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I've been reading Charles Murray book, Coming Apart and watched the interview he had with Reason TV. In the book and interview, Murray discusses white America, and the pulling away of social classes. Giving two towns for the reader to take into consideration: Belmont, MA. and Fishtown PA. In Belmont, people are college educated, get and stay married, lead healthier lives, and pass all of these things onto their children. Fishtown is the opposite: people have the typical jerry springer family filled with baby mama/daddys, they likely only graduated high school or less than that and they are unhealthy with a lower life expectancy. Another thing that i found fascinating is that apparently, Many men are simply not working at all, and this is seemingly concentrated amongst the less educated as well.The effects of this on the marriage market is well documented. '
One thing that has been on my personal mind lately is how to actually fix or help fish towns residents? A bit of personal background here: I am a child of immigrants who is a year away from a bachelors degree, I have a help desk job at a nice company, in my major (IT), with hopes of working in software development. (I will be the first in my family to obtain a BAS, I've been flirting with perusing a masters degree). I'm currently dating a women who's family is the typical Fishtown resident Murray describes (She herself is a lovely girl). Her family behaves poorly. Her sisters constantly engage in borderline prostitution. They have no work. No money outside of that which they receive from men. One has multiple children, none of them regularly attend school. They are beaten regularly by their frustrated mother. Their fathers are no where to be found or worse, are actively harmful (ie, taking the son to a drug house). Ive been blessed that both my parents are married and educated. (My mother studied nursing, My father actually had a degree in his home country that did not carry over to the US, and began studying real estate instead, he now has a real estate license, and CDL, we were actually upper-middle class until 2008 hit). She is attempting to make it out herself by studying finance, however one interesting data point that I've come across is that people who grew up poor tend to lag behind, even after obtaining the degree. Which is even more frustrating: even if a Fishtown resident somehow makes it out: they will not have as much of the funds as they had hoped. Perhaps this may because of the types of degrees they obtain (ie. someone from the hood obtains a degree in education, hoping to help and educate others who are in her same position.) Given that education correlates pretty highly with income, ive always felt as if fostering values around education and its importance would be a crucial first step and the environment many are in seems to make this highly difficult, even after obtaining such education. She herself has told me how awfully stubborn her mother is with her bad health habits. I want to preference this by saying im no elitist who wants to look down on such people: My heart is quite heavy with sorrow for them.
Murray sites an array of causes he believes are to blame: IQ, changing social norms, and the welfare state. Im not personally a fan of taking away welfare from those who may have fallen on hard times, even if that means that some one may potentially abuse it, and the cat seems to be out of the bag with many of the social norms, many of which changed due to technology (contraceptives changing sexual norms for example). I know many working class men personally who couldnt even bother with condoms, despite their mass availability, and who'd scoff at the idea of passing up a potential encounter or partner. I dont have deep enough knowledge of IQ to even begin to think of a solution, assuming this is a possible cause.
There is one thing ive personally have planned on: Being responsible. Ive always used condoms with my current partner. I do not want to have my children out of wedlock. I want to marry my wife and have children with her and only her. I want my kids to go to school, (a school in a high income neighborhood, where they can learn and thrive). And in-still hard work ethic in them to excel academically. Continue building my projects and studying leet code so that i can be a better programmer and get the software job that will pay for the house in said neighborhood. Which i suppose is all i can do. Control my own actions and hope that others see and follow my example.
Here's where I'm going to push back, by referencing Chris Arnade's book Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America. (Short review here.) He uses the metaphor of "front row" America versus "back row" America, referencing students in the front and back row of the classroom — the former are the smart, conscientious, rule-abiding, attentive people who do well in modern schooling; while the latter are the opposite. Arnade notes (as does Murray, and also Freddie deBoer) that in our current society, success heavily correlates with being "front row." Further, much like Murray, he notes that the divergence between the two continues to grow, to the point that the two groups increasingly cannot even understand each other, and have become increasingly intolerant of each other (see our politics). He also notes, and objects to, the fact that pretty much every proposal to try to 'help' the more "back row" Americans consists of projects attempting to turn them into "front row" Americans.
Arnade's point is that we can't actually do this. Some people just aren't suited for modern education, and no amount of "fostering values around education and its importance" is going to make them any more educable or less incompatible with the "front row" lifestyle. Unlike (what I've read of) deBoer, though, he argues that welfare state redistribution is not the solution, because while it's good at addressing the material inequalities between "front row" and "back row," even more than money, "back row" Americans need an existence that is dignified, that provides respect, and welfare state handouts are counterproductive to that end. Foster "values around education" all you want, you still need to find a way to integrate and provide a living for all those who simply aren't suited for college (or, for that matter, high school).
But you cannot simply redistribute "respect" like you can money, and Arnade's book is his lack of solutions to the problems he raises:
As for other people online — pretty much all "front row" — who I've seen propose various solutions, it's generally not optimistic. Plenty hold that "front row" traits are so intrinsically essential to the current post-industrial economy, and our society heavily g-loaded by necessity, that there's simply no way for "back row" Americans to contribute — that what jobs they still have will be replaced by automation (or cheaper illegal immigrants) any day now. The more optimistic of these are the ones bullish about genetic modification technologies — whether CRISPR-style splicing, or just PGS IVF —becoming cheap and commonplace in the next decade or two, so that if we can just keep things together for that long, our society will be able to afford to engineer the genes of "back row" America's children to become good, productive "front row" Americans (and then just wait a generation or two for the remaining "back row" folks to die off). The more pessimistic look to cheap VR (and improving VR porn), cheap psychiatric drugs, police surveillance and drones, and a welfare state to keep the economically-superfluous "back row" Americans pacified and warehoused (and reproducing less), for however many generations needed until they all die out.
Some propose providing "dignity" by replacing direct welfare payments with make-work schemes. But the only idea they have to keep them from being too transparently so is basically to revive FDR-style massive government infrastructure projects. But this runs up against all the problems that beset trying to build infrastructure in America, and would almost certainly end up ruinously costly.
The only other solution I see bandied about is essentially religious revival — we are all equal in dignity as beings made in God's image; the successful need to count their blessings, recognize we are all sinners, and stop looking down on those who have not received the same good fortune as them; while "back row" americans need to "come to Jesus" and stop letting their poor material conditions provide excuses for wallowing in sin. Not terribly plausible, I'd say.
Still, we do need something besides "just stay in school, just study harder, just sit still in class, just read more, just…"
I like this front row vs back row metaphor. It matches my experience much better. And school is a great place where most people have seen all types of people. I don't think the situation is hopeless for the back row, and I think there is actually a straight forward and easy solution to making their lives better through government:
Stop having the government do so much shit in people's private lives.
Imagine you have backrow students in an actual school. They are not paying attention. They are not getting worksheets done. The principle comes up with a solution: we will offer tutors to all the students who need additional help. Everyone claps and they go about their day. The vice principle is stick having to implement this policy. He comes up with the idea of just creating a worksheet questionnaire for students to fill out if they need help.
This is the same kind of problem with so many government solutions. "Oh you can't handle the bureaucracy and regimented life of white collar work and corporate America? We will help you out, all you need to do is navigate a white collar bureaucracy that makes corporate America look streamlined."
The normal methods of government can only make this problem worse, not better. The actual solutions are out there, and have been out there. Private charity orgs and mutual aid societies used to handle some of the people falling through the cracks. Apprenticeships where people learn by doing were far more common than schooling. Churches provided help to people.
And this is ultimately a market problem, that I think silicon valley companies have begun solving (when they are allowed to). How do you take some of these people and make them productive? The gig economy is much derided, but its basically been the main lifeline for so many of these people. Rideshare, food delivery, etc. It is pretty friction-less to signup to be a part of these services, they make it as easy as they can. And then you choose when to do them, presumably when you want some more cash. Buying and selling on various online marketplaces is another way I've seen various "back-row" students make money. Running a small business is the other way these people become successful. So the more barriers in the way of small businesses, the harder you make their lives.
Yes, this is a point Arnade makes in the book as well. (I've had personal experience with, dealing with Social Security, welfare offices, Medicaid, etc, and I find it hard enough as a high-IQ "front row" type myself.) My mother works for our public library, in the branch in the poorest part of town. They get plenty of people coming in to use the computers to get online (because they lack internet access at home), and some portion of those people are doing so to seek various forms of governmental assistance. The library stafd are aware of this because said people often end up coming to them for help with trying to navigate the various application processes, and such (help which the librarians are unable to provide).
Unfortunately — and here's where I once again turn back to Weber — it is in the basic nature of modernity to replace organic, human-run institutions like these with bureaucratized ones. And, as you note, the reach of such private organizations is rather less than uniform. Much of the resistance comes from the sorts who rate "equality" high in their priority of values, and who decry the "unfairness" involved. If the primary source of help for, say, the disabled are the local churches, then what about disabled non-Christians? Disabled atheists?
Plus, local charity requires local people able to afford to be charitable. I've been thinking about Alaska's economy quite often, and why it's so terrible. The job market is lousy because few are hiring, because few can afford to hire people, because there's not enough business, because few can afford the goods and services the business provides, because too many are poor and lacking jobs…
"Rideshare, food delivery, etc." all require enough of a customer base able to afford them. It's hard to compete in "online marketplaces" when the shipping costs are higher (as are the raw materials for whatever good you're producing, for the same reason). Plus, you're competing with illegal immigrant labor, or with overseas sweatshops and the like.
I remember asking a question here in one of the Sunday threads about the economic viability of Auron MacIntyre's 'have your state resist federal control (or your county refuse federal and state control) on culture-war issues by refusing federal funds and using local institutions in their place — tell your people "you don't need the welfare state, the churches will provide."' And I recall that most concluded it's simply not economically viable for any but the richest locales (all of which are pretty much on the same side as the federal institutions in the culture war), and especially non-viable for "rust belt" areas (or other, similarly-impoverished areas like Alaska).
I mean, I agree with your sentiments here, I'm just not sure we can make it actually work as things are now.
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This is a really good point, though i dont agree with it entirely. I cant deny my advantages in my life: my parents are well offish and pay for much of my expenses, they instilled enough work ethic in me and pushed me to go to school. However I also took advantage of the opportunities around me. I choose to go to a cheaper community college to get my degree as opposed to a larger university. I can say scholarships helped me as much as the pell grant did. I got my start in it doing an internship for a small local computer shop, those guys were awesome and were more than willing to help me. I dont think i would have my current job without them. There are certainly things local or market forces can do to help with many of these things. I took advantage of them and i am quite thankful for it, however i think the more nuanced perspective is to insert government where it may be critical (ie the Pell grant) rather than eschew government intervention in our lives entirely.
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