The left - right axis is no longer the right one - it can resolve into a new kind of state capitalism. This is what we can learn from China.
For nearly a century, political imagination has been trapped in a, binary choice: the left-wing model of a heavy-handed, protective state, or the right-wing model of an unbridled, laissez-faire market.
But as we confront the massive logistical, ecological, and economic demands of the mid-21st century, this old axis is breaking down.
A new paradigm is emerging, one that resolves these contradictions into a powerful synthesis: New State Capitalism.
This is is a model where an incredibly efficient, high-performing state constructs the foundational “operating system” of society, enabling a hyper-dynamic private sector to flourish on top of it.
Like how a gardener organises the gardens, provides the nutrients, space, and organisation so a beautiful garden can flourish.
The State as the Base Layer: Massive Construction and Abundant Housing
The core tenets of the old right - that the state is inherently incompetent and that the market should dictate all infrastructure - have been thoroughly debunked by the realities of modern development. Particularly - China.
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For much of the last 20 years, we thought that by China opening up to the world, it would become more “open” like us. Whats happening, is that we are becoming more like China - the platform state.
When left entirely to the private sector, critical infrastructure becomes fragmented, underfunded, and optimized for short-term dividends rather than long-term resilience.
New State Capitalism treats infrastructure as a national competitive advantage.
The state steps in as the ultimate developer, executing massive construction projects with corporate-level efficiency and technocratic precision.
Energy and Transit: The state builds and operates the core utilities - next-generation nuclear power plants, robust smart grids, and high-speed rail networks. These aren’t run as sluggish bureaucracies, but as lean, high-performing engines designed to lower the baseline cost of doing business.
Abundant Housing: Rather than leaving housing to speculative real estate markets that choke cities with artificial scarcity, the state treats shelter as a critical infrastructure project. Through massive, industrialized construction initiatives, the government ensures a permanent abundance of housing. By flooding the market with supply, the state structurally drives down the cost of living.
Universal Basic Income: Venture Capital for the Masses
Universal Basic Income (UBI) isn’t a leftist welfare program, it’s instead an essential macroeconomic stabilizer and an entrepreneurial catalyst.
When the state ensures a baseline financial floor alongside abundant, cheap housing, (and let’s be honest, housing is the majority of the cost - that also drives inflation in the economy)
The entire psychology of the workforce changes.
UBI removes the existential dread of starvation and homelessness. Instead of trapping citizens in a safety net, it provides them with a springboard.
The Entrepreneurial Floor: UBI acts as a form of state-sponsored venture capital for every citizen. When the cost of failure is no longer destitution, people are suddenly free to take massive creative and entrepreneurial risks. They can quit dead-end jobs, learn new skills, invent new technologies, and start businesses.
The Symbiosis: Why Entrepreneurs Flourish Under Efficient Government
The greatest irony of the old ideological debate is that the free market actually works better when supported by a strong, efficient state.
Under New State Capitalism, the public and private layers do not compete; they complement each other perfectly.
Entrepreneurs and private enterprises flourish precisely because the government is exceptionally well-run:
Eliminating Cost Frictions: Business owners don’t have to subsidize hyper-inflated employee salaries just so their workers can afford rent in broken housing markets. They don’t have to worry about blackouts, crumbling roads, or failing transit links.
A Healthy, Agile Workforce: With housing guaranteed and a UBI floor in place, businesses have access to a workforce that is healthier, less stressed, and more willing to engage in high-upside, innovative work.
Clear Rules, Fast Execution: An efficient state eliminates bureaucratic red tape. Regulatory frameworks for new technologies (like AI, biotech, and robotics) are clear, fast, and predictable, allowing private companies to scale at unprecedented speeds.
Examples:
Post-WWII France (Dirigisme) - The Energy & Transit Platform
The Action: The democratic government stepped in as the ultimate developer, taking on the massive, long-term capital costs of building the nation’s core utilities-specifically constructing a world-class nuclear energy grid (EDF) and the high-speed TGV rail network (SNCF).
How It Happened: The state ran these networks like lean corporate engines rather than sluggish bureaucracies. By absorbing the crushing infrastructure costs, the government radically lowered the baseline cost of doing business, which sparked a massive boom in private manufacturing, technology, and commerce.
Vienna, Austria - The Abundant Housing Platform
The Action: For over a century, the city government treated shelter strictly as critical infrastructure, continually buying up land reserves and ensuring that 60% of Vienna’s population lives in municipal or state-subsidized housing.
How It Happened: By permanently flooding the market with government-backed supply, the state structurally suppressed rent prices city-wide. Private enterprises flourished because they didn’t have to pay hyper-inflated salaries just to help workers survive, making the local economy fiercely competitive.
The Nordic Nations - The Entrepreneurial Floor Platform
The Action: Countries like Sweden, Denmark, and Norway built comprehensive universal safety nets—including free higher education, universal healthcare, and aggressive retraining programs—to provide a permanent baseline of human security.
How It Happened: This security net effectively functions as state-sponsored venture capital. By removing the existential dread of starvation or homelessness, the state dramatically increased citizen risk tolerance. Because the cost of business failure is a return to comfort rather than destitution, places like Sweden became global leaders in tech unicorns per capita (e.g., Spotify, Klarna).
Taiwan - The Tech Infrastructure Platform
The Action: Taiwan realized that advanced semiconductor manufacturing was a critical national advantage, prompting the government to directly fund, incubate, and build the initial infrastructure for what became TSMC.
How It Happened: The state absorbed the staggering, multi-billion-dollar financial risks of pioneering the microchip hardware foundation. Once that “operating system” was securely established by the government, a hyper-dynamic private ecosystem of software, hardware, and global logistics companies rapidly scaled on top of it.
Conclusion: The High-Performance Future
The left-right debate was born in an era of scarcity and industrial friction. New State Capitalism is designed for an era where state efficiency can unlock radical abundance.
By taking responsibility for the massive, high-risk undertakings - building power plants, laying rail lines, constructing abundant housing, and guaranteeing a financial baseline through UBI - the state removes the heavy burdens that crush private initiative.
The future does not belong to the state that taxes its markets into submission, nor to the state that abandons its citizens to the whims of an volatile global economy.
The future belongs to the platform state: a lean, efficient powerhouse that builds the foundation so its people can build the future.
This is connected to the idea of emergence:
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In order to be a better thinker, doer, more successful, entrepreneur, thinker, creator, entpereneur, parent, friend and anything else - to understand the world better.
This sounds great, but how exactly do we make sure this state is lean and efficient?
I agree it would be best to have a high performing state that is just, similar to the best form of government being a benevolent dictatorship. Unfortunately, most dictatorships tend not to be benevolent, in which case an inefficient form of government like democracy is preferable to the tyrannical dictatorship.