| HN Mirror

That is a risk, yes. But consider three things: moderates' differing reasons for moderation, how that has been working out, and what difference their agreement actually makes.

On the first, some moderates are prudent and thoughtful, looking at all sides of the problem, conscious of sustainability - conservative in the good (non-partisan) way. Certainly, those are people we'd like to persuade toward any big decisions by consensus, both because of their wisdom and the political and economic capital it has allowed them to amass. Many other moderates are just timorous; the more partisan conservatives are rather expert at stampeding them with culture war issues and so forth. That is definitely problematic; while individual sheep are mostly not threatening animals, a herd of them could be quite dangerous. As something of a radical leftist myself (albeit an ideologically agnostic one), I think the superior messaging and information warfare skills of rightists to move moderates around is a Big Problem.

But on the other hand, moderates can be appealed to very clearly. How has the deregulatory free-market ideology actually panned out for them, either across successive Administrations and Congresses (assuming they're older and in the US) or over the 15 year echo of the 2008 financial crisis, which includes the coming-of-age for millenials and affected most of the developed world? If you've been fairly solidly in favor of the status quo most of that time, you have to acknowledge that there have been massive concentrations of wealth in some sectors and widely distributed losses of purchasing power - eg the housing market. Likewise you have to observe that the pandemic and even the recent-current inflationary spiral has been absolute gangbusters for a lot of corporate profits. I was startled myself to observe a month or so ago that the egg industry profits went up ~600% over the last year. I know enough markets to think that some profit-taking and consolidation would be normal and even good following the shocks that hit that industry, but a 6-fold increase in profits suggests market failure rather than necessary correction.

I'm handwaving a lot here, in the interests of brevity. But my basic point is that while moderates have good reason to uphold the status quo, they also have good reasons to notice that has in many ways become a constrictive ceiling, and to question how well The Very Serious People have actually delivered for the economy as a whole.

Lastly, you would generally want the support of the moderate majority (or at least plurality) in a conventional political context. But we are not in such a time. Part of why we bounce from one phenomenon of polarization to another, and so much energy is poured into culture war that are of little inherent importance, is because we are at a tipping point, or rather a confluence of them; and when a system is unstable, a relatively small push can result in a disproportionately large tilt. That's why the more radical types are constantly jockeying for position, hoping to be well-situated to tilt things in a direction that's favorable to them and exploit an availability cascade. In very rapidly unfolding situations, it doesn't matter too much what the moderates want, because they are inclined deliberate (if they're wise) or dither (if they're timorous) while strategists and hotheads act.

Moderates ultimately want everything to go back to normal (most of the time for eminently good reasons). But while some some shocks are transitory, others are transitional. I anticipate that the next ~12 months will basically be a period of about-quarterly dislocations and dampings, and that 2024 is going to look like 2020 on steroids.