A couple of weeks ago, I gave a talk at the University of Indiana to students and some faculty in a graduate program in public policy. As usual, the best part was the Q&A, and one of the more challenging questions was why this feels like a bad time in terms of the political climate even though it seems to be a good time in terms of economic indicators. Some possible answers:
1. People evaluate the economic results of the political system by asking “What have you done for me lately?” with an emphasis on “me” and “lately.” So Americans don’t feel better because hundreds of millions of people in India and China are climbing out of poverty. And we don’t say that we are really grateful to be living in a world with antibiotics, indoor plumbing, air travel, and the Internet.
2. Yuval Levin would say that we have gained affluence but become unmoored. That is, people derive meaning from their participation in institutions, including marriage, religion, membership in professions, and work in organizations. Institutions give us roles, responsibilities, obligations, and guides to behavior. But nowadays, rather than treating institutions as a set of customs and obligations that we ought to follow, we either exit from institutions or treat them as platforms for promoting our individual “brands.” (Note that this is a very terse and incomplete description of Levin’s thesis in A Time to Build. I continue to strongly recommend the whole book when it becomes available.)
“What have you done for me lately?”
Why are you bothered by this? This is what every CEO would ask their employee each day. It is life in capitalism.
1) Why in the short term the average American care what happens to other citizens? Sure it is good lots of economic improvement of China citizens but it does seem this reality is part of the stagnation of US working class wages.
2) We live a competitive global economy. One must protect focus on the individual especially when you under 25. Why is it so wrong for young people focus on themselves versus institutions at this age? You can work on institutions later.
I still say young people are not ready to build their lives around community institutions until their careers are somewhat settled. Every generation in the post-WW2 we see this reality.
Rather than being unmoored, I think we are “recalculating”. I am borrowing one of Kling’s concepts that he used to describe the confusion and uncertainty that occurs after an economic bubble bursts which he offers as an alternative to Keynes’ Animal Spirits narrative. The current Recalculation is due to the three phenomena that Kling and everyone else here is preoccupied with, namely: 1. Social Justice Activism, 2. Trump Populism, and 3. Social Media.
These three phenomena make up what Kling is calling the 4th Axis of his Three Languages of Politics (TLP) model. Rather than an axis, I’m going to use a layer metaphor. The TLP is the Political Layer while this new layer is the Social Psychology Layer. These are like Photoshop layers that can be worked on independently but are ultimately blended together into the final image.
The Social Psychology Layer also has three axis: 1. The Chemistry of Crowds, 2. Zealotry, and 3. Fandom. The corresponding three phenomena are: 1. Social Justice Activism, 2. Trump Populism, and 3. Social Media.
The Chemistry of Crowds comes from my own observation that protest participation has an infectious quality to it. It is a social psychology phenomena that also occurs in other group traditions such as candlelight vigils, midnight mass, play-off game anthems, and lighter/screen-light rock concert ballads. Social Justice Activism starts with the politics of oppression/exploitation but the Chemistry of Crowds makes it addictive.
Zealotry is unfortunately a derogatory term but the dictionary definition and the historical meaning are better analogues of Trump Populism than the terms Tribalism or Fanaticism.
Fandom is the weirdest but most useful social psychology phenomena to frame the impact of social media. One looks to popular culture and the obsessive devotion to an idea, product, or character. It accounts for childhood fads (e.g. Harry Potter), cosplay, and endless Star Trek vs Star Wars arguments. These are all about identity but it’s more about personal identity rather than group identity. Social Media makes the Fandom phenomena exponentially more impactful.
Thanks for listening. Sorry for the extra noise.
We can get much more specific about recalc and animal spirits.
A recalc is the result of deja vu, we see something we have seen before, and it is a repeating sequence, so we close the loop and eliminate a redundancy.
We do this all the time, it is how we think. And we literally close a loop in are head, one pattern in our head triggers a repeat; and that causes the eureka moment. Called learning, releases dopamine and makes us build synapses.
In economics the loops are literally observable inventory cycles which can be minimized. Depending how far back in the supply chain we go to rebuild inventory flow determines how deep the recalc is.
We are seeing a world wide movement in debt repudiation, and they are linking up. Hong Kong protesters seem to be traveling Xi’s Yellow Brick road.
My own observation has been that the era has shifted to favoring those people, (“natural individualists”?) who are constitutionally well-suited to succeed and thrive without institutional support and who don’t tend to derive a lot of psychological benefit from belonging to groups or collectives, or even dislike such collectives. That doesn’t mean they can’t thrive within existing institutions, even be at their helm, but they don’t ‘need’ them as positive influences or behavioral guides, or to achieve necessary levels of motivation, contentment, and satisfaction.
But most people aren’t like that. This is pretty wild speculation, but I strongly suspect that this significantly contributes to the recent trend in inequality of incomes and outcomes, as functional-institution-indifferent individualists are simply scarcer commodities. That is, modern society is a harsher and thus more selective gauntlet through which fewer people are naturally capable of passing.
+1
But most people aren’t like that. I actually think more people are moving that direction and this is one reason birth rates are lower. So we socialize all our kids this way which is different than how kids, especially girls, were raised in the past. So I keep going back to the more competitive the global economy is, the more we become like Singapore.
In terms of institution builders, we very much fondly remember the local community and institution of the 1950s. And it was a unique time when 80% of citizens were better off economically so they felt more comfortable building local institutions. And remember most of the well off families had the wives be focused on improving the community and with women working this reality has diminished over the years. (Note: They were not always beloved though as Dana Carvey old Church Lady SNL segments remind us.) But one aspect the 1950s had libertarian economist HATE which was Private Unions had their peak power in the marketplace. Kevin Drum sent a tweet showing Private Unions in the 1950s was over 35% despite Taft-Hartley passing in 1947. And I do believe the Union manufacturing economy was good at manufacturing young marriage of the working class.
This idea has a great deal of appeal to me but I’m worried that it’s because it places my introverted libertarian tendencies into a more positive light rather than a social deficiency to be worked on.
Self reflection aside, there is no doubt that you have described a real personality type and this type is much more likely to succeed as a cognitive elite in Charles Murray’s Belmont. The question is whether the personality type is leading the trend or simply benefiting from the Coming Apart trend.
I guess the main aspect I don’t understand understand from Charles Murray’s Bell Curve vs. Coming Apart. I thought Murray’s main theme of the Bell Curve was the poor are stupid and unable to handle the modern world. And to over-simplify trolling Idoiotcrasy was our future.
Coming Apart seems like a call to help those left behind in the modern world and ideas for the community to improve their lives. But I do find the religious institutions are even more Paternalistic view to people struggling and I am not sure how the church will improve people’s lives.
(And yes, I do think there was a significant racial POV of Charles Murray in the two books on who we need to help but he does not make explicit.)
I read Coming Apart first and The Bell Curve later, without any pre-knowledge of the controversy. I was really confused at Murray’s insistence of restricting the analysis to white Americans in Coming Apart which only made sense given the previous accusations of racism. When I read The Bell Curve, it came across to me as a fair and carefully worded explanation of Coming Apart that included race data for non-whites. Murray’s policy recommendation is the UBI which fits Coming Apart beliefs rather than a Thomas-Malthus-like “let the poor starve as nature intended since they can’t control their sexual urges” policy.
It wasn’t until asdf , Jay, and others in the comments here suggested that The Bell Curve actually promotes the caricature painted by Gould and Lewontin that I questioned the perfect fidelity I thought I read in the two books. I haven’t re-read The Bell Curve to confirm my impression/memory. I did not perceive any implicit racism as you did but I admit to sometimes being naive about hidden motives; I like to think of it as a charitable trust but verify policy. Murray has another book coming out about race so I guess we’ll find out there.
I don’t believe in anything supernatural but religion fascinates me from an evolutionary psychology perspective best articulated by Bret Weinstein in his interview of Dawkins. I’m too am wary of paternalism but I’m aware that sometimes positive emergent effects dwarf their impact, such as the Catholic church’s shift away from primogeniture having a massive positive impact on land markets and women’s suffrage. When I learned that Yali, made famous by Jared Diamond, was a key player in the Cargo Cult movement, it made me wonder if missionaries are an important step in the transition from Animism to modern industrial society. I find the religious aspects of 12 Step programs repugnant but I’m not convinced that secularizing the steps would be a .net benefit. I dunno.
Yea, I have tended to think The Bell Curve was a very strong anti-poor book and he just sort of left the race IQs to both support IQs are hereditary but also to convince good white people should not care about the African-American slums. (The controversy of it sold books!) Now when some Bell Curvevrealities is working against the WWC, Charles NOW believes we should do something about it. (I think some of this is minorities are better located in urban centers where jobs are growing while they are decreasing in semi-rural US.)
Considering the book was written in 1994, there was both:
1) An incredible crime wave that had just starting turning downward. And few predicted that this crime drop would last decades. (To fair to asfd Baltimore crime drop has been small compared to New York or Los Angeles.)
2) Matt Yglesias had a nice chart showing the difference of Af-Am to white unemployment rates which is shrinking almost to 1%! And then look back from 1974 – 1994 and see the Af-Am was usually 7 – 12% higher then.
(Back in 1994 the impact of Hispanic-Americans and immigration was much more limited to California when we had Prop 187.)
favoring those people, (“natural individualists”?)
I don’t buy this at all, and fairly strongly believe in the opposite.
I see a few smart-lucky tech geeks “winning” huge jackpots if their idea gets implemented well and they become the winner in a network award niche, Search (Google), Social Media (Facebook), eCommerce (Amazon). I see most college graduates learning to boot-lick their professors and their new bosses, with the ability charm the boss and excuse mistakes being more important in most big orgs than to actually get the work done.
Despite the current fad in small, agile teams.
The increasing inequality is more based on the increasing “winner-take-all” business niches, with fewer different big orgs to become a VP or director in, rather than an increase in the value of the individualists.
Previously (1990?), out of 1000 grads, there would be 100 individuals starting businesses. Only 20 would make it for 5 years or more.
Avg equity for those 20 (BIG guess) maybe $500 000. They’re CEOs.
The other 80 would leave, sell at loss/no gain, try something else, try again. avg income 40% of median income (maybe $70k if median is $50k). Avg income other grads is 20% of median ($60k)
Today, tho the stats say fewer startups, lets go with 10% 100 again starting their own firms. Now again 20 would be success EXCEPT that 15 of them are bought by existing firms for an avg of $5 000 000, which is maybe FU money to these winners but often they try again. Other 5 successes have higher equity, avg $700 000, and there are even 10 more struggling successes avg $200 000. But the other 70 grads who tried and didn’t make it, they’re only at the 20% above median ($72k over $60k median), while other 900 grads are only 15% over median $69k.
More and higher rewards to the winners in the winner take all niches; less for the rest. College income premium going down. The above was income, but cost of college debt much higher now; cost of home higher now. Cost of “Upper American Dream” higher now — so fewer grads think they will be getting there in the next 2 years.
As I was about to write 5 years, as in the older expectation time, 5-10 year payoff seemed reasonable. It seems that grads now are expecting to join the elite in fewer years; yet also seeing that this “quick elite” path they were expecting is actually not very probable.
The worst of times – high expectations which are dashed with only medium results.
Another person on a reddit I follow has this “theory of self-control”. The idea is that individuals are born with differing amounts of self-control, and the current age (also, libertarian philosophy in general) is more advantageous than normal for people with high self-control.
He feels that libertarians are individuals with high self-control, and thus they espouse a philosophy which greatly benefits them.
Specialization of labor. Everyone begins to realize that their personal circumstances are increasingly determined marginally, disconnected from the overall health of the economy.
Set forth above:
“Institutions give us roles, responsibilities, obligations, and guides to behavior. But nowadays, rather than treating institutions as a set of customs and obligations that we ought to follow, we either exit from institutions or treat them as platforms for promoting our individual “brands.” ”
Consider that viewpoint carefully. Is it not exactly FACTUALLY OPPOSITE the real, 0bserved experiences of social aggregations? In their interactions and relationships, individuals in their aggregating come upon differing levels of understanding of their obligations (both to one another and otherwise) and responsibilities (forms of obligations) – that generally, as aggregations take “social” shape, result in constraints and instigations of conduct – for which in the aggregations they devise facilities or instrumentalities* for the performance of obligations and the conduct of relationships.
As those facilities are developed they become “institutions” by reason of the relationships (especially hierarchies) necessary for their functioning in expanding societies.
It does appear that such “institutions,” once established, ultimately come to promulgate and impose obligations, often to the extent of displacing their original functions of implementing the commonalities of individually determined obligations.
* “The Evolution of Civilizations” by Carroll Quigley (1961)(LibertyFund 1979)
“why this feels like a bad time in terms of the political climate”
If polarization is really the problem claimed, the elites would advocate for proportional representation. Winner-takes-all is the single most polarizing institution of which one can conceive. God forbid that people have political parties that advocate for their personal interests. Winner take all is more so than “persuasive speech” which an article in the NYT the other day claims is highly polarizing.
But no. The only answer the elites have is to try to make the little people behave the way they ought to.
Never let a good crisis go to waste and if you don’t have a crisis, invent one.