Scott Alexander (Astral Codex Ten)

But the average person has no idea how much medical progress we're making, or how many species go extinct, or how many people get scammed in an average year.

Maybe there will be some studies trying to count this stuff, but studies are noisy and can always be dismissed if you disagree.

So lots of bad stuff will happen, and all the conservatives will think, haha, nothing happened.

I told you every attempt ever to make things better or dry a single human tear has always been fake liberal NGO slush fund grifts.

Or maybe one newsworthy thing will happen.

A plane will fall out of the sky in a way easily linked to doge cuts.

And not DEI?

Or the tariffs will cause a recession.

And then all the liberals will say, ha ha, we told you that any attempt to reduce government or cut red tape or leave even the tiniest space for human freedom or progress has always been sadistic doomed attempts to loot the public square and give it to billionaires.

They are already saying this.

Everyone is just going to get more and more sure that their particular form of careening to destruction is great and that we can focus entirely on beating up on the other party and we will never get anyone who cares about good policy ever again.

Probably this isn't true, and I shouldn't even say it, because everyone else is already too doomy.

You'd be surprised how many basically sane people I've heard expressing worries that they'll be put in camps, not even illegal immigrants or some other at-risk group, or that Elon Musk sending people emails asking them what they're doing is a form of fascism.

I try to remind myself that if there had only ever been half as much government funding as there is now, I wouldn't be outraged and demand that we bring it up to exactly the current level, and once it was at the current level become un-outraged and stop worrying.

The current level is a random compromise between people who wanted more and people who wanted less, with no particular moral significance.

This thought process helps, but I think that even in that situation one could justify a few really good programs like PEPFAR on their own terms.

That is, if it didn't exist, I would be outraged until it did.

And I still think that changing the size of government should be done through legal rather than illegal means, competently rather than incompetently, and honestly rather than lying about every single thing you do all the time.

Whatever.

We've gotten through a lot.