Emotional attachment or investment is the greatest barrier to engaging rational thinking, or the type of empiricism which could solve our most pressing thorny problems. When we first envisaged the promised land which MLK invited us to march towards, we had no understanding that in this march of progress, our very own natures would be the greatest barrier- but this is very reason why, despite our best intentions and significant progress, our ultimate goal remains out of reach and will continue to be out of reach until we begin to understanding of our profound limitations when it comes to emotive subjects.
Here is the problem in a nutshell- our problem-solving is at its best when we are emotionally detached. We’ve all tried solving problems when we are angry, depressed or frustrated. Yelled at the poor company representative on the phone, ignored the email or letter from our bank in our youth, or left important, but lengthy, form-filling for another day ad nauseam. It’s usually not a strategy conducive to success, as we all know from experience. But how much worse does this problem become when we try solve problems which require cooperation, compromise across political divides and the achievement of a consensus which incorporates the best ideas and knowledge which viewpoint diversity has to offer and requires that political opponents declare a ceasefire and break bread together?
This is the problem with race in America, and the reason why no further progress can be reached until we adopt an aspect of humility in understanding how to overcome our deeply flawed human nature. Because race is a subject so emotive that it not only invites emotionally attached thinking, but demands we address the subject with the highest levels of emotional investment. Some would have us believe that America in inherently white supremacist and we should not rest until Equality of Outcome has been reached, others that both Equality under the Law and Equality of Opportunity have already been achieved and whether individuals or communities sink or swim can only be achieved by their own efforts, because the governmental approach has not only failed, but also repeatedly made matters considerably worse.
But the truth is that it is a problem which desperately needs to be solved, because it’s at the very foundation of the societal friction which is tearing America apart- and whilst one side is making matters considerably worse by ignoring uncomfortable truths, the other side obstinately believes that nothing more can be done. It’s our emotional attachment which is to blame. Because when we see opposition to ideas we care deeply about, it causes the brain to adopt a biologically triggered attitude of reactive and defensive thinking. It’s the same mechanism which helped save us on the plains of Africa from large predators, and why if a squeaky door handle moves, everybody in the room turns automatically to see who is coming in, the shadow of potential threat lingering imperceptibly in the back of our minds, ready to react.
I really didn’t understand the nature of the problem until I watched this podcast from Triggernometry:
The problem with the mindset which emotional attachments creates is not just that it impairs our minds with reactive and defensive thinking, but it also forces us into ideological tribes. A part of this relates to our intuitive knowledge that a problem shared is easier to solve, but the far more pressing concern is to seek safety in numbers, to find those who would endorse our perspective without reservation and help us prepare for ideological warfare. It offers an emotional safety blanket of mutual support from people who share our views. It’s also not healthy- and in relation to race it’s the epistemological equivalent of constructing a one hundred foot wall across America, with RACE painted on the side. It means that anyone who wants to approach the issue with a degree of nuance and genuine good faith, is sure to fail, if for no reason other than ideological isolation.
And in this political climate where no one wants to accept compromise or the prospect of working together, liberals and progressives are in the process of failing. Having confined the debate about education to a monomaniacal obsession that the problem is money, when simply pouring resources into the problem has proven to fail time and again, they have turned to ideas which are sure to make matter worse. Kids should be taught Maths, not how Maths is racist! The real problem is the ideological inability to create an environment in which parents are required to invest time and effort in their kids successes if they want them to succeed and in which headteachers are free to create environments of structured low-level discipline, where detentions are handed out for minor infractions, free from the constraints of a zealous bureaucracy ever alert for implicit bias and racism.
And before liberals or progressives dismiss this thought out of hand- consider the case of the state-run Brampton Manor Academy in London with its primarily Black British students, which recently outperformed Eton in placements to Oxbridge, and which doles out detentions for being one minute late to school. Unlike America, these kids didn’t need Affirmative Action or a DEI bureaucracy to achieve their dreams- they achieved their successes through hard work and determination, outperforming the competition. Every student carries an activity book which shows where they should be every day and every parent is subject to the same stringent disciplinary code as the students. Teachers are deferred to and obeyed in all reasonable circumstances.
It is worth noting that even modestly disrupted classrooms can result in two years of lost education by the end of K-12. The worst aspect of this soft bigotry of low expectations with regard to behaviour, is that the juvenile mind is guaranteed to interpret as simply not caring- far from feeling that they are being given special privileges, it reinforces and cements a belief in bias and prejudice. When we ponder the differences between White and Black teachers, and casually blame the White teacher for underestimating Black students by blaming the problem on implicit bias, shouldn’t we first understand that we have rendered them powerless to impress a sense of agency (which Black teachers are far surer to inculcate) and systemically prevented them from enforcing standards of behaviour, let alone holding students to account for failing to live up to their potential. Shouldn’t we first consider the Stasi-like bureaucracy we have imposed from above? Two year worth of lost education or more, far more likely to be visited upon primarily African American classrooms…
And this is other problem of the mindset of defensive and reactive thinking, the problem of multiple constituencies within one ideological bloc- it forces us to choose ideological bedfellows which are not best suited to our moral principles. Conservatives should be naturally inclined to want to make modest investments is systems which aid social cohesion, support families and communities. They tend to support discipline in schools. This is not the libertarian position. Meanwhile, although it might be possible to argue that public schools and Black parents interests might be aligned, there is no world in which a Black parents interests are aligned where a overzealous bureaucracy of apparatchik are constantly on the prowl for implicit bias, and in the process fatally undermining their child’s education.
And this is the problem. By choosing a subject which draws emotive responses I’ve been naturally drawing you into a state where you want to defend those kids and those teachers. I have no doubt that the issues raised are part of the problem, but there are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. When we have an attitude of intellectual detachment, we are able to cooperate in groups, and deal with problems rationally and empirically. We can clinically deconstruct a problem, structuralise it and look at all the constituent elements. With race, we are at the mercy of our tendency to form ideological tribes. It means diagnostics which tilt towards the monocausal and solutions which simply don’t work.
In 2004, Scotland was in the midst of a knife crime epidemic. Glasgow was the knife crime capital of Europe at the time. Because the populations involved were 99% ethnically white a whole raft of measures and policies were introduced, using the best rational and empirical thinking available. A great deal of inspiration was drawn from across the Pond, with various local America initiatives transplanted to Scotland. The work of epidemiologist Gary Slutkin, with his view that violence was like a social contagion which could be treated and triaged, highly influenced the project. Within ten years knife crim had been halved, without significantly increasing the prison population of the mainly youthful offenders responsible. But because in America race invites us into political tribes with our preferred prescriptions proactive policing, communities and youth reform-based thinking are never drawn together into one comprehensive and all-encompassing plan. Race makes the issue thorny and impossible to solve. Emotional thinking makes us discard those elements of any proposed solution which we find ideologically unpalatable, and makes these thorny problems all but insoluble.
When the young adopt ideas which are counter-Enlightenment, it’s tempting to circle the ideological wagons. When we hear that America is a white supremacist country, our kneejerk reaction is to defend the progress that has been made over the past sixty years. But there are several steps we can take to prevent ourselves from falling into the same trap that our supposed ideological opponents find themselves in.
First, we need to be WARY. If we find ourselves defensive or automatically constructing reactive arguments meant to undermine their position we should realise that we are allowing our emotions to guide us.
Second, we need to be GENEROUS. If we doubt their proposed solutions, we should at least be generous enough to understand that whilst there may be bad actors within their movements, the majority are well-intentioned and are trying to resolve very real problems which they perceive.
Third, we need to HELP. If we have anything at all to offer, even if it undermines our cause and helps reinforce theirs, we should offer it freely.
Fourth, we should CONCEDE. Although we may not agree with the central tenets of their belief system, we can at least concede when they make a contribution which is valid or worth further consideration.
Finally, we should HOPE. It won’t always work. Some will be too emotionally attached to their positions to start to think about the problem in an intellectually detached manner. But there will be some who will want to add to their knowledge, regardless of whether the new information aligns with their preconceived notions, and these invaluable few will be in an ideal position to disseminate their hopefully far healthier idea pathogens to a large and receptive audience. It might add a little much needed nuance to debates which are becoming increasingly fraught and subject to the seesaw capture of American policy by ideological extremes.
Because something has to change on this issue. It is a sad fact that when either side wins in America on this most emotive of subjects, everybody loses- otherwise we would have already solved the problem decades ago.
I agree with Josh. I am about as detached and analytical as they come, and have an appreciation for the finer points on either side of the cultural divide. And yet, it's never enough. So now, despite being more than willing to meet in the middle, I find that supposedly I'm the problem. And hope is giving way to my mood, which is dark. At some point, you give up trying to make it better, and just look for gasoline and a match, consequences be damned. I fear I am closer to that edge than I'd like to be, and am still being pushed.
See my comment to Josh, and also elsewhere in this thread. The other thing to consider is that the Left has overstepped. Most people think they are batshit crazy when they call politically dissenting African Americans as White Supremacists, and level the accusation against large segments of the Latino community. Adopting the moral high ground in these circumstances is a study in contrasts.
Did you see the mainstream media super cut of their reaction to the VA governors result? This Breaking Points segment shows it starting just after 2.00: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TmG55diyEc . You have to consider that when a largely millennial audience is receptive to commentary which ridicules these antics, it shows that the back of this type of argument has been broken. There will continue to be people who spout it, but the number of people who are actually receptive to such arguments is shrinking rapidly.
I Understand that grace might be difficult, but I think that the worm might finally be turning, and anything which shows conservatives as willing to be generous and understanding is bound to win friends and influence people.
Your idea, whatever it is, whether others agree it's great or not, doesn't matter to most who will never know what it is unless you have a truly great one that others adopt to their benefit. That's real progress, not centrally planned, forced progressivism.
If your idea only works by forcing it on others, then your idea is based on immorality, hubris and likely will make matters worse. Voluntary, live-and-let-live society allows many ideas to flourish as others agree to use them and show results they prefer. Forced society divides, rejects minorities and diversity, directly harms, is the antithesis of tolerance and appreciation of others, leading to closed, submissive, fearful people, the opposite of progress.
I largely agree. But there are ideas which gain mainstream acceptance that don't pass the sniff test once we examine them further. A collection of terrible ideas can bring a society down just as quickly as the widespread use of force and coercion. And even the Right has problems with bad ideas, although they tend to be less susceptible because they prefer well-tested and proven ideas.
A couple of points on this front. It's not a good idea to lock disruptive or disorderly young men up in prison- we need to make distinctions between those who make us angry and those who really should scare us silly. Putting young men who are disorderly in prison doesn't help because the empirical data shows that placing them with a cohort that is strongly anti-social will make them more anti-social- and once they've served their relatively short sentences their is every chance they will pose a statistically higher risk to society. There are other ways to punish, and in some respects Texas has led the way with this approach- primarily because they wanted to save the taxpayer money.
The second thing is that whilst I am generally a neoliberal and believe in global trade, the consequences of shifting labour dealing with higher value tradables offshore was disastrous for the West. Although the service sector is great in many respects, it doesn't generally produce the types of non-low value work which is suitable for the non-college educated that manufacturing does.
You may think the lower prices are worth it but I can assure you they are not. First, you pay higher taxes through more government services in one of the core aspects of limited government- keeping its citizens safe. You're also paying higher premiums to insure yourself- the costs of EMTs are offset to paying customers and a higher likelihood your car will be broken into will be reflected in the prices you pay.
For proof, we only need to look at China. Over the past thirty years China has edged a little ahead of us Actuarial Science (my brother actually studied it here in the UK- of a class of thirty he was one of only two Brits- the rest were Asian, mostly Chinese). The other thing is the Chinese actually listen to their Actuarials, and make far greater use of them at a governmental level. It's also one of the reasons why HSBC was one of the few banks which sidestepped 2008.
Anyway, now that they are offshoring- making Africa China's China- they are shedding all their low value labour from manufacturing, but they are keeping the higher value tradables for themselves. With their more risk averse worldview, they seem to understand that it is just as important for markets to have labour reallocate efficiently as it is for capital to reallocate.
An economy needs decent blue collar work, because if it doesn't happen then fatherhood rates plummet. Many blame values and its certainly true to an extent, but for family formation you also need the right ingredients. Hypergamy is a part of human society and women may well have a man's kids if he isn't a productive father, but she certainly won't let him live in the home as a father if he isn't productive.
And M. Shayer informs us what happens to IQ when fatherhood collapses. I haven't read this paper in detail (but plan to), but I have read his 2008 paper. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289617302787 . Here is the title: IQ decline and Piaget: Does the rot start at the top?
Of course, the Left has a whole plethora of bad ideas, but I thought I would highlight just a couple on the Right which emerge through complexity.
Well, locking people up in prison is government force.
Higher taxes is force.
China is a king in using force, though all governments are damned good at it.
I think any bad idea that gains traction among the people without it being forced on them and causes them harm is fine. Bad ideas like that are a lesson to others who can see the harm of holding them. And if they collapse because they continue to hold those bad ideas voluntarily, they are supposed to die off. It's not a tragedy for bad people to have bad outcomes when they voluntarily choose to practice them.
I don't disagree with you, but government does have a profound effect in shaping the direction of the economy. If companies know offshoring will be treated sympathetically across governments then there is no reason for them not to do it. There were plenty of ways in which American could have dissuaded the practice of offshoring high value labour- soft changes to accountancy requirements and laws in one, accusations of unfair trade practices and subsidy is another.
Besides, most of those American companies effectively shot themselves in the foot. Many are no longer trading and many more have been marginalised through the exploitation of their IP. The only exception would appear to be branded goods where most of value is located in the brand, and not the manufacturing.
Whether you are right or not is open to debate. Whether global competition and comparative advantage are better for more than worse for fewer is hard to tease out. Expect some changes to be good, some to be bad. Only forced solutions keep the bad in place, and handcuff the good so future improvement is lost.
If you are right that those companies are changing, then all is good. That's how real progress happens...by trying to make your lot better with innovation and risk-taking, not pretending you know the outcomes in advance, or that harm to one group means all others must suffer to benefit them.
Well, I'm a big believer in heterodox economics and comparative advantage. But I think one of things which pollutes this concept is there are a number of ways a poor understanding of what actually constitutes competitive advantage on the part of stock market analysists can create share price evaluations which are completely divorced from reality.
With one of the companies for which I worked, a director went off and bought a machine that then sat idle for most of the week because he was trying to make a high end business compete in the low cost end when all our other inputs were geared for quality and service- the annoying thing was it worked, because the business press is quite willing to feature stories of phantom improvements- their value to the customers is based upon perceived knowledge which informs investment decisions regardless of whether the information is wrong or not.
I worked for another company where the net profits in a year were half the total value of the shares of the company! The was in the period when publicly traded companies were considered virtually worthless unless their senior management were in the process of offshoring. The company was subsequently subject to a management buy-in.
Don't get me wrong- stock markets are great if you are a value investor able to discern real value from the illusionary value the superficially perceptive herd tend to fixate upon, but I do think there is an extent to which this often fallacious and misinformed type of thinking tends to undermine the productive value of entire sectors.
I think its one the reasons why VCs can be so successful- they are focused on the real. Sometimes high labour costs can be a sign of an incredibly productive and innovative workforce who have learned to compromise with management and understand that their bonuses and future pay rises are dependent upon increasing productivity and adding value for their customers, but more often than not they are to be found working for privately owned businesses. In the Anglosphere, such high labour costs are seem as an embarrassment in terms of the way potential shareholders might perceive them.
Yes, but you'll always have some people making good business decisions and others making bad ones. Predicting the future is hard, knowing where competition will come from next nearly impossible, suffering theft/fraud/error/bad-PR by employees/management. All human activity is trial and error/success built on top of what we think we know now and nobody can tease it out at scale or accurately predict the future.
I couldn't agree more, and it's great advice. It really is so very difficult to create emotional detachment when it comes to race. Why is that? Probably the same reason that racial discrimination seems so odious . . . there's nothing that you can do about your race. Things that deeply affect your life over which you have no control are really hard for a lot of us to deal with.
Thoughtful comment. I think the key point here is that the awfully named Structural Racism doesn't require actual racism or bias- although there is a compelling argument that many of the terrible disparities we see today were based upon well-intentioned liberal policies in the past. High density housing is the easy, because their isn't much to defend it. Welfare is more complicated, until we consider how easy would it have been to dissolve welfare bureaucracies, and reinvent welfare as a one stop poverty payment which was gradually phased out through tax and thereby remove almost all of the disincentive to work or be a productive father.
A very insightful article. To my mind racism is a problem because it is usually perceived as being one directional. Link it into the fact that certain groups underperform and you have a potent brew. However, racism operates both ways and so we need to look elsewhere for the cause of under performance. I don't think there is one cause but a myriad of interlinked causes of which racism is a very minor aspect.
The West has done a massive amount to eliminate racism and pretty much successfully. Unfortunately, for some people it will never be enough. The woke left and the writers who express crypto-racist views like Reni Eddo-Lodge (Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race') imagine it everywhere rather like the 'Reds under the bed' scares. Some people would rather imagine a one size fits all problem and solution. Personally I prefer a non-fashionable colour blind approach.
'Personally I prefer a non-fashionable colour blind approach.' I've started changing the wording I use here- I simply say that I prefer to treat people as individuals. I have a suspicion as to why some unconscious discrimination still exists- I think that one when professional managers try to be impartial and objective they necessarily push themselves cognitively into a more critical state- examining their own actions and motives may, by extension, make them more critical of those they are interviewing or interacting with. This obviously creates an unequal system, because they won't be doing to same with their own ingroup, with which natural rapport exists.
I first noticed something similar with my writing years ago. I would ask family and close friends to take a look at my first drafts. I specifically asked them to ignore spelling and grammar, and instead give me a general sense of whether they liked the piece, but they would instead feel compelled to tell me there was no double mm in moment. Something similar seems to happen with female entrepreneurs pitching to VCs- they are far more likely to be asked how they will protect their customer base, rather than how are they going to grow their business?
It makes sense in relation to this particular subject matter. If one is warily self-auditing ones thoughts and behaviour for potential bias, then it might automatically tip the brain into a defensive and reactive mindset, gathering evidence as post hoc proof that the individual was being impartial. We should instead teach managers to build their leadership skills when working across artificial barriers- to build rapport and reciprocal trust- that would make them fair.
The application quandary is a far easier problem to solve. Line managers only really have two levers to get their workers to shift their asses from the 60% effort which is typical to around 90%- it's carrot and stick all the way. HR and other bureaucracies have already taken away a lot of the power of the stick, so that leaves personal development in the form of training and promotions. Any line manager worth their salt in going to want to hand out promotions internally, as a means of dangling the carrot in future to other employees- especially if the promotion is to another department or division. Plus, their associate managers are going to want to aim for the tried and tested- especially when one substandard employee dealing with important or sensitive issues can blow their performance out of the window.
But most HR departments insist upon advertising jobs, and in some countries it is a statutory requirement. Presented with this deliberate attempt to undermine their effectiveness, most managers will eliminate high-end paper candidates with diverse backgrounds during the applications phase- for the simple reason that it would look a lot worse if they preferenced the person they want for the job over a diverse candidate during the interview phase.
I don't think we're actually far apart on this. Current woke thought specifically rejects the colour blind approach and elevates colour to the paramount factor in making a judgement. In this system whiteness per se is downgraded and is a negative point. The assessment of a person's abilities and their treatment as an individual is actually irrelevant in this system.
As you most aptly point out this does eliminate the high end candidates and let in the mediocre just to fulfill quotas and tick a few boxes.
Detention for one minute late the school? I think I would have had my fair share of those…
“ every parent is subject to the same stringent disciplinary code as the students.”
What does that mean? How could a parent be disciplined by the school? Charged a higher fee for tuition? They can’t be put in detention. That would be like my parents telling me today that I was in a time out. I’d laugh.
Race and education are both emotionally charged topics, but I think there may be a broader desire in America for nuance conversations. The Very Online Twitter mobs are very polarized. But most Americans of all races don’t want to have their kids segregated in schools. There’s higher acceptance of interracial marriage than ever before and, importantly, high rates of actual interracial marriage. Meaning that America is getting more racial diverse but less racially divided.
I’m definitely not one to say we’ve totally solved race in America even if I think we’ve come an incredibly long way. True racism is rare but I saw a fair amount of it growing up. It seems to me that most of the people pushing theories of systemic racism (which in a few highly specific cases does exist), haven’t seen much real racism (i.e., individuals actually willing to physically and emotionally attack other individuals due to the color of their skin).
When the Left talks about structural racism, what they are really talking about it is disparities of outcome. It's all so unnecessary because 2019 there were 7 million vacancies for reasonably well-paid blue collar jobs, and there were also certain areas of the economy, liking housing, which had never recovered to replacement levels of production. What's needed is a massive shift to vocational training in K-12 starting at age 14.
And this is before we consider the role of immigration. Don't get me wrong- I'm in favour of high levels of migration, but generally it should be for the types of highly cognitive jobs which no country generates the personnel to fill adequately, for those qualified in the courses kids in the West don't want to study. Australia has a Priority Migration Skilled Occupation List, and it worked well for years because it protected blue collar jobs- although recently the addition of blue collar jobs is probably one of the main things driving the beginnings of populism in Australia.
We need to seriously think about how we are going to employ the legions of kids who don't well at school. What the Left doesn't seem to understand is that labour is basic need (although it is also important at every level of Maslow's hierarchy). The thing is, this is the one type of equalisation which makes a whole lot of sense- because a policy which helps every kid who doesn't do well at school would disproportionately help African Americans and Latinos. The Pew data shows both demographics have a higher percentage of people at the bottom stacked up with low incomes.
Match kids to decent economic opportunities, especially those which foster blue collar dignity and respect, and most of the social problems associated with the 2% of districts in America where 50% of all violent crime occurs simply evaporate. More men with stable blue collar jobs means more families. More families in a community means an intergenerational lift into the next generation and even shows up in significantly improved cognitive development for children, mainly through peer group, but also because of the removal of negative factors and higher levels of parental engagement.
What the Left gets wrong is thinking that people want equality. Most people further down the economic spectrum just want fairness. Unfortunately, whilst higher levels of unemployment for some demographics remain static, people are always going to believe in a rigged game.
What I meant by saying there are a few cases of systemic racism are that there are in fact a few specific examples of particular cases: certain bridges in New York were purposefully built in the 1930s to be so low that buses could not pass through. This was a roundabout way of keeping African Americans and immigrants (poor ethnic groups who did not have cars) away from the beaches. NIMBY housing policies can also be systemically racist. But, no, I don’t believe disparate outcomes are the product of some kind of deep societal racism embedded in the fabric of human hearts and minds or any such nonsense.
While I agree that we should avoid emotional quick fixes (... the style and wording of some of the CRT education bans come to mind ... ), I take issue with points Two, Three, and Four.
Adopting those without caution is just asking to concede, and concede, and concede. Which is how we got here.
"They invade our space and we fall back. They decimate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here."
I'm not saying we should concede our position, but simply operate using a style of rhetoric which is less combative and confrontation. One of the reasons why liberals convince large segments of the population is because they wear their hearts on the sleeves and adopt a stance of emotional understanding, compassion and caring.
Have you ever heard of Anthony Daniels (a.k.a. Theodore Dalrymple)? Here he is with an Intelligence Squared Debate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UesrrHVLa0&t=4s (also featuring Amy Chua). Listen to his style. It's not strident or particularly argument. His is generous to his opponents. But here the thing- apologies for the spoiler, but it is the single biggest audience shift I've seen in a debate, and I've seen quite a few.
The other thing to consider is how do we broach these subjects when they are more personal than public. I think it's horrible that friendships end over this sort of thing, or that it can strain family relations. When dealing with those who are close to us, I was trying to suggest an approach which might be more constructive, without ignoring such subjects completely...
Ideas that aren't forced on others are rarely combative or confrontational. Bad people who think their good ideas must be forced on others must be eliminated from power, as power corrupts, and all people are bad once they have power to control another.
Just starting to read. I love your opening sentence. Truly. But typo in sentence #2:
Emotional attachment or investment is the greatest barrier to engaging rational thinking, or the type of empiricism which could solve our most pressing thorny problems. When we first envisaged the promised land which MLK invited us to march towards, we HAD no understanding . . .
I agree with Josh. I am about as detached and analytical as they come, and have an appreciation for the finer points on either side of the cultural divide. And yet, it's never enough. So now, despite being more than willing to meet in the middle, I find that supposedly I'm the problem. And hope is giving way to my mood, which is dark. At some point, you give up trying to make it better, and just look for gasoline and a match, consequences be damned. I fear I am closer to that edge than I'd like to be, and am still being pushed.
See my comment to Josh, and also elsewhere in this thread. The other thing to consider is that the Left has overstepped. Most people think they are batshit crazy when they call politically dissenting African Americans as White Supremacists, and level the accusation against large segments of the Latino community. Adopting the moral high ground in these circumstances is a study in contrasts.
Did you see the mainstream media super cut of their reaction to the VA governors result? This Breaking Points segment shows it starting just after 2.00: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TmG55diyEc . You have to consider that when a largely millennial audience is receptive to commentary which ridicules these antics, it shows that the back of this type of argument has been broken. There will continue to be people who spout it, but the number of people who are actually receptive to such arguments is shrinking rapidly.
I Understand that grace might be difficult, but I think that the worm might finally be turning, and anything which shows conservatives as willing to be generous and understanding is bound to win friends and influence people.
Your idea, whatever it is, whether others agree it's great or not, doesn't matter to most who will never know what it is unless you have a truly great one that others adopt to their benefit. That's real progress, not centrally planned, forced progressivism.
If your idea only works by forcing it on others, then your idea is based on immorality, hubris and likely will make matters worse. Voluntary, live-and-let-live society allows many ideas to flourish as others agree to use them and show results they prefer. Forced society divides, rejects minorities and diversity, directly harms, is the antithesis of tolerance and appreciation of others, leading to closed, submissive, fearful people, the opposite of progress.
I largely agree. But there are ideas which gain mainstream acceptance that don't pass the sniff test once we examine them further. A collection of terrible ideas can bring a society down just as quickly as the widespread use of force and coercion. And even the Right has problems with bad ideas, although they tend to be less susceptible because they prefer well-tested and proven ideas.
A couple of points on this front. It's not a good idea to lock disruptive or disorderly young men up in prison- we need to make distinctions between those who make us angry and those who really should scare us silly. Putting young men who are disorderly in prison doesn't help because the empirical data shows that placing them with a cohort that is strongly anti-social will make them more anti-social- and once they've served their relatively short sentences their is every chance they will pose a statistically higher risk to society. There are other ways to punish, and in some respects Texas has led the way with this approach- primarily because they wanted to save the taxpayer money.
The second thing is that whilst I am generally a neoliberal and believe in global trade, the consequences of shifting labour dealing with higher value tradables offshore was disastrous for the West. Although the service sector is great in many respects, it doesn't generally produce the types of non-low value work which is suitable for the non-college educated that manufacturing does.
You may think the lower prices are worth it but I can assure you they are not. First, you pay higher taxes through more government services in one of the core aspects of limited government- keeping its citizens safe. You're also paying higher premiums to insure yourself- the costs of EMTs are offset to paying customers and a higher likelihood your car will be broken into will be reflected in the prices you pay.
For proof, we only need to look at China. Over the past thirty years China has edged a little ahead of us Actuarial Science (my brother actually studied it here in the UK- of a class of thirty he was one of only two Brits- the rest were Asian, mostly Chinese). The other thing is the Chinese actually listen to their Actuarials, and make far greater use of them at a governmental level. It's also one of the reasons why HSBC was one of the few banks which sidestepped 2008.
Anyway, now that they are offshoring- making Africa China's China- they are shedding all their low value labour from manufacturing, but they are keeping the higher value tradables for themselves. With their more risk averse worldview, they seem to understand that it is just as important for markets to have labour reallocate efficiently as it is for capital to reallocate.
An economy needs decent blue collar work, because if it doesn't happen then fatherhood rates plummet. Many blame values and its certainly true to an extent, but for family formation you also need the right ingredients. Hypergamy is a part of human society and women may well have a man's kids if he isn't a productive father, but she certainly won't let him live in the home as a father if he isn't productive.
And M. Shayer informs us what happens to IQ when fatherhood collapses. I haven't read this paper in detail (but plan to), but I have read his 2008 paper. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289617302787 . Here is the title: IQ decline and Piaget: Does the rot start at the top?
Of course, the Left has a whole plethora of bad ideas, but I thought I would highlight just a couple on the Right which emerge through complexity.
Well, locking people up in prison is government force.
Higher taxes is force.
China is a king in using force, though all governments are damned good at it.
I think any bad idea that gains traction among the people without it being forced on them and causes them harm is fine. Bad ideas like that are a lesson to others who can see the harm of holding them. And if they collapse because they continue to hold those bad ideas voluntarily, they are supposed to die off. It's not a tragedy for bad people to have bad outcomes when they voluntarily choose to practice them.
I don't disagree with you, but government does have a profound effect in shaping the direction of the economy. If companies know offshoring will be treated sympathetically across governments then there is no reason for them not to do it. There were plenty of ways in which American could have dissuaded the practice of offshoring high value labour- soft changes to accountancy requirements and laws in one, accusations of unfair trade practices and subsidy is another.
Besides, most of those American companies effectively shot themselves in the foot. Many are no longer trading and many more have been marginalised through the exploitation of their IP. The only exception would appear to be branded goods where most of value is located in the brand, and not the manufacturing.
Whether you are right or not is open to debate. Whether global competition and comparative advantage are better for more than worse for fewer is hard to tease out. Expect some changes to be good, some to be bad. Only forced solutions keep the bad in place, and handcuff the good so future improvement is lost.
If you are right that those companies are changing, then all is good. That's how real progress happens...by trying to make your lot better with innovation and risk-taking, not pretending you know the outcomes in advance, or that harm to one group means all others must suffer to benefit them.
Well, I'm a big believer in heterodox economics and comparative advantage. But I think one of things which pollutes this concept is there are a number of ways a poor understanding of what actually constitutes competitive advantage on the part of stock market analysists can create share price evaluations which are completely divorced from reality.
With one of the companies for which I worked, a director went off and bought a machine that then sat idle for most of the week because he was trying to make a high end business compete in the low cost end when all our other inputs were geared for quality and service- the annoying thing was it worked, because the business press is quite willing to feature stories of phantom improvements- their value to the customers is based upon perceived knowledge which informs investment decisions regardless of whether the information is wrong or not.
I worked for another company where the net profits in a year were half the total value of the shares of the company! The was in the period when publicly traded companies were considered virtually worthless unless their senior management were in the process of offshoring. The company was subsequently subject to a management buy-in.
Don't get me wrong- stock markets are great if you are a value investor able to discern real value from the illusionary value the superficially perceptive herd tend to fixate upon, but I do think there is an extent to which this often fallacious and misinformed type of thinking tends to undermine the productive value of entire sectors.
I think its one the reasons why VCs can be so successful- they are focused on the real. Sometimes high labour costs can be a sign of an incredibly productive and innovative workforce who have learned to compromise with management and understand that their bonuses and future pay rises are dependent upon increasing productivity and adding value for their customers, but more often than not they are to be found working for privately owned businesses. In the Anglosphere, such high labour costs are seem as an embarrassment in terms of the way potential shareholders might perceive them.
Yes, but you'll always have some people making good business decisions and others making bad ones. Predicting the future is hard, knowing where competition will come from next nearly impossible, suffering theft/fraud/error/bad-PR by employees/management. All human activity is trial and error/success built on top of what we think we know now and nobody can tease it out at scale or accurately predict the future.
I couldn't agree more, and it's great advice. It really is so very difficult to create emotional detachment when it comes to race. Why is that? Probably the same reason that racial discrimination seems so odious . . . there's nothing that you can do about your race. Things that deeply affect your life over which you have no control are really hard for a lot of us to deal with.
Thoughtful comment. I think the key point here is that the awfully named Structural Racism doesn't require actual racism or bias- although there is a compelling argument that many of the terrible disparities we see today were based upon well-intentioned liberal policies in the past. High density housing is the easy, because their isn't much to defend it. Welfare is more complicated, until we consider how easy would it have been to dissolve welfare bureaucracies, and reinvent welfare as a one stop poverty payment which was gradually phased out through tax and thereby remove almost all of the disincentive to work or be a productive father.
A very insightful article. To my mind racism is a problem because it is usually perceived as being one directional. Link it into the fact that certain groups underperform and you have a potent brew. However, racism operates both ways and so we need to look elsewhere for the cause of under performance. I don't think there is one cause but a myriad of interlinked causes of which racism is a very minor aspect.
The West has done a massive amount to eliminate racism and pretty much successfully. Unfortunately, for some people it will never be enough. The woke left and the writers who express crypto-racist views like Reni Eddo-Lodge (Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race') imagine it everywhere rather like the 'Reds under the bed' scares. Some people would rather imagine a one size fits all problem and solution. Personally I prefer a non-fashionable colour blind approach.
'Personally I prefer a non-fashionable colour blind approach.' I've started changing the wording I use here- I simply say that I prefer to treat people as individuals. I have a suspicion as to why some unconscious discrimination still exists- I think that one when professional managers try to be impartial and objective they necessarily push themselves cognitively into a more critical state- examining their own actions and motives may, by extension, make them more critical of those they are interviewing or interacting with. This obviously creates an unequal system, because they won't be doing to same with their own ingroup, with which natural rapport exists.
I first noticed something similar with my writing years ago. I would ask family and close friends to take a look at my first drafts. I specifically asked them to ignore spelling and grammar, and instead give me a general sense of whether they liked the piece, but they would instead feel compelled to tell me there was no double mm in moment. Something similar seems to happen with female entrepreneurs pitching to VCs- they are far more likely to be asked how they will protect their customer base, rather than how are they going to grow their business?
It makes sense in relation to this particular subject matter. If one is warily self-auditing ones thoughts and behaviour for potential bias, then it might automatically tip the brain into a defensive and reactive mindset, gathering evidence as post hoc proof that the individual was being impartial. We should instead teach managers to build their leadership skills when working across artificial barriers- to build rapport and reciprocal trust- that would make them fair.
The application quandary is a far easier problem to solve. Line managers only really have two levers to get their workers to shift their asses from the 60% effort which is typical to around 90%- it's carrot and stick all the way. HR and other bureaucracies have already taken away a lot of the power of the stick, so that leaves personal development in the form of training and promotions. Any line manager worth their salt in going to want to hand out promotions internally, as a means of dangling the carrot in future to other employees- especially if the promotion is to another department or division. Plus, their associate managers are going to want to aim for the tried and tested- especially when one substandard employee dealing with important or sensitive issues can blow their performance out of the window.
But most HR departments insist upon advertising jobs, and in some countries it is a statutory requirement. Presented with this deliberate attempt to undermine their effectiveness, most managers will eliminate high-end paper candidates with diverse backgrounds during the applications phase- for the simple reason that it would look a lot worse if they preferenced the person they want for the job over a diverse candidate during the interview phase.
I don't think we're actually far apart on this. Current woke thought specifically rejects the colour blind approach and elevates colour to the paramount factor in making a judgement. In this system whiteness per se is downgraded and is a negative point. The assessment of a person's abilities and their treatment as an individual is actually irrelevant in this system.
As you most aptly point out this does eliminate the high end candidates and let in the mediocre just to fulfill quotas and tick a few boxes.
Detention for one minute late the school? I think I would have had my fair share of those…
“ every parent is subject to the same stringent disciplinary code as the students.”
What does that mean? How could a parent be disciplined by the school? Charged a higher fee for tuition? They can’t be put in detention. That would be like my parents telling me today that I was in a time out. I’d laugh.
Race and education are both emotionally charged topics, but I think there may be a broader desire in America for nuance conversations. The Very Online Twitter mobs are very polarized. But most Americans of all races don’t want to have their kids segregated in schools. There’s higher acceptance of interracial marriage than ever before and, importantly, high rates of actual interracial marriage. Meaning that America is getting more racial diverse but less racially divided.
I’m definitely not one to say we’ve totally solved race in America even if I think we’ve come an incredibly long way. True racism is rare but I saw a fair amount of it growing up. It seems to me that most of the people pushing theories of systemic racism (which in a few highly specific cases does exist), haven’t seen much real racism (i.e., individuals actually willing to physically and emotionally attack other individuals due to the color of their skin).
When the Left talks about structural racism, what they are really talking about it is disparities of outcome. It's all so unnecessary because 2019 there were 7 million vacancies for reasonably well-paid blue collar jobs, and there were also certain areas of the economy, liking housing, which had never recovered to replacement levels of production. What's needed is a massive shift to vocational training in K-12 starting at age 14.
And this is before we consider the role of immigration. Don't get me wrong- I'm in favour of high levels of migration, but generally it should be for the types of highly cognitive jobs which no country generates the personnel to fill adequately, for those qualified in the courses kids in the West don't want to study. Australia has a Priority Migration Skilled Occupation List, and it worked well for years because it protected blue collar jobs- although recently the addition of blue collar jobs is probably one of the main things driving the beginnings of populism in Australia.
We need to seriously think about how we are going to employ the legions of kids who don't well at school. What the Left doesn't seem to understand is that labour is basic need (although it is also important at every level of Maslow's hierarchy). The thing is, this is the one type of equalisation which makes a whole lot of sense- because a policy which helps every kid who doesn't do well at school would disproportionately help African Americans and Latinos. The Pew data shows both demographics have a higher percentage of people at the bottom stacked up with low incomes.
Match kids to decent economic opportunities, especially those which foster blue collar dignity and respect, and most of the social problems associated with the 2% of districts in America where 50% of all violent crime occurs simply evaporate. More men with stable blue collar jobs means more families. More families in a community means an intergenerational lift into the next generation and even shows up in significantly improved cognitive development for children, mainly through peer group, but also because of the removal of negative factors and higher levels of parental engagement.
What the Left gets wrong is thinking that people want equality. Most people further down the economic spectrum just want fairness. Unfortunately, whilst higher levels of unemployment for some demographics remain static, people are always going to believe in a rigged game.
Yes. I agree with all that.
What I meant by saying there are a few cases of systemic racism are that there are in fact a few specific examples of particular cases: certain bridges in New York were purposefully built in the 1930s to be so low that buses could not pass through. This was a roundabout way of keeping African Americans and immigrants (poor ethnic groups who did not have cars) away from the beaches. NIMBY housing policies can also be systemically racist. But, no, I don’t believe disparate outcomes are the product of some kind of deep societal racism embedded in the fabric of human hearts and minds or any such nonsense.
While I agree that we should avoid emotional quick fixes (... the style and wording of some of the CRT education bans come to mind ... ), I take issue with points Two, Three, and Four.
Adopting those without caution is just asking to concede, and concede, and concede. Which is how we got here.
"They invade our space and we fall back. They decimate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here."
I'm not saying we should concede our position, but simply operate using a style of rhetoric which is less combative and confrontation. One of the reasons why liberals convince large segments of the population is because they wear their hearts on the sleeves and adopt a stance of emotional understanding, compassion and caring.
Have you ever heard of Anthony Daniels (a.k.a. Theodore Dalrymple)? Here he is with an Intelligence Squared Debate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UesrrHVLa0&t=4s (also featuring Amy Chua). Listen to his style. It's not strident or particularly argument. His is generous to his opponents. But here the thing- apologies for the spoiler, but it is the single biggest audience shift I've seen in a debate, and I've seen quite a few.
The other thing to consider is how do we broach these subjects when they are more personal than public. I think it's horrible that friendships end over this sort of thing, or that it can strain family relations. When dealing with those who are close to us, I was trying to suggest an approach which might be more constructive, without ignoring such subjects completely...
Ideas that aren't forced on others are rarely combative or confrontational. Bad people who think their good ideas must be forced on others must be eliminated from power, as power corrupts, and all people are bad once they have power to control another.
Just starting to read. I love your opening sentence. Truly. But typo in sentence #2:
Emotional attachment or investment is the greatest barrier to engaging rational thinking, or the type of empiricism which could solve our most pressing thorny problems. When we first envisaged the promised land which MLK invited us to march towards, we HAD no understanding . . .
Cheers for that!