This Summer I've been doing some research on broad strategies for positive societal progress.
In Robert Zubrin's Merchant's of Despair, Zubrin offers a critique of anti-humanism, or the institutions and philosophies that prioritize the well-being of humans below other goals such as environmentalism. Zubrin offers, to my eyes, a new form of humanism which is much more practical in its pursuit of human well-being at the expense of almost everything else (DDT may not be so bad after all if it eliminates major disease vectors and some of history's most vigorous diseases at the small cost of a few soft bird eggs).
Paul Krugman in End this Depression Now argues that empirical economic theory, including old-school Keynesianism, provides us with all the tools we need to get past the current economic depression, if only our Global elites weren't stuck on morality-based austerity. He also offers an outline of how the ruling elites might have gotten to be so misguided: inequality. Krugman argues that extreme inequality has thrown off the balance of political discourse between policy for the general population and policy for the very wealthy.
Where Krugman wrote a few passages on the causes of inequality and the negative outcomes that result from it, Chris Hayes has written a book on it: his debut, Twilight of the Elites. Hayes argues that meritocracy, for all of it's virtues, contains vicious circles which, if left unchecked, tend to create a ruling elite doomed to fail. This phenomenon of failure is caused primarily by an increase of social distance between the ruling elite, selected by meritocratic institutions, and those who are ruled. This increased social distance reduces the costs of failed policy and of rigging the system. Chris Hayes introduces the valuable ideas of the fail decade (2000-2010) and fractal inequality, wherein each fractionally smaller division of the US population, there is a similar distance between economic status.
Stephen Pinker's deep tome of optimism, Better Angels of Our Nature, is as valuable as it is large. Pinker's argument is that we are unequivocally better as a society now than we were at any time previously. Pinker's analysis might be called fractal progress, as each fractionally smaller span of time (The last 10 years, 100 years, 1000 years) tell the story of similar levels of societal benefit. Pinker argues that this phenomenon is the result of an expansion of the circle of concern and an the collectivisation of the enforcement of good behavior.
Finally, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson seek to account for the stark contrast (and its relative persistance) between rich and poor nations with Why Nations Fail. Their thesis is both somewhat new and somewhat obvious: economic and political institutions (and not geography, culture, religion, or race) are the primary causes of the success and failure of nations. Many factors influence the development of such institutions, primarily, the two types of institutions, extractive and inclusive, tend to reinforce and magnify similar institutions in vicious (or virtuous) circles. But, also importantly, exogenous events have the capacity to create inflection points where institutional drift may change courses and inclusive institutions may begin to overcome the perverse incentives provided by extractive ones (or vice versa).
I have a few friends with whom I like to discuss things-that-seem-important-at-the-time. Somehow, all of them are either explicitly anarchists or at least have anarchist tendencies. If it wasn't obvious from my summaries, each of the books I've been reading more or less presuppose a state and then seeks to justify a vision of what sort of state works best or how a state might be improved. This makes conversations somewhat difficult. My project for the next little while will be to build (or find) an argument for statism.
In Robert Zubrin's Merchant's of Despair, Zubrin offers a critique of anti-humanism, or the institutions and philosophies that prioritize the well-being of humans below other goals such as environmentalism. Zubrin offers, to my eyes, a new form of humanism which is much more practical in its pursuit of human well-being at the expense of almost everything else (DDT may not be so bad after all if it eliminates major disease vectors and some of history's most vigorous diseases at the small cost of a few soft bird eggs).
Paul Krugman in End this Depression Now argues that empirical economic theory, including old-school Keynesianism, provides us with all the tools we need to get past the current economic depression, if only our Global elites weren't stuck on morality-based austerity. He also offers an outline of how the ruling elites might have gotten to be so misguided: inequality. Krugman argues that extreme inequality has thrown off the balance of political discourse between policy for the general population and policy for the very wealthy.
Where Krugman wrote a few passages on the causes of inequality and the negative outcomes that result from it, Chris Hayes has written a book on it: his debut, Twilight of the Elites. Hayes argues that meritocracy, for all of it's virtues, contains vicious circles which, if left unchecked, tend to create a ruling elite doomed to fail. This phenomenon of failure is caused primarily by an increase of social distance between the ruling elite, selected by meritocratic institutions, and those who are ruled. This increased social distance reduces the costs of failed policy and of rigging the system. Chris Hayes introduces the valuable ideas of the fail decade (2000-2010) and fractal inequality, wherein each fractionally smaller division of the US population, there is a similar distance between economic status.
Stephen Pinker's deep tome of optimism, Better Angels of Our Nature, is as valuable as it is large. Pinker's argument is that we are unequivocally better as a society now than we were at any time previously. Pinker's analysis might be called fractal progress, as each fractionally smaller span of time (The last 10 years, 100 years, 1000 years) tell the story of similar levels of societal benefit. Pinker argues that this phenomenon is the result of an expansion of the circle of concern and an the collectivisation of the enforcement of good behavior.
Finally, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson seek to account for the stark contrast (and its relative persistance) between rich and poor nations with Why Nations Fail. Their thesis is both somewhat new and somewhat obvious: economic and political institutions (and not geography, culture, religion, or race) are the primary causes of the success and failure of nations. Many factors influence the development of such institutions, primarily, the two types of institutions, extractive and inclusive, tend to reinforce and magnify similar institutions in vicious (or virtuous) circles. But, also importantly, exogenous events have the capacity to create inflection points where institutional drift may change courses and inclusive institutions may begin to overcome the perverse incentives provided by extractive ones (or vice versa).
I have a few friends with whom I like to discuss things-that-seem-important-at-the-time. Somehow, all of them are either explicitly anarchists or at least have anarchist tendencies. If it wasn't obvious from my summaries, each of the books I've been reading more or less presuppose a state and then seeks to justify a vision of what sort of state works best or how a state might be improved. This makes conversations somewhat difficult. My project for the next little while will be to build (or find) an argument for statism.
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