main solution to the homeless crisis. The solution is: build more housing to bring the market rate down in the places where it's expensive. If housing is cheaper, more people can afford it.
It does not make any difference that there are millions of empty houses if they aren't where people want to live. Giving a homeless person who lives and works in New York City a house in rural Mississippi or suburban Detroit is not helping them.
Income inequality isn't as important as raising the typical person's income. If policies improve the lot of the average person it doesn't matter if they also make a few people obscenely wealthy.
Proportional multi-member districts still keep 3rd parties off the bottom rungs of the ladder. If 5 representatives are elected from a district, that is an effective minimum of 20% of vote to get any representation at all. Mixed-member proportional solves this problem and makes effective gerrymandering impossible.
Samantha Hancox-Li’s analysis offers an illustrative case of how political action can become paralyzed when symbolic virtue signaling overtakes structural governance. Her essay documents, with precision and sobriety, the functional consequences of a political culture increasingly focused on emotional expression rather than material effectiveness. It provides a valuable empirical snapshot of a deeper structural crisis.
Well put!
I agree that the Democrats need to actually do things on the state level, but with anything related to Abundance theory I really need to hear specific examples of who is getting kicked out of the tent (if that is even possible.). When we talk about things in a vague way like this, without attaching names of politicians, it's hard to figure out what your visions is. The Michigan Democrats are very different than Minnesota Democrats in how they govern, but they're both purple state Democratic parties.
102K in a state of like what? 45 million? There's a political sorting going on, people who love Trump are leaving California for Idaho and Texas. Trump got more votes in California than any state in the US in 2020, I don't want to spend time looking up 2024. This is a separate issue than what is going on with Democratic governance. The people leaving California aren't leaving because they want a more generous social safety net. Affordable housing is probably the single biggest issue for middle of the road voters and NIMBY policies are why, not bad Democratic politicians
Partly because California is a beautiful place and Texas isn’t. Nothing to do with politics.
That's true but we can't keep with this circular firing squad that if only Democrats would provide more left wing policies it would solve everything. People were mad in 2024 about gas prices and eggs, and are still mad about housing costs. Medicare for All doesn't address any of that
Cool name btw
I also think the Dems have gone too far left in certain cultural areas. This business of permitting biological males to compete in women’s sports is an example.
It doesn’t affect many people but it was a popular Republican talking point.
I don't know how we overcome the perception on this, but it's like 14 people nationwide. And I would wager that almost every Republican super upset by this never paid attention to girls sports prior to 2016
I forget the exact numbers but at every level talent weighs way more heavily, children's soccer everyone plays, middle school less people make the team, high school even less people make the team, by college it's really been sorted. Also parents freak out way more about children's games than they do about college.
Also Harris didn't run on any kind of transgender kids in sports policy. It was just a smear. Leave the poor kids alone is the most you could say about what Democratic policy is. I can't imagine the social cost of dealing with gender identity, especially right now, but it's not small
It’s more than 14 although it’s not a large number. I’m not talking about children, I’m talking about adult males, who are bigger and stronger than females.
Lia Thomas was a mediocre swimmer competing with men but was a champion competing with women. This is deeply unfair to women.
This is a losing issue for Dems.
I’m not opposed to trans rights in general.
It's not like the NIMBY policies are aided and abetted by the bad Democratic politicians (and the proceduralist bent thereof).
It's the voters. It's not a top down issue. San Francisco protecting it's "historic laundromat" and shutting down a new mid rise apartment tower because it would cast shadows an hour or so a day on a school playground isn't happening because out of control city bureaucrats are ignoring the will of the people
Californians are very liberal on social issues. They are deeply conservative on housing. They're happy to support all kinds of things as long as those things don't make their neighborhood change ever. They're not going to shift their views on property if Democrats get more left wing. I'm leaning on California because the author called it out but it's housing everywhere, that's the problem. Nobody is moving to Texas because they're upset at Democrats
Nobody is moving to Texas in quest of high-density urbanism;. Sneer at "NIMBYs" to your heart's content, but the real problem is that California (a viuctiom of its own success) has become too crowded.
A half acre of land in Brooklyn will cost $2 - $10 million dollars. Whether you are a developer or a taxpayer, affordable housing simply has nothing to do with NIMBY. There is just no room to build.
I hate that you tar all Democrats with the same brush. Bernie Sanders is not afraid of power nor would AOC be, if she had power. When Bernie was mayor of Burlington, he created the Champlaiin Community Land Trust, that now manages 3000 units of housing that is affordable in perpetuity. That bis 7.6% of housing in Burlington. And it gets a little bigger every year.
Building housing is no solution if it is all market rate, which is nearly all of what the Yimbys are in support of.
Finally, Bernie was on a path to win the Democratic nomination in 2020, when nearly all of the Democratic conspired to block him. Not only would he have won, we would be celebrating his second term now.
Building market rate housing is absolutely a solution. If you build more, the market rate goes down. That's basic supply and demand.
San Francisco has issued thousands of market rate housing permits and rates have stayed really high. In fact, whenmarket rate housing is built, rates go up in nearby buildings.
San Francisco issued 16 housing permits in 2024. That's far from thousands. It has a long way to go before it becomes as cheap as Dallas or Austin. It sounds like a lot more red tape needs to be cleared. San Francisco is a hub of industry, it should have a huge, rapidly changing skyline like on of those newly rich Chinese cities.
Don't get me wrong, affordable and market rate housing are both good. They should build whatever is easier. What's important is to build.
People choose to ignore Democratic accomplishments at their own peril due to ignorance.
👎
You don’t address civil rights here. How do people whose very existence is dependent upon the outcomes of elections—I am one of those people—put aside their existential concerns for a possible winning strategy.
Can you see how hard it is not to focus on the genocide and instead pour yourself into nuts and bolts issues?
From the perspective of true allies (as opposed to, say, the Seth Moultons and Gavin Newsomes of the world), it’s the same calculus.
In short, voting to get the trains to run on time is all very well and good except that the tracks are always laid on top of our backs.
I address civil rights explicitly. They are mentioned in the piece. This is one area that Democrats are leagues ahead of Republicans. But I do not believe that there is some tradeoff between civil rights and building housing. We can do both.
The Trump campaign operated from the perspective that denying people civil rights was job one and there was no job two. That’s how movements based on hate work. This is not to say we can’t outperform that message with effective people focused initiatives, as team AOC/Bernie are showing.
You need to calm down and stop automatically assuming the worst remotely possible outcome.
Thank you for your soothing strong words I guess I was getting a little bit hysterical. Good thing you were there.
Isn't the harder question, though, how we get people whose very existence is not dependent upon the outcomes of elections, to care as if it were?
That is indeed the question. I’m pretty skeptical about that ever happening though.
Genocide? What are you talking about?
Genocide is the attempt by an authoritarian movement to try to eradicate a people. Sadly, there are many examples of this in modern history.
But you seem to be referring to some ongoing event.
I know perfectly well what the definition is.
But you can’t guess what I’m referring to?
Nope.
Thanks for this needed recognition of the problems. Please keep at it and perhaps some solutions will arise.
You have some valid points, however, you are also using a VERY broad brush to tar and feather Democrats. You used a comparison of California and Texas to make several points. I want to clarify one comparison in particular. You stated the following:
"Texas, home to oil, gas, and cowboys, is also building vastly more green energy than crunchy hippie California." Yes, currently Texas is the national leader in NEW construction of renewable/green energy. However, here are the facts about the existing infrastructure and production of renewable energy for the two states:
California – 54% of their power generation is from renewable energy.
39% of their energy comes from natural gas.
They are the national leader in SOLAR power production.
NOTE: California is on track to achieve their goal of 60% emission-free energy by 2030.
Texas – 25% of their power generation is from renewable energy.
50% of their energy comes from natural gas.
They are the national leader in WIND power production.
NOTE: Texas has a plan to be 28% renewable power generation by 2030.
It's important to give full and transparent facts, especially when comparing two states that are at almost polar opposite ends of the political spectrum. I understand your points about mistakes and questionable decisions and policies undertaken by Democratic leadership over the years. However, regarding the abortion issue, the difference between Texas and California is STARK:
TEXAS - The law prohibits almost all abortions, with exceptions only to save the life of the pregnant patient or to prevent serious and permanent impairment of a major bodily function. Individuals who perform or induce abortions face civil and criminal penalties, including potential imprisonment and fines.
CALIFORNIA - Abortion is legal in California up to the point of fetal viability, and the state has laws and initiatives in place to ensure access to abortion services. California's constitution explicitly protects the right to reproductive decisions, including abortion.
We are in very, VERY strange and dangerous times and I believe communication honestly and accurately is critically important if we are to regain the trust and votes of those who felt the Republicans and, most important of all, a convicted felon, liar and sexual predator offered a better future.
Great piece. This is tangential:
One thing I'd like to wonder out loud to you and others - is why is it always "YIMBYism" - right there, in the name - to put something into an existing backyard? Even under the "abundance" banner, it seems like it boils down to jamming rowhouses in an urban center.
For once, I'd like to see a blue state decide to build up new communities - if we're already to the stage of cutting red tape, why can't we incorporate some new townships or whatever and give Americans what they really want: a nice new home in a subdivision, or the ability to build a new home easily on some land? Abundance is nice, but we also need to answer: an abundance of what?
It's telling that the blue tribe are the urbanites, because so many of these arguments seem to focus on increasing access to services and housing in city centers. I'm a little over my skies in a discussion like this, but look at those fast-growing red states. The new housing is, if I'm not mistaken, basically sprawling out the metro area of cities like Dallas - not jamming more people within the city limits. That's what people want - a house with a deck and a lawn, not loft-space in an old downtown factory building.
Maybe more of the blue discourse on YIMBYISM / Abundance / name-of-the-moment is treating down my purposed path, but I've found most of what I read is either too vague or uses examples from the author's own life, which usually boil down to fights over bike lanes or subway lines.
I thought I should share an excerpt from my Substack essay "Why Kamala Lost in 9 Simple Charts. Democrats ignore this at their peril: https://charles72f.substack.com/p/why-kamela-lost-in-nine-simple-charts
"I’d like to finish with a point that is perhaps controversial and unoriginal but needs to be hammered home; it should now be crystal clear that Democrats are steadily alienating male voters – mostly white ones, but increasingly many who are nonwhite. This is dismissed as “misogyny” by many Democrats and there is certainly plenty of that. But when one gender and one race is singled out as the source of all that is evil and nothing that is good in a nation that they themselves were instrumental in building (to say the least), members of that group can become disheartened. No one wants to be a member of a party that considers him the enemy. I must say that I share this feeling (I have never oppressed anyone). For me, no amount of frustration with Democrats would ever make me vote for human beings as despicable as Donald Trump and his brownshirts. But clearly, tens of millions of men -- white, black and brown – overcame whatever distaste for Trump they might have had and did just that."
Oh, also, the author's comments on housing echo the conventional wisdom, but are wrong. https://charles72f.substack.com/p/housing-goodbye-drought-hello-glut
Seems to me a crucial social difference is that when conservatives are mad at R politicians, they...vote for them anyway. When (name the group) are mad at D politicians, they don't. And Rs can keep their eyes on a goal for 30 years, while Ds get distracted by squirrels.
A story for you - My wife has a friend who was elected to the city council. Murph, that's her name, has this perspective. "I have potholes to fix. They are not Republican potholes or Democrat potholes. They just need to be fixed." Murph is a pragmatist. We need more citizens like Murph. Democrats, as you suggest, are more interested in virtue signaling than they are in fixing potholes. However, Trump's followers are no different. Transgender issues, immigration and foreigners ripping us off are tiny virtue events that are magnified by the power hungry. Like our current president. Those of us still occupying the middle ground must forgo the emotional gratification of supporting the oppressed. The oppressor/oppressed ideology tore up Columbia University, The Bronx Defenders, Russia, Cuba, currently the Republican Party and soon it will tear up the United States. A concerned and informed citizenry is essential as the founders of the country declared. We need to get back to building a future for ourselves as opposed to what my kids have noted "Trump is trading honeybees for cockroaches".
"We Democrats...want to believe that we have the sane policies..."
The only policy that I have seen from the Democratic Party since 2016 is "We're not Trump." You have no policy about the staggering income inequality. You have no policy about the homeless crisis, while there are millions of empty houses and apartments across the US. You have no policy about the Israeli IDF training police departments across the country.
You have no policies.
Literally the majority of the article was about the main solution to the homeless crisis. The solution is: build more housing to bring the market rate down in the places where it's expensive. If housing is cheaper, more people can afford it.
It does not make any difference that there are millions of empty houses if they aren't where people want to live. Giving a homeless person who lives and works in New York City a house in rural Mississippi or suburban Detroit is not helping them.
Income inequality isn't as important as raising the typical person's income. If policies improve the lot of the average person it doesn't matter if they also make a few people obscenely wealthy.
Perhaps the following might help to strengthen the resolve of those who need that.
Being a perspective of another political party in another continent it may be easier to take in.
https://globalgreens.cmail20.com/t/t-e-gotilt-ydzuuidjy-o/
Proportional multi-member districts still keep 3rd parties off the bottom rungs of the ladder. If 5 representatives are elected from a district, that is an effective minimum of 20% of vote to get any representation at all. Mixed-member proportional solves this problem and makes effective gerrymandering impossible.
You’re not helping