In a recent article from the Columbia University alumni magazine, David Craig wonders: "Ten years from now, will people in Dallas or Cincinnati or Pittsburgh pick up a local newspaper every morning?"
I wonder: Does it matter if the newspaper industry is dominated by businesses that are regionally owned, operated, or focused? Do people in Seattle or El Paso or Philadelphia drive regionally-designed cars to regionally-operated hardware stores while listening to regionally-recorded music? No, they drive a Toyota to the Home Depot while listening to music published by Warner Brothers or some other big conglomerate. Does anyone worry about the health of the republic because of the consolidation and centralization that has occurred in manufacturing and retail and a hundred other industries? Why is the newspaper industry any different?
Interestingly, it strikes me that in some industries, companies that offer truly local products and services are able to differentiate themselves from the big (and often bland) centralized corporations, whereas regional companies are not different enough to survive. For instance, here in Denver I don't read the Denver Post or the Rocky Mountain News, but I do avidly read the Washington Park Profile, a high quality, truly local monthly paper.
Do I think that the regional newspapers will survive? Not particularly. But I don't know that it particularly matters, either.
This post by Victor Davis Hanson seems right on to me, especially his observations about the radical nature of American society:
Globalization is mostly driven by the United States, whether defined by the spread of the English language, crass advertising, the Internet, American pop culture of rap, jeans and I-pods or worldwide businesses like Starbucks and MacDonald's. A global sameness seems to trample traditional cultures and appeal to the masses worldwide despite lectures from their elites about the dangers of such American-induced contamination.
This influence of the United States is not attributable to strategic location like that enjoyed by a Germany or Iran. We don't have vast oil reserves like a Saudi Arabia, or an enormous population such as India or China.
Instead, it's what we do rather than what we have that attracts others. Our radical Democratic culture of informality and inclusiveness results in an unusually tolerant and secure society, in which participation is open to all. Being an American can be like playing at a cut-throat, madcap poker table, but it invites any to play who are willing to ante up and risk their all.
We can see this dynamism not just by the flood of immigrants -- America takes more of them than all industrialized countries combined -- but by the nature of some of them. Those who are sometimes most publicly critical of the United States, privately seem to like us a great deal. Why else would the dictator of Pakistan, an Amal militia leader in Lebanon, or a Turkish Islamist Prime Minister entrust their families either to live in the United States or to go to school here? Only in America can a Palestinian criticize the Hamas leadership, a Turkish woman wear a scarf, or a female Saudi student date.
In terms of foreign policy, many of our troubles result not, as charged, from imperialism, but from this very democratic fervor. Of all the critiques of our experience in Iraq, few have pinpointed our chief challenge: we extended one-man, one-vote and thereby empowered the traditionally downtrodden, and denigrated Shiite population, to the chagrin of Sunni elites in and outside of Iraq. It mattered little that few of the Shiia were educated, or had any experience in governance: in the naïve American sense, as free people born into the world as equal as any others, they had a right to run or ruin their own country.
By the same token, radical American egalitarianism is what terrifies our Islamist enemies. Bin Laden -- many of the terrorist's family were living in the United States on September 11 -- knows the insidious dangers of Americanization, both from his own wealthy youth spent enjoying the high life, and the failure of his Sharia law to compete with Spiderman for the attention of most of his flock.
Other superpowers like India and China pose as third-world revolutionary powers. But both are plagued by caste and rigid political or class obstacles to full participation in their societies. A Chinese can become a fully-accepted American citizen. A non-Chinese American black, white, or Hispanic would never fully be accepted as Chinese -- even with mastery of the language and the formal acquisition of Chinese citizenship.
Abroad China does not care from whom it buys or to whom it sells, and hardly cares about promoting democracy abroad. In short, it is still America that is the most radical, revolutionary, and destabilizing nation of all -- and thereby disliked for precisely the opposite reasons that the Left proclaims.
Here's an interesting quote from Michael Crichton about the "consensus" on global warming (HT: Samizdata):
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus.
Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
It seems that I shocked a few people over in Brussels with my opinions about global warming. Since in large measure I was being deliberately provocative (épater la bourgeoisie!), it would be helpful for me to clarify my stance.
Throughout history, sciences have emerged from the realm of pure speculation. Physics and astronomy from metaphysics, chemistry from alchemy, psychology from philosophical anthropology, etc. A young science is an inexact science, especially when the domain of study is complex. As far as I can see, climatology (and no, I am not a climatologist) is a young science in a complex domain. It is too early for climatology to have gained anything approaching certainty with regard to the nature of the earth's climate.
Yet humans crave certainty. They want a consistent worldview that will explain all the phenomena about which they are so confused. They want such a worldview so strongly that they will sacrifice scientific accuracy and coherence with the facts in order to get it. This is called the will to believe. In young sciences (or young, complex parts of old sciences), the results of succumbing to the will to believe are theories that sound convincing but don't track reality -- Ptolemaic cosmology, Freudian psychology, Marxist economics, superstring theory, nutritionism, and, it seems to me, the global warming theory.
Such theories can be widely believed. They can become scientific -- or, to be precise, pseudo-scientific -- orthodoxies. Just about everyone in a young science can adhere to them (e.g., my father received his training as a psychiatrist during the days of Freudian orthodoxy). So it comes as no surprise to me that, say, nearly every paper published in some peer-reviewed climatology journals would support the global warming theory, just as nearly every paper published in American public health journals might at one point have supported nutritionism, low-fat / high-carb diets, and the like.
Truth is not a matter of counting noses. It is a matter of tracking reality. When the reality is complex, it is harder to track reality. Predictions are not as certain as they will one day become. Models are just that: models. The scientists involved want certainty and may claim more certainty than their young science can yet provide, especially when their grant money depends on supporting the orthodoxy. The journalists clamor for provocative quotes so they can sell more ad space. The public gets progressively more fearful about the future, and they ask their political representatives to do something, anything, to solve the problem. The politicians and bureaucrats are only too happy to oblige, since a good crisis gives them a reason to pontificate and grab more power.
It's not pretty, and it's not science. I realize all too well that people want to know what's happening with the earth's climate. Given that we can't even forecast the weather 3 days from now, I see no reason to be confident that we can forecast what the climate will be like 30 or 50 years from now. The phenomena are too complex, climatology is too young, we don't have enough hard data going back far enough to draw meaningful comparisons, there is too much of which we are simply ignorant (e.g., how clouds form), it's unclear what the relevant factors are, the models involve a great deal of guesswork, the plain fact of political influence looms too large, the ratio of real science to sensationalism and grandstanding is frighteningly low, and the people want to believe in a consistent story even if it is more myth than reality. I'm sorry, but there are just too many mitigating factors here for me to be confident in the forecasts being propagated (I hesitate to call them predictions, let alone results, and I deliberately use the term "propagated" for its connection to the word "propaganda").
So yes I am a skeptic. As far as I can see, science thrives on skepticism and withers in an atmosphere of belief (a word whose root meaning is "to make dear or pleasant"). It is with good reason that we speak of unpleasant truths. Just-so stories about how things might be (but are not) attract those who need a coherent worldview in order to function. But scientists have an ethical and professional responsibility to understand the facts and track reality. Until they do in the field of climatology, I will consider the jury to be out.
If this be heresy, make the most of it.
This is hilarious and simply brilliant.
Stephen Davies provides some notes toward an alternative history that focuses less on politics and more on peaceful interaction and technological innovation. There are so many dates one could include: the invention of eyeglasses around 1214, of the horseshoe, of three-field rotation, of double-entry bookkeeping, of the water mill, the wind mill, the steam engine, the automobile, the integrated circuit, the Internet, and much else besides...
I have little time for blogging these days, but I must note this quote from one Ellen Goodman:
Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.
The best rebuttals I've read so far are by Arnold Kling and Mark Steyn. If it weren't for the fact that you can't deny something that hasn't happened yet, I'd say consider me a climate holocaust denier.
Michael Barone has a fascinating analysis of some county-level American census data here. His conclusions:
The results comport with the research of Joel Kotkin -- though it would also be interesting to look at percentage increases and decreases rather than raw numbers.
Over at Rants and Raves, Steve Brown is posting a series of entries about the value and state of western civilization. In his most recent post he observes:
Like it or not -- and believe me, a lot of Europeans, Brits and Canadians do not -- America is the center of power of Western Civilization, which stands or falls as America does. If America does not maintain its power and confidence, the rest of the West will surely not.
It's interesting to note that America is geographically on the periphery of the original home of Western civilization, as are our closest allies: Australia, much of Eastern Europe and Israel.
This is consistent with Carroll Quigley's analysis of civilizational evolution. Do you think the Greeks were happy when the Romans became the center of classical civilization? There are plenty of such examples. Typically, especially during the imperial phase of a civilization's history, the center of power moves to the periphery. Western civilization is unique in that it keeps cycling through the phases of expansion and conflict, without moving on to empire and decay. During its first phase of expansion (~970-1270), the center of western civilization was probably northern Italy; during its second phase of expansion (~1420-1650), the center moved north and west to Flanders, northern France, and (later) England; during its third phase of expansion (~1725-1915), the center moved north and west again to England and (later) America; during its fourth phase of expansion (~1945-????), the center has decidedly skipped over the Atlantic and is firmly planted in North America. There's nothing to be lamented about that fact -- better a western civilization dynamically expanding from a center in North America than a western civilization in decay.
In a recent essay entitled The Exceptionally Entrepreneurial Society, Arnold Kling writes as follows:
[A] nation's prosperity depends on three ethics: a work ethic, a public service ethic, and a learning ethic. The work ethic means that people believe that those who are willing to work deserve more rewards than those who are not. A public service ethic means that government officials are expected to protect private property, not to extort it. And a learning ethic means that people expect to learn, innovate, and adapt, rather than to resist change.
In the underdeveloped world, the work ethic and the public service ethic have not flourished. Instead, crime and corruption sap the economy, and entrepreneurship is particularly frustrated.
Continental Europe does not suffer such severe problems with the work ethic and the public service ethic. However, an important part of the learning ethic is taking advantage of the decentralized, trial-and-error process of entrepreneurial success and failure. The Continental European system attempts to replace the learning of decentralized markets with bureaucratic planning. Individual change agents have little access to capital and less opportunity to earn large individual rewards.
Ultimately, Europe's corporatist, bureaucratic model impedes learning and retards innovation. With its barriers to entrepreneurship, which are particularly discouraging to change agents, European economic growth has lagged behind during the last two decades of rapid technological change.
If the United States is exceptional because of our entrepreneurial culture, then our natural allies may not be in Continental Europe, in spite of its democratic governments and high levels of economic development. China seems more dynamic than Europe, but I would argue that China's government-controlled financial system ultimately is not compatible with American-style entrepreneurship. Instead, we may have more in common with other nations of the Anglosphere, as well as such entrepreneurial outposts as India, Israel, and Singapore.
Too often, those of a libertarian persuasion seem to focus only on the work ethic (or, even more narrowly, the functioning of a market economy), while ignoring the learning ethic and especially the public service ethic. They treat all governments as equivalently evil, not distinguishing between the governments of (say) Hitlerian Germany or Stalinesque Russia and the governments of (say) Periclean Athens or Jeffersonian America. To the anarcho-capitalists, all these and more are simply The State and therefore to-be-destroyed (or at least to-be-overcome). Far be it from me to argue from philosophical first principles that government is necessary, because I know that pre-state societies have existed in the past and I think that it's possible for post-state societies to emerge in the future (how likely that is, I don't know). But it's equally silly to maintain that all states are the same not only in principle but in fact. Some cultures have a stronger public service ethic than others, and those cultures have more open, honest, transparent governance. Rather than railing against all governance, libertarians might spend their time more productively by encouraging a stronger public service ethic as well as a stronger work ethic and learning ethic, since all three lead to a stronger civil society and therefore a culture that is more open to greater freedom.
Some folks wonder why I cart my own laptop around rather than, say, accepting a computer from my employer. The short answer is that I prefer to own my means of production. Indeed, owning your means of production is just about the most anti-Marxist thing you can do. In The Anglosphere Challenge, James Bennett explains why (pp. 48-49):
[W]hen the falling price of computers crossed the point where the average programmer could affort to own a computer capable of producing the code from which he typically earned his living ... for the first time since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the ownership of the most critical tool of production in the most critical industry of the world's leading economy was readily affordable by the individual worker. Throughout the first three decades of the Information Age, the individual worker was still dependent on his employer for his means of production, just as any textile worker in Manchester or Lawrence was in 1840. Suddenly, this changed. Now, it is as if a steelworker could afford his own blast furnace or rolling mill, an automobile worker his own assembly line. By strict Marxist definitions, capitalism ended some time in the early 1990s.
Arnold Kling has got to be one of the best thinkers around today. He's just about my ideal of a free-market liberal (though I don't know if he'd like the term). Case in point: his most recent article on education and entrepreneurship (and this one on American entrepreneurialism is excellent, too).
Over at Rants and Raves, the previously-appreciated Stephen Browne writes:
The "multiculturalists" deny that any race or any culture is superior in any way to any other. They also refuse to address the question of whether different cultures could have different strengths and weaknesses, better (or more adaptive) in some ways, worse in others.
I most emphatically agree with them about race - but if this is true then only the culturalist explanation is left. They cannot both be false.
That's right. In only one sense is multiculturalism true: there are multiple cultures in the world. But not all cultures are created equal. Some cultures are better than others. And despite its faults, Western culture is the best. Sorry, that's not politically correct, but it has the benefit of being factually correct. Indeed, the success of so many different races and ethnic groups in Western civilization pretty much proves the point, I'd say. That's why I especially like the mongrel nation of America. I guess you can call me a multi-ethnic mono-culturalist.
This is a big topic, but I don't have the time or the energy to write about it further tonight. More some other time, OK?
Manuel Ayau did it in Guatemala, so why can't teachers and researchers in America pursue educational entrepreneuriship by starting more private universities? It turns that a few of them are -- Founder's College and the College of the United States are two examples I'm familiar with just in the Objectivist / libertarian community.
This is way cool! (HT: Cafe Hayek.) Can you guess what the data is based on the 3D blobular view?
Stephen Browne seems like my kind of person -- a sensible libertarian who loves Western civilization and has soujourned in Eastern Europe (though much more than I have). The touching collection of anecdotes he posted recently reminded me of my time teaching English in Czechoslovakia (see my essay Eastern Eyes). He notes that "Eastern Europeans have always considered themselves to be the eastern frontier of Western Civilization." I found that to be true when I was in the Czech lands. Folks there used to say "Asia begins in Bratislava", which is demonstrably false and was a jibe at their Slovakian cousins (probably the Slovaks say "Asia begins in Uzhgorod" and the western Ukrainians say "Asia begins in Kharkov" and so on). But it captures the sense of being on the edge of the West. Perhaps that means they value it all the more.
In yesterday's Rocky Mountain News, Tawfik Hamid spoke out against jihadism. He'll do so in person tomorrow night at the University of Denver and I plan to attend his talk. Reading his essay has also prodded me to post my blog entry from September 10th as a standalone essay entitled Islam and the Future of Civilization.
In the latest issue of my favorite newspaper, the Washington Park Profile, we learn of "Manufacturism", a new movement in conceptual "art":
Manufacturism is conceptual art that manufests products and services as the byproduct of a creative idea.
Anthony Harper and Manufacturistic colleagues create a glaring statement about racism in the 21st Century, with a new piece called Unwanted Hair, a three-piece body of conceptual art consisting of a sculpture made of human hair, a donation bank, and a book of photographs with creative commentary from fellow artists. Conceptually, this piece of work is rooted in the fact that, this year a donation of African-American locked hair was deemed "inappropriate," and rejected by the national non-profit cancer organization, Locks of Love.
Harper and Nonthaveth have taken homeless signs off the streets and into an artistic body of work called Dollar$igns. Homelessness is branded by the all-to-familiar exploitive imagery of an individual holding a brown cardboard sign on a street corner asking for help. Dollar$igns removes this element of exploitation by presenting "help" signs as art.
Oy vey. I'm all in favor of protest and questioning authority. But I'm also in favor of art, not so-called art that requires no craft or talent. And no, don't submit a request that I add "manufacturism" to The Ism Book.
Five years ago this evening we Americans, and more broadly we Westerners, went to sleep comfortable and complacent. Five years ago tomorrow morning we were rudely awoken; we found our land attacked and our people violated; and we came face to face with the manifest existence of evildoers who wished to destroy us.
Then arose the refrain: "Why do they hate us?" "Is not Islam a religion of peace?" "We must have done something horrible to bring this on." "It must be our foreign policy, or our spiritual decadence, or our cultural imperialism, or even our very success in commerce, production, science, and technology."
I, too, wondered. I began a program of reading and research to understand the nature of the West and the nature of Islam. I still have much to learn. But I know now much more than I knew on September 11, 2001.
I know that the jihad of Islam against the West is not solely a battle of Muslims against Christians (or, in the case of most Europeans, the heirs to Christendom). I know that Islam has waged its so-called holy war against Zoroastrians in Persia, against animists in Africa, against Hindus and Buddhists in India and Southeast Asia, against Taoists and Confucianists in China, against Berbers in the Maghreb, against Jews in Palestine -- as much if not more than against Christians in ancient Syria, Asia Minor, the Balkans, Hungary, Iberia, Armenia, Sicily, Crete, Lebanon, and beyond.
I know that Islam is not a religion of peace. I know that Islam means submission -- submission to the arbitrary will of Allah in heaven, submission to the arbitrary edicts of authoritarian strongmen on earth. I know that the Koran enjoins Muslims to not make friends with those who do not believe in Allah, and even says to "seize them and kill them wherever you find them" (sura 4.89).
I know that Islam is opposed to science, technology, and progress. As one of the hadiths says, "Verily the most truthful communication is the Book of Allah, the best guidance is from Muhammad, and the worst of all things are innovations; every innovation is heresy, every heresy is error, and every error leads to hell."
I know that Islam endorses slavery, oppresses non-Muslims, and is opposed to human dignity, especially the dignity of women. For example, under the sharia (the Islamic law), the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man. A woman is not to seek her own fulfillment, but exists only to please a man.
I know that the West's struggle against communism in the twentieth century was merely a blip on the historical radar, whereas the struggle of Islam against all other cultures has been a constant of human history for almost 1400 years.
I know that many Muslims believe it is inevitable that all of humanity must eventually believe in Allah, his Prophet Mohammed, his holy book the Koran as the only source of human wisdom, his law the sharia as the only law; and that all other cultures must submit to the will of Allah, whether willingly or by the sword.
I know that many Muslims are not violent; but at the same time I know that the term "Islamic fundamentalism" is redundant, because to be a Muslim is to believe that the Koran holds all truth, that nothing new can be discovered because it was all discovered by Mohammed, that anyone but a Muslim is in error and shall roast in Hell for all eternity.
I know that it is claimed that many Muslims are moderates, not radicals; but at the same time I see no evidence of this so-called moderate Muslim majority rising up in protest against their extremist, terrorist, jihadist brethren, because in their hearts they know that the Koran condones and excuses and encourages all believers to slay the unbelievers wherever they may be found.
I know that we -- the peoples of the West, the peoples of Europe and America, indeed also the peoples of India and Russia and China and Africa -- live in what Muslims consider the lands of war (Dar al-Harb). I know that we are being warred upon and that we have been warred upon on and off for almost 1400 years. I know that this war will not end as long as there are people who believe in the Koran as the literal word of God, whose minds will never be open to innovation or science, who consider a woman to be half of a man, who consider the life of one who does not believe in Allah to be worth less than nothing.
I know that we must stop trading with those who want to kill us (or those who, directly or indirectly, fund those who want to kill us), that we must not tolerate them, not support them, not grant them recognition, not collaborate or negotiate with them in any way, shape, or form.
I know that there are many enemies of freedom and enlightenment, and that even the West contains such enemies. But I know that there is no greater enemy of freedom and enlightenment than Islam.
I know that there will be no peace until freedom and enlightenment reach the lands of submission (the Dar al-Islam). Yet I know that speading freedom and enlightenment is perhaps the hardest and subtlest struggle of any civilization, especially when the soil in which the seeds must be sowed is so virulently opposed to precisely freedom and enlightenment.
I know that it will be supremely difficult for the peoples of the West to maintain and expand their traditions of freedom and enlightenment while resisting those who would have us submit to Allah, Mohammed, sharia, fatalism, and authoritarianism. I know that it will be even harder for the peoples of India, Russia, China, and Africa, who lack the strong and deep traditions of freedom and enlightenment we take for granted in the West.
I know that the peoples of the Anglosphere -- the Americans, the Canadians, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the British, etc. -- are the greatest targets for the forces of submission, because our traditions of freedom and enlightenment are more deeply engrained and more fully developed than those of any other peoples on earth.
I know that, despite its faults, Western civilization is the greatest, freest, most enlightened, most open, most advanced, most peaceful, most ethical civilization in the history of humanity. I know that the West is the last, best hope of earth. I know that freedom and enlightenment must be defended, articulated, and indeed actively and confidently spread to every far corner of the earth if humanity is to survive and advance, as individuals and as a species.
I wish that it were not so, but I know that we live in difficult, challenging times, and that in all likelihood the times will become harder before they become easier.
I know that one small voice cannot have much influence on the course of history, but I know that each of us must do what we can to defend, articulate, and spread freedom and enlightenment. And I know that I will strive to do so every day of my life, because to do anything less would be to submit to the forces of slavery and darkness.
The Register has published a fine (and fun) article on the purported threat of liquid explosives. Emphasis on the purported. RTWT.
I just finished reading Bruce Bawer's book While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying The West From Within. I am given given neither to schadenfreude over the problems of various European countries nor to the view that they are experiencing a crisis of world-historical proportions. Yet one who values the Western values of free minds and free markets cannot help but be disturbed by the prospect of the heart of Western civilization bowing down meekly before militant Islamic fundamentalism, accepting sharia, and becoming a Balkanized kind of Eurabia. Many observers call this threat Islamo-fascism, which I think is not really accurate since fascism was a form of nationalism. The term jihadism seems closer to the truth, in part because the jihadists have nothing positive whatsoever to offer and seek only to destroy the West. I don't have enough first-hand knowledge to say whether some or all European nations will submit to jihadism in the way that Bawer outlines. But I do know that it will never happen in America.
A few months ago, Internet entrepreneur and essayist Paul Graham published an essay entitled Why Startups Condense in America. He adduces ten reasons why America is so entrepreneurial (or, more specifically for his purposes, why America has Silicon Valley):
Graham argues that these factors lead to more examples of successful entrepreneurship in America (or in certain parts of America) and that attitude or "culture" doesn't have much to do it. (Inexplicably, he also associates startup-friendly environments with places that have lots of public transportation, which doesn't seem to have especially helped, say, Prague or Brussels.) And he says it doesn't hurt to have low (or no) taxes on capital gains.
How realistic is it that another will beat America at encouraging startups? The prospects don't look encouraging if you're not American...
First, very few countries in the world encourage immigration -- the short list is probably America, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, and to some extent Britain. It is unlikely that, say, China, Korea, Japan, Mexico, or Germany will suddenly welcome people from all over the world. It is even less likely that such countries will not only allow immigration but become a destination for immigrants in the way that the Anglosphere seedling countries (especially America) are.
Second, one reason America has traditionally been entrepreneurial is that labor costs have been much higher in America than they were in Europe or other parts of the world (i.e., America has been rich for a long time). This has driven the need to innovate in order to save costs. There is little incentive to save human labor in, say, India or China, since the costs are so low there.
Places like China don't come out so well on the "not a police state" score. Even democracies such as France, Spain, Germany, and Latin America have a long history of state regulation, centralized decision making, inflexible labor markets, and economic ossification (even corruption, in the case of China, India, and Latin America). It is extremely difficult to overcome that kind of history, especially since it's much easier for a would-be entrepreneur to leave for America or Canada or Australia than it is to reform one's home country.
Graham seems to think that the problem of creating a large domestic market will be overcome in Europe through the efforts of the European Union (and that national languages such as French and German will die out in favor of English), but those who have absorbed the point that there is no such thing as Europe know that this is more fantasy than reality. India and China perhaps have a better chance of creating large domestic markets, but they are still so poor that this will take many, many decades (if it ever happens).
Finally, I think Graham underestimates the importance of cultural attitudes. Why does America have a more flexible labor market, fewer regulations, and a more competitive educational market? Why do Americans have a greater propensity to welcome immigrants, invest time and money in risky ventures, devalue status in favor of accomplishments, and change careers or pick up stakes in pursuit of new opportunities? These phenomena do not exist in a vacuum and are expressions of the American culture of freedom, opportunity, flexibility, openness, rebelliousness, novelty, optimism, hard work, pragmatism, and all the rest. American attitudes provide a cultural medium for the organic growth of new organizations in many fields -- not just high tech companies (consider American entrepreneurship in, say, retailing and logistics) and not even just companies (consider American entrepeneurship in religion, philanthropy, education, and even government -- we have 50 state governments, over 3,000 county governments, countless town and city governments, and an ever-increasing number of special-purpose entities that cross jurisdictional boundaries). In a way, the first American settlers were entrepreneurs, and most subsequent immigrants were attracted by the entrepreneurial opportunities of the New World. Americans have thus by and large self-selected for entrepreneurship. It's difficult to see how any other nation could come close to building that kind of culture (especially nations outside the Anglosphere). Not that they shouldn't try -- but it would be unrealistic to expect strongly positive results anytime soon.
(Cross-posted at Albion's Seedlings.)
In my continuing effort to understand American society (an effort that smarter people than I are also engaged in, as witness Jim Bennett's post yesterday), recently I've read the following books:
All three are highly recommended, especially The Culture Code -- it's only 200 pages long but packed with insights into not only American culture but also France, Germany, England, and Japan.
As Lipset points out, America is different from the other advanced industrial nations in that socialism never happened here. The early American labor movements fought for worker rights and power, but were suspicious of government (the AFL was syndicalist, the IWW anarcho-syndicalist). The New Deal led to greater unionization and an acceptance of government power (especially among the CIO), but efforts to create a viable socialist or labor party floundered (unlike even our parents in England or our cousins in Canada and Australia), in part because America's two-party system works to co-opt third-party efforts. Unionization levels in America have almost always been lower than in the other industrial nations, and since the 1950s have slowly returned to pre-Depression levels (even here, unionization is by far the highest among old-line industries and government). American workers tend to think of themselves as "middle class" and don't have the kind of class consciousness that provides fertile ground for socialism. America has never had the kind of aristocratic Tory paternalism (opposed by working-class laborism) that England, Canada, and Australia have had -- we threw out the Tories in 1776 (Canada took them in) and have been essentially a Whig nation ever since. American conservatives are not Tories and are not to be confused with conservatives (Tories) in other parts of the Anglosphere; similarly, American liberals are not socialistic (e.g., they never pursued a strategy of nationalized industry) and are not to be confused with laborites in other parts of the Anglosphere. Instead, both liberals and conservatives are mostly Whig in America -- after all, Democrats are the party of Jefferson and Republicans are the party of Lincoln (or at least they claim to be -- we know that the Democrats tend toward the laborite end of the Whig spectrum through their patronizing the unions and that Republicans tend toward the Tory end of the Whig spectrum through their patronizing the modern-day aristocracy of big business).
Just as all inviduals are unique, so are all nations. America is not special in being unique, but in being an outlier in terms of so many statistics and values. Other countries have a high radius of trust (England, Germany, Japan), but few other countries couple that high radius of trust with high openness. Other countries are open to new people and ideas (especially immigrant cultures such as Australia, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina), but few other countries couple openness with a high radius of trust. The same goes for productivity, religiosity, entrepreneuralism, optimism, and the like.
If I were to summarize my reading so far, I would say that America is full of optimistic, work-focused, religious, sectarian, freedom-loving, patriotic, rebellious, energetic, ever-moving, adaptable, pragmatic, can-do, individualistic, youth-obsessed, generous, philanthropic, hopeful, innovative, entrepreneurial dreamers. Naturally, not every American is optimistic or work-focused or religious or whatever, but those are the general tendencies of American culture.
These differences are, as Lipset points out, something of a double-edged sword. Americans live in material abundance but also experience more poverty and crime. Their rights are respected but they are more litigious. They get things done but they don't enjoy the more sophisticated pleasures of life. They are educated for specific professions but they are anti-intellectual. And so on.
Realizing that America is different does not imply claiming that it is better. As an American, I tend to like American optimism, opportunity, individualism, freedom, and all the rest. I even tend to think that the world would be a better place if more nations were more like America, but I have no interest in forcing American values on other nations since it is (and always has been and, I hope, always will be) easy for people who find those values attractive to emigrate to America and pursue their dreams here.
American historian Richard Hofstadter is said to have observed that "it has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies, but to be one." That feels right to me. The word "Americanism" sums up the many traits and values of Americans (as far as I know there is no comparable "ism" derived from the name of any other nation), and Americans are always fighting over what is American and what is un-American (it's that sectarianism again). We don't care what the global villagers (China, Japan, Russia, etc.) think, what our grandparents (Europe) think, what our parents (England) think, what our cousins (Canada, Australia) think, or even what our fellow Americans think (if I don't like your approach, I'll start my own sect or company or whatever). We're a noisy, rebellious, adolescent bunch -- and we like it just fine that way. We don't always succeed, do the right thing, or live up to our ideals. But woe to anyone who bets on American failure, decline, or decay, because we seem to learn from our mistakes better than any other people in history.
(Cross-posted at Albion's Seedlings.)
I tend more and more toward what Seymour Martin Lipset calls "American Exceptionalism" -- the view that America is different from other countries in some fundamental ways (different even, I regret to say, from the other nations of the Anglosphere). There are many reasons for thinking so, which I intend to write about in future posts (one example I've noted before: economic productivity). Until then, I leave you with a link to an article by Dinesh D'Souza entitled What's So Great About America?.
In a talk entitled Some Reflections on the Origins of Industrial Capitalism in a Comparative Perspective, historian Alan Macfarlane makes the following observations:
Western Europe and Japan are the only two major agrarian societies which are known to have passed through a stage of authentic 'feudalism'. But even more significant was the similarity between England and Japan, which each had a peculiar form of feudalism - what one might call 'centralized feudalism'. Its major feature is that it provides order, without choking society by developing into 'absolutism'.
The essence of this political balance is outlined by Tocqueville in his Reflections on English History. "There are two great drawbacks to avoid in organizing a country. Either the whole strength of social organization is centred on one point, or it is spread over the country. Either alternative has its advantages and its drawbacks. If all is tied into one bundle, and the bundle gets undone, everything falls apart and there is no nation left. Where power is dispersed, action is clearly hindered, but there is strength everywhere." De Tocqueville thought that only one country had found the balance and, with occasional wobbles towards absolutism, maintained it. "I don't know if a mean between these extremes can be found, but it would seem that William did find it."
This balance, encapsulated in the contradictory words 'centralized feudalism' is what was also maintained in Japan. Through its curious system of division between ritual ruler (Emperor) and military ruler (Shogun), through its almost identical form of feudal tenures, it maintained orderliness without absolutism, severe centralization with strong local power. It did not veer towards the 'dissolution of the state' feudalism of anarchy, or the absolutist state which Perry Anderson believed lay inevitably in the path to modernity. Only in the early twentieth century was the balance temporarily lost, with the abolition of the Shogun and the placing of the Emperor above the law.
While I tend toward radical decentralism (at least a much more decentralized political structure than we know today), I see the wisdom in Tocqueville's observations. And one could draw productive analogies between this political balance and the organization of things other than countries -- corporations and open-source projects come immediately to mind...
In an essay-review of a recent academic paper by Acemoglu and Johnson, Clemson University economics professor Daniel K. Benjamin portrays one aspect of their argument as follows:
The authors' conclusions result from their empirical estimates of the impacts of alternative patterns of European colonization. They show, for example, that the legal systems brought by the colonists interacted with pre-existing conditions of the lands they colonized to shape the long-term institutions of each colony. Some nations happened to colonize prosperous lands where population densities were high, as Spain did in Mexico and Peru. These colonizers imposed legal institutions that would facilitate the exploitation of indigenous peoples. This yielded short-term riches for these colonial powers, but discouraged long-term investment. Other nations, such as England in colonizing North America, settled lands with few local inhabitants, and thus had to rely on investment and voluntary exchange to survive. This required strong property rights institutions, which promoted investment and yielded long-run prosperity.
These forces were amplified by local disease conditions. In locales such as sub-Saharan Africa, where settler mortality rates sometimes exceeded 50 percent per year, colonizers created legal institutions that enabled them to extract resources quickly, without regard for protecting long-term investments. This was an understandable short-term strategy. But its long-term legacy has been legal systems with weak property rights that even today enable governments to extract resources at will from their citizens.
In contrast, settlers in low mortality colonies, such as North America, opted for property institutions that would protect their investments from predation by others, especially the state. These decisions of 400 years ago have produced dramatic differences in long-term prosperity. Per-capita income levels today can differ by a factor of fifty across nations with different property rights institutions, and the people who live where property rights are strongest are the richest.
This argument puzzles me. Do Acemoglu and Johnson think that the colonizers of North America and South America, like some kind of Rawlsian shmoos, made explicit decisions about which property rights regime they would choose? Do they think that whether a colonized region's politico-economic culture is characterized by exploitation or voluntary exchange is determined by the pre-existing conditions of the region (density of population, mortality rates, etc.)? Do they think that if the Spanish had settled along the Chesapeake River whereas the English had settled along the Rio de la Plata, the institutions of modern-day Maryland and Virginia would respect property rights whereas the institutions of modern-day Argentina would not? If so, their thinking flies in the face of the historical experience of all the nations that were settled by the Spanish (at the time of colonization an exploitative, centralized, absolutist autocracy) in contrast to all the nations that were settled by the English (at the time of colonization a free, decentralized, constitutional-associative polity). I have yet to read Acemoglu and Johnson's original paper (it's not available online), but I look forward to reading it, if only to determine if their argument could diverge so far from historical facts.
[Update: Yes, I grant that there are variations here. To truly analyze the issue, we'd need to compare English settlement / colonization of North America, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, South Africa, Hong Kong, Jamaica, etc. against Spanish settlement / colonization of Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Cuba, the Philippines, etc. (not to mention Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, and French colonization efforts). Some of these happened at different times (e.g., by the time English colonization of India really got underway, British foreign policy was much more socialistic than it was during the settlement of North America). I don't doubt that the existing environment (population, climate, mortality) had some impact on respect for property rights. But I think the overall patterns (Anglosphere vs. Hispanosphere) are pretty clear, and were not driven primarily by existing conditions (compare, say, Singapore and Hong Kong against the Philippines).]
In commenting on an essay entitled The People Formerly Known as the Audience, Stowe Boyd coins a new word for those of us out on the edge who are both consumers and producers of information: edglings. I like it! And as Stowe says (paraphrasing Dave Winer), "Once power migrates to the edge, the edglings are unlikely to give it back."
Charles Krauthammer explains why he loves Australia. More fodder for strengthening friendship between America and Australia (or vice-versa).
In an interview posted at african-geopolitics.org, economic historian David Landes (author of The Wealth and Povery of Nations) states:
The best indicator of the potential of growth and development of a nation is the status and role of women. Their exclusion means depriving the country of an important volume of workforce and talent. Moreover, their exclusion also undermines the desire of men to achieve success; spoiled from their childhood and treated as princes, men don't feel the need to prove themselves.
There is, I think, much truth in that statement. But then again I'm a female chauvinist.
A week or so ago I linked to an essay by Robin Hanson on the causes of economic growth. As I've noted before, Hanson has enunciated a provocative model for thinking about economic growth over the next 40 to 60 years: he argues, based on previous phases of growth in economic production, that we may be on the cusp of a phase transition comparable to that from hunting and gathering to farming, or from farming to industry. But every such phase shift requires a mechanism -- in particular, new modes of production and societal organization that overcome the limitations inherent in the prior phase. For the possible next stage, Hanson (in an essay entitled "The Economics of Brain Simulations") proposes brain simulation as the technology that is most likely to have the required impact on economic growth.
Now, I am not deeply versed in the science and technology of artificial intelligence so I don't pretend to know whether brain simulation will be developed at some point in the next 50 years. But to my mind, Hanson doesn't help his case with some reasoning that seems highly suspect, especially coming from someone who is a professor of economics. Consider:
The suggestion that the world economy will soon double every week or two, after a transition lasting only a few years, seems so far from ordinary experience as to be, well, "crazy." Of course similar predictions made before the previous transitions would have seemed similarly crazy. Nevertheless, it seems hard to take this scenario seriously without at least some account of how it could be possible.
Now we cannot expect to get a very detailed account about a new growth mode. After all, most economics has been designed to explain the actual social worlds that we have seen so far, and not all the possible social worlds that might exist. And we are still pretty ignorant about the fundamental drivers of the previous modes. But we do want at least a sketchy account. Of the many future technologies that technologists have forecast, which could plausibly have anywhere near this impact on the economy?
One helpful hint is that innovations in larger economic sectors can produce larger social impacts. In the United States we spend about 1.5% of income on farming, 1.5% on mining, 2% on gas and electricity, 2.5% on communications, 3% on transportation, and 3.5% on construction. These small fractions make it hard to see how innovations in these sectors could induce much faster growth. For such drama, we must look beyond the usual technology favorites, such space colonization, fusion energy, air cars, sea cities, or picture phones. We probably must even look beyond radical nanotechnology; nanotech might dramatically reduce the cost of capital for manufacturing, but we only spend about 5% of income there.
A more promising fraction is the 70% of income we now pay for human labor. Greatly lower[ing] this cost could have a huge impact. And robotics or artificial intelligence good enough to substitute wholesale for most human labor might just greatly lower such costs.
It strikes me as plain silly to say that Americans spend a cumulative ~20% of national income on farming, mining, gas, electricity, communications, transportation, construction, and manufacturing, but 70% on labor (it's not clear what the other 10% is, since Hanson's figures don't add up to 100%). What, I ask, is this "labor"? Isn't there labor involved in farming, mining, gas and electricity production and distribution, communications, transportation, construction, and manufacturing? Sure there is. Furthermore, "labor" is not an undifferentiated entity. The 70% of the economy that does not fall into Hanson's other categories consists of such a wide range of jobs as to be incommensurable: nurses, doctors, dentists, psychologists, pharmacists, chiropractors, veterinarians, gardeners, cooks, waiters, florists, teachers, salespeople, marketers, research scientists, chemists, computer programmers, mechanical engineers, architects, actors, singers, dancers, athletes, journalists, shop owners, entrepreneurs, accountants, lawyers, plumbers, car repairmen, customer service representatives, security guards, policemen, and hundreds of other kinds of workers all provide "labor", it seems. But to lump all their efforts into "labor" ignores the particular circumstances of the knowledge, skills, and abilities involved. I suppose the Singularitarians would argue that once brain simulation has been invented, we'll simply copy the brain patterns of people working in the relevant job and upload those copies to the relevant machine, then off we go. The result, we are led to expect, will be florist robots, chiropractor robots, gardener robots, waiter robots, actor robots (perhaps one and the same as waiter robots), car repair robots, sales robots, lawyer robots, psychologist robots, nurse robots, architect robots, programming robots, teacher robots, police robots, cook robots, plumber robots, customer service robots, journalist robots, entrepreneur robots, and all the rest.
We have an intuitive sense that some of these robots are likelier than others. Some of this "labor" involves specialized eye-hand coordination of the kind that would be hard to build into machines as far as we know right now. Some of this "labor" is tied to the human form, to human senses, to human feeling, to human empathy, to human presence, to human reactions in the context of other humans and their unpredictable actions, even to human irrationality (e.g., entrepreneurs are hopelessly optimistic and unrealistic). I suppose the AI folks would argue that once brain simulation has been invented, we'll simply build ever better simulations -- including human foibles as well as human strengths, human feelings as well as human reason, and all the rest.
Me, I tend to think that AI will not simulate us idiosyncratic humans, any more than printing presses simulate handwriting, tractors simulate oxen, airplanes simulate birds, cars simulate horses, boats simulate fish, or light bulbs simulate candles. If we ever develop strong artificial intelligence, it will by definition be artificial, alien, other -- not human.
That leaves open the question: what will the next economic phase shift look like? The shift from hunting and gathering to farming did not change what was produced (still mostly food) but did change how it was produced (and as a result introduced new professions and specializations even if on a small scale, new power relations in the form of hierarchical organization, new economic and social phenomena). Eventually those new things became in some sense characteristic of society even though the bulk of the economy was still dominated by farming. The shift from farming to industry resulted eventually in great automation of food production and a wholesale movement of people from farm and cottage workshop to factory, from country to city, from agriculture to manufacturing; more recently (over the last 80+ years) from factory to office, from city to suburb, from manufacturing to services.
It's not clear to me what the next phase shift will bring. The replacement of manufacturing by nanotechnological fabrication? Of myriad services by intelligent, human-focused (though not human-like) robots and machines? Will the service economy be replaced by the experience economy, just as the manufacturing economy was replaced by the service economy? Will the smart machines develop their own markets (why would they want to be involved in ours)? Will, as Hanson predicts, human labor prices drop precipitously as most "labor" is performed by machines? Or will we wily humans find new niches and create new kinds of jobs? I tend to be optimistic that humans will adapt and adjust quickly, as we tend to do when we have the freedom to try.
Naturally, not all societies have an equal freedom to try. And not all societies are at nearly the same level of development. (The evidence shows that freedom and development are not unrelated.) Today, the world still contains some few societies of hunter-gatherers, many societies that are primarily agricultural, a number of societies that are industrial (though it is doubtful whether they could have initiated the "exit" to industrialism), and a few societies that are post-industrial (mainly service-oriented). What happens when some of the post-industrial societies (most likely in the Anglosphere) initiate yet another exit, this time from 5% or 10% a year economic growth to 50% or 100% or 500% or 1000% a year growth? What will be the internal power relations in such a Singularity society, or the power relations between such a society and all other societies? What new professions will arise (and which familiar jobs will disappear)? Will an experience economy emerge in the midst of tremendous abundance? What new economic and social phenomena will the world witness?
I don't have the answers. But I do know we're heading into uncharted waters.
May you live in interesting times...
J.R. Dunn has a fine post about how the Anglosphere can help the Islamic world join the modern age. Something to do with fighting the Kharajist roots of modern-day jihadism with a renaissance of Mutazilism. It seems I posted something similar back in November 2001. I really do need to read up on Islamic intellectual history sometime...
Robin Hanson writes:
The truth is that the artistic creations or intellectual insights we most admire for their striking "creativity" matter little for economic growth. Instead, most of the innovations that matter are the tiny changes we constantly make to the millions of procedures and methods we use. And changing these procedures does not require free-spirited self-expression. Instead, it is quite natural for people to constantly think about tiny changes to their procedures as they follow those procedures. In fact, we imagine far more such changes than we can afford to pursue.
What we lack is not more suggestions for change, but better ways to identify the most promising suggestions, and ways to encourage people to pass suggestions on to those who can best act on them. If the world has become more "creative" it is mostly because our social institutions do better at these tasks; bohemian self-expression has little to do with it.
Speaking of soccer, over at Samizdata Scott Wickstein points to a New York Times article about the American national team. Although I don't pretend that the Americans will even get to the round of 16 in the upcoming World Cup, more interesting to me than the team's prospects is the team's philosophy, which commenter OrneryWP at Samizdata labels "flexibility and dogged determination". Jere Longman of the New York Times describes the American approach as "applying defensive pressure, counterattacking and playing aggressively ... relying on speed, fitness, athleticism, competitiveness, teamwork and intelligence". Alex Ferguson, the coach of Manchester United, calls it "that American thing". German soccer great Jürgen Klinsman says this optimism and confidence suffuse American attitudes of "how to deal with people, how to look at things, how to believe in yourself, how to focus on things and also to take risks, to say, 'Let's go for it.'"
American forward Landon Donovan explains:
What we're good at and why we've been successful is that we know what we are. A lot of countries pretend to be something they're not. A lot of teams like to pretend they're like the Brazilians. Well, you don't have the athletes the Brazilians do. You don't have the soccer knowledge and skill they do. We understand that. We're not the most talented team in the world, by far. But we are one of the most competitive, with the best spirit, the fittest, and with some of the best athletes. And we use that to our advantage.
Longman writes:
The American style, as Arena sees it, is defined by an ability to adapt, to shape strategies and formations according to various factors: the players available on a particular day, the opponent, the weather. Style depends on the qualities his players possess, not on predetermined notions about how they should play. In the 2002 World Cup, the Americans sat back and counterattacked in the wilting heat against Mexico, using three backs to cope with players' injuries and suspensions, and then charged hell-bent at Germany in the next game, certain that the Germans were not the better team.
American coach Bruce Arena (tellingly, he prefers the term "manager") says "We don't have the best players in the world."
I think that's part of the American approach to sports, business, technology, international relations, and a lot more. Despite worldwide perceptions of American jingoism, we don't always think we're the best. But as we have shown in everything from world wars to retail merchandising, Americans tend to apply flexibility, intelligence, speed, teamwork, communication, and determination to continually get better and better. That doesn't mean American success is guaranteed in any particular field of endeavor, whether that be automobile production, pre-university education, or soccer. But once Americans turn their attention to something, it would be foolish to count them out.
Although yesterday I joked about the spurious definition of cultural racism put forward by the Seattle Public School district, racism is not a thing of the past (it was especially sad that those educational bureaucrats in Seattle said that individualism is a form of racism, since it is precisely collectivism that underlies racism). Last night, while waiting to watch the Yankee highlights on ESPN, I was shocked to see a piece on overt racism among soccer (ok, football) fans in Spain, France, Italy, and even traditionally tolerant Holland -- monkey chants directed against black players, fascist flags being waved in Italy, the Spanish national coach calling France's Thierry Henry a black shit, all punished by fines that count as a mere slap on the wrist. Now, Americans don't live in a glass house by any means -- racist epithets were routinely hurled against Jackie Robinson when he "broke the color barrier" of American professional sports, but that was in 1946, people! Since then, black American players have become heroes to Americans of all colors -- from Willie Mays and Hank Aaron to Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal. The kind of behavior that has been and is being tolerated in soccer stadiums across many countries in Europe would simply not be allowed in modern America. The next time someone blathers on about the moral superiority of Europe over America, think about how a significant minority of Europeans treat their most prominent immigrants, then weep about how they treat their least prominent.
Joel Kotkin is continually stimulating. In his own calm, factual way, he challenges numberless common assumptions about American society. He sees that the future of America lies not in the old-line cities but in suburbs, exurbs, and small, growing cities (especially in Florida, Texas, and the West). He values suburbia for its endless flexibility (although he recognizes that suburbs need to include more amenities and become the mini-cities they already are in many ways). He resists the siren song of the urban planners by valuing cars over trains (here's a question for the train lovers and anti-urban-sprawlists: would you still complain about the American love affair with the automobile if all cars were electrically-powered?). And his conclusions are driven not by ideology but by serious, on-the-ground economic and demographic research into why and how certain American cities are booming and others are not (in fact he extends his analysis to places like Australia and Japan, as well). Not for Kotkin the elitist jeremiads about urban sprawl, the suburb as cultural wasteland, and so on. Instead, he recognizes that America is continually reinventing itself through the relentless movement of its people in search of better jobs, improved quality of life, an enjoyable environment, scenic surroundings, cultural and educational opportunities, and a hundred other values. And because Americans so deeply value equality of opportunity, the towns and cities that thrive tend to be those that afford great space to the aspirations of the average American, also known as the middle class (I resist the latter term because I don't think America has much class consciousness in the first place). The average American doesn't care much about convenient public transportation, hip downtowns, avant-garde art galleries, or trendy restaurants, but does care a lot about good schools, low taxes, plentiful jobs, short commutes, a safe neighborhood, and a single-family home with a yard. The towns and cities that deliver those things are growing like crazy -- places like Yuma, Arizona; Reno, Nevada; and Coral City, Florida. The elites may not like it, but the facts speak for themselves. And Joel Kotkin deserves our gratitude for directing our attention to those inconvenient facts.
Well, I don't think I'm a racist, but the administrators of the Seattle Public Schools would, since they define cultural racism as follows:
Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as 'other,' different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers.
Well, I admit to having a future time orientation (i.e., working toward long-term goals), preferring individualism to collectivism, and upholding standards in English expression. Although I think Duke Ellington is the greatest composer in American history, I'm sure that on occasion I've identified Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms as the greatest composers in the classical tradition. And no writer will ever surpass William Shakespeare as a master of English literature. So I suppose I'm guilty as charged.
Georgie Anne Geyer writes:
Mexico is so corrupt, so oligopolistic, so rotting inside with the privilege of the rich that it has to send its poor and its potential political activists to another country. And on top of that, it tries to blame the United States for its own failures....
But there are new voices of change, of reason, of self-awareness in Mexico, in place of the hoary anti-gringo rants: the beginnings of a transformation of the debate....
The same week of the Fox visit, for instance, The New York Times ran a stunning article headlined "Some in Mexico See Border Wall as Opportunity." It quotes men such as Jorge Santibanez, president of the College of the Northern Border, saying: "For too long, Mexico has boasted about immigrants leaving, calling them national heroes, instead of describing them as actors in a national tragedy; and it has boasted about the growth in remittances as an indicator of success, when it is really an indicator of failure"....
Surely the fact that America has awakened to the insult of its "neighbor" cynically exporting its problems, while doing nada at home, can only help Mexico and jar it to some modern sense. Ironically, the debate and the anger in the U.S. about this mammoth illegal immigration has already helped Mexico to begin to shed its dependency on America -- and to turn its energies toward its own real predators, all home-grown.
More about the corruption of the Mexican oligopoly here and here. Only through real, Anglosphere-like reform and resultant economic growth in Mexico will the immigration problem start to solve itself. (Though personally I think American could use some reform of its own, most particularly in this context reform of the horrendous Immigration and Naturalization Service.)
In my continuing efforts to understand America, I've recently read four books on the topic:
If modern American history is a series of footnotes to Alexis de Tocqueville, then The Radicalism of the American Revolution is significant for describing how the America that Tocqueville observed came to be out of the ferment of the revolution. The short version is that the post-revolutionary generation took seriously the philosophy of "all men are created equal" and "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" -- more seriously than the Founding Fathers would perhaps have liked. Whereas the founders were (or aspired to be) gentlemen, their sons and grandsons got busy with a form of hustling commerce that was something new on earth. No more were people to be known by their breeding or knowledge or accomplishments -- now all that mattered was the leveling force of work, work, and more work. For better or worse, the grasping, teeming, democratic, individualist, opportunistic, workaholic, visionary, evangelical, entrepreneurial, modern America had emerged with a vengeance.
Ledeen simply reminds the reader of the importance of Tocqueville -- better, I think, to read the original if one has the time (if not, Ledeen's book is a short, friendly introduction to Tocqueville).
Jasper's thesis is that Americans are the people who do not rest. We move far more frequently than people anywhere else. We change our names, our stations, our jobs, our careers, our families, our friends, and just about everything else. We attract far more immigrants than any other nation (60 million of them in our history), who move to America for opportunities that don't exist elsewhere. We move up and down economically and socially. We move into new scientific, technological, and economic fields at an alarming pace. Jasper doesn't think this is good (one gets the sense that he'd like America to be a lot more like various nations in Europe), but many of his observations are well placed.
Brooks provides some of the deepest insights into contemporary American that I have found. He explains the surface phenomena that Jasper describes by connecting them to the thoroughgoing future orientation that has been characteristic of American culture since at least the Revolution (indeed before -- as Jasper points out, ever since its discovery the New World has been perceived as the land of the future). Our future orientation makes us optimistic (often unrealistically so), entrepreneurial, utopian, messianic, hardworking, imaginative, creative, anti-intellectual, and much else besides. Brooks invokes (correctly, I think) Walt Whitman as the greatest seer into America:
Whitman saw that America is the permanent revolution, that deep in middle-American life, even in the most placid-seeming suburb, there is an unquenchable longing and hope, and it is in committing to far-off dreams that we fight the insularity and the trivialization that threaten to swallow us up every day.... Even in his darkest mood, Whitman radiated a spirit of radical optimism and inspired hopefulness.... In these pages, I have described aspects of everyday American life that are tawdry, inspiring, and comic. But I think for all his overblown rhetoric, Whitman was still essentially right. America is not a perfect country. It is often an embarrassing country. But it is a great country, and it is greatly different from other countries. It is infused with a utopian fire that redeems its people, despite the crass and cynical realities.... We are motivated by the Paradise Spell, by the feeling that there is some glorious destiny just ahead.... We are an imaginative people, a dreaming people. Middle Americans may not be contemplative or dark and brooding. We may not be rooted in a deep and mysterious past. But we do have our heads in a vast and complicated future, and that gives the American mind a dimension that is not easily understood or dismissed.
Very well said.
Brooks refers to some more books that I mean to read in my pursuit of understanding America:
It seems that it's back to the library for me...
Some more fascinating numbers from the January 2006 report on The Role of Metro Areas in the U.S. Economy. If various American metropolitan areas were their own nations, how would they rank in the world economy? Check this out (the numbers are gross domestic product and gross metropolitan product in 2004 for all nations or American metropolitan areas with production of over $100 billion in goods and services):
The key measure of the wealth-producing capacity of any society is productivity, i.e., the amount of goods and services produced per person. As I've previously noted, America is far and away the most productive large nation in the world. Honoring the insights of Jane Jacobs into the importance of cities to the wealth of nations, we can go farther (at least in America) by looking at metropolitan productivity. Here we divide gross metropolitan product (GMP) by metropolitan population to derive per capita metropolitan production for the 26 cities in America with over 2 million inhabitants, shown here in order of productivity:
Naturally I have my doubts about any statistics showing the Washington, D.C. area to be the most productive in the country, but the other cities are pretty interesting. If I had the time I'd investigate this
