ProCiv probably favors a daring approach to institutional reform. Institutions like governments, universities, and the health care system represent society’s collective intelligence. When they are operating well, society is effective, productive, and nimble in addressing crises. When they are operating poorly, they can suck up infinite money while producing less and less benefit, a process sometimes referred to as “institutional sclerosis”. There is good evidence that American institutions are quite sclerotic. Infrastructure is slow to build and expensive compared to the past. Education and medicine are skyrocketing in price while most of that extra money goes to hiring administrators and regulatory compliance. A ProCiv point of view advocates for paying the cost to make bold reforms now in exchange for upgrading our collective intelligence to manage the challenges of the coming decades.
Read the whole post. The idea is that conservatives, concerned about the survival of civilization, ought to focus on avoiding catastrophic global risks while encouraging a lot of limited experimentation.
But I am afraid that “daring approach to institutional reform” and conservatism are not a natural match.
It seems that that what you would want would be to preserve institutions and norms that are helpful and to reform those that are harmful. Other things equal, conservatives have a bias toward preservation. Progressives have a bias toward reform. If we are lucky, then conservatives will preserve good institutions and norms while gradually accepting reforms that get rid of bad institutions and norms.
But what happens when the bad institutions and norms are cherished by progressives? Think of higher education, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or being non-judgmental about people who have children outside of marriage. The progressive does not see the need for reform, and the conservative is hesitant to attempt radical change.
Seemingly related: Scott Alexander’s summary of readers’ comments on Jordan Peterson.