Links to Consider, 4/5

Ed West on empires; Tanner Greer on America's history creating organizations; Allison Schrager on economic wishful thinking; Kling on Tomasello

Ed West writes,

Britain was a sea empire, which enabled it to be both a tyrant in Asia and a liberal democracy at home, one where most people barely thought about its overseas possessions.

One of the ideas in this essay is that it is easy to be a liberal democracy if you are ethnically homogeneous. It is hard to be a liberal democracy if you are a multicultural land empire. Britain, as a maritime empire, had alien ethnic groups at a distance. But in recent years, its former subjects have immigrated into Britain itself. The homeland is multicultural, and there is less pride in being British.

Are there parallels in the history of the United States?

Tanner Greer writes,

Self-government meant a deep commitment to an otherwise mundane set of tasks. The engines of communal self-reliance were humdrum activities like reading through Robert’s Rules of Order and taking detailed minutes of all comments made at organization meetings. Through practical experience, nineteenth-century Americans realized that formality was an important tool of self-rule. Formally drafting charters and bylaws, electing officers, and holding meetings by strict procedures seems like busy work to those accustomed to weak associational ties. But the formality of such associations expressed commitment to the cause and clarified the relationships and responsibilities needed for effective action. 

He argues that we have been losing the art of self-government, because institutions have been centralized. I would offer the example of school districts. These used to be small, with parents participating in the governance of school boards. Today they are enormous, and often controlled by teachers’ unions.

Allison Schrager writes,

It concerns me that it seems like markets, the Fed, and policymakers are operating under the assumption that eventually we’ll get our old economy back. Or after this rather unfortunate hiccup, inflation will fall to below 2% and we’ll go back to near-zero interest rates. Maybe, but I would not bet the farm on it. Though that is what we are doing.

She also points out that policy makers are engaged in magical thinking about how to deal with Social Security’s finances. If you think that government is there to protect us from risk, you need a reality check.

In a review of Michael Tomasello’s The Evolution of Agency, I write,

Shared agency means that you and I both understand that we are acting in pursuit of a goal.

Suppose that I say, “Look to your left.” You choose to do so, because you believe that we have a common goal that is served if you look to your left. Looking to your left is not a reflex. A dog might be trained to obey a command “look to your left.” But I can use completely different words, such as “I see a deer in those trees,” which a trained dog would not recognize. Or I could merely point in that direction. Tomasello sees pointing as an example of a linguistic communication skill that other animals lack, because it requires a brain capable of shared agency.

Substacks referenced above:

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The lies we tell ourselves

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The rise and fall of the ‘good’ British Empire