Dave Karpf
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davekarpf.bsky.social
Dave Karpf
@davekarpf.bsky.social
71K followers 4.7K following 8.7K posts
Political Communication Professor at GWU. I write a lot about the history and future of tech and politics. Best known for that one time I made fun of Bret Stephens.

Davekarpf.substack.com
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davekarpf.bsky.social
Ch4 is about nuclear energy being awesome and safe and futuristic fun. It is the longest chapters yet of the book, and is also entirely predictable in advance.

Guys like James (there are a bunch) think anti-nuclear activists ruined the future by burdening the industry with too much regulation.
The Mystery of the Great Downshift: What We Did to Ourselves instincts than on reason and rationality"!! Deaths from radiation exposure after a nuclear meltdown are more visible and dramatic than those resulting from higher energy prices. In the former case, specific deaths can easily be attributed, while in the latter case fatalities are a big-picture, aggregate number generated by a statistical model. Yet, the researchers note, deaths from either cause are "equivalent from a cost-benefit perspective, and should be treated accordingly. The precautionary principle emphasizes salient events—the worst case scenario-and in doing so ignores the alternative, thereby encouraging inefficient policy-making."2
February 15, 2026 at 6:37 PM
davekarpf.bsky.social
Page 73. James acknowledges that, yes, sure, U.S. economic productivity post-WWII was maybe kind of high because we were the only ones whose factories were still standing.

BUT! That was AKSHUALLY a disadvantage because it removed global competition that would spur innovation.
production duo around America by both road and rail.2s The Up Wing postwar golden age was blessed with another massive advan-tage: not only was America a victor in World War II, but its domestic industry was left completely intact. The economies of all its competitors were in sham-bles, ready to be rebuilt by the American industrial base—at least, that was the case for a while. A National Bureau of Economic Research study describes the situation this way: "At the end of World War II, the United States was the dominant industrial producer in the world. With industrial capacity destroyed in Europe—except for Scandinavia-and in Japan and crippled in the United Kingdom, the United States produced approximately 60 percent of the world output of manufactures in 1950, and its GNP was 61 percent of the total of the countries presently part of the [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development]. This was obviously a transitory situation. "26 A big downside from America's postwar dominance, however, is that although minimal foreign competition helped keep profits and worker wages high, it also meant the American economy lacked an "invisible foot" of global competition where firms faced an always-present threat from new rivals-and failure if they didn't innovate in significant ways. For many vears American businesses didn't have to think or work hard to lead the
February 15, 2026 at 5:53 PM
davekarpf.bsky.social
His evidence that the good times could’ve lasted forever is that Lehman Brothers wrote a report in 1999 suggesting the dotcom boom could go on for another decade.

Ah yes, Lehman Brothers, a financial institution that famously never miscalculated a major financial bubble. Ah, well, nevertheless.
Wall Street banks are reluctant pessimists when speaking to the public, even in the worst of times. They're usually the last folks, for instance, to predict or concede a recession. During an economic boom with the stock market continually making record highs? You won't find a more fervent group of optimists anywhere. In late 1999, investment bank Lehman Brothers published a thick research report titled Beyond 2000, which brimmed with confidence about the decade ahead. Founded in 1847, Lehman was originally a cotton trader and broker. But by the turn of the century, the firm was bringing private companies to market, including such eventual corporate American mainstays as Sears Roebuck, F. W. Woolworth, Studebaker, and B. F. Goodrich. And at the turn of the next century, Lehman felt confident it was in the middle of another Industrial Revolution, perhaps even more powerful than the first. In Beyond 2000, Lehman didn't just predict the good times would keep on rolling; it forecast acceleration into another postwar Up Wing golden age. Ihe firm predicted the technology boom would continue 61
February 15, 2026 at 5:33 AM
davekarpf.bsky.social
Okay yeah he’s just an idiot.

Chapter 2. Economic growth has declined. We have let down our brilliant sage, Alvin Toffler.

If only economic growth had stayed high, we would have had underwater cities and a Mars colony!

James, you preteen, your bedtime is 10pm. No video games. Lights out.
If the Up Wing Kahn and Wiener forecast had been correct about the pace of technology-driven economic growth, the U.S. economy today would be far more technologically advanced and presumably far larger. To a great extent, it would be able to provide the capabilities and resources to create and purchase the sort of future that many imagined a half-century ago. Permanent bases on the moon and Mars? Check. A country-spanning system of high-speed rail or even hyperloops? Undersea cities? Check and check. But remember, Kahn and Wiener thought even more optimistic estimates were entirely plausible. If productivity growth had reached 5.5 percent, then overall potential economic growth-including the rapidly expanding labor force of the postwar period—could have reached 8 percent annually in the 1970s before slowing to 6 percent today. At that pace, the U.S. economy of today would be $100 trillion, or five times the current level. We might be
February 15, 2026 at 4:06 AM
davekarpf.bsky.social
Okay so James thinks economic productivity was awesome in the 1950s and 1960s, which was all because of technological advances and cultural optimism.

Look, I’m no economist (neither is he), but I kinda think part of U.S. economic growth was because Europe was, y’know, destroyed and rebuilding.
An Economic Boom Dispels Postwar Gloom Unlike Wells, many of the purveyors of postwar economic gloom lived to see their pessimistic predictions proven wildly wrong. It didn't take long. There was no Second Great Depression, of course, or even Hansen's secular stagnation. The peacetime American economy quickly made fears of another severe downturn a distant memory. Rather than sinking, it soared, propelled by rapid Technologically Futuristic Productivity growth. The 1950s and 1960s, specifically, were the fastest-growing decades of the past century.!? This wasn't an era of rapid growth driven merely by pent-up demand after the war. America became more innovative and productive. Workers performed existing tasks more efficiently even as the economy created new things for workers to do and new goods and services for consumers to purchase and businesses to invest in. While almost every household, on average, owned an automobile by 1950, the two-car household became common by 1970.13 And what was optional before the war (such as automatic transmission) 33
February 15, 2026 at 3:08 AM
davekarpf.bsky.social
I keep reminding myself that this book is taken seriously by supposedly-serious people, despite passages like this reading like they were written by a 12-year-old.

“We could’ve had exponential growth forever, but then the optimism came to an abrupt, shocking end.” Sure, kiddo. Whatever you say.
ONE The False Start of Up Wing 1.0 (1955-1973) wice in the past half-century, an optimistic, future-oriented America seemed on the verge of embarking upon a journey to a wondrous tomorrow, of taking a civilizational leap forward to rival that of the Industrial Revolution, of generating a massive discontinuity with the world of the moment. At minimum a never-ending boom of technological and economic progress, but perhaps even more: a great exponential acceleration toward a future beyond imagination. (Think of exponential growth in terms of the classic metaphor of a king offering a chessboard to a servant, starting with one grain of rice on the first square and doubling the amount on each subsequent square. By square sixty-four, the servant would receive an immense amount of rice, some eighteen quintillion grains.) And each time, unfortu-nately, those dreams came to an abrupt and shocking end, with the ongoing Great Downshift as the long-term outcome. The first Up Wing period of fast productivity and economic growth, can-do technological solutionism, and cultural future-optimism began soon 29
February 15, 2026 at 2:42 AM
davekarpf.bsky.social
Some of you might be wondering, “but Dave, is it cringe?”

…Gee, I dunno. Is quoting HAMILTON LYRICS, circa 2023, CRINGE?
“The mobility ethos is on full display in the musical Hamilton, which describes America's Up Wing patron saint of strivers, Alexander Hamilton, as the "ten-dollar founding father without a father / got a lot farther by working a lot harder."
February 14, 2026 at 7:58 PM
davekarpf.bsky.social
“Neither left nor right but up.”

“America must again become what I call an Up Wing country. Up Wing is my shorthand for a solution-oriented future optimism… the most crucial divide for the future of America isn’t left wing versus right wing. It’s Up Wing versus Down Wing.”
itonseratve ruturist postwar growth rate, such a pace might still be slower than what could be possible with better policy creating a better pro-progress ecology for science, technology, and entrepreneurship. An America where the American Dream can be more fully realized. Turning Neither Left Nor Right But Up This I believe: America again can enjoy the material and societal benefits of fast technological progress and rapid, innovation-driven growth. For that to happen, however, America must again become what I call an Up Wing coun-try. Up Wing is my shorthand for a solution-oriented future optimism, for the notion that rapid economic growth driven by technological progress can solve big problems and create a better world of more prosperity, opportunity, and fourishing. The most crucial divide for the future of America isn't left wing versus right wing. It's Up Wing versus Down Wing. (I will use these phrases frequentlv to describe both policy actions and cultural attitudes.) Down Wing
February 14, 2026 at 7:44 PM
davekarpf.bsky.social
James says “COVID-19 could have been either totally prevented through immunization with a universal antivirus vaccine or maybe NEUTRALIZED BY NANOBOTS SWIMMING THROUGH OUR BLOODSTREAMS.”

Ah, yes, of course. We could’ve had nanobots if we had only exercised more technooptimistic imagination.
America's Lost Future Disney never solved its Tomorrowland problem—its chronic inability to depict a compelling, thrilling, techno-optimist future-because America for decades has been failing to discover, create, and invent a real-world Tomorrowland future that can excite and inspire us all. This would be a future where human achievement, opportunity, and potential continue to grow; a future where America is capable of solving big problems and meeting big challenges, including some that threaten the very existence of human civ-ilization. (Cities under climate-controlled bubbles aren't a must, however.) Here's a frustrating, even maddening, glimpse of the amazing America we really could have here in the 2020s: • The U.S. economy could be fully powered by abundant and clean energy, whether advanced nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, superdeep geothermal, or space-based solar where satellites in near-Earth orbit capture some of the oodles of energy the sun sends to our planet every day and then transmit it back to Earth. Global warming? Never heard of it. It's possible. • The COVID-19 pandemic could have been either totally prevented through immunization with a universal antivirus vaccine or maybe neutralized by nanobots swimming through our bloodstreams. It's possible. • America's biggest technology companies and billion-dollar "uni-corn" startups could be exploring space rather than just exploiting our attention spans. Imagine building off-world habitats, running orbital factories, or mining asteroids for precious industrial metals. It's possible. • For the price of a business-class ticket, Americans could be flying- "rocketing," actually—anywhere in the world in under an hour. 14
February 14, 2026 at 7:28 PM
davekarpf.bsky.social
Oh FFS.

James says the problem is that we lost our bold, optimistic vision. After the Apollo mission, there was no “massive and aspirational project devoted to advanced energy, biology, etc.”

WHAT ABOUT THE HUMAN GENOME PROJECT, JAMES? EVER HEARD OF THAT, YOU DUMBASS???
post-1973 pace." This slowing of innovation and tech progress, as measured by TFP, meant Disneyland now found itself with a different sort of Tomorrowland problem. Rather than struggling to stay fifteen minutes ahead of a fast-accelerating technological present—the theme land was supposed to be grounded in reality—Tomorrowland now lacked a wildly innovative private sector and big-thinking Washington to supply it with just-around-the-corner concepts to build upon. It didn't have to be that way. If not ringing Earth with space stations and colonizing the solar system, perhaps the next big thing after Apollo could have been a massive and aspirational project devoted to advanced energy, biology (far bigger than even the War on Cancer), or trans-portation. But America ventured nothing anywhere near the scale of Apollo.
February 14, 2026 at 7:21 PM
davekarpf.bsky.social
There is a cottage industry of economists and who are obsessed with the perceived slowdown of technological progress in the 1970s.

They mostly blame the environmentalists (“We could’ve had limitless nuclear energy if not for those damn hippies!”), and propose tearing down all regulations.
Then the unexpected happened—a shock not only to Disney imagi-neers, but also to technologists, Washington policymakers, CEOs, and the burgeoning futurist industry. In the early 1970s, the Space Age was suddenly grounded, the Atomic Age began powering down, and, most impor-tantly, the postwar era of rapid technological progress and economic growth abruptly ended. It had been quite a run, and economists today call the period a "golden age" for good reason. American living standards, as measured by real per capita GDP, more than doubled as the economy overall grew at a rapid 4 percent annually from 1948 through 1973.
February 14, 2026 at 7:13 PM
davekarpf.bsky.social
First line of the introduction: “‘Conservative futurism’ might seem to be a comical oxymoron.”

SIGH.

James, let me stop you right there. Alvin Toffler was conservative. Herman Kahn was conservative. I have trouble thinking of a single brand-name futurist who WASN’T conservative.
INTRODUCTION America's Tomorrowland Problem one of the most famous Americans of the twentieth century, certainly quali-fed as a conservative futurist. Let's start with the conservative part. Walt was a capitalist and right-winger, through and through. There's no question about that. On October 24, 1947, he testified in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee-popular actor and future American president Ronald Reagan had testified the day before-about union activity at his company and employees he believed to be communists.! Walt was also a supporter of Republican politicians Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Barry Goldwater: When Walt received the Presidential Medal of Freedom-the nation's highest civilian award—from President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, he wore a Goldwater button under his lapel. Walt Disney was also perhaps the most important American futurist of the twentieth century. (Walt's futurism coexisted with a deep streak of nos-talgia, a perspective expressed through his films and television shows Song of the South, Johnny Tremain, Davy Crockett, as well as Disneyland itself, where 9
February 14, 2026 at 6:26 PM
davekarpf.bsky.social
Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” essay in 1991 urged that we focus on fighting AIDS, reducing homelessness, and developing green energy sources instead of trying to colonize space.

Pethokoukis mentions all this but then says that today we have Elon Musk, so he thinks a Sagan would be psyched for Mars now.
about we canent and Tuture residents of that pixel-not to mention the future health of the pixel itself. As Sagan elaborated, "There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Set-tle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand." I always fixate on the "not yet" part of that quote. There's no doubt Sagan desired that humanity become, in the words of electric car and space entrepreneur Elon Musk, a "multiplanetary species." Doing so would be "a step more significant than the colonization of land by our amphibian ancestors some 500 million years ago," Sagan wrote in a 1991 essay? Yet in that same piece, the astronomer dismissed President George H. W. Bush's plan, announced in 1989, to land the first human on Mars in 2019. Such a journey was simply too expensive in the view of Sagan, who in a 1991 essay cited reducing homelessness, fighting the AIDS epidemic, and finding alternatives for fossil fuels among the "clear, crying national needs" that outweighed space colonization. Earth will never be bigger than the size of a pixel, no matter how many times such a photo is taken from the outer edge of the solar system. But the pale blue dot of progress gets a bit bigger—and maybe a bit brighter—all the time, thanks to humanity's endless ingenuity. When Bush announced his plan to send Americans to the Red Planet, the New York Times highlighted cost estimates of $400 billion to reach both the moon and Mars.® But there's been a lot of progress since then, especially in the past few years. Improvements in rocket production and, more importantly, rocket reusability—in large part due to innovation at Musk's SpaceX—means launch costs are a fraction of what they were when Bush made his announcement. And those costs are headed lower still. For maybe just a sliver of the cost of that Bush plan, a Mars colony could one day be established? If he were still alive, I would like to think Sagan would be am…
February 14, 2026 at 5:31 PM
davekarpf.bsky.social
Oh this is gonna be rough.

The preface opens with Carl Sagan’s “pale blue dot” photo of earth from deep outer space.

Pethokoukis wants to reimagine the dot, not as the fragile planet we inhabit together, but as the past two centuries of technological and economic progress.

This guy sucks.
know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civiliza-tion, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of mor-als, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.? Consider again that image and that pale blue pixel, but in a different con-text. That dot? That's the roughly two-hundred-year era of modern technological progress and economic growth amid the two-hundred-thousand-year lifespan of Homo sapiens, millennium after millennium with little of either of those wonderful things. ("Spectacularly brief," in the words of Stanford University economist Charles I. Jones, who specializes in the study of economic growth.) During these past two centuries or so have been invented almost every gadget and gizmo, almost every machine and mechanism, almost every contrivance and contraption that make our lives something more than "soli-
February 14, 2026 at 5:25 PM
davekarpf.bsky.social
I suspect I may have some opinions to share about this next book I’m reading.
THE CONSERVATIVE FUTURIST HOW TO CREATE THE SCI-FI WORLD WE WERE PROMISED JAMES PETHOKOUKIS
February 14, 2026 at 3:38 PM
davekarpf.bsky.social
TIL that Polymarket sponsors Matt Yglesias’s Substack.
1 Polymarket is sponsoring this post, but the odds are not meaningfully different in other markets.
February 13, 2026 at 12:48 AM
davekarpf.bsky.social
Damn, @ryanhatesthis.bsky.social's got hands today.
"The only thing Big Tech is selling us is their own unprocessed trauma back to us. It's not a revolution. It's a comfort blanket for a managerial class that still can't fathom that all their tech and wealth couldn't protect them from the pandemic."
February 11, 2026 at 9:09 PM
davekarpf.bsky.social
This, from @joshgondelman.bsky.social. So much this.

Gambling should be like tobacco use: legal, heavily regulated, hard to access, with zero advertising and a ton of social stigma.
"Gambling should be something you have to hide from your wife and children. It should not be an activity that Kevin Hart begs you to do at every commercial break."
February 9, 2026 at 2:36 PM
davekarpf.bsky.social
“You say corporate rock sucks, and yet your independent record label is also technically a corporation. Curious!”
I think part of the issue here is that "corporate" is a weird word. When I see someone refer to Starbucks as "corporate coffee" or a book titled "Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records," I do understand what they're saying. CORPORATE ROCK SUCKS the rise & fall of SST RECORDS jim ruland Co-author of Do What You Wants The Story of Bad Religlon. SUCKS At the same time, the iconic indie label SST Records is, in fact, a corporation. So is your favorite neighborhood coffee shop.
January 28, 2026 at 2:28 PM
davekarpf.bsky.social
I know DC is still digging out of the snowstorm and the roads aren’t clear. But someone needs to head over to Matt Ygelsias’s house and give the guy a wedgie.

This is a wedgie-emergency. He is begging you to give him one.
"Corporate power" doesn't mean anything You can't fight what you can't measure or define. MATTHEW YGLESIAS JAN 28
January 28, 2026 at 2:24 PM
davekarpf.bsky.social
My lower back and entire cardiovascular system, after shoveling like 15 feet of front steps+sidewalk:
January 26, 2026 at 4:25 AM
davekarpf.bsky.social
Block block blockity block.
January 19, 2026 at 12:22 AM
davekarpf.bsky.social
Paging @ianbetteridge.com
Article titled “can AI generate new ideas?”
January 15, 2026 at 11:53 PM
davekarpf.bsky.social
This book has convinced me that LLMs can almost entirely replace YCombinator.

Clause/Gemini/ChatGPT can absolutely replicate the level of business insight that Paul Graham and his acolytes were giving their techbro recruits circa 2011.
THE LAUNCH PAD - INSIDE Y COMBINATOR WITH A NEW EPILOGUE RANDALL STROSS
January 14, 2026 at 11:26 PM
davekarpf.bsky.social
<Joe Biden's personal sniper>: "it took six years, but we finally got him, sir."
January 13, 2026 at 4:54 PM