[pmiller2]

I agree. IMO, although I know a significant number of people disagree with me here, I think David Graeber's ideas are important enough that people of all ideological stripes ought to pay attention to what he had to say.

Unfortunately, since he's far, far outside the Overton window, to the left, Americans, by and large, have a rather extreme reaction to those ideas. That's bad, because ideas that make us uncomfortable can sometimes be the ones that allow us to make truly revolutionary leaps in our thinking. Not always -- e.g. wanting to make slavery illegal is an idea that ought to make everyone uncomfortable, but has no legitimate place in today's world. But, definitely sometimes, and I believe Graeber's ideas are the type that could take us forward, rather than backward.

[jbay808]

> Not always -- e.g. wanting to make slavery illegal is an idea that ought to make everyone uncomfortable, but has no legitimate place in today's world.

I had a hard time parsing this. Did you mean legal?

[pmiller2]

Yes. Autocorrect strikes again.

[rch]

Is there a term for the tension that occurs when objectively optimal policy falls outside the window?

I'm not proposing that it's possible to identify a truly optimal policy mix, only that there might be (at least) one and I'm curious about what happens to society when it falls far outside what's acceptable to discuss.

[Ericson2314]

"Overton Defenestration" would be doing that policy anyways.

[082349872349872]

The Overton window in nineteenth century US: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23667409