The problem with technocrats
Can we not be obtuse AF about class?
I want to start out by laying out my priors.
I am not a DSA type really. I am more in the technocratic camp I guess. My field is urban planning, which is practically a religion for technocrats. Iām also pragmatic. I just want to see problems get solved.
So, it makes most sense for me to align myself with the technocrats, who are having sort of a moment right now and I mostly do. Even so, the technocrats have been losing me lately. Iām concerned about the direction all this is heading, especially with respect to tech.
Hereās the thing: Technocrats, at least as they are aligning themselves right now, Ezra Klein types, have class interests. They are a class. We know who these people are. They are well educated. They live in major cities ā fashionable neighborhoods within wealthy coastal cities. They are professional knowledge workers. Maybe, if theyāre lucky, they got in before housing prices went really crazy. They are the winners of the current economy to a big degree.
Recently Jerusalem Demas for the Argument editorialized how the U.S. should accept cheap electric vehicles from China. I get it on some level. China is KILLING US on electric vehicle development. You can buy a super nice EV there for like $20,000 or less. (During the price wars just a few years ago, you could buy a new Tesla for around that price. I bought a used EV for $9k just a few years ago but I digress.)
Matt Yglesias followed up, even more painfully, imo with how he was sick of talking about affordability, the political issue of the moment and wanted instead to talk about growing the economy, which used to be a textbook Republican position.
Matt will present himself as some sort of neutral arbiter of good policy. Thatās what technocrats do. They will argue passionately about zoning or transit frequencies. Boring stuff, to a lot of other people!
Itās not that that stuff doesnāt matter. I will get into a debate about it from time to time. But I also think itās also a purposeful technique for keeping it in that kind of technical realm and away from their personal positions and interests. We want to argue about what is best from a purely technical standpoint without really getting into values or tradeoffs, our position vis a vis other people affected by these issues. And sometimes it gets really weird.
Cheap Chinese EVs would be good for consumers, Demas says. This is sort of a pro-market argument. I donāt even full disagree I guess. Protectionism, she basically argues, hurts everyone. Itās honestly sort of conservative but thatās not what bothers me about it. Iām willing to engage with conservative ideas.
Auto consumers, I have written, have a right to be pissed off about what has happened to the auto industry and car prices. Still, I thought the Argument was kind of obtuse about what this would mean for the American auto industry. And this is DAFT AF about class. (In fairness, Matt Yglesias did a follow up where he conceded itās important for the US to have a manufacturing base.)
Politicians have to be more practical than this. There are whole regions of the country ā Detroit for eg ā that rise and fall based on the auto industry. Auto workers themselves are the tip of the iceberg. Parts suppliers, the whole supply chain, are enormous with the auto industry. Every auto industry job supports 10 others. This is why, at least in the past, politicians were very deferential to the auto industry. These guys are not just in the upper Midwest, theyāre all over the South too, even foreign automakers have huge plants that support whole economies in the Carolinas and Deep South. This is the kind of thing politicians, who have to legitimate go out and talk to ordinary people, understand and our media class, which is now ensconced in these two or three major coastal cities which have had this tech gold rush, donāt seem to get.
Pretty much the only people who can afford to be flip about this are wealthy people in coastal cities who are insulated from these kinds of economic shocks (unless it starts coming for their sectors, like Trump did, such as tech, federal workers or academia).
Iām not one of those Matt Y mega haters. In fact, I think the constant takedowns are sort of annoying. Still! Matt makes more than $1 million a year writing a blog and went to Harvard and was raised in Manhattan. He just canāt relate to what normal people are dealing with right now, the primary thing is money issues, even though Iām sure he thinks about it on an intellectual level. It is a problem for Dem-aligned groups that so many of our prominent spokespeople are like this. We just had an affordability election where our party spent the whole time lecturing people imperiously about democracy. So many self owns.
To some extent, the big populist backlash happening in politics (Trump 2.0) is a direct response to the outsized influence people like Matt (well off, urban professionals) have over politics and institutions. This is a powerful group overall. And people donāt like them! And I think to some degree they earned it! I think they did the same kind of smoke and mirrors where they protected their own class interests while presenting it as āthe scienceā during covid. And people noticed! The public is not dumb!
One qualification: I am also like this ā SORTA! I have a college degree. A masterās too! (From Cleveland state fwiw). I donāt live in a major coastal city. But by the standards of the city I live in, Cleveland, I am well off for sure.
That being said, I might be rich compared to the average Clevelander, but I am a poor person compared the well off folks in cities like New York and SF, where tech money etc. has made a lot of people serious fortunes. My husband and I combined donāt make what Matt makes in a single year in 10 probably. Especially within the wealthier neighborhoods, many people in coastal cities are on a different planet entirely from the rest of the U.S., where people are struggling.
Iām a little sensitive about the U.S. auto industry, admittedly, because my family is from Toledo, Ohio, (little Detroit) which has been on a steady decline since the 1970s. The whole region of the country has been massively destabilized by changes in manufacturing etc. Thereās a trauma from this that impacts people from generations. I grew up in Columbus with other families who had all fled places like Toledo and Cleveland. Itās the complete opposite of having been brought up in SF or New York and having your parentsā home appreciate 10 million times and make you wealthy.
One thing that frustrates me about technocrats ā a critique Trump used to full advantage ā is they just DO NOT care about is places that are not doing well. To just causally suggest letting Chinese automakers kind of decimate the American auto industry ā that is an example of the kind of awesome economic power a lot of these important talking heads have. Biden would have never. His whole term he was trying to help these industries kind of retool and modernize.
I donāt think Trump is a legit friend to like rust belt cities or manufacturing to be clear. I donāt like him. But he at least gets the optics. Biden did to somewhat. Protectionism is the one issue that I feel like really plays well in Ohio, a state that Democrats have badly fumbled and that, if they donāt regain, probably prevents them from ever holding the Senate.
Now, emboldened apparently, our opinion leaders have cast off any pretense of concern about these issues it seems like. That is concerning.
Even though I live in Cleveland, and I guess Iām a weirdo for this but, I actually care about California. I want to see them get their crazy housing problems solved. I have followed all their problems, as anyone who reads the news a lot (me!) will do ā because the national news is obsessively focused on a few coastal places.
It confuses me that these advocates in California donāt seem to care whether people live or die in the Midwest. The only solution they ever offer is to build more housing in California so everyone from Allentown, PA, or wherever can move there. Which is insulting and not a real solution.
Anyway, people see stuff like this and they get the not-inaccurate sense that these people are not on their side. This is one of my frustrations with technocrats, and the kinds of coastal nerds that constitute it now, even though I am aligned with them on many, many issues. They are sort of daft about all this.
When you are part of the economic winners, you might be tempted to view all progress as positive. After all, hasnāt your metro area been growing more prosperous every year. Havenāt you been getting richer? Your friends? What reason would you have to be suspicious of tech or progress?
While they do not care about the auto industry and manufacturing, technocrats can be curiously uncritical of the tech industry (which again, they may work in or near and benefit from). They may even be protective of the industry, having the impulse to swat down critiques of AVs, or data centers, or AI. This is another thing Iām struggling with.
I have been sort of shocked about the tenor of the reporting on self-driving cars and Waymo. Iāve already said I have mixed feelings about Waymo and I donāt support a full ban, just kind of a cautious and measured approach. Meanwhile journalists like Kelley Piper writing in the Argument has written like four articles lambasting critics of autonomous vehicles, taking an advocacy position that is almost identical to Waymoās corporate talking points.
Even if you support Waymo and think on balance it will be good, that is taking things too far, imo and I have been reporting about traffic safety for 10 plus years. These techno-optimist takes skirt over about how much damage tech has done to our social fabric over the last decade plus. How self interested these companies can be. The way they have of out muscling any political opposition with pure money and power. Ordinary people have a right to be mad and suspicious!
The interests of Uber and Lyft drivers, lower and middle class, are almost completely sidestepped in these discussions, or treated with outright derision (like itās corrupt somehow for Dem politicians to cater to them). And this is in an ostensibly left-leaning publication somehow?! Itās no wonder, I think when I see stuff like this, how the Dems/left lost the working class.
Technocrats need to look at themselves about stuff like this. The self interest of well-educated types on major cities is FOR SURE advanced by having cheap cabs everywhere. These people are major beneficiaries of the āgig economy.ā A whole class of temporary workers was created overnight to serve mainly wealthy people in major coastal cities, provide them cheap cabs, served them through the pandemic maybe for example and they can be just as easily dismissed and forgotten about.
Now that doesnāt mean we should BAN WAYMO. Again, it might make sense to take an account of how drivers will be affected and say the benefits outweigh all that. Maybe thereās a technocratic fix, like UBI. Although I donāt know how serious that is. It seems more like a technique thatās used to brush off concerns than a real possibility.
This group, the technocrats, they are riding high off some wins in housing. The YIMBY movement, I have my critiques of some elements, as most online people do, but I think, has done some really good work. The housing crisis has gotten so bad itās impossible to ignore. There is bipartisan support in some cases for reforms now. I just heard there is major legislation coming out of Washington advancing some important housing reforms.
This canāt happen soon enough. I was just in Austin, where they up zoned the entire city, and people told me rents have fallen so much itās shocking. Legitimately major win. The kind of thing, Democrats might be able to legit hang their hat on electorally.
With the YIMBY movement though, DID include a class analysis. It was often led by people who, although they might be well educated, couldnāt afford to buy homes and were economically insecure as a result. And, crucially, it identified a richer enemy: Older homeowners who were hoarding their wealth and resources by refusing to permit new housing in fast-growing areas. That kind of class analysis was smart and defensible, even though it didnāt alleviate all class concerns.
In politics, the important thing isnāt just having the best ideas, especially right now. People need to see what side you are on.
Especially when the issue involves tech, the interests of ordinary folks cannot be glossed over. AI, data centers, self driving cars ā all of these issues low and middle-income people have a lot at stake and plenty of reasons to be skeptical.
