Ian Leslie on the personalities of great leaders; Rob Henderson on the online personality; Scott Alexander on political motivation; Rob Henderson on status ambiguity and conflict
Two things Trump and his advisors don't get that demonstrates they are clueless about economics. I'm not sure exactly what mental pathology this indicates. Certainly cognitive dissonance. Maybe psychosis.
1. You can tinker around the edges, destroy thousands of lives and save maybe $200 billion with DOGE, but if you drive the country into a recession, you will blow Federal finances forever.
2. It does not make sense to brag about a strong dollar (Trump likes "strong", in case you haven't noticed) and at the same time whine that foreign nations are manipulating their currencies lower.
Essentially, he argues, contrary to all the best economists, the radical notion that not every economic change that decreases GDP is necessarily bad.
Imagine, the Trump administration amends NEPA regulations such that Thunbergite lawyers are no longer to make careers out of litigating construction project. All that litigation spending goes away, GDP falls, the economists sob “Trump caused a recession!”
Imagine, Trump somehow manages to broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. The US no longer spends billions procuring artillery shells for Ukraine. GDP falls. “Oh no, terrible, terrible” the economists sob “Trump caused a recession!”
Imagine, Trump eliminates Social Security fraud and checks stop flowing to dead people overseas. Same deal. Eliminate health spending waste. Ditto.
And in an ideal world some of that would actually come about, but given the courts, congress, etc. the likelihood is low. But still, if there is anyone really interested in facts beyond the narrative, you are going to have to do a deep dive into the BEA tables.
Your question: "Was there a time in the past when feelings mattered less and tangible objectives mattered more? I tend to think so."
Being raised on "sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me", feelings were irrelevant in the 1950s. Nobody cared about how you felt, but they did care about what you knew and did.
I watched how our grandchildren put great effort into social interaction at a time in their life when I was worrying about how to make my car faster for street racing in LA (50s). My understanding of how real things actually work put me in a good position for a good life.
"In fact, the crucial attribute shared by Milei, Musk and Trump - along with bottomless energy, idées fixe, and relentless will - is a lack of empathy."
Milei took an economy in shambles and has vastly improved it, right? Even if he cut assistance to many people who needed it, I don't see what he has done as lacking empathy.
Despite many problems, the US economy is not in shambles, it is the envy of the world. He may prove me wrong but as of yet I see nothing of net benefit in what T and M are doing. Sorry, grouping the three seems very unfair to Milei.
> And I certainly think that nowadays more people care more about their political feelings than was typical in, say, 1955.
One might point out that in 1955, fresh out of the success of World War II, political feelings were no less strong, but the polity was much more aligned in ways that Alexander points out. We had shared group identity and success that - partially - obviated disagreements.
This morning I opened the local, paper edition of the news to find that the expense of school bus transportation had drawn scrutiny and complaint.
Skimming, I see these things: area has higher per pupil transportation funding than other places; a bus driver shortage, especially a small pool for field trips; a recent effort to reduce average time-in-bus to something less than an hour and 15 minutes (that big city synergy working for you!); and a commitment to allow students to “attend the school that is the best fit for them”. (I have no axe to grind even though this was the school district where I personally wasted so much time; but should also note, it’s been in state receivership the past few years, as the city didn’t produce people who could run it. And it’s also the origin point of the now statewide Great Teacher Credential Test-for-Hire Scandal.)
So, evidently, not enough people were willing to take on this job of sitting in traffic with kids, and - damning figure! - some of the bus drivers made 104% of base pay!!
It wouldn’t have occurred to me in a million years that Margaret Thatcher was without empathy. Perhaps her family has told us that? It can’t be gleaned from her actions in office. I’m aware that she’s hated; two Brit ex-pat Big State U college professors I knew spoke of her simultaneously dismissively and yet as a figure of purest evil. (Always a sign, that.)
And yet their decisions to leave for the greener higher-ed pastures where cushy academic jobs were funded by fossil fuel revenue - oily but empathetic - had predated Thatcher’s accession …
So, to today’s puzzler: where does empathy lie? Should it go to the good governance types, zealously watching these school dollars in this *one* case? Or to the students, who cannot go to nearby schools for some reason and must be driven great distances? Many of them in special vans, due no doubt to statute?
Or is it that there should be little empathy for those greedy overtime-seeking bus drivers, as the thrust of the article seems to pre-emptively suggest?
The last sentence: “Annual salaries for drivers with the largest share of projected overtime pay ranged from $17,000 to $34,020, according to the budget report.” Wow.
I read Scott Alexander's post "Why I Am Not A Conflict Theorist" when it first came out, and I recommend it to all. It's a long read but is an honest effort to analyze why web posters and commenters are so vehement in support of their political views.
An electrical analogy would frame it as two independent questions, power and polarity. That people deeply want to 'feel good' might explain the vehemence, but 'identity group' is pretty hand-wavy and far too indeterminate in predicting which side and position on issues people actually adopt, indeed these personal characteristics were even less predictive in past decades, and so we need a distinct political theory for fairly recent history?
On the other hand it's straightforward to expand conflict theory to simply include personal and group status as among the rivalrous interests people are fighting over through the channel of politics, that is, instead of framing the question as one of either material or status-related interests, one could just say it's both.
Part of the problem is there is also a perception of scarce ethical leadership, stemming from media bias toward conflict-driven stories, confusing visibility with effectiveness since empathetic and humble leaders likely aren’t prone to self-promotion, and more recent political shifts towards populism. Gradual, steady, cooperative leadership does not grab headlines. Nevertheless, I’m also in your camp believing there are actual fewer such leaders because of modern, media impacted (especially social media) environment, combined with prevalent short-term thinking throughout the human herd.
A psychologist, Arnold M. Ludwig, analyzed biographical data of every president, prime minister, dictator, or monarch he could find from the 20th century (more than 1500) in a 2002 book called King of the Mountain: The Nature of Political Leadership. He found, as will be no surprise to many readers here, that in some respects humans are just apes in trousers. There are many details in the book, though, that I think this audience would find interesting.
"Status ambiguity increases the likelihood of conflict. And when there is a clear and understood social hierarchy, conflict is less likely."
Sometimes I think that in things that are socially constructed there is an ultimate tradeoff between equality and hierarchy. Other times I think I am creating a false dyad.
Yes to the question. Although I am not sure I am able to follow the sunshine and rain as a metaphor/analogy with regard to how I am thinking about the basic and not deep point. It is the sociality and social constructions of humans that are the point because everything beyond the individual level requires a tradeoff between the two. And as one scales the number of humans to various levels of interdependence, as the framework on this blog goes, seems to require different mixes of the tradeoff.
A big issue on taxing the rich is “how much”? They already pay most of the income taxes.
So there should be some new income metrics created and followed and adjusted. The right amount of taxing the rich, at the 90% after tax income level, should be income increases no greater than the median. If the median goes up 2%, the rich should be taxed so much that their income also goes up only 2 %.
But far better than raising any taxes is cutting waste & fraud, as so many have promised and failed to do before. So go DOGE , go. If the pain of any recession is mostly felt by Trump hating deep state overpaid Dems, it might actually reduce inflation and make median workers a bit better off.
Plus fear of tariffs is already making some companies promise more US investment, which will help with US voters getting jobs. Combined with far less competition from illegals, any recession might well be mostly ex-govt workers failing to find anything productive to work on that pays even close to their govt salaries.
Scott Alexander's interpretation of taxes shows a lack of familiarity with the tax code and how Congress intended it to change the behavior of the rich. Once you are hitting the top bracket, the Code is telling you to start availing yourself of as many credits and deductions as possible. If you do not want to deal with that rigmarole, the alternative message it sends is to stop working and thus to stop earning once you reach the top bracket.
Uncle Sugar does not want you to do this. It'd make him look bad. Uncle Sugar wants you to do stuff.
Much of the complexity in the Code comes from all the many Rube Goldberg rat tunnels Congress wants you to go through so as to get more work and more stuff out of the highly productive. The New Deal-style thinking behind the income tax wants you, Mr. Rich, to do a lot of inefficient things that meet the government's policy goals, such as "creating jobs." When Mr. Rich creates a job that does not really need to be created, he gets a tax benefit and the government gets another taxable animal. Same thing with constructing buildings, buying equipment, buying golden pens, and so on and so forth, these create jobs and taxable opportunities for Uncle Sugar and the little baby sugar nuggets in the States irrespective of if they are economically rational or not.
The reason why it's not sensible to raise taxes on Mr. Rich beyond the Laffer limit is that then Mr. Rich will just stop working, thus leaving fewer nice things for Uncle Sugar to take credit for. The only reason why the rich work so hard in the US is because of all the arcane tax incentives for doing so. If you really wanted the rich to create more jobs, you might not give them a funny medallion, but you might seek to change the rules so as to limit some kinds of deductions and to encourage the creation of more jobs.
Although raising taxes does create more demand for deductions and credits, so when you do raise taxes in the US you are also incentivizing malinvestment, which every government everywhere loves doing all the time.
you could even say explicitly “We like the rich and are happy to give them World’s Best Job Creator medallions in exchange for an extra 1% of their money, we just need some extra cash to fund government programs”.
You could say that, but the Republicans woud still claim you just don't like rich people. The only way to prove you aren't envious or suffer from some other Dark Triad syndrome is to borrow lots of money to cut their taxes. :)
Sorry I thought I'd add this comment regarding politics in 1955.
My mother worked as a secretary for Dwight Eisenhower when he was president of Columbia after the war. Both parties desperately wanted him to run on their ticket, and evidently he was quite torn. He chose the Republicans in large part because of the Democrat positions on race issues.
I went and looked for the referenced Robin Hanson post. What a lot of rot. Maybe he is not surrounding himself with the right people.
I am absolutely a two-issue voter, related by marriage to people who apolitically pursue policy in both the legislative and administrative realm, and who themselves are connected to hundreds of others interested in the same goals.
This interpretational overlay of neuroticism on top of everything, adduced to every last one of us, is just as bad as the heavy influence of the neurotic personality type on 20th century thought and culture.
And, notably, perfectly conducive to making sure all answers, dumb or not, remain in play, so that we never find the right one. To badly paraphrase some C.S. Lewis quote.
Two things Trump and his advisors don't get that demonstrates they are clueless about economics. I'm not sure exactly what mental pathology this indicates. Certainly cognitive dissonance. Maybe psychosis.
1. You can tinker around the edges, destroy thousands of lives and save maybe $200 billion with DOGE, but if you drive the country into a recession, you will blow Federal finances forever.
2. It does not make sense to brag about a strong dollar (Trump likes "strong", in case you haven't noticed) and at the same time whine that foreign nations are manipulating their currencies lower.
There are recessions and then there are recessions. One really needs to get into the weeds to understand whether a decrease in GDP is good or bad. Francis Merton does a good of opening that can of worms: https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2025-3-4-is-some-honesty-about-to-come-in-government-economic-statistics
Essentially, he argues, contrary to all the best economists, the radical notion that not every economic change that decreases GDP is necessarily bad.
Imagine, the Trump administration amends NEPA regulations such that Thunbergite lawyers are no longer to make careers out of litigating construction project. All that litigation spending goes away, GDP falls, the economists sob “Trump caused a recession!”
Imagine, Trump somehow manages to broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. The US no longer spends billions procuring artillery shells for Ukraine. GDP falls. “Oh no, terrible, terrible” the economists sob “Trump caused a recession!”
Imagine, Trump eliminates Social Security fraud and checks stop flowing to dead people overseas. Same deal. Eliminate health spending waste. Ditto.
And in an ideal world some of that would actually come about, but given the courts, congress, etc. the likelihood is low. But still, if there is anyone really interested in facts beyond the narrative, you are going to have to do a deep dive into the BEA tables.
I’ll play. Let’s not build that dam and drown all those people out of their livelihoods, for a one-time shot to the water hustlers.
Number 2 is so true.
And Number 1 is unpersuasive, and makes me wonder just who is calling whom crazy.
Your question: "Was there a time in the past when feelings mattered less and tangible objectives mattered more? I tend to think so."
Being raised on "sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me", feelings were irrelevant in the 1950s. Nobody cared about how you felt, but they did care about what you knew and did.
I watched how our grandchildren put great effort into social interaction at a time in their life when I was worrying about how to make my car faster for street racing in LA (50s). My understanding of how real things actually work put me in a good position for a good life.
"In fact, the crucial attribute shared by Milei, Musk and Trump - along with bottomless energy, idées fixe, and relentless will - is a lack of empathy."
Milei took an economy in shambles and has vastly improved it, right? Even if he cut assistance to many people who needed it, I don't see what he has done as lacking empathy.
Despite many problems, the US economy is not in shambles, it is the envy of the world. He may prove me wrong but as of yet I see nothing of net benefit in what T and M are doing. Sorry, grouping the three seems very unfair to Milei.
> And I certainly think that nowadays more people care more about their political feelings than was typical in, say, 1955.
One might point out that in 1955, fresh out of the success of World War II, political feelings were no less strong, but the polity was much more aligned in ways that Alexander points out. We had shared group identity and success that - partially - obviated disagreements.
This morning I opened the local, paper edition of the news to find that the expense of school bus transportation had drawn scrutiny and complaint.
Skimming, I see these things: area has higher per pupil transportation funding than other places; a bus driver shortage, especially a small pool for field trips; a recent effort to reduce average time-in-bus to something less than an hour and 15 minutes (that big city synergy working for you!); and a commitment to allow students to “attend the school that is the best fit for them”. (I have no axe to grind even though this was the school district where I personally wasted so much time; but should also note, it’s been in state receivership the past few years, as the city didn’t produce people who could run it. And it’s also the origin point of the now statewide Great Teacher Credential Test-for-Hire Scandal.)
So, evidently, not enough people were willing to take on this job of sitting in traffic with kids, and - damning figure! - some of the bus drivers made 104% of base pay!!
It wouldn’t have occurred to me in a million years that Margaret Thatcher was without empathy. Perhaps her family has told us that? It can’t be gleaned from her actions in office. I’m aware that she’s hated; two Brit ex-pat Big State U college professors I knew spoke of her simultaneously dismissively and yet as a figure of purest evil. (Always a sign, that.)
And yet their decisions to leave for the greener higher-ed pastures where cushy academic jobs were funded by fossil fuel revenue - oily but empathetic - had predated Thatcher’s accession …
So, to today’s puzzler: where does empathy lie? Should it go to the good governance types, zealously watching these school dollars in this *one* case? Or to the students, who cannot go to nearby schools for some reason and must be driven great distances? Many of them in special vans, due no doubt to statute?
Or is it that there should be little empathy for those greedy overtime-seeking bus drivers, as the thrust of the article seems to pre-emptively suggest?
The last sentence: “Annual salaries for drivers with the largest share of projected overtime pay ranged from $17,000 to $34,020, according to the budget report.” Wow.
I read Scott Alexander's post "Why I Am Not A Conflict Theorist" when it first came out, and I recommend it to all. It's a long read but is an honest effort to analyze why web posters and commenters are so vehement in support of their political views.
An electrical analogy would frame it as two independent questions, power and polarity. That people deeply want to 'feel good' might explain the vehemence, but 'identity group' is pretty hand-wavy and far too indeterminate in predicting which side and position on issues people actually adopt, indeed these personal characteristics were even less predictive in past decades, and so we need a distinct political theory for fairly recent history?
On the other hand it's straightforward to expand conflict theory to simply include personal and group status as among the rivalrous interests people are fighting over through the channel of politics, that is, instead of framing the question as one of either material or status-related interests, one could just say it's both.
For those who are interested:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/why-i-am-not-a-conflict-theorist
Part of the problem is there is also a perception of scarce ethical leadership, stemming from media bias toward conflict-driven stories, confusing visibility with effectiveness since empathetic and humble leaders likely aren’t prone to self-promotion, and more recent political shifts towards populism. Gradual, steady, cooperative leadership does not grab headlines. Nevertheless, I’m also in your camp believing there are actual fewer such leaders because of modern, media impacted (especially social media) environment, combined with prevalent short-term thinking throughout the human herd.
A psychologist, Arnold M. Ludwig, analyzed biographical data of every president, prime minister, dictator, or monarch he could find from the 20th century (more than 1500) in a 2002 book called King of the Mountain: The Nature of Political Leadership. He found, as will be no surprise to many readers here, that in some respects humans are just apes in trousers. There are many details in the book, though, that I think this audience would find interesting.
"Status ambiguity increases the likelihood of conflict. And when there is a clear and understood social hierarchy, conflict is less likely."
Sometimes I think that in things that are socially constructed there is an ultimate tradeoff between equality and hierarchy. Other times I think I am creating a false dyad.
Isn't there inherently a trade-off between equality and hierarchy? Like the trade-off between sunshine and rain.
Yes to the question. Although I am not sure I am able to follow the sunshine and rain as a metaphor/analogy with regard to how I am thinking about the basic and not deep point. It is the sociality and social constructions of humans that are the point because everything beyond the individual level requires a tradeoff between the two. And as one scales the number of humans to various levels of interdependence, as the framework on this blog goes, seems to require different mixes of the tradeoff.
The idea is that hierarchy pretty inevitably means some lack of equality. Just as rain almost inevitably means lack of sunshine.
You shouldn't just "sometimes" think it's true. It's always true.
A big issue on taxing the rich is “how much”? They already pay most of the income taxes.
So there should be some new income metrics created and followed and adjusted. The right amount of taxing the rich, at the 90% after tax income level, should be income increases no greater than the median. If the median goes up 2%, the rich should be taxed so much that their income also goes up only 2 %.
But far better than raising any taxes is cutting waste & fraud, as so many have promised and failed to do before. So go DOGE , go. If the pain of any recession is mostly felt by Trump hating deep state overpaid Dems, it might actually reduce inflation and make median workers a bit better off.
Plus fear of tariffs is already making some companies promise more US investment, which will help with US voters getting jobs. Combined with far less competition from illegals, any recession might well be mostly ex-govt workers failing to find anything productive to work on that pays even close to their govt salaries.
Scott Alexander's interpretation of taxes shows a lack of familiarity with the tax code and how Congress intended it to change the behavior of the rich. Once you are hitting the top bracket, the Code is telling you to start availing yourself of as many credits and deductions as possible. If you do not want to deal with that rigmarole, the alternative message it sends is to stop working and thus to stop earning once you reach the top bracket.
Uncle Sugar does not want you to do this. It'd make him look bad. Uncle Sugar wants you to do stuff.
Much of the complexity in the Code comes from all the many Rube Goldberg rat tunnels Congress wants you to go through so as to get more work and more stuff out of the highly productive. The New Deal-style thinking behind the income tax wants you, Mr. Rich, to do a lot of inefficient things that meet the government's policy goals, such as "creating jobs." When Mr. Rich creates a job that does not really need to be created, he gets a tax benefit and the government gets another taxable animal. Same thing with constructing buildings, buying equipment, buying golden pens, and so on and so forth, these create jobs and taxable opportunities for Uncle Sugar and the little baby sugar nuggets in the States irrespective of if they are economically rational or not.
The reason why it's not sensible to raise taxes on Mr. Rich beyond the Laffer limit is that then Mr. Rich will just stop working, thus leaving fewer nice things for Uncle Sugar to take credit for. The only reason why the rich work so hard in the US is because of all the arcane tax incentives for doing so. If you really wanted the rich to create more jobs, you might not give them a funny medallion, but you might seek to change the rules so as to limit some kinds of deductions and to encourage the creation of more jobs.
Although raising taxes does create more demand for deductions and credits, so when you do raise taxes in the US you are also incentivizing malinvestment, which every government everywhere loves doing all the time.
you could even say explicitly “We like the rich and are happy to give them World’s Best Job Creator medallions in exchange for an extra 1% of their money, we just need some extra cash to fund government programs”.
You could say that, but the Republicans woud still claim you just don't like rich people. The only way to prove you aren't envious or suffer from some other Dark Triad syndrome is to borrow lots of money to cut their taxes. :)
"It’s also possible that such people do respond with warmth in the moment, only to mock the person later online. This is even worse."
So Henderson doesn't know people who do this in person with their closest friends?
Sorry I thought I'd add this comment regarding politics in 1955.
My mother worked as a secretary for Dwight Eisenhower when he was president of Columbia after the war. Both parties desperately wanted him to run on their ticket, and evidently he was quite torn. He chose the Republicans in large part because of the Democrat positions on race issues.
I went and looked for the referenced Robin Hanson post. What a lot of rot. Maybe he is not surrounding himself with the right people.
I am absolutely a two-issue voter, related by marriage to people who apolitically pursue policy in both the legislative and administrative realm, and who themselves are connected to hundreds of others interested in the same goals.
This interpretational overlay of neuroticism on top of everything, adduced to every last one of us, is just as bad as the heavy influence of the neurotic personality type on 20th century thought and culture.
And, notably, perfectly conducive to making sure all answers, dumb or not, remain in play, so that we never find the right one. To badly paraphrase some C.S. Lewis quote.
Why are the times so dark
That men do not know each other,
But governments move
From bad to worse, as we see?
The past was much better.
Who reigns? Affliction and annoyance:
Justice nor law are current […...]
If the times remain so, I shall become a hermit,
For I see nothing but grief and torment.
--Eustache Deschampes