Links to Consider, 9/15/24

Allison Schrager on a U.S. sovereign wealth fund; Jodey Arrington and Phil Gramm on the welfare state; David R. Samson on tribalism; Samson on false polarization

Allison Schrager writes,

The main concern with starting a new sovereign wealth fund is that America is a net debtor. Starting a fund would require redirecting existing government revenue (Trump surrogate Doug Burgum says he envisions using revenue from oil and fracking activities), and that means running up yet more debt. This is essentially taking a leveraged bet that whatever the fund invests in will more than pay off the obligations—already a risky strategy with even the most strategic investment objectives. Mix in the inevitable inducements to steer the money toward politically favored projects, and the odds of things working out are less than even.

A sovereign wealth fund, which has now been proposed by both the Biden Administration and the Trump campaign, is a good idea only for a country running a budget surplus based on a windfall, such as the North Sea oil discovery. Even then, it could be better to simply return the windfall to the people right away, and let them choose how to invest the money.

It is a really horrendous idea for a country that is running massive deficits. We are already setting our descendants up for conflict in order to achieve current political aims. The last we thing we need is to do more of that.

Jodey Arrington and Phil Gramm write,

Since funding for the War on Poverty ramped up in 1967, welfare payments received by the average work-age household in the bottom quintile of income recipients has risen from $7,352 in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars to $64,700 in 2022, the last year with available household income data.

They are including

Medicaid, food stamps, refundable tax credits, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, federal housing subsidies and almost 100 other programs whose eligibility is limited to those below an income threshold.

David R. Samson writes,

My thesis is that the Tribe Drive—the instinctual coalitionary cognition that drives us to privilege our inter-subjective belief networks—is the base root code that predicts our species' capacity to both be vulnerable to and overcome existential challenges. Simply put, our ability to form and favor large-scale teams is simultaneously the disease and understanding this is a potential antidote.

What he snuck in here is a definition of a tribe as an “inter-subjective belief network.” That seems to me a long way from the original notion of a tribe as a group that takes care of you and fends off other groups. He goes on to write

Tribal cognition, once a trait that evolved to bootstrap trust among strangers, has manifested in the 21st century as politically-tribal weapon in the hands of fearmongers, despots, and even potentially rogue AI. It is used to mobilize hate, dehumanize others, and reduce cooperation among groups

In an introductory post Samson writes,

Tribes are a kind of secret society, where the signals of coalitionary alliance serve as the ‘secret password’ to gain the rights, responsibilities, and benefits of the collective “imagined order.” If you pass the test, and you are treated with a positive bias by your fellow members, then you are bestowed with tribal identity and the host of privileges and responsibilities that come with it.

He would like to see humans maintain small tribes, but at the same time adopt an ethic of seeing the entire human race as our tribe. One reader recommends Samson’s book, but I have not read it yet.

In another post, Samson writes,

Americans’ hostility toward political opponents has intensified beyond what is explained by actual ideological differences. This phenomenon, known as false polarization, occurs when partisans overestimate the prevalence of extreme views held by their opponents.

I think that our current media environment encourages this. A lot of “political discourse” consists of highlighting the extreme views of the other side. There are always people on the other side with those extreme views, but we over-estimate how many people share them. Consider the “fizzle” of the anti-Israel protests at the Democratic convention. It seems plausible that online media caused us (and I include myself) to over-estimate the prevalence of extreme hostility to Israel.

Substacks referenced above:@

#tribaltheory 001: An introduction

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From Cavemen to Congress

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Tribalism is the greatest threat of our species in the 21st century