He's pretty thoughtful about how power is actually leveraged and has interesting insights around these ideas, particularly areas of democratic failure that I think are worth thinking about. I think his solutions are more questionable, but his writing is at least worth engaging with.
I think people just dismiss him out of hand because he's a political enemy.
I'm worried I'm sealioning, but could you possibly point me to one of these thoughtful pieces? It's a lot to wade through for me to try to figure out what you're talking about without any pointers...
I did read a decent amount of his "mencius moldbug" stuff back in the day, and I just wouldn't describe it the way you do in this comment, so I'm wondering what I'm missing.
Hmmm, ok, I read this. Are there any parts of it that you find particularly thoughtful about power or areas of democratic failure that are worth thinking about?
I think we probably just fundamentally disagree here, because to me, this whole thing seems like drivel. Are there gems in there that I'm just not recognizing?
The idea that stuck out to me is even if you repeal chevron deference and argue congress should be making laws like it’s supposed to, the outcome will be vague laws which then get interpreted by the courts, pushing the real legislation from administration technocrats that might at least be subject matter experts in the best case to unelected judges that probably don’t know anything.
The symbolic idea of who holds power and who actually holds power in practice are not the same.
There’s also the bit that doge is constrained in ways that make success unlikely (which has now been proved out).
Thanks, that's helpful. I agree that first point is interesting, but it's maybe the most mainstream view he expresses in the article. (The issue of judicial power is pretty commonly discussed by normie liberals as well!) But that's not really a knock against it. So fair enough, thanks for calling that one out!
I think the doge thing is silly though. It didn't fail because it was "constrained in ways that make success unlikely", it failed because: 1. There was obviously just arithmetically not enough money in discretionary spending to make more than a tiny dent in spending, and 2. They never made even the most cursory effort to improve efficiency, and just went with this ideological chainsaw approach. Maybe there's some version of the idea that was (and is) a good one, but it was always doomed to fail as conceived and led.
I think people just dismiss him out of hand because he's a political enemy.