Worthwhile Reading & Watching

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A thoughtful piece on England and its influence.

Related: The rage of the British elites.  Note especially the guy who compares Musk’s purchase of Twitter with Paris under the Nazi occupation.

Katya Sedgwick, who grew up in the USSR, on the social costs of scarcity.  Not just of scarcity, I think, but of top-down economic planning.

A Norwegian study found that replacing one of the 5% worst general practitioners with one of average quality generates a social benefit of $9 million.   Surely true of many other occupations as well.

CDR Salamander writes about dependencies on China on US defense procurement.

Speaking of defense procurement, Tablet has a long profile of Palmer Luckey, founder of the defense startup Anduril:  American Vulcan.  The article also mentions General Bernard Schriever, who spearheaded USAF ballistic missile development in the 1950s and 1960s–and we need some Schrievers in government and well as entrepreneurial and creative people in the private sector if we are to become more nimble and effective in weapons-system development.  See my review of Schriever’s biography: A fiery peace in a cold war.

The WSJ book section last weekend had a review of Patrick Bishop’s “Paris 1944″…reminded me of an outstanding French TV series set during years of the Occupation. “A French Village,” as its name suggests, is set not in Paris but in the fictional town of Villeneuve.  One of the best television series I have ever seen.  Here’s my review.  That link goes to Ricochet, I also posted a review at Chicago Boyz, but the one at Ricochet is easier to read due to the WordPress typography plague.  This series should really not be missed.

Dancing the Minnesota Walz

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I think the most purely risible, ‘laugh out loud and roll on the floor’ headline of the current presidential campaign must be this one: Tim Walz’s Masculinity Is Terrifying to Republicans

This unintentionally hilarious take has been committed by one Frances Wilkinson, in an opinion piece for the entity known as Bloomberg.com. I do not know anything about Frances Wilkinson, but will venture a couple of guesses here: one, that she doesn’t really know any Republicans personally; two, that she is as acute a judge of what constitutes masculinity-fearing-Republicans as Rachael Gunn (the notorious Raygun of the Australian Olympic breakdancing team) is of break-dancing technique; and three, who the heck is terrified by the masculinity of a guy who looks like a live-action movie version of Elmer Fudd anyway?

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No, They Don’t Really Believe in ‘Equality’

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Kamala Harris has talked a lot about ‘equality,’ and she doesn’t mean equality before the law, nor equality of opportunity but equality of outcomes, ie, equity in the current terminology of the Left.  (video)  Many other “progressive” politicians have adopted similar positions, though rarely expressed in quite so explicit and extreme a manner.  But I would argue that very few among those politicians and other prominent or influential people who argue for ‘equity’ or ‘equality’ really want any such thing.

Consider, for example: Many people in ‘progressive’ leadership positions are graduates of the Harvard Law School. Do you think these people want to see a society in which the career, status, and income prospects for an HLS grad are no better than those for a graduate of a lesser-known, lower-status (but still very good) law school?  C’mon.

Quite a few ‘progressive’ leaders are members of prominent families. Do you think Teddy Kennedy would have liked to see an environment in which he and certain other members of his family would have had to answer for their actions in the criminal courts in the same way that ordinary individuals would, without benefit from connections, media influence, and expensive lawyers?

The prevalence of  ‘progressivism’ among tenured professors is quite high. How many of these professors would be eager to agree to employment conditions in which their job security and employee benefits were no better than those enjoyed by average Americans? How many of them would take a salary cut in order to provide higher incomes for the poorly-paid adjunct professors at their universities? How many would like to see PhD requirements eliminated so that a wider pool of talented and knowledgeable individuals can participate in university teaching?

There are a lot of  ‘progressives’ among the graduates of Ivy League universities. How many of them would be in favor of legally eliminating alumni preferences and the influence of  contributions and have their children considered for  admission–or not–on the same basis as everyone else’s kids? Yet an alumni preference is an intergenerational asset in the same way that a small businessman’s store or factory is such an asset.

Do you think that Hillary Clinton would be happy living as an ordinary individual, without power, status, national and global recognition, and, yes, the money she and her husband have been able to accumulate  in their lifetime of ‘public service’?  (I remember she once chose to wear a $12K Armani jacket while delivering a speech lamenting Inequality)  Is Kamala herself not seeking a rather extreme form of inequality by seeking the highest office in the land?  Is not regular access to Air Force One a form of inequality at least as potent as a billionaire’s access to the business or personal jet that he owns?

The reality is that ‘progressivism’ is not in any way about equality, it is rather about shifting the distribution of power and wealth in a way that benefits those with certain kinds of educational credentials and certain kinds of connections, and, especially those who are holders of important political offices. And remember, power is always and everywhere transmutable into wealth. Sometimes that wealth is directly in monetary form, as with the millions of dollars that former presidents such as  Clinton and Obama have made from speaking fees, or the money made by a former government official who leverages his contacts into an executive job with a an energy company even though he may have minimal knowledge of either energy or business. And sometimes the wealth takes the form of in-kind benefits, like a governor’s mansion or access to government aircraft.  (Those who lived in the old Soviet Union and Eastern Europe can tell you all about in-kind benefits for nominally low-paid officials.)  Plus, power itself provides a kind of ‘psychic income’, which can be as valuable to the beneficiary as is monetary income.

And, almost always, today’s ‘progressivism;  is about the transfer of power from individuals to credentialed ‘experts’ who will coerce or ‘nudge’ people to do what those experts have decided would be best.

To a very substantial extent, the talk about ‘equity’ and ‘equality’  is a smokescreen, conscious or unconscious, behind which  ‘progressives’ pursue their own economic, status, and ego agendas.  It is a about a kind of class warfare, conducted on a horizontal rather than a vertical basis.  If your career is based on academic credentials from an ‘elite’ university, or on political connections, or on being in a politically-favored industry, you would come out ahead under the Harris-Walz view of how things should work. But if your career is based on hard work, measurable accomplishment, and creativity, not so much. Especially if you are not willing to eagerly express agreement with whatever the elements of the  ‘progressive’ worldview might be at any particular time.

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Let the Games Begin

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The ancient Greeks gave us “democracy,” a set of rules for candidates to compete for the right to rule. They also gave us the Olympics, a set of rules for individuals, teams and ultimately countries to compete in athletic events. The Olympics outlawed certain drugs, standardized the technology and separated males from females (historically) due to genetic differences, but otherwise there is no favoritism due to race, ethnicity, family history, country of origin, etc. Medals are awarded only to the top performers, gold/silver/bronze (all formerly used for money). Capitalism is a comparable set of rules for competition among individuals, teams and countries. Technology and management differences are allowed, even encouraged, as all contestants share in it over time. Similarly, capitalist competition is the source of virtually all human improvement for winners and losers alike. The US Constitution uniquely established rules for a competitive democracy and competitive market economy, historically the source of US economic growth.

 

The Olympics is a big business, with a history of scandals relating to kickbacks to judges, host country officials or Olympic Committee Members that corrupts the competition. Similarly, politicians who make the rules for a market economy that show favoritism to particular industries, firms or people, i.e., crony capitalism, is the corrupt antithesis of competitive market capitalism.

 

Competing with Olympic coverage in France, ironically under the French banner of “equality,” is the current political competition for the US presidency, which both sides agree is “pivotal” for democracy’s future, but the democracy spectrum runs from a limited government representative republic on the right to a majoritarian “peoples democracy” on the left. Each campaign accuses the other of hate, fear mongering, political pandering and the usual lies and misinformation (political spin). So far it has been an entertaining tag team mud wrestling match (even these have rules and limits).

 

But for over a century the fundamental economic choice has been between competitive market capitalism and egalitarian socialism, growth versus stagnation. The divide has never been more clear, although the Democratic Party eschews the socialist label. In 2020, when openly socialist Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders appeared a certain victor, the Party pulled the candidate, but adopted his “democratic socialism” platform. Current candidate Harris, similarly anointed, has either agreed with or been to the left of that platform on every issue, recent flip/flops notwithstanding. Their radical distributional “democratic socialism” goes beyond “to each according to his needs” to require “to each equally.” Their production ideology, eschewing state ownership, calls for a fair degree of state control.

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“Whole of Society”

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From a recent article in Tablet Magazine about the phrase Whole of Society:

The term was popularized roughly a decade ago by the Obama administration, which liked that its bland, technocratic appearance could be used as cover to erect a mechanism for the government to control public life that can, at best, be called “Soviet-style.” Here’s the simplest definition: “Individuals, civil society and companies shape interactions in society, and their actions can harm or foster integrity in their communities. A whole-of-society approach asserts that as these actors interact with public officials and play a critical role in setting the public agenda and influencing public decisions, they also have a responsibility to promote public integrity.”

In other words, the government enacts policies and then “enlists” corporations, NGOs and even individual citizens to enforce them—creating a 360-degree police force made up of the companies you do business with, the civic organizations that you think make up your communal safety net, even your neighbors. What this looks like in practice is a small group of powerful people using public-private partnerships to silence the Constitution, censor ideas they don’t like, deny their opponents access to banking, credit, the internet, and other public accommodations in a process of continuous surveillance, constantly threatened cancellation, and social control.

Read the whole article.

I recently ran across an essay from 1913 on A City Built by Experts, by Frederick Howe, which prefigures the ‘Whole of Society’ thinking discussed in the Tablet article.

City planning is the art of building cities as men build homes, as engineers project railroad systems, as landscape artists lay out garden cities, as manufacturing corporations build factory towns like Gary, Indiana or Pullman, Illinois.  City planning treats the city as a unit in an organic whole.  It lays out the land on which the city is built as an individual plans a private estate. It locates public buildings so as to secure the highest architectural effects and anticipates the future with the farsightedness of an army commander, so as to secure the orderly harmonious and symmetrical development of the community. 

City planning makes provisions for people as well as industry, coordinates play with work, beauty with utility.  It lays out parks, boulevards, and playgrounds, and links up water, rail, and street traffic so as to reduce the waste production to a minimum.

In a big way,  city planning is the first conscious recognition of the unity of society, It involves a socializing of art and beauty and control of the unconstrained license to the individual. It enlarges the power of the state to include the things men own as well as the men themselves and widens the idea of sovereignty so as to protect the community from him who abuses the rights of property, as it now protects the community from him who abuses his personal freedom. 

City planning involves a new version of the city.  It means a city built by experts in architecture, in landscape gardening, in engineering and housing; by students of health, sanitation, transportation, water, gas and electricity supply; by a new type of municipal official who visualizes the complex life of 1 million people as the builders of an earlier age visualized an individual home.

(Emphasis added. The essay is excerpted in Visions of Technology, edited by Richard Rhodes.)

Interesting that Howe claims for his approach the term ‘organic’,  while totally eschewing the whole idea of the organic development of cities and institutions.  Interesting also that Woodrow Wilson was elected for the first time in that same year of 1913, and that he also employed the phraseology of an organic whole in rejecting the idea of the separation of powers.

The “whole of society” concept is something that easily goes beyond authoritarianism and slides into totalitarianism:  remember Mussolini’s dictum: ““Everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing above the state”…and also that German word Gleichschaltung.