Far from steel manning Hanania, it seems Bronski hasn't spent much time in the US for perhaps the past five years. Large corporations have become very leftist in their policies, and sometimes their out and out cultural efforts. The military has been actively purging right wing members and promoting their LGBTAPLHABET activities. Federal institutions like the FBI have increasingly been shown to target right wing individuals and officials. There is basically all of tech pushing hard left. Many churches in town around here fly pride flags.
Am I missing anything?
I am no fan of Hanania, but claiming that everything except for academia leans conservative just seems bonkers to me, unless one's yardstick for conservatism is "Late 80's early 90's Democrat." Then maybe.
"Making the populace (especially women) more fearful, depressed, and neurotic is undoubtedly bad for societal wealth and happiness. But does it yield votes for Democrats? Clearly yes."
H. L. Mencken on this:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
“Some economists argue that innovation increases as population increases, so that low fertility will reduce innovation.”
I can’t believe this is true, nor that there’s any evidence for it. Large countries (India, China) haven’t produced as many innovations as relatively smaller ones (the US, Israel); large corporations don’t innovate more than small corporations (Apple has become much less innovative the larger it’s become); large cities aren’t more innovative than smaller ones (LA v. SF). I’m not making a case that “smaller is more innovative” either, although I think it’s likely to be relatively more true.
Innovation is about culture, and that can happen in a lot of different types of organizations, areas, and countries. But it certainly isn’t linear. And it’s frankly a tough culture to create and nurture and maintain. I don’t know how you’d precisely model that to be able to project out into the future.
I think you're on to something. If I were to model or try to measure which countries have the best innovation culture, I would suspect it would consist of 3 things:
1) Average IQ or intelligence. Smarter average citizens/employees would suggest more good ideas. Or higher populations of groups such as Ashkenazi Jews, who have historically had higher than peer IQs.
2) Size of organizations. The smaller the better, as you muse about. A small organization is one that's usually looking to grow and find its niche. Innovation is what sets a new(ish) company apart and allows it to find a foothold. Older, larger companies are more concerned with maintaining their existing market share while only nibbling around the edges of competitors. Bolder ideas in that setting is more risky - more to loose!
3) The hardest to measure - a culture of leaders listening to employees or constituents. An organization may generate all sorts of good ideas, but if its top-down leadership - like China - then the presumption is that the only good ideas are the ones from those in power, shrinking a State or organizations "well of innovation" from which to draw. Perhaps, one of those composite measures meant to measure how free markets are. Of course, this would also have to be reflected in the individual organization's culture. But it would stand to reason that the more "open" a mainstream culture, the more organizations within that culture would conform to the culture. It's hard to operate and be successful as an organization when you're wildly out of line with the cultural zeitgeist.
Bronski's argument badly misses the mark. The most revealing sentence of his poor logic is this: "Just recently, the federal government was completely conservative".
That sentence is demonstrably False given what we observed during Trump's first two years of his presidency. It didn't matter the Republicans held an elected majority in the Federal government, the bureaucracy followed its own agenda and in this case they attempted to remove a Republican elected president on lies and subterfuge. Also, Republican is not synonymous with Conservative. And Republicans are most definitely not immune to being Woke.
Maybe I missed it in my reading but I was unable to find in Bronski's article a definition for Woke. He links Wokeness to Liberalism (as does Hanania apparently) and to political party label, but I couldn't find an explanation of what Woke means. This is a glaring flaw. It allows Bronski to argue using his labels and assume those labels are consistent with his argument. We see this flaw in the claim that Portland is not as woke as claimed because it has police and police are conservative. What an incredibly weak statement!
Wokeness is not just Liberalism. Wokeness takes Liberal priorities such as Racism and Equality and demands these concerns be the greatest of all social concerns. The consequence of this ideology is Truth and Common Sense must be obliterated to accommodate Woke ideals.
In Bronski's defense Wokeness is policy in a minority of city governments and universities. But these are many of America's most important cities and universities! Furthermore, tolerance and appeasement for Woke ideology is pervasive. The ideas are given a deference they do not deserve!
In particular, Wokeness is protected by government and institutions from being blamed for social failure. There should be no tip-toeing. Woke policies lead to worse public education and public outcomes. Admit it. Stop doing it and try something different! But instead we get school and city administrators indoctrinated in Wokeness defending Wokeness and deflecting blame to other areas.
"Everything is conservative." (Is that the case across the Western world or just America?) It must be why:
- policemen take the knee at BLM events and take time off from catching criminals to attend Gay Pride events
- the 'trans-rights issue' has gone - in the space of a few years, from something 99.9% of people had never given a moments's thought to - to an 'issue' that dominates the media and the policy statements of every civic institution and government bureaucracy.
- the post-George Floyd orgies of looting and murder rampages have gone down in history as mainly peaceful protests against injustice.
Our future was foretold in the movie "Idiocracy", only the movie itself was too optimistic. You want to know what the western world will look like in 100 years? Look at which cultures are growing their populations today and which are shrinking. The future belongs to those that show up, and that ain't us.
Good news is only some of the United States is regressive. A culture of innovation and growth exists in some states and regions. A growing problem is the deference law and policy gives to corporations. Regulations and costs make it difficult for the entrepreneur to scale , so they either choose to remain small or to get bought out either by a corporation or by an investment group. That said, corporations have the liability that they must exhaust considerable resources appeasing politicians and activists. This is the greatest drag on growth.
For example, the Western world is wasting capital and opportunity cost on "green energy" that serves no purpose other than appeasing the climate cult. I suppose within this waste there is innovation occuring but the ideology is preventing real development of new towns, cities, airports and infrastructure.
>But is fomenting fear such a new behavior for politicians? It seems to me that they have always done so
I think this is historically novel. It really shows up in larger numbers around the time in Anglo-America when women were given the right to vote; really it started happening prior to that with the release of the Bryce Report, the UK's version of the "WMD hoax" for World War I involving alleged German atrocities in Belgium. The Bryce Report was more or less rape fiction. The discovery of the fabricated affidavits drove the ardency of American neutrality during the interwar years. But this political communication style is in stark contrast with the Ciceronian style used by politicians on both sides of the ocean throughout the 19th century. We went from a time when politicians spoke like professors or podcasters for 12 hours at a time in depth about the issues to... uh... the way they are now, which would discredit the honored professions of "carnival barker" or "used car salesman" to compare them to them.
Glenn Reynolds on neuroticism & fear, “ the sector that’s growing neurotic the fastest is single, liberal women,” from Michael Barone*, who notes “women are more risk-averse than men, and thus more supportive of welfare state measures … more willing to suppress speech that is seen as irritating or hurtful.”
A missing word is Safetyism. Most women, including the married ones voting Republican, still treat victims more like too-little supervised children rather than as responsible adults who’ve made risky decisions that have had bad results. Mothers are caring about protecting kids, but don’t accept that the trade-off on being very risk averse in youth more often leads to neuroticism later. Similarly the free speech issue of “freedom to verbally insult” can be hurtful, emotionally or psychologically, to those insulted – but adults are supposed to be able to hear insults without responding with violence.
Arnold is right that politicians have long played on fears, Glenn & Michael are right that women are more risk-averse than men and especially single women are far more likely to want a paternalistic, risk-averse government, and are willing to give up general freedom for less risk. More perceived security.
And such women are concentrating into the Democratic Party, which naturally changes to fan the fears which increases their fearful turnout as well as their neuroticism – we who get Republican fund raising/spam see plenty of fear-mongering by Republicans, too. Both parties do it, on purpose, for more votes. But being female without a husband and without religion seems to make single women both more fearful and more strongly supporting Democrats~.
Or, as Bronski somewhat claims, maybe this is merely the Trump effect (rather than TDS) from 2015, the last 8 years. Almost as long as Haidt claims smartphones has been making girls more crazy, neurotic.
Bronski has some reasonable notes against his tin-manning of Hanania (neither steel nor straw), but while picking nits about Hanania’s “why everything is liberal” fails to reference many of the important points. I skipped some of his later stuff.
~Kind of funny that there is an increasing number of stories about liberal, Republican-hating women who nevertheless are more often attracted to masculine, conservative men who treat women with (non-equal) chivalrous respect, as well as seeming to be strong and competent.
It is silly to think "Some economists argue that innovation increases as population increases, so that low fertility will reduce innovation. " when innovation depends upon culture for creation and social conditions for any measurable impacts. Most cultures and social conditions (permissions) become the rate limiting steps.
This is where war seems to become important in decreasing the slow steps in creating innovation and implementation of that innovation.
Joseph Bronski - I had to look up steel-manning but agree with you and your added influences. I'd also add that mothers tend to be more liberal than average and suggest they have more influence over kids than fathers.
Robin Hanson - I don't get his math. If the global economy shrinks a bit and you apply the same growth rate to that smaller economy you do indeed get less total growth. A little. And it can be cumulatively big over a long time period. But that doesn't seem close to meaning innovation grinds to a halt. Am I missing something?
Robin Hanson's model of innovation and population growth/decline has a certain intuitive appeal to it. But it does seem somewhat reductive. It is especially reductive if technological advances, such as future, much more advanced, iterations of AI decouple population trends from technological innovation.
Far from steel manning Hanania, it seems Bronski hasn't spent much time in the US for perhaps the past five years. Large corporations have become very leftist in their policies, and sometimes their out and out cultural efforts. The military has been actively purging right wing members and promoting their LGBTAPLHABET activities. Federal institutions like the FBI have increasingly been shown to target right wing individuals and officials. There is basically all of tech pushing hard left. Many churches in town around here fly pride flags.
Am I missing anything?
I am no fan of Hanania, but claiming that everything except for academia leans conservative just seems bonkers to me, unless one's yardstick for conservatism is "Late 80's early 90's Democrat." Then maybe.
Arnold quotes Glenn Reynolds:
"Making the populace (especially women) more fearful, depressed, and neurotic is undoubtedly bad for societal wealth and happiness. But does it yield votes for Democrats? Clearly yes."
H. L. Mencken on this:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
I would add that for this purpose, something with a degree of real risk that can be exaggerated is even better than something wholly imaginary.
"I don’t think he is steel-manning Hanania here."
"It seems to me that this is an awfully simplistic model of innovation to draw such a strong conclusion."
Arnold Kling: the master of understatement.
“Some economists argue that innovation increases as population increases, so that low fertility will reduce innovation.”
I can’t believe this is true, nor that there’s any evidence for it. Large countries (India, China) haven’t produced as many innovations as relatively smaller ones (the US, Israel); large corporations don’t innovate more than small corporations (Apple has become much less innovative the larger it’s become); large cities aren’t more innovative than smaller ones (LA v. SF). I’m not making a case that “smaller is more innovative” either, although I think it’s likely to be relatively more true.
Innovation is about culture, and that can happen in a lot of different types of organizations, areas, and countries. But it certainly isn’t linear. And it’s frankly a tough culture to create and nurture and maintain. I don’t know how you’d precisely model that to be able to project out into the future.
I think you're on to something. If I were to model or try to measure which countries have the best innovation culture, I would suspect it would consist of 3 things:
1) Average IQ or intelligence. Smarter average citizens/employees would suggest more good ideas. Or higher populations of groups such as Ashkenazi Jews, who have historically had higher than peer IQs.
2) Size of organizations. The smaller the better, as you muse about. A small organization is one that's usually looking to grow and find its niche. Innovation is what sets a new(ish) company apart and allows it to find a foothold. Older, larger companies are more concerned with maintaining their existing market share while only nibbling around the edges of competitors. Bolder ideas in that setting is more risky - more to loose!
3) The hardest to measure - a culture of leaders listening to employees or constituents. An organization may generate all sorts of good ideas, but if its top-down leadership - like China - then the presumption is that the only good ideas are the ones from those in power, shrinking a State or organizations "well of innovation" from which to draw. Perhaps, one of those composite measures meant to measure how free markets are. Of course, this would also have to be reflected in the individual organization's culture. But it would stand to reason that the more "open" a mainstream culture, the more organizations within that culture would conform to the culture. It's hard to operate and be successful as an organization when you're wildly out of line with the cultural zeitgeist.
Bronski's argument badly misses the mark. The most revealing sentence of his poor logic is this: "Just recently, the federal government was completely conservative".
That sentence is demonstrably False given what we observed during Trump's first two years of his presidency. It didn't matter the Republicans held an elected majority in the Federal government, the bureaucracy followed its own agenda and in this case they attempted to remove a Republican elected president on lies and subterfuge. Also, Republican is not synonymous with Conservative. And Republicans are most definitely not immune to being Woke.
Maybe I missed it in my reading but I was unable to find in Bronski's article a definition for Woke. He links Wokeness to Liberalism (as does Hanania apparently) and to political party label, but I couldn't find an explanation of what Woke means. This is a glaring flaw. It allows Bronski to argue using his labels and assume those labels are consistent with his argument. We see this flaw in the claim that Portland is not as woke as claimed because it has police and police are conservative. What an incredibly weak statement!
Wokeness is not just Liberalism. Wokeness takes Liberal priorities such as Racism and Equality and demands these concerns be the greatest of all social concerns. The consequence of this ideology is Truth and Common Sense must be obliterated to accommodate Woke ideals.
In Bronski's defense Wokeness is policy in a minority of city governments and universities. But these are many of America's most important cities and universities! Furthermore, tolerance and appeasement for Woke ideology is pervasive. The ideas are given a deference they do not deserve!
In particular, Wokeness is protected by government and institutions from being blamed for social failure. There should be no tip-toeing. Woke policies lead to worse public education and public outcomes. Admit it. Stop doing it and try something different! But instead we get school and city administrators indoctrinated in Wokeness defending Wokeness and deflecting blame to other areas.
"Everything is conservative." (Is that the case across the Western world or just America?) It must be why:
- policemen take the knee at BLM events and take time off from catching criminals to attend Gay Pride events
- the 'trans-rights issue' has gone - in the space of a few years, from something 99.9% of people had never given a moments's thought to - to an 'issue' that dominates the media and the policy statements of every civic institution and government bureaucracy.
- the post-George Floyd orgies of looting and murder rampages have gone down in history as mainly peaceful protests against injustice.
- I could go on......
Our future was foretold in the movie "Idiocracy", only the movie itself was too optimistic. You want to know what the western world will look like in 100 years? Look at which cultures are growing their populations today and which are shrinking. The future belongs to those that show up, and that ain't us.
Good news is only some of the United States is regressive. A culture of innovation and growth exists in some states and regions. A growing problem is the deference law and policy gives to corporations. Regulations and costs make it difficult for the entrepreneur to scale , so they either choose to remain small or to get bought out either by a corporation or by an investment group. That said, corporations have the liability that they must exhaust considerable resources appeasing politicians and activists. This is the greatest drag on growth.
For example, the Western world is wasting capital and opportunity cost on "green energy" that serves no purpose other than appeasing the climate cult. I suppose within this waste there is innovation occuring but the ideology is preventing real development of new towns, cities, airports and infrastructure.
Good news? This is like saying, "My liver and kidneys are failing, but my eyesight is outstanding, still."
Those regions will be subsumed by the deterioration of the rest of the country.
Reynolds: Of course Republicans would NEVER create unfounded fears of "socialism," "elites" "CRT," "globalization," "replacement" "vaccines." :)
about bronski?
who is getting arrested and who is not?
>But is fomenting fear such a new behavior for politicians? It seems to me that they have always done so
I think this is historically novel. It really shows up in larger numbers around the time in Anglo-America when women were given the right to vote; really it started happening prior to that with the release of the Bryce Report, the UK's version of the "WMD hoax" for World War I involving alleged German atrocities in Belgium. The Bryce Report was more or less rape fiction. The discovery of the fabricated affidavits drove the ardency of American neutrality during the interwar years. But this political communication style is in stark contrast with the Ciceronian style used by politicians on both sides of the ocean throughout the 19th century. We went from a time when politicians spoke like professors or podcasters for 12 hours at a time in depth about the issues to... uh... the way they are now, which would discredit the honored professions of "carnival barker" or "used car salesman" to compare them to them.
Glenn Reynolds on neuroticism & fear, “ the sector that’s growing neurotic the fastest is single, liberal women,” from Michael Barone*, who notes “women are more risk-averse than men, and thus more supportive of welfare state measures … more willing to suppress speech that is seen as irritating or hurtful.”
A missing word is Safetyism. Most women, including the married ones voting Republican, still treat victims more like too-little supervised children rather than as responsible adults who’ve made risky decisions that have had bad results. Mothers are caring about protecting kids, but don’t accept that the trade-off on being very risk averse in youth more often leads to neuroticism later. Similarly the free speech issue of “freedom to verbally insult” can be hurtful, emotionally or psychologically, to those insulted – but adults are supposed to be able to hear insults without responding with violence.
Arnold is right that politicians have long played on fears, Glenn & Michael are right that women are more risk-averse than men and especially single women are far more likely to want a paternalistic, risk-averse government, and are willing to give up general freedom for less risk. More perceived security.
And such women are concentrating into the Democratic Party, which naturally changes to fan the fears which increases their fearful turnout as well as their neuroticism – we who get Republican fund raising/spam see plenty of fear-mongering by Republicans, too. Both parties do it, on purpose, for more votes. But being female without a husband and without religion seems to make single women both more fearful and more strongly supporting Democrats~.
Or, as Bronski somewhat claims, maybe this is merely the Trump effect (rather than TDS) from 2015, the last 8 years. Almost as long as Haidt claims smartphones has been making girls more crazy, neurotic.
Bronski has some reasonable notes against his tin-manning of Hanania (neither steel nor straw), but while picking nits about Hanania’s “why everything is liberal” fails to reference many of the important points. I skipped some of his later stuff.
~Kind of funny that there is an increasing number of stories about liberal, Republican-hating women who nevertheless are more often attracted to masculine, conservative men who treat women with (non-equal) chivalrous respect, as well as seeming to be strong and competent.
*https://www.aei.org/op-eds/single-women-are-the-odd-men-out-politically/
It is silly to think "Some economists argue that innovation increases as population increases, so that low fertility will reduce innovation. " when innovation depends upon culture for creation and social conditions for any measurable impacts. Most cultures and social conditions (permissions) become the rate limiting steps.
This is where war seems to become important in decreasing the slow steps in creating innovation and implementation of that innovation.
Joseph Bronski - I had to look up steel-manning but agree with you and your added influences. I'd also add that mothers tend to be more liberal than average and suggest they have more influence over kids than fathers.
Robin Hanson - I don't get his math. If the global economy shrinks a bit and you apply the same growth rate to that smaller economy you do indeed get less total growth. A little. And it can be cumulatively big over a long time period. But that doesn't seem close to meaning innovation grinds to a halt. Am I missing something?
Robin Hanson's model of innovation and population growth/decline has a certain intuitive appeal to it. But it does seem somewhat reductive. It is especially reductive if technological advances, such as future, much more advanced, iterations of AI decouple population trends from technological innovation.