There is no middle way

There is no middle way

An American economy that only works for 15% of the population is not sustainable and progressive politics or the end of democracy are the only ways out.

The third way between ending democracy and progressive politics is imagined to be negotiating with workers to buy time.

For instance, Juan Domingo Perón (who for Americans is the husband of Evita Peron from the song Don’t Cry for Me Argentina covered by Madonna) had Justicialismo popularly known as the "Third Position".

1. Trade unions in every industry.
2. Universal social security.
3. Free education to all who qualified.
4. Vast low-income housing projects.
5. Paid vacations.
6. One paid week for a working student before every major examination.
7. Free medical care and half of worker vacation-trip expenses.
8. 3 paid months off prior to and after giving birth for mothers.
9. Workers recreation centers were constructed all over Argentina and a resort was available to workers for 15 days a year all services included.

People call worker benefits populism but it’s really not. Bill Clinton gets home ownership to 68% and it sounds great and so George W. Bush talks about ownership society and deregulates banks.

That leads to Barack Obama letting bank management stick workers with the bill and a great recession. Neither Peron nor Clinton made any effort to set up a system where resources are automatically reasonably distributed.

America’s founders were opposed to true equality but they also recognized aspiring to it is the only way to last. Now even the aspiration of doing the right thing is gone.

Typical of third way thinking you have a tough choice between halt further AI research or double down trying to have AI make a real breakthrough in biology etc. Instead you continue AI research but restrict its usage in biology?!?

Same insanity as the 2000's create ever more complex financial instruments and nothing bad will happen even once we no longer understand them.

So authoritarian “middle” positions are rising. Let states decide if women control their bodies is the misogynistic equivalent of “Don’t ask don’t tell”.

Taxing extreme wealth was already the nonsensical alternative to limitarianism and even that is being pushed back on.

When workers have good factory jobs the “middle” position is free trade. After those jobs no longer exist the “middle” position is tariffs that are a regressive tax. The former distracts people with cheap consumer goods and the latter distracts people with a false hope of a return to manufacturing.

Sad to say but with only 15% being in the club, a speech exhorting immigration is a middle way speech. The American way is dead for 85% of our population but we are going attract more immigrants?

For anyone that wants American democracy to continue Trump should have been the end of fooling around with middle ways. Yet Xavier Becerra wins the California Democratic nomination with a middle way policy like:

I will take on the cost of living head-on by standing up to price gouging and unjustified rate hikes, expanding help with childcare and essential costs, and using the power of the state to lower prices where the market has failed.

California’s current governor is saying muddled middle things like:

“The whole system has to be reimagined, and we’re not — I don’t think we’re having an accelerated or advanced conversation right now; we’re still discussing who’s going to pay for my increased electricity because of the data center, which is a legit issue,” Newsom said at a May 19 conference convened by the liberal think tank Center for American Progress in Washington. “But it’s not the issue, and … the tech genie is not going to go back in the bottle.”

However Newsom is less openly middle way than:

The Center for American Progress emphasizes the urgent need for a comprehensive AI strategy that enables society to safely harness the opportunities presented by AI while simultaneously mitigating the multifaceted challenges and risks AI brings.

which is pure we need to have our cake and eat it too.

Even religious leaders want some sweet illogical middle way options:

The Pope maintains that marriage is strictly a sacrament between a man and a woman. However, the Vatican supports civil unions to provide legal protections for same-sex couples, and allows priests to offer informal same-sex blessings on a case-by-case basis.

Unfortunately there are human biases that prevent seeing the nonsensical nature of many middle way options.

• The Compromise Effect: People disproportionately prefer the middle option because it feels like a safe, balanced choice.[1]
• The Center-Stage Effect: Our brains subconsciously infer that a centrally placed item is the most popular. [1, 2, 3, 4]
• The Decoy Effect: Marketers frequently leverage this bias by adding a third “decoy” option that makes the middle-way choice look objectively better by comparison, even if the user wouldn’t naturally prefer it.

The origin of left and right wings came from French revolution politics where members of the deciding body sat across from each other. But throw a decoy moderates in and people who normally vote left are suddenly voting right / end of democracy while fooled into thinking they are voting middle.

Eliminate the bullshit moderate, centrist, liberal, Democrat as opposed to Democratic Socialist option and then it’s obvious Americans have been voting for end of democracy for decades.