Author Archives: Arnold Kling

Urban politics

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Why are cities so uniformly far to the left politically? Some hypotheses:

1. They attract the educated professionals who are on the left. But suburbs also attract educated professionals, and they are not so uniformly left.

2. They create many more externalities, and you can only tolerate living there if you have faith in government. The more dense the population, the more potential there is for some people to harm others, and the less likely it is that the people harming one another know one another well enough to resolve the issue on their own. The example I use is a noisy party that disturbs other people. If it happens in a small town, you have a discussion among the neighbors. If it happens in an apartment building, you call the police.

3. Cities have more division of labor. This selects for people who are less oriented toward doing things for themselves, which in turn selects for people who want more government.

4. Cities have more wealth that can be extracted by government. Winning public office can be more profitable in a city, so more ambitious people run for mayor of a big city than run for mayor of Podunk.

Sites worth following

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These are publications that often include articles that I like. But I try not to go overboard linking to pieces that I agree with, so I tend to read them a lot more than I write about them.

1. Quillette.

2. New Discourses.

Quillette is the broader of the two. New Discourses is mostly James Lindsay.

Just one example from Quillette is Reflections on Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Address, by Sergiu Klainerman. Just one example from New Discourses is Critical Race Theory’s Jewish Problem, by Lindsay.

Perhaps instead of complaining about what Twitter or Facebook are promoting or blocking, we ought to be grateful to these sorts of sites.

Existential prejudice

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Razib Khan writes,

unlike racialism, ethical religion has within it an element of utopianism, of striving for improvement. The same can be said of political religions, such as Marxism. The ultimate aim of these movements is to expand the circle of dignity outward, to encompass the whole of humanity. Failure is inevitable, and sometimes the consequences are horrific, but the egalitarian impulse also has salubrious consequences. . .

Racial and ethnic identity do not hold the possibility for such capaciousness of spirit. Taken to its logical conclusion this style of thinking leans upon biology, and therefore takes us down the path of eliminationism.

Religions allow you to convert. Nations allow you to join. But you cannot change your race or–surgery notwithstanding–your gender. The Nazis would not allow a Jew to declare a different religion. When you face existential prejudice, based totally on the condition of your birth and not on anything you can choose to do, this is particularly inhumane.

I would describe Khan’s essay as difficult to excerpt. That description might describe all of Quillette, in which it appears. Quillette is the best magazine you can find anywhere today.

The Stanford HEE vote

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Alvin Rabushka writes

First, there is barely a twinge of political diversity at Stanford. There was one Trump vote for every 27 Biden votes. Blink and you might miss the Trump votes.

Second, Stanford faculty and students are much further left on the political spectrum than the state itself.

Third, California voters rejected an increase in property tax assessments on commercial and industrial property, while Stanford faculty, staff, and students voted overwhelmingly for it.

I continue to think that the divide between the HEEs and the rest of the country is the most significant take-away from the 2020 election.

Banana Republic Watch

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The Claremont Institute’s American Mind writes,

But the 2020 election is not over. The fight has just begun. This is the moment that decides everything. Everything is now at stake. Republicans must rise to the occasion. This means rallies and protests as well as investigating and ensuring that this election was lawful.

The first sentence is true. The election will be over when each state has, according to its laws, declared a winner. It is not over as I write this, and it probably will not be over when it goes live.

But when each state has declared a winner, the election will be over. It should not be litigated and re-litigated. And by no means should people take to the streets.

I certainly agree with President Trump that legal votes and only legal votes should be counted. But each state has a process in place for making that happen. That process does not involve “rallies and protests,” and I strongly believe that it should not.

I would be happy to see a commission established to evaluate and fix the American electoral process. To have a meaningful impact, the commission would have to be bipartisan and arrive at findings by consensus. I am not saying that would be easy.

In theory, a commission could find that the process in 2020 was so broken that the “wrong” candidate became President. But there is no provision in the Constitution for an electoral college “do-over,” so the result would stand.

For me, the most important part of elections is that the transfer of power should be peaceful. The Democrats were wrong to scream “Russia!” and to attempt to remove President Trump via impeachment, and I think less of them for doing so. If Biden is declared the winner and then the Republicans scream “Fraud!” for months on end, I will think less of them.

I know all the comebacks to this. The stakes are too great! We know that Biden won by fraud (as if you personally have evidence for that claim that would convince a neutral observer)! We can’t let them get away with it! Those arguments do not sway me. If we replace the electoral process with a litigation war and street demonstrations, the resulting banana republic will be worse than anything that the Democrats implement in office.

By the way, I though that Scott Sumner’s use of the term “banana republic” in recent months was over the top. But when I read the linked article, I could not help but see the aptness of the expression.

More on Schapiro (and Morson)

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Commenters offered interesting links. One was to Heather MacDonald’s essay, which concludes

Schapiro’s condemnation of vandalism is welcome, even if, ideally, he would have spoken up against the national violence before he was himself subject to harassment. Time will tell whether his firm stand now will change the victim mentality on his own campus. For now, Schapiro is reaping what he has sown.

Another was an essay by Schapiro’s co-author, Gary Saul Morson. Called “suicide of the liberals,” if you combine it with MacDonald’s analysis it makes it seem as though Schapiro is a suicidal liberal. I also found my way to LeninThink, another Morson essay. Recommended.

[UPDATE: Another less-than-enthusiastic piece on Schapiro by John O. McGinnis, a law professor at Northwestern.]

The election and the HEEs

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1. Biden won. Get over it, people.

2. It was a lot like 2016, in that a small number of votes in swing states made a difference. Trump had the luck in 2016, and Biden had the luck this year.

3. To me, the most important take-away is that highly-educated elites (HEEs) have lost touch with the country. I mean, if the Democrats had put up Elizabeth Warren, Trump would have won in a blow-out. Anyone who works at the NYT or the WaPo is hereby disqualified to comment on American politics.

2016 made it clear that the HEEs don’t speak to white working-class voters. 2020 made it clear that the HEEs don’t speak to minorities. Biden got the the crucial South Carolina primary because of Clyburn, and Trump got Florida because of how well he did with minority voters there.

4. The legacy of Donald Trump will be that he opened up key voting blocs for the Republican Party by running against the HEEs.

5. The Democrats have a problem. The HEEs are their base, and you cannot alienate your base. But if your base alienates everyone else, what do you do?

6. Libertarians have a problem. We’re mostly HEEs. The Democratic HEEs hate us and the Republicans need to run against us.

My latest book review

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I review The WEIRDest People in the World, by Joseph Henrich.

The latest book by Joseph Henrich is the most ambitious analysis of social behavior that I have ever read. It attempts to cover essentially all human history and the entire spectrum of different societies, using the full range of disciplines of social science. To offer a review is difficult, and to attempt a summary is impossible.

I strongly recommend both the review and the book. The book made Tyler Cowen’s list of best non-fiction books of 2020.

Anti-woke, anti-Trump

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This is a small and interesting subset of commentators. See Coleman Hughes and Andrew Sullivan/Sam Harris.

My framework for looking at various aspects of the Presidential contest is to think in terms of probabilities. Given my preferences, what is the probability that the outcome of a Trump victory would be significantly better? What is the probability that a Biden victory would be significantly better? What is the probability of no significant difference?

For example, Sullivan and Harris argue vehemently that the response to the virus under President Trump was much worse than it should have been. From my framework, I do not see that. On March 19, I wrote Fire the Peacetime Bureaucrats, and I stand by the view that the top career officials at FDA and CDC should have been replaced by a crew with open minds, high energy and determination, and outstanding management skills. I would say that the probability that Biden would rely much more than Trump on the peacetime bureaucrats by a significant amount would be about 8 percent. The probability that Biden would instead find better people to rely on would be about 2 percent. The probability that neither Trump nor Biden would find better people to rely on is 90 percent.

I should say that I do not think that a Kamala Harris Administration would be much different from a Biden Administration. Although it is possible that in a Biden Administration she could slide into a role as ambassador to the radical left, my intuition is that she herself has no deep-seated beliefs, radical or otherwise.

So, on the aspects that I care most about, here goes. Depending on who wins–

1. Four years from now, will the Woke movement be stronger or weaker?

Hughes, Sullivan, and Harris argue that the Woke movement will be weaker if Biden wins. Hughes makes the important point that the Woke movement is cultural, and it would be a mistake to over-estimate the power of Presidential support or opposition to affect it.

One might hope that with Trump off stage, people on the moderate left would feel more inclined to distance themselves from the radicals. I think that is what these anti-Woke commentators are counting on, but I don’t see it as likely. If Biden wins, my friends who live conservatively and vote progressively are still going to keep their Black Lives Matter signs on their lawns. My guess is that Woke Capitalism will continue to march ahead. etc.

The ultra-Woke institutions of higher education and the K-12 establishment are likely to get much more help from a Biden Administration than from a Trump Administration. If you want to see more children in charter schools and more high school graduates finding alternatives to matriculating at Indoctrinate U, you want Trump to win. I put the probability of no significant difference at 70 percent, the probability of a better outcome under Biden at 5 percent, and the probability of a better outcome under Trump at 25 percent.

2. Will the politicization of everything be more or less?

This is where I find Hughes, Sullivan, and Harris most persuasive. Trump is a provocateur, and that is not helpful for turning down the political heat. Yes, you can blame radical leftists for politicization, but their antics are given. At the margin, a Biden Presidency seems to me to be less likely to add fuel to the fire. So I would put the probability of no significant difference at 70 percent, the probability that things would be better under Biden at 25 percent, and the probability that things would be better under Trump at 5 percent.

3. Will the President attract and retain good people?

My sense is that HUD Secretary Carson and Education Secretary DeVos have moved in policy directions that I like, and I give President Trump credit for retaining them. In foreign policy, I think that Trump’s mistreatment of his appointees is very risky. So far, we have survived without a major disaster, but I am not confident that will continue. Overall, I think that President Trump has not done a good job of attracting and retaining good people, and that is an important weakness. I think it is likely that Biden will appoint people who are more effective in achieving results but who push policies that I strongly oppose. So on this one I would rate the probability of no significant difference as 30 percent, the probability that Trump works out better [for me] as 40 percent, and the probability that Biden works out better as 30 percent. I give Biden as high a probability as I do because I fear some major avoidable mis-step on foreign policy under Trump, due to a thin team.

Thoughts on millenarianism

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Yuri Slezkine wrote,

Sonja Luehrmann questions the validity of an analogy between Bolshevism and “religion.” I do not draw such an analogy. I reject the concept of religion entirely (for reasons I discuss early in the book), define millenarianism as a belief in the imminent and violent end of our imperfect world, and argue that Bolshevism was a full-fledged millenarian movement (irrespective of whether all movements that fit my definition of millenarianism fit someone else’s definition of “religion”).

Wikipedia says that millenarianism

is the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming fundamental transformation of society, after which “all things will be changed”.

1. Slezkine describes the Bolsheviks in 1917 as like the proverbial dog that caught the fire engine. For years, Russian intellectuals had looked forward to the end of the tsarist regime. And the First World War looked like the violent end of the imperfect capitalist world. But the Bolsheviks had no blueprint for creating the heaven on earth that was supposed to follow.

2. The “fundamental transformation of society” usually requires the identification and elimination of an evil group. Often, it involves previously marginalized groups destroying previously dominant groups.

3. I suspect that millenarianism is one attempt to come to terms with one’s own mortality. I think this hits people the hardest when they are young. As they get older, most people get past the shock that they will not live forever. For those who can’t get past it, one coping mechanism is to take comfort in the belief that the whole world as we know it is going to die soon.

4. If one has children and grandchildren who seem to be on a path for a decent life, the continuity of society becomes tolerable, even desirable.

5. Hitler seems like a millenarian. He really wanted to remake the world. And in the end he reportedly thought that the German people deserved to be killed because they had let him down.

6. Antifa and the most radical self-described anti-racists strike me as millenarian.