David Roberts’ Volts podcast recently had a segment with sex columnist Dan Savage about the US election and what has gone wrong in progressive politics: Dan Savage on blue America in the age of Trump
It makes me wonder: can there ever be an effective political constituency against the commodification and financialization of housing (where houses are more important as stores of wealth than as shelters)? Could there be people who want house prices to fall a lot and stay low? Or will every political party inevitably end up caring more about house owners who want to keep prices high forever, while they live alone and in couples inside big houses in neighbourhoods where nobody with a growing family can afford to live?
As young people continue to internalize that their elders would rather see all future generations die in torment than change their lifestyles, will we see generation-based political movements of young people calling to reduce funding for end-of-life healthcare and cut tax breaks and subsidies for home-owners? Is such a movement always doomed since the rich and well-connected will always be able to capture whoever gets elected?
There are a lot of other interesting points in the discussion, including how living densely together seems to make people liberal and how the purity politics of the progressive left inhibit movement-building (“conservatives chase converts, liberals hunt heretics”).
