Anthropology Politics TV

It’s One Of Those Magic Mirrors

November 1, 2026 by David 105 Comments

Lifted from the comments, another feat of progressive self-admiration:

It’s curious that Mr Yglesias should pick a fictional character from a fictional world where commonplace human motivations have been done away with, simply written out of existence – a world with no discernible economic costs or constraints, and in which, as said character puts it, “money doesn’t exist.”

And as others note in the replies, it’s something of a stretch to imagine the modern progressive as somehow being driven by hard work and duty, or being defined by rationality. It’s almost funny.

Update, via the comments:

Dicentra adds, somewhat pointedly,

Not all of the writers “ate their own dogfood,” as it were.

Referring to an interview with Star Trek writer Ronald D Moore. Specifically,

Gene [Roddenberry] had kind of bought into his own press release that he was a visionary, and he just decided that in the twenty-fourth century there was no money and people “work to better ourselves,” I think Picard says at one point.

All of us on the show just went, “I don’t know what that means, so let’s just ignore it as best we can.”

It’s an unconvincing conceit with no pay-off. It doesn’t even work dramatically. It adds nothing of significance in story-telling terms, only inconsistencies, more things one mustn’t think about.

Regarding Mr Yglesias, it’s hard not to trip over the vanity in play, the sheer indulgence of it.

Mr Yglesias’ chosen epitome of progressivism – which is to say, the epitome of his own politics – is a made-up world, the economics of which do not make sense, even according to its own writers, and in which 700-metre starships, equipped with Impossibility Engines, are built, one assumes joyfully, in great numbers, at no cost, by people who don’t get paid.

Mr Yglesias’ adventures in fantasy have been noted here before.




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