We humans are designed to not to notice how much we want and work to achieve status; we often misunderstand our behavior by ignoring underlying status drives. Similarly, discussions of national politics too often ignore status explanations for national policies.
This is explains a lot and I hadn't much internalized it until I read this post awhile back but I have two criticisms.
First, I think people nowadays identify more strongly with their political cluster than their nation. Sure, they don't admit that, so they re-write American history so what's special about America is entirely free-markets and the constitution; or it's entirely about diversity, ellis island, and triumphs over bigotry. But you get my point. Concretely, you can be a fan of Jewish people and still notice that lots of what the USA is proud of and doubling down on today are things that many influential Jewish people see as very important and distinctive about what America should really be proud of.
(The only area that I see almost uniform gut level pride and support - tied very concretely to past victories often involving family members - is with the idea that we saved the world from Nazi's and commies and should keep up that good work.)
Second, is this just a more abstract way of saying that what people believe is deeply informed by how they see their own ancestry? i.e. Irish Catholic Americans tend to be more inspired by the USA Civil Rights narrative than their WASP cousins?
(Also point #2 on finance and banking seems forced. Most people's intuitions have almost always been excessively anti-finance if anything. If policy is too pro-bank that seems better explained by corruption, and sincere - and understandable - precaution about what bad things might happen with a major financial disturbance.)
Just as a datapoint, I remember a lot of supporters of then-candidate Obama talking about how electing him would "redeem" us in the eyes of the world. Don't hear so much about it now, but they sure seemed to care about it then.
I can't agree with #4. Science helps everyone. The first time we went to the Moon was to say we did it, but we went many times after that to study its geology and it sparked exploration of our solar system and beyond. Understanding how the universe works helps us to understand how the Earth works. Using social and economic injustice as an excuse to halt science doesn't improve anything. Just because you don't understand the science or don't care about the science doesn't mean it hasn't improved your life.
NZ has one of, if not the highest, male suicide rate per capita, a real problem with Beer Goggles (literally and as braoder cultural dumbing down metaphor) their universities (whilst strong in engineering) are bottom feeders, methamphetamine is a massive social evil. Unlike UK, say, virtually all flat land (exploitable land) is exploited in a rather ugly utilatarian manner with very notable lack of trees.
Speaking of antipodeans and pop music, I believe that it's not without relevance that AC/DC, The Bee Gees (not really antipodean) and The Split Enz, easily responsible for the best music to come out of the area, had family nucleus - i.e. Malcolm & Angus Young and Tim & Neil Finn... the significance of this is that the deeply egalitarian tendency of achieving more by undermining others, less by self improvement failed somewhat in these instances because blood is thicker than those jealous forces.
Interesting idea, but I'd like to see examples of activities of a similar size that America (or anyone) isn't especially proud of and is getting worse at, and to know whether they are propped up less.
I think your arguments on status have become akin to Marxist class theory. You are using them to explain everything, even when other, simpler explanations exist and the argument's infinite stretchiness tends to indicate that it is not actually a useful line of analysis, gratifying though it may be.
Right, but this suggests Hanson is wrong. Perhaps the ANZAC tradition and subsequent spending is natural experiment which says other factors dominate status spending on armies.
meh...you're not actually addressing the point.The point is that I can come up with any number of scenarios for status. It's about as scientific as Freud.
And I can argue against your points (Lehman an outlier etc), and someone could argue against robin's points. But then we've lost point of what robin is trying to do.
He is using status as theoretical framework/model...but then what eventually happens is that it devolves back into the original problem. It doesn't add any new knowledge nor does it give a new valuable perception.
Stuart, so what? Didn't someone recently write about the "garbage" method of creative production? I forget where I read it, maybe org theory? I think we come out ahead with efficient idea capture and transmission by Prof. Hanson, and other intellectual bloggers. Besides he can always clarify and articulate in follow up posts and comments.
I like the academic blogosphere norm that folks can be quick, sloppy, and creative right now, without harm to their professional reputation as thinkers.
I think we should protect that norm better than Vegas is protecting its "what happens in vegas stays in vegas" norm these days.
Didn't the consumers (housing investors/gamblers) driive the price bubble? I would say it was the overprotected banks, due to the implicit FNMA/FDMC government backing that killed us in terms of mis-rated bonds.
It's certainly true that a lack of consumer protection was not the cause of the problem here, which means that adding protection is not an appropriate response.
"The financial crisis scenario had to do with ‘us’ (the american people) doing whatever possible to not become poor (that was the threat)"Not true- we didn't cut back on govt spending.
"Then, the finance industry displayed that their place in the hierarchy can never be challenged no matter what."Not true- counterproof- Lehman.
I would question the notion that striving to be the best is a problem, as i feel such competition is ultimately the best thing for bringing about advancement. At the same time, i can't help but agree that it is a drive easily abused by short-term fixes, that get you ahead of the competition but not in a manner which promotes advancement.
I think the key here is an understanding that competition is not a bad thing, or that losing a competition is not a bad thing if it promotes a desire to come back and win that competition later. I think the problem is that most people are likely to see losing the competition as a "final" result, as though to lose it once is to always be a loser in it. I dont know why that mentality has arisen. Maybe its because we've occupied the top of the global food chain for enough generations that it's just part of our mentality now. Maybe its because our situation has been relatively "easy" compared with other nations over the past few decades, and the general populace has grown afraid of a true challenge? I dont know, all i can do is speculate on this point.
As a Kiwi, my take on it is that NZers can free ride on the Australians and Americans for security. There's no real sense of being threatened, unlike how Australians worry about Indonesia collapsing into a military dictatorship.
I agree with James about the constitution affecting the rate of change of economic policies in NZ.
Unstoppable force meets immovable object, here we come.May I have the copyright to that - I think I'm going to have some T-shirts done up... Lemming and Proud!
People almost always know when they're been short changed in terms of social interaction, education etc most of the economy is about buying their complicity with their own demise. He was a highly intelligent man and what is more a very good one: he was one of those rare men, much less common than their opposite, from whom goodness radiated almost as a physical quality. No one ever met him without sensing his goodness of heart, his generosity of spirit.
But he was deeply inarticulate. His thoughts were too complex for the words and the syntax available to him. All through my childhood and beyond, I saw him struggle, like a man wrestling with an invisible boa constrictor, to express his far from foolish thoughts—thoughts of a complexity that my father expressed effortlessly.
Beginning in the 1950s, Basil Bernstein, a London University researcher, demonstrated the difference between the speech of middle- and working-class children, controlling for whatever it is that IQ measures. Working-class speech, tethered closely to the here and now, lacked the very aspects of standard English needed to express abstract or general ideas and to place personal experience in temporal or any other perspective. Thus, unless Pinker’s despised schoolmarms were to take the working-class children in hand and deliberately teach them another speech code, they were doomed to remain where they were, at the bottom of a society that was itself much the poorer for not taking full advantage of their abilities, and that indeed would pay a steep penalty for not doing so. An intelligent man who can make no constructive use of his intelligence is likely to make a destructive, and self-destructive, use of it.
Au contrar (sp), if you are going to give to the government the $1, and if what you spend on is also leveraged with debt, you stand not only to pay less taxes but also get a gain, which then will not be taxed.
This is explains a lot and I hadn't much internalized it until I read this post awhile back but I have two criticisms.
First, I think people nowadays identify more strongly with their political cluster than their nation. Sure, they don't admit that, so they re-write American history so what's special about America is entirely free-markets and the constitution; or it's entirely about diversity, ellis island, and triumphs over bigotry. But you get my point. Concretely, you can be a fan of Jewish people and still notice that lots of what the USA is proud of and doubling down on today are things that many influential Jewish people see as very important and distinctive about what America should really be proud of.
(The only area that I see almost uniform gut level pride and support - tied very concretely to past victories often involving family members - is with the idea that we saved the world from Nazi's and commies and should keep up that good work.)
Second, is this just a more abstract way of saying that what people believe is deeply informed by how they see their own ancestry? i.e. Irish Catholic Americans tend to be more inspired by the USA Civil Rights narrative than their WASP cousins?
(Also point #2 on finance and banking seems forced. Most people's intuitions have almost always been excessively anti-finance if anything. If policy is too pro-bank that seems better explained by corruption, and sincere - and understandable - precaution about what bad things might happen with a major financial disturbance.)
Just as a datapoint, I remember a lot of supporters of then-candidate Obama talking about how electing him would "redeem" us in the eyes of the world. Don't hear so much about it now, but they sure seemed to care about it then.
I can't agree with #4. Science helps everyone. The first time we went to the Moon was to say we did it, but we went many times after that to study its geology and it sparked exploration of our solar system and beyond. Understanding how the universe works helps us to understand how the Earth works. Using social and economic injustice as an excuse to halt science doesn't improve anything. Just because you don't understand the science or don't care about the science doesn't mean it hasn't improved your life.
NZ has one of, if not the highest, male suicide rate per capita, a real problem with Beer Goggles (literally and as braoder cultural dumbing down metaphor) their universities (whilst strong in engineering) are bottom feeders, methamphetamine is a massive social evil. Unlike UK, say, virtually all flat land (exploitable land) is exploited in a rather ugly utilatarian manner with very notable lack of trees.
Speaking of antipodeans and pop music, I believe that it's not without relevance that AC/DC, The Bee Gees (not really antipodean) and The Split Enz, easily responsible for the best music to come out of the area, had family nucleus - i.e. Malcolm & Angus Young and Tim & Neil Finn... the significance of this is that the deeply egalitarian tendency of achieving more by undermining others, less by self improvement failed somewhat in these instances because blood is thicker than those jealous forces.
Interesting idea, but I'd like to see examples of activities of a similar size that America (or anyone) isn't especially proud of and is getting worse at, and to know whether they are propped up less.
I just added item 9 to the list.
I think your arguments on status have become akin to Marxist class theory. You are using them to explain everything, even when other, simpler explanations exist and the argument's infinite stretchiness tends to indicate that it is not actually a useful line of analysis, gratifying though it may be.
Right, but this suggests Hanson is wrong. Perhaps the ANZAC tradition and subsequent spending is natural experiment which says other factors dominate status spending on armies.
meh...you're not actually addressing the point.The point is that I can come up with any number of scenarios for status. It's about as scientific as Freud.
And I can argue against your points (Lehman an outlier etc), and someone could argue against robin's points. But then we've lost point of what robin is trying to do.
He is using status as theoretical framework/model...but then what eventually happens is that it devolves back into the original problem. It doesn't add any new knowledge nor does it give a new valuable perception.
Stuart, so what? Didn't someone recently write about the "garbage" method of creative production? I forget where I read it, maybe org theory? I think we come out ahead with efficient idea capture and transmission by Prof. Hanson, and other intellectual bloggers. Besides he can always clarify and articulate in follow up posts and comments.
I like the academic blogosphere norm that folks can be quick, sloppy, and creative right now, without harm to their professional reputation as thinkers.
I think we should protect that norm better than Vegas is protecting its "what happens in vegas stays in vegas" norm these days.
Didn't the consumers (housing investors/gamblers) driive the price bubble? I would say it was the overprotected banks, due to the implicit FNMA/FDMC government backing that killed us in terms of mis-rated bonds.
It's certainly true that a lack of consumer protection was not the cause of the problem here, which means that adding protection is not an appropriate response.
"The financial crisis scenario had to do with ‘us’ (the american people) doing whatever possible to not become poor (that was the threat)"Not true- we didn't cut back on govt spending.
"Then, the finance industry displayed that their place in the hierarchy can never be challenged no matter what."Not true- counterproof- Lehman.
I would question the notion that striving to be the best is a problem, as i feel such competition is ultimately the best thing for bringing about advancement. At the same time, i can't help but agree that it is a drive easily abused by short-term fixes, that get you ahead of the competition but not in a manner which promotes advancement.
I think the key here is an understanding that competition is not a bad thing, or that losing a competition is not a bad thing if it promotes a desire to come back and win that competition later. I think the problem is that most people are likely to see losing the competition as a "final" result, as though to lose it once is to always be a loser in it. I dont know why that mentality has arisen. Maybe its because we've occupied the top of the global food chain for enough generations that it's just part of our mentality now. Maybe its because our situation has been relatively "easy" compared with other nations over the past few decades, and the general populace has grown afraid of a true challenge? I dont know, all i can do is speculate on this point.
As a Kiwi, my take on it is that NZers can free ride on the Australians and Americans for security. There's no real sense of being threatened, unlike how Australians worry about Indonesia collapsing into a military dictatorship.
I agree with James about the constitution affecting the rate of change of economic policies in NZ.
Unstoppable force meets immovable object, here we come.May I have the copyright to that - I think I'm going to have some T-shirts done up... Lemming and Proud!
People almost always know when they're been short changed in terms of social interaction, education etc most of the economy is about buying their complicity with their own demise. He was a highly intelligent man and what is more a very good one: he was one of those rare men, much less common than their opposite, from whom goodness radiated almost as a physical quality. No one ever met him without sensing his goodness of heart, his generosity of spirit.
But he was deeply inarticulate. His thoughts were too complex for the words and the syntax available to him. All through my childhood and beyond, I saw him struggle, like a man wrestling with an invisible boa constrictor, to express his far from foolish thoughts—thoughts of a complexity that my father expressed effortlessly.
Beginning in the 1950s, Basil Bernstein, a London University researcher, demonstrated the difference between the speech of middle- and working-class children, controlling for whatever it is that IQ measures. Working-class speech, tethered closely to the here and now, lacked the very aspects of standard English needed to express abstract or general ideas and to place personal experience in temporal or any other perspective. Thus, unless Pinker’s despised schoolmarms were to take the working-class children in hand and deliberately teach them another speech code, they were doomed to remain where they were, at the bottom of a society that was itself much the poorer for not taking full advantage of their abilities, and that indeed would pay a steep penalty for not doing so. An intelligent man who can make no constructive use of his intelligence is likely to make a destructive, and self-destructive, use of it.
http://www.city-journal.org...
Au contrar (sp), if you are going to give to the government the $1, and if what you spend on is also leveraged with debt, you stand not only to pay less taxes but also get a gain, which then will not be taxed.