Don’t Fear the Future

Anti-growth, techno-pessimist, long-termist.

Published October 5, 2023

The future has a lot of enemies these days, and most of them seem to agree that progress is behind us while nothing but disaster lies ahead. Today, AEI’s Jim Pethokoukis is back on the Remnant to challenge that idea. His new book, The Conservative Futurist, makes the case for a risk-taking, future-oriented American society driven by technological change. But what would such a society look like in practice? How could it come into being? And what makes futurism and conservatism compatible?

Show Notes:

– Jim’s page at AEI

– Jim’s book, The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised

– Jim’s Substack, Faster, Please!

– Jim’s Political Economy podcast

– Jim’s previous Remnant appearance

– Virginia Postrel’s The Future and Its Enemies

– Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future

– Half-Earth Socialism

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Jonah Goldberg

Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Dispatch, based in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, enormous lizards roamed the Earth. More immediately prior to that, Jonah spent two decades at National Review, where he was a senior editor, among other things. He is also a bestselling author, longtime columnist for the Los Angeles Times, commentator for CNN, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. When he is not writing the G-File or hosting The Remnant podcast, he finds real joy in family time, attending to his dogs and cat, and blaming Steve Hayes for various things.

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