A list of some progressive ideas

Just as there are a bunch of concepts that motivate authoritarians, there are those that motivate or are at least relevant to progressives. Here is a list that is not comprehensive or exhaustive, in any particular order, and are just the ones that popped into my head. Please add to them. If you do that on some platform other than below, mark them #ProgressTerms so we can find them.

Enshittification: "is a pattern in which two-sided online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders." -Wikipedia. Examples are Twitter, Google search, Facebook, Amazon, Aribnb, and all dating apps. According to writer and Cultural Insight Zhenren Cory Doctorow, who created the term, enshittification is a product of venture capital funding and epidemic in an era when legislators refuse to limit monopolies. The solution is interoperability and portability of data. Doctorow, whose uproarious commentary on his website https://pluralistic.net/ is very much worth reading made up the word in November 2022. It was the American Dialectical Society's word of the year 2023.

Technofeudalism is the title of a book and a concept by former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis as well as French economist Cédric Durand. The idea is that companies no longer want to produce things that we buy, and they don't want to compete on quality and price, or make money that way. They find it easier to rent the product to us and then charge us to use it when we are locked in. Their focus is on locking us in via a variety of methods at their disposal since there is in practice no regulation of monopolies or free and fair market enforcement. Corporations now make money by rent seeking because it is easier and more profitable than old fashioned production and sales. Surveillance Capitalism is a similar concept and has to do with privatization of digital spaces and the ever increasing and unregulated extraction of data from people because it turns an easy profit.

Progressiveism is really a pretty simple idea that, 1) truth, or objective reality, can be known, 2) we can move closer to it and design better and better policy, 3) that policy should be focused on the long term and be as good for as many people as possible. The word's current use, particularly in the US, is more or less "I agree with and want those things, and I may vote for this or that party now (Democrats, duh), but I am frustrated by how unwilling the Democratic Party is to pursuing real reform. ie, I love how Bernie spoke truth to power and he would have won and I like AOC and Elizabeth Warren because they get to the heart of things, etc."

Socialism is understood differently in Europe and the US. In Europe it generally means, "equality should be a priority". Nobody is very worried about means of production anymore since actual production, ie. making things, happens in Asia. In the US, "socialism" means, "They (today's out-group) are lazy (unlike us) and are going to take all our stuff unless we (insert policy)" In the US nobody except a microscopic number of young liberal-arts grads called themselves socialists and it is largely a scare word used by Republicans.

Degrowth "is an academic and social movement critical of the concept of growth in gross domestic product as a measure of human and economic development." -Wikipedia. Even though there is much too much money in the world now, the increase in money is called "growth". Who could be against growth? What, you want a "stunted" economy? Wizened? Starved? No way! Shows the power of metaphor, huh? Not surprisingly economic "growth" is always reported on in the status quo media as a good thing. Imagine there is a small town with a school. Somebody starts an after school tutoring and activities business. They charge for it and top quintile by income of the families can and do pay. Another town, the parents get together and agree that the parents and grandparents will tutor and run activities and it will be free and open to all. More economic "growth" in the first than the second. Degrowth is the idea that the planet is finite and we need to get smaller, live within our means, and we need to think how we can best do that so that we are happier and healthier. It's not that radical, really.

Post-Capitalism The idea of a world without capitalism seems dangerous or silly to many Americans but less so to young Americans. Europe is less comfortable with the assumption that capitalism is the only way to run things. And for many in countries that were once colonized, capitalism often feels like an excuse or disguise for colonialism. But imagining a world that isn't controlled by massive gobs of investable capital is not only fun, but can be instructive. It also freaks out all the right people. In 1993, Peter Drucker, beloved in all MBA programs, inventor of the study of management, wrote a book called Post-Capitalist Society, not one of his books that is much discussed in business schools, ehem. Robert Heinlein, the science fiction writer wrote one called For US, the Living: A Comedy of Customs. There are many others, PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future by Paul Mason, Of the People, By the People: The Case for a Participatory Economy by Robin Hahnel. Progressives are willing to entertain any well argued idea, and this is an interesting one, not because it will happen but because what you can learn from the conversation.

The Commons The Digital Library of the Commons defines it as "a general term for shared resources in which each stakeholder has an equal interest" The Commons is one of those things like pornography that is easy to understand and identify but hard to legally define. What should be shared and what should be owned, and what does sharing and owning really mean? What are limits on things that are owned, and on the Commons? The story of British landownership is an excellent example. Of course the Highland Clearances in Scotland and England's many other colonies including Ireland, but even within England the enclosures by acts of Parliament had similar but gentler and more gradual consequences. By the way, this gave rise to one of the most under appreciated ass kicking social movements ever, the Diggers. The main problem of the Commons is that you can't make money from it so the rich and capitalists in general don't like it, or even worse, don't believe it is possible. They are wrong of course. Many have shown that it works, including Elinor Ostrom, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics. Take a look at Creative Commons. It is a way to create and share rather than hoard via copyright. What you are reading right now is Creative Commons licensed.

Anti-consumerism The radical idea that buying more stuff than you need will not make you happy and probably indicates you have some giant hole you are trying to fill. Put down the charge card and look inward, comrade! From a status point of view, shopping as a leisure activity doesn't reflect well on its practitioners.

Platform Cooperatives. This is the idea that a platform that connects buyers and sellers works best when those who use it, the buyers and sellers, own it, as opposed to investors, venture capital, private equity, etc. There are many examples to prove this. The problem is those with external investor owned platforms tend to have more access to advertising money, to bring on more users before they enshittify (see above). Of course there are also many simply worker owned cooperatives that are not platforms, just cooperatives. Just another model of people getting together to do something, one that often works.

UBI or Universal Basic Income. Where everybody gets a small amount of money to do whatever they want with. It has been tested many times and has better outcomes than projects that fund only some specific thing like food, or housing, or other things. The amounts discussed vary but usually something like US$200 a week or so in the US. If half of the seven or so trillion dollars America's billionaires have were just given to people, it would give every person in the US this amount for a year. And those billionaires would still have plenty of money! A certain type of person with wealth and/or power (who pretends they have earned it all themselves by hard work amidst great adversity) worries an inordinate amount about freeloaders. Go figure.

Anarchism gets a bad rap. Many people think that anarchism seeks anarchy or want there not to be a state or government. Whatever. I mean maybe, but if so, those types of anarchists seem to lay low, I haven't met any. Perhaps predictably, there are a gazillion streams of anarchist thought, but in general, the idea is to step back from established political and economic theory and look at their consequences rather than taking the models as given. Cast a skeptical eye on hierarchy's many theories on the vital importance of hierarchy. Good things to read are Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott or anything by David Graeber.

Decommidification is a not so graceful word meaning there are some basic things that shouldn't be bought or sold. Everybody agrees with this but not on what those things should be. But the concept is important. Those with capital and power want to privatize as much as possible so that funds can be extracted from whatever it is. Internationally in democratic countries there was consensus that it is a bad idea to make money from incarceration and that privatization would lead to dangerous incentives. But then the US did that and anybody who cares to look can see the results. On the other hand fire departments used to be commercial. They aren't now. Healthcare is bought and sold in the US, but not in other wealthy democratic countries. Some see decommidification as a right, that we have a right to health care, or housing, or eating. Others see it as simply practical. Rather than stand on the principle that everybody must provide for themselves, it is cheaper and easier to just be sure that everybody has the minimum they need to survive and if profit enters into that, it will screw things up. Very worth discussing what can best be provided for profit and what can't and why.

Intersectionality and its parent Critical Race Theory is complex but focuses on interlacing systems of power and the consequences for those who are marginalized. I mean it is pretty egg headed if want to glom it into some particular wave of feminism etc, but it is also simple. We're all in this together, so let's understand the systems that keep us down rather than get all ticked off at individuals or groups.

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