Category Archives: Politics

Another definition of culture

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From Pseudoerasmus.

‘Culture’ is defined as any information inside the mind which modifies behaviour and which got there through social learning — whether from parents, or peers, or society at large. Non-genetically inherited ‘content’ would obviously include technology/knowledge (“how to remove toxins from edible tubers”), beliefs (“witches can cause blindness”), and customs (use of knife & fork). But it also includes what economists would describe as “informal institutions”, i.e., mating systems, ethical values, social norms, etc.

Pointer from Tyler Cowen.

Apparently this is an updated version of an earlier essay. I recommend the piece as an excellent survey. Many sentences are worth quoting, including:

One might argue, the real institutional difference between developed and developing countries is actually a “social capital” gap: there are just many more coordination failures in developing countries.

Of course, you do not explain North Korea vs. South Korea on the basis of a “social capital gap.” But I think that the concept does have value in many other instances.

If you want to jump to the bottom line,

So to answer the question at the head of this post, “where do pro-social institutions come from?” — if ‘bad’ institutions represent coordination failures, then intelligence and patience must be a big part of the answer.

And, yes, he does get around to citing Garett Jones.

A book recommendation

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from Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff:

The social psychologist Jean Twenge has just written a book, titled iGen (which is short for “internet generation”), in which she analyzes four large national datasets that track the mental health of teenagers and college students. When the book is released in August, Americans will likely be stunned by her findings. Graph after graph shows the same pattern: Lines drift mildly up or down across the decades as baby boomers are followed by Gen-X, which is followed by the millennials. But as soon as the data includes iGen—those born after roughly 1994—the rates of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and suicide spike upward.

Due out one month from now.

Random North Korea thoughts

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The missile launch makes the WaPo think of President Trump. It makes me think of Bob Gallucci.

1. I had a course from him at Swarthmore College.

2. He negotiated the deal in 1994 that was hailed as stopping North Korea’s nuclear program. North Korea got some badly-needed oil shipments, and we got their promise to stop enriching uranium.

3. About a week ago, he co-authored a bipartisan letter to President Trump urging negotiations with North Korea.

A cynical view is that the chances of a U.S. attack are inversely proportional to President Trump’s perception of his popularity. In that case, if you want to minimize the chances of war, you should be telling President Trump that he is very secure in his position and the American people are very happy with him.

Ten years ago, the Capitol Steps came up with How do you solve a problem like Korea? I haven’t watched it. But I knew that if I Googled that title I would find something.

Human conflict: a Girardian view

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Dan Wang writes,

If one is a Girardian, then there is perhaps no greater catastrophe than the growing tendency of the American meritocracy to be incubated in elite colleges. Is it not worth fretting that the people running the country are coming in higher numbers from these hothouse environments at a young age, where one is inflamed to compete over everything and where tiny symbolic disputes seem like life and death struggles? How much of the governing class has fully adopted this attitude, and to what extent can we see our recent political problems to be manifestations of this tendency?

Pointer from Tyler Cowen. Read the entire essay.

Wang links to a useful summary of Girard’s ideas.

If people imitate each other’s desires, they may wind up desiring the very same things; and if they desire the same things, they may easily become rivals, as they reach for the same objects. Girard usually distinguishes ‘imitation’ from ‘mimesis’. The former is usually understood as the positive aspect of reproducing someone else’s behavior, whereas the latter usually implies the negative aspect of rivalry.

Again, there is much more at this link. Wang’s idea is that when you throw a bunch of similar people together ini college, you make it natural for them to desire the same things and to be prone to conflict.

I admit that I am still trying to fully grasp these ideas.

Martin Gurri on Post-Truth

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He writes,

For liberals, “post-truth” is the only possible explanation for Donald Trump’s somersault to the presidency. At some point, liberals believe, fake news metastasized into false consciousness: hence Trump. For conservatives and libertarians, the phrase aptly describes an information environment dominated by the liberal news media and entertainment industry.

Read the whole essay. I interpret one of the main points to be that the bond of trust between elites and the public has been broken, so that there is no longer a shared truth concerning the interpretation of events. I interpret his conclusion as being that we need to discover a new elite, one which has credibility. Easier said than done, to say the least.

Racism a Century Ago

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A commenter provides supporting evidence for my view that it was worse back then. He cites three articles from the North American Review. For example, one of them says,

The original population of the States, it is true, was mixed. But there was nothing unassimilable in the Dutchman, the Frenchman or the Swede. Irish immigration frightened Americans into Know-nothingism. But about the worst that it did, after all, was to fill the ranks of Tammany. It has found its level and is a source of alarm no more. Not so the Italian, with his Mafia, or the Eussian and Polish exile. The spirit of European revolution and of European anarchism is invading American cities.

Read the whole comment.

Now vs. Then

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I have resisted two claims made in recent conversations.

1. Compared with the early Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants, Hispanics today face more prejudice.

I am afraid that the Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants faced a great deal of prejudice, and that this has been mostly forgotten. Thomas Leonard’s Illiberal Reformers is a must-read for its coverage of the eugenics movement. My reading of that book makes me suspect that the prejudice back then was even worse.

2. Compared with the 1960s, the stability of our country is less threatened in the Trump era.

This is a tough one, because it involves assigning probabilities to non-stochastic phenomena. Even if the probability of chaos is in some sense lower today than it was in 1965, it is still higher than zero today, and meanwhile we know that the country stabilized after the 1965-1980 period receded. So in some sense, it is simple to claim that we live in more dangerous times now.

I am prepared to argue that we survived the 1960s because politics was still coalitional and fluid rather than being entirely identity-driven. The Democratic Party absorbed the anti-war movement, even though the Vietnam war was initiated by a Democratic Administration. The Republican Party absorbed what had previously been the core constituency of the Democrats, the Solid South.

In 1967, blue-collar workers and college students were like two distinct tribes. But by 1973, blue-collar workers were sporting long hair, listening to hard rock, and experimenting with drugs and sexual freedom. I would be willing to bet that in 2023 we won’t see erstwhile Trump supporters adopting the race and gender doctrines that are prominent on campus today.

I’m not seeing the sort of coalitional politics that I saw in my youth. Mr. Trump won by gaining votes from among the anti-Bobos. The Democrats are doing remarkably little to try to get those votes back. Indeed the Bobos who form their base do not want the anti-Bobos in their coalition.

Because today’s divide seems less fluid to me, I think that the danger is higher that conflicts will not be reconciled peacefully.

The Class War Synthesis

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Many of us have talked about the Trump-era class war. You can call it Somewheres vs. Anywheres. Bobos vs. anti-Bobos. Managerial elites vs. populists. But both sides need one another, or at least they are stuck with one another. This suggests that some sort of Hegelian synthesis is likely to emerge. What it will look like?

My first thought is national socialism. It needs another name, because of all the Hitler/holocaust baggage, but here is why it makes sense.

The nationalism would include immigration restrictions, protection of “culturally significant industry” (e.g., wine in France), and cultural pride. This would appeal to the anti-Bobos. The socialism part, which requires technocratic management of economic outcomes, would appeal to the Bobos.

To get to national socialism in the U.S., the left would have to give up its attachment to multiculturalism and the right would have to give up its attachment to free markets (which Alberto Mingardi says has happened). Right now, it is easier for me to imagine the latter than the former, but maybe if the left loses one more election that could change.

And no, I do not want to see national socialism, even without the baggage. But it strikes me as a very plausible scenario.

Jacob Siegel writes,

A politics that’s inclusive, multi-ethnic, pluralist, federalist, preserves universal healthcare, preserves the liberty of individuals and their right to make their own choices without trying to legislate cultural attitudes, that defends civil liberties, demands equality of opportunity, curbs and regulates speculative finance, recognizes that markets are not value neutral or sacrosanct and encourages economic policy to improve the material well being of Americans without returning to reactionary nativism or neo-mercantilism, that ends wars that can’t be won and doesn’t start new ones without a clear threat or national interest that can be expressed in terms of political outcomes and for which people above the rank of sergeant will be held accountable

Parts of his essay remind me of Martin Gurri, in their description of the mood of revolt and nihilism that is in the air. His preferred solution strikes me as the left giving up the most Inquisition-ist form of multiculturalism but otherwise getting its way. My guess is that we will see something worse.