The Future Frontiers

Within the song American Remains by The Highwaymen, Willie Nelson provides the listener with a terse but rather powerful musical prose.

I am a Midwest farmer, I make a living off the land.

I ride a John Deere tractor, I’m a liberated man.

But the rain it hasn’t fallen since the middle of July. And if it don’t come soon my crops will die.

The bank man says he likes me, but there’s nothing he can do.

He tells me that he’s coming, but the clouds are coming too

He ain’t my friend. And I’ll ride again.

For many Americans, this kind of nostalgic look into America’s frontier-laden past could find broad support and praise. It is a story of perseverance and grit, of the frontier man, caught between both natural elements and the ever-present market, which demands much and provides little. This frontier ideal, with its potential harvests, free real estate, and plentiful opportunities, for decades drove the American political psyche. It created both legends and fables, worldviews and ideologies, glued together by narratives of material abundance and territorial expansion.

Over time, this ideal has, of course, changed. Limitless territorial expansion ended once our country hit the Pacific Ocean, and the kind of political freedom it promised was eventually supplanted by the promise of free markets delivering free men. Man could still achieve this legendary search for freedom by starting a business, or by investing in new corporate titans that were delivering unimaginable oceans of wealth and growth.

With the onset of the Great Depression, this future eventually collapsed from its own contradictions and debts, and then America once again found itself developing new polities and institutions which could meet the moment. Gradually, the frontier became one of balanced growth, achieved through both government intervention and private initiatives. Unions were now important in day-to-day life, as were federal agencies and their regulatory oversight. Growth was finally steady, as was wage growth and economic security. And despite internal conflicts emerging around segregation, the role of religion in society, gender equality, and the external conflict in Vietnam, the future was still viewed positively by most Americans, and the system was thus able to hold. But eventually, even this vision collapsed as new crises emerged. Soon, led on horseback by Ronald Reagan and his disciples, the era of neoliberal, “greed is good” capitalism came to increasingly define our vision of the present and future.

We have lived in this frontier for decades, and its ability to provide optimistic outlooks is now completely dead and buried. Many of us can no longer imagine fundamentally changing our nation’s politics or economy, nor can we imagine a world where growing crises, such as climate change or inequality, are solved through existing figures and institutions. Capitalism is fixed, oligarchic corruption is law, institutions are broken, and imagining anything better is impossible.

Our ideas of the future are increasingly having to absorb this dim reality. When crises are abundant, and when all sides of the political spectrum uniformly view our current moment with intense suspicion and dread, ideas will indeed begin to adapt. Three emerging visions of the frontier, in particular, help to offer a glimpse into our increasingly divergent ideas of the future, and on how American politics is ever evolving to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Gonzo Techno-Resentment

American conservatism’s political ethos for decades was defined by the simplified image of the Western man. It was, after all, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, whose movements helped to establish visions predicated on the value of individualistic ambition and its ability to lead societies and markets to greatness. Under these guiding lights, the future of America writ large was to be a story defined by free men and markets, leading to a more prosperous nation. In 1980, this ethos became cemented among the Republican base, and by the late 1990s found itself being implemented by the supposed Democratic opposition. Deregulation, tax cuts, and small government all became king.

It was here that another cowboy emerged, this time through the wild man character of Governor George W. Bush of Texas. Upon his victory in 2000, Bush embarked on a quest to bring democracy to the Middle East alongside a stronger and more entrepreneurial American economy. Our national motto was now to kick ass overseas while cutting taxes at home; to pump oil into the sky while pumping our stock markets and mortgage-backed securities full of cash and credit. War and hawkish policy became ubiquitous; home ownership, and the freedom it could provide, was to soon be available to all who sought its promises.

For an amount of time, Bushism seemed to present an almost perfect future for American conservatism, providing a limitless vision of market-led expansion, limited government, and democratization abroad. It was, especially among its most sycophantic supporters, the new driving force for a new American century. But this future, much like the credit ratings on countless mortgages, or the countless WMDs in Iraq, was, in the end, total dogshit. The financial crisis of 2007/2008 hit the economy like a firetruck just as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were grinding to a complete point of stagnation. Trillions were wasted on bailouts and war while millions suffered and thousands were killed.

Among the conservative base and its hermit-like intellectual class, various reactions began to form out of these generational failures. The future, as a concept, grew far darker, being increasingly shaped by nationalistic nostalgia and a deep polarization against the liberal others. American culture was in rapid decline, with both religion and tradition being thrown to the wayside by a surreptitious cabal of liberal elites who controlled the media, academia, and the federal bureaucracy. Less a vision for society and more a vitriolic and paranoid reaction against American liberalism, the conservative vision of the frontier since 2008 has become a loose ideology typified by a growing resentment against democracy and egalitarianism. It is also extremely online and anti-social.

Take the national conservatives, whose ideological blend of ethnonationalism and welfare chauvinism has helped the group to leapfrog into various conservative organizations and publications. Within this tent, the future of America has to be one with strong borders, sturdy trade protections, and reinforced social traditions that cement the role of God, family, and community. America must be orderly, cohesive, and willing to sacrifice certain pleasures in order to achieve a new century of American prosperity. And similarly to the cowboy ethos of Goldwater and Reagan, the future offered here is one characterized by strong and mythical male breadwinners who will help to glue American capitalism back together through hard work, heterosexuality, and Christian morality.

The end goal is entirely ambiguous and is instead driven by a vibes-based approach, which fails to define what its core principles for government and the economy will actually look like in practice. Rhetorically, among its biggest boosters like Senators Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance, the outcomes have been rather pugnacious and invariably driven by cultural war grievances. Class is mentioned, as is the need for government intervention into the economy, but often just to serve as mere window dressing for a politics of elite white resentment and idiotic protectionism.

The problem of climate change is entirely ignored, as are the deleterious effects of capitalism. Housing unaffordability, inflation, healthcare costs, and wage inequality are all thoughtlessly blamed on immigration, or on the aforementioned liberal cabal, which is seemingly pulling the strings within all major corporations. It is a vision which is fundamentally anti-present and angry; vaguely pro-economic intervention but not beyond the realm of rhetoric or shitposting.

The same can be said for the neo-reactionaries, a hodgepodge group of Silicon Valley investors and bloggers who have, over time, developed what they refer to as a Dark Enlightenment. Led by individuals like Curtis Yarvin and Peter Thiel, both of whom are increasingly influential in Washington, this frontier has gradually morphed into an all-out ideological opposition to our current democracy. Liberalism, beyond just serving as a rhetorical punching bag, is viewed as an existential threat that has poisoned capitalism’s natural trajectory by injecting the harmful viruses of bureaucracy and egalitarianism. Capitalism’s inherent drive for all-out market and social competition is to be viewed positively and as an iron law of nature, which must be defended through brute force and violence, purposely blending social Darwinism with authoritarian capitalism.

The role of the state is one in which national governments will be bled of their autonomy and supplanted by localized, capitalist city-states. CEOs and shareholders will serve as both autocrats and business professionals, blending their economic interests and fiduciary responsibilities with political governance. There will be no policymaking beyond protecting markets and investment. Citizens of these states will only be able to voice their displeasure by packing up and fleeing to another capitalist city.

The only place where these two tents actually diverge is with their end goal for humanity. For the neo-reactionaries, modern society and democracy must both be sacrificed to the god-like machine of capitalism. Through doing this, unfettered capitalism will eventually help to deliver humanity to a point and time where our brains can be molded into computers and chips, thus fending off the climate crisis and mortality in one fell swoop. Society’s leading mantra would be simple and bleak: We must compete, we must innovate, and we must strive to live and act like machines; any deviation will mean death and destruction.

In their totality, the national-conservatives and neo-reactionaries theoretically have a variety of disagreements on the exact role of the state and the economy, but these differences are not that stark in reality. Put these different groups into a room together, and they will largely agree. In fact, this has already been done, and the interaction was one of mutual understanding and only slight tweaks around the edges.

The contemporary American right’s united frontier is ultimately a political attempt to stand athwart our current moment in history and yell that we are forcibly going back. Democracy and equality will be uprooted in order to defend capitalism and innovation. Only capitalism, faith, and transhumanism can save us. It is fundamentally anti-individual and anti-social, viewing people as mere inputs, as lumps of coal which are meant to power our self-imposed death machine in perpetuity.

Abundance With Supply-Side Characteristics

The abundance movement is all the craze right now. Backed by millions of dollars of fresh PAC money, individual donations, and new think tanks, the abundance movement has helped to orchestrate various conferences and policy wonk cocktail hours devoted to changing and challenging current ideas within American liberalism. Most vitally, this movement has positioned itself as supporting a new kind of liberalism, which will build, get things done, and kill the dragon that is bureaucratic proceduralism.

Led by the journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, who earlier this year released a book titled after the movement’s now-famous moniker, Abundance has helped to propose various new ideas on how to change American political and economic governance in the coming decades. The most prominent ideas have been permitting and zoning reform, targeted deregulation, and expanded research and development (R&D). Increasing housing supply is particularly one of their goals, as are calls for new and bold ideas that will help to expedite scientific research and its subsequent commercialization.

Regarding policy and calls for technocratic governance, this is where abundance excels as a unified frontier. It offers a vision of a government and political class that is wholeheartedly devoted to engaging in a kind of managerialism which will increase supply, decrease proceduralism, and support individual risk-taking and ambition. Housing, green energy, good research, and food will be abundant, and these outcomes will be achieved through public-private coordination predicated on sound policymaking, efficient planning, and market-driven growth. It is a future where technology, and the role it will play in helping to make society more equitable, is positioned front and center, and in a rather optimistic manner.

In its totality, Klein and Thompson present a frontier where growth in the technological sector and other vital markets will inevitably lead to greater productivity and fewer working hours. Stratospheric factories will orbit our planet while delivering us our every consumer need in a matter of minutes; growth will be so quick and widespread that everyone will be able to have a piece of this ever-expanding pie; and housing will be both sleek and timely, being efficiently built within increasingly dense neighborhoods. It is a vision which ultimately alludes back to the possibilities of post-war liberalism, and to John Maynard Keynes’ dream of a new century where technological advancement and proper technocratic governance would deliver a world of abundant supply, post-material values, and far more free time for the average person. Fundamentally, it is a future powered by an updated form of supply-side liberalism, one which is heavily predicated on increasing supply through deregulation, R&D spending, techno-optimism, local planning, and federal subsidization.

But it is here that this vision of a new and improved managerial state for the 21st century begins to run into some serious problems. While the movement’s policy prescriptions and ideas around planning are indeed sound, it is within the movement’s idea of the future, and its form of politics, where severe lapses in judgement, context, and political economy emerge.

Historically speaking, supply-side liberalism is not new and has, in fact, been tried again and again for decades. In fact, since the time of Keynes, there has existed a variety of ideas and groups that have been focused on harnessing market forces to both increase supply and bring about the public good. Two influential New Deal intellectuals in particular, Charles Merriam and Alvin Hansen, presented a series of arguments in the 1930s and 1940s that advocated for utilizing local groups and rules, alongside federal investment, for the purposes of increasing supply and innovation, and all while ignoring increases to federal administrative capacity or fiscal distribution.

Various New Deal era developments were heavily underwritten by these supply-side policies, often through intermediation with local elites and firms. Slum clearance, urban renewal, housing development, and various other projects were all implemented through the peculiar concoction of federal spending, business-led development, and a broad commitment to lowering barriers for supply siders. During this era, affordable housing was sometimes built, but more often what followed were high-rise apartments and luxury developments, which helped to simultaneously expand housing stocks and private profits. Neighborhood redevelopment projects occurred as well with relatively few restrictions, and delivered decade-long increases to local housing, business growth, and property values.

Moreover, as the 20th century progressed, and as new generations of Democrats came to power thanks to emerging coalitions of young, urban professionals, this helped to further place more wind within the sails of market-led development. Faith in markets, and support for innovation and entrepreneurialism, became the mantra of a new kind of Democratic party, which was looking to position themselves as the logical center between Reagan’s new conservatism and the antiquated New Dealers. It was during this shift that various working-class and African American communities were displaced through supply-side developments, deindustrialization, and other market considerations.

Over time, this burgeoning supply-side liberalism begat a slew of urban areas that favored business elites and their choices of investment. Increased focus on markets and their adopted vernacular allowed rating agencies and construction firms to gain unprecedented levels of power over local rulemaking and implementation. Municipal budgets more and more began to reflect the preferences of supply-siders and new upper-middle-class homeowners. Privatization, tax cuts, subsidies toward nascent businesses, and various other reforms all became the main way that local and state governments try to implement socioeconomic policy.

Even today, local policies are often geared toward and filtered through a political economy of business-focused growth and a deep faith in markets to deliver social progress and adequate supply. The ability of the government to provide welfare and material alleviation has been utterly sidelined, and in its place, a new form of liberalism has gradually climbed out of the ashes of the New Deal coalition. It is a liberalism that has indeed built more, but only for some.

New policies, such as zoning reform, land trusts, and government R&D, will undoubtedly all help to increase supply and expand markets. But these initiatives will concurrently continue to operate in a supply-side environment that has existed for over half a century. Businesses, financial firms, and homeowners will mobilize against policies that they view as opposed to their interests, and sound policy alone will never be enough to surmount political skullduggery and its effects on policy outcomes. People ultimately need a story that relates to their hardships and then offers a kind of politics that can fix them, rather than just a tirade of facts and statistics.

After all, new housing, energy projects, and technological developments occurred throughout the 20th century, sometimes with tremendous success. Just look at Silicon Valley, or at the “New South,” which helped to empower cities like Atlanta, Nashville, Houston, and Charlotte to new economic and social heights. All were supply-side focused and used federal and state dollars to increase supply and technological innovation. But despite all this growth in technology and wealth, most of these gains failed to be delivered to the people who needed them most. New homes and apartments have indeed been built throughout the south, but has this helped to provide a politics where poverty and inequality are greatly mitigated? Have millions of new iPhones designed in California really helped to deliver better lives for all?

Abundance’s policies aren’t bad or idiotic, but just like the supply-side liberals of yesteryear, it is a movement of anti-politics and technocratic policy governance that fails to account for how market forces and perfidious actors might weaponize their stated goals for their own benefit. At the end of the day, technology and growth can indeed create abundance, but if this supply is not distributed fairly, or if it is not led by a politics strong enough to assert its will and coalitional strength, you are merely setting yourself up for a policy portfolio of some short successes and many long-term failures.

The Left’s To-Be-Decideds

What exactly is the American left’s vision for the future? To state that it is a coherent or unified one would be inaccurate, especially since the left is so often undermined by internal fighting or slight disagreements over policies. But by and large, the American left broadly wants a future with more government intervention, greater egalitarian outcomes, and a climate that isn’t falling apart by the 2050s. It is simultaneously simple and extremely vexing, and this is for a variety of reasons.

For starters, the American left is multifaceted. Among its ranks are scores of democratic socialists, union members, urban activists, college students, academics, progressive lawmakers, nonprofit leaders, and a multitude of other groups and figures. And what makes each of these groups tick is not at all uniform. Disagreement over policy and vision is common, as are public feuds and their consequences. Many can sometimes treat being on the left as a form of social standing amongst peers, or as a proud badge to wear on one’s coat or social media header. Overall, this is not the case with the broader American left, but it is indeed a problem that has occurred.

Secondly, the American left suffers from several ideological and institutional limitations. Fifty years of neoliberal hegemony, paired with a Congress that has a plethora of anti-majoritarian veto points, can be quite challenging to navigate. Just look at the internal fights that occurred in 2021/2022 over the IRA and its various provisions, or at the rotating cast of moderate villains that emerge every two to four years to derail Democratic momentum. The reality of federalism brings with it severe limitations on implementing national programs, and as a political coalition, the left is not yet popular enough to unilaterally overcome these hurdles.

Thus, the contemporary left finds itself decentralized and with a governmental system which is slow to deliver legislative positive change. Austerity is easy to enact in our system, as is quantitative easing and mass deportations. But as for building governmental capacity, implementing universal programs, or even just establishing new and effective means of taxation and regulation? All take time and consistent support, something which the American left is often bereft of. But despite these structural challenges, there is indeed something beneath the surface that is starting to gain traction, with a new frontier beginning to emerge.

Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City, for one thing, represents a real and stark break from past ventures in local governance. Whether it’s free buses, universal childcare, city-owned grocery stores, or the delivery of baby baskets to new parents, all of these potential avenues indicate a shift from past Democratic norms, and in the largest city in our country. These are not initiatives focused on using tax incentives or subsidies to push the market toward providing these services, nor is it an attempt to create services through means of public-private endeavors or outsourcing. Instead, nestled within Mamdani’s victory is a nascent vision for local governance with a 20th-century left-labor, social-democratic bent. It is a vision that views market dominance with suspicion while respecting the role of the government in bringing about universal programs and effective pro-labor urban planning.

It wants more bike lanes and more government-built green energy facilities; it demands zoning reforms paired with public housing programs that learn from the mistakes of the past. Fundamentally, Mamdani’s victory, and his broader coalition with people like Brad Lander, represents an opportunity to construct a new and pragmatic current within the American left that is powerful and competitive enough to spread nationally. It is also a current that could find common ground with an American population that is increasingly anti-oligarchy and anti-status quo

It is here where Bernie Sanders’ populist opposition to the Republican Party’s right-wing bullshittery has gained steam. These left-populist messages, geared towards class and distribution, have landed well with a working population in need of support amidst ongoing inflationary pressures and stagnation. Bernie’s messaging has also deeply resonated with a to-be-determined resurgent labor movement, which is helping to once again politicize the economy and reorient it around class conflict.

As Republican governance implodes, and as our planet’s environmental crisis is further exacerbated (think more wildfires, floods, hurricanes, etc.), people will eventually begin to demand a new kind of system. The extraction of fossil fuels, insurance markets, and tech financial speculation will all inevitably reach a point where their continuance means drastic environmental degradation and extreme risk absorption. For many markets, these risks will simply grow too substantial and extreme, with governmental support being needed as a last-ditch market stabilizer. Without government, these industries and their growth strategies will all inevitably fail.

If the left, led by figures like Mamdani, Sanders, Lander, and various other yet-to-be-known insurgents, can ultimately present real alternatives for the future, there really does seem to be a pathway to significant change. Social-democratic governance could indeed serve as a robust frontier for the left, but for this to occur, the left will have to overcome its present internal and external challenges, and the possibility of this occurring remains to be seen.

Frontiers Dead and Buried

Frontiers die because of their inability to solve or present alternatives to fundamental socio-economic issues. Katrina, the financial crisis, and the war in Iraq all damned Bushism to the dustbin of history. Today, whether it is Trump’s buildup of troops near Venezuela, his laissez-faire approach to economic development, or his administration’s growing austerity agenda, which will impact federal emergency assistance to red and blue states alike, the Republican Party is gradually showing itself incapable of governing the future effectively. Market-friendly frontiers have been dead since 2008, and now, with conservatism once again dropping the ball, it seems that Trumpism’s response to our growing economic and environmental crises is falling as well.

What comes next is not yet determined. Conservatism is betting deeply on anti-democratic and nationalist-traditionalist variants of capitalism, which will cut deeper than ever before and punish those who disagree. Moderates are betting on abundance and on the ability of technocratic and apolitical market governance to deliver adequate supply and policy delivery. Finally, the left finds itself decentralized but with a tremendous amount of talent, opportunity, and social-democratic momentum. All three of these frontiers appeal to the different fears and anxieties that we feel as Americans. Insecurity is indeed quite plentiful.

What political actors offer to us, beyond just policy, will matter deeply as we emerge into the middle part of a 21st century already ridden with crises and conflicts. Visions of hope and purpose, and of the just distribution of power and security, will be vital in helping to convey that positive and transformative changes are still possible, and that democracy is not just a stagnant hunk of ossified shit in the end.

The political scientist Jonathan White put it best when he wrote:

“If representatives orient themselves to the future less in terms of comprehensive visions than managerial competence, they adopt a stance that unelected officials can claim to be better suited to. One of the familiar justifications for technocracy is that expert-based institutions are well placed to pursue long-term targets, free of the constraints of partisanship and public opinion. The more that democratic politics looks like managerialism in a suboptimal setting, buffeted by partisan hostility and electoral strategizing, the more one can expect calls to shift authority elsewhere.”

These calls already exist and are being directed at three very different visions of what politics can look like within our country. Only time will tell how the American frontier will continue to evolve, but one thing is for certain. As profound challenges emerge and plague our society, frontiers will develop, and we should fight and organize quickly for a democratic alternative that is able to win out and deliver. Hopefully, this can be achieved well before the death drives of capitalism and climate change begin to reach a rather scary apotheosis.