I review Alberto Mingardi’s Classical Liberalism and the Industrial Working Class, which looks at the thought of a nineteenth century reputed socialist.
Hodgskin saw government interference, not capitalist exploitation, as the force standing between workers and their fair share of income.
Paul Matzko’s The Radio Right describes a short-lived period in the history of radio. From about 1957 to the end of the 1960s, a set of now-forgotten political/religious AM radio broadcasters attained a listening audience that approached 20 million, at a time when our population was about half of what it is today. I recommend listening to the Matzko interview with Aaron Ross Powell and Trevor Burrus.
Some ways in which this rhymes with the present:
1. This grass-roots right was much, much bigger than the intellectual right. National Review had less than 20 thousand subscribers around 1960. Then, as now, conservative intellectuals were leaders without a following.
2. The grass-roots right was strongly attached to conspiracy stories. Back then both Communism and racial integration were part of a conspiracy. Of course, the right has no monopoly on conspiracy-mongering–look at the left’s theory that Trump-Russia collusion defeated Hillary in 2016. I think that the grass-roots right will never let go of the theory that the Democrats stole the election for Biden. I predict that four years from now at least two-thirds of Republican voters will believe that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen. Assuming Mr. Trump is not the nominee in 2024, my prediction is that the actual nominee will be unable to completely distance himself or herself from the stolen-election narrative.
3. The left treats censorship of the right as perfectly legitimate. Matzko’s main story is how President Kennedy undertook to use the IRS and the FCC to shut down the Radio Right, and by the end of the 1960s this effort had succeeded. I think it will be harder to stamp out the grass-roots right today, but the effort is surely being made. And of course, when someone is trying to shut you down, this serves to increase your openness to conspiracy theories, as Ross Douthat points out. (Pointer from Tyler Cowen. I had written most of this post before Sunday, when Tyler linked to the Douthat piece.)
The scale of the funding disparities between trendy arts and environmental charities, on the one hand, and humanitarian charities, on the other, can be staggering. For instance, one popular nonprofit, the Community Center for the Arts, had $268,158 back in 2000, but its assets grew to $40 million just seven years later—an increase of nearly 15,000 percent. Likewise, environmental charities have also seen stunning growth: in 1997, the Jackson Hole Land Trust had $3.9 million in assets, but by 2014 it had $22.5 million. Meanwhile, the Latino Resource Center, a prominent human services organization, had $355,452 in assets in 2014, a relatively modest increase from the $126,438 it had in 2005—giving it roughly 1 percent of the assets held by some of the more fashionable conservation and arts charities.
This is from a review essay of Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West, by Justin Farrell. The book sounds interesting.
The non-profit sector is much over-rated in our society. Non-profits seduce young employees with the intention heuristic–the mission of the organization must be good, since it does not seek profit. But non-profit status is mainly a way to avoid accountability to customers. The only accountability is to donors.
I wish that the only non-profits that we had were those dedicated to helping poor people take care of basic needs and obtain education and training. If I were king, I would get rid of the non-profit status for universities, environmental groups, and other organizations that employ and serve the affluent.
1. Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World. Analysis of human culture that is broad, deep, and bold. In a functioning academic world, graduate students in many social science disciplines would be mining this book for dissertation topics. My review could not do it justice.
2. Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories. A must-read on the intellectual foundations of the Woke movement. My review suggests ways it might have been better executed.
3. Kevin Davies, Editing Humanity. Tells the stories of the scientists involved in the discovery and development of the gene editing technology known as CRISPR, two of whom were awarded a Nobel Prize in chemistry the week that the book came out. The book is history of science reported with maximum melodrama, which makes for an entertaining and informative read.
4. Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles, Never Trump. A look at the way that conservative intellectuals agonized over Mr. Trump. My review shows where I agree with them and where I part company.
5. Peter Zeihan, Disunited Nations. Zeihan has strong opinions about the way that demographics and resources affect the way nations operate in the world. As my review says, I find his opinions very provocative, even though he does not subject them to rigorous testing the way Henrich does his ideas.
1. The Murder of Professor Schlick, by David Edmonds. It tells the tale of the Vienna Circle, a group of positivist philosophers. Edmonds describes their attempt to develop a philosophy of scientific rigor against a backdrop of reactionary anti-Semitism. One excerpt:
Jews were the most loyal of Habsburg subjects. Certainly Popper, and Circle members, saw the Habsburg era through rose-tinted, rearview glasses. After World War I they felt that the Jews stood out: in the golden age of the empire it was different: everyone stood out.
Austria was much smaller than the former empire, and whereas other minorities were prominent under the Habsburgs, in Austria it was mainly the Jews that were noticeable.
1930s Austria and contemporary America are similar in that those who favor rigorous thinking find our ideas attacked on ethnic grounds (for being Jewish then, for being white now). One difference is that back then the Vienna Circle was mostly socialist and the attacks came from the right. Today, the attacks come from the socialist left.
2. Trust in a Polarized Age, by Kevin Vallier. I agree with the substance of this book. But the manner in which it is written serves as a reminder that academia and I were not meant for one another. An excerpt:
We cannot determine which reasons are intelligible without appealing to some form of idealization. A person can have an intelligible reason even if she does not affirm the reason at present. An intelligible reason is one that an agent is rationally entitled to affirm after some amount of reasoning, which includes the collection of information, and making proper inferences based on that information.
I ascribe intelligible reasons to persons based on the reasons they would affirm as their own if they were moderately idealized. Moderately idealized agents correspond to real persons, but they have reflected enough to respond to considerations that we would hold them responsible for ignoring. In this way, moderate idealization appeals to standards of information and inference that are not perfect but that are appropriate to our practice of responsibility. This, in turn, supplies the reasons on which trust and trustworthiness may be based, since the practice of trust and trustworthiness is a practice of responsibility.
This is the sort of prose that academics are obliged to read–and to write. I feel fortunate to have “failed” in my youthful attempt at such a career.
3. The World of Patience Gromes, by Scott C. Davis. Recommended by Glenn Loury. It is a great book, and it was very inexpensive on Kindle. Davis did extensive research to describe the evolution of a black neighborhood in Richmond where Davis worked as an anti-poverty volunteer in the early 1970s.
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.
The Daily Northwestern reports,
After a week of abolitionist organizing on campus, University President Morton Schapiro’s email condemning student protests and the hashtag #ResignMorty trending on social media, Schapiro declared in a virtual dialogue Tuesday he “(doesn’t) walk back a single word.”
The letter referred to is quoted by Steven Hayward as reading, in part
We, as a University, recognize the many injustices faced by Black and other marginalized groups. We also acknowledge that the policing and criminal justice system in our country is too often stacked against those same communities. Your concerns are valid and necessary, and we encourage and, in fact, rely on your active engagement with us to make your school and our society equitable and safe for everyone. That said, while the University has every intention to continue improving NUPD, we have absolutely no intention to abolish it.
Northwestern firmly supports vigorous debate and the free expression of ideas — abiding principles that are fundamental for our University. We encourage members of our community to find meaningful ways to get involved and advocate for causes they believe in — and to do so safely and peacefully. The University protects the right to protest, but we do not condone breaking the law.
I view what is going on at Northwestern as a significant test case. The question it raises is whether the future of the left is represented by Maoists, as is feared by Yoram Hazony, or whether it is represented by Schapiro.
When it comes to moderation, Schapiro literally co-wrote with Gary Saul Morson the book, called Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us. A few years ago, those co-authors wrote Cents and Sensibility, arguing for the need to connect economics with the humanities.
I also feel for Tiffany Riley, a Vermont high school principal, who wrote,
I firmly believe that Black Lives Matter, but I DO NOT agree with the coercive measures taken to get to this point across; some of which are falsified in an attempt to prove a point. While I want to get behind BLM, I do not think people should be made to feel they have to choose black race over human race. While I understand the urgency to feel compelled to advocate for black lives, what about our fellow law enforcement? What about all others who advocate for and demand equity for all? Just because I don’t walk around with a BLM sign should not mean I am a racist.
For which she was fired. [UPDATE: a reader sent me a story about Riley’s case.]
Persecution of heretics is the whole point of this awful religion.
The Three Languages of Politics is the subject of a podcast by Darnell Samuels and Joel Nicoloff, which I found heartwarming and head-sobering. It was heartwarming in that they clearly understood and bought into the book. It was head-sobering to consider how unconventional they are. If all I tell you is that they are young and Canadian, you are unlikely to guess their intellectual framework(s).
I hope you will listen and enjoy.
I recently read Live not by Lies, by Rod Dreher. Takeaways:
1. Social Justice ideology is antithetical to liberalism. You can get that from Pluckrose and Lindsay (Dreher cites Lindsay).
2. The Social Justice movement manipulates language and pressures people to accept lies. You can get that from Jordan Peterson, who first came to prominence because he was not willing to let government dictate his use of gender pronouns. Dreher does not cite Peterson, but he does cite Orwell, who wrote the classic warning about coerced lying.
3. The tyranny that is coming to this country will be a “soft” tyranny. Mass surveillance will come from technology firms, not from a secret police. Enforcement will come from social pressure, restrictions on employment, and de-platforming, not from imprisonment, torture, or assassinations.
4. Dreher’s main claim is that in order to resist this tyranny, one must learn from the Christian resistance to the Soviet Union. Above all, we must not allow Social Justice propaganda to obliterate history and destroy freedom of conscience. We should live with the hope that truth will defeat tyranny.
In Trillion Dollar Economists, Robert Litan wrote (p. 254),
Various economists had ideas for how the commission could best achieve these apparently conflicting objectives, but none were as influential as Paul Milgrom, his colleague Robert Wilson, and longtime senior economic advisor at the FCC Evan Kwerel. . .
The key mechanism these economists designed was the simultaneous auction that required bidders to remain active in every round of bidding in order to be eligible to receive any licenses
Litan’s 2014 book about economists whose work proved valuable in practice is remarkable in that it included several subsequent Nobel laureates: Richard Thaler (2017), William Nordhaus (2018), Banerjee/Duflo/Kremer (2019) and now Milgrom and Wilson.