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I ass-pulled 50 years, I could have said 75 and I don't think it changes my point. 50 years = "directionally over the last century post WW2"
Clearly the answer to this is yes. Many norms across society have changed in 50 years. Some of these changes are good, some bad. The norms around political violence have clearly gotten better, so that is nice.
What I’m talking about is, on net, norms of: institutional restraint, civic obligation, elite shame, truthfulness, long-term stewardship, and basic seriousness about governing. Some norms have improved. Others, like these, have decayed badly.
It mattered when politicians felt they had to at least pretend to respect institutional boundaries. It mattered when business leaders felt they had to at least pretend they owed something back to the society that made them rich. It mattered when public lying carried more shame. It mattered when leaders were expected to speak like adults, not like engagement-optimized influencers.
Trump is the obvious example, although clearly not the whole argument. A president(al candidate) being caught on tape saying "grab em by the pussy" or lying constantly and blatantly, or saying any number of things that would have been politically fatal in an earlier media environment, and large parts of the country just shrugging, is obviously a norm shift.
Similarly, on a procedural side: I don't really want to get into a debate about American constitutionalism and procedural philosophy, but it is very clear the Trump2 admin is doing many things outside the bounds of previously thought to be accepted norms and processes. Maybe it's good they're bending/breaking these processes because they were shit, maybe it's bad, maybe the Dems did it first in some way, I don't really care here. The point is that it's happening, and the boundaries are constantly being pushed and tested.
Also fun stuff like Citizens United.
This is obvious to you, as it is obvious to me. However, I have seen enough partisan back-and-forth on this forum to know that many members either do not find this obvious, or choose to ignore it while trying to dunk on their opponents.
The perpetual "the Republicans ruined it" "no the Dems ruined it" is a stupid argument in my opinion. I don't care who ruined it, I want my government to work again. Us all fighting each other about who's fault it is serves the Democratic/Republican elite, who get to continue ruining everything as we fight over the Titanic's deck chair arrangement.
Red vs Blue arguments trap us inside a frame that benefits them and not us.
The incentives of the political, economic, and media elite are growing increasingly detached from the long-term health of the society they govern.
Sure, politicians always wanted to be elected, businesses have always wanted to make money/secure power to ensure they can continue to make money, media has always wanted eyeballs. None of those incentives are new. What changed is the strength of the counterweights.
There used to be more pressure: social, institutional, geopolitical, and reputational. The elites had more pressure to justify their status by maintaining buy-in. Call it noblesse oblige, fear of communism, postwar civic nationalism, stronger unions, higher institutional trust, whatever. That system wasn't 100% fair or wonderful either. But there was at least pressure on elites to build public goods, maintain legitimacy, and make ordinary people feel like they had a stake in the system.
That pressure seems much weaker these days, does it even exist?
Now we get to enjoy things like: financialization, regulatory capture, monopolistic/oligopolistic concentration everywhere, cartoonish short-termism, asset inflation, institutional decay, and attention-economy slop. The pie is not being expanded in the way it could be. A lot of elite behavior now looks more like fighting over pie slices on a stagnating pie. We seem to be Moloch-maxxing a lot more these days.
Yes. Greed was not invented in 1976. My point is that the restraints around elite self-interest have borderline evaporated.
There have always been selfish rich people/corrupt politicians/those willing to trade the public good for personal advantage. But societies differ in how much they constrain that behavior, how much shame attaches to it, how much counter-power exists, and how much elites feel obligated to reinvest in the system that enabled their wealth.
Previously, the rich often felt some need to build public goods with their names on them. Libraries, universities, museums, civic institutions, hospitals, parks, whatever. Obviously there was ego and such involved, but the output was still often a durable public good.
Plus, I think they used to fear "the masses" a hell of a lot more than they do now. A big reason homeownership was pushed in the 1930s-??? (definitely not these days lol) was as a way to support/entrench/create buy-in to "the system" by making millions of households materially invested in private property, consumer credit, and rising asset values. To be clear, I think that this is a good thing. I want my government to be worried about my opinion towards the system, and to take action to make me like the system by having the system work for me. Do Americans feel like the system is working for them right now?
Now the dominant model feels blatantly extractive. Regulatory capture, monopoly/oligopoly power, tax avoidance, asset hoarding, platform rent-seeking, union avoidance, and political influence operations. The goal increasingly seems to be to take as much as possible out of the system while giving as little back as possible. All of this was happening in 1975 or 1950 too, but it seems a lot more successful and a lot more aggressive now.
Technology matters enormously. I agree. But I don’t think "the internet did it" is a full explanation either. The internet amplified incentives and trends that were already there.
TL;DR: Over the last ~X decades, the "elite" / "the institutions" have become increasingly optimized for extraction, self-preservation, and short-term advantage rather than long-term civilizational health. The informal norms that once partially restrained that behavior have weakened. We are worse off as a result. Parisian "no you're team is the one truly at fault" is useless at best, and actively against our own interests as citizens at worst.
This isn't a social norm, it's a political norm based on leftist assumptions. And not a common one in the past; it's most associated with Andrew Carnegie, though he based it on different assumptions. Further, Carnegie's beliefs did not cash out to "I should pay shitloads of taxes" (though he supported a high estate tax), but to "I, and other wealthy people, should use our wealth to directly help society".
These are the same thing at the level of abstraction I am speaking from. Politics and it's norms are downstream from the grouping of humans that makes a society (regulated by societal norms) that requires political entities that end up having political norms.
I was not taking a stance of "therefore we must tax more"
This was literally what I was talking about. So we agree?
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