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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   32506 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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Male and female competitiveness - a case study in the running world

Many of the conversations about gender differences in sports emphasize the role of culture in encouraging or discouraging participation in a gender-differentiated fashion. I think running provides an interesting example of the type of approaches that men and women tend to bring to sports in the context of a relatively gender-egalitarian sport. At nearly every running distance from sprints up to marathon, there is a consistent, persistent difference between men and women of approximately 10-12% (see this slightly outdated chart, the couple records broken since don’t change the story). Relative to sports that rely on strength or are highly multi-dimensional, men and women are much, much closer in actual ability, with elite women outperforming competitive hobbyist men in a way that you don’t see elsewhere. Based on personal observation of the sport and understanding of strategy, this is little or no difference in the way men and women approach races at high levels, with the similarities in pacing, drafting, and finishing kick resulting in a similar aesthetic between men’s and women’s races. Also of note, there is no large split in participation between men and women at amateur levels, with local races and clubs being fairly close to 50-50 and often including more women.

Despite these similarities, anyone that participates in local races will notice one very striking difference between men and women - there are a lot more men that are genuinely competing, trying to do their best for a given distance and fitness level than women. For example, one recent local race I competed in was an 8K with roughly five thousand participants; the men’s winner ran a shade under 24 minutes, the top 10 men were under 27 minutes, and 64 men cleared 30 minutes. The top woman was over 30 minutes and finished 76th overall. The 10th place woman came in around 34 minutes. Without being rigorous about the math, we can see at a glance that there are about 7 times as many men hitting a 70% age grade, which is generally a good cut-off for being a competitive hobbyist. From personal observation, this trend repeats itself in most local races, especially when there isn’t any significant prize money on the line (money brings pros, which tightens things up at the top a fair bit).

Prior to any speculation on what’s going on with that sort of disparity, I want to emphasize that among the women that are competitive, I see basically no difference in approach between the men and women. I work out with a few of the local fast women, these were D1 runners in college, and they’re all the same obsessives about running tons of mileage and hammering big workouts that the guys are. In my experience, the women at any given age-grade above approximately 65-70% treat the sport very similarly to the men.

So why are there so many fewer women in that bucket? Some speculative reasons in no particular order:

  • Physical development is much, much harder for the median woman than the median man. They’ve tried at some point, but they don’t get the immediate physiological response to stimulus that the men get, so they stop caring as much about it. Anecdotally, a powerful female runner friend of mine has told me that she feels like her buildups and improvement are always much slower than men. I think this is physically plausible and that the women who do hit higher age-grades are more anomalous than men.

  • Women get pregnant. Training hard after pregnancy is more challenging than any inflection point men have. I don’t think this explanation is terribly likely because my observation doesn’t suggest a bit change across age groups, but I haven’t been rigorous and I’m open to correction.

  • Fewer women have competitive personalities. Women tend to enjoy the social aspect of the sport more and focus more heavily on that, enjoying easy-paced runs with friends, getting into races to do an event with friends, and so on. Men, even social, friendly men, tend to be hypercompetitive about anything they care about, focusing heavily on self-improvement and metrics.

Any of those could be true and I’m sure I could come up with more, but the reason I think this makes good culture-war fodder is the implications for Title IX. Running is more physically gender-egalitarian than other sports, women participate in it at high rates, women’s tactics, strategy, and training is similar to men’s, the culture of the sport is welcoming to all, and yet, there just aren’t very many women that show much interest in competing. If women aren’t interested in running after decades of mandated equal funding for college sports, what hope is there for some actually gender-egalitarian world in sports more broadly? Is the answer from people that think there shouldn’t be observed differences in male and female preferences just that running is still somehow sexist in a way that I just can’t see? I suppose if you take disparate-impact doctrine entirely seriously, what it suggests is that whether I can see it or not, discrimination against women must be happening in the sport somehow.

From personal observations: a humongous portion of 3, with a greater opportunity cost bringing men down (comparative attractiveness of a runner’s physique between the sexes and the sheer suck of running with extra muscle mass if you also lift).

For comparison, look at high level chess.

Cause men tend to be more insane than women.

I can't really find a better word to describe it. It's something I've seen in people whom are really focused on sports, from running to martial arts. The ones whom been invested in such things - for years upon years - tend to be just a little bit, uh, off.

After all, you're basically torturing yourself regularly, week after week, for seemingly no purpose whatsoever other than to, well, keep doing it?

So it seems from the outside. Mind, there's a plethora of benefits that come with said exercise and whatnot, but that doesn't get much focus, as said benefits typically come after those years of practice.

And, yes, your observations tend to run similar to mine. In martial arts, men typically outnumber the women to a vast degree.

After all, you're basically torturing yourself regularly, week after week, for seemingly no purpose whatsoever other than to, well, keep doing it?

You get to enjoy it after a while, then eventually you find you can't imagine yourself living without it.

It's (usually) only the first few weeks that a new form of regular exercise feels like torture, then the body gets on board with the program and finishes up the initial adaptation and it gets substantially easier. Then as time goes on, you start to see the benefits, the body continues to adapt to better handle the strain and eventually it becomes part of your identity. If exercises did continue to feel like torture even after hundreds of hours of training, nobody would presist in them.

Cause men tend to be more insane than women.

I would say it has more to do with testosterone than with anything else. It's an incredible chemical, a real life super-soldier serum that we only take for granted because it's "always been this way". Your average man will see greater results faster than your average woman in (almost all) forms of sports, which would certainly help a lot as seeing progress is a real boon to getting invested in any particular form of exercise. The social differences between how men and women value sport are also all certainly downstream from the differences that testosterone impart.

You get to enjoy it after a while, then eventually you find you can't imagine yourself living without it.

Preaching to the choir, speaking for myself. Mind, it can be easy to fall off the bicycle for some people. There's a wide gulf between people who do this in their early twenties/thirties and the guys who are still doing this well into their twilight years.

Maybe I'm just biased, as I hang out with alot of older guys who are still fit and active.

testosterone

I'm hesitant to give chemistry all the credit, but that's due to my personal experience. I've gone from 'I hate PE' in high school to 'I need to do this for my own well-being' as I've gotten older. I feel there's a critical mindset there that's more prevalent(or becomes more prevalent) in men(which isn't common to begin with, imo) that's less prevalent in woman.

Having been both a student and teacher at MIT, my personal explanation for men going into science is the following:

1. young men strive to achieve high status among their peer group

2. men tend to lack perspective and are unable to step back and ask the question "is this peer group worth impressing?"

- https://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

Crab bucket mentality. Women love shitting on other women who have something they don't. Be it fitness, family, a loving husband, career, hobbies, you name it. There is always some frenemy or judgmental family member whispering evil in their ear, trying to poison them against their own happiness.

Unfortunately for women who aspire to greatness, or even just happiness and contentment, their higher agreeableness and neuroticism causes them to cave to their haters more often than they reach escape velocity from the crab bucket.

I've never in all my life seen a man effected the same way. I'm sure everything under the sun is possible. I'm sure some internet rando is going to say it happened to them and they have a penis. But I've never seen it.

It's because men can 'improve' their status within a single-sex groups and women mostly can't.

There is precisely zero way for a woman to status 'compete' with a woman who is much prettier than her. The only way to play is to try to tear her down. I'm not endorsing this necessarily, but it's a reality.

The man is willing to concede that another man is the bigger alpha or whatever because he hopes that one day he can be the alpha of this fiefdom or another. He probably won't, but the hopium keeps things alive.

The best thing a median man can hope for is to be the largest fish in a small pond.

Women love shitting on other women who have something they don't. Be it fitness, family, a loving husband, career, hobbies, you name it. There is always some frenemy or judgmental family member whispering evil in their ear, trying to poison them against their own happiness.

I'm not sure how this is supposed to answer the OP's question. Women are less competitive at sports because they're... more competitive? You seem to be portraying them here as competitive, anyway.

Unfortunately for women who aspire to greatness, or even just happiness and contentment, their higher agreeableness and neuroticism causes them to cave to their haters more often than they reach escape velocity from the crab bucket.

I would agree that "higher average agreeableness" would be a possible explanation for being less competitive at sports, but I don't see how this follows from your first point, and in fact it seems to contradict it. Women are more agreeable... and that's why they're always trying to tear each other down?

I mean, if you think words don't mean anything, then I understand your confusion. Let me illustrate with some examples if the difference between nakedly shitting in someone's soul, and actual competitiveness seems too abstract for you.

My wife eats healthy and exercises. Both because it makes her feel good, is good for her mental health, and it helps her auto-immune issues and family history of Crohn's Disease. And every single one of her friends, her mother, her sister et al are constantly making passive aggressive comments about it. Weird shit implying one way or another she's gonna get fat. Or that she's actually hurting herself. Or that she's setting impossible body standards for our daughter. Or that she won't look good if she gets too muscular.

What's the competition? My wife is already married, to me. The women are already married too! These women aren't trying to beat my wife in a race, or anything else for that matter. None of my wife's behaviors have the slightest indirect impact on them, beyond making them feel guilty about their own poor choices. So they whisper poison in her ear.

Now, compare this with Mike Tyson trying to get into his opponents head before they directly clash in the ring. Shit like "I'm going to eat your children" or "I'll fuck you till you love me." Attempting to intimidate a boxer before you fight directly in the ring in a time honored tradition, and how it counts as competitive behavior should be manifestly obvious.

So men are associated with the good version of competition - pure, honorable, based on rules and tradition, with a spiritual purpose. And women are associated with the bad version of competition - spiteful, lawless, poisonous, visited on people who want no part of it. Bit suspicious that it would break down so cleanly like that.

Why make it a gendered thing? Clearly all humans have the capacity to engage in both sorts of activity. Need we point out that men commit the vast majority of acts of rape, murder, and torture? Almost all mass shooters are men - how's that for poison? Granted, a lot of victims of violent crime are asking for it in various ways, but many aren't (I know from firsthand experience). So much for honorable and rule-governed conduct.

If I had to choose between being physically assaulted or being called fat, I'd generally prefer being called fat. If the question is who "shits in people's souls" more, then men do so much more shitting that it's not even a contest.

This is a great example. Evidently I touched a nerve, and thus total war, scorched Earth, is declared. Expand the scope of the argument without limit, and say every mean and hateful thing about the opposition you can passive aggressively throw out, as though it has anything to do with anything.

I appreciate you being so gracious as to provide such a sterling example. Takes a lot of courage to step into that role.

You know I’m a man right?

Anyway I bear no ill will towards you, so if you don’t want to continue the discussion we don’t have to.

I appreciate you being so gracious as to provide such a sterling example. Takes a lot of courage to step into that role.

I was being charitable and kind and assuming you were just pretended to be retarded as an example. Or are you saying that men can be just as passive aggressive as women can, because you, a certified haver of a penis, are so?

  • -11

It's evident to me that you knew from your first post in this exchange that you were cruising for a banning, so you decided to go for broke and get your digs in while you could.

Banned for a week.

Men and women are different. Why wouldn't these differences surface in their approaches to competition?

Traditionally competition amongst women is much less direct than competition among men, I suspect oweing to the traditional venus for competition and lessor roles in public life.

Also it's typically only women that care about womens competition, if that.

Also it's typically only women that care about womens competition, if that.

This is changing quite fast. While obviously women disproportionately care, and men still care about men's sport much more, in Britain at least both women's cricket and football are becoming increasingly mainstream society wide, and with tennis it's been the case for some time.

Possibly in terms of watching competition as entertainment. It's a very small portion of women that participate in women's athletics via organized competition. Nor do the women who participate benefit in the same way that men do, as women's achievements are not valued as much by men as men's achievements by women.

Unfortunately for women who aspire to greatness, or even just happiness and contentment, their higher agreeableness and neuroticism causes them to cave to their haters more often than they reach escape velocity from the crab bucket.

I think this might be closer to the key. I'll (partially) be your internet rando with a penis, I'm not especially fit but I exercise and am not overweight and often get shit from my slightly to very overweight male co-workers for not eating or drinking more.

However, I also don't put much weight on what they say about such things so it has never become an issue.

I could definitely see someone who did care what they thought being negatively impacted, to your point.

Edit: FWIW, never had that issue about weight with male peers as a kid and I never encountered crab bucket mentality about academics either, though some of my nerdy male friends who went to worse schools have mentioned getting shit for being in AP classes. They also were not strongly impacted by such statements.

shit for being in AP

or GATE is more anti-intellectual or just regular nerd bullying.

never in all my life seen a man effected

It's pride month. Have you had much experience with men with same sex attraction? There's a cohort amongst this group that love shitting on others, in the sense you mean it.

There's entire genres of men getting the crabs in a bucket treatment.

Black boys getting criticism for acting white.

The oughts term "metro sexual" to call a straight guy a fag for owning clothing that fit.

Terms for supposedly one dimensional men. Dumb jock. Nerd. Sissy. Autistic. Don't stand out, be well rounded like the rest of us.

It's all over, dude.

Men are incentivized (whether this is by nature, society, life, the laws of the universe, whatever isn't really important) to find one thing they're very good at and to run with it.

For men, beauty is a floor and status is the ceiling. For women, status is a floor and beauty is the ceiling. A man may benefit from his looks, but wins because of his status. A woman benefits from her status, but wins because of her beauty.

Consider two beautiful underwear models moonlighting as baristas to make ends meet - one man, one woman. Who is more likely to have the opportunity to marry hypergamously? Consider two very successful but ugly corporate lawyers - one man, one woman. Who is more likely to have a more attractive spouse than themselves, the man or the woman?

Women's status is assured, but largely set. Men's is not assured, but usually malleable.

This often causes great consternation to members of both sexes.

The Hold Steady has a song about this called Guys go for looks, girls go for status.

Girls don't like boys, girls like cars and money

https://youtube.com/watch?v=3FTS2tdmyYM

Men are incentivized (whether this is by nature, society, life, the laws of the universe, whatever isn't really important) to find one thing they're very good at and to run with it.

It is important though.

If it's by nature, this undercuts the moral force of constant demands for policies that fix this.

Yes, I just want to stop hearing about the WNBA.

I think it's the third option, though we might have to be specific. Men and women are both competitive, but the ways they compete, and with who can vary widely.

I've been involved in amateur sports for a long time, and on something that is very gender-neutral in basic ability (shooting). The numbers are just insanely male. In a major match with a hundred and fifty competitors, you might have five to seven women, most of them the wives of better shooters who clearly put in little to no practice. When you find one with that drive, who is there on her own, has put in the work to get competent, and is really pushing herself....it's a beautiful thing, but notable in its rarity.

Perhaps it's just that women have less need to justify their existence.

Excellent post. If I could offer insight from another sport: Rock Climbing, indoor and outdoor. It's a good example because it is relatively gender neutral compared to eg weightlifting or basketball, and it is a sport primarily practiced by Blue Tribers who are very self consciously feminist etc.

It's a little harder to pin down an exact percentage advantage in climbing, because the points are made up.* But it's accepted common sense that men have a broad advantage over women, the best men in the world climb something like 5.15d while the best women climb something like 5.15b. I'd expect a man to climb 5.10 indoors within a year of serious effort, while I would expect a woman to climb 5.10 eventually, as a general concept. I've known female climbers who hit 5.13 on a regular basis, which is better than I have ever hit and would have been pro-grade male in living memory. But there's a whole grade of professional male climber who are better than any pro female, and there are always a supermajority of men among the best climbers in any gym.

Climbing tends to be a very social sport, and from years spent working and setting and hanging out in climbing gyms I'd attribute a lot of the difference to this, which is similar to @2rafa's point:

Most people seek social status in their hobbies. Women require a lower level of achievement to be accepted into the group, and receive less reward for higher achievement. Men require a higher level of achievement to be accepted into the group, and receive more reward for higher achievement.

In most climbing gyms you can watch cliques form. There might be one, or there might be a dozen, always there are social groups that hang out and climb together. It seemed to me that, to be part of "higher tier" groups of the best climbers in the gym, a male climber had to be crushing V7-5.12, while a female climber had to be climbing 5.10 and didn't really ever need to boulder. To be accepted as an equal in the general climbing social circle, a male climber had to be hitting V4-5.10, while a woman had to hit 5.9 and know how to belay. At that point, once you are in the group, you can hang out and just chill and smoke and belay and climb if that's what you want. Bouldering is 95% hiking and sitting around with your buddies anyway. For a lot of people, acceptance and equality is all they want to achieve. For others, further social goals await.

And while climbers are self consciously feminist, and typically work very hard to treat men and women "the same," I observed over time that while lots of climbers dated**, I never saw a lasting relationship between a male climber and a female climber where the female climber was significantly better than the male climber. Female climbers could date male non-climbers, or even guys who only came into the gym on occasion, but if two regulars dated it only ever worked if the male was the superior climber.***

I suspect similar dynamics occur in other sports, although perhaps not as legibly because grading in climbing has certain specific effects.**** Men need to do more to be acknowledged at all as equals, and the more they do the more respect they get. While women don't need to do as much, and then don't get much reward for getting better.

*Grading is theoretically rigorous, but ultimately empty because it's hard to compare across styles. It would be easy to set a bouldering problem that is an easy V2 for anyone over 5'10" and a hard V5 Dyno for anyone under 5'6". Given that many female climbers also hate dynos because of upper body strength, the grades get all screwy fast. Theoretically there are also climbs that are "scrunchy" which are easier for shorter climbers, and you'll never convince me that crimps aren't better the smaller you are, but for the most part you see that matter much much less than you see reach-y climbs throw off scoring. To keep it simple: 5.6-5.8 is what you expect a modestly athletic person to hit their first day, 5.9 should be doable within a month of learning basic technique, and 5.10 should be achievable within months for most athletic men.

**No group of ForeverAloners has ever frustrated me more than climbing gym regulars who whined they couldn't find a girl. They had everything precisely backward: they wanted to meet a girl at the gym. NO. The girls at the gym aren't impressed by you, they have their pick of chill 420-friendly Bicep-heavy White or Asian dudes on tap. You can climb to get laid, but bring a girl from outside the gym into the gym. She will be fucking impressed that you climb an overhung V3, that you can belay her and coach her up a 5.7, she'll think you're the bees fuckin' knees if she watches you take one lead fall with a buddy.

***Expanding this rule to gyms we all hang out in, like capitalism, is left as an exercise to the reader.

****If you're going to an area where you're climbing 5.10, everyone in the group needs to climb 5.10 at least to get anything out of it. At the same time, it's less exclusionary than running because you can climb different stuff, where no matter how hard I try I can't go for a run with @Walterodim, just won't happen, can't keep up.

I think there’s also a disincentive for women (outside of true competition) to push hard. If you go to a standard gym, you find women doing the treadmill, rowing machines, or fairly light dumbbells. They seem to not want to be seen working too hard to get fit.

Most people seek social status in their hobbies. Women require a lower level of achievement to be accepted into the group, and receive less reward for higher achievement. Men require a higher level of achievement to be accepted into the group, and receive more reward for higher achievement.

This should be flipped: women receive more reward for less achievement, unless some hardcore adjusting for baseline level (and/or change in level) male/female achievement is going-on. For a given level of achievement, women tend to receive much more reward socially and financially than men do. Top professional female athletes are celebrities who can earn millions in income, whereas almost all of the thousands of boys and men who can beat them at their sport are nobodies.

And while climbers are self consciously feminist, and typically work very hard to treat men and women "the same," I observed over time that while lots of climbers dated**, I never saw a lasting relationship between a male climber and a female climber where the female climber was significantly better than the male climber. Female climbers could date male non-climbers, or even guys who only came into the gym on occasion, but if two regulars dated it only ever worked if the male was the superior climber.***

smh... not even a feminist space like rock-climbing, of all things, is safe from hypergamy.

If you're a man and your date/girlfriend/wife can defeat you at her domain of [X] (absolutely or sometimes relatively)—where [X] is something she knows you've made an attempt at—you're fairly toast unless you can best her in much greater magnitudes by way of other domains, [Y], [Z], etc.

No, it's correct as is.

Acceptance info the group covers what you're thinking of as reward. Women get accepted into the group, whether it is "serious rock climbers at east suburban gym" or "Gatorade athletes" at a lower level of achievement. But getting WNBA mvp isn't worth that much more than being on the team; where NBA MVP makes you a god. Less reward for the higher level of achievement.

But getting WNBA mvp isn't worth that much more than being on the team; where NBA MVP makes you a god. Less reward for the higher level of achievement.

Being a WNBA MVP is indeed a much lower absolute level of achievement than being an NBA MVP. Lower reward for lower level of achievement would be expected ex-ante. As I commented:

>women receive more reward for less achievement, unless some hardcore adjusting for baseline level (and/or change in level) male/female achievement is going-on. For a given level of achievement, women tend to receive much more reward socially and financially than men do. Top professional female athletes are celebrities who can earn millions in income, whereas almost all of the thousands of boys and men who can beat them at their sport are nobodies.

Since we're talking about the WNBA (shudder)—which is kept afloat by the NBA—Brittney Griner wasn't even a WNBA MVP to my knowledge, yet received VIP treatment when it came to international diplomacy. In a similar situation, one of the many multi-thousand American boys or men who are/were better than her at basketball would had been left to rot with little fanfare as complete unknowns, especially if they don't have the black or LGBT cards to play.

much lower absolute level of achievement

Only in the same meaningless and trivial sense that a disabled swimmer in the most severe category winning a paralympic gold is a 'lower level of absolute achievement' than an ordinarily abled person swimming faster than that person in a club meet. Obviously you do have to 'adjust for baseline level'.

Or if you like, a blind man climbing K2 is surely a 'higher level of achievement' than a sighted person doing so slightly faster.

I'm not a serious climber, but am I the only one who likes that rock climbing gyms are coed, social, and largely feminist because it's a place where it's considered to be perfectly acceptable to stand directly below and stare at hot women in tight spandex in harnesses while they flex their posterior muscles to climb up walls? They probably assume that I and other watchers are impressed at their climbing, but I'm not particularly, I'm just enjoying their climbing, and I always suspected others did too.

Having been slowly co-opted into climbing over the last few months by some friends, and having spent a decade+ doing Brazilian Jiujitsu (which is similar, though not as gender-balanced but that has been changing) I do get where you're coming from.

At risk of being blunt, what's the lesbian rate of serious climbing women?

About average for prog leaning East coast women? Not particularly gay, but not rare either. Probably much more non practicing bisexuals.

I've climbed with lots of queer women, but I attract gay girls to my circle like flies to shit, so my anecdata may be particularly bad. Sometimes I look at how many bi women I've dated and think I'm the sexual equivalent of the big sign on the highway Last Exit for Heterosexuality.

Fair enough. I feel like BJJ tends to trend incredibly that way, but I suppose the violence aspects make it a bit different.

V4

There is one trait in which I happened to win the genetic lottery: grip strength. I went to a climbing gym a few years ago and was able to climb V4 my first day; I was 5'6" and 150 pounds then. Probably my grip strength is 90th or 95th percentile.

This might be the one occasion where I say: I hate people like you on sight bro. It took me over a year to consistently hit V4s. Your grip strength must be insane to gut out a V4 with zero technique, or you're very naturally graceful. The only other kid I ever met that good from the start was a guy who was inches from being a pro soccer player, just a tremendous athlete.

I don't remember if it was the first day or the fourth, but I've never been more than a handful of times. I am nowhere near that pro soccer player's level of athleticism. I was just an ordinary 25-year-old dude that worked out a couple times a week. Plenty of guys could run faster, jump higher, and lift more than I could. At the time I could run a mile in a little under seven minutes, bench 195, squat 275, and deadlift 315. Which I considered decent, but nothing to write home about. I will also say that I was about at my limit on these and succeeded only about half the time. I suppose I could go back now, three years older and ten pounds heavier, and see if I've still got it. I could take pictures to show you, if you wanted.

As far as grip strength: yeah, I'll say I won the genetic lottery there. I went to summer camps when I was a preteen where they held dead-hang contests; I always won by a large margin. Even now, with no specific training, I can dead hang from a standard pull-up bar for two minutes. Grace? I'm average, although more flexible than average. Pretty sure that whatever talent I have at climbing comes from just having grip strong like bull. Hands are medium or large, for what it's worth.

That being said, though, swings and roundabouts; I'd trade half my grip strength for a quarter of your social gracefulness, assuming you're not also autistic...when God made me, He must've used a grab bag of random parts off the factory floor or something. I have strong grip, stretchy skin, ADHD, and autism.

You should really give climbing a serious go if your top skills are grip and flexibility, my dude.

We can only trade degrees of 'tism. But I'm jealous of your climbing.

Yeah. Also, IMHO...if those ForeverAlone guys are short - 5'5" or less - they could be climbing V10 consistently, be the best climber in their local gym by a large margin. Unless they're making a million a year or better and have top one-percent charisma? They've got a snowball's chance in Hell of being with a girl who is wealthy and functional enough to afford a climbing gym. Short men, IMHO, are essentially selected by lot to be remarkable human beings, to be nurses, caretakers, and social workers for their partners, or to be celibate for life. The latter seems to be a little bit frowned upon these days...although there's an awful lot of short medical residents who are "focused on their careers". Probably better than living What's Eating Gilbert Grape or winding up with someone who's a danger to herself or others.

I know very little about the topic, but isn't there a fourth possibility: that getting a good absolute ranking in the race is what motivates people to try really hard? A woman in the race you described could kill herself training and still not crack the top 50, which might be a disincentive. If this is true, then having separate events for men and women (or, at least, separate rankings) might result in more serious female competitors.

Good addition! I never even considered that, to be honest. I don't think it's particularly likely, because the guys that are relatively high still aren't actually all that high in the running world and can only finish somewhere like 25th because it's not a big deal of a race (and there's no money involved). Someone finishing in that range would expect to finish out of the top thousand at marathon majors and really isn't even competitive with the guys a few rungs higher. But sure, I could see there being some demotivating aspect for women knowing that you have to be very, very good to beat mediocre guys, so you're never going to get the experience of being close to the absolute lead. This would also match up with my anecdotal impression that basically all of the competitive women ran in college - that gave them the opportunity to develop in an environment where they actually were leading.

My theory: most of what is now called "white supremacy" is just boomers attempting to prolong "boomer reality." (Obviously not all boomers)

What do I mean by "boomer reality"? Boomers are an American cohort born in unprecedented wealth when America was the only intact industrial power. They are also quite large cohort and were therefore over their lives able to use their influence to "fine-tune" America to their specifications. Boomers like to drive, therefore America is easy accessible via cars, not so much via public transport. This is also why gasoline tends to be cheaper in America than elsewhere. Boomers love to see their property values soar, therefore pretty much nothing is legal to build anywhere in America. (or so I hear)

What looks like white supremacy is boomers' dislike towards brown immigrants. But I would argue that the reason is not that they are brown, it is because they are not part of "boomer reality." Hispanics are more used to public transport (compared to white boomers) and are also okay with living in higher density. If lots of Hispanics materialize in America, and have a chance to vote for their preferences, this might result in more public transport (which boomers don't need) and more dense housing (bringing boomer property values down).

This also explains boomer opposition towards global warming. Global warming implies that car-centric culture might not be completely sustainable and anything that implies "boomer reality" might not be sustainable is an enemy.

I do think "boomer reality" is now very toxic, but here's how it is different from old white supremacy: Southern white supremacists cared a lot about their own legacy. They were thoroughly evil people, but they did care for their own white children (and noone else). White plantation owners could picture the world without themselves in it. Not the world without plantations (they fought a war over it), but one with different owners (their sons) running these plantations.

Boomers are fundamentally narcissistic and they cannot imagine anyone else as main characters of life, not even their own children. And that's the black heart of "boomer reality". Real white supremacy would be white male tenured boomer professor retiring and giving his tenured seat to his younger -- also white male -- protege. That's not at all what's happening, instead cushy tenured professorships are being replaced with insecure nontenured positions -- mostly held by brown and female people.

Calling this "white supremacy" almost gives it too much dignity. This is fire sale.

"White supremacy" is simply not the right terminology to describe what is happening. It is also unfair because younger whites are not profiting at all from "boomer reality". Accusing a poor white millenial of "white supremacy" is kicking the chained dog. I suspect the popularity of the concept -- alongside most of "awokening" -- is the result of elite millenials getting radicalized by realization that their Boomer parents intend to spend everything on luxury cruises and leave them with jack shit. In other words awokening is fueled precisely by a lack of actual, working white supremacy. (As well as a lack of any other safety net for precarious millenials)

(Don't get me wrong, I do think it is good white supremacy is no more, my point is that boomer narcissism is also bad, but in a very different way)

Why do I think my theory is correct? Because there was a similar generation divide in my native Serbia (then Yugoslavia) in the early 90's although generations were one step back. It was "Greatest Generation", Silent Generation and some elder boomers, versus younger boomers and x-ers (millenials were still young children or not yet born). The former still lived in "communist reality" while that reality begun to unravel for the latter.

One of the reasons why Milosevic ruled over Serbia for so long is because he promised the pensioners that their pensions will remain untouched no matter what. So there was a bloody civil war with younger generations being thrown into meat grinder which had comparatively little impact on the old people (not zero impact due to inflation, but lesser impact). What Milosevic promised to the old was continuation of "communist reality" till they die. And they followed him.

Not saying that the younger Serbian generations were completely innocent here -- there were some rabid warmongers there too -- but the whole thing would have been impossible without the compliance of the old people.

I don't think it is a coincidence that both Trump and Milosevic have promised to the old people continuation of their respective realities. Hence old people disproportionately voting for them.

Returning to situation in America, what I think is going to happen is that "boomer reality" is going to continue unraveling and it will be replaced with "woke reality." The advantage of woke reality is that it is cheap -- you don't need a car and a house to live it, just internet connection. Problem is that it is not all that much more real than "boomer reality". It is based on throwing around inaccurate inflammatory terms like "white supremacy" (as I explained) and on funding things like DEI offices -- which make people MORE racist. A self licking ice cone. None of it is as toxic as boomer reality, true, but it is still a type of unreality.

One variable I am unsure of is how much of boomer wealth will millennials be able to actually inherit. Are boomers really going to spend it all on luxury cruises and nursing homes? If not, if millennials actually inherit something valuable, they might switch from woke into something similar to "boomer reality," possibly also justified by wokeness. Something something building more housing is racist somehow. Obviously I am not saying that EVERY millenial is going to end up like this, but then not every boomer is Trump voter.

But I am just a millenial from Serbia, and first to admit that I don't know jack. What do you think?

This is a lot of words to essentially say that people tend to vote in their own self-interest, unless I'm missing some more salient point in there.

I don't think the initial claim ("most of what is now called "white supremacy" is just boomers attempting to prolong "boomer reality."") is even particularly true, because I don't think most accusations of white supremacy are even aimed at boomers; they're aimed primarily at millennials who reject wokeness as far as I can tell. If only because most of those accusations happen online where the boomers, well, aren't.

Conversely, popular millennial leftist politics are just as inherently selfish as boomer politics, it's just that it's based on appropriating wealth from other people instead of conserving existing wealth.

The Triumph of Janet (and follow-up with a mad Boomer who turned out to actually be called Janet ranting about the yoof at the Conservative party conference) has rapidly become the canonical British complaint against "Boomer Reality" after going viral on Substack.

A more intellectual version makes the case that the underlying problem is the moral failure of Thatcherism. Margaret Thatcher thought that subsidising Boomer asset acquisition would cause the beneficiaries to become bourgeois and develop the bourgeois virtues, but it actually caused them to become landed gentry in denial and develop the gentlemanly vices (without the noblesse obilige or martial tradition that kept the real landed gentry safe from the guillotine). Sam Freedman sees the core belief that defines boomer reality as "the asset wealth I was subsidised to acquire is something I deserve because I am more virtuous than younger generations". At this level of generality, I think the argument applies on both sides of the Atlantic.

Thank you for those links. Really fits into my speculation.

I definitely agree with the last point- politically active millennials are disproportionately absolute loonies and everyone is afraid of the near-fossilized boomers losing power because as entertaining as a Marjorie Taylor green speakership would be no one wants it, while ‘the left eats its own’ cancel culture is that generation trying to seize power.

Fifty years of civil rights law and affirmative action hadn't equalized blacks.

I think that if we simply had race-neutral policies that we would see equality after somewhere between 100 and 500 years.

boomers like to drive

God I seriously wish that some of these anti-car people could just spend a month actually living in the "car free" cities that they think everybody wants so they could realize how terrible it is.

People point at some fairy tale version of a Finnish city where there's playgrounds everywhere and people are walking around drinking espressos and beers and wearing scarves and children are laughing and playing with one another in city squares.

It's not the lack of cars that is causing this unless cars is some sort of euphamism and I'm just not pol-pilled enough to understand what you guys mean when you envision a car free city. My city is a "walkable" city. From where I am sitting typing this there are a dozen coffee shops within a 5 minute walk, countless bars and restaurants, shopping, there's a train that goes literally right in front of my house, and a stop for that train a block away. There are 5 parks I can think of offhand that are within the same 5 minute walk from my house.

Guess what? I still drive EVERYWHERE I go.

  • I can bike, but if I bike I have to carry a 20lb chain with me to lock it, and even then I worry about the wheels being stolen, the seat being stolen, the lights being stolen, or some other set of things being stolen. ALL of this has happened to me or people I am close friends with. I have had bikes stolen that were locked up, parts stolen off of my bikes, etc.

  • I can walk, but I have to take a bizarre circuitous route that avoids: the park, the local drug store, all of the bus stops, all of the train stops, and any convenience stores which are currently being used as homeless shelters and drug injection sites. Even still I've had friends robbed or beaten up walking through my city.

  • I could take the idiotic train that our city is so proud of (and everybody who can actively avoids), and be accosted by the schizophrenic psychopaths who are using the train as a refuge from the weather.

The parks are de facto homeless encampments, meaning if I want to take my kids to play, guess where I go? 30 minutes out into the suburbs.

This idea that "boomers like cars and ruined everything by making car centric cities" is absurd and I can only assume is parroted by people who never leave their goon caves.

What city do you live in?

some of these anti-car people could just spend a month actually living in the "car free"

I do, it is amazing. I haven't driven a car once in 2023. I used to have to drive a car everyday on the west coast. I can confidently proclaim that at least all NYC boroughs, Boston (until 2022 MBTA collapse), Mumbai, Madrid, Singapore & Paris can be lived in completely car free.

Note: I have nothing against cars. I literally have an automobile-engineering degree and spent a past life building cars at a big-car co. I love cars, I love road trips and I don't drink just so I can be the happy designated driver. It's just ....... Cars just make no sense as the primary mode of transport in an urban environment. Yeah you can have a car. A fast, spacious and small car. VW Gold R, Model 3 & the Mazda 3 Turbo are better SUVs than SUVs. You just don't need to drive it 99% of the time. Guess what ? The roads are still packed with cars. But now those who NEED to drive can drive, and the rest of us get convenient options.

This can be achieved in smaller towns too. There is high car ownership in college towns (Amherst, Ithaca) and small town New England (Portland Maine), but people still walk around or take transit for most occasions. The car comes out when it's needed.

I can bike, but if I bike I have to carry a 20lb chain with me to lock it

Many major cities now have bike sharing systems around the city which completely eliminates the need to carry your own bike around.

I can walk, but homeless shelters and drug injection sites.

Sounds like Portland, Seattle, SF..... west coast cities are not walkable. They are not even cities. They are dystopian examples of human deterioration. West coast cities are exactly what happens when car culture is unwilling to cede any ground. Not a single wealthy boomer lives in the city core, because highways drop you in the middle of the city core anyway. All 3 of these cities are designed with meeting the needs of car based visitors more than the needs of the residents. And it shows.

The parks are de facto homeless encampments, meaning if I want to take my kids to play, guess where I go? 30 minutes out into the suburbs.

I fully agree with you here. Progressives are idiots. Stringent enforcement of public-safety is first step towards convincing people to move out of cars.

This idea that "boomers like cars and ruined everything by making car centric cities" is absurd and I can only assume is parroted by people who never leave their goon caves.

It is true. They did ruin everything. It's just that it is a self-fulfilling prophecy now. Boomers created the wound and cars were the bandage. So if you ever suggest removal of bandage it gets met with obvious anger. But if you ask for funding to treat the wound itself, it gets treated with confusion and dismissal.

West coast cities are exactly what happens when car culture is unwilling to cede any ground. Not a single wealthy boomer lives in the city core, because highways drop you in the middle of the city core anyway. All 3 of these cities are designed with meeting the needs of car based visitors more than the needs of the residents. And it shows.

Can you expand this? I've never heard somebody blame the drug/homelessness/theft/inner city problems on cars before. Is the idea that you should force people to live among the filth, because then they would be more motivated to fix it?

Can you expand this? I've never heard somebody blame the drug/homelessness/theft/inner city problems on cars before. Is the idea that you should force people to live among the filth, because then they would be more motivated to fix it?

That's my bad. I conflated multiple things together and wrote a confusing mess.

All 3 of these cities are designed with meeting the needs of car based visitors more than the needs of the residents. And it shows.

I meant that serving the interests of commuters rather than tax-payers of the city has led to cities being carved up in ways that is hostile to the city's residents. This is a pure urban planning complaint, and not an inner city related problem.

drug/homelessness/theft/inner city problems on cars

Agreed. I am blaming it squarely on incompetent city govts. SF, Seattle and Portland's local govts have done everything in their power to make public spaces feel unsafe and public transit feel unusable. To be fair, if you've ever parked in the downtowns of any of these cities, cars don't feel much safer either.

you should force people to live among the filth, because then they would be more motivated to fix it?

It is a good question. Because dumping an interstate through the city must've cost around $25B in adjusted costs (using BigDig as reference). Surely that is enough money to solve a homelessness issue for any competently run city govt. Sadly, SF is the diametric opposite of competent. So we have a human constructed hellscape that progressives are convinced is what heaven looks like. I like that about New England liberals. Lot less incompetent.

cars are great for things that are time-sensitive or far away. Public transportation is so slow and a hassle. walking is really slow. i think having a car is nice because it gives options even if you do not use it.

I agree. However, it is a large capital investment, so once you make the plunge to buy one, it makes sense to use it whenever it would be marginally advantageous to do so.

Poorly designed transit is slow. Walking is slow when things are far apart. You can absolutely design cities so that other options are faster than driving... especially since if everyone is driving, you inevitability face heavy congestion, especially within cities. When I was in Switzerland the trains ran beautifully (even during construction) and were probably much easier than driving would have been.

Cars are useful for some things but it would be nice if I didn't have to own one just to get around town, and could get by using one rarely enough that I could make do with the various car rental apps.

This is probably nothing new, but I'd argue that cars are great (i.e. efficiently used) for one thing, that is, for a nuclear family to move between two locations, as long as both our outside urban cores.

Public transportation is so slow and a hassle.

Public transit is only slow if it is has to sit in traffic. In NYC, Boston & Western Europe, it is a lot faster to get around in public transit than in cars. The problem with cars, is that you have to build larger roads and parking spaces everywhere. That makes transit impossible. That leads to everyone using cars, which in turn requires larger roads and parking spaces. So now everyone wants to go somewhere by far fast, but that that has made traffic worse and the place you want to go to farther off. When you build for transit, everything is so close by that even walking is faster than a car.

far away

Yes ofc. Agreed. For anything out of town, trains can serve a similar purpose. But I am not opposed to cars as an essential means of transport outside the city core.

All of this is especially perplexing giving the rampant drinking culture in the US. If the only fun event in most towns is drinking, then how can I drive to the spot ? I guess the obesity epidemic keeps the BAC levels low /s .

Public transit is only slow if it is has to sit in traffic. In NYC, Boston & Western Europe, it is a lot faster to get around in public transit than in cars.

Only because NYC has managed to slow cars enough. Transit in NYC is slow in general, it's just not as slow as driving to most places.

When you build for transit, everything is so close by that even walking is faster than a car.

LOL. Have you ever been to New York City?

LOL. Have you ever been to New York City?

I live in NYC.

NYC has managed to slow cars enough

What could NYC do to speed up cars more ? What has it done to slow cars down ?

NYC manages to excel by American standards, but that's a passing grade for global cities in the rest of the world. As compared to other cities of the world, NYC actually allows cars to take a highway straight into the downtown core of the city. Other cities cut off the highway at the edge of the ring road that surrounds the city core. Both Manhattan highways occupy the most expensive waterfront space in the world. If the 2 highways were fully moved underground, you'd be looking at one of the most expensive sale of airspace in the entire history of humanity.

Parking is free or dirt cheap in most of the city, while occupying area that generates far more revenue if given as restaurant seating space. Note there are 3 types of people who take cars into NYC. The first are people who are so rich, that they could have simply taken a daily cab instead. The second are slightly-rich people who commute into the city with a car, who should have to pay actual market rate for parking or have their employer pay it. The final are disabled people who ofc deserve to be accommodated, and should have separate reserved parking on each block.

What has it done to slow cars down ?

Pack too many people in too little space.

Parking is free or dirt cheap in most of the city

Which excludes most of Manhattan.

But your claim was

When you build for transit, everything is so close by that even walking is faster than a car.

Have you walked from Chelsea to Soho? I have, it takes a damn long time, and it's not a huge portion of the length of the island. If we're not talking just about Manhattan, crossing the East River on foot takes a long time itself -- the Brooklyn bridge is a mile long and the pedestrian path is often crowded. The Williamsburg bridge is even longer and has more of a climb. Cities aren't built to walking scale.

Pack too many people in too little space.

...this is what makes a city, a city. Are you just opposed to the existence of cities?

Cities aren't built to walking scale.

I think it's clear from the other poster's previous comments that they mean a combination of walking and transit; not that you can walk literally everywhere. No one who lives in NYC would walk all over the entire city. I think you can understand this and are trying to make gotchas rather than engage in good faith.

More comments

Have you walked from Chelsea to Soho?

Yeah, it's 30 minutes. In those 30 minutes you see more inspired architecture and more Michelin starred restaurants than entire regions of the US. A good few grocery stores, a target, every fashion store that exists and some of the world's premier underground performance locations (Smalls Jazz, Comedy central). You'll cross effectively 100k people worth of housing, and all in a 30 minute walk, 10 minute bike share, or a 10 minute subway ride.

30 minutes in the traffic in LA, and you're still in traffic while having burned 200 fewer calories.

I have basically zero knowledge on this subject, but weren't Portland and Seattle founded and established way before car use became widespread?

Yep, the i5 and i90 literally tore through the middle of downtown Seattle. Seattle used to have a superior public transit network in 1914 than it does in 2022.

God I seriously wish that some of these anti-car people could just spend a month actually living in the "car free" cities that they think everybody wants so they could realize how terrible it is.

A lot of them have done so, probably most notably NotJustBikes, who moved to Amsterdam.

Most of these problems seem to be unrelated to the extent to which a city is walkable. Car-dependent American cities still have homelessness, crime, and drug use, while many walkable ones in Europe or Japan have much less. Walkability does not mean doing nothing about social problems; Amsterdam did a lot of work (see section 9) to clean itself up.

This idea that "boomers like cars and ruined everything by making car centric cities" is absurd and I can only assume is parroted by people who never leave their goon caves.

This is unnecessarily rude, but also seems to neglect history. Were cities already plagued by the same issues after WW2, when the exodus to car-dependent suburbs began, and is that why people started to leave? Have the policies imposed to make cities and suburbs more amenable to cars, such as knocking down urban neighborhoods to make way for highways, or preventing any housing from being built, contributed to these social problems?

(The actual thing to object to is that boomers aren't responsible for these policies for the most part--it's actually Silent and Greatest, until more recently.)

Most of these problems seem to be unrelated to the extent to which a city is walkable.

I strongly disagree! People won't want to walk or take mass transit if they feel much more likely to be victimized in doing so. This creates a spiral, where the most walking-friendly destinations and infrastructure end up neglected, making them even less attractive, and people who want to drive end up going elsewhere.

Were cities already plagued by the same issues after WW2, when the exodus to car-dependent suburbs began, and is that why people started to leave?

Yes. People began moving to suburbs almost as soon as they could get cars. Even before, with the "streetcar suburbs" proliferating in the 1920's. Then rising crime and unrest, and safety-hostile urban policies like blockbusting and forced school integration caused mass flight right when the new interstates made it convenient to do so. But notably this happened in the sixties when the boomers were still children or young adults. The highway builders and urban renewists were mostly members of the Greatest Generation. The Boomers just inherited their world, and actually put a lot of effort into fixing the bigger mistakes, leading to an urban renaissance in the 90's, at which point they seemed to have declared victory and turned their attention inward.

This creates a spiral, where the most walking-friendly destinations and infrastructure end up neglected, making them even less attractive, and people who want to drive end up going elsewhere.

Something like this is possible, or even likely. Another point, often made by urbanists, is that having more regular people in spaces makes them safer, and feel safer, because of safety in numbers. However, mainly what I was trying to get at is that the policies that allow lawlessness to continue and spread are orthogonal to policies that favor driving/other modes of transportation, and so it is entirely possible (easy, even, aside from the political constraints that seem to be unique to America) to make walkable places that are nothing like what firmamenti describes.

Yes. People began moving to suburbs almost as soon as they could get cars. Even before, with the "streetcar suburbs" proliferating in the 1920's. Then rising crime and unrest, and safety-hostile urban policies like blockbusting and forced school integration caused mass flight right when the new interstates made it convenient to do so.

Streetcar suburbs are the opposite of a car-dependent development and are not a problem.

I think you should re-check your history. Homicide rates declined from the mid 30s until the mid 60s, which is exactly when American governments started demolishing urban neighborhoods to build highways, subsidizing homeownership, etc.

If you're just going to drop a thinly veiled claim that being near black people is a public safety hazard, you should have some evidence for it. "Controversial claims require evidence" etc.

Streetcar suburbs are the opposite of a car-dependent development and are not a problem.

They may be car-dependent now if there street cars are gone. In the one near me it does keep the homeless and adjacent criminal elements from the nearby city from riding public transit out to the suburbs.

If the street cars are gone (and not replaced with some other transit) it's not really a streetcar suburb anymore.

Perhaps. And many such suburbs were annexed by the city anyways. Point is that the strong impulse to live near the city but not in it predates cars. It was not cars that created the impulse to move to suburbs, or was the desire to move to suburbs that caused people to demand cars.

Suburbs are very old, but the cities they surrounded were never rebuilt to allow the suburbanites easier access to the detriment of the city's inhabitants. Certainly the streetcar suburbs we just discussed did not do that and did not require that. Cars' mere existence are not the problem; it's enforced car dependence: Knocking down urban neighborhoods to build highways to the suburbs (which already couldn't handle all the traffic even back in the 50s), building suburbs that can literally only be accessed or traversed in a car, preventing the building of any housing other than sprawling and expensive single family homes, etc.

Streetcar suburbs are the opposite of a car-dependent development and are not a problem.

I'll nitpick a bit because why not. Even if streetcar suburbs still existed and functioned, their popularity would still mean White flight, or middle-class flight, from the urban core, resulting in the long-term decay of the latter.

This is obviously hypothetical, but I disagree. Taking a streetcar (or tram, bus, light rail, whatever) into the city, and walking to your final destination, is very different from living in a far-flung exurb that, at best, involves commuting for work (and by the 80s, often didn't even involve that much). And building such places is far less destructive to the city itself. One could argue this just subjects the middle class to the awful conditions of the cities in the 70s without any alternative; on the other hand, maybe if they stay, they vote for better crime policies, provide stabilizing social forces, don't displace lots of inner-city residents, and improve the tax base in the city. (My inner libertarian is outraged at that last one, but usually whenever the urban/suburban arguments start to happen on TheMotte, someone tells me that it's ok that car-dependent suburbs are subsidized because one function of government is to provide public goods for the benefit of all, so I figure what's good for the goose is good for the gander).

As far as I can tell, this "long-term decay" lasted a few decades and has generally been on the reverse since the 90s (in general; obviously some cities continued to decline, but e.g. NYC has had increasing population over the past few decades.)

Agree and great comment. Just because I'm curious and skeptical, where does the idea of blockbusting come from? Did this actually happen a lot, was it rare, or was it (like poisoned Halloween candy) a complete fabrication?

For those who don't know, blockbusting was the supposed practice of real estate speculators putting black tenants (preferably violent ones) into a previously white neighborhood. When the white neighbors fled, the speculator would buy their houses for cheap and then rent them as a slumlord to new black tenants.

While Wikipedia says "blockbusting was very common and profitable", this feels like a just-so story. I wonder to what extent it really happened. It feels like an effort to blame evil white landlords for a process that would happen naturally anyway.

I literally haven't driven a car in 20 years, ie. after I did my driving license (which I've since lost). I don't live in a fairytale Finnish city, I live in a normal Finnish city.

The OP's city sounds like a fine place to live without a car apart from schizo addicted criminals taking over all the public spaces. So perhaps the issue doesn't have to do much with cars at all.

I think a big reason that urbanism is getting so much attention since 2020 is that it brings suburban swing voters within striking distance of rioters. The threat of violence is a useful stick when there's a close election or politically charged trial coming up. For example, Rep. Maxine Waters called on protestors to get more "confrontational" if Chauvin was acquitted at his trial. So violence is a useful tool but the problem is that a lot of voters live in the suburbs which aren't as easily accessible to BLM or Antifa. Even worse: they often have separate police forces and DA's that would be less sympathetic to burnings and beatings. If you get rid of the cars you force people to move closer to the city center where you're able to more credibly threaten them.

Agreed, I commute daily via transit and my car is the last possession I'd give up besides my home. I'm as far from carfree as is possible to be.

God I seriously wish that some of these anti-car people could just spend a month actually living in the "car free" cities that they think everybody wants so they could realize how terrible it is.

I've lived in a city like this for almost four decades now. I own a car only because my wife loves her dacha and that's a quarter of a year spent in the exurbs where a car is a necessity. It's still a B-segment car and not an SUV.

This is nonsense and you completely lack perspective. I've never owned a car in my life, which is completely normal here, coming from a small European city.

God I seriously wish that some of these anti-car people could just spend a month actually living in the "car free" cities that they think everybody wants so they could realize how terrible it is.

I'm with all the other guys posting down there: lived it, still kinda do, it's pretty neat. What gives?

For what it's worth, I mean that genuinely: how do you square multiple people telling you things are fine with your post insisting it is, in your own words, terrible?

I can bike, but if I bike I have to carry a 20lb chain with me to lock it, and even then I worry about the wheels being stolen, the seat being stolen, the lights being stolen, or some other set of things being stolen. ALL of this has happened to me or people I am close friends with. I have had bikes stolen that were locked up, parts stolen off of my bikes, etc.

I can walk, but I have to take a bizarre circuitous route that avoids: the park, the local drug store, all of the bus stops, all of the train stops, and any convenience stores which are currently being used as homeless shelters and drug injection sites. Even still I've had friends robbed or beaten up walking through my city.

I could take the idiotic train that our city is so proud of (and everybody who can actively avoids), and be accosted by the schizophrenic psychopaths who are using the train as a refuge from the weather.

This is an civility problem, not a walking problem. In South Africa they have problems with thieves stealing copper, poor maintenance of aging power plants... there's lots of load shedding. This doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with electricity or power grids in general. It shows that South Africa is not a well-organized country, amongst other things.

I live car-free just fine in a proper, civilized country. There are many civilized cities where public transport is full of working people as opposed to drug addicts. The solution to your city's problems is vigorous policing, removing the problem people.

(load shedding refers to, "people in this area don't get to have power right now," planned by the power company so that they have enough power)

Why the hell aren't they calling it a rolling blackout like everyone else? Very confusing term

You wouldn’t want to be crushed by the darkness, so you lighten the weight on your shoulders. It’s a nice chiaroscuro reversal to think about by candlelight.

I'd argue it's more of a law enforcement problem.

All the law enforcement in the world doesn't fix low trust societies. You need the stock of the people to be of a "better" kind where you don't really fear you'll get mugged/stabbed/raped for going on a walk with your two children in the middle of the day.

What does "stock" of the people mean here?

edit： I don't mean to sound baiting, I am genuinely curious. Like, breeding? Genetic superiority? Socioeconomic status? More genteel class manners?

But I think it' also true that high-trust societies are also prone to enact policies that result in lousy conditions such as this, such as deinstitutionalizing mentally ill people, lenient sentencing etc. Plus, I'm sure that White flight and urban decay affects high-trust societies as well.

I mean. Is Eugene, Oregon c. 2015 a "low trust society"? If you get the wheels stolen off your bike, as I did, odds are it's not Tyrone from the 'hood doing the stealing. It's probably some white dude who may or may not have a meth habit. Not that much violent crime out there, but a hell of a lot of bike theft.

That's still a lost trust society just a different gradient of "low trust". In a "normal" high trust society you don't even need to lock your bike because there aren't any methheads around to do petty crime.

Boomers are fundamentally narcissistic and they cannot imagine anyone else as main characters of life, not even their own children.

On this forum, one of our principals is that claims which are inflammatory should come with a greater amount of supporting evidence. Yet you've provided none.

I'm a millennial. This is ridiculous. There's no evidence that boomers are more narcissistic than any other generation. In fact, I would say they are less so than later generations.

There's not "no evidence" in the sense that you can certainly find papers claiming narcissism has decreased over time. However, you can also find ones saying that it is flat over time, or has increased over time. E.g. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_surprisingly_boring_truth_about_millennials_and_narcissism

In a foundational 2008 paper, Jean Twenge (coauthor of The Narcissism Epidemic) and her colleagues reviewed 85 studies that surveyed more than 16,000 college students between 1979 and 2006... The researchers found that college students were becoming more narcissistic—by a full 30 percent from 1982 to around 2006. UC Davis’s Kali Trzesniewski and colleagues responded in 2008... The results indicated no change in narcissism... In yet another 2008 paper, Twenge and Joshua Foster re-analyzed data... they found that narcissism rose among both whites and Asians from 2002 to 2007. But because Asians tended to have lower narcissism scores in general, and the Asian population at UC campuses increased during the time period under scrutiny, the overall trend may have been obscured. Twenge and Foster also objected to the data that Trzesniewski and her coauthors had used... Further studies in 2009 and 2010 found no rise in narcissism. But a 2010 paper by Twenge and Foster objected to their methods... “The debate on changes in narcissism [is] seemingly settled,” Twenge and Foster wrote in 2010. “Seemingly” being the keyword: In late 2017, a new study appeared in Psychological Science that called all the previous ones into question... They found a “small and continuous decline” in narcissism throughout that time period.

The actual section is several paragraphs with a lot more details, but you get the gist. It then points out that the instrument used has a constant wording, which may be interpreted differently. Other sources don't provide a single simple answer, either, such as https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191210111655.htm or https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20171115-millenials-are-the-most-narcissistic-generation-not-so-fast (which I think summarizes some of the same evidence as the first article).

On this forum, one of our principals is that claims which are inflammatory should come with a greater amount of supporting evidence.

Theory, meet practice. I'd be shocked if this post was modded.

..

In fairness to the boomers, the boomers that are currently going on luxury cruises did spend an enormous amount of time and money raising their kids for 18 years and then paying for their college education.

I've not been above a bit of boomer-negging in my time, but I'd also add to this - what's the alternative? Sure, in previous times parents might strive to leave their children an inheritance. But this was really more a luxury of the landed and rich, the ones we pay disproportionate attention to, who leave the most records. I question how common inheritances of any size really were. And though I'm sure there are no surfeit of examples of boomers who sold their retirements for boats breast implants and booze, there also seems to be a prevailing norm of saving enough to at least scrape by on your own until you die.

Far more common was the burden of caring for ageing parents in their dotage, both financially and physically. It might just be my American individualism or whatever speaking, but, as much as I appreciate a culture that's invested enough in family and long-term bonds to respect and care for the elderly, there is something a bit perverse about landing whatever poor woman you arranged to marry your eldest son to serve you hand and foot during your last years. Fillial duty beats a lot of alternatives culturally speaking, but I don't think it beats what we strive for now.

Finally, though you note that the expectation of great returns on an expensive education were rather tragically misplaced, doesn't it make sense to give to your children when young rather than when they're old and past being able to use the resources for much of their most productive years? Inheritance is nice, but I think it's taken a backburner importance in people's priorities for a reason.

the boomers were not white supremacist enough

No way! The Civil Rights movement was correct. It also doesn’t imply either 1. or 2. It is perfectly possible to move to the Midwest and dodge all those dirty minorities. Curiously, this isn’t enough to earn you a nice school and job. It does depress housing prices, because for some reason, Bumblefuck, Kansas isn’t actually that popular.

I don’t think it’s accurate to call Hispanic immigration a product of Boomer anti racism, either. More a corporate/laissez faire policy.

I'd like to see you try to pass an Intellectual Turing Test for arguing why the Civil Rights movement was bad.

I don’t think it’s accurate to call Hispanic immigration a product of Boomer anti racism, either. More a corporate/laissez faire policy.

Por que no los dos? Almost all policies have a Bootleggers and Baptists aspect to them -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists

Not sure I can. I mean, you’ve already provided the standard argument: that minorities are responsible for (insert QoL decrease here). It could be a bit stronger, since I don’t believe you really demonstrated the link. If I had to pass the test, I’d start from your argument and try to explain how the Midwest is simultaneously cheap and very, very white.

As for Baptists and bootleggers, I have no trouble believing Boomer antiracists would be included in such a coalition. I just…don’t see much evidence of them. The Boomers I know are pretty conservative, and today that means skepticism on immigration. It’s the Gen-Xers who are more likely to take the neoliberal or progressive stance. And in both groups, old-school race blindness still holds more sway than antiracism.

Then again, I’m in a pretty conservative part of the country, surrounded by defense engineers and a family of rednecks. My finger isn’t exactly on the pulse of Boomer sentiment.

I grew up in South Carolina. Yes, yes I have. Around 60% black for my abysmal high school.

You proposed that black people are icky, so white people turned to the last refuge of legal discrimination: price. I think this is a flawed theory. If an all-white school was so valuable, the Midwest would look very different, as priced-out whites moved to the educational utopias of Ardmore and Lincoln.

What do the terrible schools of the Midwest and the Deep South and the rust belt have in common? They’re poor as hell. The unemployment and the addictions and the fucked-up families are not conducive to good schools or to successful citizens. They’re also not unique to black people.

I know the answer to all your questions. I also know you’re mistaking correlation for causation.

If black people caused poor schools, you would expect white-bread schools to do much better. As far as I know, that’s not true out in the boonies. The common factor is poverty, and I don’t think the Civil Rights Act is to blame for that.

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Are boomers really going to spend it all on luxury cruises and nursing homes?

Sure. Nursing homes, end of life care and healthcare costs in the last year of life. Those are heavy financial hits.

I have respect for Indians that build a fiefdom of convenience stores to pass to their children, it's obviously a different mentality than the "make sure you get a college degree and save enough in your 401k so you can retire."

The cruises aren't so much the issue, though. It's more the advent of modern healthcare means that an essentially limitless amount of cash can be consumed to extend a life at 0.01 QOL an extra 3 years, something that didn't exist in prior eras to anywhere near the extent.

Oh contraire, boomers IME tend to admit that things are incredibly hard for young people right now, high percentages are supporting children or grandchildren, and it being illegal to build things is a phenomenon of extreme bureaucratic inefficiency applied to environmental regulations.

extreme bureaucratic inefficiency applied to environmental regulations

This is correct and more strangely, it is the same young people who would be up in arms against any politician proposing a radical overhaul of environmental regulations.

I think it is more about the dissolution of regional distinctiveness, and lack of tolerance that follows from that, because every place and people is assumed to be the same, or should be.

My (boomer) mother grew up in a Southwestern American city with a lot of hispanics and very few blacks. She speaks Spanish badly, but my grandparents spoke it fluently (none of us are hispanic). When Bussing went into effect, she had to sit for an hour on a bus every day to move from one majority hispanic school to another, and the main change was not being able to invite her classmates over, because they lived too far away. Her opinion on bussing is that it may or may not have made sense in Alabama, but it was stupid and wasteful in her city. I took busses all the time as a teen, though they're hot and not very efficient. "Brown people" is a stupid category, but New Mexico and Arizona hispanics love their automobiles -- low riders, trucks, mechanic jobs, custom details, the whole package.

There was a woman in one of my social groups, born in Africa, went to a college in the Great Plains, living in a former Spanish colonial part of the American Southwest, going on about her experience as a Black American and her Blackness, and her sensitivity toward people curious about her background, and it was so very tiresome. None of her ancestors were American slaves, or suffered from redlining, or were discriminated against in any way. None of our ancestors owned a plantation. Nobody in our state was involved. And yet here we all were, unable to talk about any of our actual histories or the places we were actual from, because of her feelings of Blackness.

For a while, I lived with an Albanian family in rural Kosovo. Everyone was very nice to me, and I especially liked that I didn't have to drive or own a car at the time, and I could drink a 50c macchiato at a cafe over the course of an hour without anyone judging me for it. That was mostly because everyone was poor, though. They were upset over having their village shelled, and that for a while they had to teach their language in basements with only a single book for a room full of children. This may be peripherally related to pensioners, but it seems more related to feeling responsible for people who are deemed backwards. Which is, yes, also a problem in many American cities.

The American West has in some sense always wanted cars, even before they were invented. Horses were adopted with great enthusiasm the instant they arrived on the continent. And so were cars. Phoenix isn't full of cars and expansive, flat suburbs because of "boomers." It's full of cars and boomers and suburbs because it's in the middle of an enormous desert. Arizona spent 20 years building the CAP canal system, not for boomers to spread out (although they do), but because they're in the middle of an enormous desert. Boomers from Arizona and Texas drive RVs around for the same reason. i don't think this is necessarily grounded in unusual narcissism, but simply in unusually high wealth.

Thanks for your perspective.

When Bussing went into effect, she had to sit for an hour on a bus every day to move from one majority hispanic school to another, and the main change was not being able to invite her classmates over, because they lived too far away. Her opinion on bussing is that it may or may not have made sense in Alabama, but it was stupid and wasteful in her city.

My mom also has anecdotes about bussing an hour one way to a distant schools with slightly different racial proportions. For seemingly no benefit to anyone. Having heard various bussing anecdotes has put me in a very cynical mindset regarding technocratic solutions to social problems.

This also explains boomer opposition towards global warming. Global warming implies that car-centric culture might not be completely sustainable and anything that implies "boomer reality" might not be sustainable is an enemy.

People seem to overestimate how old the boomers actually are. Many are in their 60s, which is not that old. When they came of age in the 70s-80s, much of modernity was already extant. Cars and highways were already thoroughly mainstream and ubiquitous. But generally, people become more conservative as they get older due to a combination of society moving left-ward and changing personal beliefs. A 90s Clinton democrat could actually be considered a Republican today.

I'm pretty sure that even back in the '70s there was a growing perception in the West that their car-centric culture as it existed was not going to be completely sustainable, but I'm also sure that was entirely due to the oil crises and the appearance of Peak Oil theory, not global warming.

I'll take the opportunity to shill https://www.amazon.com/Boomers-Promised-Freedom-Delivered-Disaster/dp/0593086759

There are some great/awful stories in there. It has six chapters devoted to six notable boomers. For instance, Sotormayor's first attendance of the judge's annual party put on by the outgoing clerks (where they put on little skits and musical parodies). After they were finished, she stood up and said their skits 'lacked a certain something', putting on salsa music and encouraging the other judges to dance. This went against protocol and was extremely awkward for the others. RBG's husband had died 3 days earlier, yet Sotomayor told her that her dead husband would've wanted her to dance.

Sotormayor is also the one who confused de jure and de facto.

tl;dr: Do any of you read Portugese?

I am having one of those moments where I feel like I must be losing my mind, because the alternative is that the world is even stupider than I already thought, which is just too depressing to countenance. I was doing some research on education for what are, ultimately, culture war purposes (I think parents are more important than teachers, and I think people to my political Left get this horribly wrong all the time) and I came across a citation that seemed potentially useful. I found it in this document (PDF warning) as both the title and on page one:

Politics are an important influence in schools; as Paulo Freire stated in his 1968 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed: “all education is political; teaching is never a neutral act” (p.19).

Now, any time I see a reference to critical theory from the 1960s, it piques my interest, because it has been my experience that a lot of people work very hard to obfuscate the origins of what is currently being called "Wokism," and used to be called "cultural Marxism" (not to be confused with the conspiracy theory that "Cultural Marxism" is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory--I assume Paulo Freire was not a Jew, but I admit I do not know for sure). Anyway I immediately went looking for a copy of Paulo Freire's seminal work so I check the quote out in context. Fortunately, the author of the paper appears to be a music professor at McGill, so the citation is right there for my use!

Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder.

I fire up the Internet Archive and find a 1972 edition of the book (the UK printing, apparently) and turn to page 19, which... does not contain the quote. I pull up other editions--there's a 30th anniversary edition, a 50th anniversary edition, someone clearly regards this as an important text--and not only does the quote in question appear nowhere in these pages, but chunks like "education is political" or "neutral act" also return no results. Maybe the text search is wrong? Maybe the scan is bad? Hmm, no, a quick sampling finds the OCR did a bang-up job, actually.

Googling the full quote generates a number of results. The University of Sheffield's "Education Matters" blog gives the citation "Freire (1970: 19)." But no--the 1970 printing also lacks the quote. Dr. Fatima Nicdao (she/her) suggests it's actually (1968), but that's the Portugese date of publication, as near as I can tell. Anti-Racism in Higher Education: An Action Guide for Change is also pretty sure the quote appears on page 19, as does Reframing Assessment to Center Equity: Theories, Models, and Practices and Developing and Evaluating Quality Bilingual Practices in Higher Education, to name only three of the books that agree on this citation. You may notice that all of these books were published in the last two years.

At this point I'm thinking, "I've got to be missing something. Maybe I'm making this too difficult for myself. I haven't even checked Wikipedia!" There I find the following:

There is no such thing as a neutral education process. Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of generations into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the "practice of freedom", the means by which men and women deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.

— Jane Thompson, drawing on Paulo Freire

(emphasis added)

At this point I am feeling increasingly confident that the quotation is spurious. Now, it seems pretty clear to me that Freire would agree with the quotation! I don't think any of these people are misrepresenting his view (though they might be oversimplifying it). I'm able to date the quote "teaching is never a neutral act" back as far as 1998, in a book entitled (of course) White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America Similarly, "all education is political" goes back at least as far as a textbook from 1996:

What are some examples of Freire's idea that all education is political?

As an aside, page 181 of that textbook is also of historic interest, and reads as part of a chapter on "Teaching to Empower Minority Students":

The emphasis on empowerment is part of a broader educational development referred to as critical theory. Critical theory developed from Paolo Freire's work, a reconsideration of the work of Dewey, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, Lois Weis, Alma Flor Ada, Jim Cummins, Stanley Aronowitz, and others. The following concepts are central to critical theory, and are useful in trying to comprehend and analyze your own teaching experience.

(Here is the list, for the curious, with definitions elided.)

Consciousness ...

Culture ...

Domination ...

Empowerment ...

Ethics ...

Hegemony ...

Hidden Curriculum ...

Ideological Domination ...

Ideologies ...

Social Class ...

Social Construction of Knowledge ...

Anywhow, I am terminally crippled with self-doubt, and proving a negative is hard. Part of me is certain that the very first reply to this rant is going to be "oh here's a direct link to the page where he wrote that, you just missed it." But I cannot find any evidence at all that Paolo Freire ever actually wrote the sentence, "all education is political; teaching is never a neutral act." Certainly those words do not seem to appear in any English-language translation of anything he has written. Which, who cares, right? Spurious quotations are totally an Internet thing, Abraham Lincoln said so.

But I care, because now instead of finding an academically useful citation I've spent three hours going down the rabbit hole of a spurious quotation. How can so many people be publishing stuff with this quote in it, and none of them paused long enough to check their source? I mean, I guess this is in the end just a particularly academic example of the old "too good to check." But I'm frustrated in part because none of the foregoing accomplishes what I actually intended to accomplish today, which was to make progress on a scholarly paper. There's no place for me to publish a peer-reviewed essay entitled "Spurious Quotations in Education Theory: Jesus Christ You Critical Theorists Are the Worst Academics Alive, Check Your God Damn Sources For Once, You're a Fucking Embarrassment to the Profession."

So please. Embarrass me, instead. Find evidence that Freire actually wrote the quoted phrase. Somewhere, anywhere, in any language! Because right now I'm feeling extremely uncharitable toward my outgroup on this, and it's such a petty thing, I know, but it just feels emblematic of the entire critical enterprise of focusing on "whatever works" over and above any commitment to truth, facts, history, academic rigor, professionalism, or even taking two seconds to check the damn source.

How can so many people be publishing stuff with this quote in it, and none of them paused long enough to check their source?

When I search on Google Scholar for that quote, I find only the source you link. Ditto when I search for the two phrases, “all education is political” “teaching is never a neutral act”. So, basically no one is publishing that quote. What people ARE doing is paraphrasing Freire as saying that all education is political and that education is never neutral. Which, as you note, is an accurate paraphrase of his claims. (This master's thesis, which might or might not quote accurately, attributes the following quote to Freire's Pedagogy of Freedom)

Education as a specifically human action has a “directive” vocation, that is, it addresses itself to dreams, ideals, utopias, objectives, to what I have been calling the “political” nature of education. In other words, the quality of being political is inherent in its essence. In fact, neutrality in education is impossible. Not impossible because irresponsible or subversive teachers so determined or because some teacher or another decided so.

When I search on Google Scholar for that quote, I find only the source you link. Ditto when I search for the two phrases, “all education is political” “teaching is never a neutral act”. So, basically no one is publishing that quote.

I directly linked three books from academic presses from the last two years, an academic blog, an academic tweet, and an academic paper, and I only furnished a sampling of what I found because it just seemed silly to keep going after finding so many examples. That's a far, far cry from "basically no one."

What people ARE doing is paraphrasing Freire

The numerous, recent sources I already cited literally directly quote him, often giving a page number (usually, 19) for the quote. Are you... engaged in performance art here? Duplicating the phenomenon about which I am complaining?

So, when instead of searching on Google Scholar I instead search for the exact quote in regular old google, I get 19 hits, one of which is you. When I search for “all education is political" "teaching is never a neutral act” freire, I get 91 hits, including you. That is pretty much "basically no one." As others have noted, you are complaining about lazy quotations, an unfortunately very common phenomenon, but one which in this case at least has the merit of accurately representing the views of the cited author.

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I really admire how smoothly you were able to combine the implication "basically no one is doing this, who cares" with the implication "this happens all the time, who cares" in this comment. If that move hasn't got a fancy name like "motte and bailey doctrine" or "apophasia," then it should, and if it does have a name, I would like to learn it.

Well, if you can't understand the difference between an empirical claim about a general phenomenon and and empirical claim about a specific phenomenon, then I can't help you.

But to be more explicit, your post seems to me to be little more than "boo outgroup", and 1) your evidence that your outgroup is doing what you claim is incredibly weak; and 2) you have no evidence that what that handful of outgroup members has done is unique to your outgroup, so, yes, who cares?

And to be completely clear, those who cite Freire seem to me to almost always be full of shit. Especially some former colleagues of mine who literally argued that the fact that "teaching is inevitably political" gave them license to push their political views in class, when of course it actually means that they had a responsibility to present students with views they disagreed with.

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But to be more explicit, your post seems to me to be little more than "boo outgroup"

The "more" is really the important part, though. I admit these people are in my "outgroup" but the point was the sloppy scholarship (and my disbelief), not the outgroup per se.

your evidence that your outgroup is doing what you claim is incredibly weak

My evidence that the individual scholars I am directly complaining about are doing exactly what I am complaining about seems pretty ironclad to me, to the point where I doubt it could possibly be so straightforward, to the point where I asked a bunch of Internet strangers if they could maybe check the Portugese for me because surely these scholars aren't that stupid but--yes, these scholars are apparently at least that stupid. To the point where @netstack immediately identified a separate case of this same phenomenon happening in other articles referencing Freire.

you have no evidence that what that handful of outgroup members has done is unique to your outgroup, so, yes, who cares?

I care, as I believe I stated in my original comment. It's offensive to me, as a professional, when other professionals do shoddy work, especially when it costs me time. If that's not enough for you, like, okay! You should go talk to someone who counts in your eyes, instead of telling me that I shouldn't care about things that I care about.

And to be completely clear, those who cite Freire seem to me to almost always be full of shit.

This is how I feel about all critical theorists, but surely it helps matters to present the occasional clear case of academic malfeasance. I don't regard them to be full of shit because reasons, I regard them to be full of shit because look here are dozens of examples of easily-identified shitty scholarship on just one quotation.

surely it helps matters to present the occasional clear case of academic malfeasance. I don't regard them to be full of shit because reasons, I regard them to be full of shit because look here are dozens of examples of easily-identified shitty scholarship on just one quotation.

Except that you don't have any evidence of academic malfeasance nor shitty scholarship; as I noted, a search of google scholar turns up nothing.

And, surely, it is not sloppy quotation practices which make you deem them full of shit, is it? Surely it is stuff like this:

"For example, think about the Resident Assistant system, where you have to report these fellow undergrads, whom for whatever reason, are drunk. Rather than center care practices of holistic healing, or therapy, they’re disciplined before they can understand themselves in this way. That is not benefiting people of color. It's not benefiting folks going towards their true passions. But it's really going to maintain the status quo. So, policing looks like surveillance in and out of the classroom, and it looks like literal police, and it looks like all of the systems of control that we have at UC Santa Cruz: for example, to surveil our fellow students. So it looks like the regents, whom have nothing to do with education, but are overseeing us. Overseeing. Do I have to spell it out for you? "

Emphasis in original.

Except that you don't have any evidence of academic malfeasance nor shitty scholarship; as I noted, a search of google scholar turns up nothing.

Look, this is not really a fight I'm interested in having, but in my opinion Google Scholar is shit and I never use it for anything because it is shit and I don't know anyone who does use it for anything because it is shit. To my mind, by far the most useful academic tool to appear in the last, I'm going to say 20 years, is just Archive.org's online library. Probably some people love Google Scholar so this is just me having thoughts about a thing, but I haven't got any other response for you here. I've never seen anyone try to prove anything of worth by citing to "Google Scholar says" so I'm just kind of dumbfounded about it. Maybe I am just old, that is often a problem when matters of technology come into play, but there you have it. Google's front page search is orders of magnitude more valuable to my scholarship than Google Scholar has ever been.

But I don't do STEM, so, you know. YMMV.

And, surely, it is not sloppy quotation practices which make you deem them full of shit, is it?

See, this is where you misread me so completely I have to wonder about my communication skills. It's very much the sloppy quotation practices, for me. It's very much the bad scholarship that I hate. The weird culture war stuff is bad, too, but it might be helpful for me to suggest that when I refer to these scholars as my "outgoup," I am about 60% thinking about the fact that they work in colleges of education, rather than thinking about their political alignment qua outgroup. That is, these are education scholars, often with Ed.Ds, while I'm a philosopher who sometimes writes analytically on education.

It's hard to not launch into a rant about this, honestly. And it feels like a failure of professional courtesy to be like, "oh, those teaching academics are the worst" when I'm sure the engineers or the business professors or someone feels the same about me. But the scholarship that comes out of these colleges of education, like, it's just so bad, basically all the time. And it happens to have kind of played havoc on my day, today, and I thought others might find it interesting to see a specific case, about specific people, making a specific mistake, that is kind of emblematic of the larger criticisms leveled against them.

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For what it’s worth, I do think this sort of OP pushes the boundaries of

Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?'

“Boo outgroup” isn’t a rule. It works as a report category, though, because it requires toeing a number of others. Being a bit uncharitable or a bit general or a bit angry at Those People is normal. Feeling all of those at once is a recipe for less-than-clear thinking. It’s also a good way to get other people to make the same generalizations.

So I sympathize with @Gdanning. Your OP got my hackles raised. I made my response anyway because, well, the object level really was dumb. Not terribly surprising (per the gwern link), but dumb, and therefore a good distraction.

I maintain that, if posting like that were normalized, this community would be much worse-off.

I maintain that, if posting like that were normalized, this community would be much worse-off.

I literally implored y'all to show me I'm wrong. I actually wanted to be wrong about this. I wanted someone to show me the quote, maybe in Portugese, so I could say, "ah, yes, I'm a dumbass, that's much less surprising than all of these doctorate-wielding people being such complete dumbasses." That wasn't rhetoric; I came here to test my shady thinking, I wanted to be talked down, and the second thing you did was find another horrible example right there in the material I was citing.

That suggests to me that I'm not criticizing these people because they're my outgroup and I want to boo them, but in fact because they have earned criticism. Surely that's a valuable thing to learn?

This is all strange internet stuff, you've contradicted your own stance.

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your post seems to me to be little more than "boo outgroup",

Exhaustively researched primary sources are "boo outgroup," but warmed-over theschism reposts about boomers being white supremacists is fine? How much of the literature would he have to read before the post was acceptable?

The point is not how exhaustive his research was; I have no doubt that the language is either misquoted or miscited. The problem is the "boo outgroup" inference that he draws therefrom.

You seem to be trolling.

Looks like a classic case of citogenesis, hmm? /u/gwern really is a national treasure.

It probably won’t make you feel any better, but this sort of thing is much more likely than we might prefer!

Hold on. From the 30th anniversary ed., p. 34. This is the last page of the foreword, written by one Richard Shaull:

There is no such thing as a neutral educational process. Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of a younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the “practice of freedom,” the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.

So, uh…who the hell is Jane Thompson? The quote traces back to here. In turn, Jane L. Thompson wrote a book called Adult Education for a Change in 1980. But what’s this? She was just quoting, too! Her citation brings us to

Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Penguin, 1972).

Full circle.

It probably won’t make you feel any better, but this sort of thing is much more likely than we might prefer!

I actually deal with it with students all the time, because Plato is up there with Mark Twain and Winston Churchill among the pantheon of the spuriously-quoted. So a student will tell me something is in Republic and build their whole paper around it... and I will ask them where in Republic Plato makes this claim, and they will show me the website where someone claims Plato said that, and it will be wrong. So yeah, you're not wrong. But it sure is annoying to have to deal with it from colleagues rather than from students.

I just want you to know that I’m losing my mind trying to find it, now. See my edits.

And see my other response! Looks like we followed the same breadcrumbs. What a disaster.

EDIT: If you look through the Wikipedia page history, you'll see that at some point Shaull did get correctly credited for the quote, but someone checked the cited source (with the incorrect attribution) and "corrected" the correction.

So, uh…who the hell is Jane Thompson?

...this is worse than I thought!?

The Wikipedia citation goes to the book

Mayo, Peter (1999). Gramsci, Freire, and Adult Education: Possibilities for Transformative Action. London: Zed Books. ISBN 978-1-85649-614-8.

On page 5 of that book, the quote is indeed attributed to Jane Thompson, as the editor of another book. The Gramsci book is on archive.org, the footnote points us to a 1980 text by Thompson, Adult Education for Change at page 26 (but also repeated in a different text by M. Mayo). That book is also on archive.org, and when you turn to page 26, you can see Thompson has block-quoted the block-quoted text, which she attributes to Paulo Freire! But return to the 1972 Freire text and you will see that, no, that quote is definitely part of Shaull's introduction to the book.

Just... astonishing. Multiple misattributions, literally none of the people quoting Shaull had any idea what they were doing. Words fail me.

Well, since we're here.

Do you think there's such a thing as a neutral education process?

Do you think there's such a thing as a neutral education process?

I do not!

Not sure what else to say about it, though. Cultural reproduction is a really complicated proposition even in monocultures; in places with values pluralism, you're basically always going to be goring someone's ox. What Freire (and all the crits) tend to get wrong is that they decline to subject their own proposed solutions to the standards of their own critique. At best their position basically boils down to "yes, your way is not neutral, I guess our way is also not technically neutral but noticing that makes us the good guys so it's okay when we do it." Contemporary identity politics is just yeschad.jpg-ing your own views while wojacking your opponent's.

Contemporary identity politics is just yeschad.jpg-ing your own views while wojacking your opponent's.

always_has_been.jpg

Nah.

This Friere guy has the right idea—banking vs. libertarian education is a neat phrasing of the problem. You could cut 90% of the critical oppressor/oppressed narrative, though, and nothing of value would be lost.

Maybe he suffered from success in that it seems obvious in hindsight? Rote memorization has gotten a pretty bad reputation over the years. As has top-down educational intervention, to the point of becoming a stock villain.

It depends on what you think education is intended to accomplish. I think a useful heuristic is to assume that education teaches someone how to think, indoctrination teaches someone what to think. But I think to educate people properly, at times it requires the interplay of both forces. People need a foundation of knowledge that doesn't derive from every individual having to reinvent the wheel, intellectually, but that doesn't come from people's mere curiosity. You need to uncritically build that foundation in people, as an authority figure; from first principles.

How could you teach someone how to think without introducing a frame that also teaches them what to think. How to think is a slightly larger space than what to think. But both are indoctrination.

People need a foundation of knowledge that doesn't derive from every individual having to reinvent the wheel, intellectually, but that doesn't come from people's mere curiosity.

I agree that you need to do that to create functional people, but it's still indoctrination. The unfortunate truth is that you need to indoctrinate children.

You need to uncritically build that foundation in people, as an authority figure; from first principles.

First principles are, by their nature, arbitrary. Actually, that's not fair, they aren't arbitrary, they are selected because of their relative usefulness. But they cannot be more or less true than other first principles exactly because they are first principles.

Biblical Truth: Everything the bible says is true. The bible should used as the decider for any dispute. Is a first principle.

The law of non contradiction: "Not both A and not A" or "¬(p ∧ ¬p)". Is another first principle.

There is no way to show that one is fundamentally more true than the other, because they are first principles. You need to use first principles to evaluate the truth of a statement.

Therefore, all education is indoctrination. In many ways, but at the very least in terms of first principles. Which is already going to account for a lot of indoctrination.

The law of non contradiction: "Not both A and not A" or "¬(p ∧ ¬p)". Is another first principle.

That one's pretty uncontroversial, but the more interesting one is the law of excluded middle: "either A or not A". We all learn it, but there's a school of thought (intuitionism) that this shouldn't be a basic law. And indeed there are some weeeeeeeird results in math that go away (or become less weird) if you don't allow proof by contradiction.

That one’s pretty uncontroversial

Well…

I essentially agree with you almost completely. That's actually the case I was making. Maybe the only thing I'd disagree with is the claim that all education is indoctrination.

Therefore, all education is indoctrination

This is wrong on its face. Words have meaning. Teaching a child basic algebra and 1+1=2 and the multiplication table is not "political" nor is it indoctrination. Teaching a child that the brown folx don't need to learn no colonizer math and infact there are indigenous ways of knowing is indoctrination.

Only an ideologue hellbent on using his teaching position as a way to indoctrinate children would say "all education is indoctrination".

I'm curious. So, generally, people indoctrinating can think that the things that they are trying to indoctrinate into are true, right? Like I assume, in the example given, the people tend to think that

So what makes something indoctrination, rather than merely teaching? Is it that it's unsupported (but surely there are all sort of things that are taught without citations, that we think is good and proper—"don't touch the stove" has no proof attached, unless they ignore your education/indoctrination)? Is it that it's not true, and so propagating wrong beliefs in general is indoctrination? I imagine the most likely stance is something like "inclining them towards a faction in an ongoing controversy," but that would seem to involve things we wouldn't want—e.g. people with familiarity with economics are more pro-market than the general population (let's assume the causation runs in that direction, that was my experience upon learning what little economics I have learned), and so teaching someone economics would be indoctrination, regardless of how demonstrable it is? Or is it whether there's ongoing controversy among the experts in particular?

The lines feel blurry.

So what makes something indoctrination, rather than merely teaching?

I wanted to go with something like "indoctrination is about values, teaching is about facts", but I think it's broader than that. If I had to boil it down to a single thing, I'd call it something like "openness to critical examination". Economics is superficially about facts, but a Marxist is going to be hostile to the idea that capitalism is good, Keynesian-descendant economists are going to be hostile to the idea that government stimulus might be counter productive, and libertarian-descendant economists will be hostile to the idea that a bad outcome could come out of anything other than government intervention.

I'm pretty sure a significant portion of the population ends up being indoctrinated into ideas that are true, rather than taught them. Everybody knows the Earth is round, but the average person would probably make a fool of themselves trying to debate a devoted Flat Earther.

That seems like a fine definition as long as you're okay with some indoctrination being just fine to do, which I think the previous poster would not have liked.

Yeah, when it comes to values I don't think it's possible to do anything other than indoctrination. I suppose you could do "Group X believes in A, B, and C, while group Y believes in D, E, and F", but you do have to teach what is the right thing to do at some point.

For me the issue is that I consider it to be the fundamental right and duty of the parents, not the state, or any private institution not authorized by the parents. The state indoctrinating children kind of makes a mockery of the very idea of democracy.

Honestly it ain't that blurry. There's "facts" about the world as far as the teacher/establishment understands them and there is "what ought to be done about the state of the world" sort of material, that's an entirely different thing. Further the teacher if they are interested in raising an army for culture war reasons understands full well taht certain things are held to be true by broader society and certain things are held to be true only by their own faction.

How would "infact there are indigenous ways of knowing" be indoctrination under this basis? That would not seem to be an ethical statement.

Secondly, are you saying that indoctrination is based upon factions? Does it cease to become indoctrination as the factions become smalle? For example, is saying that the actual nazis were doing bad things and you shouldn't do things like that indoctrination? What about saying that it seems like the global temperature rising was caused by humans?

You're wrong that these things can be easily separated.

I am not a fundamentalist christian. Some fundamentalist christians do not believe in evolution. In fact, evolutionary theory is directly contradictory to what they do believe.

There's "facts" about the world as far as the teacher/establishment understands them and there is "what ought to be done about the state of the world" sort of material,

If I was a science teacher for their children, I would want to teach them evolution (assuming I am following your definition of what is and isn't indoctrination). Evolution is a "'fact' about the world as far as the teacher understands it". However, me simply teaching what I believe to be factual, despite not being a moral value to me or a description of what a person ought to do, would be a threat to their worldview.

My simply providing what I see as facts would be hostile to them. Therefore, personally I would not want to do that - as that seems immoral to me. I would be indoctrinating their children into a worldview that was hostile to the worldview of their parents.

Do you see how I think all education is indoctrination, despite the fact that I am not trying to "raise an army for culture war reasons"? I am actively laying out boundaries of how not to do that.

Cleary from what I said, I disagree with you. I think all teaching is indoctrination. Do you think I am an "ideologue hellbent on using his teaching position as a way to indoctrinate children". I am not a teacher. I am absolutely not interested in indoctrinating the children of anyone else. I am interested in indoctrinating my own future children.

The indoctrination position you lay out is left wing. I am right wing and still stand by my position.

I don't know about "hellbent" but I am in favor of recognizing that it is normal and healthy to indoctrinate the children of my groups into a worldview. Not just teach the facts, but a coherent moral worldview. I don't think that is possible to avoid. Or if it is possible to avoid you will simply end up with children who are profoundly alienated. More likely, you will end up with children who become indoctrinated into some other groups worldview, one that is hostile to you. That is what happens to many children today, they are not indoctrinated enough by their parents so they're indoctrinated by radical leftists.

Attempts to avoid indoctrinating children into any moral/political worldview whatsoever do those children a disservice. Humans are, as Aristotle says "Political Animals". In general we want to belong to a worldview. Failing to provide that for children just makes them vulnerable to being snapped up by hostile ideologies.

I am not a teacher, and I do not want teachers indoctrinating my children. But I would like to raise them to align with my worldview and I recognize that that is indoctrination. I am not a totalitarian about how to raise children, I am happy to make space for them to question things. I mean, I'm here on the motte, I love a good argument and hope my children will express a healthy level of contrarianism. But I will not attempt to avoid bringing them into my culture and worldview. That would be cruel, so I am comfortable with indoctrinating them.

Yes.

Leaving a child near a hot stove will teach them something, and has nothing to do with a 'present system' or with world transformation.

Incorrectly-cited quotations are incredibly common, to the point where they are more common that correctly-cited ones. It's surprising how many people do this who should know better. You've probably repeated a few yourself.

This type of error was likely near universal in the past. In modern times, we at least have the ability to look it up. Wikiquote and Quote Investigator are good resources for this.

A good heuristic for writers is that all quotations are fake unless you can find it in a primary source. Even then, there's no guarantee that the phrase wasn't originally coined by someone else.

You've probably repeated a few yourself.

I haven't created the impression in you that I'm actually extremely neurotic about quotation authenticity?

...uh, well, good!

How can so many people be publishing stuff with this quote in it, and none of them paused long enough to check their source?

As an average Joe and non-academic, I just assume that a sizeable chunk of papers and citations are just made up and I look on requests for "source?" and quasi-religious appeals to "peer review" with an increasingly jaundiced eye. I think that a lot of this is probably not malicious, since I too have copied quotations from second or third hand sources without checking the original when writing undergrad papers, but that doesn't make this any less of a problem.

The usual retort is along the lines of "it might not be the perfect system, but it's the best one we've got." I'm not sure I agree. A tabloid magazine article claiming something outrageous is easy for people to evaluate and accept, reject, or suspend judgment. In contrast, a published study filled with impressive sounding words and using complicated statistical methods appears cloaked in a mantle of authority, expertise, and erudition has much more power to simply overawe plebs into accepting its conclusion.

This sloppy, lazy, or ideologically motivated science has the potential to be very harmful to a person's project of building a useful and accurate model of their world because when it's wrong, it's wrong in cleverer , deeper, more subtle ways than, say, the tabloid example above. A great analogy is "The Book" from Anathem:

Since the sole purpose of the Book was to punish its readers, the less said of it the better. To study it, to copy it out, and to memorize it was an extraordinary form of penance.

[...]

There was no point at all to the Book, which is what made it an especially dreaded form of penance. It contained twelve chapters. Like the scale used to measure earthquakes, these got exponentially worse as they went on, so Chapter Six was ten times as bad as Chapter Five, and so on. Chapter One was just a taste, meted out to delinquent children, and usually completed in an hour or two. Two meant at least one overnight stay, though any self-respecting troublemaker could bang it out in a day. Five typically meant a stay of several weeks. Any sentence of Chapter Six or higher could be appealed to the Primate and then to the Inquisition. Chapter Twelve amounted to a sentence of life at hard labor in solitary confinement; only three avout had finished it in 3690 years, and all of them were profoundly insane.

Beyond about Six, the punishment could span years. Many chose to leave the concent rather than endure it. Those who stuck it out were changed when they emerged: subdued, and notably diminished. Which might sound crazy, because there was nothing to it other than copying out the required chapters, memorizing them, and then answering questions about them before a panel of hierarchs. But the contents of the Book had been crafted and refined over many centuries to be nonsensical, maddening, and pointless: flagrantly at first, more subtly as the chapters progressed. It was a maze without an exit, an equation that after weeks of toil reduced to 2 = 3. Chapter One was a page of nursery-rhymes salted with nonsense-words that almost rhymed-but not quite. Chapter Four was five pages of the digits of pi. Beyond that, however, there was no further randomness in the Book, since it was easy to memorize truly random things once you taught yourself a few tricks-and everyone who’d made it through Chapter Four knew the tricks. Much harder to memorize and to answer questions about were writings that almost but did not quite make sense; that had internal logic, but only to a point. Such things cropped up naturally in the mathic world from time to time-after all, not everyone had what it took to be a Saunt. After their authors had been humiliated and Thrown Back, these writings would be gone over by the Inquisition, and, if they were found to be the right kind of awful, made even more so, and folded into later and more wicked editions of the Book. To complete your sentence and be granted permission to walk out of your cell, you had to master them just as thoroughly as, say, a student of quantum mechanics must know group theory. The punishment lay in knowing that you were putting all of that effort into letting a kind of intellectual poison infiltrate your brain to its very roots. It was more humiliating than you might imagine, and after I’d been toiling on Chapter Five for a couple of weeks I had no difficulty in seeing how one who completed a sentence of, say, Chapter 9 would emerge permanently damaged.

I like that analogy a lot.

This sloppy, lazy, or ideologically motivated science has the potential to be very harmful to a person's project of building a useful and accurate model of their world because when it's wrong, it's wrong in cleverer , deeper, more subtle ways than, say, the tabloid example above.

To this I would add: discovery of the problem also leads to similar harms. At some point every single one of these authors either (A) thought nothing of cribbing a cite from someone else without verifying it, or (B) wondered if they should check the cite, and then did not, or (C) checked the cite, decided to use the fake one anyway. I think that's an exhaustive list. In the case of (A), they basically are trusting any claim they happen to like, which is bad; in the case of (B), they are lazy scholars at best, and in the case of (C), they're actively deceptive. None of these possibilities rises to a level of "trustworthy professional," and I think that fact raises serious questions about other things they say and do. It impeaches their character as scholars. And rightly so! But this contributes to the ongoing crisis of confidence in our epistemic elites.

I found it in this document (PDF warning) as both the title and on page one:

Politics are an important influence in schools; as Paulo Freire stated in his 1968 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed: “all education is political; teaching is never a neutral act” (p.19).

There are a number of things wrong with the quotation in the PDF. First off, the source material (though not your own quotation!) misspells the author as “Friere.” Second, the cited book is not in the bibliography. Third, the language in the quotation (English) is wrong. It should be Spanish, as this work was first published in Spanish translation in Mexico.* Finally, the statement is too pithily set forth to be the author’s own words (in whatever language).

In other words, it has all the hallmarks of an apocryphal quotation.

Its existence is perpetuated by the academic need to hang every insight with clout in the field, no matter how banal, on a academic theorist. Feire’s writings basically make this point, albeit in a roundabout form that is rather inconvenient to quote properly. More careful academics will not attribute this phrase as a direct quotation (as does the author in the PDF). Interesting, this paraphrase is not original to the PDF author, so it cannot really be unquoted either. Thus, it is not surprising that the paraphrase gets misrepresented as an actual quote and this apocryphal citation gets cribbed from source to source, because it efficiently does the academic work it needs to do.

Because right now I'm feeling extremely uncharitable toward my outgroup on this, and it's such a petty thing, I know, but it just feels emblematic of the entire critical enterprise of focusing on "whatever works" over and above any commitment to truth, facts, history, academic rigor, professionalism, or even taking two seconds to check the damn source.

It’s not “two seconds” to check a source: you’ve already spent more time on it than that. And it still has not been checked. No one has pulled up the 1968 original edition, which doesn’t seem to be online and does not seem to be stocked in North American academic libraries. So how is an academic to handle it? Well, most would check the edition they do have at hand to find a page they can cite and, failing that, they assume that their peer-reviewed source got the cite to the inaccessible edition correct and they simply reproduce that. They might get more skeptical if the quotation seemed wrong, but it does encapsulate what the guy is trying to say.

Plus, the sentiment seems to assume that critical theorists’ writings are found in a single source (“the damn source”). Actually, it’s a confusing mess. Their publication histories are inevitably complex, being reprinted and republished multiple times, in multiple editions, multiple languages, and even multiple (discordant) translations. Most academics just cite the reader or book they have in their personal libraries. In this situation, differences are sure to happen and they are tolerated, because it’s a pain to check whether a quotation in some other edition is correct. And it’s tolerated because these critical thinkers stand for their ideas more than their words. There’s no citational archeology to find the original statement in the original edition and the original language. It’s not the Bible.

  • Or so Wikipedia tells me.

Cory Doctorow’s identification of “enshittification” is a valid and cogent examination of how platforms go to die, and when abstracted, how markets, empires, and other middlemen in general go to shit and either collapse or become niche, or capture the market and become permanently shitty.

It occurs to me now that one of the great strengths of American libertarian-capitalism, as it was in the 20th century, was an environment competitive enough to reduce the incentives and pressures to enshittify, primarily by the freedom to open a truly competitive business. The old could adapt and become competitive once more, but in doing so, they’d lose the benefits of enshittification; great for the customer, but hidden from execs on the bottom line.

But larger organs of power and money have both adapted, the way evolving systems tend to do, and have found ways to capture market forces and regulatory oversight, and entrench their enshittification without fear of ever being unseated. Late stage (enshittified) capitalism and late stage democracy are feeling their oats.

Most noticeably, in my opinion, was the way the American power-sliding-leftward culture captured academia and media, which used to be the oversight mechanisms keeping a free people educated and informed about the agglomerating nature of socialism and fascism. Now, all problems in society are laid at the feet of capitalism and free markets without examination of other possible governmental or societal causes. Any power shifts to the left are framed as “reforms,” and power shifts to the right are framed as “corruption” and “fascism.”

But that’s just leftism, not enshittification, you may (rightly) point out. Ah, but the fiscal effects: taxes must increase because budgets must increase. Why? Solving problems is no longer the goal of the government; now, issues must be managed. Societal woes must be serviced by specific groups of unionized government employees. Union contracts have to be renegotiated because wages have to increase with inflation and/or remain a multiple of the minimum wage. Training programs have to be run during working hours to avoid systemic oppression affecting intersectionally underprivileged clients. Multisyllabic words have to be repurposed to adequately and loquaciously describe innovative and ever more lucrative forms of enshittification.

This is a problem. What are some solutions?

But larger organs of power and money have both adapted, the way evolving systems tend to do, and have found ways to capture market forces and regulatory oversight, and entrench their enshittification without fear of ever being unseated. Late stage (enshittified) capitalism and late stage democracy are feeling their oats.

Most noticeably, in my opinion, was the way the American power-sliding-leftward culture captured academia and media, which used to be the oversight mechanisms keeping a free people educated and informed about the agglomerating nature of socialism and fascism. Now, all problems in society are laid at the feet of capitalism and free markets without examination of other possible governmental or societal causes. Any power shifts to the left are framed as “reforms,” and power shifts to the right are framed as “corruption” and “fascism.”

Was academia and media really all that different back then, as "oversight mechanisms keeping a free people educated and informed about the agglomerating nature of socialism and fascism?" Or was it largely a façade then as it is today?

Earlier today Ron Unz posted a lengthy article about some WW-II revisionism synthesizing a bunch of his earlier commentaries on the topic, but what surprised me most was a related article he linked containing shocking pre-war correspondence that I had never heard of before, although I am no stranger to WW-II revisionism.

The context is that when the Germans captured Warsaw they captured the original facsimiles of secret correspondence from the Polish Ambassador to the United States, the authenticity of which have been confirmed many times over. Here's a document from the collection, a secret report dated January 12, 1939 (pre-war) by Jerzy Potocki. This is a translation of the full secret report on the situation in the United States as perceived by the Polish ambassador:

There is a feeling now prevalent in the United States marked by growing hatred of Fascism, and above all of Chancellor Hitler and everything connected with National Socialism. Propaganda is mostly in the hands of the Jews who control almost 100% [of the] radio, film, daily and periodical press. Although this propaganda is extremely coarse and presents Germany as black as possible–above all religious persecution and concentration camps are exploited–this propaganda is nevertheless extremely effective since the public here is completely ignorant and knows nothing of the situation in Europe.

At the present moment most Americans regard Chancellor Hitler and National Socialism as the greatest evil and greatest peril threatening the world. The situation here provides an excellent platform for public speakers of all kinds, for emigrants from Germany and Czechoslovakia who with a great many words and with most various calumnies incite the public. They praise American liberty which they contrast with the totalitarian states.

It is interesting to note that in this extremely well-planned campaign which is conducted above all against National Socialism, Soviet Russia is almost completely eliminated. Soviet Russia, if mentioned at all, is mentioned in a friendly manner and things are presented in such a way that it would seem that the Soviet Union were cooperating with the bloc of democratic states. Thanks to the clever propaganda the sympathies of the American public are completely on the side of Red Spain.

This propaganda, this war psychosis is being artificially created. The American people are told that peace in Europe is hanging only by a thread and that war is inevitable. At the same time the American people are unequivocally told that in case of a world war, America also must take an active part in order to defend the slogans of liberty and democracy in the world. President Roosevelt was the first one to express hatred against Fascism. In doing so he was serving a double purpose; first he wanted to divert the attention of the American people from difficult and intricate domestic problems, especially from the problem of the struggle between capital and labor. Second, by creating a war psychosis and by spreading rumors concerning dangers threatening Europe, he wanted to induce the American people to accept an enormous armament program which far exceeds United States defense requirements.

Regarding the first point, it must be said that the internal situation on the labor market is growing worse constantly. The unemployed today already number 12 million. Federal and state expenditures are increasing daily. Only the huge sums, running into billions, which the treasury expends for emergency labor projects, are keeping a certain amount of peace in the country. Thus far only the usual strikes and local unrest have taken place. But how long this government aid can be kept up it is difficult to predict today. The excitement and indignation of public opinion, and the serious conflict between private enterprises and enormous trusts on the one hand, and with labor on the other, have made many enemies for Roosevelt and are causing him many sleepless nights.

As to point two, I can only say that President Roosevelt, as a clever player of politics and a connoisseur of American mentality, speedily steered public attention away from the domestic situation in order to fasten it on foreign policy. The way to achieve this was simple. One needed, on the one hand, to enhance the war menace overhanging the world on account of Chancellor Hitler, and, on the other hand, to create a specter by talking about the attack of the totalitarian states on the United States. The Munich pact came to President Roosevelt as a godsend. He described it as the capitulation of France and England to bellicose German militarism. As was said here: Hitler compelled Chamberlain at pistol-point. Hence, France and England had no choice and had to conclude a shameful peace.

The prevalent hatred against everything which is in any way connected with German National Socialism is further kindled by the brutal attitude against the Jews in Germany and by the émigré problem. In this action Jewish intellectuals participated; for instance, Bernard Baruch; the Governor of New York State, Lehman; the newly appointed judge of the Supreme Court, Felix Frankfurter; Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau, and others who are personal friends of Roosevelt. They want the President to become the champion of human rights, freedom of religion and speech, and the man who in the future will punish trouble-mongers. These groups, people who want to pose as representatives of “Americanism” and “defenders of democracy” in the last analysis, are connected by unbreakable ties with international Jewry.

For this Jewish international, which above all is concerned with the interests of its race, to put the President of the United States at this “ideal” post of champion of human rights, was a clever move. In this manner they created a dangerous hotbed for hatred and hostility in this hemisphere and divided the world into two hostile camps. The entire issue is worked out in a mysterious manner. Roosevelt has been forcing the foundation for vitalizing American foreign policy, and simultaneously has been procuring enormous stocks for the coming war, for which the Jews are striving consciously. With regard to domestic policy, it is extremely convenient to divert public attention from anti-Semitism which is ever growing in the United States, by talking about the necessity of defending faith and individual liberty against the onslaught of Fascism.

At least from the 1939 perspective of the Polish ambassador to the United States, the purported role of the media as "oversight mechanisms keeping a free people educated and informed about the agglomerating nature of socialism and fascism" was a farce then as it is now.

Wouldn’t your point be considerably undermined by the near indisputable fact that Nazism was, in actual fact, a severe threat to both fundamental human right to life as well as world peace? And the fact that despite all this FDR actually failed to bring the US into war against the Nazis? There is no global Jewish conspiracy.

FDR actually failed to bring the US into war against the Nazis

If I recall correctly, America was attacked in Hawaii by the Japanese, and that was used as justification to land Americans in France to fight the Germans. If FDR failed to bring the US into war with the Nazis, what am I thinking of?

Germany declared war on the United States, which was very welcome to the UK and Winston Churchill. There was actually some debate in congress I believe about whether Pearl Habour meant that the US should get involved at all in Europe, and it may have hypothetically gone the other way. The Soviets did not declare war on the Japanese until late in the war, and visa versa the Japanese did not feel under obligation to declare on the Soviets when Hitler launched Barbarossa.

Hitler for some reason thought the US was weak and it was in Germany's interests to openly declare war, which was... bold.

What was used as justification to land Americans in France to fight the Germans was the fact that Germany had declared war on the US shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack.

The US had been waging undeclared war in the Atlantic against Germany for about a year prior to Hitler's declaration of war.

Do you really think the US was neutral in the war before that time?

That is irrelevant to what was used as justification for the Normandy invasion, which was what OP's claim related to.

You don't have to answer the question if you don't want to. The assertion was "FDR actually failed to bring the US into war against the Nazis", but to me that depends on whether or not the US was actually neutral before Germany declared war.

That was not the assertion that I was responding to.

Yeah that’s exactly where it breaks down, that’s a misunderstanding. Germany declared war on the US! Not the other way around. It wasn’t actually a total given that we would have preemptively declared on them first. And if we had declared first, it would have been a much more difficult sell to the public. Being the recipient, even if it may seem a bit of a technicality, nevertheless quieted a lot of domestic opposition. On top of all that, there’s the military reality of the Pacific campaign — pure numbers aren’t useful, as you need lots of ships to make use of those numbers, and time. While Europe was a lot easier to just ship over men by the hundred thousand much sooner, once the war is truly Axis vs Allies.

Wouldn’t your point be considerably undermined by the near indisputable fact that Nazism was, in actual fact, a severe threat to both fundamental human right to life as well as world peace?

All Great Powers are a severe threat to both the fundamental human right to life and world peace, this isn't saying much. Are you saying Germany had a plan to attack the West? That's a popular conception but one that is also dismissed among the reflection of "insiders." There's an interesting 1945 diary entry from James Forrestal, the first U.S. Secretary of Defense:

Played golf today with Joe Kennedy [Roosevelt’s Ambassador to Great Britain in the years immediately before the war]. I asked him about his conversations with Roosevelt and Neville Chamberlain from 1938 on. He said Chamberlain’s position in 1938 was that England had nothing with which to fight and that she could not risk going to war with Hitler. Kennedy’s view: That Hitler would have fought Russia without any later conflict with England if it had not been for Bullitt’s urging on Roosevelt in the summer of 1939 that the Germans must be faced down about Poland; neither the French nor the British would have made Poland a cause of war if it had not been for the constant needling from Washington. Bullitt, he said, kept telling Roosevelt that the Germans wouldn’t fight; Kennedy that they would, and that they would overrun Europe. Chamberlain, he says, stated that America and the world Jews had forced England into the war.

What Kennedy told me in this conversation jibes substantially with the remarks Clarence Dillon had made to me already, to the general effect that Roosevelt had asked him in some manner to communicate privately with the British to the end that Chamberlain should have greater firmness in his dealings with Germany...

Looking backward there is undoubtedly foundation for Kennedy’s belief that Hitler’s attack could have been deflected to Russia…

The idea that the media is so full of this cynical, power-seeking narrative building today, but in the 1930s was when it was actually dedicated to the truth of "keeping a free people educated" is what looks naïve in the context of these insider perspectives.

So Great Britain took a stand and pressured Poland to not negotiate a settlement over 95% ethnically German Danzig. Then Great Britain declared war on Germany after their invasion of Poland, which the Germans did not expect, then however-many-tens-of-millions dead and the Soviet Union conquered half of Eurasia, including all of Poland... If you don't trust the media narrative-building today it should also make you somewhat suspicious of the narrative-building of the past.

I don’t think you can simply call the entire body of WWII scholarship “suspicious narrative building”. I’m especially astonished to see an actual argument… arguing that the West’s meddling caused the war? Dude. It was brutal and vicious German expansionism, abetted by Soviet greed, that caused the invasion of multiple neighbors, an outright war of conquest. And that’s not even getting into the obvious Holocaust and associated war crimes angle. I do appreciate the source but it’s the height of narcisssism on the part of the two Americans quoted to take full responsibility for the UK going to war. They aren’t as influential as their egos think. Don’t forget Poland was the last straw of a long string of events and invasions. If you want to find a culprit, Munich is a good start as even Hitler admitted he was willing to back down if push came to shove. But the acquiescence gave him a false sense of weakness for later moves. In particular, it’s well documented Hitler thought until the very end that the UK wouldn’t join in and was a bit in denial when they did — but a lot of that had to do with his idea of Britain as a racially superior country, and in his schema the racial winners didn’t fight each other, and less the actual actions of the UK itself.

It was a threat to Europe certainly, but I don’t think it would have affected the Americas as much. They were genocidal especially against Jews and Romaní. But given the oceans that surround the American continent and the fact that the shortest pacific route would require a launch from the USSR, which I don’t think they could do without taking Moscow.

The threat is moral. The retreat of democracy, liberalism, human rights, and other enlightenment virtues. And certainly after the war the narrative of the Allies (except the Soviet Bloc) who later became NATO “saved the world” with the center of the alliance in Washington DC, who could boast a strong economy and military readiness because those oceans mean that war didn’t destroy our cities or kill our civilians. This same “save the world” motif tends to show up when we want to go to war. Every war since then has been fought “to stop human rights abuses.” Putin has in recent times been recast as hitleresque in the sense of seeking to destroy Ukraine, and wanting lebensraum. Even NATO bombings in Serbia were cast as stopping genocide.

Most of those later stories are at least somewhat true. But the larger point is that the logic of NATO’s right to stand astride the globe and to sanction or bomb or invade are based on the logic of WW2. We are holding ourselves out as moral paragons on the basis of human rights and liberal democracy and free trade as the proper way to do things.

In an alternate universe, FDR doesn't die in 1945. He refuses to nuke the Japanese and the war drags out for 2 more years, tripling the number of American war dead. In 1949, after an incredible 16 years on the throne, FDR retires with a popularity rating in the teens. In the mean time, the Soviet Union has taken advantage of his weakness to absorb large amounts of Europe into its sphere including Austria and Finland. Hokkaido is now a Russian island. The communist party wins a plurality in French elections. In the United States, FDR is widely regarded as akin to Neville Chamberlain.

To me, it seems like FDR's biggest sin was that he was simply wrong about Communism. The Pollyanna attitude of his administration toward the Soviet Union is shocking when we read about it today. And his interventions during the Great Depression were largely ineffective. FDR died at the right time. His historical legacy remains intact because of Truman.

In an alternate universe you could also have posited what actually happened and say this would have destroyed the legacy of FDR and Churchill, you cannot underestimate the power of post-war narrative building. I grew up hearing "If the United States hadn't defeated Hitler we would all be speaking German right now" and genuinely believing that we stopped Germany from conquering the entire world. So that map looks good in comparison to that post-war narrative and the legacy of those involved remains intact.

Yeah, I was trying to think of places that the Soviet Union would have snatched with a weakened U.S. and it wasn't easy because they had already snatched so much. I think unquestionably Hokkaido, Austria, Finland, and Greece. Beyond that, I don't know. Maybe Turkey, Cyprus, parts of Iran?

Why FDR continues to get a pass for enabling and celebrating a genocidal dictator I'll never know.

Definitely Turkey. The USSR trying to wrest the straits away from Turkey after the war is the reason it's in NATO.

If France and Germany stay out of the war, what alternative map do you think arises that looks better than the one we ended up with? An Eastern Europe dominated by the Soviets was bad, but it's a dream world in comparison to one dominated by the Germans. Considering that the non-Jewish Poles either executed or forced into labor by the Nazis during the relatively brief period of occupation numbers in the millions, being a Soviet satellite was a walk in the park in comparison. More likely, though, the Germans would have lost the war in a similar manner to how they actually did (no, I don't think there were enough troops defending the west to have made a difference), except the Soviet Steamroller wouldn't have stopped at the Elbe. Stalin would have taken all of Germany, plus Finland, Greece, Yugoslavia, Austria, and Italy. And that's assuming that Hitler never pushed into Denmark or the Low Countries, which would have been easy pickings. I don't see how the US, UK and France all stay out of this war and the result is somehow better.

An Eastern Europe dominated by the Soviets was bad, but it's a dream world in comparison to one dominated by the Germans.

I can imagine a dream world where Germany becomes the leader of a continental European entente that includes Poland in the fold. Hitler made peace offers in 1940 that entailed making Poland an independent protectorate, is that really different from their EU and NATO membership today? That map looks like the map of today but minus a Cold War that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war...

Hitler wanted an alliance with Poland against the Soviet Union, and the Poles were inclined to negotiate with the Germans until some bad timing with leadership transitioning and pressure from the British to not negotiate with the Germans.

When Germany was in its strongest negotiating position in 1941, the Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess solo-piloted an airplane to Scotland, strapped on a parachute for the first time, and bailed out in an attempt to go around Churchill and make contact with England's peace factions. Apparently the peace offer was "the Nazis would withdraw from western Europe, in exchange for British neutrality over a planned attack on Russia". It's hard to doubt the sincerity of Rudolf Hess wanting to avoid war with Great Britain given what he did as the leader second in command only to Hitler.

Hess, by the way, was tried as a major war criminal at Nuremberg and convicted. He received a sentence of life in prison, and remained in prison longer than any other German leader until he committed suicide at the age of 93.

I won't speculate who would have won a war between Germany and the Soviet Union in either of those alt-history scenarios. Whoever wins that war, there is no chance in my mind the outcome would have been worse than what actually happened, with Churchill refusing every peace offer made by the Germans and settling for nothing less than unconditional surrender after the complete destruction of Europe and tens of millions of deaths, the Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe, and the "denazification" psychological warfare that consolidated the truth regime we all live under today.

I can imagine a dream world where the Soviets become the leader of a continental entente that includes Poland in the fold. Is the Warsaw Pact really any different than EU or NATO membership today? That is, I can if I pretend that the USSR wasn't a horrible state that killed millions and violated the human rights of everyone else. You can continue to play a game of "let's pretend" and claim that anti-German propaganda was merely post-hoc rationalization for the US getting involved in war, but it doesn't fly. The German state actually was that bad. Any "independent" Poland in such a system would only have been independent to the extent that the German transplants would have had some form of self-government after liquidating the native population. This isn't some wild speculation; it's what Hitler said himself, and what Hitler started to implement during the occupation.

Is the Warsaw Pact really any different than EU or NATO membership today?

Yes, because the Warsaw Pact became the immediate enemy of Western Europe, and West Germany (composed mostly of former Nazi leadership) became the immediate ally of the West. How is this at all coherent? Why couldn't we just skip to that part where Germany is allied with Western Europe against the Soviet Union (which is what Hitler explicitly wanted) without destroying Europe and gifting the USSR half the continent? If Poland had entered the fold as a satellite for Western Europe as Germany had wanted, and as Poland is today, then that is the more logical outcome unless you buy into the post-war propaganda lies that Germany aspired to conquer Western Europe and the world. Hitler also wanted Great Britain as an ally against the Soviet Union, so why was a Total War with unconditional surrender necessary to align West Germany with the West against the USSR?

The US, Great Britain, and France wanted war with Germany and Germany did not want war with them. Instead, we fought an entire World War and destroyed Europe in order to create a pact for a true enemy to the West. It's completely incoherent and unjustifiable without the post-war mythos.

That was the appraisal of General Patton by the way:

We may have been fighting the wrong enemy (Germany) all along. But while we're here (on the Soviet border), we should go after the bastards now, 'cause we're gonna have to fight 'em eventually.

Patton wanted to arm the just-defeated Germans and attack the Soviet Union, proposing we "may have been fighting the wrong enemy." How do people's hearts not sink for Europe when they realize what could have been avoided if the West hadn't waged total war with unconditional surrender demands on Germany, rebuffing Germany's peace offers every step of the way? Obviously, their mind is on the post-war mythos rather than the reality of the situation at the time which is much harder to defend without relying on those narratives.

You're leaving out the part where the Nazis still control Germany and Eastern Europe. The situation today isn't what Hitler wanted because Poland and all the rest are actually independent countries run by their own people and not satellites settled with German transplants with the native population relegated to second-class citizens at best and exterminated at worst. They also have at least some semblance of modern democratic, liberal institutions that Hitler never would have tolerated. This is what the West thought was worth fighting a war over.

In an alternate universe the US just settles on a peace deal with Japan rather than surrender. Instead of relying on a racist caricature of the Japanese being completely insane and willing to fight to the last man, woman and child if the white man ever sets foots on their sacred shores, I think it's more prudent to assume that the Japanese high command recognized that the war was over and was looking for ways to end it on equal terms. Which, according to the mainstream US story, was exactly what was happening and was indeed the purpose behind the alleged Japanese plan of 'Ketsu Go'.

The notion that the only way to end the war was with American boots in Tokyo is a mythical one. The US did not need to drop the bombs since it did not need the complete subjugation of Japan. On that note, the US had no grand strategic forethought that could reach past the nose of the allegedly jewish propaganda described above. Leaving them with the USSR in Europe and China in Asia.

As is the case with most of the foreign policy ventures of the past, we are living through the failures of 'great' historical figures who amounted to little other than drinking the cool-aid of their time. With history serving as a sugarcoat that we can use to help convince ourselves that we are the end product of 'great' men making the best out of a bad situation. Things just happen, the moral arch of history bent in such a way that we had to do what was done. So no matter how inhumane and horrible we acted, just know it was ultimately justified. God bless and Amen.

I think it's more prudent to assume that the Japanese high command recognized that the war was over and was looking for ways to end it on equal terms.

No, it's still not. The fight-to-the-last-man "caricature" didn't come from racism, it came from a combination of the Japanese "Glorious Death of One Hundred Million" campaign and their army-prompted civilian mass suicides on already-taken islands. The Japanese high command wasn't looking for ways to end the war before any nukes were dropped; they were attempting a coup d'état to try and prevent a surrender after two nukes.

No, it's still not.

It is and the Wikipedia link in your linked comment says exactly the same thing I did.

While Japan no longer had a realistic prospect of winning the war, Japan's leaders believed they could make the cost of invading and occupying the Home Islands too high for the Allies to accept, which would lead to some sort of armistice rather than total defeat.

Like I said in my comment, the only reason for nuking Japan was to induce unconditional surrender. And my overarching point was the US did not need Japan to surrender in the first place.

The allies operated in a world where Versailles brought very real problems: that is, a peace treaty after a surrender that didn't come with Frenchmen marching into Berlin and that ended with the losers deluding themselves of their own grandeur the decade after. The way both Germany and Japan were treated was in part done to make sure that sort of thing would NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST happen: Germany and Japan were beaten more comprehensively than the central powers of 1918 were, and rather than extract reparations from them, they were paid into extensively.

Judging by the peace that's followed afterward, I see no reason to condemn this. It worked, I'm glad it did, I appreciate that it was made so.

It's in a way helpful for you to so completely make my prior point.

As is the case with most of the foreign policy ventures of the past, we are living through the failures of 'great' historical figures who amounted to little other than drinking the cool-aid of their time. With history serving as a sugarcoat that we can use to help convince ourselves that we are the end product of 'great' men making the best out of a bad situation. Things just happen, the moral arch of history bent in such a way that we had to do what was done. So no matter how inhumane and horrible we acted, just know it was ultimately justified. God bless and Amen.

Maybe don't write up a peace treaty that is unfair and conducive to another war breaking out. To pretend the Treaty of Versailles was ever about peace is vulgar.

Judging by the peace that's followed afterward, I see no reason to condemn this. It worked, I'm glad it did, I appreciate that it was made so.

Considering you have no knowledge of what peace was possible without incinerating a bunch of civilians for spectacle I consider your appreciation of it a strike against your moral character.

The German response to Versailles is well-documented, was fairly predictable, but their insistance that it was a particularly unfair treaty rings and rang hollow after the treaties of Frankfurt and Brest-Litovsk. I don't pity the Germans today, and people ought not have pitied them back then, though even in strictly realist terms that does still leave Versailles a failure.

Considering you have no knowledge of what peace was possible without incinerating a bunch of civilians for spectacle I consider your appreciation of it a strike against your moral character.

I love insulting internet randos as much as anyone else does, but I'm gonna stick to people who don't hind their insults behind thin intellectual veneers to scratch that itch.

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Dropping the bombs was not simply about ending the war, it was also about sending a message how the post-war world would shape up (especially to Stalin and Soviet Russia): look what we can do. Don't piss us off.

One of the biggest errors one can commit is reading history through the lens of the present rather than through the lens of the past. Yes, we now know that the USSR became a military juggernaut in WWII and subsequently became a superpower at the head of an international league of communist states whose power only rivaled the US and the West more broadly. But things looked different in 1939. Sure, Stalin was a strongman and a thug, but so is Paul Biya, and most Americans haven't even heard of him, let alone are concerned about him. I'm not trying to equivocate the USSR in 1939 with Cameroon today, but if one were trying to evaluate international threats back then, it would be ridiculous to put the Soviet Union in the same league as Germany. Russia had always been a backwater, and Soviet attempts to industrialize and modernize hadn't really borne much fruit, resulting famines due to agricultural "reforms". Furthermore, Stalin's purges had left the military apparatus in complete disarray, and this is after they had collapsed in the first World War and not exactly had much success before that. At the same time, Germany was a historically strong power is intent on remilitarizing in contravention of the Versailles treaty, all the while spouting rhetoric that war was necessary for national hygiene and demonstrating that not only did it wish to annex heretofore independent countries that had German-speaking populations, but that it would invade other countries as well, even after it had explicitly promised not to. If Roosevelt had taken the same level of caution toward Stalin as he did toward Hitler, he would have been an idiot.

One of the biggest errors one can commit is reading history through the lens of the present rather than through the lens of the past.

Indeed, and I can't think of a war where the post-war mythos served such a profound role in the post-hoc moral justification for starting the conflict than WWII.

Let's assume for argument's sake that Kennedy's view that neither Great Britain or France would have declared war against Germany over Poland without pressure from the United States. What is the justification for this pressure from the United States under the scenario? There's no credible threat against France or Great Britain, much less the United States itself.

If you remove the post-war mythos surrounding Holocaust and Hitler as the anti-Christ of post-war Progressivism, what in 1939 would motivate FDR to risk such an enormous conflict with disastrous consequences, and contrary to the opinion of 95%+ of the American public?

I'm sure there are many reasons we can point to, but none of them formulate the popular narrative we live under today for why we fought this war, and I think that says something profound.

In case you missed the point of my post, Hitler was the bigger threat. Roosevelt knew this—which is why he was so aggressive in his foreign policy—because all the evidence at the time pointed toward it. The "postwar mythos" you speak of is merely confirmation of this. You act as if Roosevelt was either entirely irrational or had some ulterior motive. And for what it's worth I trust Joe Kennedy about as far as I can throw his corpse. The guy was an egomaniac and an antisemite who made self-serving comments after the war to make it look like all the smart money would have backed him had it not been for that conniving Roosevelt. Even Chamberlain changed his tune when it became clear that Hitler had no interest in being appeased.

Or was it largely a façade then as it is today?

It was a facade, but it was a facade for multiple competing groups.

Producers would like to get the most money for the least effort. Thus, they abuse lock-in and network effects to squeeze their consumers, converging on a minimum viable product. Okay, neat.

In your analogy, the government is the producer. It’s also the product, via its services, and the money, via kickbacks and sinecures. This is incoherent because shittification is not about self-licking ice cream cones. It’s about market capture, and markets have never been a good description of governments.

What is the equivalent of creating a new firm? And how exactly was a free, socialist-hating media supposed to enshrine it? Americans didn’t stay in America because academics were willing to denounce Hitler and Stalin. They stayed because dictators are bad for business. They stayed, voted in leftists and rightists, and won the Cold War.

American socialism was strongest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Same for fascism. They rose and fell in the time of this amazing free enterprise, because it turns out your enemies get to use the pulpit, too.

You’re looking for reasons to caricature your enemies. This theory isn’t a very good one.

The analogy of the OP seems apt.

Companies and bureaucracies tend (over time) to increase their own power at the expense of the people they nominally serve. This could take the form of higher prices or higher taxes.

The only thing that keeps the system working is competition. But when regulatory capture locks out competition, things will become enshittified. The same thing has happened in states that have transitioned from somewhat robust democracies into one-party states. California comes to mind here.

This is of course not limited to liberalism. A conservative one party state could have the same effect.

But parties aren’t competing to provide the same good. Outside of the smallest offices, there’s all this baggage of policy planks and national networks.

The analogy to buying from a different company isn’t voting differently. It’s moving to a country with similar politics. Possible, but a high bar which I wouldn’t expect to decide the issue.

Btw - in that vein - can themotte help me find a specific article - about how modern physical products peddled on instagram are shitty just because sponsorship on instagram take huge part of the money for the product?

Ah, but the fiscal effects: taxes must increase because budgets must increase. Why? Solving problems is no longer the goal of the government; now, issues must be managed. Societal woes must be serviced by specific groups of unionized government employees. Union contracts have to be renegotiated because wages have to increase with inflation and/or remain a multiple of the minimum wage.

Federal Receipts as a share of GDP have bounced around within the same 15-20% range since the 1950's. Labor productivity has followed a roughly linear trend . Public Sector unions are still around but private sector unions are dead as a door nail compared to the pre-enshittification era. Here's a Brookings report outraged that we're hitting a record high of roughly 11 million Federal employees, but their graph shows we had roughly 9 million in 1984 and we've had a 40% increase in population since then so I'm not sure there's been a large proportional change.

Your talk about American Libertarian Capitalism but the era of triumphant deregulation before Conservatives started to admit that globalization deindustrializing the 'heartland' was bad lasted thirty years from 1980-2008?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OPHNFB

“enshittification” is the inevitable outcome of winner-take all markets, lack of viable competition, and profit maximization. I cannot recall any services that do not have more restrictions or degradation compared to even as recently as a few years ago: more ads, more paywalls, throttling, more bloat and unnecessary features, more crud and spam . Many services/products initially run at a loss. after attaining critical mass, comes the enshittification to recoup costs.

Seems the general thrust of the "market right" in the last twenty years has moved away from competition - and its reliance on taking consumer preference/sovereignty for granted - as particularly important and toward a greater reliance on human capital and realism about the gulf between what the best and brightest in Big Biz know vs. everyone else. You can see how this dovetails with "state capacity libertarianism" or a more holistic, body-politic-as-organism kind of mentality. A corporate noblesse oblige that is more concerned about rival states and national striving than petty consumer preferences. Big business and government allies as tastemakers, not taste-takers.

We don't even hear chatter anymore about the importance of small, nimble companies, as somehow inherently better incentivized by non-complacent thirst for profits and local knowledge. That's all out. Who can even talk about that when AI and its reliance on behemoth companies' data collection is all the rage?

Now, all problems in society are laid at the feet of capitalism and free markets without examination of other possible governmental or societal causes.

If you read Cory Doctorow's other posts on his site, he seems to be heavily against capitalism. He recognizes that capitalists working with the government isn't really capitalism, but calls them out in such a way as to suggest the answer is more government interference, not less, and things that people call socialism.

(Also, "enshittification" is not the best term, because it's too generic sounding.)

Capitalism is just another of the words that permeates our culture and even day-to-day life which is basically meaningless stand-in. It may have some prosaic "definitions" such as private ownership of means of production, but virtually nobody uses them this way. In the eyes of many, capitalism is whatever we have now, which is to be problematized, criticized and changed. On the opposite side we have socialism, which is also not strictly defined, it is just opposite of our current shitty system of capitalism, it is an ideal state that will work and whatever it is, it is definitely not capitalism. So capitalism is just useless umbrella term with negative connotation be it insensitive free-market capitalism or it may be late stage crony capitalism and it may be even party-state capitalism under current regime in China.

Capitalism vs socialism is best viewed as part of ideological language, it is similar to other radical rhetoric such as oppression vs liberation and so forth. It really is that stupid, we need to fight oppression/capitalism and if result of that fight turns into shit, then some new form of capitalism/oppression sneaked in through reactionary forces and true socialism/liberation was not even tried. History needs to make another another revolution, only next time informed by previous failures until the true utopia will eventually be achieved.

At this point I think that words like capitalism are just brainworms and we are best served if we taboo these words and restart the conversation.

Sure, but if Capitalism needs to be tabooed Enshittification needs it much worse.

I draw heavy parallels from enshittification to Meditations on Moloch . It is a process which is not unique to capitalism which Doctorow readily lays down blame to why it happens. The most succinct way I can think of this concept without making it about capitalism is: it is when you optimize for something and you lean in to a local maxima, but if everyone leans into to the same maxima the whole system collapses.

The solution is decentralization and resilient diversification. If see that a bunch of people have been trapped by the molochian forces you move away from them because you know there is disruption, abrupt chaos and collapse about to happen. We are watching this happening with Reddit because they are trying to IPO and we are seeing it with New York because Leftism induced bureaucracy. It isn't capitalism it is moloch.


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