My tentative hypothesis: the less difference there is, the more important it becomes to signal it. More weird stuff in the article.
Wealth seems like the best explanation, since it empowers self-expression in a general sense. One of the main comparisons I saw focused on comparing Scandinavia and India / China, and asking the women why they went into whatever career they went into. Indian or Chinese women go into STEM fields not because they like them more than alternatives, but because they represent a stable, high-status job or a path to America or so on.* Scandinavian women are happy being nurses because the job is more enjoyable and they’re wealthy enough to want a larger share of their compensation in job satisfaction instead of money.
*It’s not the thing I read on gender differences, but Peter Chang’s story seems interesting and relevant. The government decided that he would go to culinary school, and he wasn’t interested, since he wanted to be a scholar, not a chef. His dying grandmother gave him advice to learn any skill at all:
She told her grandson that “you should not just think about yourself, whether you’re happy or not,” Chang recalls. “You have to consider that you’re the eldest son of this family. On your shoulders, there are your parents and your younger siblings, and you have to think for them.”
And then he goes on to become a master chef and gets to America and is now running a chain of restaurants. But the advice seems very un-Scandinavian.
John Adams, one of America’s Founding Fathers, reportedly wrote in one of his letters:
The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.
Very Confucian, family first, no individualism. I respect that, actually, my own culture suffers from being in the middle, longing for the idea of an extended family tribe / gang, but yet too focused on individual desires to actually make that happen.
Funny thing is, it is not immediately obvious, but both red-stater American, and social democratic Scandinavian cultures are individualists. They just differ in the opinion of what kind of economic setup brings the most individual freedom. One is more about focusing on not letting anything taken away from you, the other focusing on having everything given to you that you may need to live according to your individual desires.
A properly non-individualist culture is not actually socialist or social democratic in the modern sense. It is more tribal. Share, but only with people I am closely tied to. Sharing with millions of strangers can only be justified by a form of individualism: they did not earn by being part of your tribe, they earned by being individuals who need it and repay it.
I am just saying it because I am kinda tired about debates about individualism vs. socialism. This is a non-issue. The issue is individualist socialism vs. individualist non-socialism vs. communal tribalism.
both red-stater American, and social democratic Scandinavian cultures are individualists.
I don’t think this is true about Scandinavia. Not sure about the Finns, but both Norwegian and Swedish culture have been described as enforcing a LOT of conformism.
I am fairly astonished—this is a fairly obvious definition of modern social democracy / social liberalism?
Old, collectivist socialism was about common social goals of basically the pyramid-building type. Enter liberal individualism. Everybody lives for their own goals. At some point people realize that the current distribution of wealth does not lead to the maximization of individual goal achievement. Some people want to be artists, but it is hard to make a living that way unless you are really good. Some people want to play the business mogul, but they own five businesss and they could still play it if they owned only one. So four (or their profits) can be redistributed to the artists. Of course it is a highly theoretical unreal example, but just making a point. Socialist, because the wealth belongs to the society, not the individual, can be spread around. Individualist, because the goal is not pyramid-building but enabling individuals to get the resources to live as they want to.
Sort of look at like this: individualism is people living for hobbies, personal goals, not socially determined duties. Socialist wealth redistribution is about enabling more people to live for a hobby instead of doing what it takes to make a living.
Disclaimer: not an endorsement, but a description of other people’s goals
Some people want to be artists, but it is hard to make a living that way unless you are really good. Some people want to play the business mogul, but they own five businesss and they could still play it if they owned only one.
It seems to me that this rests on a bad model of motivations. Not bad because inaccurate, though; it’s a simplified model but it’s about as accurate as any equivalently simple one. Bad because it creates bad incentives.
I’ve met a ton of people that want to be artists, i.e. to fill the social role of “artist”, and I’ve also met a ton of people that want to be entrepreneurs, i.e. to fill the social role of Tony Stark. (You can’t swing a dead cat in California without hitting one or the other.) Most of them stop at wanting, but the ones that don’t universally produce bad art and bad companies. Good art comes from the people that want to produce good art, which is hard, takes a lot of directed effort, and doesn’t actually have much to do with the social role.
One could argue, of course, that that implies extrinsic policy goals and you’re rather concerned with intrinsics. I don’t live in these people’s heads, so I don’t know how intrinsically satisfied they are, and I haven’t seen any research covering that ground either; but even if we’re concerned only with pure hedonics, I can’t help but wonder how good an idea it is to set people up to be frustrated in their ambitions.
this is a fairly obvious definition of modern social democracy / social liberalism?
Nope, not to me.
because the wealth belongs to the society, not the individual
Not in any “modern social democracy” that I know.
I feel you’re confusing feel-good propaganda with how things actually work in real life.
individualism is people living for hobbies, personal goals, not socially determined duties. Socialist wealth redistribution is about enabling more people to live for a hobby instead of doing what it takes to make a living.
This calls for a quote usually attributed to Maggie Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” To redistribute wealth you first need to create it and “people living for hobbies” tend not to create much.
Rawls is the most used philosopher in these circles and he basically re-implemented socialism from am collectivist to an individualist philosophy in A Theory Of Justice.
I think this is more of a central idea than just propaganda. I think it began as people trying to live as individualists first, living for their hobbies, then figured the market does not support it. So basically hoped to increase freedom by less reliance on the market, figuring if take money form rich people they still have enough to live for their own hobbies and thus you increased the total social sum of hobby-living. True, probably the whole thing does not work economically because it is a “how to spend money on xmas presents to make the most people happy” kind of philosophy and not a “how to make money” kind. I am just saying the basis of it is individualistic. No common goal, but individual pleasure. No pyramids.
Rawls is the most used philosopher in these circles and he basically re-implemented socialism from am collectivist to an individualist philosophy in A Theory Of Justice.
Yes, but that doesn’t mean that he’s right or that his theory makes much sense. I have a fairly low opinion of “these circles”.
it began as people trying to live as individualists first, living for their hobbies
First of all, I don’t think that “living for a hobby” has anything at all to do with being an individualist. The markets are individualistic, a fact much lamented by a variety of authors (e.g. Karl Marx), and hobbies can perfectly well be communal.
to increase freedom by less reliance on the market
This is basically “if someone gives me resources for free (gratis) I’ll be more free (libre) in the sense that more options will be available to me”. That is trivially true, but still has nothing to do with individualism—the principle works in the same way for tribes, governments, AIs, etc. etc.
Yes, but that doesn’t mean that he’s right or that his theory makes much sense. I have a fairly low opinion of “these circles”.
I used to, too, but lately I figured I should not really write off ideas so easily that are basically shared by the majority of professors more or less. I did not sign up them either but learned to put them into a “gray zone”, neither affirm nor deny, but more like watch where they lead neutrally. One thing is clear, I suck at empathy, lately I am even thinking I may be schizoid a bit, and it would not be safe (in the sense of my calibration) to scoff too much on bleeding-heart stuff, as it can be my inner indifference speaking instead of my rational judgement.
Markets are individualistic because there is no such thing as fads, bandwagons, fandom, network effect and stuff like that? :) Sorry, I must say with a high probability that this 19th century idea is falsified. Just look at “Apple fanboys”. Basically a religion, attire and all that. The 21st century market does not even resemble individuals looking like the buying the best things for their individual goals. More like people buying things that signal membership in a community...
Hobbies can be communal, but I guess what makes them individualistic is the lack of commitment. Stop when no longer fun.
This is basically “if someone gives me resources for free (gratis) I’ll be more free (libre) in the sense that more options will be available to me”. That is trivially true, but still has nothing to do with individualism—the principle works in the same way for tribes, governments, AIs, etc. etc.
No offense, but do you too have a similar empathy deficiency problem I am struggling with? It is trivially easy to imagine people having all kinds of individual aspirations but the sheer necessity of needing to pay rent, bills, support a family etc. overrides it and basically they have to accept any job they can.
Again I don’t endorse socialism, but it deserves more empathic understanding than you seem to give to it. Imagine four men, each having to support a family and each wanting to be a not too good violinist, not too good means not expecting to get paid for it. A has no money, B has €5M, C has €20M and D has €100M. B, C, and D will all be able to live for their hobby as they don’t need a wage to live. A will have to work as an accountant. Redistributing from D to A enables all four to live as a violinist. Yes, the model is not complete, as it lacks the model to generate wealth, yes, there are economic arguments against it, but can’t we give some empathic understanding how A feels coerced, forced, unfree, due to the lack of money, to follow his impulse and B, C, D not? Can’t we at least empathically understand that there is at least a freedom advantage gained from this, even if other disadvantages created, by D saving A from “wage slavery” ?
do you too have a similar empathy deficiency problem I am struggling with?
Hard to say—I do not struggle with such a problem and in my experience people who proclaim that I should have more empathy towards X just want my money.
but can’t we give some empathic understanding how A feels coerced, forced, unfree, due to the lack of money, to follow his impulse and B, C, D not?
Some. Very very small empathetic understanding. Certainly not enough to base economic systems of societies on.
But if you think you should feel so much empathy for the poor bloke who can’t be a violinist, let me ask you something. Have you ever been to a very poor third world country? Say, India, or something in Tropical Africa. I recommend you go, and not in a tour bus either. I suspect this will recalibrate your empathy a lot.
No, I was never outside Europe, don’t really like to travel long distances, I am more familiar with the Eastern European style of poverty and yes, most of what empathy I am capable of having goes to people outside the first world, inside the first world it seems more doable to compromise personal goals with the need to make a living.
My point is simply libertarian capitalism cannot really claim to maximize personal freedom, of course, we could say that it does optimize the combined goal of personal freedom and coming up with an economic system that can survive more than 50 years, economists understand it, I am just saying some understanding should be given to non-economists who look for alternatives where most people are not stuck in having to make a living doing things they don’t like. That libertarian capitlaism should not be defined as an individualist or freedom based system, but more like a stability based system, we could easily imagine far more freedom based or far more individualist systems (say based on basic income where most people are not expected to get a job) but they would not last for more than 2 generations, so it would be more proper to call it stability based, not individuality based, that is only my point, not that it is bad or that there are currently better alternatives, but merely that its virtue is its stability, not its individuality nor its freedom.
We should probably not confuse preference and necessity. Some people enjoy being in a tribe. Other people don’t enjoy being in a tribe, but it is their only (or most likely) way to survive in their situation.
Just because you miss not being in a tribe is not a proof that if you were a member of an actual tribe, you would enjoy it. Actual tribe might differ from your idea of a tribe; it could be full of people you would hate, and in some kind of society you could have no reasonable way to escape.
We should probably not confuse preference and necessity. Some people enjoy being in a tribe.
I don’t think there are some people who enjoy every kind of tribe and others who hate every kind of tribe.
It largely depends on the other people in the tribe and your relationships with them.
Sure, there are different tribes, and different personalities. Let’s assume that an “average tribe” is… well, average; not very abusive, but also not perfect.
I think some people, if given realistic free choice, would prefer to live in that tribe, and some people would prefer to live in an individualist society. So let’s say the former are “voluntary tribesmen”, although they may have bad luck and end up in an abusive tribe. The latter, if they live in a culture that does not give them a choice, are “involuntary tribesmen”.
From the outside, the “voluntary” and “involuntary” tribesmen may look the same for an observer from our culture. Both stick with their tribe. But one of them enjoys it, and the other one only does it to prevent starvation of themselves or their relatives. Just because we sometimes feel that we would enjoy living in a tribe, we should not believe that all people living in tribes are of the “voluntary” type.
Wealth seems like the best explanation, since it empowers self-expression in a general sense. One of the main comparisons I saw focused on comparing Scandinavia and India / China, and asking the women why they went into whatever career they went into. Indian or Chinese women go into STEM fields not because they like them more than alternatives, but because they represent a stable, high-status job or a path to America or so on.* Scandinavian women are happy being nurses because the job is more enjoyable and they’re wealthy enough to want a larger share of their compensation in job satisfaction instead of money.
*It’s not the thing I read on gender differences, but Peter Chang’s story seems interesting and relevant. The government decided that he would go to culinary school, and he wasn’t interested, since he wanted to be a scholar, not a chef. His dying grandmother gave him advice to learn any skill at all:
And then he goes on to become a master chef and gets to America and is now running a chain of restaurants. But the advice seems very un-Scandinavian.
John Adams, one of America’s Founding Fathers, reportedly wrote in one of his letters:
Very Confucian, family first, no individualism. I respect that, actually, my own culture suffers from being in the middle, longing for the idea of an extended family tribe / gang, but yet too focused on individual desires to actually make that happen.
Funny thing is, it is not immediately obvious, but both red-stater American, and social democratic Scandinavian cultures are individualists. They just differ in the opinion of what kind of economic setup brings the most individual freedom. One is more about focusing on not letting anything taken away from you, the other focusing on having everything given to you that you may need to live according to your individual desires.
A properly non-individualist culture is not actually socialist or social democratic in the modern sense. It is more tribal. Share, but only with people I am closely tied to. Sharing with millions of strangers can only be justified by a form of individualism: they did not earn by being part of your tribe, they earned by being individuals who need it and repay it.
I am just saying it because I am kinda tired about debates about individualism vs. socialism. This is a non-issue. The issue is individualist socialism vs. individualist non-socialism vs. communal tribalism.
I don’t think this is true about Scandinavia. Not sure about the Finns, but both Norwegian and Swedish culture have been described as enforcing a LOT of conformism.
Sounds like an oxymoron to me.
I am fairly astonished—this is a fairly obvious definition of modern social democracy / social liberalism?
Old, collectivist socialism was about common social goals of basically the pyramid-building type. Enter liberal individualism. Everybody lives for their own goals. At some point people realize that the current distribution of wealth does not lead to the maximization of individual goal achievement. Some people want to be artists, but it is hard to make a living that way unless you are really good. Some people want to play the business mogul, but they own five businesss and they could still play it if they owned only one. So four (or their profits) can be redistributed to the artists. Of course it is a highly theoretical unreal example, but just making a point. Socialist, because the wealth belongs to the society, not the individual, can be spread around. Individualist, because the goal is not pyramid-building but enabling individuals to get the resources to live as they want to.
Sort of look at like this: individualism is people living for hobbies, personal goals, not socially determined duties. Socialist wealth redistribution is about enabling more people to live for a hobby instead of doing what it takes to make a living.
Disclaimer: not an endorsement, but a description of other people’s goals
It seems to me that this rests on a bad model of motivations. Not bad because inaccurate, though; it’s a simplified model but it’s about as accurate as any equivalently simple one. Bad because it creates bad incentives.
I’ve met a ton of people that want to be artists, i.e. to fill the social role of “artist”, and I’ve also met a ton of people that want to be entrepreneurs, i.e. to fill the social role of Tony Stark. (You can’t swing a dead cat in California without hitting one or the other.) Most of them stop at wanting, but the ones that don’t universally produce bad art and bad companies. Good art comes from the people that want to produce good art, which is hard, takes a lot of directed effort, and doesn’t actually have much to do with the social role.
One could argue, of course, that that implies extrinsic policy goals and you’re rather concerned with intrinsics. I don’t live in these people’s heads, so I don’t know how intrinsically satisfied they are, and I haven’t seen any research covering that ground either; but even if we’re concerned only with pure hedonics, I can’t help but wonder how good an idea it is to set people up to be frustrated in their ambitions.
Nope, not to me.
Not in any “modern social democracy” that I know.
I feel you’re confusing feel-good propaganda with how things actually work in real life.
This calls for a quote usually attributed to Maggie Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” To redistribute wealth you first need to create it and “people living for hobbies” tend not to create much.
Again: I am reporting it, not endorsing it.
Rawls is the most used philosopher in these circles and he basically re-implemented socialism from am collectivist to an individualist philosophy in A Theory Of Justice.
I think this is more of a central idea than just propaganda. I think it began as people trying to live as individualists first, living for their hobbies, then figured the market does not support it. So basically hoped to increase freedom by less reliance on the market, figuring if take money form rich people they still have enough to live for their own hobbies and thus you increased the total social sum of hobby-living. True, probably the whole thing does not work economically because it is a “how to spend money on xmas presents to make the most people happy” kind of philosophy and not a “how to make money” kind. I am just saying the basis of it is individualistic. No common goal, but individual pleasure. No pyramids.
Yes, but that doesn’t mean that he’s right or that his theory makes much sense. I have a fairly low opinion of “these circles”.
First of all, I don’t think that “living for a hobby” has anything at all to do with being an individualist. The markets are individualistic, a fact much lamented by a variety of authors (e.g. Karl Marx), and hobbies can perfectly well be communal.
This is basically “if someone gives me resources for free (gratis) I’ll be more free (libre) in the sense that more options will be available to me”. That is trivially true, but still has nothing to do with individualism—the principle works in the same way for tribes, governments, AIs, etc. etc.
I used to, too, but lately I figured I should not really write off ideas so easily that are basically shared by the majority of professors more or less. I did not sign up them either but learned to put them into a “gray zone”, neither affirm nor deny, but more like watch where they lead neutrally. One thing is clear, I suck at empathy, lately I am even thinking I may be schizoid a bit, and it would not be safe (in the sense of my calibration) to scoff too much on bleeding-heart stuff, as it can be my inner indifference speaking instead of my rational judgement.
Markets are individualistic because there is no such thing as fads, bandwagons, fandom, network effect and stuff like that? :) Sorry, I must say with a high probability that this 19th century idea is falsified. Just look at “Apple fanboys”. Basically a religion, attire and all that. The 21st century market does not even resemble individuals looking like the buying the best things for their individual goals. More like people buying things that signal membership in a community...
Hobbies can be communal, but I guess what makes them individualistic is the lack of commitment. Stop when no longer fun.
No offense, but do you too have a similar empathy deficiency problem I am struggling with? It is trivially easy to imagine people having all kinds of individual aspirations but the sheer necessity of needing to pay rent, bills, support a family etc. overrides it and basically they have to accept any job they can.
Again I don’t endorse socialism, but it deserves more empathic understanding than you seem to give to it. Imagine four men, each having to support a family and each wanting to be a not too good violinist, not too good means not expecting to get paid for it. A has no money, B has €5M, C has €20M and D has €100M. B, C, and D will all be able to live for their hobby as they don’t need a wage to live. A will have to work as an accountant. Redistributing from D to A enables all four to live as a violinist. Yes, the model is not complete, as it lacks the model to generate wealth, yes, there are economic arguments against it, but can’t we give some empathic understanding how A feels coerced, forced, unfree, due to the lack of money, to follow his impulse and B, C, D not? Can’t we at least empathically understand that there is at least a freedom advantage gained from this, even if other disadvantages created, by D saving A from “wage slavery” ?
Hard to say—I do not struggle with such a problem and in my experience people who proclaim that I should have more empathy towards X just want my money.
Some. Very very small empathetic understanding. Certainly not enough to base economic systems of societies on.
But if you think you should feel so much empathy for the poor bloke who can’t be a violinist, let me ask you something. Have you ever been to a very poor third world country? Say, India, or something in Tropical Africa. I recommend you go, and not in a tour bus either. I suspect this will recalibrate your empathy a lot.
No, I was never outside Europe, don’t really like to travel long distances, I am more familiar with the Eastern European style of poverty and yes, most of what empathy I am capable of having goes to people outside the first world, inside the first world it seems more doable to compromise personal goals with the need to make a living.
My point is simply libertarian capitalism cannot really claim to maximize personal freedom, of course, we could say that it does optimize the combined goal of personal freedom and coming up with an economic system that can survive more than 50 years, economists understand it, I am just saying some understanding should be given to non-economists who look for alternatives where most people are not stuck in having to make a living doing things they don’t like. That libertarian capitlaism should not be defined as an individualist or freedom based system, but more like a stability based system, we could easily imagine far more freedom based or far more individualist systems (say based on basic income where most people are not expected to get a job) but they would not last for more than 2 generations, so it would be more proper to call it stability based, not individuality based, that is only my point, not that it is bad or that there are currently better alternatives, but merely that its virtue is its stability, not its individuality nor its freedom.
We should probably not confuse preference and necessity. Some people enjoy being in a tribe. Other people don’t enjoy being in a tribe, but it is their only (or most likely) way to survive in their situation.
Just because you miss not being in a tribe is not a proof that if you were a member of an actual tribe, you would enjoy it. Actual tribe might differ from your idea of a tribe; it could be full of people you would hate, and in some kind of society you could have no reasonable way to escape.
I don’t think there are some people who enjoy every kind of tribe and others who hate every kind of tribe. It largely depends on the other people in the tribe and your relationships with them.
Sure, there are different tribes, and different personalities. Let’s assume that an “average tribe” is… well, average; not very abusive, but also not perfect.
I think some people, if given realistic free choice, would prefer to live in that tribe, and some people would prefer to live in an individualist society. So let’s say the former are “voluntary tribesmen”, although they may have bad luck and end up in an abusive tribe. The latter, if they live in a culture that does not give them a choice, are “involuntary tribesmen”.
From the outside, the “voluntary” and “involuntary” tribesmen may look the same for an observer from our culture. Both stick with their tribe. But one of them enjoys it, and the other one only does it to prevent starvation of themselves or their relatives. Just because we sometimes feel that we would enjoy living in a tribe, we should not believe that all people living in tribes are of the “voluntary” type.