Links to Consider, 10/20
Scott Sumner on Brad DeLong's opus; Rob Henderson on young male psychology; Brian Chau interviews me; Wild Problems Discussion; Brink Lindsey on post-industrial politics;
DeLong sees many of the problems of the 20th century as being caused by people having blind faith in ideologies. While individuals have committed crimes in all times and places, only ideology can motivate the sort of mass crimes committed by communist and fascist regimes during the 20th century. DeLong actually sees three ideologies that people adhere to despite the evidence being overwhelming against them; communism, fascism and extreme laissez-faire. I think he’s right about the first two, but mostly (not entirely) wrong about the third.
DeLong is a great writer and an erudite historian. But unlike Sumner, I could not finish the book. It is hard for me to sit through 500 pages of the intellectual over-confidence that seems to be an occupational hazard of left-of-center economists.
The vast majority of violence is carried out by young men.
…Relatively low impulse control, low empathy, low fear, high sensation seeking, relatively shallow emotions, need for stimulation, proneness to boredom, violent fantasies, desire for revenge, and increased likelihood of criminality. Of course, some women score highly on these traits, and there are women who are psychopaths. But far fewer than males.
…in the absence of formal social mechanisms (religion, community leaders, group bonding activities, etc.), all deaths in a small scale human society would be due to murder.
…humans eventually established large settlements, despite the attendant risks. It appears they did this with structural innovations (religion, men’s organizations, respected community leaders, rituals, and so on) that dampened social stressors.
Brian Chau, who likes very long-form podcasts, interviews me. Assuming you are already familiar with my three-axes model, I would start at minute 6. Also, of course speed it up. I give a commercial for Albion’s Seed. And about minute 26 I get into stuff that will get me canceled. At about 1 hour and 45 minutes in, I talk about elite conflict. At 2 hours, 5 minutes, we talk about Fantasy Intellectual Teams.
I also appear on this discussion of Russ Roberts’ Wild Problems. I am joined by Jerry Muller and John Alcorn.
In the altered ecosystem of postindustrial civic and political life, the numerous and nimble new professionalized groups simply outcompeted the old mass-membership organizations and drove them from their former prominence.
The end result of all this change is that politics is now largely a game for well-educated elites: there are few paths to power and influence that don’t start with at least a four-year university degree.
…the entire political system has been captured by highly educated managerial and professional elites and is now run according to their narrow and well insulated points of view.
A long essay, recommended. But he characterizes “the elite” as if it were unified. I think that conflict among elites is still very important.
I was intrigued by your comments on feminizations on the Brian Chau podcast. I think there is a difference between older and younger women. Older woman, particularly those who have worked with men or have brothers seem to be much better sports. Much less likely to claim sexual harassment at an off colored joke or even a compliment.
I find Brink Lindsey rather mealy-mouthed and sometimes worse. So it's hard to decide whether he believes everything he writes or just espouses key talking points of the elites he sometimes chides to ward off their possible wrath. One even wonders if the strong language he uses only when bootlicking is "Straussian" signaling. Consider (from Lindsey's essay Arnold links above):
<blockquote>Many elites of both left and right, meanwhile, describe themselves — at least among themselves — as socially liberal and fiscally conservative, and thus find themselves in the comparatively empty lower-right quadrant. And diametrically opposed to them are large numbers of people in the suppressed quadrant of the economically liberal and socially conservative — a sizeable group of people with views that long went without any representation in national debate. This is the vacuum that authoritarian populism has rushed to fill. Donald Trump was the first U.S. presidential candidate to claim these voters as his own. <i>Of course he offered them poisonous demagoguery, not actual concern for their outlook and interests, but he made them feel seen, and that was enough to enable him to nearly wreck American democracy.</i> Whether he will ultimately succeed remains an open question.</blockquote>
Emphasis added (or maybe not, if the markup I tried to add doesn't work). The point, however, is that Lindsey dramatically accuses Trump of offering voters "poisonous demagoguery, not actual concern for their outlook and interests, but he made them feel seen, and that was enough to enable him to nearly wreck American democracy."
In retrospect we see that truly Trump did not offer "actual concern" (by their fruits ye shall know them). He never tried to implement the key policies he promised on the campaign trail. But Lindsey doesn't criticize Trump for lying to voters. Instead, Lindsey complains that Trump offered "poisonous demagoguery" and "nearly wreck[ed] American democracy." Those latter points are pure elite propaganda lies, which Lindsey repeats exactly. Only Lindsey's pet anti-democratic elite claims that offering voters things they want (things entirely in the mainstream of American public policy throughout most of the 20th and even 21st Centuries, and obviously Constitutional for those who worry about that) is tantamount to "wrecking democracy." The claim that "democracy" means steadfastly ignoring the interests and wishes of the voters is an obnoxious elite inversion of the worst kind. As for "poisonous demagoguery," that is just nasty name-calling by which Lindsey tells elites he agrees that is is improper for any politician to appeal to voters rather than big-money donors. Trump violated that rule because he didn't need major-donor funds, and spectacularly wiped the primary floor with the elite-approved pseudo-right-wing tools like ¡Jeb Bush! (whom everyone knew was <i>planning</i> to take the Republican nomination and then deliberately lose the election to Hilary in exactly the same way as McCain and Romney had thrown over their campaigns by steadfastly refusing to appeal to voters' actual interests. Both McCain and Romney even praised their "opponents" on TV!).
Lindsey concludes with "whether [Trump] will ultimately succeed [to wreck democracy] remains an open question." Now, that may be a dig at the possibility of Trump running again. Obviously, as Lindsey would have it, the voters summoning Trump again would be "un-democratic!" (personally, I think it would be moronic). However, I suspect Lindsey meant more than that. We can also understand Lindsey to be stating that because (per Lindsey) Trump made "people in the suppressed quadrant of the economically liberal and socially conservative" "feel seen" those people may keep on trying to "wreck democracy" by voting for "authoritarian populism." Note that "populism" is just a propaganda term, made pejorative by elite preferences, for "offering the voters what they want," and "authoritarian" in current elite-speak is just a propaganda term for "trying to move public policy away from elite preferences." For example, per elite preferences, imprisoning hundreds of J6 protestors for years without trial or bail <i>on misdemeanor charges</i> is NOT "authoritarian" but proposing to enforce child-abuse laws against Dr-Mengele-proteges who sterilize and mutilate adolescent children IS "authoritarian."
Does Lindsey believe exactly what he has written? Or is that part of his essay so strident that we cognoscenti are to take it for the opposite of what it says? The latter possibility doesn't really make it less harmful-- most readers won't get the joke, and the more who do, the more likely the elites Lindsey seems to be sucking up to will lose tolerance for him.