#chrisdillow — Public Fediverse posts

“transformative repolarization” seems like a term worth remembering.

from #AaronRegunberg https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/aug/30/data-center-politics-democrats-republicans

ht #ChrisDillow @greenhombre

Why do politicians who once touted “modernization” now try to sell us the 1950s? #ChrisDillow https://chrisdillow.substack.com/p/the-politics-of-cher ht @markreckons

“AI might displace some coders, but it won’t make priests redundant. Fostering such jobs might require more investment in soft skills, and perhaps even in humanities’ subjects.” #ChrisDillow https://chrisdillow.substack.com/p/wanted-a-new-blair

On how the absence of a strong left cripples policymaking even (perhaps especially) on the liberal center. By #ChrisDillow

Placating the right yields terrible governance — practically, morally. Outcompeting the left requires delivering.

https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2025/05/why-we-need-a-strong-left.html

“He has to blame immigrants and the disabled, because to blame anything or anyone else would be to question capitalism. Which cannot be done.” #ChrisDillow https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2025/04/governments-vs-capitalists.html

“A sensible politics needs to ask: how can we create constituencies of countervailing power to the regressive rich?” #ChrisDillow https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2025/01/against-if-i-were-king-politics.html

“We're handing so much money over to owners of prime residential or commercial land, to owners of oil and gas fields, intellectual property and infrastructure that there isn't enough left to create enough demand for dynamic sectors of the economy.” #ChrisDillow https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2024/10/against-scooby-doo-ideology.html

cc @louis // a good rentier capitalism piece!

“In this context, Keynes is now irrelevant. ‘It is in determining the volume, not the direction, of actual employment that the existing system has broken down’ he wrote. That might have been true in the 1930s but it is not now. Redirecting labour requires not macroeconomic policy but specific measures targetting these egregious jobs.” #ChrisDillow https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2024/09/beyond-tax-rises.html

“A big reason why the right talks so much about immigration is that to talk about anything else - climate change, the cost of living, failing public services, unaffordable housing, flatlining real wages and so on - would be to bring capitalism into question. And that it must not do.” #ChrisDillow https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2024/08/the-end-of-modernity.html

// see also his explanation why the British center-left no longer talks about “modernisation”. they loved to in the 80s and 90s, when “it meant attacking unions and the poor”.

"A self-taught miner 70 years ago knew that balance sheets have two sides, whereas an Oxford-educated former Bank of England economist today pretends not to know it. Which is a sign of how politics has been captured by institutionalized stupidity." #ChrisDillow https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2024/06/funding-public-services-a-bevanite-approach.html

#economics #finance

On the distinction between managerialism and quality management, #ChrisDillow https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2023/10/management-in-question.html

"Neoliberal capitalism has done much more damage to the traditional English way of life than 'cultural Marxism' or 'wokesters' ever have." #ChrisDillow on small 'c' conservative which belongs neither to "left" nor "right" https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2023/07/on-being-conservative.html

#ViaRSS

"The word 'neoliberalism' is much misused. We might, however, attach that label to the valorization of the goods of effectiveness over those of excellence - of winning at all costs over performing well." #ChrisDillow https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2023/04/devaluing-excellence.html #ViaRSS

“We must avoid the schoolteacher attitude to politics and business, marking the work of politicians and businessmen as if it were a test of intellectual ability and singling out the best and worst students. Instead, we must consider institutions. Do we have those institutions which help filter out incompetence and bias, or which are resilient to error? The answer, for now, is: no.” #ChrisDillow https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2023/04/when-clever-people-do-stupid-things.html #ViaRSS

"Achieving pro-growth policies is a matter of power, not brains... Bad policy is not mere intellectual error. It is the product of capitalism — of economic stagnation and of how capital exercises power over the state." #ChrisDillow https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2023/03/against-schoolteacher-politics.html