The status of the center rose, even if it remains far below levels it reached sixty years ago. Just looking at the outcome of the Democratic Presidential nomination contest and the House elections, the body politic did not show an appetite for radical progressivism. I could also cite the failure of the affirmative action referendum in California.
Libertarians had a terrible year. Hong Kong’s freedom got crushed. All over the world, officials exercised unprecedented power over individual behavior, with control over the virus the stated intention but not the result, at least in Europe and here.
Government spending and the Fed advanced deeper into the economy. Both political parties continued to retreat from economic liberty, and both seem eager to find a way for government to exploit the economic and technological power of the big tech firms (that is what politicians mean by “regulating big tech.”) In referenda, a higher minimum wage did well.
Looking for a silver lining somewhere? The marijuana legalization movement had more gains, if that’s what gives you a buzz.
Radical progressives had a disappointing year at the ballot box, but otherwise the religion that persecutes heretics had a fantastic year. Cancel culture came to the New York Times. It made major inroads in corporate America and in major investment firms.
Tyler Cowen made a number of predictions for the effect of the pandemic on relative status, and those mostly proved correct. But he did not predict George Floyd’s death, which led to the conversion millions of Americans to Wokeism. Even foreign demonstrators joined the flock.
The resistance to that religion has become more overt, but the religion itself enjoys powerful momentum. Mr. Trump’s executive order to stop preaching the religion to government workers is certain to be reversed.
Vitalik Butarin writes,
If a project having a high moral standing is equivalent to that project having twice as much money, or even more, then culture and narrative are extremely powerful forces that command the equivalent of tens of trillions of dollars of value. And this does not even begin to cover the role of such concepts in shaping our perceptions of legitimacy and coordination. And so anything that influences the culture can have a great impact on the world and on people’s financial interests, and we’re going to see more and more sophisticated efforts from all kinds of actors to do so systematically and deliberately. This is the darker conclusion of the importance of non-monetary social motivations – they create the battlefield for the permanent and final frontier of war, the war that is fortunately not usually deadly but unfortunately impossible to create peace treaties for because of how inextricably subjective it is to determine what even counts as a battle: the culture war.
Pointer from Tyler.
Think of the history of the Catholic Church. The Church translated its cultural power into tremendous wealth (have you seen the Vatican museum?) and political power. Not surprisingly, it attracted some very unsavory people to become popes and cardinals. The Woke religion is in its infancy.