Recently, Walter Russell Mead wrote an outstanding article in Tablet titled “You Are Not Destined to Live in Quiet Times.” It’s about the paradox—and great dangers—of technological progress: “Human ingenuity has made us much safer from natural calamities. We can treat many diseases, predict storms, build dams both to prevent floods and to save water against drought, and many other fine things. Many fewer of us starve than in former times, and billions of us today enjoy better living conditions than our forebears dreamed possible. Yet if we are safer from most natural catastrophes, we are more vulnerable than ever to human-caused ones.”
Today on Honestly, Walter talks about that significant vulnerability, and why human-caused catastrophes are the most serious threat to humanity today. Walter also explains why he believes we have definitively entered a pre-war era, and what he thinks needs to change in order to get us out of it.
Walter Russell Mead is a fellow at Hudson Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College. He’s written numerous books on foreign policy, including last year’s excellent book on Israel titled The Arc of a Covenant, and he is the host of the brand-new podcast What Really Matters.
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Another excellent podcast Bari. I would like to take issue with the notion that populism is fueled by people who want elected leaders that are more similar to themselves.
I think this is fundamentally incorrect. Populism is on the rise because the ruling elite is incompetent. They repeatedly make decisions that defy the best interests of large swathes of the electorate. Whether it’s net zero, Covid, even infrastructure - the ruling elite has repeatedly devised policy that not only doesn’t work, but makes us more impoverished.
I don’t think people want leaders who look more like themselves. They want leaders who actually look different from each other. Politicians may represent different parties, but they’re all the same. They almost all come from law and finance, and other than small differences, think exactly the same.
The US is an outlier because there are some difference between the parties. If you look at Canada, Britain and the rest of Europe, traditional parties don’t offer different visions. They are the same. There is no one to vote for unless you support the neo-liberal, progressive agenda.
Mead asks what can be done about huge student debt and housing prices in California. The answer is to get the government out of the way!
As soon as the Feds starting subsidizing college education through the student loan program, costs started going up and up much faster than inflation.
And in California, the state government makes it very hard or even impossible for builders to build new homes by imposing overbearing regulations, zoning laws and environmental impact studies. It's all about supply and demand. Increase the supply and prices fall. California artificially keeps the supply of new housing down. No matter what you do, you cannot circumvent the law of supply and demand. It operates even in communist countries, with devastating results.