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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   28722 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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Ideological Institutions

The other day I was explaining my understanding of think tanks to a younger friend. They had a reaction of "no way!? Is that really how they work". This is the most common reaction, followed by "yeah of course that's how they work, why are you telling me this like I'm stupid?"

The purpose of ideological Institutions is two-fold:

  1. To be a standing army of sorts for a particular ideology. That way anytime a new issue comes up in political discourse there is a ready and willing group of people willing to advocate for the ideology. I'd sum this up as "political coordination".
  2. To extract funds and resources from wealthy people of a particular ideology. I'd sum this up as "a tax on political beliefs".

These may sound like they are at cross purposes, but they are not. A successful think tank does both very well.

Some of you here might have the immediate complaint somewhat along the lines:

Universities can also be ideological Institutions but they don't have their people paying a tax on their beliefs. But this isn't true on two dimensions:

  1. Tuition costs for parents and students. Some of the most clearly ideological small liberal arts colleges are private and very expensive.
  2. Ideologically captured departments within universities also impose a cost on their graduates: 4 years of their life and a useless degree.

I think the existence of these ideological Institutions has had an overall negative effect on American politics. Similar to news organizations they benefit from ongoing political conflict.

But they are also a necessary set of institutions for balancing out democracy. They act as a way for people who care and hold strong beliefs to feel like they have more of an impact on politics than their single vote would normally allow.

The "tax" imposed by the think tanks is entirely voluntarily, and the wealthy people pay it because they support the goals and methods of the think tanks. The universities and other nominally-neutral but actually ideologically captured institutions are much more effective because they can obtain their funds either from governments (thus real live taxation) or from ideological neutrals and opponents as well as the aligned (in the case of universities gatekeeping careers, for instance, or professional organizations like the American Bar Association or American Medical Association)

I think the inside view for a lot of these people paying the tax is that it feels about as "voluntary" as actual taxes. Many of them have a sense that their political opponents pose a credible threat and danger to them and theirs.

I think ideologically capturing professions is short term gain for long term cost. These institutions will cost off their reputation for a time, and then everyone will learn to discount their value as neutral organizations. And their funding sources will start drying up.

I think ideologically capturing professions is short term gain for long term cost. These institutions will cost off their reputation for a time, and then everyone will learn to discount their value as neutral organizations. And their funding sources will start drying up.

We're in the long term, and this didn't happen. The strategy was to capture so many institutions that they can support each other's reputation. The media, the universities, the bureaucracy, the "scientific community", etc. It worked. There's no check against ground truth because that's too hard to do and too easy for the institutions to explain away.

I think they are starting to suffer. but I doubt you are satisfied with how much suffering and how fast it is happening.

A bunch of people did not trust the results of a major election in 2020. I'd say that is largely a trust issue brought about by the fact that many important institutions are clearly captured.

State legislatures have started banning DEI at universities. Next step is for them to give up entirely and start just cutting funding to them.

Many social sciences have reputations in the gutter because they spent too many years ideology focused rather than rigor focused. Psych, Sociology, etc.

Climate science is not trusted.

News orgs are hated.

Next step is for them to give up entirely and start just cutting funding to them.

The next step is actually to put political appointees in charge of everything at public universities and revoke tenure from everybody.

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