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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   28916 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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Various threads lately have had me thinking about how incredibly wealthy we are as a country, and how it definitely was not always so. For example, I made this comment a couple days ago about how everyone was just flat super poor back in 1900, and we're literally at least 10x richer now. I had likewise told the following story in the old place, in context of wealth to afford vast quantities of food (and how that may interplay with societal obesity):

Even coming from Canada, my wife was shocked by how cheap food is here in America. Historically, it just was not this way. We are one generation removed from stories like, "In the fall, dad made his semi-annual trip to the market in the city and brought back some quantity of 50lb bags of flour and 5lb chunks of lard, having a huge smile on his face, saying, 'We're gonna eat reaaaal good this winter!'" (I don't actually remember the exact quantity he said, but it was a low number, and we can easily scale by a small multiplier.) Like, this was a level of abundance in preparation for the winter that they were not used to (obviously, this was not their entire supply of food for the whole winter; they had some other food stored, but it is indicative that it was, cost-wise, an absolute treat). I checked a nearby grocery store's website; 50/5lbs would cost me $26.85. Like, pocket change. (Even if the multiplier was 5x, that's like nothing.) I probably have that much in random cash sitting around in my car. If I lost it or it was stolen, I'd be sad about a violation of my property, but literally wouldn't give a shit about the monetary value. This was a wonderful blessing of food abundance to some people in first-world countries not very long ago.

I didn't completely spell it out, but that was my wife's father's story when he was a child in Canada. (I also hedged on the number; my best memory was that it was precisely one 50lb bag and one 5lb chunk). That was not that long ago.

Yesterday, I read an obituary for a 95 year old who was born in a homestead dugout in New Mexico. Literally born in a hole in the ground.

Perspective on how utterly ridiculously quickly we went from basically universal poverty to nearly universal wealth is often lacking in many conversations where it could be quite beneficial. Sure, some in the capitalism/communism debates (or more generally the sources/causes of wealth and how it interacts with society's choices/governance), but also in obesity conversations (as mentioned) and even fertility conversations. Born in a homestead dugout. And you don't want to have a kid because of a car seat?!

I still don't properly know how exactly to craft an argument that comes to a clean conclusion, but I really feel like this historical perspective is seriously lacking in a country where the median age is under 40 and many folks no longer have communal contexts where they get exposed to at least a slice of history from their elders.

This sort of presentism is common in a lot of threads. I have frequently commented about how divisive and violent American politics were in previous centuries (even before the Civil War). And how in previous civilizations, contrary to some of our DreadJim-posters, women did not live like chattel under the absolute rule of their Patriarch. It often comes up in discussions about race (I wonder how many of these young black Millenials and Zoomers saying that racism is "as bad today as it was under Jim Crow" have actually asked their grandparents if they agree?)

As you say, previous generations were much poorer than us, relatively speaking, though that goes to the common argument about medieval kings having fewer luxuries than a modern American teenager. "Would you rather be a Roman emperor, or a poor person in 21st century America?" I think a lot of people would prefer to be a Roman emperor, even if they would miss smartphones and flush toilets.

It's very hard to avoid seeing yourself relative to the rest of the world you live in.

It's very hard to avoid seeing yourself relative to the rest of the world you live in.

I think it's because we care about the status that materials goods can afford far more than the goods themselves. The Roman emporer is poor in terms of what stuff he can access, but he is famous and powerful and has many slaves and hangers-on.

That's what people mean when they say they 'can't afford children', they worry that having children would eat into their positional status goods like holidays, clothes, cars and dining out. Food and clothing are dirt cheap, but plane tickets don't discount in bulk. Children can share bedrooms, but that might make you look poor. Because we don't afford status to parents in any meaningful way, having kids is a drop in status for most people.

The Roman emporer is poor in terms of what stuff he can access, but he is famous and powerful and has many slaves and hangers-on.

It sometimes crosses my mind that these are very different measures of wealth that people probably use interchangeably. The wealth of "other people's time" is actually zero-sum: the guy at the bottom of the totem pole will never get anyone's time. You might think robotics and computers could fix this, but my dishwasher saves countless person-hours and hasn't given me any (well, at least much) social status.

To some extent, it might make sense to consciously get people to adopt non-zero-sum measures for status. Not sure how practical that is, though.

it might make sense to consciously get people to adopt non-zero-sum measures for status.

Is this even theoretically possible, though? Status is a relative position, and a rising tide does not lift all boats. It'd be akin to raising everyone's SAT scores—you're still going to have a 99th percentile and a 5th percentile, along with the correlated benefits (or lack thereof).

One idea I've seen is having a multiplicity of status hierarchies. One person's status derives from being best in the world at chess; another at speed running Super Mario; another at laparoscopic surgery.

In practice, we could have that now, but we don't. My hypothesis is that by having a global status domain, the status hierarchies that can exist just aren't numerous enough to give everyone or even a substantial minority one they can sit on top of. Perhaps if instead we just compared against people in our neighborhood or city, things would be better.

One idea I've seen is having a multiplicity of status hierarchies . . . In practice, we could have that now, but we don't.

My instinct is that we absolutely have a multiplicity of status hierarchies operating today in a largely independent fashion. For example, there are plenty of American sub-groups in which status and money don't seem closely aligned. If you're a full professor of history at a large state university, then your status among colleagues will derive primarily from your research output and its reception. If you're a Hasidic Jew in Brooklyn, then your status in the synagogue will derive from your knowledge of Torah. If you're a Texas adolescent boy, then your status at school will derive from how many touchdowns you throw. These qualities are not closely related to earnings (if they're even related at all).

Arguably we already have that though. Magnus Carlson might not be a household name to everyone but he’s hot shit to anyone who’s remotely familiar with competitive chess. Bobby Fischer and Gary Kasparov and Boris Spassky were household names, to the point that they became important symbols and agents for national cultural struggles. The way they were talked about was closer to war heroes than people who play a game that involves moving small figurines around a checkered board. And I’m sure the top laparoscopic surgeons of the world probably feel they have a great deal more status than the average white collar wage laborer. I’ve also seen stories about internet content creators who are nobodies to the world at large, but if they walked into a comic con they would be treated like royalty.

I thought I had remembered a quote from de Tocqueville explaining that every American was content with his station in life because every American would at some point serve as president, chairman, or other elected official of an association, board, committee, government body, etc. So while he may be just another face in the crowd in one context, he would be a respected leader in another. I can’t find the quote I’m thinking of, but taken together, these two seem to speak to the same phenomenon, albeit more obliquely:

Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types- religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute. Americans combine to give fêtes, found seminaries, build churches, distribute books, and send missionaries to the antipodes. Hospitals, prisons, and schools take shape in that way. Finally, if they want to proclaim a truth of propagate some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form an association. In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association.

And

The federal government does confer power and renown on those who direct it, but only a few can exercise influence there. The high office of President is hardly to be reached until a man is well on in years; as for other high federal offices, there is a large element of chance about attaining to them, and they go only to those who have reached eminence in some other walk of life. No ambitious man would make them the fixed aim of his endeavors. It is in the township, the center of the ordinary business of life, that the desire for esteem, the pursuit of substantial interests, and the taste for power and self-advertisement are concentrated; these passions, so often troublesome elements in society, take on a different character when exercised so close to home and, in a sense, within the family circle.

With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs. Apart from the voters, who from time to time are called on to act as the government, there are many and various officials who all, within their sphere, represent the powerful body in whose name they act. Thus a vast number of people make a good thing for themselves out of the power of the community and are interested in administration for selfish reasons.

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