Excited to check out the book! I would draw a distinction between support for growth and support for the types of policies that lead to sustained growth. Of course most people want the former, but less common is an understanding of what will actually lead to that objective. I do agree that politicians have little incentive to advocate / communicate the benefits of such policies in the current political climate
Good, but probably not able to deliver results at scale. Best for agriculture and small businesses, but I do not think it helps finance high-value-added export industries.
Small farmers and shopkeepers in developing nations often need what to us in the West are very small amounts of capital to ramp up a business, survive until the next harvest, and restock their shelves. I think it can make a big impact on a family and the village/neighborhood they live within.
I don't see it so much as a long-term development strategy as a form of enabling a fisherman to fish so he can feed his family (to use a Biblical analogy).
I give out microloans to farmers in developing nations every month. They can use the money more than I can.
I see. One of the main arguments of my Substack is that there is no evidence that microfinance loans do any good. This lack of evidence is widely accepted academically. There is plenty of evidence that it is harmful in some cases.
If these farmers can use the money better than you, why not just give them the money?
Alternatively why not invest in equity in SMEs in developing countries?
Just took a look at your profile and noticed that you were interested in developing nations. You might be interested on reading this series that I wrote on the topic:
I agree with a lot of what you said. But I would ask you to consider one thing: I know (from a previous post) that you oppose UBI, but please hear me out and see this page that I have compiled:
Attaching any sort of "strings" to any serious proposal for UBI would add unnecessary complexity, create perverse incentives and cracks to slip through, and ultimately undermine it and defeat its basic purpose as a social dignity floor as well as a permanent economic stimulus.
The late, great, Buckminster Fuller would surely agree with me. The outmoded and utterly specious that everybody must "work for a living" is, well, outmoded and specious given today's technology. It is just as outmoded and specious as the idea that "everybody must procreate".
Additionally, we must be aware that, as Edward Abbey famously said, "growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell," which eventually kills its host.
Thanks for posting a link to your article, but it is simply too long. From a brief skim, I do not see you adding any new arguments that I have not already seen before.
My counter-proposal is not complex at all. In fact, it is much simpler than the current system. It is also dramatically cheaper.
It is the UBI that creates perverse incentives by rewarding non-work and subsidies single-parent families and many people who need no assistance.
Other than the above, what cracks does my proposal have?
Do you you intend to abolish the current welfare system to pay for UBI, or is your UBI in addition to the current system? There is a huge difference between the two.
Since human beings evolved for hundreds of thousands of years to work in order to survive, it is absolutely preposterous to argue that work is “outmoded and specious.”
Economic growth is “not for the sake of growth.” It is for the material benefit of humanity and the act of work is a key factor in human flourishing and character development.
If you cannot see that, then I have a hard time taking your other moral arguments seriously.
An unconditional UBI without growth would be a catastrophe for the human condition. The fact that you add an anti-growth argument shows your true intentions.
Many UBI supporters are actually trying to persuade others why the should not have to contribute to society. It is laziness and selfishness disguised as virtue.
Your proposal promotes neither material progress or upward mobility, which is the point of this article.
"We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living."
And he said that back in 1970, mind you. And plenty of other futurists back then, and all the way back to Keynes in the 1930s, believed that by now, the workweek would have shrunk down to 15-20 hours per week. And yet that didn't happen. Why? Because the oligarchs took nearly all of the productivity gains since the early 1970s following the Powell Manifesto, and especially since the neoliberalism of Reagan and Thatcher. If that doesn't make the reader feel RIPPED OFF, check your pulse 'cause you might be dead!
When you favor some people or demographics or families or walks of life over others, that inevitably creates cracks to slip through. And quite frankly, with all due respect, I see your proposal as patronizing and paternalistic, and ultimately treats human beings as means to an end rather than ends in themselves.
Literally every single study of UBI or UBI-shaped pilot programs, experiments, and such has NOT found the significant disincentives to work that you claim would occur if there were no strings attached. From the Alaska Permanent Fund to Give Directly to Dauphin, Manitoba to the Eastern Band Cherokee to so many other studies around the world, it's basically a non-problem.
As for UBI replacing current programs, I would favor it as a partial replacement of *some* social welfare programs but *not* all. I would argue that we also would still need single-payer Medicare For All, for example. And things like Social Security, well, we can also integrate that in and make UBI "Social Security For All".
UBI does not create any perverse incentives, as one is not penalized for working and earning more, and one will still come out ahead. UBI merely sets a social dignity floor.
And I am not arguing against growth per se, only that growth in GDP should not be seen an end in itself, but rather a means to an end, lest it ultimately become an "own goal" (pun intended).
And finally, I will quote Robert Reich: "The economy exists to make our lives better. We do not exist to make the economy better".
I'm afraid we may just have to agree to disagree about UBI then.
Very good analysis. It seems to me that "progress" is lower on the list of progression. To achieve progress we must have production. To get more production, capital is needed. To accumulate capital we must have a respect for property and the ability to keep it. And here we come to what Henry Grady Weaver calls "The Mainspring of Human Progress."--Freedom. To get to progress we must have freedom. Simple concept. Difficult for us to accept as right.
Along with progress comes increased leisure time, and I'm increasingly of the opinion that this surplus of time not spent in problem-solving, either subsistence problems, or more abstract intellectual problems, is at the core of what looks to be today's social dysfunctions.
I'm not reaching backward to a more rosy era, but instead I'm commenting on a noteworthy rise in the cult of the individual which has supplanted social cooperation and hence cohesion. Where once social cohesion was the necessary key for group survival, and later, advancement (progress), lengthy deviation from social cooperation toward individual self-fulfillment has become possible, and we are now living in a fragmented society of individuals pursuing their own ends, which are divergent, unfocused, and often at odds with a stable social structure.
So it seems that expression of the individual is a luxury reserved for a society whose individuals can afford it and still survive. It has a lot in common with other self-indulgent practices, like purposeful intoxication. You can afford to be drunk at all hours if you do not need to show up for work.
I don't think that mankind has yet evolved a way of dealing positively with its new-found leisure.
I wrote a later article that made a similar argument, although I think it has more to do with affluence and leisure enabling individuals to embrace the non-rational parts of their brain with fewer short-term negative consequences.
Your argument that the cause is is actually declining need for social cooperation is also plausible. This is certainly the case with digital technology.
Though I am a strong supporter of material progress, I share your concerns that humanity is not well adapted to affluence and leisure. I believe, however, it is largely among people with certain psychological temperments, not necessarily the general population. Unfortunately, they are particularly likely to express itself in ideology and politics:
Since I was here already, I used your thread to test the Substack Edit/ Save feature [the three dots on the lower right of a post]. I have found that when I edit a longer comment, I seem to lose part of it upon re-saving. Testing just now, I have confirmed the lower portion of my long comment text no longer was displayed, but if I go back to Edit mode I can see the whole text body.
Do you have any insight into Substack's functioning to explain this, or to find a solution/ work around?
I now will sometimes add a nested reply as an "edit" to a long comment, if I don't need to change the existing text. Or I will end up cutting and pasting the lower portion into a nested reply as a "continuation" of my previously too long comment. Then I can display the total original and edited content in two separate comment fields. Ugh!
I don’t know how Substack commenting works. It does seem to have a memory problem is the text box is open for a long time period or you make quick edits immediately after saving.
I was going back and forth to other web pages to capture their respective links, but lost my initial commentary here as a result. Now you get a more truncated version. I guess the solution is to save a prelim comment with a note it will be edited later?
Came here from Nathan Cofnas's Substack, discussing human biodiversity (HBD) and the need to consider the innate intelligence of subject populations "being helped by public policy". Found your comment about pursuing Upward Mobility to be intriguing and link to here.
From my read of this post, and touching a couple of other links, my initial impression was along the lines of "oh, another guy with a lot of rather naive ideas about how to improve the world, with inadequate detail." But I see from your About page you seem to have a credible background to explore these ideas, so I hope to continue to give you the benefit of the doubt.
From what I see in this post, I do not have any major issues with your commentary so far. I do urge you to incorporate thinking about genetic heritage as well as cultural heritage in your explorations. Charles Murray (and maybe Cofnas?) seem to be honest analysts while exploring a touchy topic about race and intelligence that does seem more and more deserving of attention if it provides useful explanatory value. I also keep in mind Sowell's cautions about possible cultural bias in such IQ testing, even when the test creators strive to avoid that. Beyond my expertise to critique further.
Also that our society that believes "all men are created equal" has derived this view from the cultural impact of the Judeo-Christian civilization; and is basically the only major culture to do so. [See Inventing the Individual by Larry Siedentop or Dominion by Tom Holland, plus Tom's many You Tube interviews/ speeches.] I understand that early "scientific investigations" were also commenced with the idea of better understanding God through understanding His natural laws, etc. Whatever such explorations were commenced by Islamic believers between 800 to 1100AD were squelched by later "clerics". Perhaps somewhat indirectly, some advances in Western Civilization may have resulted from Church laws on consanguinity reducing the influence of European tribes, so a focus was directed to the family and to the "nation" rather than the clan/tribal inheritance, etc. [See http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/whatever-happened-to-european-tribes/ ]
Hopefully you have or will also consider the impacts of transferring past learning via the discovery of writing, printing press, and internet, along with its promotion of class based or more universal literacy.
Finally, I checked your Upward Mobility page, found 4 or 5 links related to housing that I did not read (yet), and somewhere a comment you would be exploring training and educational assistance in future posts. That latter seems most promising to me, with the caveat that we have tried "Head Start". It seemed to work well for the pilot/prototype program with dedicated parents, teachers, and support staffers, but when expanded to the real world using average parents and people, it did not show any net improvement by age 8 or 10. Maybe someone has a better idea, as clearly core competence in literacy and numeracy is essential to do well in our Progress Society. Apprenticeship and trade school programs sound promising, but the value of those jobs depends on supply and demand, along with the productivity enhancements provided by energy and information tech. In the final analysis there is no "job security" except having the skills required by the marketplace - anything else is delusion.
I better stop here. You know most of the above so thanks for the opportunity to rant. I will sign up to your Substack, look for your Upward Mobility items to come, etc. But I have trouble keeping up with the 6 or 7 Substacks to which I am already a paying or nonpaying subscriber.
I think that you were looking for Upward Mobility. That is the topic of the book that I am writing now. I will be adding many posts on the topic in the near future.
As for your other points, I am familiar with the literature that you mention, and I have incorporated them into my thoughts to the extent that I think is necessary.
I will also add remark on the Cofnas site that readers should explore this site as well, even it they need to take a skeptical view.
I checked Amazon for your second book so I will probably buy it there, but no promises on when I will actually get to read it. The Amazon blurb book summary suggests I won't agree with parts of what you propose, but at least you are exploring and presenting solution options.
I suppose I should read your Left vs. Right post before I leave this site (sigh!).
Hi, Michael. I moved this comment from another site as requested.
I have read both your books and all your stuff online, and the one place where I differ from you is in how we define progress. You focus more on material prosperity. I certainly agree that this is super important, but would add other values, such as freedom, knowledge, understanding, health, longevity, and even meaning.
The advantage of your narrower definition is that it is easier to measure. The disadvantage is that it may be too narrow and restricted and thus lead us astray at the margins.
I kind of agree that the future is not definable, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t speak about it in general terms. Progress is not just about the present and the past, but also about the possibility of a better future as well.
Thanks for the comment. I am really glad to hear that you enjoyed my two books.
If you have not already done so, please leave a review on Amazon. Positive reviews really help independent writers like myself.
As to your specific comments:
I plan to write more in future posts about this, but I certainly do not believe that human material progress is the only thing that matters. I only believe that it is the most important. I agree with all those other things that you mentioned.
And I also agree with your last paragraph.
I am curious what you mean by a narrow definition can "astray at the margins." Can you give me an example of what you mean?
"And the village was deserted, the huts gaped black, rotting, all askew within the fallen enclosures. A calamity had come to it, sure enough. The people had vanished. Mad terror had scattered them, men, women, and children, through the bush, and they had never returned. What became of the hens I don’t know either. I should think the cause of progress got them, anyhow." — Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Agreed that we need to create a prosperous working class (and accessible pathways to the same) in order for growth-oriented policies to see broad-based, sustained support. The argument here seems to be that if we make consumption less expensive, then such support will follow. However, we've seen systematic decreases in the relative price of most goods for the past half-century even as (anecdotally, at least) there has been a profound erosion in support for growth-oriented policy. How do we make sense of this correlation? I suspect that access to "good, dignified jobs" is the key to a prosperous working class that feels truly prosperous to its members and encourages them to buy into progress-aligned policy. While I would like to see us roll back short-sighted regulations that place tremendous upward pressure on the prices of key basic goods, I also think we're going to need (a) systematic reform of K-12 education such that people leave school with basic literacy and numeracy and (b) extensive implementation of corporate apprenticeship programs that enable people without an insanely expensive (both from a cost and opportunity cost perspective) 4-year college degree to take on a "good, dignified job". (a) seems hard and unlikely, but (b) seems ~maybe~ possible, and likely to be politically popular as well. Perhaps counter-intuitively, clear pathways to good jobs seem to feel more important to most people than pathways to greater material wealth in a low-skilled job.
Thanks for the comment. I don’t think that there has been much of an erosion of support for growth among voters. I think elected officials are just ignoring the issue so they can focus on issues to rally the base. I will give my plan on job training in my next book.
Thanks for all your posts, I love them all. What do you think of Charlie Robertson’s Time Travelling Economist? He hypothesizes that education, electricity and fertility are the ways that countries have historically escaped poverty. Thanks as always!
I thought I read a review in WSJ also but can't find it. Basically I think his emphasis on education / literacy as the first enabling condition is coherent with your trade-based cities point, you can't have trade based cities without education. And his second point that electricity is the next enabling condition, is identical with your 5th fossil fuels point. I don't quite see how his fertility point (reduced fertility enables saving which enables nationwide capital deployment) is coherent with ny of your points though - I am sure I am missing something - thanks for replying!
I am reluctant to criticize a book that I have not read, but I am not convinced that literacy programs and family planning have major impacts on long-term economic growth rates. Both are so widespread across the globe that neither really differentiates poor countries with stagnant growth from those that suddenly experience transformative growth.
Plus many demographers have pointed out that a youth bulge often goes along with rapid economic growth.
I agree with him on electricity, but fossil fuels are more than just the electrical sector.
"[N]ostalgic but distorted memories of how they think life used to be... nostalgic memories that never existed."
You know about the Hedonistic Treadmill. It's relative, not absolute, and time-dependent. Was I happier as a teen, without electronic devices delivering free high-quality entertainment, and with yummy takeaways being a treat not routine? The answer for most people of my age, in the US, would be, yes!
Why?
We didn't have today's high levels of anxiety universally reported by medical practitioners and sociologists. Today those anxieties are actively promoted by the media.
We lived in Free Roaming societies. Our parents weren't punished for not having us in sight every moment. We were free to hop on our bicycles and go to the lake, the zoo, the movies, into town, on our own.
We lived in high-trust societies. We didn't need latchkeys because the front door was always left unlocked during the day.
We had hierarchies, boundaries and consequences. Psychologically we knew where we fit in and it gave us a sense of security.
Getting dressed wasn't a fashion competition. Jeans, a tee shirt and sneakers were all we needed.
We were allowed to be children.
I could go on and on. Those memories existed, all right.
The line you quoted is about how nostalgia distorts our understanding of the actual material standard of living at the time. It is not about happiness or memories of happiness.
It is a fact that people in the 60s and 70s (or whatever decade that you are referring to) had significantly lower material standard of living than today.
Material progress is not about a Hedonistic Treadmill. It is zero-sum status-seeking competition that leads to that treadmill , and zero-sum status-seeking competition has been part of the human experience for millenia.
I go into more detail on the relationship between material progress and happiness here (and plan a serious of additional articles on the topic in the future):
Excited to check out the book! I would draw a distinction between support for growth and support for the types of policies that lead to sustained growth. Of course most people want the former, but less common is an understanding of what will actually lead to that objective. I do agree that politicians have little incentive to advocate / communicate the benefits of such policies in the current political climate
I already gave you two warnings for going off topic. You are now blocked.
Excellent piece.
It seems I need to purchase a copy of your book and put it on my reading list
Yes, you do! LOL
But, seriously, glad that you found this article interesting.
Came over here from your comment on Elle’s post.
Quite a good read, thanks for sharing!
Thanks for the feedback. Do you mind adding this comment to my original comment on Elle’s post so others will know it is worth checking out? Thanks.
Interesting. But on what basis are you assuming that human society, or some part of it, has achieved 'progress' ? And what is progress anyway ?
Thanks for the comment, David.
I actually gave a clear definition of progress in the article, but I guess that you missed it.
In my book series, I use the following working definition of progress:
“the sustained improvement in the material standard of living of a large group of people over a long period of time.”
As for "assuming that human society, or some part of it, has achieved 'progress'."
I am assuming nothing. I carefully examined the evidence and drew the obvious conclusion.
I go into more detail on the evidence for progress in these articles:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/what-is-progress-ea7
I also have an entire series of articles on the evidence of progress:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/evidence-of-progress-the-series
So what do you think about microfinance ? Good, bad, unproven, irrelevant?
Good, but probably not able to deliver results at scale. Best for agriculture and small businesses, but I do not think it helps finance high-value-added export industries.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-developing-nations-can-create
Why do you think it is good at a micro level ? I think we would agree it won’t finance any export champions.
Small farmers and shopkeepers in developing nations often need what to us in the West are very small amounts of capital to ramp up a business, survive until the next harvest, and restock their shelves. I think it can make a big impact on a family and the village/neighborhood they live within.
I don't see it so much as a long-term development strategy as a form of enabling a fisherman to fish so he can feed his family (to use a Biblical analogy).
I give out microloans to farmers in developing nations every month. They can use the money more than I can.
Some articles on this here
https://drdavidwhitehouse.substack.com/p/german-lawsuit-challenges-microfinance
https://drdavidwhitehouse.substack.com/p/south-korean-banks-the-eu-and-the
https://drdavidwhitehouse.substack.com/p/india-offers-alternative-to-microfinance
I see. One of the main arguments of my Substack is that there is no evidence that microfinance loans do any good. This lack of evidence is widely accepted academically. There is plenty of evidence that it is harmful in some cases.
If these farmers can use the money better than you, why not just give them the money?
Alternatively why not invest in equity in SMEs in developing countries?
Why does it have to be a debt?
Just took a look at your profile and noticed that you were interested in developing nations. You might be interested on reading this series that I wrote on the topic:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-developing-nation-can-experience
I agree with a lot of what you said. But I would ask you to consider one thing: I know (from a previous post) that you oppose UBI, but please hear me out and see this page that I have compiled:
https://truespiritofamericaparty.blogspot.com/p/why-ubi.html
Attaching any sort of "strings" to any serious proposal for UBI would add unnecessary complexity, create perverse incentives and cracks to slip through, and ultimately undermine it and defeat its basic purpose as a social dignity floor as well as a permanent economic stimulus.
The late, great, Buckminster Fuller would surely agree with me. The outmoded and utterly specious that everybody must "work for a living" is, well, outmoded and specious given today's technology. It is just as outmoded and specious as the idea that "everybody must procreate".
Additionally, we must be aware that, as Edward Abbey famously said, "growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell," which eventually kills its host.
Thanks for the comment.
I summarized my strong opposition to a UBI in the article that you mentioned, though much of my reasoning is behind a paywall.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-universal-basic-income-ubi-is
Thanks for posting a link to your article, but it is simply too long. From a brief skim, I do not see you adding any new arguments that I have not already seen before.
My counter-proposal is not complex at all. In fact, it is much simpler than the current system. It is also dramatically cheaper.
It is the UBI that creates perverse incentives by rewarding non-work and subsidies single-parent families and many people who need no assistance.
Other than the above, what cracks does my proposal have?
Do you you intend to abolish the current welfare system to pay for UBI, or is your UBI in addition to the current system? There is a huge difference between the two.
Since human beings evolved for hundreds of thousands of years to work in order to survive, it is absolutely preposterous to argue that work is “outmoded and specious.”
Economic growth is “not for the sake of growth.” It is for the material benefit of humanity and the act of work is a key factor in human flourishing and character development.
If you cannot see that, then I have a hard time taking your other moral arguments seriously.
An unconditional UBI without growth would be a catastrophe for the human condition. The fact that you add an anti-growth argument shows your true intentions.
Many UBI supporters are actually trying to persuade others why the should not have to contribute to society. It is laziness and selfishness disguised as virtue.
Your proposal promotes neither material progress or upward mobility, which is the point of this article.
And the full Buckminster Fuller quote:
"We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living."
And he said that back in 1970, mind you. And plenty of other futurists back then, and all the way back to Keynes in the 1930s, believed that by now, the workweek would have shrunk down to 15-20 hours per week. And yet that didn't happen. Why? Because the oligarchs took nearly all of the productivity gains since the early 1970s following the Powell Manifesto, and especially since the neoliberalism of Reagan and Thatcher. If that doesn't make the reader feel RIPPED OFF, check your pulse 'cause you might be dead!
When you favor some people or demographics or families or walks of life over others, that inevitably creates cracks to slip through. And quite frankly, with all due respect, I see your proposal as patronizing and paternalistic, and ultimately treats human beings as means to an end rather than ends in themselves.
Literally every single study of UBI or UBI-shaped pilot programs, experiments, and such has NOT found the significant disincentives to work that you claim would occur if there were no strings attached. From the Alaska Permanent Fund to Give Directly to Dauphin, Manitoba to the Eastern Band Cherokee to so many other studies around the world, it's basically a non-problem.
As for UBI replacing current programs, I would favor it as a partial replacement of *some* social welfare programs but *not* all. I would argue that we also would still need single-payer Medicare For All, for example. And things like Social Security, well, we can also integrate that in and make UBI "Social Security For All".
UBI does not create any perverse incentives, as one is not penalized for working and earning more, and one will still come out ahead. UBI merely sets a social dignity floor.
And I am not arguing against growth per se, only that growth in GDP should not be seen an end in itself, but rather a means to an end, lest it ultimately become an "own goal" (pun intended).
And finally, I will quote Robert Reich: "The economy exists to make our lives better. We do not exist to make the economy better".
I'm afraid we may just have to agree to disagree about UBI then.
You're very welcome, by the way 🙂
Very good analysis. It seems to me that "progress" is lower on the list of progression. To achieve progress we must have production. To get more production, capital is needed. To accumulate capital we must have a respect for property and the ability to keep it. And here we come to what Henry Grady Weaver calls "The Mainspring of Human Progress."--Freedom. To get to progress we must have freedom. Simple concept. Difficult for us to accept as right.
Along with progress comes increased leisure time, and I'm increasingly of the opinion that this surplus of time not spent in problem-solving, either subsistence problems, or more abstract intellectual problems, is at the core of what looks to be today's social dysfunctions.
I'm not reaching backward to a more rosy era, but instead I'm commenting on a noteworthy rise in the cult of the individual which has supplanted social cooperation and hence cohesion. Where once social cohesion was the necessary key for group survival, and later, advancement (progress), lengthy deviation from social cooperation toward individual self-fulfillment has become possible, and we are now living in a fragmented society of individuals pursuing their own ends, which are divergent, unfocused, and often at odds with a stable social structure.
So it seems that expression of the individual is a luxury reserved for a society whose individuals can afford it and still survive. It has a lot in common with other self-indulgent practices, like purposeful intoxication. You can afford to be drunk at all hours if you do not need to show up for work.
I don't think that mankind has yet evolved a way of dealing positively with its new-found leisure.
That is a very interesting point.
I wrote a later article that made a similar argument, although I think it has more to do with affluence and leisure enabling individuals to embrace the non-rational parts of their brain with fewer short-term negative consequences.
Your argument that the cause is is actually declining need for social cooperation is also plausible. This is certainly the case with digital technology.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/is-material-progress-driving-us-crazy
Though I am a strong supporter of material progress, I share your concerns that humanity is not well adapted to affluence and leisure. I believe, however, it is largely among people with certain psychological temperments, not necessarily the general population. Unfortunately, they are particularly likely to express itself in ideology and politics:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/where-does-ideology-come-from
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/radical-ideologies-feast-on-mental
Since I was here already, I used your thread to test the Substack Edit/ Save feature [the three dots on the lower right of a post]. I have found that when I edit a longer comment, I seem to lose part of it upon re-saving. Testing just now, I have confirmed the lower portion of my long comment text no longer was displayed, but if I go back to Edit mode I can see the whole text body.
Do you have any insight into Substack's functioning to explain this, or to find a solution/ work around?
I now will sometimes add a nested reply as an "edit" to a long comment, if I don't need to change the existing text. Or I will end up cutting and pasting the lower portion into a nested reply as a "continuation" of my previously too long comment. Then I can display the total original and edited content in two separate comment fields. Ugh!
I don’t know how Substack commenting works. It does seem to have a memory problem is the text box is open for a long time period or you make quick edits immediately after saving.
open for long time periods and quick edits after saving -- that would be me! :-)
I was going back and forth to other web pages to capture their respective links, but lost my initial commentary here as a result. Now you get a more truncated version. I guess the solution is to save a prelim comment with a note it will be edited later?
Came here from Nathan Cofnas's Substack, discussing human biodiversity (HBD) and the need to consider the innate intelligence of subject populations "being helped by public policy". Found your comment about pursuing Upward Mobility to be intriguing and link to here.
From my read of this post, and touching a couple of other links, my initial impression was along the lines of "oh, another guy with a lot of rather naive ideas about how to improve the world, with inadequate detail." But I see from your About page you seem to have a credible background to explore these ideas, so I hope to continue to give you the benefit of the doubt.
From what I see in this post, I do not have any major issues with your commentary so far. I do urge you to incorporate thinking about genetic heritage as well as cultural heritage in your explorations. Charles Murray (and maybe Cofnas?) seem to be honest analysts while exploring a touchy topic about race and intelligence that does seem more and more deserving of attention if it provides useful explanatory value. I also keep in mind Sowell's cautions about possible cultural bias in such IQ testing, even when the test creators strive to avoid that. Beyond my expertise to critique further.
Also that our society that believes "all men are created equal" has derived this view from the cultural impact of the Judeo-Christian civilization; and is basically the only major culture to do so. [See Inventing the Individual by Larry Siedentop or Dominion by Tom Holland, plus Tom's many You Tube interviews/ speeches.] I understand that early "scientific investigations" were also commenced with the idea of better understanding God through understanding His natural laws, etc. Whatever such explorations were commenced by Islamic believers between 800 to 1100AD were squelched by later "clerics". Perhaps somewhat indirectly, some advances in Western Civilization may have resulted from Church laws on consanguinity reducing the influence of European tribes, so a focus was directed to the family and to the "nation" rather than the clan/tribal inheritance, etc. [See http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/whatever-happened-to-european-tribes/ ]
Hopefully you have or will also consider the impacts of transferring past learning via the discovery of writing, printing press, and internet, along with its promotion of class based or more universal literacy.
Finally, I checked your Upward Mobility page, found 4 or 5 links related to housing that I did not read (yet), and somewhere a comment you would be exploring training and educational assistance in future posts. That latter seems most promising to me, with the caveat that we have tried "Head Start". It seemed to work well for the pilot/prototype program with dedicated parents, teachers, and support staffers, but when expanded to the real world using average parents and people, it did not show any net improvement by age 8 or 10. Maybe someone has a better idea, as clearly core competence in literacy and numeracy is essential to do well in our Progress Society. Apprenticeship and trade school programs sound promising, but the value of those jobs depends on supply and demand, along with the productivity enhancements provided by energy and information tech. In the final analysis there is no "job security" except having the skills required by the marketplace - anything else is delusion.
I better stop here. You know most of the above so thanks for the opportunity to rant. I will sign up to your Substack, look for your Upward Mobility items to come, etc. But I have trouble keeping up with the 6 or 7 Substacks to which I am already a paying or nonpaying subscriber.
Thanks for the comment.
I think that you were looking for Upward Mobility. That is the topic of the book that I am writing now. I will be adding many posts on the topic in the near future.
As for your other points, I am familiar with the literature that you mention, and I have incorporated them into my thoughts to the extent that I think is necessary.
Truncated version!! Ho ho ho ho!! :-)
I will also add remark on the Cofnas site that readers should explore this site as well, even it they need to take a skeptical view.
I checked Amazon for your second book so I will probably buy it there, but no promises on when I will actually get to read it. The Amazon blurb book summary suggests I won't agree with parts of what you propose, but at least you are exploring and presenting solution options.
I suppose I should read your Left vs. Right post before I leave this site (sigh!).
Hi, Michael. I moved this comment from another site as requested.
I have read both your books and all your stuff online, and the one place where I differ from you is in how we define progress. You focus more on material prosperity. I certainly agree that this is super important, but would add other values, such as freedom, knowledge, understanding, health, longevity, and even meaning.
The advantage of your narrower definition is that it is easier to measure. The disadvantage is that it may be too narrow and restricted and thus lead us astray at the margins.
I kind of agree that the future is not definable, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t speak about it in general terms. Progress is not just about the present and the past, but also about the possibility of a better future as well.
Thanks for the comment. I am really glad to hear that you enjoyed my two books.
If you have not already done so, please leave a review on Amazon. Positive reviews really help independent writers like myself.
As to your specific comments:
I plan to write more in future posts about this, but I certainly do not believe that human material progress is the only thing that matters. I only believe that it is the most important. I agree with all those other things that you mentioned.
And I also agree with your last paragraph.
I am curious what you mean by a narrow definition can "astray at the margins." Can you give me an example of what you mean?
Thanks again!
Reading this, I remembered the hens:
"And the village was deserted, the huts gaped black, rotting, all askew within the fallen enclosures. A calamity had come to it, sure enough. The people had vanished. Mad terror had scattered them, men, women, and children, through the bush, and they had never returned. What became of the hens I don’t know either. I should think the cause of progress got them, anyhow." — Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
LOL
Joseph Conrad had a very different definition of progress from what I am using in this column.
The 19th-century Congo was definitely not a place that was experiencing progress. In fact, it was the exact opposite.
Did you read the article?
If so, You should be able to figure out that your comment is off topic.
Agreed that we need to create a prosperous working class (and accessible pathways to the same) in order for growth-oriented policies to see broad-based, sustained support. The argument here seems to be that if we make consumption less expensive, then such support will follow. However, we've seen systematic decreases in the relative price of most goods for the past half-century even as (anecdotally, at least) there has been a profound erosion in support for growth-oriented policy. How do we make sense of this correlation? I suspect that access to "good, dignified jobs" is the key to a prosperous working class that feels truly prosperous to its members and encourages them to buy into progress-aligned policy. While I would like to see us roll back short-sighted regulations that place tremendous upward pressure on the prices of key basic goods, I also think we're going to need (a) systematic reform of K-12 education such that people leave school with basic literacy and numeracy and (b) extensive implementation of corporate apprenticeship programs that enable people without an insanely expensive (both from a cost and opportunity cost perspective) 4-year college degree to take on a "good, dignified job". (a) seems hard and unlikely, but (b) seems ~maybe~ possible, and likely to be politically popular as well. Perhaps counter-intuitively, clear pathways to good jobs seem to feel more important to most people than pathways to greater material wealth in a low-skilled job.
Thanks for the comment. I don’t think that there has been much of an erosion of support for growth among voters. I think elected officials are just ignoring the issue so they can focus on issues to rally the base. I will give my plan on job training in my next book.
This comment is off topic.
Thanks for all your posts, I love them all. What do you think of Charlie Robertson’s Time Travelling Economist? He hypothesizes that education, electricity and fertility are the ways that countries have historically escaped poverty. Thanks as always!
Glad that you like the posts.
Unfortunately, I have never heard of Charlie Robertson’s Time Travelling Economist.
Dang - here's Tyler Cowen on it - https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/02/the-time-travelling-economist.html
I thought I read a review in WSJ also but can't find it. Basically I think his emphasis on education / literacy as the first enabling condition is coherent with your trade-based cities point, you can't have trade based cities without education. And his second point that electricity is the next enabling condition, is identical with your 5th fossil fuels point. I don't quite see how his fertility point (reduced fertility enables saving which enables nationwide capital deployment) is coherent with ny of your points though - I am sure I am missing something - thanks for replying!
I am reluctant to criticize a book that I have not read, but I am not convinced that literacy programs and family planning have major impacts on long-term economic growth rates. Both are so widespread across the globe that neither really differentiates poor countries with stagnant growth from those that suddenly experience transformative growth.
Plus many demographers have pointed out that a youth bulge often goes along with rapid economic growth.
I agree with him on electricity, but fossil fuels are more than just the electrical sector.
I think my Five Keys to Progress is more useful.
"[N]ostalgic but distorted memories of how they think life used to be... nostalgic memories that never existed."
You know about the Hedonistic Treadmill. It's relative, not absolute, and time-dependent. Was I happier as a teen, without electronic devices delivering free high-quality entertainment, and with yummy takeaways being a treat not routine? The answer for most people of my age, in the US, would be, yes!
Why?
We didn't have today's high levels of anxiety universally reported by medical practitioners and sociologists. Today those anxieties are actively promoted by the media.
We lived in Free Roaming societies. Our parents weren't punished for not having us in sight every moment. We were free to hop on our bicycles and go to the lake, the zoo, the movies, into town, on our own.
We lived in high-trust societies. We didn't need latchkeys because the front door was always left unlocked during the day.
We had hierarchies, boundaries and consequences. Psychologically we knew where we fit in and it gave us a sense of security.
Getting dressed wasn't a fashion competition. Jeans, a tee shirt and sneakers were all we needed.
We were allowed to be children.
I could go on and on. Those memories existed, all right.
I don't think we really disagree.
The line you quoted is about how nostalgia distorts our understanding of the actual material standard of living at the time. It is not about happiness or memories of happiness.
It is a fact that people in the 60s and 70s (or whatever decade that you are referring to) had significantly lower material standard of living than today.
Material progress is not about a Hedonistic Treadmill. It is zero-sum status-seeking competition that leads to that treadmill , and zero-sum status-seeking competition has been part of the human experience for millenia.
I go into more detail on the relationship between material progress and happiness here (and plan a serious of additional articles on the topic in the future):
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/does-material-progress-lead-to-happiness
This other article also deals with some of what I think that you are getting at (or maybe not):
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-are-people-still-unhappy-in-a
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/three-mega-trends-of-the-last-60
Adam Mastroianni shares some interesting thoughts here:
https://www.theseedsofscience.pub/p/why-arent-smart-people-happier