j.r. leonard

Arguing the limits of liberal Utopianism has been my whole point Just because you’ve designed the perfect plan on paper, doesn’t mean it’s going to weather the economic and political realities of the world. You should be constantly updating your priors based on results

The political environment in the US is particularly toxic to getting gov't to do certain types of things, which is why handing out money is often a good default measure. That being said, it doesn't have to be that way, and having the gov't succeed more pushes against that view.

I think that’s an understatement. There is a history of racism and white supremacy that compromises the government’s ability to deliver public services equally and efficiently And it doesn’t get addressed enough because it doesn’t map well into existing left-right politics

You can’t talk about housing and education without noting that the existing structures are there to allow certain people to retreat into enclaves explicitly designed to limit those people’s interactions with other people not wealthy enough or white enough to be there

That also might be why a majority minority city did public housing better than more white dominant regions.

That is totally believable, and it made sense when the minority voting base was smaller and white ppl were more hostile. As diversity becomes more mainstream as required by demographics, newer minority politicians will be more open to broader coalitions.

Although there is a terrible alternative that I worry about, where the definition of "white" keeps on expanding until the only non "white" people are black people.