Theo Landsman
@ordinalandsman.bsky.social
Senior Political Analyst at YouGov Blue, Political Science PhD candidate , Ranked Ballot Nerd, Map poster.
The best you can do here is probably something like feeding really high quality data to a well incentivized bureaucracy with a ton of automation and a really well designed unicameral legislature, but there's a huge gap between that vision and where we are now.
December 19, 2025 at 7:59 PM
The best you can do here is probably something like feeding really high quality data to a well incentivized bureaucracy with a ton of automation and a really well designed unicameral legislature, but there's a huge gap between that vision and where we are now.
I came to this stuff from a weird direction of reading the techno-utopian libertarian stuff first, then the deliberative democracy counter arguments, then the marxist planning stuff, but this essay on Red Plenty is still something I think about all the time.
crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/i...
crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/i...
In Soviet Union, Optimization Problem Solves You — Crooked Timber
crookedtimber.org
December 19, 2025 at 7:57 PM
I came to this stuff from a weird direction of reading the techno-utopian libertarian stuff first, then the deliberative democracy counter arguments, then the marxist planning stuff, but this essay on Red Plenty is still something I think about all the time.
crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/i...
crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/i...
Oh 100%, I'm just saying, having discussed this article with other socialists, I have found remarkably little enthusiasm for doing something like this in the U.S.
December 19, 2025 at 7:42 PM
Oh 100%, I'm just saying, having discussed this article with other socialists, I have found remarkably little enthusiasm for doing something like this in the U.S.
@ryanlcooper.com has a great article about how the Faroe Islands casually built a completely seamless taxation and payments system: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
This is the kind of stuff Austrians and Marxists used to dream about but now it seems to mostly excite normal accountants.
This is the kind of stuff Austrians and Marxists used to dream about but now it seems to mostly excite normal accountants.
The Greatest Tax System in the World
Why can’t America be as great as the Faroe Islands?
www.theatlantic.com
December 19, 2025 at 7:37 PM
@ryanlcooper.com has a great article about how the Faroe Islands casually built a completely seamless taxation and payments system: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
This is the kind of stuff Austrians and Marxists used to dream about but now it seems to mostly excite normal accountants.
This is the kind of stuff Austrians and Marxists used to dream about but now it seems to mostly excite normal accountants.
I think most 'normal' economists who are not just a different kind of ideologue are in favor of the tamer version of this stuff, they just don't have the fervor to implement it over political objections and constraints.
December 19, 2025 at 7:34 PM
I think most 'normal' economists who are not just a different kind of ideologue are in favor of the tamer version of this stuff, they just don't have the fervor to implement it over political objections and constraints.
Like it is really easy to take this stuff to far but also we built a panopticon that is completely machine legible and our processing capacity exploded and we've done basically none of the social welfare optimization stuff those leftists originally wanted with that.
December 19, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Like it is really easy to take this stuff to far but also we built a panopticon that is completely machine legible and our processing capacity exploded and we've done basically none of the social welfare optimization stuff those leftists originally wanted with that.
It is actually a huge shame that the far left has completely abandoned any belief in rationalizing/making legible/optimizing the economy. The only people who still believe in some version of that vision appear to be tech libertarians who don't have the history/context for how it failed.
December 19, 2025 at 7:28 PM
It is actually a huge shame that the far left has completely abandoned any belief in rationalizing/making legible/optimizing the economy. The only people who still believe in some version of that vision appear to be tech libertarians who don't have the history/context for how it failed.
If I was trying to make the strongest possible version of this argument, which I'm not sure that I believe, it would be that any kind of prioritization of aesthetics over human life inevitably poisons the aesthetic because the kinds of people who are willing to enact these projects are dead inside.
December 19, 2025 at 3:42 PM
If I was trying to make the strongest possible version of this argument, which I'm not sure that I believe, it would be that any kind of prioritization of aesthetics over human life inevitably poisons the aesthetic because the kinds of people who are willing to enact these projects are dead inside.
I don't think she says the Ballroom is good, IMO the question she's asking is 'why can't liberals or the left embrace a singular aesthetic that is good the way Trump-ists have embraced the McMansion aesthetic that is bad.' And I think the answer is more interesting than posing it rhetorically.
December 19, 2025 at 3:32 PM
I don't think she says the Ballroom is good, IMO the question she's asking is 'why can't liberals or the left embrace a singular aesthetic that is good the way Trump-ists have embraced the McMansion aesthetic that is bad.' And I think the answer is more interesting than posing it rhetorically.
He built a lot of monuments and monumental infrastructure like train stations yeah, the 'trains run on time thing' is wrong but there's a reason he is associated with trains. The way that existing monuments like the coliseum were restored was also explicitly fascist.
December 19, 2025 at 3:19 PM
He built a lot of monuments and monumental infrastructure like train stations yeah, the 'trains run on time thing' is wrong but there's a reason he is associated with trains. The way that existing monuments like the coliseum were restored was also explicitly fascist.
The most aesthetically talked up libraries in the U.S. were built by Andrew Carnegie and very much represent the singular vision of one man with decidedly anti-democratic levels of power and terrible politics.
December 19, 2025 at 2:49 PM
The most aesthetically talked up libraries in the U.S. were built by Andrew Carnegie and very much represent the singular vision of one man with decidedly anti-democratic levels of power and terrible politics.
The Statue of Liberty was a gift from France that was envisioned immediately in the aftermath of and explicitly in reaction to the dethroning of Napoléon III. I seriously doubt that the political culture of either country would have allowed it to be built or even proposed domestically.
December 19, 2025 at 2:42 PM
The Statue of Liberty was a gift from France that was envisioned immediately in the aftermath of and explicitly in reaction to the dethroning of Napoléon III. I seriously doubt that the political culture of either country would have allowed it to be built or even proposed domestically.
It's trivial to imagine a version of the New Deal built environment that is twice as majestic because it invested in half as many 'pointless bid to restore the grandeur of a bygone age' projects. The question is why is it so clear that we could never have that.
December 19, 2025 at 2:36 PM
It's trivial to imagine a version of the New Deal built environment that is twice as majestic because it invested in half as many 'pointless bid to restore the grandeur of a bygone age' projects. The question is why is it so clear that we could never have that.
I am a huge fan of the New Deal but it absolutely suffers from the same ruinously insane obsession with aesthetics as these other projects. We dredged every canal in the U.S. with zero automation and then when they immediately silted back up because no one was using them we dredged them again.
December 19, 2025 at 2:33 PM
I am a huge fan of the New Deal but it absolutely suffers from the same ruinously insane obsession with aesthetics as these other projects. We dredged every canal in the U.S. with zero automation and then when they immediately silted back up because no one was using them we dredged them again.
I'm saying the opposite, I think her piece actually makes the case that any elevation of aesthetics as a political priority drives people insane and leads them to do horrible and politically pointless things.
December 18, 2025 at 10:15 PM
I'm saying the opposite, I think her piece actually makes the case that any elevation of aesthetics as a political priority drives people insane and leads them to do horrible and politically pointless things.
But it really feels like somehow that is not possible, that prioritizing aesthetics really is some sort of dark path that inescapably draws people to fascism.
December 18, 2025 at 10:07 PM
But it really feels like somehow that is not possible, that prioritizing aesthetics really is some sort of dark path that inescapably draws people to fascism.
I don't think that art and making things the built environment beautiful is a waste of time and money. I just wish there were people advocating for those things who didn't not so secretly want to do ethnic cleansing or prevent anyone from ever moving to their neighborhood again.
December 18, 2025 at 10:07 PM
I don't think that art and making things the built environment beautiful is a waste of time and money. I just wish there were people advocating for those things who didn't not so secretly want to do ethnic cleansing or prevent anyone from ever moving to their neighborhood again.
It's easy to dunk on liberals with something like 'why can't liberalism build anything as interesting as Soviet towers or Mussolini's monuments' but the more interesting question is the opposite, why does everyone with strong opinions on monumental architecture turn out to be politically insane.
December 18, 2025 at 9:37 PM
It's easy to dunk on liberals with something like 'why can't liberalism build anything as interesting as Soviet towers or Mussolini's monuments' but the more interesting question is the opposite, why does everyone with strong opinions on monumental architecture turn out to be politically insane.
I thought the piece was pretty fun and learned a bit about the East wing project from it, but it also inadvertently made the case that left-liberalism's refusal to wade into aesthetic debates is actually super important and not some kind of regrettable oversight.
December 18, 2025 at 9:33 PM
I thought the piece was pretty fun and learned a bit about the East wing project from it, but it also inadvertently made the case that left-liberalism's refusal to wade into aesthetic debates is actually super important and not some kind of regrettable oversight.
I guess the question is where the average persuadable consumer is. Like if you want to persuade political practitioners that they should adopt a new tax policy you can just write it up, but the people reading those articles aren't going to change their ideology because you made a good case.
December 18, 2025 at 4:18 PM
I guess the question is where the average persuadable consumer is. Like if you want to persuade political practitioners that they should adopt a new tax policy you can just write it up, but the people reading those articles aren't going to change their ideology because you made a good case.
I think as a general rule you need to be willing in any relationship to entertain the possibility that you have hurt the other person very badly. Not because you are a bad person, but because everyone makes mistakes and relationships are hard. Not a lot of signs of that in that article.
December 16, 2025 at 8:36 PM
I think as a general rule you need to be willing in any relationship to entertain the possibility that you have hurt the other person very badly. Not because you are a bad person, but because everyone makes mistakes and relationships are hard. Not a lot of signs of that in that article.
My vague sense is that someone who would agree with an anti-Semitic conspiracy on a likert scale but not on a more nuanced question is essentially someone who is not a hardened anti-semite but also does not contribute to any kind of social stigmatization of antisemitism.
December 15, 2025 at 6:55 PM
My vague sense is that someone who would agree with an anti-Semitic conspiracy on a likert scale but not on a more nuanced question is essentially someone who is not a hardened anti-semite but also does not contribute to any kind of social stigmatization of antisemitism.
FWIW I liked the normal explanation <> conspiracy explanation idea a lot and will definitely be trying it!
December 15, 2025 at 6:53 PM
FWIW I liked the normal explanation <> conspiracy explanation idea a lot and will definitely be trying it!