“What Nathan misses is that the moment anyone tried to take seriously the implications of Darwinism in social policy, they were demonized and are today equated with Hitler. I’m of course talking about the Eugenics movement, the progressive cause of the day.”
That is not how things worked between Darwin and WWII. Racial science and eugenics were not demonized until after WWII, which is why so many historical texts and prominent thinkers have to be cancelled today.
Exactly. They were demonized only when it became associated with Nazis...after the Nazi were defeated. So, that's a good 85 years where the implications of Darwinism on social policy were not just accepted but championed by progressives.
If anything, this anecdote points to optimism in changing beliefs.
I’m pretty pessimistic for the same reasons as Brian; inequity aversion is pretty fundamental to the human psyche, and expecting people to “get over it” seems unlikely, but it is important to know that all of this, not so long ago (and with much less evidence in favor) was once the waters in which elites swam.
"Here’s the thing: despite this pathology, mankind has made a lot of technological and economic progress."
Completely true, but on a kind of log scale of progress, how much of that occurred before our pathological need to not be the bad guy grew to it present proportions? Newton, James Watt, Andrew Carnegie, Einstein weren't put into competition with midwits (of which I freely admit I might be one). If Newton were born today, he might look at higher learning and decide to become a plumber.
"This can be clearly seen in the case of sex. In many ways, society accepts men and women are different. Yet civil rights law and programs to for example get more young girls into coding are able to easily ignore this fact when convenient. "
Sex is different because individual men have an incentive to defect. Your average programmer knows the women next to him aren't as good as he is, but having one more woman in his dating pool, one with any degree of understanding of what he does is valuable to him. Even when this isn't true, should he choose to go Damore, his general dating prospects will be hindered. Even when he's already married, his wife will speak approvingly of what a good feminist he is for supporting the latest gender equality initiative.
There is no real racial equivalent to this. Raising the salience of race differences means reducing the population of some races with which you interact with, or which can ever judge you. There is no innate human need for racial diversity like there is for sex.
So the masses shouldn't have any impact (because apparently that means communism, even though communism has only ever been imposed in war torn non-white countries), but the elites having all the power is bad (because like what actually happens in places like China/Russia, etc).
We have massive polarization during COVID, and it did nothing to facilitate freedom. Whereas the countries with high social trust (Nordics) got freedom despite being "socialists".
If you want freedom and markets, you want a republic full of white people.
Without HBD, it's difficult to explain why you don't want to be flooded with browns. Once you flooded with browns, you ain't getting freedom and markets bub.
> What Nathan misses is that the moment anyone tried to take seriously the implications of Darwinism in social policy, they were demonized and are today equated with Hitler. I’m of course talking about the Eugenics movement, the progressive cause of the day.
> So basically, my solution is present day America with fewer regulatory agencies
The problem is that reducing pathological regulation and so on is a public good so it will generically be underprovided; libertarianism is thus self-undermining.
There needs to be an organization - a sort of meta-government - whose job is to reduce overregulation and other forager pathologies. But it is currently not possible (or not easy!) to create such an org.
Yes, "rule of law and free markets" are the solution. History proves that they work better to raise the standard of living and the quality of life. (E.g. The End of History...")
The left don't oppose that solution because it doesn't work. Any intelligent leftist knows that the rightist solution does work. It seems that until we understand the leftist opposition to what is right, we will never be able to implement the solution that works. Because the left will continue to defeat it.
> The left don't oppose that solution because it doesn't work.
Almost the entire left since the french revolution has been defined by opposition to markets! Did you miss the french revolution, communist revolution, progressive era, and the current election??
The French Revolution is the turning point after which society organized on capitalism and free markets (and not e.g. the church or some feudal rules) exists. It was the revolution of the newly ascending capitalist classes against the Old Regime (royals, church, and so on).
Moderl style capitalism has started to grow a few centuries before, but it was then that it started taking over as the central ideology of the state and moved those older organizing principles aside.
The "right" in the French Revolution wasn't free market proponents. They were royalists.
A reading of "Citizens" convinced me that it was one of those "reform leads to revolution" things, and that the hereditary nobility were often the ones going into business, opening factories, and doing the supposedly "bourgeois" work of ushering in the industrial revolution in France.
I could be convinced some other way, but that was the book I read.
I don't know how far it goes, but Louis XVI was George III-like in that he loved technology much more so than court nonsense.
Finally, I believe there is some evidence that to a surprising extent given the slaughter - the families who were successful before the Revolution, tend to reappear in the upper class a couple decades after the Revolution as well.
NGL, when comments are turned off on a post that doesn't have a paid section, it's mostly because I forgot (the default is subscriber-only can comment, even on public posts)
“What Nathan misses is that the moment anyone tried to take seriously the implications of Darwinism in social policy, they were demonized and are today equated with Hitler. I’m of course talking about the Eugenics movement, the progressive cause of the day.”
That is not how things worked between Darwin and WWII. Racial science and eugenics were not demonized until after WWII, which is why so many historical texts and prominent thinkers have to be cancelled today.
Exactly. They were demonized only when it became associated with Nazis...after the Nazi were defeated. So, that's a good 85 years where the implications of Darwinism on social policy were not just accepted but championed by progressives.
If anything, this anecdote points to optimism in changing beliefs.
I’m pretty pessimistic for the same reasons as Brian; inequity aversion is pretty fundamental to the human psyche, and expecting people to “get over it” seems unlikely, but it is important to know that all of this, not so long ago (and with much less evidence in favor) was once the waters in which elites swam.
"Here’s the thing: despite this pathology, mankind has made a lot of technological and economic progress."
Completely true, but on a kind of log scale of progress, how much of that occurred before our pathological need to not be the bad guy grew to it present proportions? Newton, James Watt, Andrew Carnegie, Einstein weren't put into competition with midwits (of which I freely admit I might be one). If Newton were born today, he might look at higher learning and decide to become a plumber.
"This can be clearly seen in the case of sex. In many ways, society accepts men and women are different. Yet civil rights law and programs to for example get more young girls into coding are able to easily ignore this fact when convenient. "
Sex is different because individual men have an incentive to defect. Your average programmer knows the women next to him aren't as good as he is, but having one more woman in his dating pool, one with any degree of understanding of what he does is valuable to him. Even when this isn't true, should he choose to go Damore, his general dating prospects will be hindered. Even when he's already married, his wife will speak approvingly of what a good feminist he is for supporting the latest gender equality initiative.
There is no real racial equivalent to this. Raising the salience of race differences means reducing the population of some races with which you interact with, or which can ever judge you. There is no innate human need for racial diversity like there is for sex.
So the masses shouldn't have any impact (because apparently that means communism, even though communism has only ever been imposed in war torn non-white countries), but the elites having all the power is bad (because like what actually happens in places like China/Russia, etc).
We have massive polarization during COVID, and it did nothing to facilitate freedom. Whereas the countries with high social trust (Nordics) got freedom despite being "socialists".
If you want freedom and markets, you want a republic full of white people.
Without HBD, it's difficult to explain why you don't want to be flooded with browns. Once you flooded with browns, you ain't getting freedom and markets bub.
You can bet on the effect on the market of “being flooded with browns”.
Polygenic embryo selection is coming fast enough to overwhelm effects from migration.
> What Nathan misses is that the moment anyone tried to take seriously the implications of Darwinism in social policy, they were demonized and are today equated with Hitler. I’m of course talking about the Eugenics movement, the progressive cause of the day.
But eugenics used to be quite popular!
> So basically, my solution is present day America with fewer regulatory agencies
The problem is that reducing pathological regulation and so on is a public good so it will generically be underprovided; libertarianism is thus self-undermining.
There needs to be an organization - a sort of meta-government - whose job is to reduce overregulation and other forager pathologies. But it is currently not possible (or not easy!) to create such an org.
Yes, "rule of law and free markets" are the solution. History proves that they work better to raise the standard of living and the quality of life. (E.g. The End of History...")
The left don't oppose that solution because it doesn't work. Any intelligent leftist knows that the rightist solution does work. It seems that until we understand the leftist opposition to what is right, we will never be able to implement the solution that works. Because the left will continue to defeat it.
> The left don't oppose that solution because it doesn't work.
Almost the entire left since the french revolution has been defined by opposition to markets! Did you miss the french revolution, communist revolution, progressive era, and the current election??
What I meant to say was that the left oppose the solution because it does work.
The French Revolution is the turning point after which society organized on capitalism and free markets (and not e.g. the church or some feudal rules) exists. It was the revolution of the newly ascending capitalist classes against the Old Regime (royals, church, and so on).
Moderl style capitalism has started to grow a few centuries before, but it was then that it started taking over as the central ideology of the state and moved those older organizing principles aside.
The "right" in the French Revolution wasn't free market proponents. They were royalists.
A reading of "Citizens" convinced me that it was one of those "reform leads to revolution" things, and that the hereditary nobility were often the ones going into business, opening factories, and doing the supposedly "bourgeois" work of ushering in the industrial revolution in France.
I could be convinced some other way, but that was the book I read.
I don't know how far it goes, but Louis XVI was George III-like in that he loved technology much more so than court nonsense.
Finally, I believe there is some evidence that to a surprising extent given the slaughter - the families who were successful before the Revolution, tend to reappear in the upper class a couple decades after the Revolution as well.
Asshole, ur gonna get comments turned off for non-paid subscribers again and my subscription budget is running low.
NGL, when comments are turned off on a post that doesn't have a paid section, it's mostly because I forgot (the default is subscriber-only can comment, even on public posts)
I am going to remove that guy's comments this time though. Honestly, one semi-incoherent comment is fine, but four of them is a bit much