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Sep 25, 2021Liked by Arnold Kling

The Mormon Church seems to select against these traits.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/us/for-mormons-succession-monson.amp.html

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Sep 25, 2021Liked by Arnold Kling

Although not immune to the Dark Triad, small businesses have a better chance of avoiding it than big businesses because small businesses are less hierarchical and need to be cooperative to thrive in the marketplace. Moreover, small businesses such as professional practices tend to operate as partnerships, so there is a high degree of mutual monitoring of shirking and dysfunctional behaviors. Of course, small businesses with toxic cultures exist. I'm merely suggesting that successful small businesses are more likely to be able to weed out Dark Triad behaviors than larger organizations.

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Re Joe and Hunter Biden, Arnold, do you personally know anyone who is the parent of an adult with serious drug and behavior problems? Biden's reactions to Hunter strike me as very typical of people in that position.

There is a recognition that yes, the child has done wrong, but also a sense that others' reactions to the child are harsher and more punitive than the behavior deserves, and thus one needs to stick up for the child and protect him from others as well as himself. (Usually there is a solid grain of truth to that assessment.)

Nothing "dark triad" about Joe's handling of Hunter, in my estimation.

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This is a detail of the whole post, but I would like to know how you would assess the traits of Reagan (one of his biographers said he was inscrutable) and Nixon (a man full of contradictions). What did their personalities say about the times in which they were in power?

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And the replacement of prestige hierarchies with dominance hierarchies seems to operate on both the left and the right. Both have a relativizing sense that the old respect was unearned, itself a form of power politics. Whether pushing back against perceived race/gender elitism, or against perceived educational/cultural elitism, it all seems related to Gurrian revolt of the public dynamics.

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