I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening competitive mindset.
So sure, one way is to protect myself and those I love behind a gated community. But that's pretty much voluntarily throwing myself to jail, I'd rather make it less necessary for others to be aggressive against my kin. I believe it requires more (and smarter) redistribution.
Another reason why it's my selfish interest, as a professional expert, to continuously reshuffle wealth, is that my social value resides in what I know and in my ability to learn, not in my family's accumulated wealth. Stabilising accumulated wealth, especially across generations, would make it harder to use my skills in order to climb higher on the social ladder.
Is my education a factor in this view? Probably.
* It helps me grasping some sociological insights which ought to be obvious. For instance, while hearing political speeches about wealth (re)distribution, I stay aware that the property laws are a social construct that must be agreed upon and can be altered at will by society, not a natural (let alone a God-given) law.
* It exposed me to a lot of competition, in school then at work, and although I've been a winner on average, I aspire to more fulfilling activities than turning others into losers. I have no revenge to take on others people, I don't enjoy crushing them.
* Having gone from penniless undergrad to minimum-wage PhD student to well-paid junior then senior specialist, I've experienced a variety of wealth levels. As a result I'm convinced that once basic needs are addressed, monetary incentives don't work the way Adam Smith' sycophants pretend they do. Money's meaningful as a way to keep score, and to compare myself among my social peers; but taxes don't affect that much, as long as they don't reverse relative wealth between potential peers.
If they're wrong ( and oh so many are ) , "Adam Smith's sycophants" have a fundamental reading comprehension problem. He's nominally a tepid-right, Virginia school economist, but Russ Roberts frames "Wealth of Nations" as a drill down of "Theory of Moral Sentiments". Smith spends barrels of ink decrying rents.
Many, many people who espouse Smith just cherry-pick reinforcement from him. Now: having said that, I am no progressive. I'd actually be for redistribution if it could be shown to work; we can't even get insurance payments fo people from Hurricane Sandy right. There is just always a paucity of philsopher-kings. We're just not that smart. It takes decades for the permanent bureaucratic class to debug these things - look at the history of the relativelty simple ( and possibly brilliant ) ag. subsidy regime.
I don't think we have a good empirical handle on aggression. I've known too many wealthy people who I would not turn my back on. I've known too many saintly/salt-of-the-earth/shirt-off-their-back poor people. The proportions do not favor material comfort having much of a seat at the table.
The cultural more of "crushing people" kinda looks like a thing now, and it makes me modestly angry.
I view Smith as one element of the (very important) Scots Enlightenment, along with Hume, James Watt and all the others. Where those guys are/were right, they're still right. That's my bias, though.
In practice altering the distribution of wealth and income doesn't usually involve taking from A and giving to B. It usually is more taking from the rich and spending the money on free education and the like. You can also put taxes on large estates, give subsidised houses / loans to the less well off and so on.
There used to be quite a lot of that between WW2 and Thatcher getting in in the UK with tax rates as high as 98%. The period of this song https://youtu.be/pzU2owPegHE?t=23s
In general, if you subsidize something you get more of it and it costs more. Of course there may be some odd current in the river which makes this untrue - an example is bulk grain subsidies in the US, which prices risk of underproduction way down. IMO, this is like "if you need 4 GB RAM , get 8 just to be safe".
Indeed, in both housing and in education, we've subsidized it, there is more of it and it costs more.
Overall even the rich benefit from higher taxes if the middle class had more income today most of them would have been spending it on things the rich provide.
Today by squeezing the middle class and lower middle class they might be making money but over long term with the middle class having lower disposable income they will be spending less so hurt the higher classes as well.
"I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening competitive mindset."
That's mostly my rationale for being in favor of (moderate) wealth redistribution, which on surface would be against my interests, as someone by no means wealthy but with an above-median income.
What's the point of having money if you cannot walk safely among people ?
Is resource redistribution the only way to solve income inequality? I always believed we weren't playing a zero sum game. It's likely that when we are all working for a living and prospering then we all prosper a little more. I don't believe that means someone rich has to lose a little more so someone poor can win.
> I always believed we weren't playing a zero sum game. It's likely that when we are all working for a living and prospering then we all prosper a little more. I don't believe that means someone rich has to lose a little more so someone poor can win.
If you studied economics, you'd very quickly realize that many areas that people compete for and responsible for inequality are zero-sum (at least in the short-run and medium-run). It is more tricky for wealth, since once person owning something more esoteric, like a portfolio does not necessarily preclude anyone else from doing so.
The most notable example, of course, is real estate, especially in the areas where zoning laws prohibit from building upwards. You might also know it as a NIMBY suburban sprawl, which is one of the biggest factors in creating inequality and misery in the US.
Another example that I haven't explored fully is political influence. The attention and decision-making of policymakers is definitely zero-sum by virtue of there being a fixed amount of them.
I don't believe that the laborer and the software developer are competing for the same resources in most cases. They are not playing a zero sum game. Their resource accumulations are based on market conditions, the market allocates toward value of utility in a mostly efficient manner.
Why would we move from a set of natural laws that govern allocation to a central authority based one? Ie, why should government take from the software developer some of his resource so that the laborer has more than what the market would allocate?
"It's likely that when we are all working for a living and prospering then we all prosper a little more."
Do you seriously think this is an achievable goal ?
There will be always people that can't or won't work hard for a living. It might be due to their upbringing, education, DNA, personal choices, health conditions, personality. It doesn't mean that these people should be left to their own devices, for the "selfish" reasons mentioned by the OP, if not for more "noble" ones.
Resource redistribution does not aim to "solve" income inequality, but to lessen its side effects. It might be not the only way, it is definitely not perfect and you might say it is not fair, but at least it is a realistic way to tackle a difficult problem.
"It's likely that when we are all working for a living and prospering then we all prosper a little more." Well, of course, we all prosper when we all are prospering. :)
While life isn't exactly a zero-sum game, for certain moments it works that way. In any case, for now (nearly) all of us are Earth-bounded, so the limits of what our planet and our Sun can provide to us (over time) is what truly matters. There's only so much of Earth to go around, and only so much radiation to be received from the Sun. (And I am of course overlooking the occasional changes from meteors and comets and other whatnot from the heavens.)
This thing about income (and wealth) inequality is about more than mere discontents. There are plenty who fear that our global economic system (leaning heavily on capitalism with sprinkles of socialism) will soon arrive at a point of being unsustainable - a point that arrives prior to actual resource depletion.
The heart of it is in the ways that people can be so entitled to things, such as water, food, clothing, shelter, education, offspring, healthcare, etc. The worries are about the consequences of greater portions of the population being at or below subsistence levels. This is especially alarming when the statistics show it growing more significant within "First-World" nations.
The three big factors seem to be (to me, anyway): (1) Strong property rights which enables more rentiers and natural monopolies; (2) Rentiers/Monopolizers out-competing most or all others for political and economic influences and favors; (3) human labor becoming less needed over time due to the growing rise of adaptable and reliable automation.
> Is resource redistribution the only way to solve income inequality?
Yes.
> I always believed we weren't playing a zero sum game.
That's true, so a redistribution can result in a net gain (or loss) of aggregate experienced utility. But you can't change the outcomes resulting from the current system of allocating resources without changing the allocation.
It doesn't particularly matter if the game is zero-sum or not because of the way money interacts with influence/power. Essentially it is a bidding war, so those with the most money will always command the most influence by way of being able to bid the most. It doesn't matter that others are still gaining in their monetary compensation. They are still suffering through a widening deficit in power and agency.
Here in Sweden the left wing fight to prevent universal social entitlements, but right wingers want them means tested. That's coherent with tho line of reasoning
> monetary incentives don't work the way Adam Smith' sycophants pretend they do
Well, they certainly work the Adam Smith said they do, to wit: "The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers."
To be fair though, and this is a common mistake, there is a world of difference between "Someone who holds general liberal positions" and "Someone who specifically subscribes to the policies of Classical Liberalism."
What you are referring to is Classical Liberalism which is a very specific thing.
What most people mean by "Liberal" is ideas of liberty and equality. Which is the generic form of Liberalism. (There are many sub-categories, including Classical, Conservative, Social, and Economic Liberalism)
Under those terms property would be a social construct (and contract).
Liberals are capitalists with a heart. Social democrats are capitalists with a heart and a brain.
And personally, I think social democracy worked pretty ok except for the fact that it required a pretty strict anti-socialism, which meant that when the '70s arrived and the elite decided to "restore growth" by clawing back every concession to the working class and the human heart that they'd ever made under social democracy, nobody could stop them.
I cannot imagine a single meaningful thing "the elites" could do to have a concession to the human heart. They best they can do is things like taking the boot of Jim Crow off the neck of people. That's not that far from the arsonist-fireman syndrome.
Most of the concessions to the working class are still with us. Everything except jobs. And for a while, "restoring growth" worked. my hobby horse for why it stopped is low interest rates and low inflation.
51% of college graduates voted for Romney in 2012 while only 48% for Obama
Romney actually lost with highschool educated only and he lost significantly with postgraduate studies only getting 42% of the vote with Obama getting 55%.
So really the trend is that academics are liberal, not the highly educated.
(That 3% gap in college grads likely accounts for a larger percentage of the population than the massive 13% gap among grad degree holders)
edit: another source that adds evidence to my argument
Professors in humanities that identify as Republican range from 6 to 11 percent.
Social Sciences 7 and 9 percent
2% of English professors are Republican.
Meanwhile 18% of social scientists are Marxists.
This evidence leads me to believe that Academics self select to be liberal and that people with a conservative mindset do not find academia appealing for whatever reason. The reason I rule it has little to do with intelligence of the groups is the prevalence of Marxism amongst academics. Intelligent people that use evidence to reason about their beliefs wouldn't be Marxist.
I have a BsCS; if I got an MsCS you could not much consider me any more educated than I already am. Examples abound of medical doctors who hold flatly a-scientific views.
Marxism is completely dependent on using narrative as a primary tool. It is also therefore a-scientific.
> 51% of college graduates voted for Romney in 2012 while only 48% for Obama
What happens when you control for race and gender (c.f. the difference in electoral votes that election when you look only at white men (I think the only state Obama would have won was Washington) )
The article defines highly educated as people with advanced degrees. They are not academics. I doubt anyone would classify the general population of all college graduates (i.e. from all colleges) in the US as highly educated.
1.68% of Americans have a Phd (actually significantly more than I expected and significantly more than I think deserve to be handed out). I really wonder how many of these people do practical work. I can't find statistics to prove my bias so we will have to leave it as is unless someone can find some.
Doctors are also among the highest-paid members of American society and, along with wealthy financial professionals, you will typically find them siding more with the Republican Party often out of concern for their tax bracket.
I modified my main post with some more evidence in support of my theory which I'm posting here so you can see it as a response.
Professors in humanities that identify as Republican range from 6 to 11 percent.
Social Sciences 7 and 9 percent
2% of English professors are Republican.
Meanwhile 18% of social scientists are Marxists.
This evidence leads me to believe that Academics self select to be liberal and that people with a conservative mindset do not find academia appealing for whatever reason. The reason I rule it has little to do with intelligence of the groups is the prevalence of Marxism amongst academics. Intelligent people that use evidence to reason about their beliefs wouldn't be Marxist.
I don't think social scientists are Marxist in perhaps the sense you understand it. Social scientists don't want to overthrow the bourgeosie so much as they interpret social systems through the machinery of gender, race, and social class. Gender, race, and social class are absolutely necessary to understand contemporary social structures.
I worked at a private University (as a conservative leaning independent) for 7 years. I found the University to be a hostile work environment for conservatives. In my case as well as others, that I met while there, it was enough to dissuade us from pursuing an advanced degree.
I worked with many wonderful academics, they are people that I still count among the smartest and kindest people that I have ever met. At the same time, they could be absolutely vicious towards conservative or religious ideals or individuals. There was regular conflict over the Catholic University's traditional masses and other gatherings. They would wrap themselves in a cloak of "Academic Freedom" as they denounced anything that they viewed as religious infringing on their positions.
It wasn't just religious issues that brought out the worst of them. I still remember how on the first anniversary of 9/11 a number of professors refused to participate in the memorial ceremony because the University's ROTC would be the color guard. They deemed their presence to be sending the wrong message and a validation of the war in Afghanistan.
All in all, it left a bad taste in my mouth and as time grew on it was no longer a place that I wished to be. If it wasn't for an online option at a different school, then I never would have pursued my masters degree.
Re the 9/11 thing, if you are someone who dislikes the killing of innocent people it seems reasonable to be horrified by the original 9/11 killings of three thousand odd people and also horrified by Bush/Cheney using that as a justification to do stuff leading to the deaths of many times as many innocent people. It seems quite reasonable to avoid condoning that.
I won't disagree that that feeling is reasonable or justified. I've worked at a number of places where someone who felt that way would have been supported if they chose not to participate.
That being said, Academia is the only place where I have worked that it was considered okay to demand that others not be allowed to participate. Especially, demanding that students who may or may not feel the same way be barred from attending.
This has always confused me. There are some rich texts based on beautiful rigor on the side of the conservatives like freidman and Hayek. Goldwater also approaches things in a very principled manner. Arthur brooks' latest book is similar.
On the other than, I have not come across any liberal text, yet, that makes a good convincing case for liberalism. I would love to get some recommendations. I'm interested in principled arguments for liberalism. If there are so many highly educated people who are liberal, I would assume there are certain foundational texts that argue their position. Basically, I'm looking for "freedom to choose" of the left.
Your post confuses me, no offense intended. Friedman and Hayek called themselves liberals, not conservatives. The American progressive movement co-opted the word "liberalism". Before that, they called themselves "progressives". Is that what you're looking for?
Todd8's comment below confuses me for the same reason. Rawls could be considered to be on the US-left. The other people he mentioned, except Gross and Levitt, all opposed Rawls, and called themselves "liberals".
Hopefully vowelless won't take offense, because that's probably just a side-effect of how overloaded (and thus meaningless) words like "liberal" and "conservative" and "right" and "left" are in modern American politics. Modern "liberals" are more properly "progressives" (or something), the actual liberals are mostly people who call themselves "libertarian" and "conservatives" are split between the uneducated redneck snake handling fundamentalist types, and the more educated, "fiscally conservative, small government" types. And I'm sure somebody will shoot all sorts of holes in what I just said, which just furthers my point. It's hard to talk about any of this stuff, because we don't have a consistent lingo.
The vast majority of Americans lean "fiscally conservative, small government".
When Bernie Sanders won his mayoral election many years ago, the town council thought he was going to institute a Marxist-Leninist state. They were shocked when he streamlined budgets. (I'm not a Bernie supporter; it's just an anecdote I recently heard on the radio.)
Many consider San Francisco to be one of the most "liberal", "progressive" cities in the United States. But during the California fiscal crisis recently, at the depths of the national recession, San Francisco was the only major city in the state (IIRC) that kept a balanced budget the whole time. They did that by relying on savings (the city keeps billions stashed away for emergencies), and by rapidly instituting furloughs and budget cuts. This wasn't by fiat--all components of government, as well as the special interests, were on board. LA and other major cities couldn't accomplish that. And that's ignoring the rest of the country. Similarly, when Democrats obtained a super-majority in California, capable of overriding Republican tax and budget filibustering, they didn't open the flood gates of taxes and spending.
The only politicians in recent memory who flat-out stated that they didn't care about fiscal conservatism was Dick Cheney and a substantial minority of similarly-minded politicians and pundits, almost all dedicated Republicans. To quote Dick Cheney, "deficits don't matter".
Ignoring social issues, the divide in America isn't about fiscal conservatism and small government versus a gargantuan state. The conflict is over emphasis (social services vs military and police), and small percentage point changes in the taxation rate.
The semantic problem here is that there is near-uniform agreement on liberalism in America, when "liberalism" is properly defined as the belief in human liberty, moral equality, and democracy. Since virtually no-one (<5%) in American public life disagrees with philosophical liberalism, we just argue about different strains of liberalism that we call "liberalism", "conservatism", "libertarianism", &c.
> Friedman and Hayek called themselves liberals, not conservatives.
True.
> The American progressive movement co-opted the word "liberalism".
No, they didn't. For quite some time, the American left [0] (called "liberal" dominantly for some decades, some adopted the moniker "progressive" when it was perceived that the right had created bad associations with "liberal" a few decades ago, but with very little in common, in terms of ideas, with the older progressive movement, either in terms of substantive ideology, policy preference, or contemporary relative left-right position), right (usually called "conservative"), and libertarian political camps have all been dominated by, or at least significantly shaped by, ideas that trace back, in different ways, to 18th century liberalism and its struggles against 18th century conservatives. And all three have adherents who claim that their group is the proper heir to classical liberalism.
[0] relatively speaking, before anyone makes the common argument that by international standards, the US has virtually no left, with the major parties ranging from center-right (Democrats) to far right (Republicans).
> called "liberal" dominantly for some decades, some adopted the moniker "progressive" when it was perceived that the right had created bad associations with "liberal" a few decades ago
This is not supported by history in any way. This wikipedia article [1] is a good place to start. There are other explanations on Quora [2] [3]. These are not primary sources, but they have the relevant references.
Sorry about the confusion. In my mind conservative is fiscal conservatism, smaller government, more liberty, etc. Liberalism is about bigger government, larger social programs, sanitation of speech, etc.
I think there's a terminological confusion here. "Liberal" in its American, Hillary-Clinton-esque sense is of course going to be favored by highly-educated professionals: it's designed for us. It's our class ideology.
If you like immigration because it brings in competitive STEM workers and only eliminates jobs Americans don't want to do, it might be because you view yourself as educationally and professionally advantaged enough to afford to suppress wages for everyone else.
If you like the idea of piecemeal reform packages crafted by lobbyists and haggling (like Obamacare), it might be because you've been trained to think of committees of experts as the best way of accomplishing, well, anything.
If you want to tax smokestack industries out of existence because blue-collar workers can just learn to code, it might be because you've spent so much time among people with postgraduate degrees that you've come to think of yourself as normal rather than as belonging to an identifiable class.
A classic text on the philosophical underpinnings of (US) liberalism with regard to economic redistribution policies is A Theory of Justice by John Rawls, a renowned professor of philosophy at Harvard.
After reading Rawls, I'd suggest maybe reading Robert Nozick's libertarian leaning Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Nozick was another distinguished philosopher from Harvard writing about the same time as Rawls. Nozick comes to a completely different conclusion than Rawls.
Both books are good and completely accessible to an ordinary reader (i.e. philosophy degree not required). However, they are serious and not as entertaining as the Friedmans' Free to Choose. While the two philosophy books address the question of what should a fair society look like from a philosophical perspective, I feel they don't address the aspects of human nature that have proven troublesome in socialist economies as well as Free to Choose.
Finally another classic, The Fatal Conceit by F. A. Hayek considers the practicality of socialism from an economic position in a more focused way. Like the previously mentioned books, it is an easy read.
These books may not reflect cutting edge thought, having been written in the 70's and 80's, but they were a useful starting point for me when I started to think about these issues more deeply and they are considered seminal works that in my opinion shouldn't be skipped while studying the questions of political and economic theory.
A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell further reflects on this question and makes some conclusions about why smart people end up disagreeing in such fundamental ways. I find Sowell's thinking and writing to be clear and well expressed.
Finally, an interesting book addresses the puzzling and related question of why does the academic community so easily accommodate views so antithetical to a scientific world view. I believe that this at the heart of the questions raised by the original NYT piece. The book is Higher Superstition by Gross and Levitt. While interesting this book is erudite and seems directed to narrower audience than those mentioned above, expecting a well-read reader.
I am not joking when I say I don't know a single liberal who has read Rawls or Mill.
In fact it is curious how little 'well educated' people read. They appear to absorb their opinions from Thomas Friedman and George Monbiot as if by osmosis.
That is not to say there don't exist conservatives or libertarians who also do not read books. Certainly I know religious conservatives who read very little outside of the Bible. I just also know a lot of college educated people whose houses are as bare as caves when it comes to books and most of them are liberal. They spend most of their time working long hours or frenetically socializing, not book friendly activities.
My guess is that few of any political conviction go to the source.
I think it may be tough to find texts that self-identify as "progressive" because -- in my experience as a philosophy major at a good school -- most academic literature takes it for granted that you see value in progressive positions.
I think the point is that there are no defined left-wing foundational texts, that it arises with education across disciplines. Liberalism is a product of a variety of educations, not the creation of any one person or group.
Read scientific studies on animal migration patterns. Then hit basic astronomy. Then particle physics. Then every episode of the Simpsons.
These kinds of threads tend to be self-congratulatory, and obviously the answer is "self-selection". But I'll bite. Most of the conservative professors I have known in the Humanities have been in (military) history and classics, where they are likely drawn to classical or martial virtues. Economics professors are generally some variety of libertarian. Many Humanities professors are devout Christians.
But I've never known a professor to be an intolerant, hard-core social conservative. And perhaps that's because the only personality trait that has a correlation with intelligence is "openness to experience". A certain kind of liberality is necessary in academia.
And I guess the converse question which has vexed socialists for decades - why do so many of the poor vote for centre-right, business-friendly parties? For example, why did so many working class people vote for Thatcher in UK in the 1980s? Why are they not massively in favour of Jeremy Corbyn right now?
I'm not saying it's irrational. But sometimes it's odd to hear people who need the government to subsidise their minimum wage zero-hours income just for basic survival defending the Conservative Party's economic manifesto. I read "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" some years ago, and this question really stuck with me.
I've noticed that typically poor men are not very left leaning compared to women. For a man it's somehow incredibly difficult to vote for some member of "intelligentsia" who is very condescending towards you. If men go left, they usually go radical "taking back what is rightfully ours". If you fall short of that, it's lot better to lure in poor men by promising more jobs. And they have noticed how economic growth seems to correlate with jobs. Who talks about GDP? Is he condescending? Paying less taxes and this dude makes this GDP thing go nicely and then I get better paying job? Sounds good.
For women it's more like "oh the government is helping me to take care of the kids". It matters less if the politician is condescending, as you are kind of funneling that to your kids.
I think if the socialists are vexed then it is because they are part of the liberal 'elite' who basically don't understand the type of person who - according to their income - they patronisingly expect to always vote for them. The one dimensional politcal spectrum cannot hope to accommodate everyones views.
Apart from the fear that socialism could tank the economy and leave everyone worse off, there are a number of other reasons.
It used to be (in the Thatcher years) about one nation conservatism, though that supposedly died along time ago. A patriotic desire to put ones own country before oneself, which in recent years has been all about the strength of the economy. This is supposedly dead now, or certainly a smaller factor than it used to be.
Now I would argue it is because many poorer people are not bought into utopian/universalist agenda. The logical conclusion of this is helping the rest of the world before helping them. Many will view others, perhaps only slightly below themselves in economic terms as deserving of what they get, or even undeserving of the help they already receive. Immigration also plays into this (in a big way currently).
I would also argue that many believe state intervention is horribly uneven and unfair. Some people have the fortune to be heavily subsidised to live in pretty desirable places, or receive a lot of social care, whereas others struggle to get anything out of the system whatsoever.
Poorer people in the UK often face an effective marginal tax rate of 60-100%. i.e. It doesn't pay to work. More socialism would only serve to excacerbate this. In reality the figure could be considered even higher once wealth thresholds are accounted for. If you save any money above (is it >35,000 pounds?) then you have to pay for your own social care in old age. If you have > 8000 pounds then you are disentitled from a lot of things too.
One thing that is somewhat specific to the UK is that we have a needs based welfare system, as opposed to an entitlement based system (e.g. France). Being more needy jumps you to the front of the queue.
I think above a certain income threshhold it easy to feel removed from this conflict (below) and feel as if you are operating in a capitalist/meritocratic system, but at the bottom the incentives are really quite perverse.
Personally I think the most important political axis is honest/dishonest (or integrity vs corruption), and there is plenty of injustice at all levels of life. We should put the socialists in charge of (regulating) the banks and the conservitives in charge of administering wellfare.
I have also considered this question, my answer is that the party on the "right" will have a core mission of maintaining the power and wealth of the powerful and wealthy.
This is, unsuprisingly, not a great vote winner for the masses. So around this core mission they need to build a platform, and so they pick the easiest way to attract voters to this cause up until the point when they get a majority that's able to actually fulfil the core mission.
This explains lots of interesting things about politics. Why do the right hate foreigners, gays, athiests, muslims, transexuals etc. Why do they love patriotisms and wars and the good old days? Is there any obvious link between "good business" or "small government" and hating gays? The basic answer is that it's a cheap way to rally people to your cause.
Nowadays it's common for right wing people to be openly gay, when for a long time they had to be hypocritical and keep it secret while attacking their own community. But cleary there's no direct link between sexuality and political orientation, the party just decided to start a culture war against a powerless minority for their own profit and some people ended on the wrong side of the line.
Just think Buzzfeed but for politics, they want your click/vote, and they'll plumb the depths of human psychology to find out what they need to say to get it.
Corbyn is like the anti-buzzfeed. Dry boring headlines about what's actually important. Let's try pacificism, and consider that perhaps the people who died on the other side of our wars were actually human too.
So I would say it's irrational, most people are if they don't put time and effort into not being. And if someone has a financial interest in you not being rational, they have a good head start and some obvious levers to push to get what they want.
You’re assuming poor American working class voters vote against their interests by voting conservative. Leaving aside the social issues for now and looking solely at economic ones, let’s ask the question whether that’s true to them in their own minds.
The American liberal party (Democrats) brands itself as the party that’s going to help you out. It’ll leverage redistribution (taxes) to take money from rich people and corporations and get you stuff like free healthcare, free college, unemployment insurance, etc. That should sound pretty appealing if you’re poor.
However, the American conservative party (Republicans) brands itself as the party that’s going to get out of your way. It’ll cut taxes, remove regulations, get government out of your life and basically let you determine your own path without trying to hold your hand the whole way. Sure, less free stuff than the Democrats offer, but Republicans believe there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Nothing comes without strings attached in the Republican worldview, even if in the Democrat view of course there are no strings.
These two economic angles tap into completely different mindsets.
The Democrat angle taps into two mentalities: “We need to help people out” and “Free stuff? Don’t mind if I do!” The former is the wealthier, more educated Democrats, who feel life’s been good to them and they’d like to see others benefit too. The latter are the poor Democrats, who feel life’s been unfair to them and they could use a little help.
The Republican angle taps into one mentality: “People can make it on their own salt.” If you’re a poor Republican, you just want to be able to live your life without worrying about government handouts with strings attached. The idea of free stuff is a little insulting to you – it implies you can’t make it on your own. If you’re a wealthy Republican, you feel like you got what you got fair and square, and the idea of taking what you’ve earned and giving it to someone who hasn’t earned it goes against everything this country stands for.
You can ultimately boil American conservatives and liberals down into individualists (conservatives) and collectivists (liberals). Redistribution is fine for liberals because we’re all the same anyway – if two people have differing wealth, it’s because of unfairness, and we can use redistribution to remedy that unfairness. Redistribution is anathema to conservatives; it’s insulting to the poor and it’s robbery to the rich, not to mention it upends the profit motive, which in the Republican mind spells bad things for the economy.
I suspect the right answer is somewhere between European socialism and robber baron laissez-faire capitalism, but I’ve always been a centrist myself.
I won’t go into social issues in this comment, since it’s already quite long. However, if you want a better grasp of why conservatives have the stances they do and why liberals have the stances they do, I recommend checking out Jonathan Haidt on moral foundations theory first:
Then perhaps a read-through or listen to Will and Ariel Durant’s Lessons of History (keeping an ear out in particular for the discussion of order vs. freedom, and the integral roles they play in society. American conservatives are pro-order socially and pro-freedom economically; American liberals are pro-freedom socially and pro-order economically).
"[The Democrats] get you stuff like free healthcare, free college, unemployment insurance, etc."
No offense, but there's something basic that is amiss with a formulation when two thirds of the examples given are political results that have never been delivered by Democrats and the last one, unemployment insurance, was only grudgingly produced under conditions of a) depression b) significant pressure from the socialists on the Democrats' left.
Indeed. Democrats/liberals are the class party of white-collar professionals and self-styled "meritocrats". Democrat vs Republican should be read as new money vs old money.
Yeah, that all sounds really noble, yet it doesn't really mesh with the modern Republican party successes being built on the "Southern Strategy" which sought to attract white Democrats by playing on racial fears.
I mean that's a double whammy, the voters were previously democratic, putting them on the opposite side of your dichotomies, and various members of the Republican party are on record as using race as a wedge issue, trying to convince white voters that equality was not in their interest (which the chairman of the RNC later apologized explicitly for).
Far smarter men than me are still debating how much is genes, how much is early childhood influence, how much is the result of what you experience along the way, etc.
I don't suspect we'll have anything remotely close to a conclusive answer anytime soon. My guess is it's something like baking a cake; the batter (biology), how mixed or lumpy it is (childhood), and how it's cooked (life experiences) will all play a role, but aside from the extremes like the eggs missing or being grossly under- or overcooked there's no good way to accurately gauge how everything comes together to produce what it does.
Nope, "liberals" are by far the group who favors limited government and individual freedom. Conservatives are the ones who advocate torturing people, legislating womens' medical care, and otherwise intruding government into peoples' lives and bodies.
Perhaps due to the behaviour of the politicians more than their policies. A lot of left wing politicians and parties seem to be openly condescending to people they consider 'uninformed', whereas a lot of right wing ones will at least pretend to understand where they're coming from.
Perhaps also because some people value social attitudes more than economic ones. Perhaps some people say, dislike immigration more than they dislike economic inequality. Maybe people would vote for parties with 'liberal' economic views and 'conservative' social ones, or 'conservative' economic views and 'liberal' social ones.
>And I guess the converse question which has vexed socialists for decades - why do so many of the poor vote for centre-right, business-friendly parties? For example, why did so many working class people vote for Thatcher in UK in the 1980s? Why are they not massively in favour of Jeremy Corbyn right now?
I think the more appropriate question is: how many working-class people voted for Thatcher, as a percentage? How many favor Corbyn today? Which number is larger?
There has always been false consciousness, but I think it's often overstated the degree to which the working class actively holds and participates in false consciousness, rather than simply being repressed or ignored.
I read your comment and had a quick think, and it occurred to me that it's likely to do with nationalism. Most liberal political parties' views on immigration etc. tend to put off the voters you are talking about. Most of the right winged parties tend to emphasise (taking your example) British business and there's a lot of dey tuk urrr jerrbbs syndrome that comes from these types.
Why do they believe it? Obviously, in any one election you can say it's the headlines of the day combined with the personalities of the leaders.
So are working class people repeatedly irrational in voting for right-wing parties? Interestingly, UKIP are combining left-wing economics with right-wing social policies, and have made a lot of ground with the working class. Arguably, this is Trump's constituency in the US as well.
The only UKIP MP wants to increase immigration from third world countries. I'm not sure that message gets through to the voters somehow. So like Trump, they surf on a wave on xenophobia, with little interest in actually following through with their promises.
In the US the conservatives get those votes by pretending to give a shit about "values". Such as (subtly) not liking brown people, liking Jesus, etc. It is astonishing the votes you can get for free just making some meaningless statements that a lot of people agree with.
Your comment about Corbyn is essentially tautology - he's unelectable because he's unelectable. Why? Why don't the working class want a leader who's promising to end policies which continue to hit the working class the hardest?
And why do the poor loathe unemployment? Why don't they loathe being poor more than being unemployed? Working minimum wage on zero-hour contracts means they're still poor.
It never seems to occur to anyone that maybe, just maybe ... there is an anti-conservative selection pressure or bias?
Look at the "nomenklatura" in USSR times - they were all good Party members, and they too, had the higher university degrees.
If you weren't a Party member or in other ways, indicated disloyalty to the prevailing political worldview ... you didn't get admitted to the choice spots.
How many "Western-style free market" (however defined) professors with tenure, were there in Moscow, in 1987? Must mean that as an economic perspective it was wholly discredited, right?
Unpopular opinion on HN, but people are mostly liberals when the current system works for them and it's even more visible as observe the political spectrum outside the US. It's easier to say "the market solves everything" when it works for you. When it does not work for them, they turn either to the right or the left side. As the current system is mostly falling apart for the middle class, you then have a raising far-left and far-right as a consequence. That's also why the vast majority of rich people are liberals.
Oh interesting, I'm indeed French and it's interesting to see that it does not mean the same thing, I've misinterpreted parts of the article then. Actually, even on wikipedia, the content between the same pages is completely different, interesting to see !
"Liberal" means exactly what it always meant: there have always been different strains of liberalism. It's just the conservatives and libertarians who are picky about what they call themselves, defining themselves in opposition.
What do you think Liberal means? In the UK, as well as in the USA, it generally doesn't mean "the market solves everything" (You might be thinking of Libertarianism[1]).
The article explicitly references redistributive economic views, quite the reverse of the market-centric view you attach to the label.
In the UK, "the liberals" (a.k.a The Liberal Democrats) are "social liberals" (indeed, we usually claim to be the largest Social Liberal party in Europe.)
In the rest of Europe, it does tend to break down in the way you describe. In 2009 (not sure if still the case), Denmark had a centre-right party called Venstre in government ("The Liberal Party"), and a much smaller party Radikal Venstre in opposition ("The Social Liberal Party"). This pattern (with or without the smaller one) tends to be the pattern in most of Europe I believe.
However, the article is discussing US Politics, so that is where the confusion arises.
I would like to argue that the {Liberal => Social liberal} mapping comes from JS Mill in the UK in the late 1800s, but I'm sure it originates before then.
Note also that the Lib Dems, a merger of the Liberal Party and the SDP, were not right wingers (Liberals) and left wingers (Social Democrat Party) merging, they were a historical Social Liberal party (Lib) merging with a relatively right wing spin off from Labour (SDP).
Way back when, (Whigs and Tories era), the "Liberals" we're the ones arguing for free markets as opposed to Feudalism. This is where attachment of the word "Liberal" to free market-ists originates, I think.
Mapping Australian politics to the USA is crazy. All sides end up being really left in comparison. Even sanders views on guns are right wing in Australia.
Higher education both attracts and produces mindsets which solve problems through planning, engineering and designing.
There is a natural tendency to use your methodology of problem solving on all problems. So we tend to produce a greater collection of social engineering and central economic planning advocates. We want to design a greater society. We want to design a greater economy.
Even when you look at highly educated vs slightly more highly educated in the same field you see the same shift in mindset. The divergence between Fellow, Architect, Engineer is that at each higher level there is a greater degree if centralization mindset of design.
There is a potential fallacy that should be evident that you can not necessarily and simply equate more education with always producing the correct perspectives and therefore liberal view points are the correct positions. As in the above, we in engineering fields know the value higher levels of discipline, yet we also are fully aware of the problems resulting from high level engineers and architects who design their perfect systems which don't work in the real world.
Higher education produces problem solving disciplines that are very useful and powerful, yet these same disciplines also are subject to error as well as they typically can't quantify the numerous variables in large systems thinking
> There is a potential fallacy that should be evident that you can not necessarily and simply equate more education with always producing the correct perspectives and therefore liberal view points are the correct positions.
This. If there existed a world in which only liberals were right all the time conservatism would have been selected out of the gene pool by now. That's not a metaphor. Political tribes have been battling for probably tens of thousands of years.
Republicanism is definitely on its way out as a way to structure human governance.
It's the same problem that caused the Boston Tea Party. Increasing lack of representativeness. I think it has taken the full powers of the media to synchronize the people this far but with the Net there is too much dissenting opinion, too much expression for a party system to work.
If the Net generation was represented in parliament, then political parties would have a half-life similar to Boy Bands.
I think I'll be heavily down-voted for posting that on HN but in my opinion the reason most college graduates are liberal is that - whether we want to admit or not - colleges teach liberalism. I'm not saying that Big Brother is behind this, I think it "just happened" for many reasons.
As a consequence while most liberals think that they have the answer for life, the universe and everything and that they are objective, independent and "scientific" thinkers, they are more often than not just regurgitating packaged values that have been impressed on them.
You'll always see that 80% of the people are followers. The system teaches liberalism, so 80% of the people going through the system will be liberal just by following - often unconsciously. 10% of the remaining will choose to be liberal out of true critical thinking while the 10 remaining percents won't be. Those who haven't been through the system (drop outs, high school graduates, etc.) are more likely to have more diverse opinions. Which are then dismissed by flagging them as "opinions mostly held by uneducated people".
But what I've found is that education systems barely teach anything. For all the knowledge we've been presented, we just "really know" a ridiculous tiny fraction of it. This is why nowadays, you don't even need to be "smart" in the academical sense of the term to be in the top 5%, you just need to be a critical thinker in your field and think out of the box. Because it is indeed an extremely hard thing to do once you've been through college, as you've been nurturing the illusion that you learned most of the things you actually memorized. Many packaged values and referentials have thereby been patterned on your mind.
For all these reasons, it is in my opinion unlikely that most people won't feel liberal after going through college.
For perspective, what in the US is called "liberal" in the rest of the world is rather to the right of centre. The two parties are pulling apart from each other but to outsiders they remain very similar both in policy and ideology, at least at the national level. Neither is talking of actual reform, only incremental change.
> in the rest of the world is rather to the right of centre
I find "rest of the world" hard to justify. The Indian right-wing are Hindu hardliners, but economically not all that different from the "center-left" INC, both of which, are IMO, way more left-wing than the US Democratic party when it comes to economics. Socially, all parties here pander to their regional (as opposed to national) voterbases. The Pakistani right-wing also seems to oppose economic liberalism (i.e. capitalism). Looking beyond this region, each country seems to have its own "left-right" divide, while not sharing much in the ideology of another country's "left-right" divide.
No, on this very page, we seem to have a couple of Australians and a few Europeans, expressing how these terms mean something else in their countries. I don't know how South Americans use these terms, but I expect them to be closer to the European sense.
The two parties have been getting more polarized, that much is clear. The problem with the GOP from an educated person's perspective is that many, if not most of its politicians get elected through anti-intellectual rhetoric. Trump is the most extreme example of this. He makes no actual arguments and just attacks his detractors.
An educated group taught to embrace science will certainly take issue with leaders who ignore it.
Additionally, the GOP is the party of creationists and climate deniers. That is just too extreme of an anti-intellectual slant to tolerate.
Except that you do not see democrats stumping about the benefits of communism. You do see GOP candidates openly denying climate change and denouncing Darwinism as a left-wing plot. One has decided to become more extreme than the other.
Climate change? What does that mean? It used to be global warming but the facts were so blatantly unsupportive that the sly shift to 'climate change' was adopted. Now it's a mantra for unthinking people. But it works because heads I win, tails you lose. The climate is always changing. Temperature changes are slight and hedged with ifs and buts. Now if you mean that the CO2 level in the atmosphere has increased from the pre-industrial levels of around 270 parts per million to 400 parts per million today then I'm with you. Recalling that life on earth would be impossible were the level to reduce to less than around 120 ppm, let's get this into perspective. Meanwhile Arctic Greenland is indeed turning green (NASA study).
https://youtu.be/Yi8SFOJffFA while the temperature in that area has remained unchanged over the past 16 years prior to this year's El Nino.
Anyway, I'm sure that the greening of the Arctic and of many places elsewhere as evidenced by satellite imagery is a disastrous phenomenon we should discourage.
“An ancient forest has thawed from under a melting glacier in Alaska and is now exposed to the world for the first time in more than 1,000 years.". An observation probably invented by some imaginative climate denier?
As Judith Curry has said: "Efforts to link dangerous impacts of extreme weather events to human-caused warming are misleading and unsupported by evidence. Climate change is a ‘wicked problem’ and ill-suited to a ‘command and control’ solution. It has been estimated that the U.S. national commitments to the UN to reduce emissions by 28% will prevent three hundredths of a degree centigrade in warming by 2100...".
Perhaps it is because state and national GOP party platforms specifically call out support for creationism and the denial of man-made climate change while no Democratic platform statements call for the introduction of socialism or communism? There is a difference between being right and being smug.
> Because socialists and communists does not actually carry the negative connotations you ascribe it
Tell that to North Korea, Venezuela, China, the Soviet Union, etc etc
Your statement is purely subjective which was my original point that classifying an entire group based on what a fraction of that group says isn't really valid. In the US we only have two major political parties so chances are people will either fall into one or the other based on various factors and influences including but not limited to education.
I'm sure many intellectuals are driven away from the GOP because of these issues, however the studies mentioned in the article seemed to be about people's actual political beliefs, not just which party they end up voting for.
Probably because the education system, in most western countries is largely subsidised by government. So the professors, and the teachers who are largely on public payroll, are bound to be less critical of government, than, say someone in the private sector. Which in turn will permeate those who they teach. It's in their best interest to then spread ideals which uphold their government funding.
Well that's...a reach. There's more to the American liberal outlook than support for government programs. I'm guessing you didn't read the article; you might want to do that first and attempt a more substantial comment later.
If there were "more to the American liberal outlook than support for government programs", a thoughtful ("substantial"?) comment would have given us some examples of such, and then related those examples somehow to the proposition under discussion. Your comment, instead, amounts to "RTFA!"
Yes I did read the whole article, I'm not going to write a rebuttal for each and every point it makes, just to quell your patronising remarks.
Telling me to 'make a more substantial comment later' apart from being pretty rude, doesn't actually discredit the point I made about public education being intrinsically skewed in favour of where its funding originates.
The article isn't very well written, but it does raise an interesting question. However, this question requires a clear definition of what is meant by liberal, which is a non trivial matter: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-orig...
My to cents:
Let's start by defining "liberal" as those who hold the belief that the current Trend in social, economic or political developments will result in them having a better life. The opposite of that is the quintessential "conservative" adagio that "things are getting worse and worse". What exactly constitutes that trend is up for debate, but I think a precise definition isn't essential for this argument.
Since the percentage of the population that is highly educated is increasing (for whatever definition of "highly"), we can infer that access to education isn't only hereditary. That is, there are some of us who are now highly educated but who's parents were not (yes, it still is mostly hereditary, and almost for sure we will inherit that to our children). This, in turn, results in better standards of living for us than for our parents. So, locally, the trend, seems for us to be moving in the right direction. We vote for continuing this trend of more education for more people, of more access to healthcare for more people, and so on, because if it weren't for that trend we'd be struggling like our parents did.
Compound to that the rich-get-richer phenomena, and then our children will probably keep benefiting from this, so they will most likely also be "liberal". Only when a social revolution removes our now-hereditary privileges will we turn into "conservatives".
"some of us who are now highly educated but who's parents were not [...] results in better standards of living for us than for our parents. So, locally, the trend, seems for us to be moving in the right direction."
Say what?
In the 1950s, you graduated from high school (or even dropped out) and then went to work in the steel mill or car factory. (there were no robots and we didn't trade with China) You could support a family on that one income: house, car, wife, kids, etc.
Lately, you get your BA and then work 3 different part-time jobs. If you get the MA, and find somebody else who does, then the two of you can both work jobs and get a place of your own. Your student loans will be huge. Forget about kids.
I believe myself to be a liberal. However, I still believe that the question asked "Why are the highly educated so liberal?" in itself is a loaded question.
I love watching Mr Bug's thought percolate through the Net. I can only imagine this is what it must have been like for the first proto-Communists as Karl Marx went to town.
I kind of went to deep end of the pool. The dude points out widely believed lies. The argues that because they we're lies, complete opposite must be true. And because you believe opposite is true, then you ought to take opposite political stance than the lying people.
But because the opposite is weak ass conservative party that only defines itself as opposite of the democratic party, you need to go back in time to find genuine alternative.
So you go back to monarchists. Which surprisingly fits snuggly with hard core libertarian views. Libertarian monarchism with attitude of "Lets cut the crap, someone is anyhow pulling all the strings, might as well be public knowledge. It's going to be pretty much like nowadays, except you're not going to be lied to."
The whole thing is incredibly anglocentric, mostly doesn't take into account geopolitics and gets into weirdly pacifist streak. Which only suits monarchism if you pick the period of 1840 - 1910. (As if war/violence is the only problem of human kind.)
It's exactly what U.S. needs if it's going to follow the footsteps of roman republic. You guys are still way too fervent with this democracy thing if you aim for Imperial future.
This demographic tends to be wealthier. Greater wealth means less required assistance and, therefore, greater opportunity to advocate on the behalf of others.
Pithy answer 2: because they are economically privileged.
The headline is a broad generalisation, and as another broad generalisation poorer people are more religious and more conservative because they have harder lives, bleaker temporal outlooks and hope for a better life 'beyond'.
I think your "pithy answer" won't stand up to actuall polling.
Highly educated low-wealth/low-income people tend to be socially liberal and probably skew socially leftist (think postdocs, school teachers, humanities PhDs).
High-wealth low-education people probably skew to the right (self-employed craftsmen, sports people, "old money" heirs).
I would say that I'm liberal, but not what most people consider liberal by some standards since my politics are closer to mutualism crossed with geolibertarianism. So, I get the occasional "huh" from people when explaining what govt policies I support like LVT, promotion of unions and/or worker owned businesses, and the like.
I'd question the other side: why are conservatives so stupid? They aren't all, of course, but there's a strong correlation between low IQ and holding a conservative world view.
Because empathy requires effort and a certain level of intellect. My personal experience is that less educated people tend to view the world through a filter of their own experiences and don't realise (or choose to ignore) the possibility of a situation vastly different to their own. Highly educated people are exposed to philosophies and opinions that provoke thought and analysis. They are used to engaging in thought experiments and utilising imagination to consider many facets of an issue. I suppose you could say that they are trained to think rather than view something at face value.
Certainly if you only read one third of one paragraph of the article it would seem shoddy. You even paraphrased that snippet to delete the part that clearly states it's only a partial explanation: "The growing number of women with advanced degrees is part of it, as well-educated women tend to be especially left-leaning."
I didn't edit the snippet at all. But let's look at the whole paragraph:
What explains the consolidation of the highly educated into a liberal bloc? The
growing number of women with advanced degrees is part of it, as well-educated
women tend to be especially left-leaning. Equally important is the Republican
Party’s move to the right since the 1980s — at odds with the social liberalism
that has long characterized the well educated — alongside the perception that
conservatives are anti-intellectual, hostile to science and at war with the
university.
He posed the question "What explains the consolidation of the highly educated into a liberal bloc?"
Then answered it by saying that it could be because of more highly-educated women, because they tend to be particularly left-leaning.
What does that "explain"? The core question is why education tends towards left political views. A related question is why this is seen moreso in women. But suggesting that this tendency is explained, even partially, by the demographics on which the tenancy is seen is tautological... Unless there's some obvious reason I'm missing that women should be more susceptible to this bias?
Pithy answer: because you aren't going to be afraid of something when you understand that it's not something you need to fear.
When you have a simple world view, nuance is always going to escape you. An educated person can understand that the world isn't simple, which will lead to a more liberal view, as liberal views tend to be based on the assumption that angry, narrow world view responses aren't a good thing. Someone who sees things in black and white, ignoring the complexities of life, will respond with simple, ignorant answers.
Examples: climate change denial, anti-vax, religion... They're the intellectual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting, rather than seeking to actually understand anything.
It's worth noting that all these things are driven by fear of things people don't understand. Someone who understands how vaccinations work, why we do them, why they're made the way they are can't be afraid of them, and thus won't be against them. But most people aren't in that camp, which opens the door for people to make bad choices.
It's hard getting people to be want to be informed and right, when it means they might have to disagree with their social group.
I find this comment to be borderline insulting, even when my political views are very liberal. Basically, what I read in your comment (maybe I'm misreading it) is that not having a liberal view means that the person does not understand the world, has an angry response, ignores the complexities of life and does not understand anything.
So, instead of just trying to understand what do these people think, feel and fear we just assume we're superior and think they're ignorant? Of course, there are ignorant conservatives, just as there are ignorant liberals. There are also really smart conservatives who have a really strong foundation and understand how the world works. They just have another view of which are the solutions to our problems, but it's really hard to say which is the "right" and which is the "wrong" view.
I also find surprising that religion is in the same bucket as climate change denial or anti-vaccinations. I've meet a lot of religious people who have already tried to understand things and have found that they believe in a god, or whatever, and that does not make them more or less intelligent, it's just a personal belief.
Finally, the correlation "higher education => magic knowledge of everything" is plainly not true, not even "in some cases". A degree just gives you knowledge in a specific area, and does not make anyone more intelligent just by having it. It is not a badge of superiority.
As someone said in another reply, this is just an attitude of "liberals are right, conservatives are not", but there's no right political view as of now.
"A degree just gives you knowledge in a specific area, and does not make anyone more intelligent just by having it."
I've always felt the most beneficial part of higher education isn't the knowledge gained but the way you are taught to get it - Through research and critical thinking.
That isn't to say that people who don't have a higher education aren't capable of these things, but as a proportion of the population I think you'll find a greater competence in those with a higher education.
>>"...the most beneficial part of higher education isn't the knowledge gained but the way you are taught to get it - Through research and critical thinking."
This isn't necessarily the case with college grads of the past few years, who are more self-centered, self-absorbed and coddled. In fact, most of the 'noise' coming out of colleges today are the b*tching and moaning that someone said something that offended them. Not exactly 'research' oriented or based on 'critical thinking'. Its more aligned with the environment they've decided to surround themselves in, while those who are 'less-formally-educated' get their 'education' through elbow grease and busted knuckles (also known as 'life experience'.
Yes, religion in the same bucket (and largely responsible for the existence of the bucket itself). Why look for answers when they all are in THE BOOK?
> A degree just gives you knowledge in a specific area, and
> does not make anyone more intelligent just by having it.
In many (most?) cases a degree also means that you became familiar and aquired skills needed for problems solving and answer finding. And even if raw intelligence may be the same it gives tremendous advantage.
Not every religious person is a hardcore bible reader who does not question anything. In fact, most believers I've met are in the opposite end: they know most of the tales of the bible are just tales, and accept the scientific methods and explanations. They just believe there's also a god or something out there.
Regarding the degree thing, you may or may not acquire them. The degree just requires you to demonstrate a certain knowledge and skills, but not necessarily problem solving and answer finding. If you apply yourself and have good teachers, you can certainly learn it, but it's not that much different of a situation than when you're working in some job or doing things by yourself. It's not necessary nor sufficient, and definitely not even in most cases.
> most believers I've met are in the opposite end: they know most of the tales of the bible are just tales, and accept the scientific methods and explanations.
> Yes, religion in the same bucket (and largely responsible for the existence of the bucket itself). Why look for answers when they all are in THE BOOK?
Within Christianity (much less religion more generally), the idea that the answers are all "in the book" (the doctrine of sola scriptura) is a doctrine of a distinct subset of the larger body of believers.
The doctrine of sola scriptura does not mean all the answers are in the Bible. It means that when it comes to issues of faith and morals, the Bible is authoritative above all else. The doctrine makes no claim that the Bible contains everything anyone would ever need to know.
> The doctrine of sola scriptura does not mean all the answers are in the Bible.
Yeah, immediately after I posted that, I wondered if I should clarify that sola scriptura actually doesn't mean that itself, and the "all answers are in the book" approach is actually at best a not-infrequent corruption of a minority approach to what is, itself, within Christianity a minority doctrine, rather than the doctrine itself.
But I figured that the clarification was probably not necessary, and that it was tangential to the point that "the answers are all in the book" isn't some kind of universal, or even general, trait of religious belief.
Still, its well taken.
> It means that when it comes to issues of faith and morals, the Bible is authoritative above all else.
While this is getting a bit far afield, the mere authoritative above all else on matters of faith and morals approach is the doctrine of prima scriptura, which is an alternative to sola scriptura held in some branches of Protestantism.
Why? Most of what the parent wrote is factual and descriptive, not prescriptive or disparaging. The post doesn't condemn anyone. I find your response just as unpleasant, because you seem to be suggesting that this line of discourse should be shunned, which frankly isn't going to help anyone.
>>Examples: climate change denial, anti-vax, religion... They're the intellectual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting
They aren't, you just don't understand it. Anti-vax people are often very well educated. Their position is that you can't trust the pharmaceutical corporation and the government to put health of the citizens above their profit.
99%+ of the population is in no position to make their own judgement about climate change or effectiveness of medical procedures. What most people do is choose who to believe. You choose to believe the government and the researches, some people don't. From purely incentive based analysis maybe those people are rational after all as they are very clearly not aligned in the interest of general population (the whole thing relies on assuming there would be enough whistleblowers among researchers and that they are in general ethical - both very shaky assumptions).
>>It's worth noting that all these things are driven by fear of things people don't understand.
No, they just don't believes the same authority figures as you do.
>>Someone who understands how vaccinations work, why we do them, why they're made the way they are can't be afraid of them, and thus won't be against them.
This comment is equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting rather than seeking to actually understand the position of others.
Thinking like yours is a problem because it skips over actual problems: misaligned incentives, lack of transparency, history of corruption and politically motivated government policies (for example with anti-fat pro grain diet policy).
Thank you for the well written rebuttal and points.
Highly educated people are exposed to more ideas and theories leading them to less likely BLINDLY believe what "authority" figures say/claim and that they (the highly educated person) could be wrong due to or that not enough information is known [at this time] to make or change their own determination of what or who to believe. They are more likely to be open minded because they are cognizant of blind spots.
Perhaps the real answer is closer to "it's easy to be tolerant and broad-minded if you don't feel threatened".
You're answer boils down to "because liberals are right and the others are wrong". But there isn't really such a thing as a wrong political opinion. People's political choices are based on their experience of the world. The whole premise of democracy is that if you take the mean of everybody's personal experience you will arrive -- more or less, and with some difficulty -- at the right answer.
> You're answer boils down to "because liberals are right and the others are wrong"
I disagree. I read the OP's answer as, "The more education you have, the more you're prepared to accept the possibility that you're wrong." This leads to a greater acceptance of viewpoints (or at least the right to hold them) which you don't necessarily agree with, which is basically liberalism in a nutshell.
>"The more education you have, the more you're prepared to accept the possibility that you're wrong."
I've never met or seen anyone who self-identifies with a specific political label who was willing to accept they might be wrong.
That includes liberals. To be honest, the inability to consider alternative viewpoints is an attribute I associate strongly with liberals in particular.
...and history is always written by the more dominant force - not necessarily the morally correct one.
everyone from person to country tries to justify their actions to be morally acceptable - depending on what 'morally acceptable' passes for at the moment in time.
Pretty much. And you're generally not threatened of things you understand. Most things in the world aren't actually scary.
That's not to say there's nothing to be scared of out there - obviously there is. But there's a difference between knowing something is worth worrying about, and being badly informed or not informed at all, and thus being scared of it.
* Thing not to be scared of: vaccinations for your kids
* Thing to be scared of: long term effects of climate change
I'd take higher levels of education to mean that you're more exposed to being wrong about things, thus more accepting of the idea that you might be wrong, and more likely to change your view on finding out you are.
The more educational levels you pass through, the more you have it beaten in to you that you don't know as much as you think you do, and you're wrong to greater or lesser degrees a lot of time, about a lot of things.
Erm... I wouldn't say that the average liberal feels that there's much they don't know, and that they might be wrong about a lot of things. (I wouldn't say that the average conservative is like that, either.)
I believe that academia is the perfect place for the formation of cliques which over time exclude non-believers. Right now there's a powerful liberal clique in academia - but over time it could be replaced by anything, really. At some point eugenics were all the rage, today it's taboo, etc. And since educated people pass through the academia, and receive a lot of information filtered through the leading clique, they're likely to share the clique's views. (Whether, on top of that, educated people also simply exhibit less critical thinking and original opinions based on their own experience than the average person I don't know; I wouldn't be surprised by it being either true or false, I can certainly construct a believable narrative explaining both possibilities.)
Speaking of eugenics and such... how do I put this, in hindsight people reevaluate their ideas wrt what's scary, and the British Labor and Liberal parties' insistence that Nazi Germany wasn't particularly scary seems to me to be a pretty good example. I think this shows that "you're generally not threatened of things you understand" sometimes is less accurate than "you're not threatened of things that you completely misunderstand, while those who do understand them are right to be scared shitless about them." And sometimes, like in this case, "you" are more liberal than "them", and sometimes it's the reverse.
because you aren't going to be afraid of something when you understand that it's not something you need to fear
Such as a highly educated media worker, has no fear of the factory closing because the company has found somewhere with lower taxes and relaxed pollution laws?
This is the appeal of Trump: he is the only candidate who doesn't want to send his demographics jobs offshore. It absolutely makes perfect sense for a significant number of voters to prefer him. I am really astonished at how many "liberals" despite their "high intellect" don't seem to get that there is a whole world outside their little bubble.
Or maybe the factory closing is a net benefit long term. Was losing millions of jobs in the farming sector a bad thing? Or the automation of the glass industry in the 1930's and 1940's that increased production and cleaned up emissions? Is the move to driverless vehicles and what that'll do to the logistics industry bad?
There's lots of examples of people losing jobs. That's sad for the individual, but long term it's generally good for the country. It'd be easy to say no to those forms of progress that hurt workers, but it'd be the wrong decision in the long run.
No-one said making the right choice has to be victimless, or that the wrong one has to be hard.
Not saying you're entirely wrong, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you yourself aren't in immediate danger of having your job eliminated. If you were, I'm guessing you'd see another side of the story.
Sure, but telling an ordinary worker that they need to give up their livelihood in the now, for a net long term benefit that he or she may not live to see, is a hard sell.
> telling an ordinary worker that they need to give up their livelihood
What you need to tell the worker is not that they need to give up their livelihood, but that they need to retrain. Still painful, but much less. Also, there are ways to reduce and relieve the pain of retraining. And who knows for many people acquiring new skills and contacts may even turn out to be exciting and fun.
We need a politician with the guts to openly explain to the public that retraining is a necessity instead of fostering delusions that the old jobs can be kept. In fact, the progress in the development of self-driving cars combined with the fact that the most common job in most states is a truck driver [1] make this something of an emergency.
> he is the only candidate who doesn't want to send his demographics jobs offshore
Or at least he'll say that.
Whether he'll a) change his mind the next day, b) have any feasible plan to implement this, c) whether it's actually a net-positive for his demographic, d) whether he supports a bunch of other things that will hurt this demographic are all less clear.
Why not just increase sales tax and then give it to American union members if buying votes by subsidising them is a good strategy? It's basically the same thing, but it seems a lot less "American" to be honest about it.
Given a choice between someone who promises to fight for the thing you care about, but might be lying, and someone who promises to not fight for the thing you care about, the choice seems easy.
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You're completely missing the point. The 'cost' of voting is the same no matter who you vote for and even if you chose not to vote someone will become president. So for many people they see the choice as being between someone who might fuck them over and someone who will fuck them over. I'm not a Trump supporter, but it's not that hard to see his appeal.
The 'cost' of voting isn't about paying money to vote. It's about the laws and policies that are brought in by the people in power. Taxes are a very obvious direct one, but just diverting tax money from "good stuff" to "bad stuff" is a fairly direct cost too.
Someone promising you unreasonable things is much more likely to be fucking you over. Some would say that promising you unreasonable things and then fucking you over is the basic thread of all politics, Trump is just taking it several steps further because apparently people have become unmoored from the reality of government and so cannot judge what is unrealistic anymore.
Is this actually true? Plenty of former Russians are very anti socialist, because of their experience with communism. They would say that their larger experience causes them to fear things that sound good in theory, but are terrible in practice. Either way, I doubt you could get away with saying they have a simple worldview without nuance.
I think your view really boils down to "i'm right they're wrong, so of course education and experience would cause anyone to be on my side!"
It's just a tad naive to list the entirety of religion with climate-change and anti-vax and then conclude that the sole reason that religion exists is "fear of things people don't understand". Do you know anything about religion at all or are you just parroting what you read in the news about American Christianity?
It's funny to me because this kind of thinking seems to indicate that you are "Someone who sees things in black and white, ignoring the complexities of life, [who] will respond with simple, ignorant answers."
Furthermore, the vast majority of people who are pro-vax and anti-religion have made up their mind based on nothing more than social cues. They're not scientists and they have to trust what they're told just like most people.
> Pithy answer: because you aren't going to be afraid of something when you understand that it's not something you need to fear.
I guess we are all are against some things. For my own part, I don't see that when there is something I feel is wrong, it is always, or even usually, because I am afraid of it. Furthermore, some things (strong AI; synthetic biology), I have become afraid of by understanding some of it.
> Someone who understands how vaccinations work, why we do them, why they're made the way they are can't be afraid of them, and thus won't be against them.
Oh, my. I am all for vaccinations, but the reason is simply that I find the people who claim that vaccinations do not cause autism (or whatever negative consequence) more credible than those who claim that they do. It's not even about my own education, it's about what sources of information I find trustworthy. I couldn't possibly say anything myself about how vaccinations and autism are or are not related.
If I listen closely, I'm pretty sure that I can hear you patting yourself on the back through my computer.
Your comment boils down to saying, "Because education opens your mind," which is completely asinine. Political science and philosophy are not young fields. Where would Aristotle, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Locke, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin or Madison fall today?
Are you telling me that you find it reasonable to think that none of them would find themselves on the right, because they're uneducated, have a simple world view, and can't appreciate nuance?
I like this website more when I don't click the political articles.
I didn't say left or right, or Democrat/Republican once. I specifically chose examples that would reflect that both sides of the political spectrum get wrong.
The left doesn't have exclusive ownership of liberalism, nor does the right always find itself to be illiberal. Fear and ignorance however can abound on both sides, leading to illiberal opinions.
I'm sure some of those mentioned would be left and right, as well as anyone else you might want to bring up. There's parts of Aristotle's Politics and Ethics that would most certainly place him on the right of the political spectrum. But that's got nothing to do with liberal views.
> I didn't say left or right, or Democrat/Republican once.
Okay, but the article did, and so do the statistics, and that was certainly the framing of your original comment. The crux of the question is why our universities are churning out individuals that align so strongly with the politics of the left, not necessarily liberalism.
I am completely comfortable admitting that policies of the right are sold more often with FUD than policies of the left. What I resent is the implication that there isn't an argument to be made beyond the FUD.
Where would Aristotle, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Locke, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin or Madison fall today
That's an uninteresting question. Environments change, and so do our definitions. I don't know much about your founding fathers beyond the Declaration of Independence, but I'd say all those mentioned were progressives in their own time.
There's some research that suggest climate change and evolution denial go up (by certain measures) as the respondants understanding of the issues goes up.
The answer is apparently that the smarter you are, the more likely you are to have absorbed this information, but also, the more likely you are to realise that your social group expects you to answer in a certain way.
For people outside the social groups that have rejected evolution/climate change, more knowledge helps rather than hurts. So it's not just about ignorance.
Fear and ignorance don't respect party lines. There's things liberal people are likely to be wrong about, and there's things illiberal people are likely to be wrong about.
The issue is where people fear a situation or outcome, and then draw their answers from their peers, who are also either un or ill-informed on the subject. Then you get bad answers to important questions, which no-one goes back to question (because now disagreeing with the answer means disagreeing with your social group).
The fact that most highly educated are liberal doesn't imply that most liberals are highly educated. I would guess (and hope) that most anti-vaxers are not highly educated, liberal or not.
We're talking about post-graduate degrees though. I would hope that most people with advanced degrees would have the critical thinking skills to understand the net benefits of vaccination, even without formal training in science.
And anti-GMO. Anti-nuclear. Organic food enthusiasts. Anti modern farming. Naturopathy and homeopathy believers. The type of people who think that global warming causes more hurricanes for example.
I don't mind this answer in general, but liberals also have big issues with anti-vax and anti-gmo sentiments. I don't think they're immune to uniformed fear-mongering and sticking their fingers in their ears.
>It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen.
Hehe, the obvious hole in his education was of course that he couldn't fix his pipes himself. :)
Anyway, would you care to summarize or just briefly mention what point the article argues?
TL;DR: The purpose of ivy league schools seems to be to teach people the entitlements of being part of an elite class. With that comes a complete ignorance to the fact that there are smarter, more diligent people that don't get into elite universities. [cites the behavior of numerous Yale graduates]
You could make the same argument against the "scholar" who spends their life in university and research. They are highly educated and practically useless as they accomplish little of substance towards "enlightenment." A socialist utopia sounds great when confined to the walls of the Ivy League but the individual who actually works for a living is far too wise for such nonsense.
T9 (Triple 9) is a high IQ society similar to Mensa, but which only accepts members whose IQ is in the .999 percentile.
It's a non-scientific poll, but in my experience while lots of my college friends were liberal, lots of my professors and the smartest people I know lean libertarian.
IQ societies aren't representative of the IQ range they require. I have a feeling people who feel the need to join one of those groups are more socially disaffected and have lower empathy than the their non-member IQ peers, which certainly correlates with a libertarian outlook.
And I haven't found your comment about libertarianism being rampant among professors to be true at all. Where did you go to school? That would be very much outside the norm.
> have lower empathy than the their non-member IQ peers, which certainly correlates with a libertarian outlook
I frequently hear this sentiment from the left, and it's terribly disheartening. It's something akin to "You don't want the government to provide everyone with a car? You must not like people having cars!" or "You don't want the government to arrest people for drinking soda? You must want everyone to die of obesity!". Libertarians aren't unemphatic, they simply have different solutions.
>IQ societies aren't representative of the IQ range they require.
And having an advanced degree doesn't mean you have a high IQ or are even particularly smart.
>I have a feeling people who feel the need to join one of those groups are more socially disaffected and have lower empathy than the their non-member IQ peers
Have a source? Anyway a lot of people are invited to join these groups when they're young, and I'd argue liberals are more likely to seek out the approval of others.
>And I haven't found your comment about libertarianism being rampant among professors to be true at all. Where did you go to school? That would be very much outside the norm.
I went to a mildly prestigious university. I have a Masters in CS and a Bachelors in Mathematics. I think it's likely that my teachers were more libertarian because I took very few liberal-arts classes, where I noticed the more liberal professors were.
Usually the ones that lean libertarian are old white guys. My Asian professors didn't seem into politics at all and the few female professors I had also didn't seem politically oriented.
I had one chemistry professor though who would go on and on about how much he hated the government and regulations and how good things were back when he could obtain [illegal chemical] easily.
Honestly the only time politics seem to come up is when the professor has some issue with some government regulation.
I can see how it might seem like many professors are liberal though, they believe in global warming, vaccines, human rights, but it turns out that many libertarians believe in all that stuff too.
So sure, one way is to protect myself and those I love behind a gated community. But that's pretty much voluntarily throwing myself to jail, I'd rather make it less necessary for others to be aggressive against my kin. I believe it requires more (and smarter) redistribution.
Another reason why it's my selfish interest, as a professional expert, to continuously reshuffle wealth, is that my social value resides in what I know and in my ability to learn, not in my family's accumulated wealth. Stabilising accumulated wealth, especially across generations, would make it harder to use my skills in order to climb higher on the social ladder.
Is my education a factor in this view? Probably.
* It helps me grasping some sociological insights which ought to be obvious. For instance, while hearing political speeches about wealth (re)distribution, I stay aware that the property laws are a social construct that must be agreed upon and can be altered at will by society, not a natural (let alone a God-given) law.
* It exposed me to a lot of competition, in school then at work, and although I've been a winner on average, I aspire to more fulfilling activities than turning others into losers. I have no revenge to take on others people, I don't enjoy crushing them.
* Having gone from penniless undergrad to minimum-wage PhD student to well-paid junior then senior specialist, I've experienced a variety of wealth levels. As a result I'm convinced that once basic needs are addressed, monetary incentives don't work the way Adam Smith' sycophants pretend they do. Money's meaningful as a way to keep score, and to compare myself among my social peers; but taxes don't affect that much, as long as they don't reverse relative wealth between potential peers.