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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   37164 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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Do we want women able to compete in sports with peers

No why?

  1. Empathy doesn’t scale because it is clearly a case where local knowledge and prudence is needed to prevent it getting out of hand. In marriages, that role is generally the father.

  2. I too would support repealing female suffrage. But I wouldn’t stop there. Only men that own real property or have kids should be able to vote (skin in the game).

Only men that own real property or have kids should be able to vote (skin in the game).

Anyone capable of being arrested, paying taxes, or otherwise being subject to regulation (or even being drafted into the military) has skin in the game.

Back when the franchise was restricted to landowners, the government was a lot smaller and not an overwhelming presence in people's lives.

Yes and hopefully it goes back to that (ie maybe there was a correlation between limited franchise and limited government)

Apartheid S Africa had a very limited franchise and didn’t have a notably small government.

Perhaps but is there more or less government today in SA? Probably depends. SA arguably is worse off for everyone today

Dunno. Apartheid SA was probably more tyrannical, but had less bureaucracy.

I don’t think constantly checking peoples id cards counts as less bureaucracy. I guess it counts for the whites that would never be checked, but for the Coloureds and Bantus it mattered a lot.

Back when the franchise was restricted to landowners, the government was a lot smaller and not an overwhelming presence in people's lives.

Back when the franchise in the US was restricted to landowners, the government was enforcing slavery, which is the least libertarian policy imaginable. And 9 out of the original 13 States had established religion, which is a pretty overwhelming presence in people's lives in a society where most people actually believed in their own religion.

What are the current social pathologies afflicting the West, particular America?

Homelessness, drug addiction, mental illness , which go together. Singapore has the right idea but we need to extend it to users too. Its a supply and demand problem, just tackling the supply is not enough.

The solution is quite simple but will never be implemented.

This is the problem with all the 'how would you fix America' type posts. within reason, basically you cannot do anything.

Another solution is to just increase in-group bonding and sympathy production while controlling your daughters’ media consumption as a community. This is accomplished through heightened emotional events, stories, daily / weekly habits, social ties, and victim complex development. I sort of get tired of using them as an example but there really is none better for wide applications: Hasidic women are not concerned about any of the issues you brought up, because are inculcated with in-group preference due to manifold social technologies. They vote according to what the male leaders tell them to vote for, by and large, as well.

Open borders (those poor immigrants)

That is easiest to refute. Have you looked up how Poland and other European countries build walls to keep unwanted emigrants out?

Government was actually interested in keeping illegal emigrants out and was at least minimally competent so fence was build*. 186 kilometers, 400 million dollars. Construction permits, project paperwork, public investment assessment, legally required discussion, environment assessment, plan review and everything else got waived.

Illegal border crossings dropped drastically.

Poland has universal suffrage.

And it is not a fluke, Lithuania fortified border, Finland started wall construction recently from what I remember.

*unlike in case of Trump who is more interested in collecting donation to himself than in keeping illegal migrants out.

We can have a free, fair, open, educated society in which women and kids aren't threatened every time they walk a street or attend a school, or we can let women vote and participate in the workplace. But we cannot have both.

That is untrue. Poland has both, Ukraine had both before Russia started to bomb it, Czech Republic has both, Slovakia has both, Finland has both, Estonia has both, Lithuania has both... I can go on.

You get "Mean Girls" running a matriarchy - and NO matriarchy - EVER - has succeeded in all of history.

Really? Any? Ever? Really?

Have you looked up how Poland and other European countries build walls to keep unwanted emigrants out?

Makes a change from keeping wanted emigrants in...

Or is this a case of the problems of indexicals? https://youtube.com/watch?v=wX1x7pfH8fw

While I understand where you’re coming from, I will point out that America has something - a certain demographic issue - that none of the countries you named have pretty much any of. And that the exacerbation of that particular issue, which is one of the main reasons that 21st-century America cannot have nice things, is being sustained largely by women voters in this country today. And that the European countries which have spent the past decade importing that same issue - some of which are finally applying the brakes to that process, and some of which are still proceeding full steam ahead - have also done so in large part because of female political preferences.

Now, I’m not saying I necessarily favor the OP’s position. And I do appreciate you pointing out that there are at least some countries left where women are still somewhat based. (Once upon a time, not too long ago, even in America women were considered to vote more conservatively than men on a lot of issues, but a combination of factors has destroyed that forever.) Obviously I pray - not only as a straight man who would benefit immeasurably from a peaceful and happy resolution to the War of the Sexes, but also as a person who needs to live in this society - that women can be salvaged as a political presence and brought back into harmony and balance with men, and I’m perfectly fine if that doesn’t have to involve “repealing the 19th.” Still, I’m not as confident as you are that Polish women won’t catch the same mind virus that women in the rest of the industrialized world seem to have pretty much all succumbed to already.

What is this ‘certain demographic issue’ you’re darkly hinting at?

To be clear, I’m referring to having a large proportion of your population descended from the Third World. Shouldn’t have darkly hinted about it, but I figured it’d be obvious based on all of my other posts about the matter.

Ahh I've read a lot of your posts but didn't pick up on it. Interesting.

The fact that Poland supports NATO and Ukraine despite US foreign policy (pushing the gay globally) and Ukraine internal policy (electing drag dancing Zelensky) shows that there is a shift there.

They used not to accept refugees and they got in trouble with the EU for it, now they're taking in Ukrainians and theyre getting tighter and tighter with the EU and US.

There is little chance of Poland remaining Polish in these conditions.

Echoing Dag, speak plainly. Don't engage in "a certain demographic issue" weaseling here. Own your words, and if you aren't willing to come out and say "black people" or make the effort not to just be dunking on your racial outgroup, then your post is bad and unnecessary. (And you know perfectly well you're allowed to be a white nationalist here, you're just not allowed to spit on your enemies.)

Roger that, I was posting late at night right before bed and wasn’t exactly on my A game. Apologies.

Women are generally even more natural followers than most men are. Christian women are more conservative than Christian men. The women of America in the 1800s were evil reactionaries compared to the men of today. Banning women from voting takes us back, what, ten years? Okay, women voting is bad (and is every man voting much better?), but that doesn't mean fixing that specific issue will solve anything. Plus, downstream of the 'actual problem' is that 90% of the american population supports the female franchise. So it doesn't solve the problem, nor is it feasible without separately solving the problem.

Do you not think that the enfranchisement of women opened up new opportunities for men? Even if we discount the work female scientists did to advance technology and society (which admittedly wasn't huge), what about the work of male scientists who wouldn't have been scientists if women weren't in the workforce doing other more trivial work? Never mind how smart or empathetic they are, extra people means extra hands, making lighter work I thought. Which brings me to my point - I really don't think you could stop open borders if you fired half the workforce. In a few decades you could, but I doubt a modern society could make do with just its men and limited immigration for years let alone decades.

I think you are dead wrong about empathy, but I think you are being hyperbolic there for effect - human sacrifice is almost certainly more destructive for a society, likewise incest.

I really don't think you could stop open borders if you fired half the workforce.

The economy would tank and unemployment would surge, so that would take care of much of the immigration problem too. Eventually there would be a new equilibrium

I think the ‘women in the workforce’ discourse overlooks something important:

The fifties were anomalous in how few women worked, and even then, 35% of married women and a majority of unmarried women worked. Now we can assume that these were mostly poorer women doing stereotypically feminine jobs(eg, seamstress).

Put that way, the discourse is about social values and what’s held up as ideal. And that’s not going to change the immigration situation that much.

A great deal of jobs provide little benefit to anyone. Administration and marketing are often negative-sum, reducing efficiency. See Scott's recent article about how some evil bioethicist made up some rules that got a bunch of people killed and wasted enormous amounts of time for very limited gains.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-from-oversight-to-overkill

Then there are the people who teach bioethics. I suffered the great misfortune of doing a university course on what I thought was philosophy of science but turned out to be bioethics. It was immensely tedious and cost me money. Much of university is wasteful or malign, university administration can be both.

Or all the regulatory approvals, environmental approval you have to do before you can build anything.

In Speer's Inside the Third Reich he makes a semi-serious joke about how he was pleased when Allied bombers blew up an archives building. Now, he thought, they could bring greater dynamism to their work. We could lose a lot of deadweight and be better off. That's before we even start cutting into all the duplicate brands of shoes or publishing of books that nobody ever reads, or the lawyers who invent laws and then work around them. Or the fast food scientists who cram more sugar into fat people, so that doctors and dieticians can work tirelessly to keep them alive. If they weren't all preventing eachother from doing their jobs, they'd have little left to do.

ALL - 100% - of these are traceable DIRECTLY to empathy and, hence, to women's suffrage.

So are we no longer blaming Marx and his successors for these problems? Just want to clarify, it seems like that's a sticking point for many people who agree with you. I'm totally down for that, it would make for a refreshing change, anyways.

We've had the experiment for a century: We can have a free, fair, open, educated society in which women and kids aren't threatened every time they walk a street or attend a school, or we can let women vote and participate in the workplace. But we cannot have both.

And when the inevitable slide into "only a select few men get the right to control society" happens, how confident are you that they won't just fuck you over anyways? Or are you banking on the equivalent of being on the central planning committee?

The solution is quite simple but will never be implemented.

That's what many others have said. But I get the feeling that you, like them, won't be around when the problems come up again and we start looking for answers and apologies.

Marx

Well blaming the Enlightenment rather, but communism is just liberalism that's unhappy that heaven on earth hasn't been brought fast enough. So really it's just degrees of guilt.

when the inevitable slide into "only a select few men get the right to control society" happens, how confident are you that they won't just fuck you over anyways? Or are you banking on the equivalent of being on the central planning committee?

You are currently being fucked over by an organized minority, you were fucked over by an organized minority in the past, and you will be fucked over by an organized minority in the future. Humanity has never known any other system and it's dubious that an alternative is even possible given the nature of political relationships.

What your question really is, when properly translated, is "how will the new elite adhere to the myths that cemented the power of the old elite's political formula?" well it will not, because it will have different myths for a different political formula.

You are currently being fucked over by an organized minority, you were fucked over by an organized minority in the past, and you will be fucked over by an organized minority in the future. Humanity has never known any other system and it's dubious that an alternative is even possible given the nature of political relationships.

If I am, then the best option for everyone would probably be the system most open to anyone getting power. I can join the current political elite with effort, I wouldn't be able to join the OP's without so much effort as to render my life pointless.

What your question really is, when properly translated, is "how will the new elite adhere to the myths that cemented the power of the old elite's political formula?" well it will not, because it will have different myths for a different political formula.

It's hardly a myth that suffrage was not the default state of all men. The ultimate goal of the OP is to argue that we are better off restricting some people from having political power. But why stop at sex? There are many men who are incapable of being good rulers as well, equally responsible for supporting the "social pathologies" listed in the OP. So what's going to stop the reversion to an oligarchy or monarchy? Because there's always going to be some argument over who counts as virtuous or not.

"This far and no further!" sounds nice, but a man can no more control the slippery slope than he can command the tides to recede.

If I am, then the best option for everyone would probably be the system most open to anyone getting power.

Congratulations, you are now a proponent of warlordism and a fierce opponent of liberal democracy. Or perhaps you misunderstand the types of regime that make power most accessible.

I can join the current political elite with effort

You can do that in any regime, and if you can't that means it's not long for this world. I suspect that OP's patriarchy, like all patriarchies, would have a nontrivial contingent of female elites, nominally recognized or not.

It's hardly a myth that suffrage was not the default state of all men.

Quite so, but it is a myth that insofar as it is the default state of all men, it matters in the slightest to the political object.

The idea of vote as a matter of importance, a natural right, a lynchpin of your power over your masters and the righteousness of their establishment. All mythology. Mythology on the same level of absurdity as the divine right of kings, I might add.

Arguably of an even worse caliber since, as De Jouvenel points out, its potency has managed to summon levels of control and tyranny undreamt by any king.

You don't elect representatives friend, representatives have themselves elected by you.

why stop at sex?

Indeed, why have the pretense of suffrage at all, why even acknowledge the rituals of a previous political class? Nay, let's have new rituals instead. Tis always so.

You might as well ask a Bolshevik whether they'd stop at taking the property of the Tsar. Or indeed a democrat whether they'll

There are many men who are incapable of being good rulers as well

Indeed, and by the cruel mercy of God, the many never rule the few.

So what's going to stop the reversion to an oligarchy or monarchy?

Nothing, except that the latter doesn't exist and the former is the only regime that has ever existed.

"This far and no further!" sounds nice, but a man can no more control the slippery slope than he can command the tides to recede.

Quite and this is why naive conservatism is a futile position. However build a new sand castle upon the ruins wrought by the tide, that he can. In fact that's probably the only thing that can ever be done, in a sense.

Congratulations, you are now a proponent of warlordism and a fierce opponent of liberal democracy. Or perhaps you misunderstand the types of regime that make power most accessible.

No? Warlords don't allow people to obtain power, they would work to ensure that theirs was the only one.

In contrast, Apple cannot prevent Google from releasing phones and trying to break Apple's share of the smartphone market. This is a consequence of our decidedly not-warlord society.

You can do that in any regime, and if you can't that means it's not long for this world.

Under a feudal system, my right to weapons that can easily threaten people would probably be taken away to ensure the power of the rulers. There's a reason people say that Sam Colt made men equal. Despite this, feudalism lasted quite a while.

You don't elect representatives friend, representatives have themselves elected by you.

How so? Nothing stops me from, in theory, running a popular candidate who isn't part of the dominant clique and unseating the existing representative.

Indeed, and by the cruel mercy of God, the many never rule the few.

You're banking on coin flips as to who is going to be on top. Let's hope you're good at predicting the outcomes of those flips.

Quite and this is why naive conservatism is a futile position. However build a new sand castle upon the ruins wrought by the tide, that he can. In fact that's probably the only thing that can ever be done, in a sense.

Or, you know, we could just...not. Like, as much value there is to be had in demolishing a society to rebuild it in your own image, the constant fights over precisely this are wasteful and disastrous. There's an existing system under which you can get away with a great deal. The grander your expectations, the more effort you require, but that's how it's always been, yes?

Warlords don't allow people to obtain power, they would work to ensure that theirs was the only one.

Warlords and their clique are people, are they not? Sure they seek to monopolize, but that is the nature of power. Power is never shared. And in a national democratic system it is not either, and the ruling elite is smaller than the combined cliques of a dozen warlord provinces.

Apple cannot prevent Google from releasing phones and trying to break Apple's share of the smartphone market. This is a consequence of our decidedly not-warlord society.

All that it means is that they fought and lost. Because they are not sovereign, and don't actually decide who is allowed to make smartphones. Yet they still do so under the authorization of somebody. If USG decided to hand a monopoly to Apple, they could have, but they did not because corporate power is a castle that has to be maintained in constant flux so as to not compete with the castles of the managerial sovereigns. They very well might have handed such an honor if Apple was significantly more willing to play ball with surveillance than Google.

Under a feudal system, my right to weapons that can easily threaten people would probably be taken away to ensure the power of the rulers. There's a reason people say that Sam Colt made men equal. Despite this, feudalism lasted quite a while.

Then you're not an elite. The feudal system had quite a lot of men-at-arms and knighthoods for specific kinds of expertise. Yes the ruling elite has the power to exclude you if they consider you too dangerous, however unwise it is to do so. They hold this power in any regime.

Ask Trump how he feels about it.

How so? Nothing stops me from, in theory, running a popular candidate who isn't part of the dominant clique and unseating the existing representative.

And yet everything does stop you, in practice. Because the myth that you are told about how democracy works is not the practical reality. Without large amounts of support from existing institutions or alternate ones, competition is impossible.

Consider all these studies that have been made that show that the will of constituants has insignificant influence on a politician's conduct in office compared to the will of his donors. Consider how deeply unpopular politicians still remain part of a system that should exclude them if it worked they way you think. Consider again, how most of the levers of power are not actually in the hands of any elected body but within an entrenched administration that only answers to the politicians in theory.

Even if you did manage to get elected in a fluke, you'd still hold no power. Because just because it says people should do your bidding on paper doesn't mean jack shit. I point yet again to Trump and his generals who should really be in prison for disobeying his direct legal orders if the system worked anything close to the way you think. But it doesn't.

You're banking on coin flips as to who is going to be on top. Let's hope you're good at predicting the outcomes of those flips.

I am not. The few ruling the many is a sociological law of the universe that has never been broken. It is true even in a mob.

I did not say that I would like the few in question, or that replacing fews that I don't like wasn't risky. But you either convince them to give you what you want or forcibly replace them with more amenable people, there is no third way.

as much value there is to be had in demolishing a society to rebuild it in your own image, the constant fights over precisely this are wasteful and disastrous

The current elite is so deeply incompetent and unable to integrate the people who would vouge for my preferred agenda that confrontation is inevitable. Most of the very reasonable things that I and a lot of others want are impossible without a coup and secession has been made deeply illegal. In this situation there is no choice.

Warlords and their clique are people, are they not? Sure they seek to monopolize, but that is the nature of power. Power is never shared. And in a national democratic system it is not either, and the ruling elite is smaller than the combined cliques of a dozen warlord provinces.

The point is that under liberal democracy, there are different freedoms and powers one has/can get that, in my view, stack up to favor it over warlordism.

Consider all these studies that have been made that show that the will of constituants has insignificant influence on a politician's conduct in office compared to the will of his donors. Consider how deeply unpopular politicians still remain part of a system that should exclude them if it worked they way you think.

Politicians vote how they want on issues that society doesn't consider salient. If it's very visible and watched over, they vote how their constituents want. They also work to help their own supporters with working with the government. This is broadly known by everyone, no myths required.

The current elite is so deeply incompetent and unable to integrate the people who would vouge for my preferred agenda that confrontation is inevitable. Most of the very reasonable things that I want are impossible without a coup and secession has been made deeply illegal. In this situation there is no choice.

What exactly are you asking for that is "very reasonable", and by whose standard?

The point is that under liberal democracy, there are different freedoms and powers one has/can get that, in my view, stack up to favor it over warlordism.

And I think those are fictitious and mythical because in practice there never is or was anything such as the separation of powers.

Politicians vote how they want on issues that society doesn't consider salient. If it's very visible and watched over, they vote how their constituents want. They also work to help their own supporters with working with the government. This is broadly known by everyone, no myths required.

Right, and what "society considers salient" magically always coincides with what the ruling class actually wants and what the media they control decide to talk about. Funny that.

I think considering democracy to be a system of justification rather than decision requires far less complexity to explain the behavior of its systems. But it is of course not compatible with believing in it being in any way special.

What exactly are you asking for that is "very reasonable", and by whose standard?

Abolishing censorship, public order being restored, the death penalty for serious crimes, the promotion of traditional family values, national sovereignty, reducing immigration to culturally manageable levels, having the economy reward the production of real goods instead of financial products.

The standard would be history I suppose. But these are all things most people in most countries want anyways in you ask them. It's not what the elite believe in however, and they can't be convinced to allow it because the underlying problems are load bearing for their power or the justification thereof, which is what really matters.

More comments

We can have a free, fair, open, educated society in which women and kids aren't threatened every time they walk a street or attend a school, or we can let women vote and participate in the workplace.

Does "We" mean men, or do you think that removing women's liberties is compatible with a free society?

As for safety, I'm living in a massive, diverse, multicultural city where families can hang out safely in amazing public parks late into the night, and a hot woman can walk down the darkest, dingiest alleyway at 3 am in the morning without as much as fearing being cat-called. On the other hand, it's also a society run by rich people unprincipled enough to work with commies, whose main legitimation from the socially conservative masses is that the police will be badasses if someone does as much as play loud music too late at night in a ghetto, and even the dumbest semi-disabled old man can (and probably must) get a job sweeping leaves under the supervision of a pedantic harpy or something similarly simple in those amazing public parks.

In short, there are many social models, but there isn't one which is both free and massively restricts the freedom of 49% of the population.

I agree with you that modern society is overly empathetic, but this is a trend that goes back to the 18th century, as the intellectual classes began to promote the idea that benevolence is the ultimate virtue. It predates the decline of patriarchy and organised religion, and it's at least as notable in e.g. the upper echelons of the Catholic Church hierarchy (all-male and all-religious, more or less) as in a multi-gender corporate boardroom.

Additionally, as I recall personality psychology, the vast majority of men are about as empathetic as most women. The aggregate differences are at the margins, e.g. highly trait-disagreeable people are overwhelmingly men.

Hong Kong.

Also, I pay hardly any income tax, get good health insurance through my employer, and the price of necessities is low (but the price of "luxuries" is often absurd, as are rents due to the low supply of flat land).

Fair enough, although I live near a mosque. However, a lot of Muslims here are Indonesians and Malaysians, who are also not the kind of Muslims that people tend to worry about. The main problem is that they take up a lot of space in the park with their massive family picnics after going to the mosque, but I'd still rather have them than gangs or loud people.

According to Wiki, HK is 92% Chinese. This doesn’t read as particularly diverse from an outside perspective. Moreover, the source link said that ~89% of the population spoke Cantonese at home.

This doesn’t read as particularly diverse from an outside perspective.

I suppose it depends on your perspective, since I come from a less diverse place. Also, I spend a lot of time in Kowloon, which is one of the more foreigner-heavy parts of HK, along with HK Island and some of the coastal towns in the New Territories.

Does "We" mean men, or do you think that removing women's liberties is compatible with a free society?

His argument is clearly that women sacrifice almost all their liberties for those two specific ones.

I'm not sure what that means. Can you provide more detail?

How much liberty do you think men would sacrifice to be able to vote and work?

I'm not sure what that means. Can you provide more detail?

That women voting and working uniquely causes them to sacrifice the rights they have as non-voting homemakers. That is the right to a home to make, a right to not be raped (and other molestation and violent crimes in public), the right to a functional government, etc.

How much liberty do you think men would sacrifice to be able to vote and work?

None really. An unworking man, in the state of nature, is quickly dispatched by the rest of local humanity, or abandoned and allowed to starve.

More simply put, to understand the argument, you must understand the priors of it. One is that women are very bad at voting for things that are good for women. Particularly long term. They support things like welfare, soft on crime policies, anti bullying (physical only of course), which feminize public spaces, but allow for the truly sociopathic to take over society. Contrasted with the less empathic male voting patterns, it is taken that voting should be restricted to the class that is historically less likely to allow for the sociopathic capture of government.

Similarly, the prior is that female influence in the workplace does a few things: 1) It makes single income families out of reach for most households because it increases labor supply; 2) It also does part 1, because it reduces male effectiveness (productivity) over time, as women profligate workplace rules (HR) that provide small subsets of women short term wins in favor of the economy as a whole losing; 3) It increases reliance on government services, like public education, which lower overall productivity, allows for public employee unions to hold communities hostage, etc.

To be clear, I don’t think voting is a freedom issue. Voting is a tool to create good social outcome; it is not an end upon itself.

"End in itself" and "freedom issue" are two different things, though. If you have one system where an individual can choose to vote or not, and another system where an individual has no choice (mandatory voting or mandatory non-voting) then the first is a system that gives that individual more choices (positive freedom) and doesn't stop them doing something (negative freedom).

Voting in America is an illusion of choice. Your vote doesn’t matter except for perhaps the most local of races and even then pretty unlikely.

But to me, the key takeaway about American ideas of freedom is the foundational statement of America — we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable right, that among them are the rights to life, liberty and happiness.

Shortly thereafter TJ explains that government is created to protect those rights. We settled on a democratic Republican form of government because we thought it was the best way to secure our unalienable rights; not because democratic Republican governments was an important right per se.

So if the government created a law banning you personally from voting in any election, you wouldn't consider that an abridgement of your freedoms?

Me personally, for no reason? Probably.

Revoking the franchise from some group of which I am a member(the unmarried, non veterans, whatever)? Quite possibly not.

Why do you draw the distinction?

Impartiality of the law matters even when it doesn’t particularly help you. A law like ‘only married people/veterans business owners/people with college degrees can vote’ might not be to my benefit, but it is an objective and consistent standard. On the other hand ‘only people not named hydroacetylene can vote’ is not an objective and consistent standard, it’s just formalized corruption.

More comments

Freedoms, no. Rights? Perhaps. But targeting it to an individual has a different concepts compared to class.

However, prospect theory likely suggests that once you go down a path it becomes untenable to return to status quo ante. The 16th-19th amendments were a disaster.

Freedoms, no.

Why not?

Because it doesn’t affect my ability to perform basic activities (eg buy property, choose what religion I believe in, associate with whom I want, say what I think etc).

Maybe we should start with building more housing.

You can’t build enough housing when you import a million or so illegal immigrants every few years not counting foreign visa holders. Every country that has this “replacement” level immigration naturally runs out of housing

Why is every anti-immigration argument like this? Just put 'immigration' next to a superficially related BAD THING and declare immigration is THE cause of the bad thing. If a few million immigrants every few years overwhelms the natural supply of housing, how on earth did the world population 10x in a few hundred years without mass homelessness? Population growth in the US is slowing, not increasing, despite immigration. And the answer is just ... they built more houses and cities and towns, farmed more food and paved more roads. Which we, physically, and economically, could easily do.

This is complete nonsense. US population growth has been slowing for decades even with immigration, and the barriers to building more housing are all completely artificial.

You can’t build enough housing when you import a million or so illegal immigrants every few years not counting foreign visa holders. Every country that has this “replacement” level immigration naturally runs out of housing

The US is very empty and rarely builds up. It has depopulating towns and cities. There is nothing natural about its lack of housing.

The homeless problem in US cities is not a result of a lack of housing, and framing it that way is just an effort to push policies that have little to do with homelessness.

Maybe, but I wasn't talking about homelessness.

You can’t

That's quitter talk, you absolutely can build enough housing, it's just a question of if the will to do so exists and what we consider to be adequate housing.

The market has historically relied on supply and demand, not will. Are you saying you want the Gov to make commie blocks for everyone? Why not just stop the replacement migration?

The housing market is artificially constrained on the supply side. Reduce the power of local governments to block development and you’ll get more housing supply.

I'm not saying I want anything, I'm saying that it's not a question of "can't" but "won't".

There are a few different ways to approach the problem of "insufficient houses to meet demand", ranging from building commie blocks/pods all the way to just dropping regulations and allowing shanty towns to spring up.

I really hate when someone says they can't do something when they actually mean they won't do something.

I am pretty sure that @Mer simply wants to remove existing impediments to building housing. Then, the market will take care of the problem, as it has in places like Houston.

Or, of course, government can subsidize the building of housing, thereby shifting the supply curve. No "commie blocs" needed!

Sure, we can build giant Krushchevskies but that just drives up the price of single family homes not located nearby while not actually addressing America's housing problems because American housing problems are mostly not due to shortage, they're due to non-optimal distribution.

You want to "fix" the housing problem? Kick women out of the workplace and a married family will be able to raise their kids on a single salary, with mom at home keeping an eye on the schools and housing prices will be within the reach of a single-family income.. as they were until the mid-late-60s.

Is there even the slightest shred of evidence for this claim? The number of new housing units being built has declined compared to population. The incomes of households will not change the underlying fact that there isn't enough housing.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, given that this isn't even the 5th boldest claim you've made in this post without providing any sort of argument.

The two income trap as it is called is a real phenomenon, although it's effect size is debatable. Essentially a lot of the stuff middle class people spend a lot of their money on are inelastic in supply(Real estate in a good school district, tuition into high status schools ect) such that single income households weren't able to compete with dual income households and gradually either fell out of the middle class or adapted.

inelastic in supply (Real estate in a good school district, tuition into high status schools

This is entirely an artificial problem. We could build more housing, but no, because then NIMBYs might only make 300% returns on their house instead of 400%.

There are only so many kids we can stick in the high class school building before it degrades the exclusive experience they're jossling for. I'm not really even a proponent here but what the people are really bidding on is space in the high value social networks and the various benefits of proximity. We can and should be building more, but we also need to accept that there is always going to be high cost real estate because not everything actually scales.

Most people aren't worried about high-status high schools and aren't getting into top colleges, regardless of price. To the extent that drives the two-income trap, it doesn't affect the bulk of the population.

One of the highlighted comments in this old SSC post points out that we could have vastly more space in elite colleges. But elite colleges aren't discriminating based on price anyway--having a second income earner in your household probably makes them less affordable given how generous they're getting for low and even middle income students.

And given the decline in fertility, especially among the very people jostling for space in high status schools, we probably could have fewer students in those desirable schools even as if we built way more housing!

Most people aren't worried about high-status high schools and aren't getting into top colleges, regardless of price. To the extent that drives the two-income trap, it doesn't affect the bulk of the population.

There are always different leagues and social milieus with their own exclusive prizes. That said if you think most parents aren't thinking about school districts when deciding where to live then you've not met many.

One of the highlighted comments in this old SSC post points out that we could have vastly more space in elite colleges. But elite colleges aren't discriminating based on price anyway--having a second income earner in your household probably makes them less affordable given how generous they're getting for low and even middle income students.

There are highschools where zero students will go to an ivy league school, high schools where maybe one will and highschools where greater than 20% of the students will go to one. Yes, it's not the tuition itself that is getting you in the door but there are many other things money can buy and even if your kid isn't getting into an ivy there is still a lot of benefit to growing up rubbing shoulders with the type of person who does. You can go look up the cost of homes by school district if you want, the cost difference and arbitrary line on the map makes is incredible.

There are always different leagues and social milieus with their own exclusive prizes. That said if you think most parents aren't thinking about school districts when deciding where to live then you've not met many.

The average person is fine with a good school, where their kids will learn something and won't be mugged, which isn't constrained the way relative status (e.g. top 5%) is.

There are highschools where zero students will go to an ivy league school, high schools where maybe one will and highschools where greater than 20% of the students will go to one.

Yes, and the school itself is only doing marginal amounts of work. Most of it is the students and parents (and the school looks good due to selection).

even if your kid isn't getting into an ivy there is still a lot of benefit to growing up rubbing shoulders with the type of person who does.

In my personal experience, the total benefit to doing this, without going to a good school yourself, is pretty much 0. Maintaining social connections, especially ones that could result in a meaningful benefit, that long is uncommon. Yes, people are willing to pay quite a lot money for private schools and/or good public schools, but the evidence of either of them providing a strong causal benefit is, as far as I'm aware, pretty weak. Saving your money and just giving it to them will probably be way more helpful.

You can build as many buildings and make as many good school districts as you have good kids to put in them. At least if that's your only constraint; other constraints like needing to be located near the parents' employment complicate things. It's not a pure status good, because most parents aren't looking for an "exclusive experience".

Not that doing anything about NIMBYism (the drumbeat for which seems to have increased lately; more millennials and zoomers who don't want to take out a mortgage wanting SFH homes to be torn down in favor of commie blocks to reduce rent, I guess) would help; it's largely NIMBYism which keeps the good districts good.

You can build as many buildings and make as many good school districts as you have good kids to put in them.

As someone put it in an recent AAQC, it's not the buildings or the 'magic' dirt that make some communities more desirable, it's the cohort. If your extra school buildings are filled with the kids of those who failed to compete for space in the original school buildings then you have created and interior product and everyone in the system can plainly see this. I live in Chicago, a city with stark economic shifts from one neighborhood to another, it is just simply the case that people do not move to the low cost neighborhoods unless they have no other option.

You are calling for a world in which male Antifa members should be able to vote but women like Ann Coulter and @2rafa should not. Interesting.

If your argument in favor of such a world is that it is not pragmatically possible to measure each individual's level of voting based on empathy and so we need a heuristic as crude as "sort by genders", then you probably might as well just give up on democracy completely because at that point you might as well just say "well, only people I personally trust to vote the way I want them to should be allowed to vote".

You would probably have to do that one way or another in order to get the world that you want because the vast majority of men disagree with you. Indeed, even 100 years ago a majority of men disagreed with you, which is how women got the right to vote to begin with.

This is why America's constitutional republic is something of a miracle, as broken as it is . Anyone who meets a broad set of criteria is able to participate in the process, yet the Electoral College keeps a good equilibrium between the interests of the masses vs. the minority. White, male property owners are outnumbered in popular vote but their votes carry more weight in the Electoral College.

or on the other extreme, China's politburo system, which seems to work well too.

Direct democracies seem to be the worse.

the vast majority of men disagree with you. Indeed, even 100 years ago a majority of men disagreed with you, which is how women got the right to vote to begin with.

They got the vote after a massive slaughter of young able-bodied men.

The vast majority that disagrees is going extinct.

Idk if the Mormons or the Amish care about women's vote. These are the rising sub-groups among the population that actually cares to implement democracy.

Women of the future have 2 choices, Sharia law or... White Sharia law.

You are calling for a world in which male Antifa members should be able to vote but women like Ann Coulter and @2rafa should not. Interesting.

I really don't like arguments that boil down to, "You claim some distribution has a mean of X, but what say you about the area beneath the curve over here, a whole two standard deviations away!!" Unless someone is claiming that no counterexamples exist, pointing out counterexamples usually implies...nothing at all, really.

Do you actually disagree with the assertion that men vote more conservatively than women on average, or what? Was OP's mistake simply that he didn't make that claim in such precise terms?

Men vote more conservatively than women on average but the difference is not huge. My point is that if the heuristic that @motteposter feels compelled to use to ensure support for his chosen policies is so immensely crude as to simply sort by genders, then at that point @motteposter might as well consider not supporting democracy at all. After all, the logical next step after removing women's suffrage is removing some men's suffrage, probably also based on average characteristics of the groups that they belong to. And so on.

Or maybe @motteposter is more motivated by wanting to dunk on women than by actually wanting his chosen policies to be implemented, which is why he is making this into a gender thing to begin with. That too is possible.

You take women out of politics you change the political landscape because media is no longer catering to female sensitivities.

The anti female suffragist had a lot of interesting things to say about how female suffrage would change society.

The media (as opposed to politicians) cater to female sensitivities because women tend to do the family shopping, which makes them more valuable to advertisers. "Soap operas" are called "soap operas" because they were paid for by detergent ads. At the time, packaged detergent was the most sophisticated mass-market consumer product, which made Proctor & Gamble and Unilever the most valuable advertisers. Even growing up in the 1980's, my sister (who watched soap operas) knew every brand of laundry detergent on the market before she left primary school. Needless to say, I did not - which would not have bothered an advertiser whose assumptions about gender roles were normal for the 1980's.

Most of the people I know who want to restrict/eliminate women’s suffrage are also very open about wanting to restrict/eliminate the suffrage of many categories of men as well, so what you’re treating as a reductio ad absurdum may very well be OP’s position. I agree with you that simply banning all women from voting probably won’t magically fix all of the problems he brought up, and that the cause of these problems is far more multifaceted than he is presenting.

That being said, there is something to be said for the way that women’s suffrage is uniquely corrosive to democracies in a way that suffrage for, say, minority ethnic group suffrage isn’t: it’s way harder for men to treat women as an adversarial political faction, since men have no choice but to stay on good terms with women in order to, you know, propagate the species. In a multiracial democracy, the majority group can simply politically marginalize and outcompete the minority group - “there’s more of us than there are of you, so you lose, sucks to suck” - but in a democracy with women’s suffrage, the men are absolutely forced to make many concessions to women. Not only because, by definition, women will always be approximately as numerous as men, but also because the nature of the relationship between men and women is that most men will naturally capitulate to the social and sexual pressure exerted by women. So, a society with women’s suffrage will not simply become more feminized in proportion to the number of female votes; the women will actually tend to punch above their weight politically, until the feminine/empathic approach to politics becomes the default consensus in such countries.

Do you actually disagree with the assertion that men vote more conservatively than women on average, or what?

If this is supposed to be common across all societies, then the assertion is falsified. For example, at least until recently, the UK Conservatives did better among women voters than male voters.

I mean Ann Coulter has regularly called for this...

Ah, I did not realize that she was that out there.

2rafa also isn't American, so she already can't vote in the elections that matter.

I think this this the most recent one, but she's said it many times.

https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/politics/2021/10/22/ann-coulter-says-women-shouldnt-have-right-vote-19th-amendment-missouri-state-university/8528256002/

I think @motteposter is misidentifying his grievence with women to empathy. Mencius Moldbug wrote something like "Democracy is rule by who controls the media". I do not think this is universally the case. But women have a higher degree of conformity then men, and so are susceptible towards propaganda that portrays a minority viewpoint as consensus. I recall a study where researchers showed girls social media posts with randomly generated numbers of likes; their subjective rating of these posts matched the forged community opinion. You can steer the overton window in this way.

In pictures I see of the third reich, the ones most enthusiastically waving the swatztika flags and doing the Hitler salute at rallies are young women. Is that them being "empathetic"? No, it's social contagion. The media tells them that Nazism is socially desirable and good, and liberalism is unthinkable. And so they wave their flags. This makes democracies with female franchise singularly unstable and vulnerable to the most passionate power-seeking minority in its meme ecosystem. We are currently being driven off a cliff by such a one.

This leaves me in a bind, because I still feel myself a liberal in my bones, and female equality is a natural and inevitable derived principle of liberalism. I have said before (maybe joking) that extra votes to parents for their children might be a workable approach.

In pictures I see of the third reich, the ones most enthusiastically waving the swatztika flags and doing the Hitler salute at rallies are young women.

This might have been propaganda. Like how at Trump rallies they would always find a few black guys and put them right behind Trump so they would be in the frame on TV. A large part of the Nazi narrative was that National Socialist women were fit, attractive, proper, German, and loyal, unlike the hedonistic communist sluts who smoke and play cards.

This leaves me in a bind, because I still feel myself a liberal in my bones, and female equality is a natural and inevitable derived principle of liberalism.

Every time that impulse rears its ugly head in my heart I beat it bloody by remembering Ukraine and the draft, and concluding that enfranchisement should be only for those expected to die for it.

I recall a study where researchers showed girls social media posts with randomly generated numbers of likes; their subjective rating of these posts matched the forged community opinion. You can steer the overton window in this way.

That sounds like the sort of thing I'd expect to see in a Metal Gear Solid game.

In pictures I see of the third reich, the ones most enthusiastically waving the swatztika flags and doing the Hitler salute at rallies are young women. Is that them being "empathetic"? No, it's social contagion. The media tells them that Nazism is socially desirable and good, and liberalism is unthinkable. And so they wave their flags.

Worth noting that Nazism was disproportionately popular with women before the Nazis came to power (IIRC the most popular single party with women, before it was the case for men or the population as a whole). Least popular was KPD.

it was not women who were sent to die in wars started by the nazis.

The US has women's suffrage everywhere. In California, for instance, 66.5% of women voted, while only 63.7% of men voted. Compare to Utah: it has 66.6% of women voting, and 60.6% of men. Would you say Utah is more dysfunctional than California?

https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/number-of-individuals-who-voted-in-thousands-and-individuals-who-voted-as-a-share-of-the-voter-population-by-sex/

In Utah I am guessing most of those women are married and voting the same as their husbands?

Or their husbands are voting the same as them; marriage changes how both vote. (I'd be curious to see how marriage affects how gay men and women vote.)

Admittedly, Utah's probably a unique case; Texas is a better comparison. But the trend also holds there. The point stands that more women voting doesn't seem to lead to particularly "empathetic" policy.

Also consider: the 1979 general election in the UK would have resulted in a Labour majority with only a male franchise. Were the UK's 70s woes due to too little Labour power?

marriage changes how both vote.

Do you have any sources for this? I don't doubt it is true, but I would expect the changes for husbands to be much smaller.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/104335/love-politics-valentines-day.aspx

From 2008.

Particularly, see:

https://media.gallup.com/poll/graphs/021408MarriagePartyGraph3.gif

Neither of those show that "marriage changes how both vote." Leaving aside that causation cannot reliably be inferred from correlation, married and unmarried persons vary across many dimensions which are also correlated with party affiliation, such as age, class, race, and geography

Also consider: the 1979 general election in the UK would have resulted in a Labour majority with only a male franchise. Were the UK's 70s woes due to too little Labour power?

Indeed, and even more than this women were far more likely to vote Conservative throughout the 1950s and 1960s, indeed the gap was at points a yawning 20+ point chasm.

Open borders (those poor immigrants), street crime (those poor incarcerated people), social promotion in school (those poor kids), crap teachers (those poor teachers [the dumbest cohort in any college - look it up]), drugs (those poor druggies need free needles), homelessness (those poor people), able-bodied people on welfare (those poor people), trannies (those poor men).... and, of course, below-replacement fertility

To go one-by-one (and to be clear I don't agree that some of these are even big problems but even if you do think that linking it to women is still extremely silly);

Open borders

The foreign born population of the US peaked in 1890 and was consistently very high for the 1860-1920 period, and per this Gallup poll men are exactly as likely as women to support decreasing immigration. https://news.gallup.com/poll/395882/immigration-views-remain-mixed-highly-partisan.aspx

street crime

Crime levels are not too easy to assess really for any pre-war period, but murder rates tend to follow crime rates closely and there are better records from past eras on the basis of which comparisons can actually be made, and on that count there is no observable relationship between female enfranchisement and murder rates; they were very high pre-war, came down around from the mid to late-30s, went back up again and now are relatively low at least compared to the pre-war era (and obviously also compared to the 80s). And once again, at least as of 2015 women were more likely to say they had a great deal of confidence in the police per Gallup, the margin being two points.

social promotion in school

What?

crap teachers

Again somewhat confused here. Is the implication here that women make bad teachers of that they support policies which lower the standard of teachers; if the latter, what are those policies?

drugs

Women are more likely to be against marijuana legalisation. Can't find a poll with crosstabs available for questions about harder drugs but I don't why there would be a dramatic change.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/14/americans-support-marijuana-legalization/

homelessness

The policy which would do the most by far to alleviate homelessness is building more in urban centres; I can't find any specific polling with available gender crosstabs on specifically the question of should American zoning requirements being loosened in cities, but FWIW in Britain there was a Yougov poll asking about the classic NIMBY 'brownfield only' talking point, and on that score male and female attitudes were almost identical.

able-bodied people on welfare

On this one it does seem that there is a slight bias towards greater generosity in welfare among women - and I would say this is a good thing but nevertheless let us say that it is not for the sake of argument - but the gap isn't huge. On issues like a potential UBI the gap was 6 points in one Gallup poll, and on the semi-related issue of healthcare the gap on government provision was pretty similar. So even if you do think over-generous welfare is a serious issue the gender component is not huge; certainly not large enough to prompt shrill cries about the destructive effects of female suffrage.

below-replacement fertility

Again, which supposedly pro-natal policies are women thwarting?

100% - of these are traceable DIRECTLY to empathy and, hence, to women's suffrage

Yawn. A classic 'everyone who disagrees with me does so because they are too emotional and aren't sufficiently level headed'. Lazy and trite.

To quote myself from the old place:

Should be remembered that historically, at least in major Western countries, once women's suffrage was actualized, women were more likely to vote for conservative parties than for left-wing parties for a long period - it only flipped the other way in the 70s or the 80s.

"As already indicated, the “history” of the gender voting gap in Western democracies can roughly be divided into three phases (Inglehart and Norris 2000, 2003). The first phase (the traditional gender gap) lasted until the late 1970s/1980s and is typically characterized by a more conservative vote from women in comparison to men (e.g., Campbell et al. 1960; Norris 1988; Randall 1987). This was predominantly explained with women's more pronounced religiosity (see Manow and Emmenegger 2012 for a detailed discussion) and their lower labor market participation (i.e., Baxter and Lansing 1983; Blankenburg 1967). The clear-cut party competition, with regard to religion, traditional family structures, and a woman's devotion to her family, worked in favor of a more conservative female vote (e.g., Norris 1988; Studlar et al. 1998). At the end of the 1970s, the gender differences in the ballot started to vanish, or at least substantially diminish, in several countries, especially in Canada, the United States, and the Netherlands. This phase of so-called female party de-alignment has partly been explained by modernization and secularization processes, as well as by the accompanying decomposition of cleavages in general (Inglehart and Norris 2000). Shortly thereafter, in the 1980s, surprisingly new gender-driven voting differences emerged in some advanced democracies, such as the United States, West Germany, and the Netherlands (Inglehart and Norris 2000). This time, however, the gender gap was reversed and exhibited a female preference for parties on the left. Ever since, a third phase defined by a modern gender voting gap has entered the electoral scene. However, these new emerging electoral gender differences are rather seen as a reflection of overall societal value changes leading to the de-alignment phase (e.g., Inglehart and Norris 2000)."

What has flipped once might very well flip again, given the conditions.

Isn't that adequately explained by conformism? Women held up the dominant religion back then and they do so now.

No, not really. For instance, one example I've seen used is that many French republicans (for decades past the last French monarch actually was on throne) were suspicious of women's suffrage because they thought women would return a king to the throne. One argument was even that it would create instability, since there would then be pressure from the republican army to coup the king to return to a republic. What were the women "conforming to" then? Who determines the target of conformity? Men? But men were to the left of the women - the women weren't following the instructions of the men in voting, at least in all cases.

No, not really. For instance, one example I've seen used is that many French republicans (for decades past the last French monarch actually was on throne) were suspicious of women's suffrage because they thought women would return a king to the throne. One argument was even that it would create instability, since there would then be pressure from the republican army to coup the king to return to a republic. What were the women "conforming to" then? Who determines the target of conformity? Men? But men were to the left of the women - the women weren't following the instructions of the men in voting, at least in all cases.

That is a good counter-example that works against my theory. But to what degree do we know that women were actually more royalist decades after the revolution? Also, when was this? Didn't the French pretty quickly revert to a monarchy in all but name? I could see it being the case that republicans didn't like the female franchise and simply called it royalist because it was bad. Similar to how everyone and their mother is called a White Supremacist these days. Mind you, I am merely musing, I have absolutely no data to back this up.

I can give you some historical data. The initial message spoke about "decades past the last French monarch actually was on throne", and yours about "quickly revert[ing] to a [monarchy] in all but name".

  1. It should be noted that before the French Revolution, some french women had a right to vote in some circumstances: those that were declared heads of a noble family, because they were widows or single, or some religious women, were called to vote in the Etat Généraux. It is irrelevant to the discussion.

  2. The last french monarchy died in 1848. It is also in 1848 that all french men got the right to vote (before that, the right to vote was limited to a few rich men).

  3. The Second Empire lasted from 1952 to 1870.

  4. After 1870, France was a Republic, except for 4 years during Second World War.

  5. Women got the right to vote in France in 1944 (so right after second world war) and voted for the first time in 1945.

  6. Some people on the left argue that France is still some kind of monarchy (a "republican monarchy") since 1958 (Fifth Republic) as the president is very powerful. However, as the president is elected for a finite amount of time, I suppose that is not what you could call "a monarchy in all but name".

So I think "decades past the last French monarch actually was on throne" meant from 1870 to 1944.

But to what degree do we know that women were actually more royalist decades after the revolution?

It is a difficult question to answer, but the question was not only that they were royalist, but that they were supposed to be more religious than men. It is difficult to know if it is true, but it is certain that it was one of the main arguments advanced by the anticlerical Parti Radical, which was a strong centrist party under the Third Republic.

OP claimed that women are (too) empathic and that this leads to a number of (suboptimal) permissive policy choices that we tend to call progressive. Stefferi countered that there were periods of time when women were regarded as much more conservative than men, even when the Zeitgeist went in a different direction. The French example was meant to illustrate this.

My position is that women are the arbiters of social orthodoxy and are much more conformist than men. When the orthodoxy is religious, they're more religious. When the orthodoxy is woke, they're more woke. After a couple decades of Republicanism, they should be more Republican if that ideology penetrated the social consciousness deeply enough.

A number of counter-examples were raised. The rise of Hitler and the support he received from women is one, the supposedly more royalist French women is another. The question is: are those good counter-examples? The former is certainly a good counter-example to the OP's proposal that women prefer more empathetic and permissive policies. I am not yet sure if it is a good counter to my claim. It could very well be that the Weimar Republic was mainly an elite project with mores that ran counter to the sensibilities of the masses. A similar thing could be true about female royalists in France.

You might be right (I don't know). The main point of my post was to give historical data.

one example I've seen used is that many French republicans (for decades past the last French monarch actually was on throne) were suspicious of women's suffrage because they thought women would return a king to the throne.

As an interesting historical note, this was also true in Spain in the early part of the 20th century. After the establishment of a Republic the left was deeply split on women's suffrage; some supported it on principle, others opposed it because they feared women would vote as a bloc for the right. Suffrage was in the end extended to women and in the next election in 1933 the right won in a landslide.

That’s not surprising to me, to be honest. Women tend to be more conservative than men outside the Anglosphere — and the relative unconservativeness of women inside the Anglosphere is only, what, half a century old?

Re the franchise, I think you’re half right. The problem isn’t women voting, it’s the voting. It’s a terrible way to make decisions in almost every situation because it turns every contest into a popularity contest. More political power rests in the PR and image creation teams than in any policy think tank. In fact if you want real power, it’s more important to project a popular image than to waste time learning how to govern, or studying issues. Any policy you have is about applause lines, it doesn’t have to work or make sense, but it better sound good when you say it on TV.

Empathy, and in fact most emotions run things because they’re easy to manipulate. Emotions are fairly easy to tap into and tend to short circuit any sort of logical, fact-based discussion of issues. But no long-term good decisions can be made when the path forward it to appeal to empathy, fear, or anger. You cannot empathically force drug users into treatment— the emotion makes you want to help, but it also means that solutions whether they work or not that sound mean won’t be available choices. You can’t kick disruptive kids out of class — it’s mean. But then nobody gets an education. You can do the same with fear. Guns are scary. Banning them seems to work. But it also means that you’re dependent upon the cops who might take a while to get there or do something.

Democratic systems have other flaws. They tend to select the worst candidates most of the time. Watch any election in your country and ask whether — given their resume and command of the issues and so on — you’d hire them for an important project. Nobody would hire Joe Biden, or Trump or Bernie or MTG or AOC to do anything important. But these are exactly the kinds of “leaders” we produce. They do well in focus groups, they dress the part, and that’s how we distribute power. They are beset by short term thinking. Solving a problem like homelessness will take decades. Putting a man on Mars, again decades. Fixing and modernizing schools, again, probably decades. But our elections are every two years— this is an extremely short window in which to “show progress”. Worse, the painful part — the taxes, the road cones, the traffic jams — all show up long before any of the benefits can be realized.

They tend to select the worst candidates most of the time.

I don't think is true more so than any other potential method of selection. The average democratic leader in the world right now seems pretty clearly superior to the average autocratic leader even when only comparing peer nations, if nothing else because democratic systems usually (though of course not always) seem to exclude the truly deranged; for every Ataturk you get several Mobutus, Amins and Kims.

They are beset by short term thinking

True, but autocratic leaders are hardly immune from that; see Galtieri.

Well, true, if you’re looking at the current crop. But over the sum and total of history you’d have Augustus Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Napoleon, Peter the Great, etc. And those who took power with an intention to rule often managed to fix problems in ways that elected managers cannot.

I mean if you have to reach back two millennia it's clear that history is not really replete with such characters. And in any case, there are plenty of democratic leaders who could well be said to fall into the same camp; Lincoln, Gladstone, Churchill, Peel and depending on what your ideological disposition is Attlee or Thatcher. I don't really subscribe to great man theory much but even if one did there are plenty of elected leaders who fit the mould.

Lee Kwan Yew, Paul Kagame, Park Chung Hee, and the Hashemite Kings are all well-within-living-memory examples of non-democratic but very high competency statesmanship. There's obviously examples of democratically elected leaders that could be counted as greats, as well, but I don't think "benevolent dictator" is the kind of black swan event you're making it out to be.

I mean let’s make a fair comparison and compare democracies to, not autocracies as a whole, but to the different types of autocracy and oligarchy.

So there’s the various remaining strong monarchies, which are generally well run and doing well or at least improving by their own terms even if they’re not your cup of tea. There’s PRC style oligarchies(and the PRC maintains the world’s highest level of trust in government- it clearly does some things right). There’s postsoviet kleptocracies, which are not doing so hot, and there’s short term strongman dictatorships which look pretty terrible. There’s also hybrid regimes like Hungary and Singapore, which seem to be doing at least OK.

Altogether it’s not clear that democracy is strictly superior to all options. Definitely superior to some, though, and probably superior on some axes(minority rights and freedom of expression seem plausible here) to all challengers, but also probably losing out to others on other axes(stability/cultural continuity seems plausible).

I think those three better looking forms of non-democratic governance still seems pretty deficient in the round compared to democracy. As for monarchies, the few remaining strong monarchies seem to mostly be coasting by on oil money, and arguably NK is a monarchy in all but name, and while the PRC and some hybrid regimes seem pretty stable that stability seems pretty transient. Chinese stability especially is pretty recent, and I'm not sure Singapore as a well-placed city state has many lessons to offer other more normal nations. Hungary is I guess doing fine, but hardly better than it's more safely democratic counterparts in Czechia, Poland etc.

Obviously this is a question more complex than a short forum comment, but just on the face of it I don't there's any particular reason to believe any form of non-democratic government produces notably more competent leaders.

Morocco and Malaysia are fairly strong monarchies doing better than average for the region and generally on the upswing for mostly non-oil related reasons. Liechtenstein is also a strong monarchy that’s carved out a pretty good niche for itself, although obvious micro state caveat. Jordan doesn’t seem like it’s notable for improvement recently, but it’s weathered recent challenges admirably well.

I agree that it’s difficult to cast hybrid regimes as obviously better than democracies, but it’s also difficult to cast them as obviously worse. Part of this is probably boundary effects and if we want to have a real discussion(obviously this thread is the wrong place for that as you yourself note) we should preregister what we consider a hybrid regime versus a democracy that’s simply corrupt(Ukraine) or dominated by one party(Japan) or both(Mexico).

As far as oligarchies are concerned I’d point to China and Rwanda as strong examples of countries that improved recently and notably after switching to oligarchic governance even if that oligarchy may not be my cup of tea. I might point to Kazakhstan as a weaker example, too. In any case this really is a topic that deserves its own top level comment if we wanted to get in depth, but my broader point was that there’s lots of different non-democratic systems and not all of them have a blatantly one sided comparison to democracy.

Nobody would hire Joe Biden, or Trump or Bernie or MTG or AOC to do anything important. But these are exactly the kinds of “leaders” we produce

Is this because of the voting, or because of the options? Who exactly is out there ready to lead America to a new age of beauty and success but is prevented from rising to the top because of voting? If we had a Caesar or a Churchill waiting in the wings, do you really think they couldn't win an election? Against either of the geriatrics? Frankly, they're just not that good then.

The reality is our best and brightest don't try to become president because the president just isn't that important. The systems we've constructed as a society have many levers to control them, but they are very spread out. The president has less power over what type of buildings get built than whoever puts together the International Building Code, less power over environmental standards than the employees of the EPA, less power over the financial industry than the leaders of international financial institutions etc. If you want to make a big difference, becoming a top dog Democrat and trying to become president seems like a middling choice compared to going and starting a lobbying organization or something. At best you get to fight the system in the attempt to do things nominally in your power (RIP Trump), at worst you lose your goals in the process of getting there (RIP Obama) or have your staff run around you to continue business as usual (RIP Biden). There are many, many players at the top, and any single defector from the general direction of the herd gets thrown down pretty hard from what I've seen. There is no publicly visible #1 role, and probably just isn't a #1 person at all. That's what oligarchy is all about I suppose, and it seems to me we're already there.

Monarchy/autocracy seems like the solution to some people, but it's really just a roundabout way of achieving what we really need: the ability of society's best people to be in positions of power where they're able to say ''No, fuck you, this is how it's gonna work," and to be able to say it not just to the plebs, but to the rest of the elite.

I want the president of Harvard to be able to say "No, we aren't about inclusion, our whole purpose is to be exclusive so the best people can all hang out," and act on it, without losing his position. I want the President to be able to say "Yeah, we're building nuclear power plants everywhere, including your back yard. You're scared? Too bad. They're statistically optimal." Currently, those are just impossible. They'd be ripped apart by their own class, no matter how right they are. Of course, this level of power is ripe for corruption and may cause collateral damage. That's why great leaders are so important. Of course, no one believes we have great leaders at the moment, and so neither side wants anyone having those kinds of power. Why?

I think we as a society have just largely lost the ability to make great people. Outside of very narrow groups, parenting is mostly terrible, education ranges from mediocre to actively harmful, and nearly all societal systems work very hard to prevent people doing anything unusual or experiential enough to grow into a top-tier individual. No one has values, let alone a set we can all agree upon, and the idea of virtue is largely ignored. The best we've got are turbo autists blessed with immense intellect who are never taught the wisdom to use it well, and very boring run-of-the-mill groomed elite. The latter enforces the status quo, the former lacks the understanding required to shatter it.

How do you think parenting should be improved, and what are the values that you want society to agree upon?

Not all problems necessarily have practicable solutions, but I'll do my best.

Parenting: rebuilding intergenerational wisdom after a gap occurs is difficult, and the reality is traditional parenting is difficult to work in the modern world.

Additionally, the average parent just isn't that good at navigating the modern world in their own right. However, children need role models, guidance, and all that, and frankly the state should be able to provide at least some of that. State sponsored tutors, a restructuring of the school system, and similar things could help, or even just state funding for third-places with productive activities would be good.

Values: Mine obviously, but I'm not so unreasonable as to think that's a solution. I see it as [my values > your values > no values > my values inversed]. Most value systems I've encountered are broadly good, with some rough edges. What isn't good is a valueless society drowning in ennui. Obviously some values will prove to be maladaptive, but those inherently end up being uprooted one way or another.

Voting also has the problem that it tends to reflect the preferences of coalitions that can organise well in order to provide concentrated benefits to voting blocks (NIMBYs, trade unions, pearl-clutching environmentalists, activist grifters, retirees etc.) rather than disorganised groups whose policy preferences would provide dispersed benefits to heterogenous voters (taxpayers being among the biggest victims of democracy). And as you suggest, good long-term policies are undersupplied by politicians, because politicians generally lack incentives to think long-term. This contrasts with a lot of even short-term business: if I buy a house to fix up and resale, then I want to be able to convince buyers that it's a good long-term investment.

I'm not saying that there is a better alternative, but even Churchill's "Democracy is the worst system of government, save the alternatives" is a pro tanto argument against government as much as it is in favour of democracy.