Keeping America's Edge
The United States is in a tough spot. As we dig ourselves out from a serious financial crisis and a deep recession, our very efforts to recover are exacerbating much more fundamental problems that our country has let fester for too long. Beyond our short-term worries, and behind many of today’s political debates, lurks the deeper challenge of coming to terms with America’s place in the global economic order.
Our strategic situation is shaped by three inescapable realities. First is the inherent conflict between the creative destruction involved in free-market capitalism and the innate human propensity to avoid risk and change. Second is ever-increasing international competition. And third is the growing disparity in behavioral norms and social conditions between the upper and lower income strata of American society.
So begins a very long article that I’ve written for the current issue of the new magazine National Affairs that Yuval Levin has started with great attention as the modern successor to the legendary The Public Interest.
This article is my best shot at summing up why I think the current political debate in Washington seems to me to be so disconnected from reality, what I think are our key problems, and what I think we should do about them. Readers of my posts at this blog will have seen (and in some cases participated in) the development of some of these ideas. This work comprises part of a chapter of the book that I’ve been working on that has caused my near radio silence for the past few months.
You can read the whole article through the link, so I won’t try to summarize it here, but comments are more than welcome.
Nice try, but alas, just more ritual intellectual seppuku to pander to your base.
I’d rather read Diamond Age again, tyvm, because Stephenson is at least honest about the problems you just limn.
The REAL gap is the population IQ gap.
What good is talking around it?
Conservatism is a zombie philosophy…..that is your base problem.
The rise of the Third Culture and the Interwebs have zombized it.
It’s obsolete….and here is the main reason.
Half of the electorate tends conservative, half liberal…..this was a balanced system and WAI (Working As Intended by the founders and framers) until the grouped minorities began to achieve numerical parity with the [mainly] white christian electorate. But now the non-hispanic white conservatives have disenfranchised themselves from the non-white conservatives. The exquisite eqipolar parity tension of the system is collapsing……and it is simply going to beat itself to death.
A new party will rise from the ashes of conservatism, but it will take time.
— matoko_chan · Dec 14, 12:29 PM · #
And I will never read anything by Yuval Levin again after his frankly dishonest article about Palin.
You still don’t get the critical damage Palin has done to your party……she destroys the credibilty of every conservative that makes apologia for her.
— matoko_chan · Dec 14, 12:33 PM · #
Great article, Jim, written with the nonchalant bravery of a zoned-in clinician. It carpet-bombed my mind with right-ons and yeah-buts and data-driven aha’s, which, it seems to me, is the best that can be said of anything.
In fact, I have a lot to say about it. But let me think some more before I waste space in your comments. Right now I’ll just say that I appreciate your bringing to the fore the ‘nation among nations’ issue. Vertical codependencies between horizontal domains are too often overlooked in political philosophy, a striking omission when you consider that the survival and autonomy of the State are preconditions of long term domestic prosperity (i.e., preconditions of mutualism). Even the giants of liberal theory are vulnerable on this point. Back in the days of yore, when I was budding pinhead, I tried to solve this problem by importing into the original position the System’s self-interested perspective. Yada yada, I became an esquire.
Okay, let me say another thing. It probably went without saying for a reason, but to your list of notional parameters I would add a spatial one: America’s lucky geography. I’d like to know how you see this “inescapable reality” interacting with the others.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Dec 14, 01:38 PM · #
Have you guys thought about a feature where readers can choose to block comments from particulars? The site LibraryThing has this on its group forums, and it’s quite useful.
— Ben A · Dec 14, 02:09 PM · #
Are there really people who can’t stop themselves from reading things they don’t like? I don’t understand who this feature would be useful, for.
— Chet · Dec 14, 04:24 PM · #
It’s not always the case that income inequality somehow represents a vitality that must be protected to maximize our wealth. Large numbers of bankers and money managers are somehow able to extract high incomes from our economy without adding any apparent value. There are legions of mutual fund managers, for example, who are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars or more each year to deliver performance that is no better than that of passively managed portfolios. Market economy zealots will insist that these folks somehow DO add value OR ELSE they would not be able to earn their compensation, but even a cursory view of human behavior and the actual structure of our economy uncovers multiple violations of the premises that would have to hold true for the invisble hand to accurately dispense income in accordance with value.
Investment banking is likewise suspect. How many millions of dollars are extracted from the economy in the form of investment banking fees for bankers and lawyers to “advise” on mergers and acquisitions, which in the aggregate are well-known to destroy rather than create value?
Why do the New York Yankess earn in the aggregate hundreds of millions of dollars? Has the invisible hand made an accurate determination that the optimal interest of society is served by handing over to A-Rod the right to direct tens of millions of dollars worth of of the economy each year? Or is it perhaps possible that the invisible hand has been tricked? The money to pay A-Rod comes primarily from televison, and television gets it from advertising, and the cost of advertising is born by all consumers’ having to pay just a bit more for just about everything they buy. Did we consciously make this choice with full information and with utter rationality, two basic premises on which the invisible hand theory is built?
Tiger Woods extracts $100 million from our economy every year. Again, this money comes from advertising. Is it not likely that the invisible hand has delivered to him resources that our society might better spend on say, health care or education for young children? Or roads? Or whatever other expenditure you want to deem “strategic”.
Surely our long-term wealth and liberty are not going to be sustained by having bankers, money-managers, and athletes who are paid better than their counterparts in China?
We can go on and on. Does our society really need hundreds of thousands of lawyers to serve our nation’s strategic interest, or might there be something more valuable those folks could contribute instead of filing yet another class action lawsuit to help me get a $12 refund from my cable company.
Something is wrong with our economic system. It’s not that a market-based economy is inferior to other systems, it is that we live under too many illusions about the context in which our market-based economy operates. People are NOT always rational, utility-maximers. We do NOT have perfect information on which to base every single one of our economic decisions. Our economy is NOT frictionless.
The social gaps you identify surely threaten our strategic position, and they certainly contribute to the economic inequality that you say must be tolerated in order to have a dynamic, wealth creating economy. But other structural features in our society also exacerbate economic inequality beyond that which could be present in an equally dynamic system that addressed rather than ignored the inability of the invisible hand to work its magic in an environment and with economic participants that are far less than 100% conducive to its mission.
— andrew · Dec 14, 04:25 PM · #
andrew:
You open with:
I agree, and if this was not clear form the article, mea culpa. While I don’t really agree with a lot of the specifics of your attack on renumeration in finance, I do agree (at least abstractly) with how you close your comments. I introduced the final “A New Approach” section at the end of the article with the following words:
— Jim Manzi · Dec 14, 04:40 PM · #
“While I don’t really agree with a lot of the specifics of your attack on renumeration . . . .”
The problem is that in fact, we (the people reading this blog, or the people of the United States) don’t agree about what is “fair” remuneration, i.e., there isn’t some alternative to the current distribution of income that would command broad assent. So we can accept the results of the market (without, I hope, identifying market value and moral worth), or we can move to an endless, zero-sum political battle with special surtaxes on golf sponsors, financial services companies, baseball tickets, Oprah advertisers, etc.
— y81 · Dec 14, 05:07 PM · #
The implication here is that there are systems that are just as good as a market-based economy. The implication is also that there are people who can make the system more fair or more just. This is dangerously false and it’s the fatal conceit of progressives.
There might be systems that are better than free-market, but certainly none have been created as yet. Secondly, supposing there was one that was better, there’s no one who could be trusted to manage it. I mean, I wouldn’t trust you. Would you trust me?
— jd · Dec 14, 05:24 PM · #
Dr. Manzi, the evo bio truth is that raw capitalism is survival of the greediest.
You and the socons want to make the Masters of the Universe into Stephenson’s vickies.
How do you implement that without regulation?
Morality laws and sintaxes?
An Official Religion of America?
You are ludicrous.
— matoko_chan · Dec 14, 05:25 PM · #
Ben A,
If you’re using FireFox and don’t mind installing the GreaseMonkey plug-in, then you can try out my Ignore TAS Commenters script.
— kenB · Dec 14, 05:49 PM · #
y81:
Yes, I agree entirely that market rewards are not a proxy for moral (or any other kind) of worth. They are just prices that help deploy resources. Of course, this is pretty galling to many people on the short end of the stick. Wishing that people could have their consciousness raised so that they won’t feel this way anyore is a version of hoping for a New Man – we need to deal with this crooked timber of huanity as it is. This is a source of conflict inherent to any capitalist democracy, and we have to workarounds for it (IMHO) that don;t devolve into exactly the situation you describe. This was one of the themes of the piece.
jd:
To extend my comment to y81, there is no better system, so we have to find ways to manage its problems.
motoko:
A serious question: Did you even read the piece?
Best,
Jim
— Jim Manzi · Dec 14, 06:21 PM · #
<p>Partway through the article, having trouble with this paragraph:</p>
<p><i>Yet the strategy of giving up and opting out of this international economic competition in order to focus on quality of life is simply not feasible for the United States. Europeans can get away with it only because they benefit from the external military protection America provides; we, however, have no similar guardian to turn to. We do not live in a Kantian world of perpetual commercial peace. Were America to retreat from global competition, sooner or later those who oppose our values would become strong enough to take away our wealth and freedom.</i></p>
<p>I found this paragraph very confusing, because it seems to me to sloppily conflate military peace with commercial or economic peace. Consequently, your assertion that ”[w]ere America to retreat from global competition, sooner or later those who oppose our values would become strong enough to take away our wealth and freedom”, seems pretty important and not very well supported. Are you talking about retreating from the global economy, retreating from a Bush-like interventionist foreign policy, or both?</p>
<p>I don’t see how one necessitates the other, e.g. we could easily spend less militarily while easing trade policy and competing harder economically.</p>
<p>What’d I miss?</p>
— Troy · Dec 14, 06:25 PM · #
“It is common to think of the post-war global economy as a baseline of normalcy to which we wish to return. But it seems more accurate to see that era as an anomaly: the apogee of relative global economic dominance by the West, and by the United States within the Western coalition. The hard truth is that the economic world of 1955 is gone, and even if we wanted it back — short of emerging from another global war unscathed with the rest of the world a smoking heap of rubble — we could not have it.”
I agree.
“sooner or later those who oppose our values would become strong enough to take away our wealth and freedom.”
I disagree.
If America’s has a smaller part of the world economy then it should be more prudent in its foreign commitments. There is no reason why we should enter into alliances with countries on Russia’s border or tell China how to treat its citizens. If America were less involved in Asian affairs then the Asian powers would probably have conflicts between themselves before they would attack the western hemisphere.
— Mercer · Dec 14, 06:32 PM · #
Mercer is hitting on the sentence and the paragraph that threw me also.
— Troy · Dec 14, 06:47 PM · #
Dr. Manzi, I did read it and I’m grievously disappointed. This is on a par with your libertarianism/liberalism post advocating distributed localized Jesuslands and Yearning for Zions everywhere via States Rights.
You know better…..you know human nature.
You are just throwing chaff.
Conservatism is obsolete in the 21st century…..it is intellectually obsolete, philosophically obsolete, and demographically obsolete.
I’d just like you to be honest.
— matoko_chan · Dec 14, 07:12 PM · #
OTOH, your AGW posts are excellent….because they don’t deny climate change, but attack the cost-viablity and the efficacy of human agents acting to change it.
Conservatism caused this mess….why not just junk conservatism? why seek to refurbish failmemes?
— matoko_chan · Dec 14, 07:22 PM · #
There are many such systems, under various circumstances. For instance, it’s instructive that, as demonized as communism is in America, essentially every single American both grows up under it as a child and then institutes it in their own family as an adult.
Of course, MMO games are the ultimate sandbox for economic systems. It’s instructive that almost no guild auctions loot drops for gold. Some invent their own money, which they deduct for loot and award for attendance; others merely award the loot to the raider who stands best to benefit from it (and from whom the guild would benefit the most.)
I don’t understand how anyone could consider themselves economic-minded and not be investigating how these systems actually work in an environment almost perfectly suited to do so. Of course, almost no one is. Why, it’s almost like economics isn’t a science at all, but just an expression of political ideologies!
— Chet · Dec 14, 07:34 PM · #
kenB,
Superb! Many thanks.
-Ben
— Ben A · Dec 14, 07:34 PM · #
Chet while that is true, there is a whole body of work on evolutionary economics which what we can observe in MMO auction houses and realm economies. Evolutionary economics are anathema to established conservative failmemes, just like evolutionary biology, SBH (social brain hypothesis) and the rest of contemporary scientific thought.
Conservatives cling to the status quo long past its sell by date.
That is the definition of conservatism as I understand it.
— matoko_chan · Dec 14, 08:23 PM · #
Yup. If you increase resolution to the hour, we can say that schools receive a kid at 8am, maintain certain constraints and administer certain forces throughout the school day, and then release the kid at 3pm as that day’s output. A relevant question is, what forces apply between 3pm and 8am, and do these forces undercut or reinforce the school’s attempted refinements.
One problem is the dissolution of the family and the decay of middle class norms (virtue —> freedom), which clearly maladjusted the forces acting on the child outside of school, that is, maladjusted the forces from the market’s perspective. Wanton poverty and neglect amplify this decay of a child’s external. To use an ad hoc analogy, what happens to the child after school is akin to a Detroit production line, where after every third stage in the process a gremlin comes in and loosens all the nuts and bolts.
Don’t know how you fix it, though. Money and policy can dampen some of the amplifiers, but they don’t seem to be cures for the underlying distortions in a child’s external. Guardianship, perhaps? (Plato’s, not the modern kind.)
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Dec 14, 08:30 PM · #
“One problem is the dissolution of the family and the decay of middle class norms (virtue —> freedom)”
Nope, not the dissolution…….but the EVOLUTION of the family….we need to find ways of nourishing the new evolutionary forms of family instead of clinging to outmoded WEC notions of what families should be.
America has evolved….it is no longer a white protestant nation.
Our high schools are outmoded…they were designed for an age of manufacturing. America is simply not going to do the worlds manufacturing anymore.
KVS, you cant go backwords.
Everything evolves, genes, memes, culture, governments.
You can’t stop the signal.
— matoko_chan · Dec 14, 08:51 PM · #
Jim,
I hope I am not too late to this thread for you to consider my comments. I found your article stimulating and intelligent, as I usually do. As is also common, I found myself in broad sympathy with your position. But there is one part of your essay I do not understand, and I would greatly welcome any attempt you might make to expound on it.
To briefly summarize, you describe America as being on the horns of a three-fold dilemma. First, innovation and growth require creative destruction, which sucks, and which people try to stop. Second, the economic incentives aside, we need to maintain high levels of innovation and growth in order to maintain our international position. Third, creative destruction has undermined America’s social harmony, which undermines the long term foundations of an innovative and growing economy. The current path has us headed towards a radically slower rate of innovation and economic growth, while continuing to undermine social harmony. The solution is to adopt market driven policies which unleash innovation, while doing our best around the edges to reinforce social harmony. The obvious other alternative is the European approach: use government policy to increase social cohesion at the cost of slowing down innovation.
What I don’t understand about your argument is its second point: what is it about America’s international position that is threatened, and why does this matter? The utility of the point in your broader argument seems to be that it undercuts the European solution. You write at one point:
“Yet the strategy of giving up and opting out of this international economic competition in order to focus on quality of life is simply not feasible for the United States. Europeans can get away with it only because they benefit from the external military protection America provides; we, however, have no similar guardian to turn to. We do not live in a Kantian world of perpetual commercial peace. Were America to retreat from global competition, sooner or later those who oppose our values would become strong enough to take away our wealth and freedom.”
This seems like an empty gesture to me rather than an actual argument, not withstanding the fact that you make it off hand in several more places in your article. The world of threats that existed during the Cold War has changed completely. It was possible to say then, in some sense, that we let the Europeans and the Japanese free-ride on our military effort by deterring great power war. But great power war now looks to be a thing of the past. The only threats left in the world are several orders of magnitude lower, and lower still if one chooses to focus only on the physical security of the United States. In short, if I am right, why must we maintain our international position? We certainly do not need to do so in order to fund a military machine that defends us. If I am wrong, why am I wrong? What is the security threat we face, and why must we be concerned about maintaining the kind of economic pre-eminence that would allow us to go toe to toe with another great power?
The upshot, it seems to me, is that the European solution is a perfectly viable option if we choose to seize it. I believe that solution has many internal problems, but it is not a need to maintain our relative advantage that limits it. In the end, I tend to think the policies you argue for need to based on an argument that your proposed balance between innovation and cohesion is morally superior to the welfare statist approach. These moral arguments are certainly dicier than the more neutral utilitarian language you are so adept at using, but they have the advantage of being the kind of rhetoric that can motivate supporters in a democracy—at least the large portion of them who are not policy wonks. And I do think that your argument would be importantly strengthened by replacing a focus on international competitiveness with this kind of approach.
But in any event—I may have your argument wrong! Have I misunderstood your point about international position and why we must maintain it?
As always, I greatly enjoyed this essay, as I do the rest of your work. Thanks for writing so well and so provocatively.
— Brendan · Dec 14, 08:52 PM · #
Look Dr. Manzi.
Buckley said that conservatism was standing athwart history yelling stop.
But you want to wind the history clock backwards.
Einsteinian time dilation aside, this simply isnt possible.
Conservatism has to evolve to remain viable.
1. Raw free-market capitalism is survival of the greediest. When nearly everyone in america was a social cohesive white protestant, that acted as controls. Not true anymore, as the econopalypse proved.
The solution is to adopt market driven policies which unleash innovation, while doing our best around the edges to reinforce social harmony.
Impossible. The social cohesion of the past was white christianity, and market driven policies unleash both innovation AND GREED.
2. “We do not live in a Kantian world of perpetual commercial peace.” But imposing American primacy is simply not feasible anymore. You are confusing the global economy with global security. We can’t afford to be the Superawesome World Police anymore…..we are broke.
3. Our darwinian university system is still the finest in the world and we drain brains from other countries, and some of them stay.
Praps like Zacharia said we are going to live in a post-American world. Big White Christian Bwana’s time is over.
So is conservatism’s.
— matoko_chan · Dec 14, 09:24 PM · #
Hardly a post-American world. Even if China becomes number 1, USA will still be No.2 for most of this century. India might become a great power toward the end of this century.
And USA will always be No.1 among the Western nations. Even in an Asia-dominated world.
BTW. There are ways to leverage that position. e.g. A Western Hemisphere economic union, comparable to the EU. Total population over a billion by 2050. This would still be a Christian (or post-Christian secular), civilization. It would be comparable in size to the great powers of Asia.
Really, it’s more Europe and Russia that are facing a serious decline, because of internal demographic collapse. I am still expecting USA to be a major player by 2100.
— Keid A · Dec 14, 11:03 PM · #
Troy / Mercer / Brendan:
Thanks for your thougtful comments. I think the basic point you are all making is more or less why not have a social democracy?
I agree with all of you that I simply asserted that we can not allow ourselves to become substantially less powerful without expecting that we will be subjected to external coercion. Partly, this was because NA is a magazine focused on domestic political economy, and partly because delineating the specifics of scenarios by which this would happen is always somewhat speculative. In the book, I promise that I will go into this a lot more.
One point of perspective is that I’m not speaking of immediate military action by some specific power. I am describing (or, to recognize the weight of your criticisms, gesturing toward) a pretty brutal, evolutionist view of the world. Technolgical and economic power harnesed by self-identified, coherent nation-states, and more broadly civilizations, always holds the potential to be converted to military power, and eventually somebody does so. If you are small and weak, you are eventually the subject of predation by others who are stronger. My point was that, as we have no external protectors (for the time being), we must remain strong, which in turn implies maintaining technological and economic throw-weight.
There is some degree of sympathy, however, between the practical international stance implied by this view, and what I think you guys are saying. The “edited recommendation” that didn’t fit the editorial mission of NA was “Avoid Empire”.
— Jim Manzi · Dec 14, 11:06 PM · #
Jim,
A great article – but one thing I was left wanting was a better description of the term “innovation.”
This word is accepted to mean “new” or “inventive,” whereas I interpret it – in economic terms – as “productive change.” I don’t think there are many businesses that promote innovation without the context of increased productivity and efficiency. You do detail how markets are a force of this type of productive change, but why is that so many of us struggle to grasp how markets are productive? In other words, I’d bet there are certain sections of the country where the term “innovation” does not poll well.
My larger question is: do you really believe that the repression of innovation by a disenfranchised electorate and a complicit political establishment is surmountable? My theory is that it is not; it is as much a fabrics of human nature as risk taking and idea making, and we can only hope that the latter wins out in the end.
— Matt C · Dec 14, 11:11 PM · #
I can get on board with this.
This does not follow. Who is this “we”? It occurs to me that this function is already taken care of by the market. The labor market, which really doesn’t function any different than the market for goods. It wasn’t that long ago employment was at very high levels, even with high levels of legal and illegal immigration. The labor market was taking care of itself as best it could despite regulation. You propose we can collectively determine what the labor market needs should be, presumably by some mystery mechanism, better than the market itself. It would be ridiculous to say “we should set a limit on the number of iPods sold per year, because we can determine the optimum number needed by consumers”. Yet, it’s acceptable to say “we can set the number of Latino gardeners and maids because we know how many are needed in the economy”.
Furthermore, by guiding immigration the way you propose, you basically want immigration policy to function as a welfare program for the most poorly skilled Americans. Which 1)discourages those workers from seeking more skills, 2)hurts immigrants hungry to improve their lives, and 3)hurts employers who are forced to seek labor from a smaller, weaker, and more expensive labor pool. If American workers cannot compete with laborers who may speak little or no English, and have a work history that is difficult or impossible to verify, are we really doing those American workers a favor in the long run?
And to top it off, your Ministry of Labor Planning only gets implemented “once we have re-established control of our southern border”. Is that a wink telling us your plan is all hot air meant to pacify the rubes? Because if it’s serious, I suggest this proposal is remarkable for it’s lack of seriousness and reasonable thought.
The article strikes me as full of fairly tired right-of-center platitudes with a dash of populist folk wisdom. Probably mother’s milk for a demographic that may be feeling particularly disheartened these days. But I have to say I’m largely unimpressed.
— shecky · Dec 15, 03:10 AM · #
Yawn.
There are examples of working, viable social democracies in the wide, wide world.
In America there is only the example of a failed paradigm…..conservatism.
Conservatism is what landed the US in the ditch….what is the point of trying to tweak a failed model?
How many tries do you get?
And my response is that what you propose can’t be done, Dr. Manzi.
Conservatism is a white paradigm…..it is a CSS that maximizes fitness for the population of non-hispanic white american christians…..but neither the world or America are white anymore.
— matoko_chan · Dec 15, 03:15 AM · #
And yes, shecky.
Dr. Manzi is required to commit this embarrassing public ritual intellectual seppuku in order to pander to the “conservative” WEC base…..like all conservative “intellectuals” he must avoid the taint of elitism, use of the scientific method, be publically ostentatiosly pious, and worship at the twin alters of Reagan and Norman Rockwell.
— matoko_chan · Dec 15, 03:24 AM · #
shecky:
I don’t think I ever argued that the first quote implies the second.
It seems to me that unless you want to argue that the U.S. should literally have open borders (theoretically, the position of the WSJ editorial page), that the right to move to the US will be a scarce good that must be allocated, one way or another, by law. What I did argue was that this allocation should be done in the long-term, general interest of the citizens of the U.S., and that this implies focusing on improving US human capital.
— Jim Manzi · Dec 15, 07:23 AM · #
Keid A:
I agree with the general tenor of your comments. The theme of the piece was how to make sure that this happens. As per earlier comments of mine, there is a whole section on international relations linked to this that was just not relevant for the editorial mission of NA.
Jim
— Jim Manzi · Dec 15, 07:30 AM · #
Jim,
thanks for your response. I am definitely down with the prescription of avoiding empire. I look forward to the book! But I would urge you to think very carefully about the practical meaning of the “brutal evolutionary world” you posit. America’s economy is always likely to be large, even if innovation slows, and under either path were are offered in your article, it will always have the potential to build a sophisticated and powerful military machine. Furthermore, America’s incredibly secure geography—if we can even be threatened at all—gives us a lot of leeway in ramping that machine up. The pressure from the outside world seems very small to me, even accepting a changing technological future with other nation states harnessing advances and creating military power.
But at any rate, thanks again for the post. Can’t wait till the book gets here.
— brendan · Dec 15, 08:57 AM · #
One more time, the emperor is naked.
Until you address the basal problem, Dr. Manzi, which is that american conservatism is a white-christian-people-only philosophy in a land that is no longer majority white christian, your book will be just as irrelevent as this post.
— matoko_chan · Dec 15, 11:18 AM · #
Which is why our lucky geography and our population size should temper your worries. Our navies and our ocean motes, our minds and our bodies — these aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
As I said above, I thought this was a good article. It does read like a treatment of your book rather than a completed work in its own right; in spots it is conclusory rather than argumentative. But since it is a treatment of parts of your book, I suppose that’s a feature not a bug.
One more thing. You want to use IQ tests (or ‘talent’ tests) to discriminate among immigrants. How is this even remotely feasible? How is it morally defensible? How is it even desirable? What happened to ‘tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free’? You’re a big fan of always looking to costs in addition to benefits. Are you sure you want an America that looks like what you propose?
Of course, pay no mind to me mon ami. I’m on my way out.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Dec 15, 12:00 PM · #
“If you are small and weak, you are eventually the subject of predation by others who are stronger.”
All empires eventually fail. And in todays technologiacally dynamic world, the life span of empires is oretty short. No Rome for us. And the US is unlikely to be subject to military predation. What is most likely to happen is that the military and economic umbrella that the US extends to certain part of the world will be dissassembled and responsibilities shared. The relevant blocs would be something like North America-Europe vrs. Russia vrs. China vrs. India (maybe?). In my opinion that would be a better situation becasue we would not be carrying the entire burden ourselves. More money for social democracy.
— cw · Dec 15, 02:36 PM · #
I think you’ve laid out the problems well.
I too think you’ve overblown the threats to the USA & consequences of “going Europe.” We might lose clout overseas and that in turn might have negative economic impact, but then we save a bunch of money not having to run ~100 military bases, get involved in “nationbuilding” excercises, etc. Actually being invaded is rather unlikely so long as we have nukes and the Altantic & Pacific Oceans (not to mention the US Navy, even a diminished version).
I do like the idea of thinking of immigrants as valued recruits. I’m not sure about going for only high-skill/aptitude types. Is that right? Is it politically feasible? Surely there is some number of low-skill/aptitude immigrants that can be accepted each year as well? If you manage to halve that number and also increase the number of highly skilled immigrants, that would be a dramatic improvement, no?
Regarding the issues of out-of-wedlock births and public education… well, I think those are facets of the same problem. There is near-constant talk about “fixing” public education. I’ve come ‘round to the belief that, while improvements are always possible, the schools flaws are secondary. Primary problem: input. The students. More specifically, their homelives.
And that, I have no idea how to fix. I don’t think it’s something that can or should be done governmentally, anyway.
— Rob in CT · Dec 15, 04:13 PM · #
This implies our hypothetical central planning bureau is capable of determining what the labor market needs better than the actual labor market. Strange that for decades, if you wanted to come to the US, you basically showed up and proved you had no communicable diseases. That’s if you came via official gateways. Everyone else just showed up, and nobody complained except the previous generation’s offspring (sound familiar?). I guess that plan worked so poorly with Europeans that it obviously can’t be allowed to work for the duskier folks of the globe.
This pernicious notion that we can direct the labor market is the stuff insidious government expansions are built of. We need an infrastructure and bureaucracy to determine all these things, punitive regulations to take care of scofflaws, and enforcement troops on the ground to lay down the law. Not to mention border enforcement, which will rival drug enforcement in power and liberty erosion. And all to regulate folks who are looking for honest work.
In some ways, these proposals are all very progressive, protectionist for low end labor, onerous on employers. And it fundamentally assumes that economic prosperity is a zero sum game, where the pie is of a finite size that has to be divvied up into smaller portions as more people arrive. In which case, North America should be among the most destitute regions of the globe, having gone from a sparsely populated wilderness to a sprawling collection of hugely populated urban centers. This fallacy also seems to affect your international proposals, where a more prosperous world translates into a doomed United States, their prosperity coming at our cost. Of course, the arrival of people alone didn’t cause an economic boom. It was helped by a government reluctant to assume too large a role in the meanderings of the free market to take advantage of the human capital that is available.
The most ridiculous thing about all this is that the proposed immigration system is pretty much already in place in weaker form. And it’s already insanely oppressive. And as a result, broken and substantially ignored. It’s damn near impossible to legally settle in the US unless one already has a sponsor of some kind. A relative. Or an employer with a really good excuse. Just wanting a chance to start anew, away from the old country’s oppressive ways isn’t good enough. A proposal to fix it needs to stop focusing on what more government can do, and focus instead on what less government can do. Is that really so hard for a conservative to understand?
— shecky · Dec 15, 04:47 PM · #
This sounds about right. Fixing public education is usually more about fixing young people into taking advantage of what is basically the free education they’re being provided. This is not an education issue, but rather a social engineering issue that spreads beyond the students themselves. My brief experience leads me to believe that public school teachers are tickled pink when they have enthusiastic students, who somehow magically manage to do well and move on to bigger and better things. Given a room full of apathetic (or worse) problem students, they are more inclined to provide their mandated babysitting service until the students are legally free to fend for themselves.
Unless there is a universal way to create superhero teachers worthy of inspirational movies, there may never be any real “fixing” of the educational system to our satisfaction.
— shecky · Dec 15, 05:06 PM · #
shecky:
No, it implies that if we do not have open borders, then we must allocate the valuable slots called “rights to immigrate”. This implies coercion.
Given that the thesis of the article is that we need growth and to get growth we need disruptivce innovation, but that we need to balance the tensions that this creates, it’s pretty hard for me to see how you can assert that I have presented a zero-sum view of the economy. Further, since I actively advocate actively trying to get a lot of people to move here and become citizens – saying this would be “great” for America – it’s really hard to see the basis on which you assert that I have this zero-sum view of immigration.
Jim
— Jim Manzi · Dec 15, 06:07 PM · #
Rob in CT:
This is precisely the point I was trying to make in the piece when I said:
— Jim Manzi · Dec 15, 06:10 PM · #
RE: out of wedlock births. I’m all for welfare reform (or elimination), but how do you explain massive welfare states in Europe with very succussful educational systems and a very high out-of-wedlock birth rate?
You’ve articulated the usual Culture War boilerplate that demonizes sexual transgression as if repression was the solution to all of our economic problems. Ridiculous. Economics and sexual behavior are utterly unrelated and always have been. Only Puritans think that their material success is granted them by a God pleased by their chastity.
— Ray Butlers · Dec 15, 06:37 PM · #
Ray:
Are you sure you believe that?
Jim
— Jim Manzi · Dec 15, 08:59 PM · #
“how do you explain massive welfare states in Europe with very succussful educational systems and a very high out-of-wedlock birth rate?”
In some European countries it is common for unmarried couples to stay together and raise their children till adulthood. That is better then married couples having kids then divorcing while the children are minors or a single mom raising kids without a father in the house.
— Mercer · Dec 15, 09:52 PM · #
Never let it be said that I failed to get the point. Adieu, adieu, and to all.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Dec 15, 10:30 PM · #
Are you sure you believe that?
Uh, yes. Why do you ask? As I said it’s a Culture War myth that regulating sexual behavior (that’s really what we’re talking about here) will solve all your money problems. Only an idiot would link the two.
If only everyone would behave like nice little white puritans everything would be fine. Really dumb.
And I regret participating in this since I see you write for the Manhattan Institute. Disgusting. I never should have bothered.
— Ray Butlers · Dec 15, 10:41 PM · #
It is very unlikley that a government could manipulate people into forming successful marriages or to get poor folk to adopt middle class behavior. These exist for cultural reasons that the government has little control over. Recognizing this is a conservative act. Maybe I’m actually a conservative.
I’m much more in favor of reforming our political institutions so that they can sucessfully deal with the problems we face. The problems of innovation and single mothers are going to be moot if health care costs are not gotten control of, for instance. I think this country is headed for years of economic decline if our government can’t deal with the issues that confront us.
— cw · Dec 15, 10:51 PM · #
Ray:
Best of luck, mate.
cw:
I agree.
— Jim Manzi · Dec 15, 10:56 PM · #
Even worse….Dr. Manzi writes for K-Lo’s Krazie Korner at NRO.
Shorter Manzi—
Hey, lets use “conservative” values to fix the problems CAUSED by “conservative” values.
lol
— matoko_chan · Dec 16, 12:13 AM · #
I agreed with most of your recommendations, Jim. But I would add that deregulating public education should also come with increased funding for public education that should come straight out of standing military expenses.
For some people the discussion is “keeping the edge in America,” for some its “keeping America’s edge,” but for me its “keeping American’s edge in the global economy.” When you consider that headline export to gdp ratio in HK and Singapore is over 150%, and in China, Vietnam, and Thailand its around 50%, there is a lot of value that is more easily assignable to a business than to a country. In a way, Wal Mart has more value than, say, Italy. Tax havens are one salient result. High-paid, upper-middle class creative services jobs are another. These jobs just wouldn’t exist if companies like Apple coulnd’t assemble the iPhone in Taiwan.
I don’t think people understand that. In a lot of ways, we want to have our cake and eat it too. At some point in time this recognition should really change policy discussions in the US. Its not about the US or its political might — its about the people it empowers (this is also why our education failures are so painful). I don’t care which nationality or culture they come from, as long as they work hard to make the world wealthier, cleaner, more interesting and more secure then I would be willing to buy their lunch.
— wfrost · Dec 16, 12:43 AM · #
I don’t care which nationality or culture they come from
….as long as they are non-hispanic caucs.
— matoko_chan · Dec 16, 06:11 AM · #
Do you know what Frost?
Manzi might even have some decent ideas…..but as long as you all continue to dogwhistle the teabaggers and palinistas out of the other side of your mouths, you have no credibility.
You’re just a dirty joke.
— matoko_chan · Dec 16, 06:22 AM · #
Fascinating blog, wfrost.
I’ve been watching the breathtaking statistics on the growth in China’s high speed rail system for a while now. And you get to actually ride on it.
Color me seriously envious.
If I was a young person today, I couldn’t imagine a more interesting place than China to spend a few years.
— Keid A · Dec 16, 11:10 AM · #
KVS:
Why?
— Jim Manzi · Dec 16, 11:19 AM · #
motoko:
I keep trying to read your comments and understand the actual critcisms (which I normally welcome). I’d like to ask you to do the follwoing: submit a comment that describes the high-level policies that you believe the US government should implement in several paragraphs using conventional rules of grammar and without undefined abbreviations.
— Jim Manzi · Dec 16, 11:25 AM · #
As much as I’ve seen, her grammar is fine and none of her abbreviations should be opaque to someone whose job is on the internet. Surely you had no trouble unpacking the term “cauc” in the context of race?
Most of the grousing about motoko (whom I affectionately think of as “the Major”, which I guess makes me Batou) strikes me of being as the “you damn kids” variety. Especially yours. And surely her comments are no less substantive than jd’s. Or the celebrated KVS, for that matter. (Or me, I suppose.)
— Chet · Dec 16, 12:56 PM · #
Let me make it simple Dr. Manzi.
Conservative values like white protestant mores encoded as law, American “exceptionalism”, and unregulated free market capitalism (“creative destruction”) are exactly what have gotten us into the current state of social disaster, foreign policy disaster, and economic disaster.
The grow of the welfare state is a direct response to the consistant attempt of conservatism to slow delivery of civil rights and social welfare to non-white minorities.
I think you need a different paradigm than white christian conservatism.
— matoko_chan · Dec 16, 02:08 PM · #
As for policy decisions I think Our Elected President (365 to 173) is doing just fine.
He already threw the Kass Klones off the Bioethics Council, restored funding for eSCR, is attempting healthcare reform, extended an olive branch to MENA, is attempting fix the Israel problem, and is attempting to fix the wall street problem.
It might be that social democracy is the only path out of the ravine that conservatism has driven this country into.
I don’t know.
I have never played 11-dimensional chess.
But I do know that cheerleading failmemes to “hearten” your base is not helping.
Tell your base to grow up.
And stop yelling at me to get off your lawn.
;)
— matoko_chan · Dec 16, 02:26 PM · #
hmm….since your base is pretty much older white people, mind if I change that?
But I do know that cheerleading failmemes to “hearten” your base is not helping.
Tell your base to cowboy up and accept reality.
And stop yelling at me to get off your lawn.
— matoko_chan · Dec 16, 02:29 PM · #
Its my lawn too.
;)
— matoko_chan · Dec 16, 02:39 PM · #
And while I’m at it, Dr. Manzi…..
Get rid of this skank.
She is a flaming demagogue and you all know it.
You should be ashamed.
— matoko_chan · Dec 16, 03:17 PM · #
“Conservative values like white protestant mores encoded as law”
The belief that children are best raised in a household with both parents is not just a white protestant value.
— Mercer · Dec 16, 04:18 PM · #
No but the belief that that the two parents MUST be one XX and one XY is.
Stop with your double talk.
White christian conservatism is a zombie culture being animated with lies and rage tranfusions.
Evolve or go extinct, but don’t pretend you foolin’ anyone with an IQ over room temperature.
— matoko_chan · Dec 16, 06:26 PM · #
is the skank palin or hitchens?
— Max Socol · Dec 16, 10:47 PM · #
reading comprehension fail, Max.
i SAID she….unless Hitch has had a gender reversal im talking about Palin.
Manzi and the Derb were my mentors…..i didnt betray them…..they ganked me.
Dr. Manzi knows EXACTLY what Palin is.
He just doesn’t have the nads to say it.
— matoko_chan · Dec 17, 12:34 AM · #
oh yeah…i forgot the old people thing.
skank is feminine— dig the UD.
Derogatory term for a female, implying trashiness or tackiness, lower-class status, poor hygiene, flakiness, and a scrawny, pockmarked sort of ugliness. May also imply promiscuity, but not necessarily. Can apply to any race, but most commonly used to describe white trash.
— matoko_chan · Dec 17, 12:54 AM · #
Regarding some of the comments above, it’s not clear that European-style democracy would produce greater social harmony in 21st century America, or for that matter that it will produce such harmony in 21st century Europe. Most of the countries with such systems today are small and are ethnically, religiously and culturally very homogenous (one of the effects of World War II was to eliminate several of the lumps of ethnic heterogeneity that had survived previous rounds of warfare). None of those countries has demonstrated much capacity to assimilate immigrants. None embraces anything like the geographic breadth of the United States. Whether the white working class of England and France will be pacified by high welfare benefits into working (intermittently) for an international elite, or will instead launch pogroms (reciprocated no doubt) against neighboring Muslim communities, is certainly an open question.
— y81 · Dec 17, 11:51 AM · #
it’s not clear that European-style democracy would produce greater social harmony in 21st century America
Okfine, y81.
But can we at least admit that traditional conservative tactics to enforce social cohesion like anti-miscegynation laws, anti-SSM laws and segregation fail even more dramatically than social democracy to solve the problems of poverty and single parent families?
I think the problems with our schools are not wholly separable from our problems with families and poverty.
The only thing we can do within the educational system is to create vocational track academes within the high school format. Vouchers and privatization and teacher “merit” are just fake ways of changing the SES (socio-economic status) of the student….bandaids for the real problems, which are: poverty, lack of familial support, and the bellcurve of IQ.
And the problem in the US, unlike Europe, is that the grouped minorities are now achieving majority status.
Like I said, white christian conservatism is a zombie culture.
This blog, Culture 11, and Big Hollywood all shared the same misunderstanding of the nature of culture.
Culture doesn’t shape people as much as people shape culture according to their needs.
Culture is evolutionary, and adaptable.
So Big Hollywood’s attempt to “take back culture” is what we call a pre-fail.
What white christian conservatism is experiencing is not a culture “war”…..it is an evolution of culture event, like glaciation or the extinction event at the K-T boundary.
FOXnews and christian rock, for example, are attempts to build artificial replications of the bearers of contemporary culture….and as such, are incapable of attracting new converts.
This blog for example, is more of a museum of culture than a culture “street”.
And maybe that is just is what conservatism is….but that is why white christian conservatism is a zombie…it doesn’t represent or signify for non-white conservatives….they have been driven out.
Dr. Manzi, you talk about the creative destruction of the market…..culture is creative destruction also.
And the failed memes you cling so desperately to…..are long overdue for destruction.
— matoko_chan · Dec 17, 01:31 PM · #
The term, “meme,” has failed. The poor thing is exhausted. Stop forcing it to fight and let it retreat quietly to its remote hilltop.
— turnbuckle · Dec 17, 04:32 PM · #
matoko_chan,
I think there is a major flaw in your thinking here. You are projecting social changes of the past, and you are not understanding the revolutionary implications of what is happening elsewhere.
The tide of Hispanic immigration into the United States is changing and could even reverse!!!
The decadal economic outlook for the USA is now very poor as a result of its increasingly high-tax, high-debt environment.
By contrast the economic outlook for Latin America, and other resources-rich regions is now extremely positive, as a result of the global resources boom that is ultimately being driven by the rapid industrialization of Asia that is lifting 2 billion people into middle class lifestyles at 10% per annum growth rates.
IMHO and I am only a private investor, not an economist. Only an idiot would invest in old industrial economies like Europe or USA today. They will take decades to work out their debt problems. The market action is focussed on booming Asia, and the resources-rich spillover countries.
The USA and Europe have much more to fear from aging populations, high debt and high taxes than they do from too many immigrants.
If I were you, I would advise lots of robots to take care of your “aging white protestants”. Ask the Japanese for advice about that.
— Keid A · Dec 17, 04:43 PM · #
Spock, my thinking is sound.
I am telling Dr. Manzi that white christian conservatism is a failed paradigm.
He can’t seriously propose using white christian conservative memes to fix problems caused by white christian conservatism.
The rise of the federal welfare state was caused by white christian conservatism obstructing and/or slowing delivery of civil rights and citizen welfare to minorities in a pluralist republic.
The cultural disenfranchisement of white christian conservatives is being caused by cultural and demographic evolution.
His book, like this post, seem to be only crude attempts to “buck up” the base with platitudes and outright lies.
He understands perfectly well what I am saying, grammer and l’argot (slang) aside.
— matoko_chan · Dec 17, 08:13 PM · #
Keid A, thanks for the comments. It’s never too late to visit.
Matoko, you’re speaking in nihilistic platitudes. Its kind of cool, I guess, but it doesn’t really get us anywhere. If modern Christian conservatism is artificial because it was born from the remnants of a bygone era, then please help me find a genuine, successful culture that emerged spontaneously from the isolation of pure brilliance. Good luck in your journey for fresh air and in avoiding our museums (or isn’t it madhouses?) of culture! But I’m afraid that cursing you’re the contingency of your cultural origins is, in your words, what we call a pre-fail…
Maybe the ravine wasn’t called by Platonism but rather by a series of really bad policies and decisions. But that’s not as fun is it?
— wfrost · Dec 17, 10:43 PM · #
Conservatism has failed because it is whites limited. None of Dr. Manzi’s tactics can help America recover because the tactics are only designed to help white christians, who are becoming a minority in America. You are the one speaking in platitudes and strawmen. In short, you have to fix conservatism first…and that means making it relevent to minorities.
Again, the growth of the welfare state originated when federalism failed to deliver citizen rights and local welfare to minorities. If you had all pulled a Colin Powell and walked on Palin last year, she wouldn’t be your candidate in 2012. She is a cancer on your party, and a tarbaby. You will never be rid of her now.
Don’t slime the Ancients by trying to convolve a local CSS like WEC conservatism with Platonism.
You aren’t birds, you are frogs, all the way down….you can’t lift your faces out of your local mudpatch to see the long game.
That is why Obama is kicking your ass….you only have tactics, he has strategy.
Finally, I don’t despise my cultural origins…..I understand human nature.
I despise failure to evolve, and the continued willingness of people I once admired like Reihan and Dr. Manzi to give cover to racism and classism and anti-intellectualism and obstructionism in order to cling to the status quo that once gave them power.
My dad loved Jack Kemp.
He should have been your exemplar, not Palin.
— matoko_chan · Dec 18, 10:26 AM · #
Maybe the ravine wasn’t called by Platonism but rather by a series of really bad policies and decisions.
And jaysus-h-keeyrist-inna-handcart take fuckin’ responsibilty for what the white christian conservative paradigm has done to the country. No one with an IQ over room temperature believes the “it wasn’t us, it was those bad republicans that did it” schitck.
Stop pandering to your WEC base and try to educate them for Thomas Jefferson’s sake.
You aren’t christians…..populism and power are your gods.
/spit
— matoko_chan · Dec 18, 10:36 AM · #
One point that I found really interesting in this article was the discussion of the upper middle class. You can correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like your project is to bridge the gap between the contemporary lumpen GOP and the urban educated elite, based on their shared appreciation for bourgeoise values and social norms.
You make a lot of hay out of the fact that the educated elite largely lives by these social norms—the implication being that this fact is (or should be) extremely important in forming their political identity. That today’s educated professionals actually professes values and beliefs that are wildly different from the postwar WASP establishment, you cast aside as a curiosity.
One could make the argument that the latter fact is actually far more important than the former. The actual voting patterns of the urban professional class would seem to support my interpretation over yours—the alternative being widespread false consciousness.
— hal · Dec 18, 11:02 AM · #
hal:
Thanks for the comment. I wouldn’t describe what I’m trying to do that way. It’s not clear to me at all how to go from X set of beliefs and Y set of behavior to voting preferences. That part of the piece was simply meant to be descriptive.
— Jim Manzi · Dec 19, 04:15 AM · #
matoko_chan & wfrost,
I loved Hans Rosling’s fascinating presentation at the Mumbai TED Conference.
I believe this is indeed the likely future for Asia, with extremely deep implications for the future of the USA and the West:
Asia’s Rise How and When? (17 minutes)
— Keid A · Dec 19, 10:11 AM · #
An interesting look at the problem of global competitiveness and its long-term consequences if we start to slip further. However, I don’t think strong families are the real problem or real solution here. The number one reason families break up is finances, pure and simple. You can talk about social norms until you’re blue in the face, but if they can’t pay the bills, or if one of them doesn’t understand how to manage money and the other partner bolts, then your social norms won’t help much. I think teaching people about finances, even the basics, is the first real reform our system needs. It could be that this teaching is one of the things that a “strong family” would help with, I don’t know, what I do know is that if you let the credit card companies and Mr. Money do all the teaching, you will end up with a bankrupt population.
The other issue I have is with the “tiered regulation” solution to financial stability. While I think it might work, in theory, it really isn’t that much different from what we have now, only the rating system that determines the level of risk for companies is privatized.
One of the key problems to this (or any other system of regulation) is there will always be people who game the system. In fact, the more you regulate, the more incentive there is for some people to hire other people to find and exploit any loopholes. No matter where the bright line is, if you try and “fence in” the safer investments from the unsafe ones, you’re going to find people who tunnel under it. It isn’t just “creative destruction” like the Dot-Com boom and bust, that drives these crises.
— MyName · Dec 23, 06:42 PM · #
“But what remains to be seen is whether this new upper class will have the nerve, wit, and sense of purpose that led the old WASP elite to develop a social matrix that offered broadly shared prosperity to generations of Americans.” — Manzi
Ah, yes, the “wit” of the WASP elite in late 20th America! Truly, something to behold!
If only they’d come up with anything as clever or amusing as that sentence!
Actually everything our WASP elite touched after, say, the Marshall Plan was a failure, ranging from the simply irrelevant (culture) to bloody disaster (Vietnam) to mere debacle (the auto industry.)
At some point, to their great credit, they drunkenly made their way back to the bar at their restricted country club and white-ethnic Catholics, Jews, white Protestants from the lower orders and various people of darker hues made, i.e., forced, their way in, paving the way for later industrious Asians, Indians and others.
The children and grandchildren of the WASP elite smoked pot, assumed the priviliges that were handed to them and frequently married outside of the dying gentry that spawned and bored them. Good for them.
But please, spare us “the nerve, wit and sense of purpose” that gave us quotas, legacies, “the best and the brightest” in the 60s and the American car industry in the 1970s.
Let’s not romanticize the irrelevant, the genteelly bigoted and the brain dead. They didn’t “develop the social matrix” (nice bit of sociology speak by the way) that created the new elites; they either got out of the way or assimilated into what our nation was becoming.
— Amused · Dec 23, 07:14 PM · #
I think there’s one way for the government to encourage more stable families in our society. Age-appropriate and truthful Sex Education. “Abstinence-only” education has many young people rush to get married just to get off without thinking carefully about the decision, IMHO. The divorce rate is the highest in the South, after all. (Although this probably has to something to do with the economic differences you highlighted in your article as well)
— Aaron · Dec 23, 08:06 PM · #
Manzi writes: “All told, finance, insurance, real estate, automobiles, energy, and health care account for about one-third of the U.S. economy. Reconfiguring these industries to conform to political calculations, and not market-driven decisions, is likely to transform American economic life.”
I think this assumption is alarmist and not fact-based. The government intervened in these sectors only because it had to, not out of some desire to get these industries to “conform to political calculations.”
It intervened in the financial and insurance sectors to prevent a global economic meltdown. It intervened in the automotive sector to prevent huge bankruptcies that would have greatly exacerbated what was already the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. It intervened in health care because non-intervention will eventually bankrupt the nation, not to mention that we are alone in our peer nation group that has failed to make the moral decision that people shouldn’t die due to lack of access to health care.
And the government is trying to get out of the finance, insurance, and automotive sectors as soon as is practicable and allow them to return to essentially market-based decisions, albeit with greater regulation to make sure the disaster scenario is less likely to repeat itself. Perhaps the health care intervention is less likely to revert to market forces, but the unfettered market has shown that it is perhaps not the best vehicle for good health outcomes as our peer nations with different systems cover everyone, get as good outcomes as we do, and spend far less. So I’m not convinced that the financial, insurance, and automotive interventions are for the long term and will “transform American economic life,” and to the extent that the health care intervention is a long-term one, it may be a very good thing.
The effects of energy policy may be a more contentious, but again there are plenty of examples from abroad that have shown that we can be far more efficient and far less dependent on fossil fuels without dramatic changes to one’s “economic life.”
— dsimon · Dec 24, 12:21 AM · #