The anti-Promethean backlash – Niskanen Center

“The Permanent Problem” is an ongoing series of essay about the challenges of capitalist mass affluence as well as the solutions to them. You can access the full collection here, or subscribe to brinklindsey.substack.com to get them straight to your inbox. 

We are able to say that communist central planning failed because we can compare its results with those of capitalism. We can look at nighttime photos of the Korean peninsula; we can contrast Soviet bread lines with the groaning shelves of an American supermarket. 

Imagine a nearby Universe, though, where on Earth Prime, Marxist-Leninist revolution had somehow triumphed globally while reducing the most advanced countries to ruins. Rebuilding from the ashes would have felt like progress, as would the spread of…