Only 10% of consumers now love to cook, while 45% hate it and 45% are lukewarm about it. That means that the percentage of Americans who really love to cook has dropped by about one-third in a fairly short period of time.
Pointer from Tyler Cowen.
As I have said before, the trend in hobbies is narrower, deeper, older. Fewer people are engaged in each hobby. Those engaged are much more dedicated. And hobbies that have been around a long time attract an older constituency.
in terms of human talent, GDP, China right now is in most ways a peer country to the United States. We’re not ready for that, mentally or emotionally.
In contrast, Peter Zeihan sees China in a precarious position:
1. China is the about to age at the most rapid rate of any country. Over the next twenty years, the average age of the U.S. population will barely budget, but the average age in China will rise 5 years.
2. China is much more dependent on trade than the U.S. It needs to import great quantities of oil, from the Middle East. According to Zeihan, “somewhere between 40 percent and 50 percent of the Chinese economy is directly involved in international commerce.”
3. China’s navy would have a very difficult time operating out of China’s waters.
4. China’s geography is conductive to internal strife and warfare, but not to economic integration.
Fox News and other partisan networks have demonstrated that the quickest route to huge profitability is to serve up a steady diet of high-carb, low-protein populist pap. Reasoned disagreement of the kind that could serve democracy well fails the market test. Those of us who otherwise believe in the virtues of unfettered capitalism should bear that fact in mind.
His speech was on the topic of how to disagree reasonably. It is here where I think that Paul Krugman has met the market test and failed the public responsibility test. To be responsible, you have to set a good example of how to disagree. To set a good example, you have to take the most charitable possible view of those who disagree. This is difficult, as commenters frequently remind me when I do a poor job of it. And even if I do sometimes offer a charitable view of those who disagree, obviously I don’t generate clicks in the volume that Krugman does.
But I want to emphasize that we need to try to disagree reasonably. The alternative approach of fighting tribally is not working well and will only make things worse. Again, see The Three Languages of Politics.
Perhaps we could create more clear and direct contests, where the two political sides could compete to do something good. For example, divide Detroit or Puerto Rico into two dozen regions, give each side the same financial budget, political power, and a random half of the regions to manage. Then let us see which side creates better regions.
You might think that the goal is to help the distressed people. Or to prove once and for all which party has better ideas. But the more modest goal is to let the two sides let off steam in less dangerous ways. Kind of like my father’s idea in the 1950s for solving the Cold War: turn it into a contest between the U.S. and the Soviet Union to see who could destroy Germany first.
Philip Auerswald suggests that this is the key political and tribal divide.
the 21st century, certainly the 20th century going into the 21st, has been an era in which the largest cities have become even more dominant and have driven the advance of human society and human prosperity. . . .in a way, when we think about the origins of populist surges–and I really want to point out that this isn’t just the United States: that the point is this is a global phenomenon–that it is something that is really kind of the revenge of the country
This podcast with Russ Roberts covers many topics, all interesting.
I mean two tribes whose mutual incomprehension and loathing can drown out their love of country, each of whom scans current events almost entirely to see if they advance not so much their country’s interests but their own. I mean two tribes where one contains most racial minorities and the other is disproportionately white; where one tribe lives on the coasts and in the cities and the other is scattered across a rural and exurban expanse; where one tribe holds on to traditional faith and the other is increasingly contemptuous of religion altogether; where one is viscerally nationalist and the other’s outlook is increasingly global; where each dominates a major political party; and, most dangerously, where both are growing in intensity as they move further apart.
That describes the Bobo vs. anti-Bobo divide. But the tribalism among ideological conservatives, progressives, and libertarians also is strong, as I discuss in The Three Languages of Politics.
Read Sullivan’s whole piece, which deals with the social psychology of tribalism.
What are the antidotes to tribalism? Sullivan suggests trying to view yourself and others as individuals, not as tribes. He also recommends mutual forgiveness, rather than wallowing in the offenses committed by the other tribe. Russ Roberts and I also recommend humility, rather than insisting that your tribe is certainly right and that the other side’s view has no merit. We also think that reading TLP can help.
The assumption of self-interest does make sense as a starting point in analyzing economic behavior, because in modern societies, people are taught that self-interest is acceptable in their employment, business, consumer, and financial affairs. But they’re taught the opposite when it comes to government affairs. The standard, culturally accepted view is that public policy should advance the common good. So it’s not surprising that when non-economists talk about politics, the common good is what they talk about.
The essay is a valuable lesson in political science. Some key points.
1. People vote for what they think is best for the country. Of course, their thinking may be off base.
2. Ideas matter. Political scientists, like all social scientists, are prone to treating people as machines, so that only tangible things influence votes. But in fact people vote on the basis of ideas in their heads.
Tendencies in voting by age, class, or ethnicity are mediated by ideas. It is not that African-Americans are genetically disposed to vote for Democrats. They are acculturated to ideas that make it right to vote for Democrats.
3. People’s ideas about politics are influenced to some extent by the media. Of course, the causality runs also in the other direction–people’s choice of media is influenced by their political inclinations.
4. One study that Friedman cites suggests that the increase in polarization in recent years can be explained entirely by changes in the media environment.
I think that these observations tie in with the negative feelings that Russ Roberts and I have about the political environment. We agree that ideas matter. And the trends there look bad to us. First, a lot of bad ideas are gaining currency about economic issues. Second, people on both right and left have the idea that they are certainly right and that those who disagree are certainly evil, and the media environment is serving to reinforce this. Third, the ideas that seem to be prominent on college campuses seem particularly worrisome.
In the NYT, Peter Baker writes,
Although elected as a Republican last year, Mr. Trump has shown in the nearly eight months in office that he is, in many ways, the first independent to hold the presidency since the advent of the current two-party system around the time of the Civil War.
If so, that is because the two-party system has fractured. Of course, the U.S. electoral system is highly conducive to two parties. But I would say that right now there are four.
1. Hard left. Sees socialism as a term with positive connotations and capitalism as a term with negative connotations. Does not see anything wrong with refusing to allow conservatives to speak in public.
2. Bobo center. Strongly favors lenience on immigration. Liberal on social policy. Generally content with the status quo on most economic issues, but worried about inequality.
3. Anti-Bobo heartland. Strongly favors restrictive immigration policy and “America first” foreign policy and trade policy. Very suspicious of the other three parties.
4. Conservatarians, meaning conservative-flavored libertarians or libertarian-flavored conservatives. I don’t count the fringe folks on the alt-right–they are electorally irrelevant and out of the picture. There are some Republicans in Congress who are conservatarians, but not any that I know of on the alt-right. Conservatarians worry about unsustainable fiscal policy, the power of the regulatory state, and a loss of key values, such as individual responsibility and respect for freedom of speech.
Note that you might not consider yourself to be in any one of these parties. Note that in the wake of the Trump ascendancy many libertarians feel more comfortable in the Bobo center. But I am more comfortable with the conservatarian crowd.
The Democratic Party is a fragile coalition of the hard left and the Bobo center (plus some ethnic groups that may or may not be reliably Democratic going forward). The Republican Party is an even more fragile coalition of the anti-Bobo heartland and conservatarians. Individually, none of these four parties is anywhere close to a majority. Even a landslide win in 2020 by Democrats (or, less plausibly, by Republicans) will not mean that a majority favors anyone’s agenda.
With the debt ceiling deal, President Trump showed a willingness to break with the conservatarians. My guess is that they will end up patching things up and working together, but the message that the President is sending is that he thinks that the conservatarians need him more than he needs them.
There is a good chance that the Democratic nominee in 2020 will cater to the hard left. If so, then this will give the Bobo center the sort of discomfort that the conservatarians feel with the Trump phenomenon. William Galston’s recent piece foreshadows this. It will also make it difficult for the conservatarians to abandon Mr. Trump.
To paraphrase Neil Young, here is a new essay that’s guaranteed to bring you right down. It’s by Russ Roberts.
The current state of the country and the current state of political and intellectual conversation depresses me in a way that it never has before.
I share his despondent mood. Here are what I see as the causes.
1. For a conservative-flavored libertarian, or libertarian-flavored conservative, the Overton Window is moving away from our views all over the place. Health care policy obviously, where Obamacare is most likely to be replaced by full-on single payer. Fiscal policy in general, where tax and spend (or maybe just spend and spend) is entrenched. Trade policy, where protectionism now has bastions in both parties.
Mainstream economics will soon be all about inequality, secular stagnation (i.e. the theory that government needs to spend because everyone else is saving too much), climate change, race/gender bias, market failure, and market power. In other words, reinforcing rather than counteracting what Bryan Caplan calls anti-market bias in the general population.
The Trump Presidency is not the solution to this Overton Window trend, and one can argue that it is part of the problem. The Republican Party won about as much as it possibly could last November, but in terms of American football, the Republicans have not moved the ball. When the Democrats get it back, they will have excellent field position.
2. The people who care most about politics want to have their outrage validated. The media cater to that desire. Does the sight of neo-Nazis marching validate your outrage as a progressive? The progressive media will make as big as story as possible out of it. Do the antics on campus validate your outrage as a conservative? The conservative media will make as big a story as possible out of it. This reinforces the destructive feedback loop to which Roberts refers.
3. The Internet encourages immediate reactions. As articles appear, your instinct is to share those with which you agree and denounce those with which you disagree You don’t take the time to think through an issue in a nuanced way. In fact, stories come and go so fast that by the time you think about something, it is no longer being discussed.
4. The U.S. lacks an external threat that is widely recognized and powerful. Sure, some people think that Muslim radicalism is an existential threat. Some people think that climate change is an existential threat. But for an external threat to lead us to pull together, there needs to be a consensus about the threat. Without the consensus, these sorts of fears instead exacerbate divisions. Russ and I worry that the outrage cycle is an existential threat. But that is an internal issue, not an external one.
In conclusion, it looks as though the country is in what some have called a cold Civil War. That is unsettling enough. Moreover, it seems highly probable that the left will come out on top, and that it will in victory show no signs of heeding Lincoln’s call for “malice toward none and charity to all.”
Describing our primitive ancestors, Robin Hanson writes,
when the group was stressed and threatened by dominators, outsiders, or famine, the collective view mattered less, and people reverted to more general Machiavellian social strategies. Then it mattered more who had what physical resources and strength, and what personal allies. People leaned toward projecting toughness instead of empathy. And they demanded stronger signals of loyalty, such as conformity, and were more willing to suspect people of disloyalty. Subgroups and non-conformity became more suspect, including subgroups that consistently argued together for unpopular positions.
I suppose that people see charging a high price for something in the wake of a hurricane as disloyal. The situation calls for group solidarity, and instead here is this merchant looking out for himself.