On becoming less left-wing (Part 1)

Nonetheless, if you are trying to change an organization or a society and you do not consider the effects of your changes on moral capital, you’re asking for trouble. This, I believe, is the fundamental blind spot of the left. It explains why liberal reforms so often backfire,43 and why communist revolutions usually end up in despotism. It is the r

Thus state intervention came to be discredited by a value proposition that was no longer aligned with individual aspirations. The laissez-faire approach was never attractive: it deprived the poor and even the middle class of access to affordable essential services. But the interventionist counter-offer ended up looking not that attractive, either:

All my experience tells me that such a level of fatalism isn’t realistic; we can, up to a point, design and choose the society we wish to live in. Besides, there have been few moments in history when we have needed creativity more—to work out how to get to net zero carbon emissions and avert climate change; how to cope with ageing populations; how

I showed how this moral matrix leads liberals to make two points that are (in my opinion) profoundly important for the health of a society: (1) governments can and should restrain corporate superorganisms, and (2) some big problems really can be solved by regulation. I explained how libertarians (who sacralize liberty) and social conservatives (who

When times are good, people should be reluctant to challenge ancestral wisdom—their culture. In other words, they should be comparatively conservative. When things aren’t going well, people should be prone to endure the risks that come with change. They should be comparatively progressive—liberal, if you will.