Gre Lukianoff on scout mindset; Scott Sumner on Christianity's rise and fall; Devon Eriksen on each political party's preferred media; The Zvi on sports gambling
Based on recent Pew findings, I imagine that age has a lot to do with the “mismatch between consumption preferences and production preferences.” If you look at the demographic breakout on “% of U.S. adults in each demographic group who prefer ___ for getting news” you will see that there is very little difference between Republicans and Democrats. But between age groups there are large differences. (https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/news-platform-fact-sheet/ ). The 50 to 64 age bracket preferred TV at 42% versus 8% for ages 18-29, while the latter group preferred digital devices 86% to 46% for the former.
Earlier in the year, Pew had reported on political affiliation demographics finding:
“Today, each younger age cohort is somewhat more Democratic-oriented than the one before it. The youngest voters (those ages 18 to 24) align with the Democrats by nearly two-to-one (66% to 34% Republican or lean GOP); majorities of older voters (those in their mid-60s and older) identify as Republicans or lean Republican. While there have been wide age divides in American politics over the last two decades, this wasn’t always the case; in the 1990s there were only very modest age differences in partisanship.” (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/changing-partisan-coalitions-in-a-politically-divided-nation/ )
However, these results didn’t seem predictive this election, “Among younger voters aged 18-29, 49 percent of men voted for Donald Trump -- shattering previous images of young people generally leaning left… ...women under 29 had a massive 61-37 Harris-Trump split.” (https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-election-results-why-more-young-men-voted-for-donald-trump-6970224 ). Interestingly, on the Pew preferred news source question, women favor television 34% to 29% over men. And men prefer digital devices 60% to 56% over women.
I'm not sure I fully understand the ramifications. Probably not but it seems to call into question what we know about cause and effect regarding voting differences by sex and the influence of media choices.
If Pew is still finding 18-24 year olds align with Democrats 2-1 in 2023/2024, then they are pretty clearly oversampling women and the college educated and undersampling men.
You could have more easily made that case 8 years ago.
As the parties have sorted out and people know exactly what Trump stands for - and more importantly what today’s Dem party stands for - that case is much harder to make.
In addition, the election evidence shows only real but fairly small differences in votes for Trump versus votes for Republicans down ballot. No way does Trump’s consistent but small outperformance of down-ballot Republicans this month get you to 2 to 1…
"Higher education created this problem by favoring applicants who are interested only, or primarily, in engaging in activism."
Taken naively and literally this would be bad enough. The trouble is that 'activism' here is a euphemism (in the form of a "totum pro parte" metonym) for "100% aggressive far-left political activism". That is, the universities are madrassas looking to recruit those most likely to be future leaders of the jihad and most passionate about istishad. To imagine such a place would somehow be neutral toward and just as interested in admitting enthusiastic Hindu or Buddhist or Pagan """activists""" would be to have totally lost touch with reality and become a chump fooled by word games. Unfortunately the naive textualist approach does indeed fool a lot of people and allow the academies to hide the ball of their political and ideological agenda behind a good number of other Orwellian euphemisms.
Interesting that you don't include Muslim in the list. But maybe I don't understand the point. For Muslims and those you list I would think it would entirely depend on which side of the issue the candidate was an activist.
"As a quibble, why doesn’t he come out and say 'scout mindset vs. soldier mindset'"
I think it's good that he uses normal language rather than jargon. "Scholarly mindset" is more easily understood than "scout mindset", which would require a discursion to explain.
For you (AK) it makes sense to use Galef's terms because in your larger body of work you have not only reviewed her book, but discussed it many times. In a stand-alone commentary like Lukianoff's, it is better to stay away from jargon unless it is really needed.
Arnold wrote: It’s as if the public is saying “We thank the Church for preserving the teachings of Jesus for 1800 years, but we don’t need you any longer. We have made these ideas a part of our secular philosophy, our social science, our politics, our culture. You’ve done your job, now please go away.” The ideas haven't really been adopted, rather they just serve as false moral cover for other often un-Christian practices. Compare G.K. Chesterton: The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad."
One can imagine waking up one of the early church fathers out of cryogenic suspension like Captain America, having them take a look around, and asking them isn't it great how all their Christian values have wholly incorporated into and implemented by our secular philosophy, our social science, our politics, our culture, etc. He'd be disappointed that in two millenia and despite all our medications breakthroughs, we still had not cured raving insanity, or, perhaps in the alternative, demonic possession.
"…But Christianity in an institutional sense seems to be declining in the West. It’s as if the public is saying “We thank the Church for preserving the teachings of Jesus for 1800 years, but we don’t need you any longer. We have made these ideas a part of our secular philosophy, our social science, our politics, our culture. You’ve done your job, now please go away.”
This reminds me of something said by a liberal friend. He attributed our living standard to minimum wage, labor unions, the social safety net, etc. instead of those things resulting from improved economics. This is similar but different. While Christianity isn't necessarily unimportant, increased concern for the plight of the masses more likely comes with improving economics. Whether Christianity comes or goes is a separate issue.
Trump’s tariffs he talks about are bad - let’s see if he goes through with them or not - but otherwise his economic policies were far, far better than Obama’s.
I defy you to name even two places where Obama economic policy was superior to Trump’s.
Remember, Obama was the one who when asked about raising capital gains taxes, and it was pointed out to him it might lower government revenues, said it was still the right thing to do “because of fairness”:
Don’t confuse “gives good teleprompter” with good understanding of economics.
And Warren - the originator of “you didn’t build that” - has an understanding of economics and business that is probably even worse.
I’m not saying Trump would be above average in economics understanding compared to the average reader of *this* blog (though he might be), but all 3 of Harris, Warren and Obama have advocated - and implemented, in Obama’s case - obviously bad economic policies, where Trump’s were quite good.
"Trump’s tariffs he talks about are bad - let’s see if he goes through with them or not ... I defy you to name even two places where Obama economic policy was superior to Trump’s."
Trump killed TPP so he's already moved the wrong way on tariffs. On top of that it was bad China policy. (Gave China an opportunity for greater influence in those countries.) And apparently Obama understood the economic benefit of TPP.
Hillary said in the same campaign that she was against TPP, so hard to blame Trump for that.
[Personally, TPP as it was negotiated by Obama’s team, I honestly don’t know if it would have been net better or not. I remember leaning against at the time, but without strong conviction. The secrecy of the negotiations and terms was a serious concern, and the possibility that the dispute resolution mechanism would undermine U.S. sovereignty by allowing foreigners to challenge U.S. laws in an international tribunal was a *very* serious concern.
I can see both sides of that argument. Where a TPP negotiated by any Republican administration prior to Trump - or for that matter by Bill Clinton Administration - I would agree with you would have been a good thing to do.]
And the question was whether Obama or Warren know far more about economics than Trump, as you claimed. You’ve given no evidence that they do, only suggestions that they *might*. While I’ve given multiple bits of evidence that they don’t. BOTH policies advocated *and* words uttered.
"I defy you to name even two places where Obama economic policy was superior to Trump’s."
Policy entails many variables besides understanding economics. Policy is not a measure of how well one understands economics. On that note, you could also certainly argue Trump understands why tariffs are a bad idea and still wants them or is using them as a negotiating threat. Since we really can't use policy OR political statements to know how well they actually understand basic and more advanced economics, it is really one opinion against the other. My opinion is that Trump and Harris have a poor grasp. I disagree with Obama and Warren on many things related to economics but I still think they have a pretty good grasp. On that note, there is A LOT I disagree with Krugman about but I have no doubt he has a very good grasp of economics.
Democrats love few to many, sort of like Nazis without Hitler. Especially credentialed experts like professors lecturing students on whatever. Eriksen has causality switched: it’s because the intellectually superior Dems want central power, under their control, that they’ve been drifting towards control of one-to-many TV. And exclusion of any Republicans as professors, or even those just telling the T truth about low performing students having below avg SAT ( in her elite classes), and how they are so often Blacks with the low SATs. Doing poorly.
The Dems don’t like this truth, so are censoring it, censuring any professor who tells the Truth.
Trump is more Truthful honest about immigration & many problems. It’s because the big Dem media lies that so many, hungry for truth, are looking at the internet or other many>>many news sites for news.
Republicans still watch TV for entertainment, a lot and probably more than Dems, but not so much for news.
Contrary to Kling, Dems who believed the media lies about Russian Hoax 2016-2018, who believed the lie about H Biden’s laptop, such gullible useful idiots are pretty objectively worse than those who do not believe the lies. Including who do not watch.
++ good list of experts being wrong. Dems can win again when experts are right.
"Eriksen could be wrong because he makes it sound like modern Republicans are way more sophisticated than Democrats in their ability to seek out and process alternative information sources. ... but I have a hard time crediting the notion that the median Republican voter is a far superior media consumer than the median Democratic voter."
I think it would be a mistake equating sophistication with superior. It seems likely Republicans are more likely to seek out alternative sources but processing it is more of a toss-up.
And I mostly agree with AK. But I *do* believe the median Republican voter is at least a superior media consumer (if not far superior) because they are more likely to consume media from both sides of the political spectrum, while the median Dem voter almost surely consumes media nearly exclusively - or perhaps 100% exclusively - from leftist media sources.
“the deterioration of intellectual quality in higher education is my number one issue.” Arnold - What does it mean for this issue to be number your one issue? In terms of daily actions and priorities? Do you work on it more than other issues? What work are you doing on this issue?
Marijuana legalization makes for an interesting case study. Legalization likely means the police no longer pursue those in the black market, so why would they comply with regulations, taxes, and fees? I now smell marijuana from cars every day, indicating usage is through the roof.
Sadly, my reading of the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual-V indicated that Substance Use Disorder starts among those under 17 years of age. Addiction is a disease of children, who then become adult addicts. There but for the grace of our genes go many of us...
My cynical side says the politicians expected a tax bonanza. Instead, the damage from drugs has likely become much more widespread. Social issues seem to be a matter of picking the least bad trade-off.
"Legalization likely means the police no longer pursue those in the black market,"
I wouldn't make that conclusion. It means when they find a personal use amount they will ignore it. Trafficking is very different. They pursue trafficking of other illegal drugs mostly separately from users. And they pursue black market alcohol and cigarettes, though I'm guessing that is less of an issue than black market marijuana. (A far smaller percentage of the total market for those items)
"My cynical side says the politicians expected a tax bonanza."
Here in Massachusetts, marijuana was legalized not by politicians but by voters in a referendum. However, the voters didn't want it just made legal. They wanted it to be "well-regulated". So we now have a Cannabis Control Commission appointed by the powers that be at the State House. The Commissioners and their staff must approve all new stores, and have developed a boatload of regulations and reporting requirements. All selling must take place in one of the state-approved stores. There are extra taxes, and to avoid being undersold, "growing your own" is prohibited, as is any growing not approved by the CCC--and, yes, meeting all their regulations and filing all the reports they want.
“But Christianity in an institutional sense seems to be declining in the West. It’s as if the public is saying “We thank the Church for preserving the teachings of Jesus for 1800 years, but we don’t need you any longer. We have made these ideas a part of our secular philosophy, our social science, our politics, our culture. You’ve done your job, now please go away.”
My younger self would have believed this, and loved the formulation. I suspect that the majority of left intellectuals believe as Scott does here.
I no longer do.
My counter-argument:
“There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” — David Foster Wallace
Older liberals seem to worship at the altar of “climate change” and the ideal of the pristine Mother Gaia narrative (as Alex Epstein describes so well in his most recent book).
Younger (decidedly Il-liberal) leftists worship woke oppressor-oppressed ideology. Which is how and why they feel virtuous in choosing to “Back Hamas” in the wake of Oct 7th.
So “You’ve done your job, now please go away” - which is what the secular left wants and makes clearer with each passing year as it attempts to do just that - has in less than half a century been demonstrably proven to be either wrong, or else a fabulously bad idea.
And I say this as a Jewish agnostic thisclose to atheist myself. Albeit one who sent his children to Sunday school, specifically so they could learn Judeo-Christian values.
But it becomes more and more evident that anything akin to proper Judeo-Christian values continue to vanish with each passing generation as belief in religion has plummeted in the last two decades in the West.
As evidenced by the aforementioned woke “Back Hamas” crowd.
Robin Hanson, without using my words, has made similar points about our culture for months if not years now.
I would interpret what Hanania wrote as a core part of what he has been focused on for the past few months in his writing: that he thinks the modern right has forsaken intellectualism and that all of what he calls "Elite Human Capital" has clustered left of center. Essentially he thinks that people with high IQs and more intellectual rigor are all Democrats and that the low IQ dunces are all on the right. And I don't think it's a stretch to say that smart people read and dumb people watch TV. If you're smart, it's generally much more efficient and superior to consume information by reading - not for everyone, but probably for most. Reading and being good at it is a skill that likely overlaps with high intelligence. Watching TV is lazier and a less efficient way to consume information.
That is distinct from the separate question which is what is the salient form of sharing information. As I wrote last week, podcasts were dominant in this election. That is the most important form of mass media now. Television is obsolete. Most people are canceling their cable subscriptions. They get their TV through streaming services. And streaming MSNBC sounds painful. If you want to reach a lot of people now, you don't do it through TV. You do it through podcasts. Just look at the viewership numbers for MSNBC or CNN and compare it to leading podcasts. We're talking about orders of magnitude difference.
So I think the neo-Democrats are the party of television insofar as they couldn't figure out how to run a campaign of ideas and disseminate them through podcasts. Instead they relied on controlled media like television and then lost the election. The neo-Republicans had ideas and champions to go advocate them (like JD Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy) and they were more than happy to go do interviews and dive into the lion's den to defend those ideas. That's why they won through podcasts and the internet.
there is some research both from the UK and i think Finland that is critical of sports gambling. The issue here boils down to the ease of being able to place a bet over a mobile phone vs having to seek out a casino to do so. Libertarians will have no issue with easy ability to engage in sports gambling, but the access of minors is not all that well monitored, prevalence of advertising during prime time viewing hours and during games along with inducements such as bet $5 and get a $200 credit is hardly a societal benefit....Make it more difficult to gamble via a mobile phone would seem to makes sense and the regressive nature of sports and for that matter other gambling done over mobile phones cannot be overlooked. Economists seem to have some issues with the regressive nature of lotteries so stands to reason that they should have issues with ease of gambling over mobile phones.
Gotta love the ads to promote sports gambling that in fine print say if have an issue call a given number. Really?
“Gotta love the ads to promote sports gambling that in fine print say if have an issue call a given number. Really?”
No different than ads for alcohol. Or (I presume, though I can’t say I've seen for myself) for marijuana.
Below you note that more regulation wouldn’t help with alcohol abuse, and I suspect you’re correct about that. Conservatism suggests we should highly value the learning over time about what works best [Prohibition didn’t…]
But you also make the same claim for marijuana, which has only a few years headstart on gambling in terms of legalization.
I *suspect* I know why you seem more tolerant of marijuana than gambling, and your implicit claim that marijuana should not be more highly regulated but that gambling should, but do you not see the apparent hypocrisy of your stated positions on marijuana vs. gambling?
“This would imply that there is a mismatch between consumption preferences and production preferences.” [re: Dems vs GOPers]
I think this is an *excellent* observation. And not one I’ve seen elsewhere.
As an aside, I read both AK (of course) and Hanania. I find Hanania writes more interesting stuff than just about anyone, and I agree with him ~80%-85% of the time, but find him infuriatingly wrong about 15% of the time. He clearly lacks almost any epistemic humility, which seems to be somewhat common for folks “on the spectrum” in my experience.
With AK, I find I agree with him 90%-95% of the time. And where I disagree, I usually think long and hard about it, and am willing to consider that maybe he’s right and I’m not.
Epistemic humility - I believe I first heard this phrase in a Russ Roberts podcast - has become my favorite phrase of the decade.
Based on recent Pew findings, I imagine that age has a lot to do with the “mismatch between consumption preferences and production preferences.” If you look at the demographic breakout on “% of U.S. adults in each demographic group who prefer ___ for getting news” you will see that there is very little difference between Republicans and Democrats. But between age groups there are large differences. (https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/news-platform-fact-sheet/ ). The 50 to 64 age bracket preferred TV at 42% versus 8% for ages 18-29, while the latter group preferred digital devices 86% to 46% for the former.
Earlier in the year, Pew had reported on political affiliation demographics finding:
“Today, each younger age cohort is somewhat more Democratic-oriented than the one before it. The youngest voters (those ages 18 to 24) align with the Democrats by nearly two-to-one (66% to 34% Republican or lean GOP); majorities of older voters (those in their mid-60s and older) identify as Republicans or lean Republican. While there have been wide age divides in American politics over the last two decades, this wasn’t always the case; in the 1990s there were only very modest age differences in partisanship.” (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/changing-partisan-coalitions-in-a-politically-divided-nation/ )
However, these results didn’t seem predictive this election, “Among younger voters aged 18-29, 49 percent of men voted for Donald Trump -- shattering previous images of young people generally leaning left… ...women under 29 had a massive 61-37 Harris-Trump split.” (https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-election-results-why-more-young-men-voted-for-donald-trump-6970224 ). Interestingly, on the Pew preferred news source question, women favor television 34% to 29% over men. And men prefer digital devices 60% to 56% over women.
I'm not sure I fully understand the ramifications. Probably not but it seems to call into question what we know about cause and effect regarding voting differences by sex and the influence of media choices.
If Pew is still finding 18-24 year olds align with Democrats 2-1 in 2023/2024, then they are pretty clearly oversampling women and the college educated and undersampling men.
How did you determine that?
I see lots of not-quite-comparable group stats; 18-24 and 18-29; democrat leaning and Harris voters; and media preferences by sex for all ages.
I determine it based on the exit polls showing that young men voted for Trump:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls
Voting for Trump and aligning with Democrats more generally are not mutually exclusive.
🙄
You could have more easily made that case 8 years ago.
As the parties have sorted out and people know exactly what Trump stands for - and more importantly what today’s Dem party stands for - that case is much harder to make.
In addition, the election evidence shows only real but fairly small differences in votes for Trump versus votes for Republicans down ballot. No way does Trump’s consistent but small outperformance of down-ballot Republicans this month get you to 2 to 1…
"Higher education created this problem by favoring applicants who are interested only, or primarily, in engaging in activism."
Taken naively and literally this would be bad enough. The trouble is that 'activism' here is a euphemism (in the form of a "totum pro parte" metonym) for "100% aggressive far-left political activism". That is, the universities are madrassas looking to recruit those most likely to be future leaders of the jihad and most passionate about istishad. To imagine such a place would somehow be neutral toward and just as interested in admitting enthusiastic Hindu or Buddhist or Pagan """activists""" would be to have totally lost touch with reality and become a chump fooled by word games. Unfortunately the naive textualist approach does indeed fool a lot of people and allow the academies to hide the ball of their political and ideological agenda behind a good number of other Orwellian euphemisms.
Interesting that you don't include Muslim in the list. But maybe I don't understand the point. For Muslims and those you list I would think it would entirely depend on which side of the issue the candidate was an activist.
"As a quibble, why doesn’t he come out and say 'scout mindset vs. soldier mindset'"
I think it's good that he uses normal language rather than jargon. "Scholarly mindset" is more easily understood than "scout mindset", which would require a discursion to explain.
For you (AK) it makes sense to use Galef's terms because in your larger body of work you have not only reviewed her book, but discussed it many times. In a stand-alone commentary like Lukianoff's, it is better to stay away from jargon unless it is really needed.
Arnold wrote: It’s as if the public is saying “We thank the Church for preserving the teachings of Jesus for 1800 years, but we don’t need you any longer. We have made these ideas a part of our secular philosophy, our social science, our politics, our culture. You’ve done your job, now please go away.” The ideas haven't really been adopted, rather they just serve as false moral cover for other often un-Christian practices. Compare G.K. Chesterton: The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad."
More Chesterton: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
One can imagine waking up one of the early church fathers out of cryogenic suspension like Captain America, having them take a look around, and asking them isn't it great how all their Christian values have wholly incorporated into and implemented by our secular philosophy, our social science, our politics, our culture, etc. He'd be disappointed that in two millenia and despite all our medications breakthroughs, we still had not cured raving insanity, or, perhaps in the alternative, demonic possession.
"…But Christianity in an institutional sense seems to be declining in the West. It’s as if the public is saying “We thank the Church for preserving the teachings of Jesus for 1800 years, but we don’t need you any longer. We have made these ideas a part of our secular philosophy, our social science, our politics, our culture. You’ve done your job, now please go away.”
This reminds me of something said by a liberal friend. He attributed our living standard to minimum wage, labor unions, the social safety net, etc. instead of those things resulting from improved economics. This is similar but different. While Christianity isn't necessarily unimportant, increased concern for the plight of the masses more likely comes with improving economics. Whether Christianity comes or goes is a separate issue.
Your friend sounds like an economically clueless Obama/Elizabeth Warren “you didn’t build that” progressive.
It’s so easy to be liberal if you are ignorant of economics.
I'm not sure how economically clueless he is but it seems so on this point.
On the scale of economically clueless I'd say Harris and Trump are far more clueless than Obama and Warren.
…and now we find a place to disagree, strongly.
Trump’s tariffs he talks about are bad - let’s see if he goes through with them or not - but otherwise his economic policies were far, far better than Obama’s.
I defy you to name even two places where Obama economic policy was superior to Trump’s.
Remember, Obama was the one who when asked about raising capital gains taxes, and it was pointed out to him it might lower government revenues, said it was still the right thing to do “because of fairness”:
https://taxfoundation.org/blog/obama-and-gibson-capital-gains-tax-exchange/
Don’t confuse “gives good teleprompter” with good understanding of economics.
And Warren - the originator of “you didn’t build that” - has an understanding of economics and business that is probably even worse.
I’m not saying Trump would be above average in economics understanding compared to the average reader of *this* blog (though he might be), but all 3 of Harris, Warren and Obama have advocated - and implemented, in Obama’s case - obviously bad economic policies, where Trump’s were quite good.
"Trump’s tariffs he talks about are bad - let’s see if he goes through with them or not ... I defy you to name even two places where Obama economic policy was superior to Trump’s."
Trump killed TPP so he's already moved the wrong way on tariffs. On top of that it was bad China policy. (Gave China an opportunity for greater influence in those countries.) And apparently Obama understood the economic benefit of TPP.
Hillary said in the same campaign that she was against TPP, so hard to blame Trump for that.
[Personally, TPP as it was negotiated by Obama’s team, I honestly don’t know if it would have been net better or not. I remember leaning against at the time, but without strong conviction. The secrecy of the negotiations and terms was a serious concern, and the possibility that the dispute resolution mechanism would undermine U.S. sovereignty by allowing foreigners to challenge U.S. laws in an international tribunal was a *very* serious concern.
I can see both sides of that argument. Where a TPP negotiated by any Republican administration prior to Trump - or for that matter by Bill Clinton Administration - I would agree with you would have been a good thing to do.]
And the question was whether Obama or Warren know far more about economics than Trump, as you claimed. You’ve given no evidence that they do, only suggestions that they *might*. While I’ve given multiple bits of evidence that they don’t. BOTH policies advocated *and* words uttered.
HRC is not Obama.
I have given evidence supporting my opinion. I agree it is weak but no weaker than yours.
You've changed tthe topic.
You’re the one who claimed that Trump is more clueless on economics than Obama and Warren. I just responded to that imo outrageously false assertion.
"I defy you to name even two places where Obama economic policy was superior to Trump’s."
Policy entails many variables besides understanding economics. Policy is not a measure of how well one understands economics. On that note, you could also certainly argue Trump understands why tariffs are a bad idea and still wants them or is using them as a negotiating threat. Since we really can't use policy OR political statements to know how well they actually understand basic and more advanced economics, it is really one opinion against the other. My opinion is that Trump and Harris have a poor grasp. I disagree with Obama and Warren on many things related to economics but I still think they have a pretty good grasp. On that note, there is A LOT I disagree with Krugman about but I have no doubt he has a very good grasp of economics.
Democrats love few to many, sort of like Nazis without Hitler. Especially credentialed experts like professors lecturing students on whatever. Eriksen has causality switched: it’s because the intellectually superior Dems want central power, under their control, that they’ve been drifting towards control of one-to-many TV. And exclusion of any Republicans as professors, or even those just telling the T truth about low performing students having below avg SAT ( in her elite classes), and how they are so often Blacks with the low SATs. Doing poorly.
The Dems don’t like this truth, so are censoring it, censuring any professor who tells the Truth.
Trump is more Truthful honest about immigration & many problems. It’s because the big Dem media lies that so many, hungry for truth, are looking at the internet or other many>>many news sites for news.
Republicans still watch TV for entertainment, a lot and probably more than Dems, but not so much for news.
Contrary to Kling, Dems who believed the media lies about Russian Hoax 2016-2018, who believed the lie about H Biden’s laptop, such gullible useful idiots are pretty objectively worse than those who do not believe the lies. Including who do not watch.
++ good list of experts being wrong. Dems can win again when experts are right.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/3228149/dissident-former-leftist-explain-trump-won/
Love Lukianoff
"Eriksen could be wrong because he makes it sound like modern Republicans are way more sophisticated than Democrats in their ability to seek out and process alternative information sources. ... but I have a hard time crediting the notion that the median Republican voter is a far superior media consumer than the median Democratic voter."
I think it would be a mistake equating sophistication with superior. It seems likely Republicans are more likely to seek out alternative sources but processing it is more of a toss-up.
Well, I mostly agree with you.
And I mostly agree with AK. But I *do* believe the median Republican voter is at least a superior media consumer (if not far superior) because they are more likely to consume media from both sides of the political spectrum, while the median Dem voter almost surely consumes media nearly exclusively - or perhaps 100% exclusively - from leftist media sources.
“the deterioration of intellectual quality in higher education is my number one issue.” Arnold - What does it mean for this issue to be number your one issue? In terms of daily actions and priorities? Do you work on it more than other issues? What work are you doing on this issue?
Sports gambling, gambling in general (like internet use, like net CO2 emissions) is under taxed.
Marijuana legalization makes for an interesting case study. Legalization likely means the police no longer pursue those in the black market, so why would they comply with regulations, taxes, and fees? I now smell marijuana from cars every day, indicating usage is through the roof.
Sadly, my reading of the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual-V indicated that Substance Use Disorder starts among those under 17 years of age. Addiction is a disease of children, who then become adult addicts. There but for the grace of our genes go many of us...
My cynical side says the politicians expected a tax bonanza. Instead, the damage from drugs has likely become much more widespread. Social issues seem to be a matter of picking the least bad trade-off.
"Legalization likely means the police no longer pursue those in the black market,"
I wouldn't make that conclusion. It means when they find a personal use amount they will ignore it. Trafficking is very different. They pursue trafficking of other illegal drugs mostly separately from users. And they pursue black market alcohol and cigarettes, though I'm guessing that is less of an issue than black market marijuana. (A far smaller percentage of the total market for those items)
"My cynical side says the politicians expected a tax bonanza."
Here in Massachusetts, marijuana was legalized not by politicians but by voters in a referendum. However, the voters didn't want it just made legal. They wanted it to be "well-regulated". So we now have a Cannabis Control Commission appointed by the powers that be at the State House. The Commissioners and their staff must approve all new stores, and have developed a boatload of regulations and reporting requirements. All selling must take place in one of the state-approved stores. There are extra taxes, and to avoid being undersold, "growing your own" is prohibited, as is any growing not approved by the CCC--and, yes, meeting all their regulations and filing all the reports they want.
“But Christianity in an institutional sense seems to be declining in the West. It’s as if the public is saying “We thank the Church for preserving the teachings of Jesus for 1800 years, but we don’t need you any longer. We have made these ideas a part of our secular philosophy, our social science, our politics, our culture. You’ve done your job, now please go away.”
My younger self would have believed this, and loved the formulation. I suspect that the majority of left intellectuals believe as Scott does here.
I no longer do.
My counter-argument:
“There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” — David Foster Wallace
Older liberals seem to worship at the altar of “climate change” and the ideal of the pristine Mother Gaia narrative (as Alex Epstein describes so well in his most recent book).
Younger (decidedly Il-liberal) leftists worship woke oppressor-oppressed ideology. Which is how and why they feel virtuous in choosing to “Back Hamas” in the wake of Oct 7th.
So “You’ve done your job, now please go away” - which is what the secular left wants and makes clearer with each passing year as it attempts to do just that - has in less than half a century been demonstrably proven to be either wrong, or else a fabulously bad idea.
And I say this as a Jewish agnostic thisclose to atheist myself. Albeit one who sent his children to Sunday school, specifically so they could learn Judeo-Christian values.
But it becomes more and more evident that anything akin to proper Judeo-Christian values continue to vanish with each passing generation as belief in religion has plummeted in the last two decades in the West.
As evidenced by the aforementioned woke “Back Hamas” crowd.
Robin Hanson, without using my words, has made similar points about our culture for months if not years now.
So I say Sumner’s lede should indeed be buried.
I would interpret what Hanania wrote as a core part of what he has been focused on for the past few months in his writing: that he thinks the modern right has forsaken intellectualism and that all of what he calls "Elite Human Capital" has clustered left of center. Essentially he thinks that people with high IQs and more intellectual rigor are all Democrats and that the low IQ dunces are all on the right. And I don't think it's a stretch to say that smart people read and dumb people watch TV. If you're smart, it's generally much more efficient and superior to consume information by reading - not for everyone, but probably for most. Reading and being good at it is a skill that likely overlaps with high intelligence. Watching TV is lazier and a less efficient way to consume information.
That is distinct from the separate question which is what is the salient form of sharing information. As I wrote last week, podcasts were dominant in this election. That is the most important form of mass media now. Television is obsolete. Most people are canceling their cable subscriptions. They get their TV through streaming services. And streaming MSNBC sounds painful. If you want to reach a lot of people now, you don't do it through TV. You do it through podcasts. Just look at the viewership numbers for MSNBC or CNN and compare it to leading podcasts. We're talking about orders of magnitude difference.
So I think the neo-Democrats are the party of television insofar as they couldn't figure out how to run a campaign of ideas and disseminate them through podcasts. Instead they relied on controlled media like television and then lost the election. The neo-Republicans had ideas and champions to go advocate them (like JD Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy) and they were more than happy to go do interviews and dive into the lion's den to defend those ideas. That's why they won through podcasts and the internet.
there is some research both from the UK and i think Finland that is critical of sports gambling. The issue here boils down to the ease of being able to place a bet over a mobile phone vs having to seek out a casino to do so. Libertarians will have no issue with easy ability to engage in sports gambling, but the access of minors is not all that well monitored, prevalence of advertising during prime time viewing hours and during games along with inducements such as bet $5 and get a $200 credit is hardly a societal benefit....Make it more difficult to gamble via a mobile phone would seem to makes sense and the regressive nature of sports and for that matter other gambling done over mobile phones cannot be overlooked. Economists seem to have some issues with the regressive nature of lotteries so stands to reason that they should have issues with ease of gambling over mobile phones.
Gotta love the ads to promote sports gambling that in fine print say if have an issue call a given number. Really?
“Gotta love the ads to promote sports gambling that in fine print say if have an issue call a given number. Really?”
No different than ads for alcohol. Or (I presume, though I can’t say I've seen for myself) for marijuana.
Below you note that more regulation wouldn’t help with alcohol abuse, and I suspect you’re correct about that. Conservatism suggests we should highly value the learning over time about what works best [Prohibition didn’t…]
But you also make the same claim for marijuana, which has only a few years headstart on gambling in terms of legalization.
I *suspect* I know why you seem more tolerant of marijuana than gambling, and your implicit claim that marijuana should not be more highly regulated but that gambling should, but do you not see the apparent hypocrisy of your stated positions on marijuana vs. gambling?
“This would imply that there is a mismatch between consumption preferences and production preferences.” [re: Dems vs GOPers]
I think this is an *excellent* observation. And not one I’ve seen elsewhere.
As an aside, I read both AK (of course) and Hanania. I find Hanania writes more interesting stuff than just about anyone, and I agree with him ~80%-85% of the time, but find him infuriatingly wrong about 15% of the time. He clearly lacks almost any epistemic humility, which seems to be somewhat common for folks “on the spectrum” in my experience.
With AK, I find I agree with him 90%-95% of the time. And where I disagree, I usually think long and hard about it, and am willing to consider that maybe he’s right and I’m not.
Epistemic humility - I believe I first heard this phrase in a Russ Roberts podcast - has become my favorite phrase of the decade.
Sumner would be more correct to say Christianity since 313AD. In the first three centuries it was not as he describes.