Links to Consider, 5/4
David Rozado on Trump's media magic; Rob Henderson on hazing and loyalty; Jean Twenge on kids today; Colin Woodard on Gun Deaths
Note: On Monday, May 8, Bryan Caplan will join us for our paid subscriber Zoom at 8 PM. On Monday, May 15, Freddie deBoer will join us.
Even as of 2022, out-of-office Trump is often more prominent in news media content than the current seating president Joe Biden, who took office in January 2021.
He offers data analysis to back his claim.
In his 2022 book, Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living, the anthropologist Dimitris Xygalatas argues that the number of difficult requirements imposed by a community correlates with a longer life span of the group. In short, the higher the price of membership, the longer the group survives. This is one reason why sports teams, fraternities, and militaries are hardest on their newest members. Imposed suffering builds bonds and filters out potentially disloyal members.
The argument is that hazing creates loyalty and selects for loyalty. It would create loyalty through a sort of sunk cost fallacy. “I suffered so much to get here, it must be worth it.” Selecting for loyalty means that you only keep people who are willing to suffer to join your group.
Henderson worries that our military is no longer selecting for loyalty, and that indicates that our country is weakening.
Both Millennials and Gen Z are also more pessimistic about capitalism. While younger adults once had a more positive view of capitalism than older adults, that flipped in the early 2010s. Younger adults in 2018-2021 were considerably less positive about capitalism than in 2010
This is part of a long, information-dense post, taken from what is likely an information-dense book.
The Deep South is the most deadly of the large regions at 15.6 [deaths from guns] per 100,000 residents followed by Greater Appalachia at 13.5. That’s triple and quadruple the rate of New Netherland — the most densely populated part of the continent — which has a rate of 3.8, which is comparable to that of Switzerland. Yankeedom is the next safest at 8.6, which is about half that of Deep South, and Left Coast follows closely behind at 9. El Norte, the Midlands, Tidewater and Far West fall in between.
He uses this data to highlight the “gun culture” of the “Deep South.”
His article is a swindle. The swindle begins with, but does not end with, the fact that the statistics are for “gun deaths.” But a majority of “gun deaths” are suicides.
According to the background paper with Woodard’s analysis where he breaks out the types of “gun deaths, for the “Deep South,” the rate of gun homicides was 6.5 per 100,000 in population. Still the largest of any of his “regions.” But his “regions” are part of the swindle. Homicides per capita are in fact higher in particular cities than in his “regions.”
For example, in Chicago in 2022, the homicide rate was 25.8 per 100,000, which is four times the rate in the “Deep South.” And imagine if you were to look at neighborhoods rather than “regions.”
My guess is that the story about the South’s “gun culture” is too good to check for 99 percent of the people who read Woodard’s article. But if you are looking for a real concentration of gun homicides, look inside some of the Blue (or Red) cities, not in Trump country.
Tyler Cowen linked to Woodard’s article, or I would not have bothered providing “context,” as the fact-checkers say.
Substacks mentioned above:
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If you map gun homicides across the US, it will look like this map:
https://www.energyjustice.net/justice/index.php?gsLayer=black&gclid=Cj0KCQjwr82iBhCuARIsAO0EAZxXVqPvi-1jHjLhPGng1wHrRKZlt2Lgw3ZdG0GU1fhNRKBXFji8N90aAtPtEALw_wcB
which should be unsurpising given the FBI statistics on gun homicides. While I think Woodard is being deliberately deceptive- basically lying by omission- I have encountered the fact that a lot of white people outside the South don't truly grasp how many African-Americans live in the South. I am often met by disbelief when I tell them that the states of the deep South, VA, NC, SC, GA, AL, MS, LA have between 22%-38% African- American population. The only state that is an outlier in this regard, what is considered an "Northern State" with such a large fraction of African Americans, is Maryland at 32%.
In my own state, Tennessee, it is 17% African-American. When you examine the FBI crime data on non-negligent homicides for 2016- almost all of the murders occur in the 5 biggest cities of Tennessee- Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Clarksville. My own town of Oak Ridge has between 0 and 1 murders most years, with the occasional 50% spike to 2. A large majority of the jurisdictions in Tennessee have zero murders every year. I imagine this is true in all the states of the US. Murders are highly concentrated in the most urbanized areas of every state.
“ It would create loyalty through a sort of sunk cost fallacy.”
This doesn’t seem right to me. Having already gone through a hazing may create a sunk cost mentality.
But I think the point is that ex ante the high cost of joining has a selection effect. While the high cost of joining may on margin compel people to remain, I think the bigger effect is that it selects out—before they even make an attempt—those people who don’t have the commitment or wherewithal to go through it in the first place. Special forces selection programs would be a good example.