Carter and Mason are of course right, but how in practice does one just "loose" consciousness of "race." And what happens if some do and others do not loose that consciousness? Surely is cannot be pretending that "race" in the here and now does not exists and affect social outcomes.
But don't most Republican politicians have more degrees than their median voter? This seems like a completely different problem from staff management. Identity politics works better for Republicans than Democrats because they have fewer identities to manage.
I’ll also clarify “find themselves”. Everyone in the arts (except for instrumentalists, who need only show up for auditions and play behind a screen) spends most of their time promoting themselves and their organizations to other arts people, to dilettantes, to board members, to fellow employees, to donors, and to the public at large.
"What should you do with these entitled brats in staff positions ... "
The issue here is actually an extension of Gurri's insightful observation about the diminished strength of elite narrative control. But it's not just 'narratives', it's 'control' in general! That is, there has been a serious weakening of traditional mechanisms of group behavioral control across the board - a kind of sudden widespread depreciation of organizational capital - and the assurance of party discipline in just one manifestation of this general problem. I'd like to see Gurri run with that and give his speculations on why he thinks this may have happened.
I've written here before that it's something I've seen at work, a consequence of which has been a near total breakdown in the capacity to delegate and coordinate across the boundary between inner circle and merely near-inner-circle. This is part of a shift to a low-trust equilibrium, because leaders can't trust that things won't get leaked and that subordinates will be disciplined and put 'loyalty' to leaders and 'the cause' ahead of personal complaints, disputes, or opportunities for gain.
Likewise, see how much trouble the Democrat insiders seem to have lately in getting everyone in the left-o-sphere on the same sheet of music. There is obviously some kind core, strategically sophisticated element that cares deeply about winning elections and thus what the polls say, and who are willing to compromise as necessary for the sake of expediency if those polls say the left is going too far and pissing off too many swing voters. Which might, you know, get a Republican governor elected in Virginia as an unforced error. For example, there was a whole week where focus was on the "popularists" like Shor and Klein and, it's clear to me anyway, Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic.
The polls say that even marginal Democrats are really fed up with the covid stuff,, and also the CRT in schools stuff, and also worried about inflation and crime. So it has become important to use the various party mouthpieces to communicate to their side's free radicals when they need to cool it, bite their tongues, and exercise some patience and discipline for a while, or else, all turn on a dime spontaneously with "We have always been at war with EastAsia."
But it seems that these elites are having much more trouble than usual getting the worms to go back in the can they opened, and that the worms take on lives of their own once unleashed from their tin prison. In particular, political elites on the left and their mouthpieces have not yet been able to make much of a dent in the covid-alarm permanent-emergency mindset in their efforts to convince people to get with the new program and let them throttle public policy back to normalcy lest they get crushed in the next election.
Perhaps this is less 'related' and more simply a direct consequence of classical Gurri narrative-control-weakening, such that if you can't control the narrative and your audience keeps getting a stream of messages on social media contrary to what you want them to think, then your coordination costs just went sky high and you can't get everyone to shift to a new position for common benefit.
I think you misunderstand what he means by ‘working with people.’ Conducting an orchestra is not a particularly social activity, and conductors are not exactly known for being people persons.
My comment was based on over 4 decades spent playing in professional orchestras. I can assure you that conductors are not introverts who suddenly find themselves in a position that requires 75 experts to stare at their every move and listen closely to their every comment.
I’ll try to clarify again: the contention is that women prefer jobs that involve talking to people, not directing them physically. I expect more make third base coaches too, though they’re also ‘working with people.’ That’s not a ‘people job’ in the same way being a social worker is.
I note Hanania brings up whether one can trust any reported statistics from the CCP, then brushes the concern away as though that isn't a problem at all. Shortly afterwards, Americans simultaneously fear the Chinese and want to keep them down and believe they are not doing nearly so well as the Chinese claim to be... it seems unlikely for both of those thing to be true, at least within the same person or group. One wouldn't make that claim about how Americans feel about North Korea. I sometimes wonder if he thinks these things through.
The more one writes, especially about topics beyond an immediate area of expertise, and Hanania is definitely getting himself out there, the more mistakes one is going to make.
True, although I think this is a basic point of epistemology. I have noticed that Hanania has a lot of confirmation bias in terms of looking at data and not questioning where the numbers come from and how they could be interpreted if they match his desired answer. I am reminded of his essay about how liberals read and conservatives watch TV which was based on some very tenuous survey information. Then again, most econometrics, statistics and data science texts treat any pile of data as coming directly from the mouth of God, so I can sympathize a bit, but someone who wishes to be a serious thinker really ought to know better.
“ Recall that I proposed a strong Chief Auditor function for the U.S.”
Citing the Communist Party of China in support of that proposition seems troublesome for a self-identified libertarian, since I’d expect you to say that China’s government is overly robust in some respects (that are important for libertarians) and still fragile in others.
Additionally, any auditing silos in China report to leaders with very different incentive structures than US politicians. We should expect very different behaviors as a result. Arnold has yet to flesh out who a Chief Auditor would report to in the US, how they would be selected, and what incentives would be in place for them to do their job making enemies of all the other bureaucracies. I, for one, am eagerly awaiting that.
As a first step, an interesting question would be, before even getting into the specifics, how big and independent would such a branch have to be in order to work? Obviously, I'd think if it's something approaching the communist party, it's gonna have some negative side effects.
Randomly, I wonder if within the US system something like the chief auditor isn't better set up as a part of the judicial branch rather than the executive branch. At heart, auditing (beyond purely financial audits) is "judicial" work in the sense that it's deciding the extent to which practice conforms to legality. In this system a judicial auditor would take over the interpretation of the law from unelected bureaucrats and enjoin them when they depart from the official interpretation. I'm not offering any judgement on whether that's a good idea or not... just trying to think it out as an alternative to standing up another executive branch bureaucracy with entirely different sorts of powers
The Comptroller General is technically part of the legislative branch as head of GAO, but is a PAS official with a 15 year non-renewable term, which is not quite life tenure like a judge, but about as close as you can get. Dodaro was appointed late in the Obama administration and will be replaced next March.
That is an interesting idea, tying it to the judicial branch. If the chief auditor had some ability to charge with crimes or just cut budgets that might make for a good answer to "Well, the Supreme Court said no, but the President doesn't give a shit and is doing it anyway."
If you had a "House of Repeals", a branch that is a bit like Congress only it can only repeal laws, a Chief Auditor might do well positioned under there as well, since its bosses would be inclined towards making the government do less if it isn't doing them well in the first place.
"Additionally, any auditing silos in China report to leaders with very different incentive structures than US politicians. We should expect very different behaviors as a result."
Right. More to the point, we already have a Chief Auditor. So we don't have to wonder what we would expect. We have equivalents to those Chinese "evaluators, and can see those different behaviors with our own eyes. And, exactly as you say, our different power and political incentive structure means that our leaders don't really care.
USG already has multiple overlapping layers of very good oversight and internal and external auditing institutions. GAO often does a superb job, and the Inspectors General tend to do high quality work and do not shy away from publicizing ugly truths. We already have the GPRA (93) and then GPRAMA (2010), and organizations take the performance reports and plans seriously. The Comptroller General and the IG's maintain lists of open priority issues and recommendations for all organizations, and monitor to determine whether the problems have been fixed.
Indeed, the CG *is* basically the 'Chief Auditor', which is why in some states and in some other countries the position with the same responsibilities is actually called "Auditor General".
And yes, there are plenty of professionals who take all that stuff as seriously as they can. But, inevitably, the always run into having to get approval from political-decision-making paygrades, and the incentive structure for those decisions in our system is just inherently never going to be lined up with what the auditors say should be done.
Yes, very much so. Adding another layer seems far more likely to simply add another layer instead of doing anything useful unless there are very obvious and clear incentives to be different. Politicians keep getting elected and bureaucracies continue to find public support despite terrible performance, so until that part is fixed the result from adding more layers of poo is always going to be just having a little more poo on top.
Carter and Mason are of course right, but how in practice does one just "loose" consciousness of "race." And what happens if some do and others do not loose that consciousness? Surely is cannot be pretending that "race" in the here and now does not exists and affect social outcomes.
But don't most Republican politicians have more degrees than their median voter? This seems like a completely different problem from staff management. Identity politics works better for Republicans than Democrats because they have fewer identities to manage.
I’ll also clarify “find themselves”. Everyone in the arts (except for instrumentalists, who need only show up for auditions and play behind a screen) spends most of their time promoting themselves and their organizations to other arts people, to dilettantes, to board members, to fellow employees, to donors, and to the public at large.
"What should you do with these entitled brats in staff positions ... "
The issue here is actually an extension of Gurri's insightful observation about the diminished strength of elite narrative control. But it's not just 'narratives', it's 'control' in general! That is, there has been a serious weakening of traditional mechanisms of group behavioral control across the board - a kind of sudden widespread depreciation of organizational capital - and the assurance of party discipline in just one manifestation of this general problem. I'd like to see Gurri run with that and give his speculations on why he thinks this may have happened.
I've written here before that it's something I've seen at work, a consequence of which has been a near total breakdown in the capacity to delegate and coordinate across the boundary between inner circle and merely near-inner-circle. This is part of a shift to a low-trust equilibrium, because leaders can't trust that things won't get leaked and that subordinates will be disciplined and put 'loyalty' to leaders and 'the cause' ahead of personal complaints, disputes, or opportunities for gain.
Likewise, see how much trouble the Democrat insiders seem to have lately in getting everyone in the left-o-sphere on the same sheet of music. There is obviously some kind core, strategically sophisticated element that cares deeply about winning elections and thus what the polls say, and who are willing to compromise as necessary for the sake of expediency if those polls say the left is going too far and pissing off too many swing voters. Which might, you know, get a Republican governor elected in Virginia as an unforced error. For example, there was a whole week where focus was on the "popularists" like Shor and Klein and, it's clear to me anyway, Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic.
The polls say that even marginal Democrats are really fed up with the covid stuff,, and also the CRT in schools stuff, and also worried about inflation and crime. So it has become important to use the various party mouthpieces to communicate to their side's free radicals when they need to cool it, bite their tongues, and exercise some patience and discipline for a while, or else, all turn on a dime spontaneously with "We have always been at war with EastAsia."
But it seems that these elites are having much more trouble than usual getting the worms to go back in the can they opened, and that the worms take on lives of their own once unleashed from their tin prison. In particular, political elites on the left and their mouthpieces have not yet been able to make much of a dent in the covid-alarm permanent-emergency mindset in their efforts to convince people to get with the new program and let them throttle public policy back to normalcy lest they get crushed in the next election.
Perhaps this is less 'related' and more simply a direct consequence of classical Gurri narrative-control-weakening, such that if you can't control the narrative and your audience keeps getting a stream of messages on social media contrary to what you want them to think, then your coordination costs just went sky high and you can't get everyone to shift to a new position for common benefit.
The gender divide establish by Lyons would imply that in orchestras women would typically be found on the podium surrounded by male instrumentalists.
I think you misunderstand what he means by ‘working with people.’ Conducting an orchestra is not a particularly social activity, and conductors are not exactly known for being people persons.
My comment was based on over 4 decades spent playing in professional orchestras. I can assure you that conductors are not introverts who suddenly find themselves in a position that requires 75 experts to stare at their every move and listen closely to their every comment.
I’ll try to clarify again: the contention is that women prefer jobs that involve talking to people, not directing them physically. I expect more make third base coaches too, though they’re also ‘working with people.’ That’s not a ‘people job’ in the same way being a social worker is.
I note Hanania brings up whether one can trust any reported statistics from the CCP, then brushes the concern away as though that isn't a problem at all. Shortly afterwards, Americans simultaneously fear the Chinese and want to keep them down and believe they are not doing nearly so well as the Chinese claim to be... it seems unlikely for both of those thing to be true, at least within the same person or group. One wouldn't make that claim about how Americans feel about North Korea. I sometimes wonder if he thinks these things through.
The more one writes, especially about topics beyond an immediate area of expertise, and Hanania is definitely getting himself out there, the more mistakes one is going to make.
True, although I think this is a basic point of epistemology. I have noticed that Hanania has a lot of confirmation bias in terms of looking at data and not questioning where the numbers come from and how they could be interpreted if they match his desired answer. I am reminded of his essay about how liberals read and conservatives watch TV which was based on some very tenuous survey information. Then again, most econometrics, statistics and data science texts treat any pile of data as coming directly from the mouth of God, so I can sympathize a bit, but someone who wishes to be a serious thinker really ought to know better.
“ Recall that I proposed a strong Chief Auditor function for the U.S.”
Citing the Communist Party of China in support of that proposition seems troublesome for a self-identified libertarian, since I’d expect you to say that China’s government is overly robust in some respects (that are important for libertarians) and still fragile in others.
Additionally, any auditing silos in China report to leaders with very different incentive structures than US politicians. We should expect very different behaviors as a result. Arnold has yet to flesh out who a Chief Auditor would report to in the US, how they would be selected, and what incentives would be in place for them to do their job making enemies of all the other bureaucracies. I, for one, am eagerly awaiting that.
As a first step, an interesting question would be, before even getting into the specifics, how big and independent would such a branch have to be in order to work? Obviously, I'd think if it's something approaching the communist party, it's gonna have some negative side effects.
Randomly, I wonder if within the US system something like the chief auditor isn't better set up as a part of the judicial branch rather than the executive branch. At heart, auditing (beyond purely financial audits) is "judicial" work in the sense that it's deciding the extent to which practice conforms to legality. In this system a judicial auditor would take over the interpretation of the law from unelected bureaucrats and enjoin them when they depart from the official interpretation. I'm not offering any judgement on whether that's a good idea or not... just trying to think it out as an alternative to standing up another executive branch bureaucracy with entirely different sorts of powers
The Comptroller General is technically part of the legislative branch as head of GAO, but is a PAS official with a 15 year non-renewable term, which is not quite life tenure like a judge, but about as close as you can get. Dodaro was appointed late in the Obama administration and will be replaced next March.
That is an interesting idea, tying it to the judicial branch. If the chief auditor had some ability to charge with crimes or just cut budgets that might make for a good answer to "Well, the Supreme Court said no, but the President doesn't give a shit and is doing it anyway."
If you had a "House of Repeals", a branch that is a bit like Congress only it can only repeal laws, a Chief Auditor might do well positioned under there as well, since its bosses would be inclined towards making the government do less if it isn't doing them well in the first place.
"Additionally, any auditing silos in China report to leaders with very different incentive structures than US politicians. We should expect very different behaviors as a result."
Right. More to the point, we already have a Chief Auditor. So we don't have to wonder what we would expect. We have equivalents to those Chinese "evaluators, and can see those different behaviors with our own eyes. And, exactly as you say, our different power and political incentive structure means that our leaders don't really care.
USG already has multiple overlapping layers of very good oversight and internal and external auditing institutions. GAO often does a superb job, and the Inspectors General tend to do high quality work and do not shy away from publicizing ugly truths. We already have the GPRA (93) and then GPRAMA (2010), and organizations take the performance reports and plans seriously. The Comptroller General and the IG's maintain lists of open priority issues and recommendations for all organizations, and monitor to determine whether the problems have been fixed.
Indeed, the CG *is* basically the 'Chief Auditor', which is why in some states and in some other countries the position with the same responsibilities is actually called "Auditor General".
And yes, there are plenty of professionals who take all that stuff as seriously as they can. But, inevitably, the always run into having to get approval from political-decision-making paygrades, and the incentive structure for those decisions in our system is just inherently never going to be lined up with what the auditors say should be done.
Yes, very much so. Adding another layer seems far more likely to simply add another layer instead of doing anything useful unless there are very obvious and clear incentives to be different. Politicians keep getting elected and bureaucracies continue to find public support despite terrible performance, so until that part is fixed the result from adding more layers of poo is always going to be just having a little more poo on top.