"Probably the most frustrating part of the debate was that Sehon kept comparing Scandinavia to the U.S., instead of comparing his ideal to my ideal."
Sweden exists and America exists, so you can debate the merits of the two with some empirical accuracy.
Caplan-stan doesn't exist, so you can't really debate its merits with much empirical precision. Until Communism was tried, people thought it would turn out a lot closer to the ideal then what really happened.
"In the debate, I told the audience that the 2020 U.S. presidential election nicely exposes the sheer crumminess of democracy. Trump or Biden: Those are your choices."
Previously you stated that you would have turned over dictorial powers to the faculty of Harvard, now you say it's a mistake. Instead it should be STEM PhDs (aren't he people running the CCP stem PHDs).
The experiment with "narrow elite has all the power" hasn't worked out in the past. The failure modes are easy to understand. Even if you think democracy should be reformed or the franchise rules somehow amended, reasonably broad diffusion of political power seem to protect against some worst abuses and failure modes.
I’m surprised that you did not mention - at least in this recap - the high degree of cultural homogeneity in the Scandinavian countries as a major source of their cohesiveness and ultimately happiness. Not to mention a largely white and highly educated population that has avoided the brunt of European wars and has largely remained politically neutral. From my experience, the predominant culture was formed from their Christian roots, and kept alive by a strong tribal instinct that has led to a balance between strong capitalist and commercial trading roots, and an impulse to support those on the lower rung of society. This has all been threatened by the high number of immigrants that have arrived who come with a very different cultural background and are not broadly accepted as a member of their tribal in-group.
While there is a lot to admire about these countries, this model could not simply be translated to the US, with a highly diverse multi-cultural population.
A relative i have and the swedish democrats (or far right- anti immigrant party, 23% of our goverment currently) are very happy to point this aout and argue for this point
The relative seems to feel literal disgust and stress around immigrants unless they are extremely veted or they already knew them well
Caplan's main hobby horse is trying to ensure there are no countries with a ' largely white and highly educated population' left in the world to exist.
> homogeneity in the Scandinavian countries as a major source of their cohesiveness and ultimately happiness....largely white
Happy by what standard? There is no such fact as race. And innate ideas are the absurdity of knowing reality prior to knowing reality. Why for what or whom is cohesiveness good?
Well, they are all Scandinavian. I spent some time barhopping w/a Norwegian blond. She liked Sambucca and coffee beans. I like to group people by whether they have a focused or unfocused mind. I find value in that. How about yourself?
The definition of happiness is what BC discussed in his recap - there are metrics to measure this, which he accepts. I would argue that tribal affiliations are ingrained in our evolutionary makeup, and allow (demand) for the members of the tribe to act in accordance with the cultural norms of that tribe, including putting group membership often ahead of individual impulse. This is what makes for better social conditions, IMHO.
And, yet, curiously, very curiously, you dont tell us.
> tribal affiliations are ingrained in our evolutionary makeup
Man has free will to focus or evade focusing his mind. This is known by common human experience, not science. Evolution stopped w/mans free will mind because that is the most powerful method for mans life. You rationalize the cowardly sacrifice of independent judgment to social approval. Better social conditions protect and reward mans free will mind.
Incoherent, scientifically illiterate nonsense. Just as "race" doesn't exist (as good science), race denialism is equally bad science. Gene pools matter. Classical liberalism only appeared 1,000 years ago in the outbred gene pool in NW Europe. Inbred gene pools are never classically liberal, with high-social-trust institutions such as formal/constitutional law, they are always clannish and low trust.
See Samuel Bowles' 2008 Ulam Lectures, Santa Fe Institute.
Yes, Im a Rand fetishist. Ive grown weary of statistical studies of emotions posing as science.
Have you ever considered science as the product of a focused mind? As bluesman, Johhny Winter almost sang it,"Realitys out there,babe, its sneakin' up on ya Its gonna git ya wherever you go.
>"race" doesn't exist (as good science), race denialism is equally bad science.
If you mess up your mind w/contraadictions, it will respond w/demons.
Everything you have said so far is muddled gibberish and a PROJECTION of your mental dysfunction. Waste of time. You think you understand science, but you obviously don't because you do not appear to be capable of anything other than lazy, slobbery generalizations.
Is that science after its been shredded in a materialist meatgrinder? My grandmother made delicious chopped liver w/a meatgrinder. And Canters Deli in LA on Fairfax Av also serves thick chopped liver sandwiches to the hipsters after the clubs close at 2AM.
Two notes: i think that people that are socialist at heart have a strong preference against SEEING and knowing about inequality, not necessarily inequality per se.
Immigration is bad for this preference because then they can see the poor people
This is a big part of Anti-beggar and anti-immigration sentiment in sweden actually: the argument that they would just be poor in their own country doesnt hold weight to them, they simply hate seeing and knowing about these poor people
Also, in sweden, parts of the social democrats (the democrats easentially) and most of the leftist party thinks that we have gotten worse since the 80s when we started to liberalize and provatize much of the economy. They complain often that we are too capitaistix
What does he even mean by this? Elon runs a social media, rocket and car company. He isn't running anything besides that. Which I indeed would cheer very loudly as an alternative to Trump or Biden.
Regarding Sweden as a model of successful socialism...
Linked to The Capitalist Manifesto by Carmack recently, that exact topic is covered by the author and is described as a gross mischaracterization. It looks he's published this book entirely on the topic:
Swedes in the US are wealthier though, and maybe not for reasons related to national economic systems, like the dollars status in international trade. A fairer comparison might be Scandinavia vs the UK, they're both European contrives with similar demographics. The difference in economic systems between the UK and Scandinavia, and the US and Scandinavia, is smaller, but the quality of life in the UK is still appreciably lower than in Scandinavia.
Happiness indexes are stupid. Happiness can mean multiple, distinct things. I suspect that this measure is actually looking at satisfaction, not joy, or fulfilment, or other forms of happiness. The USA has traditionally been home to ambitious people who are not satisfied with way things are. That is not a negative in my book.
When the first philosopher, Thales, 600BC?, discovered natural causes, mans 300K-year dependence on coincidences was ended. The modern, statistical-mathematical method of measuring coincidences does not change this. Coincidences are not causes.
Learn some real social science (and biology wrt/ "race").
A well known model in social science is Henrich's WEIRD model, it is used to explains the evolutionary origins of modern rationalism, Enlightenment values, etc.
Medieval, pre-liberal/pre-enlightenment European culture (and the rest of the world) was conformist and collectivist, but it mutated into modern culture with agentic values ("individual achievement") with an expanding, increasingly literate/numerate, increasingly wealthy, increasingly scientifically innovative urban commoner class because of expanding river and sea trade and "market" economics. Frankish manorialism evolved with "free cities" and Hanseatic League (which in Holland gave birth to modern accounting and "capitalist" sea trade.
I don't know what definition of "socialism" was in use in the debate, or if it was coherent, but Marxism is not a traditional, medieval social form, it is a modern ideology that was supposed to fix the anxiety over loss of traditional morals and social order created by "capitalism", colonialism, imperialism and so forth. The problem is that Marxism rejected the traditional, religious concept of social order based on renunciation of evil and sin, replacing it with either nothing, or some kind of utopianism that by definition doesn't exist.
I get the sense that most europeans define "socialism" not as Marxism (in the strict sense), but as some vague opposition to the american corporate-state system (and nationalism-populism), combined with cultural leftism, postmodern pluralism, coastal cosmopolitanism, etc.
Man has a free will mind that he can either focus or evade focusing. Thus the need for philosophy as an intellectual framework that explains the cultures acceptance of parrrticular ideas and a particular use of the mind. The West started as rational in Greece, decayed into Christianity, bounced back as science, and faded into our present nihilism and return of religion.
Are you saying that they are happier because so many unhappy ones were successful in committing suicide? Or are you saying that the prospect of suicide makes living, unhappy people happier? Or something else?
I was being sarcastic about the absurd, pseudo-scientific claim that socialism causes happiness. Leftists like science after its been prostituted to Leftism.
Good question you ask of Stephen Grossman. Partly because my brother committed suicide, I've been reading about suicide in the 53 years since he did so. One thing that comes out pretty clearly is that people who commit suicide often get very happy (relatively) once they've decided to do so. But before they've decided to do so, they are miserable, which is why they decided to commit suicide.
I’m sorry to hear that about your personal story, and also sorry to hear of the temporary improvement in happiness that precedes a suicide attempt. I’d hope that the number of Scandinavians intending to commit suicide is small enough that it has insufficient t power to explain the differences here.
"Probably the most frustrating part of the debate was that Sehon kept comparing Scandinavia to the U.S., instead of comparing his ideal to my ideal."
Sweden exists and America exists, so you can debate the merits of the two with some empirical accuracy.
Caplan-stan doesn't exist, so you can't really debate its merits with much empirical precision. Until Communism was tried, people thought it would turn out a lot closer to the ideal then what really happened.
"In the debate, I told the audience that the 2020 U.S. presidential election nicely exposes the sheer crumminess of democracy. Trump or Biden: Those are your choices."
Previously you stated that you would have turned over dictorial powers to the faculty of Harvard, now you say it's a mistake. Instead it should be STEM PhDs (aren't he people running the CCP stem PHDs).
The experiment with "narrow elite has all the power" hasn't worked out in the past. The failure modes are easy to understand. Even if you think democracy should be reformed or the franchise rules somehow amended, reasonably broad diffusion of political power seem to protect against some worst abuses and failure modes.
I’m surprised that you did not mention - at least in this recap - the high degree of cultural homogeneity in the Scandinavian countries as a major source of their cohesiveness and ultimately happiness. Not to mention a largely white and highly educated population that has avoided the brunt of European wars and has largely remained politically neutral. From my experience, the predominant culture was formed from their Christian roots, and kept alive by a strong tribal instinct that has led to a balance between strong capitalist and commercial trading roots, and an impulse to support those on the lower rung of society. This has all been threatened by the high number of immigrants that have arrived who come with a very different cultural background and are not broadly accepted as a member of their tribal in-group.
While there is a lot to admire about these countries, this model could not simply be translated to the US, with a highly diverse multi-cultural population.
A relative i have and the swedish democrats (or far right- anti immigrant party, 23% of our goverment currently) are very happy to point this aout and argue for this point
The relative seems to feel literal disgust and stress around immigrants unless they are extremely veted or they already knew them well
Caplan's main hobby horse is trying to ensure there are no countries with a ' largely white and highly educated population' left in the world to exist.
> homogeneity in the Scandinavian countries as a major source of their cohesiveness and ultimately happiness....largely white
Happy by what standard? There is no such fact as race. And innate ideas are the absurdity of knowing reality prior to knowing reality. Why for what or whom is cohesiveness good?
Replace “race” with “set of closely related tribes”.
The various Scandinavian countries will all tell you how very different they are from each other. Does that mean there is no value in grouping them?
Well, they are all Scandinavian. I spent some time barhopping w/a Norwegian blond. She liked Sambucca and coffee beans. I like to group people by whether they have a focused or unfocused mind. I find value in that. How about yourself?
The definition of happiness is what BC discussed in his recap - there are metrics to measure this, which he accepts. I would argue that tribal affiliations are ingrained in our evolutionary makeup, and allow (demand) for the members of the tribe to act in accordance with the cultural norms of that tribe, including putting group membership often ahead of individual impulse. This is what makes for better social conditions, IMHO.
>happiness...metrics to measure this
And, yet, curiously, very curiously, you dont tell us.
> tribal affiliations are ingrained in our evolutionary makeup
Man has free will to focus or evade focusing his mind. This is known by common human experience, not science. Evolution stopped w/mans free will mind because that is the most powerful method for mans life. You rationalize the cowardly sacrifice of independent judgment to social approval. Better social conditions protect and reward mans free will mind.
Incoherent, scientifically illiterate nonsense. Just as "race" doesn't exist (as good science), race denialism is equally bad science. Gene pools matter. Classical liberalism only appeared 1,000 years ago in the outbred gene pool in NW Europe. Inbred gene pools are never classically liberal, with high-social-trust institutions such as formal/constitutional law, they are always clannish and low trust.
See Samuel Bowles' 2008 Ulam Lectures, Santa Fe Institute.
Are you a Rand fetishist. or similar?
Yes, Im a Rand fetishist. Ive grown weary of statistical studies of emotions posing as science.
Have you ever considered science as the product of a focused mind? As bluesman, Johhny Winter almost sang it,"Realitys out there,babe, its sneakin' up on ya Its gonna git ya wherever you go.
>"race" doesn't exist (as good science), race denialism is equally bad science.
If you mess up your mind w/contraadictions, it will respond w/demons.
Rand cultists, like all cultists, are sociopathic, emotional manipulators.
There is EXACTLY NOTHING that you have said that is either "focused" or "scientific".
ZERO.
Troll.
This is simple:
BOTH the pro-race faction AND the anti-race ("race denier") faction are wrong, in different ways, about the science of human population genetics.
Your inability to think coherently, at a basic level, is a strong indicator that you are mentally dysfunctional.
You are a waste of time.
Everything you have said so far is muddled gibberish and a PROJECTION of your mental dysfunction. Waste of time. You think you understand science, but you obviously don't because you do not appear to be capable of anything other than lazy, slobbery generalizations.
What do you mean by “there is no such fact as race”?
There is no Bigfoot, no aliens in flying saucers, no Santa Claus, no God, no Devil. However, I lived in LA and Berzerkly so I know theyre real.
That is a scientifically illiterate response. No surprise.
Is that science after its been shredded in a materialist meatgrinder? My grandmother made delicious chopped liver w/a meatgrinder. And Canters Deli in LA on Fairfax Av also serves thick chopped liver sandwiches to the hipsters after the clubs close at 2AM.
more incoherent blather.
Can you define race?
The better question is, how was "race" defined in the past, and what was scientifically true and false about that past definition.
Additionally, how is "race denial" ideology both scientifically true in some ways, but false in others?
9 and 11 was interesting to me
I dont get 13
(Im swedish btw)
Two notes: i think that people that are socialist at heart have a strong preference against SEEING and knowing about inequality, not necessarily inequality per se.
Immigration is bad for this preference because then they can see the poor people
This is a big part of Anti-beggar and anti-immigration sentiment in sweden actually: the argument that they would just be poor in their own country doesnt hold weight to them, they simply hate seeing and knowing about these poor people
Also, in sweden, parts of the social democrats (the democrats easentially) and most of the leftist party thinks that we have gotten worse since the 80s when we started to liberalize and provatize much of the economy. They complain often that we are too capitaistix
"Letting Elon run the show"
What does he even mean by this? Elon runs a social media, rocket and car company. He isn't running anything besides that. Which I indeed would cheer very loudly as an alternative to Trump or Biden.
Seems a little crazy that in the 21st Century we are still having this debate, but I guess that is where we are.
Has Bryan written about why he takes world happiness rankings seriously anywhere?
I thought Hayek already won this debate ...
Regarding Sweden as a model of successful socialism...
Linked to The Capitalist Manifesto by Carmack recently, that exact topic is covered by the author and is described as a gross mischaracterization. It looks he's published this book entirely on the topic:
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/mirage-of-swedish-socialism-economic-history-of-welfare-state.pdf
Being able to definitively debunk the Sweden argument would be powerful indeed; I do not know if it does that or not.
Are Swedes in Sweden happier than descendents of Swedes in the US? I will wager that US descendents of Swedish immigrants are happier that Swedes.
Swedes in the US are wealthier though, and maybe not for reasons related to national economic systems, like the dollars status in international trade. A fairer comparison might be Scandinavia vs the UK, they're both European contrives with similar demographics. The difference in economic systems between the UK and Scandinavia, and the US and Scandinavia, is smaller, but the quality of life in the UK is still appreciably lower than in Scandinavia.
Happiness indexes are stupid. Happiness can mean multiple, distinct things. I suspect that this measure is actually looking at satisfaction, not joy, or fulfilment, or other forms of happiness. The USA has traditionally been home to ambitious people who are not satisfied with way things are. That is not a negative in my book.
This is group that statistically measure happiness around the world.
https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/social-environments-for-world-happiness/
>capitalism and socialism lie on a continuum, which makes perfect sense to me.
What continuum? And why is identifying it unimportant?
Suicide rates are largely a measure of how religious a country is. The lowest rates are all in Muslim countries, which no one would say are utopias.
When the first philosopher, Thales, 600BC?, discovered natural causes, mans 300K-year dependence on coincidences was ended. The modern, statistical-mathematical method of measuring coincidences does not change this. Coincidences are not causes.
Learn some real social science (and biology wrt/ "race").
A well known model in social science is Henrich's WEIRD model, it is used to explains the evolutionary origins of modern rationalism, Enlightenment values, etc.
Medieval, pre-liberal/pre-enlightenment European culture (and the rest of the world) was conformist and collectivist, but it mutated into modern culture with agentic values ("individual achievement") with an expanding, increasingly literate/numerate, increasingly wealthy, increasingly scientifically innovative urban commoner class because of expanding river and sea trade and "market" economics. Frankish manorialism evolved with "free cities" and Hanseatic League (which in Holland gave birth to modern accounting and "capitalist" sea trade.
I don't know what definition of "socialism" was in use in the debate, or if it was coherent, but Marxism is not a traditional, medieval social form, it is a modern ideology that was supposed to fix the anxiety over loss of traditional morals and social order created by "capitalism", colonialism, imperialism and so forth. The problem is that Marxism rejected the traditional, religious concept of social order based on renunciation of evil and sin, replacing it with either nothing, or some kind of utopianism that by definition doesn't exist.
I get the sense that most europeans define "socialism" not as Marxism (in the strict sense), but as some vague opposition to the american corporate-state system (and nationalism-populism), combined with cultural leftism, postmodern pluralism, coastal cosmopolitanism, etc.
Man has a free will mind that he can either focus or evade focusing. Thus the need for philosophy as an intellectual framework that explains the cultures acceptance of parrrticular ideas and a particular use of the mind. The West started as rational in Greece, decayed into Christianity, bounced back as science, and faded into our present nihilism and return of religion.
It makes no sense to say that Scandinavians are happier than Americans when their suicide rate is higher.
Maybe theyre happier because they know that suicide will end their unhappiness.
🎶Suicide is painless.
It brings on many changes.
And I can take or leave it,
If I please.🎶
Rock or jazz? Yer playin' w/fire. And you wont get higher.
Are you saying that they are happier because so many unhappy ones were successful in committing suicide? Or are you saying that the prospect of suicide makes living, unhappy people happier? Or something else?
I was being sarcastic about the absurd, pseudo-scientific claim that socialism causes happiness. Leftists like science after its been prostituted to Leftism.
Good question you ask of Stephen Grossman. Partly because my brother committed suicide, I've been reading about suicide in the 53 years since he did so. One thing that comes out pretty clearly is that people who commit suicide often get very happy (relatively) once they've decided to do so. But before they've decided to do so, they are miserable, which is why they decided to commit suicide.
I’m sorry to hear that about your personal story, and also sorry to hear of the temporary improvement in happiness that precedes a suicide attempt. I’d hope that the number of Scandinavians intending to commit suicide is small enough that it has insufficient t power to explain the differences here.
Thanks, Max Lib. Yes. The idea that it's a large number that would affect aggregate data is untenable.
Jesus Christ!
Mick Jagger!