1. My review of A Time to Build.
Levin sees today’s elites as unwilling to abide by institutional constraints. Some abuse their power within an institution. Levin terms this “insiderism”. Others only use institutional prestige to enhance their personal ambitions but eschew any obligations to bolster the institutions that support them or to conform to institutional norms. Levin calls this “outsiderism” or “platforming,” meaning using the institution as a platform from which to expand one’s personal recognition.
2. A very comprehensive interview of Yuval Levin by Richard Reinsch . Hard to excerpt, but here is a slice:
meritocracy contributes to that problem because it leaves our elites now thinking that their positions are earned, that their authority is legitimate by default because they’ve been selected into elite institutions of higher education in particular. . . an elite that doesn’t think it needs to be constrained is a very bad fit for a democratic society.
It invites the kind of resistance, frustration, and ultimately populism that we’ve seen, and I think it deserves that response. Our elites in fact don’t think enough about how to constrain themselves in ways that could make it clear to the larger society that they’re playing a legitimate and valuable role. And I think institutions have an enormous role to play in that because our elite institutions can constrain our elites in ways that put them to use for the larger society. That’s what the professions do. That’s what political and cultural institutions do when they’re functioning well.
But if we understand our institutions as performative, as just platforms for people to stand and shine on, then they don’t really function to constrain our elites. They just display our elites and increase the frustration of the larger society with them. I think part of the solution to this part of the problem our country confronts is an idea of institutionalism that requires much more constraint and formation, that requires people to understand themselves as needing to prove that they operate by some standard of integrity and public service and that would require a real cultural change in a lot of our elite institutions.
They believe their authority is legitimate by default because they’ve been selected into elite institutions of higher education.
Because, when they were teenagers, they worked hard and got excellent grades. Therefore they’re entitled to a lifetime of deference. It doesn’t matter if they never achieve anything in their whole adult lives. Never build anything or add something of lasting value to society. Because what they achieved aged 17 is enough on its own.
This guy really impressed his teachers aged 17? And now he wants to ban nuclear power and sugary drinks? Makes perfect sense.
This lady was a really obedient student fifty years ago? And now she has a plan to ban fracking and coal? Of course, go ahead.
Kling’s review of Levin’s “A Time to Build” reminds me of why I value Arnold’s insights so highly.
Not only does Kling accurately and charitably present the work of others, he has a knack for tying the core elements into a larger framework as he does in the quote above.
“As an institution declines, the Left has an instinct to tear it down and the Right has an instinct to defend or restore it.”
I don’t think this is right. There are Red and Blue institutions, and people want to defend their own side’s institutions and tear down those of the other side. Are big labor unions institutions? Complex regulatory regimes? What about the whole system of Affirmative Action, HR, diversity-focus in personnel selection? Or Academia? Government agencies or extensions like the National Endowment for the Arts? Seems that the Right wants to tear these down (with justice) and the Left has been defending them.
I think the error derives from the fact that a lot of institutions are inherently old and thus perceived as traditional and a stubborn inertial legacy of the pre-reformed past. I really dislike the “OK Boomer” meme, but a lot of this kind of analysis seems stuck taking the leftist rhetoric of the 1960’s not only at face value but as is if were still operative and an still accurate description of contemporary positions. But there’s been far too much water under the bridge since then.
That is true, it is not strictly a Left vs. Right thing, more of a “conserve what we’ve already built” vs. “build it right this time” tension.
I think of the classic “Marketing Myopia” article by Theodore Levitt in which he emphasizes that customers want quarter-inch holes not quarter-inch drills. He applies this insight to the oil industry:
He wrote this in 1960. He was very very very wrong in his assessment right up until the Fracking Revolution. Levitt was far too eager to re-invent the petroleum industry based on his one very good insight. On the other hand, I’m sure that more than a few big oil executives dismissed fracking because of overconfidence in the stability of the existing value system.
The Professor did identify one of the realities missing from Levin’s work on institutions. Why do they change and why do some institutions end up declining? Over the last 100 years we have seen the decline of local ‘Fraternal’ groups and private sector labor unions. Why did they decline? At the heart of the groups were unable to keep with society changes. In thinking about Levin’s solutions I seen maps of Scott Winship of ‘Medtiating Institutions’ and all the states identify as the highest values are all states with low population density. (Utah, Nebraska, South Dakota, Maine, etc.)
Secondly, I really wish Levin would separate the economic elite and political elite as well. Think about Mitt Romney run as President and remember his 47% comment to CEO crowd. The comment probably did not cost him the 2012 election but it reinforce a lot of what average people believe how CEOs think of their workers.
Agreed. Kling takes the concepts further than Levin, but in Levin’s defence, he makes clear that is book is identifying a problem and not a prescription for a cure. You can hear the “klanging in Kling’s head” in his post about political theory as the wheels continue to turn as he integrates these disparate ideas into a coherent whole.
I appreciate your focus on elites but I don’t think that is the value in Levin’s work. The value is in his “mold vs. platform” idea which is unfortunately both non-sticky and meaningless without a description. The institutional “mold” is the framework from which an institutions positive-sum value is derived. The “platform” is a performance stage from which individual stakeholders in the institution derive value via self-promotion. Levin’s key message, for me, is that we need to return the emphasis of selfless contribution to increase institutional value rather than the recent shift towards extracting value from institutions as if their only value is in their Twitter-like platform characteristics.
The decline of labor unions is another great potential subject for the style of “MBA Use Case” that Kling is promoting for institutions in his review.
The idea of studying the life cycle of institutions is worthwhile. It would be interesting to see if there are empirical precedents for Levin’ s top-down nonsense oblige model, or if in fact competition and spontaneous order contribute to the ascension and decline in influence of institutions.
Noblesse – ugh, auto-correct
I thought Levin’s book was going to be “Bowling Together Again” in response to Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone” (similar to every David Brooks book). It is not. Perhaps it is was my low expectations but I see great value in Levin’s book and Kling elegantly expresses it in his review.
I was offended by Levin’ s patronizing contempt for the ignorant masses crying out to be formed by their moral and intellectual betters. The deluded “populists” who elected Trump after all are. In no way enjoying greater peace, prosperity, and personal autonomy under him. No way. It doesn’t’t fit the model. All the best minds know that all of us ignorant hicks are bust dieing deaths of despair and lack the skills to find work in the new economy. And lower tax rates, improved energy supplies, decreases in the state of regulation, not passively accepting whatever the mercantilism nations of their world decide will be our fate, has done nothing good and is wholly regrettable in comparison to the excellent performance of the progressive elite in setting an example through their unsurpassed success in managing the nation’s cities and states like California and Illinois.. Levin can take his noblesse oblige on a stick and…..
And while I am in an unhinged ranting frame of mind, let me also add that all this piety about immigration chafes me too. A while back I made the mistake of bringing my excellent and beautiful South American wife up here on a vacation and taking her to a Friday Night at the Oprey at the Ryman. So of course she immediately wanted a green card (Country music, or sertaneja, is the most popular music in her country, and look around next time you are at Graceland and there are sure to be at least half dozen South Americans). So I have been through the green card gauntlet. And consequently appreciate greatly the President’s efforts at reforming this bureaucracy. It is expensive, slow, and labor intensive. Health checks, trips to consulates, biometrics appointments, and mountains of paper. But the elite’s notion that no reform is necessary. Citizenship can just be thrown at anyone who wanders across the border, Wuhan-infected or not, strikes me as not particularly practical.
There are no elites, meritocracy a myth.
6% of government policy in DC comes from 600,000 voters in three small cities across Alaska, Wyoming and Vermont. That is an unavoidable skew in the distribution of government goods ias a value added chain. It is unsustainable, large parts of government delivered goods will end up idle, in sudden stops, awaiting a decision on raw material from the decision process. Then the decision is made and we get sudden catch up. In value added channels, that is a loop, unpriced, unclosed and causes spiral.
The foul mechanism is the ear mark system, an amazingly inefficient form of program management in Congress, a sure loser in efficiency, a guarantee of long term arbitrage (the opposite side of idle).
The cure is a bet, a bet between the House and Senate, a bet that the House can estimate the cost of ear marks and just pay the state capitals proportionally once per budget period. The cure causes the inefficiency to be priced, and that inefficiency comes directly from state capital transfers each budget period. Small states will quickly learn top produce smart senators.
American democracy has its quirks and I’m sure Edgar would remind us all of the superior tradeoffs that parliamentary systems incur but I suspect if you did a comparative analysis with Brazil and/or Canada you would find the Null Hypothesis holding sway. There is no doubt that the 6% from Alaska, Wyoming and Vermont matter but it is just one factor in a much larger system. Its like comparing the characteristics of a Wankel engine in the Mazda RX line of cars and concluding that you should replace it for a piston engine (or vice versa).
I think the key benefit of democracy is orderly succession. In his post about political theory, Kling states that it is a mistake to think that the goal of democracy is “to reflect the will of the people”. It is important to understand the quirks of your Wankel engine but I wouldn’t modify or abandon your RX-8.
Having said that, I love when both you and Edgar reframe Kling’s topics to apply to your political pet peeves. Kudos on that.
“meritocracy contributes to that problem because it leaves our elites now thinking that their positions are earned, that their authority is legitimate by default because they’ve been selected into elite institutions of higher education in particular. . . an elite that doesn’t think it needs to be constrained is a very bad fit for a democratic society.”
That’s not meritocracy. In a Meritocracy, authority isn’t legitimate by default, it’s legitimate because it has proven merit. You don’t lead because you went to a prestigious institution. You lead because you have reliably shown that you are worth following. And in fact, the leaders of a meritocracy are very much constrained, and know it. They’re constrained by the responsibility of continuing to have the ability to be in charge, and constrained by the knowledge that as soon as you’re surpassed, you let someone else lead.
This is describing more of an oligarchy, where you’re in charge because you’re part of the group that gets to be in charge. Ability, quality, merit- these things aren’t relevant.
My copy is on its way, but it’s worth pointing out that there is a deep tension between many conservative-libertarian ideas and the general notion of institution-salvaging.
The thing is, there are good institutions and bad institutions, and some of the bad ones are just rotten through and through and everyone would be better off if they disappeared entirely.
A conservative is used to looking at something that’s been around a long time, and exercises the knee-jerk reflex to pay deference to the embedded-wisdom of time-tested traditions, and assume “they must be doing something right”.
But that’s not the only reason things last a long time. Sometimes we have to live with entrenched errors that are artificially propped up and protected from failure in a way that is so politically hard to change it just keeps going on and on.
(There is an additional complication in that institutions can evolve to fundamentally change in character but have the misleading appearance of continuity by preserving the same names and rituals and appearances. For example, trust in ‘U.S. Congress-1890’ is not commensurable with trust in ‘U.S. Congress-2020’, because Congress isn’t actually Congress anymore.)
And so it’s essential to try and use judgment to tell the difference. One can’t take a attitude of presumed worthiness of preservation and salvage on institutions in general.
We have ideas like “Creative Destruction” emphasis on the destruction. Milton Friedman on our profit-and-loss system, “… losses were at least as important in weeding out failures, as profits in fostering success.”
Traditions and old institutions are usually defended with an evolutionary selection arguments of surviving many rounds of experiments and trial and error to arrive at arrangements in a domain too complex for design. But in addition to variation, the selection pressure is a key element, and the destruction, losses, errors, and failures have to be tolerated and embraced to preserve the health of the entities and to ensure they are well-adapted and adjusted to the latest context.
So, when an institution is static, stagnant, and protected from disappearance, the right way to love it is with tough love of kicking it out of the nest. If it doesn’t fly, so be it.
Furthermore, there is a subtle point to grasp which is that social institutions at different levels of generality can be in conflict with each other.
So, in the United States, we have an inherited general institution of a system of dynamic free enterprise, robust competition, innovative entrepreneurship, and light-touch regulation. And then we also have whole specific regulatory regime complexes of roles, relationships, and responsibilities, and reliable expectations that throw the values of the general institution out the window and replace it with corrupt rent-seeking by concentrated special interests seeking to freeze everything in place and leverage state power to insulate themselves from normal business pressures.
Now one has to ask not, “Whether to save an institution,” but instead, “Which Institution?”
Let me give a example of the above: Taxis vs. Uber.
The whole heavily-regulated taxi system, with quotas of medallions and legally determined fares is (or was) without doubt, an institution – an official and explicit complex of protocols and modes of human interaction. Arguably it’s ‘formative’ too, instilling certain habits of courtesy and etiquette in customers and drivers, and even reinforcing certain rules of civil society with the backing of legal sanctions, such as anti-discrimination values.
Now, someone of conservative-libertarian bent might look at this institution and say, “let it burn” or “tear it down”.
And they would have been right. And ideally, that’s what should have happened, to make way to things like Uber. But that official move has proven to be politically impossible to achieve almost anywhere. Instead, Uber took the legal risk of knowingly and intentionally breaking the law with the expectation that the powers that be in many jurisdictions would give it a “Silicon Valley Exception” and just look the other way, as a secret and passive method of cooperating in desired reform without having to go through the political trouble of trying to make it happen in the officially proper manner.
There have been some people who have tried to defend the existing regulated-taxi-system institution, and the arguments are generally worthless and laughable. Really, there is no good argument to try and save it, or reform or salvage it. The right answer is that it can’t survive without artificial propping up, so “tear it down”, “let freedom ring”.
And what about deregulation in general? Isn’t the general thrust of the movement to look at a wall in the way of our more general institution of free enterprise and say, “Tear Down This Wall?” What about all the YIMBY / anti-zoning / anti-building restriction stuff? “Take the zoning code and ‘let it burn’ ”
All this raises the question why one should think differently about the rotten regulated-taxi-system than one does about rotten wokeademia. I look forward to reading to book to see if Levin is able to provide a convincing answer.
Yes “one” should. I can think of one specific Dark Nihilist who seems a tad bit inconsistent on that front. I do, however, agree with everything you said. Borrowing a term from software development, “change control” is an important and surprisingly freeing pursuit and its best to build it in from the start.
Would you mind spelling out that inconsistency?
I’m certainly no Nihilist, and while I wouldn’t cry to see certain noxious things disappear, and wouldn’t be opposed to giving them an even more gentle shove in that direction than Milikh proposes, “selective nihilist” doesn’t really make sense as a concept. Anyone calling for the abolition of anything bad would then be nihilistic, which is absurd.
No, you are certainly no nihilist. I’m just not good at superhero names. You have an innate understanding of classical liberal ideals but you have “dark” moments in which you conclude that coercive human agency is a viable option. There are no true nihilists, only a spectrum.
Consider David Hume and his mistreatment because of his [non-]beliefs. Adam Smith didn’t seek revenge on his behalf, he simply showed his respect for his dear friend as best as he could. Some fights aren’t worth fighting. Wokeademia seems to be at a comical peak; mockery seems most appropriate at this moment in time.
A more provocative example: Pravda.
Now, was Pravda an institution, indeed, the premier institution of journalism and news reporting in the Soviet Union? Certainly. Worth salvaging? No, corrupt beyond redemption, and indeed impossible to reform given the corruption of the more general institutions of which it was an important component with a circulation of over ten million. Better probably to have no papers at all than to have only Pravda. And even when not under the thumb of that wicked state, a ruined brand with an irredeemably tarnished reputation, indeed, its very name having become shorthand for fraudulent propaganda.
Now, it technically still exists, but was mostly abandoned and partially sold off after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It did the opposite of a Hemingway bankruptcy without that former state support, imploded all at once, and then very slowly.
Perhaps this example provides a kind of test for whether an institution should be salvaged or whether “building” means starting over from scratch.
If your state regime collapsed tomorrow, is it the kind of thing with ongoing and potential value which would be purified, revived, and improved, or would it just be ditched?
We are constantly preached to by Levin and his ilk that Bolsonaro, Modi, Orban, and Trump are the 4 worst human beings on the face of the Earth. Yet, which of the right-thinkers preferred rulers can match these 4 in terms of advancing the peace, prosperity, and personal autonomy enjoyed by the citizens of their countries? Perhaps so-called populists are just people with a preference for competence and results.