Michael Lind on philanthropy strangling the left; Bryan Caplan on macro puzzles; Joel Kotkin on California; A Larry Summers interview; Matt Taibbi helps Russian dissidents
I'd like Lind or someone similar to define whether it's really non-profits that are driving the trends. Or something else. My hypothetical model is that what's really going on is an excess supply of intellectuals.
1. The explosion of subsidized higher education has created a much bigger pool of "intellectuals".
2. Buyers of intellectuals, which include NGOs but also includes subsidized higher education itself, in turn, get much more control over intellectual production. In NGO production, this works out as Lind says. In higher ed, producers basically get to buy piecemeal labor for adjuncts and grad students.
3. In both cases, the labor pool is almost perfectly competitive, so there's an extreme tournament effect. An intellectual laborer who doesn't do exactly what the boss wants is almost immediately replaceable. So attempts to "stand out" will tend to be on the more extreme side of the distribution.
The upshot of all of this is that the only way to "go back" in the long-run is to stop flooding the market with subsidized intellectuals. When the supply is such that they can't be treated like commodities anymore, they'll have more freedom to diverge in opinion.
Peter Turchin much? "Elite Overproduction" has been known to be a partially loaded term at this point, where others pointed out as mid-tier underproduction (relegating elite servants to arts and crafts as an outlet), or misplacement of the "real elite" (concentrating real power back into the socio-cultural 1%).
This line of logic however still reaffirm Venkatesh Rao's theory on the upper and lower form of the "clueless" strata (upper as in upper middle gossip class), or Curtis Yarvin's perception on trimming the fat on "armigers" by 75% (down to 5% of total population).
TL;DR we need more Etsy, deviantArt, Fiverr, and more!
Maybe on the surface, but all of those approaches seem to me to be historical-cultural narratives. In the big picture, aren't these guys basically just saying "society should and ultimately deterministically will" revert to these norms or collapse?
Maybe they're right, but I'm arguing from a purely economic framework. To my mind, that has a big advantage in that it's got very rigorous foundations. There are lots of historical exceptions, but none to supply and demand.
Because of this, we can simply say "stop subsidizing and mandating" and return to the free market. The surpluses and shortages will end. That's a lot easier to support than a complicated historical narrative. IMHO.
More Etsy would be fine, but even better if folks don't misguidedly enslave themselves into debt to become adjunct professors with an Etsy side hustle.
You really need to pick up Christopher Caldwell's Age of Entitlement. It's crystal clear that the number one buyer of young intellectual college graduates is HR departments, from which the rot spreads.
Cancel Student Debt? Hardly. Make the universities pay for it.
“Donations to non-profits that promote causes ought to be taxed double.” People are now looking at me, wondering why I’m laughing in public like some crazy person.
And sadly, it has about as much chance of passing as my desire for each layer of government to tax the next layer down as a set percent of its revenues.
I'd like Lind or someone similar to define whether it's really non-profits that are driving the trends. Or something else. My hypothetical model is that what's really going on is an excess supply of intellectuals.
1. The explosion of subsidized higher education has created a much bigger pool of "intellectuals".
2. Buyers of intellectuals, which include NGOs but also includes subsidized higher education itself, in turn, get much more control over intellectual production. In NGO production, this works out as Lind says. In higher ed, producers basically get to buy piecemeal labor for adjuncts and grad students.
3. In both cases, the labor pool is almost perfectly competitive, so there's an extreme tournament effect. An intellectual laborer who doesn't do exactly what the boss wants is almost immediately replaceable. So attempts to "stand out" will tend to be on the more extreme side of the distribution.
The upshot of all of this is that the only way to "go back" in the long-run is to stop flooding the market with subsidized intellectuals. When the supply is such that they can't be treated like commodities anymore, they'll have more freedom to diverge in opinion.
> excess supply of intellectuals
Peter Turchin much? "Elite Overproduction" has been known to be a partially loaded term at this point, where others pointed out as mid-tier underproduction (relegating elite servants to arts and crafts as an outlet), or misplacement of the "real elite" (concentrating real power back into the socio-cultural 1%).
https://americancompass.org/the-commons/elite-overproduction-or-mid-tier-underproduction https://troynikov.io/elite-underproduction
This line of logic however still reaffirm Venkatesh Rao's theory on the upper and lower form of the "clueless" strata (upper as in upper middle gossip class), or Curtis Yarvin's perception on trimming the fat on "armigers" by 75% (down to 5% of total population).
TL;DR we need more Etsy, deviantArt, Fiverr, and more!
Maybe on the surface, but all of those approaches seem to me to be historical-cultural narratives. In the big picture, aren't these guys basically just saying "society should and ultimately deterministically will" revert to these norms or collapse?
Maybe they're right, but I'm arguing from a purely economic framework. To my mind, that has a big advantage in that it's got very rigorous foundations. There are lots of historical exceptions, but none to supply and demand.
Because of this, we can simply say "stop subsidizing and mandating" and return to the free market. The surpluses and shortages will end. That's a lot easier to support than a complicated historical narrative. IMHO.
More Etsy would be fine, but even better if folks don't misguidedly enslave themselves into debt to become adjunct professors with an Etsy side hustle.
You really need to pick up Christopher Caldwell's Age of Entitlement. It's crystal clear that the number one buyer of young intellectual college graduates is HR departments, from which the rot spreads.
Cancel Student Debt? Hardly. Make the universities pay for it.
“Donations to non-profits that promote causes ought to be taxed double.” People are now looking at me, wondering why I’m laughing in public like some crazy person.
And sadly, it has about as much chance of passing as my desire for each layer of government to tax the next layer down as a set percent of its revenues.
‘… macroeconomics of hypochondria.‘ 👍
I’m going to steal that.
And I might add the Green Deal is the macroeconomics of megalomania.
"Donations to non-profits that promote causes ought to be taxed double."
Ah, if only...
The Green Deal will ensure the USA & Western Countries will in due course be exporting their poverty.