RE: Progress & Conservation: A Radical Centrist Manifesto
Once again a very good article:) Unfortunately, the environmental crisis combined with the co-opting of civilization by corporate oligarchs under a new trans-national plutocracy which practices what I call institutionalized lawlessness has made the human condition upon the earth dire. There doesn't seem to be any way to stop this now as the whole political spectrum has been compromised while the changes necessary under this system are being handed over to corrupt mayors of the new emerging city-states under what some call agenda 2030. It's a disaster from the perspective of the city I live in and I suspect most cities around the world are suffering the same fate.
It can't be stopped now other than by nature or supernatural intervention as the plutocracy is wielding unprecedented military and technological power and the only force capable of resisting these powers in recent history was organized labor which the oligarchs shattered into a billion splinters in the last 70-years. They've done the same thing to religion, too, especially in the west so there isn't the religious scale needed that would be effective in resisting this agenda; in fact, the oligarchs have more control over religion than its ever had which can be evidenced by Christian Zionist's bombing Islam for Israel...
The Ancaps are right only in the sense that the only thing anyone can do now is to just try and drop out of the system in every way one can. This in no way makes Ancap philosophy a challenge to the present toxic status-quo.
I'm more optimistic than that. Organized labor has disappeared, the proletariat as a political force is dead, but we are seeing the emergence of the precariat. I think Guy Standing and Murray Bookchin were right to recognize that the working class was no longer going to be the driving force behind progressive movements. Rather, it is the unemployed, the homeless, and those who have precarious employment (jobs that don't provide security)--these are the folks that are going to be organizing protests and political movements in the near future. I think the popularity of people like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a good sign. And Andrew Yang will likely make it into the Democratic Party Presidential debates, which will push the idea of universal basic income into the mainstream (just as Bernie being in the last round of such debates pushed universal healthcare and other progressive measures into the mainstream). The popularity of Ocasio is forcing other less progressive people to focus more on climate change too.
I forgot to mention the splintering of ethnic groups as a force of resistance via corporate multiculturalism. So the oligarchs took out the three primary routes of resistance in the last 100-years: labor, religion, and ethnic homogeny. I might add in the splintering
of the family unit to boot.
Our perspectives on this disaster are likely divergent because of our differing metaphysics. I concede to being a curmudgeon Gnostic. Best wishes nevertheless:)