Recommended Reading – Articles
If I have the political power, and I’m afraid of you becoming rich and challenging me politically, then it makes a lot of sense for me to create a set of institutions that don’t give you secure property rights. If I’m afraid of you starting new businesses and attracting my workers away from me, it makes a lot of sense for me to regulate you in such a way that it totally kills your ability to grow or undertake innovations.
So, if I am really afraid of losing political power to you, that really brings me to the politics of institutions, where the logic is not so much the economic consequences, but the political consequences. This means that, say, when considering some reform, what most politicians and powerful elites in society really care about is not whether this reform will make the population at large better off, but whether it will make it easier or harder for them to cling to power.
Walter Russell Meade – Establishment Blues
….The American people aren’t perfect yet and never will be — but by the standards that matter to the Establishment, this is the best prepared, most open minded and most socially liberal generation in history. Unsatisfactory as the American people may be from the standpoints of Georgetown and Manhattan, this is as good as it gets. Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman could only dream of the kind of sophisticated and cosmopolitan understanding that folks in Peoria have now compared to the old days.
The American people are less prejudiced, more globally aware and more willing to meet other cultures and societies halfway than ever before. Minorities today are better protected in law and more fairly treated by the public than ever in our history. No previous generation has been as determined to give women a fair chance in life, or to attack the foul legacy of racism. The American people have never been as religiously tolerant as they are today, as concerned about the environment, or more willing to make sacrifices around the world to promote the peace and well being of humanity as a whole.
By contrast, we have never had an Establishment that was so ill-equipped to lead. It is the Establishment, not the people, that is falling down on the job.
Here in the early years of the twenty-first century, the American elite is a walking disaster and is in every way less capable than its predecessors. It is less in touch with American history and culture, less personally honest, less productive, less forward looking, less effective at and less committed to child rearing, less freedom loving, less sacrificially patriotic and less entrepreneurial than predecessor generations. Its sense of entitlement and snobbery is greater than at any time since the American Revolution; its addiction to privilege is greater than during the Gilded Age and its ability to raise its young to be productive and courageous leaders of society has largely collapsed.
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MikeF:
January 22nd, 2012 at 10:58 am
Zen, you’ve probably already read this book, but I’ve been studying the concept of energy expenditure in Joseph Tainter’s concept of energy expenditure developed in his book The Collapse of Complex Societies (1990).
We, as a people, have a finite amount of energy to use. While some have argued that we’ve wasted blood and treasure in these endeavors, the problem is actually greater: we’ve expended massive amounts of energy (intellectual capital, time, resources).
There is a point of diminishing returns that happens quickly after a regime change where any additionally external effort (COIN, CT, Nation-building, etc) is scaled back exponentially.
Consider how much effort has been placed into these wars for limited gains, and then compare that by asking the question
Where could we be better expending our energy?
zen:
January 23rd, 2012 at 3:04 am
Hi Mike!
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I have – after John Robb reviewed it I picked up a copy:
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https://zenpundit.com/?p=3632
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You hit it on the head with diminishing returns. Starting from a state of economic simplicity, adding complexity through specialization and even bureaucracy greatly multiplies societal productivity – up to a point. Beyond that, adding more complexity s a drain, especially where in non-market situations there’s no “natural” way to liquidate this complexity or respond to feedback signals the way companies do by going bankrupt or losing profits, market share or valued employees. Bureaucracies are very hard to get rid of even when they are horribly counterproductive and wasteful.
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Specifically to your point on military/FP, Less is more. The only cost-effective interventions (wars of choice, not WWII situs) are done on a shoestring, leverage applied like jujitsu to the pressure point. When I was reading Walter LeFeber”s Inevitable Revolutions, looking past his leftist agenda, it was amazing how many of the successful interventions undertaken by the US (that LeFeber was condemning) were laughably small, hastily improvised, operations by the USMC or the CIA. Some of them are also in Boot’s Savage Wars of Peace. Contrast this with the “big show” interventions like Vietnam or Iraq
joey(Concerned of Tumbridge Wells):
January 23rd, 2012 at 2:00 pm
The fact has been identified that America has less class mobility than the majority of other European or European descended countries.
The problem is that America does not have a clue as to how to change it, and the trend is worsening.
The juxtaposition between the top two articles makes me think that Zen sees the growth in the wealth of the few and the increasingly paramilitary appearance of law enforcement are not an accident.
Am i reading to much into this…
Chris:
January 23rd, 2012 at 5:20 pm
I think it’s worth noting that these problems, whilst not as acute in Europe, certainly still there and continue to impact upon our politics. In the UK the current Conservative Government has a large number of what Charles Murray describes as third generation elites (or a lot more in our case). Our current Chancellor is a Baronet, a brief glance at Wikipedia reveals him to be the 17th of that line, so a little removed from the common man. Many others in both the major Parties are in a similar position, and the lobbying class is also heavily interwoven with the weathy and the political classes (who are increasingly wealthy in themselves).
There’s a good post up on Kings of War at the moment which talks about our desire not to lose being much stronger than our desire to win. Inherently elites have these same drives, but in their case they stand to lose power, money, titles and so forth, and they have both the means and the drive therefore to “lock in” their success through legislation.
Consider laws like SOPA and ACTA, both concieved of by the lobbyists of the entertainment industry. Here you have a perfect example of industries (and by extension those who run those industries) seeking to lock in a particular business model which has created a great deal of weath for them and their friends. These pieces of legislation have been shown to cause harm to innovation and opportunities to create new wealth (as well as breaking the internet in the case of SOPA, which could be a big deal), yet SOPA was almost passed without any real discuss, and ACTA almost certainly will pass.
What is encouraging is that there is “society” as a whole, particularly in the US and Europe is swiftly waking up to the power they have, particularly over the electorate. Ultimately politicians want to keep their jobs, and if they realise that the public truly are liable to hold them to account they do need to compromise.
However, I do think that America has unique problems to worry about, as its the only society I think where a lobbyist (Former Senator Chris Dodd) could say this and not cause enormous problems: