The things people actually care about, like money, success, influence, and psychological health, come entirely from structural/unconscious power.
No. Social Power is very much tied closely to Psychological Health. That people with lots of “structural power” are on average Psychologically healthier is mostly not the result of structural power. Higher IQ, conscientiousness, low time preference and other things that correlate with functionality and thus our social construct of “health” psychological and otherwise are what enables one to accrue what you term “structural power” in the first place. I’m not saying it is the sole source of it merely that social data shows the correlation is pretty strong in the modern US.
Is there any reason at all to think social animals such as ourselves would derive more psychological well being from “structural” than “social” power? In a terminal sense I mean. We have strong evidence people care about social power in itself a lot. “Structural power” is something that in itself excites only non-neurotypicals. Top earners may get excited about earning even more money much like gamers get excited about a high score. It only matters to them either because of their private fixation or their social circle. Having structural power is instrumentally useful, since we can leverage it into other things the monkey brain cares about like a candy bar or sex with a very skilled escort. In conversation on IRC Athrelon noted how this relates to the well known argument of “diminishing marginal utility of money”.
The dimishing marginal utility of “structural power”
The standard “liberal” position on it is approximately: “Structural power doesn’t matter for happiness and well being after a certain level so we should redistribute it directly via means such as progressive taxation.” Pause and think about this for a minute.
To use your example, wouldn’t Donalnd Trump get depressed about being being a laughing stock and buffoon who teenage girls can beat with impunity? Perhaps not Donald Trump personally for this exact example but to give examples someone like Howard Hughes certainly could become very miserable while having all the “structural power” in the world. People kill hemselves or completely cut contact with the outside world because of a lack of “social power”. Suicide for anyone above direst material poverty is usually about trying to escape this kind of suffering. Worse, the utility of those with social but not “structural” power over this individual would fundamentally derive from his misery.
Isn’t there something fundamentally ugly about that? Maybe it is worth in a utilitarian sense but it is a form of Omelas and carries all the burdens of proof real implementations of such scenarios do. If social power is not a good way to redistribute “structural” power and structural power while correlating with merit and mental health does not in itself buy that much happiness the scenario very much does come down to this.
And even if it was an excellent way to do so, note how structural power is fundamentally tied to the wealth creating mechanisms of society! Maybe white married middle class men are rather good at stewarding their material resources and wealth compared to some other demographics an incredible notion I know. But if true redistributing such power results in less wealth creation. Social power today does not nor has it ever accurately matched contributions to wealth creation. Of course neither does “institutional” power perfectly match this. But there are good reasons to expect it to be a better fit, foremost of those is how it can leverage the neat information properties of markets.
“Structural power” is something that in itself excites only non-neurotypicals. Top earners may get excited about earning even more money much like gamers get excited about a high score. It only matters to them either because of their private fixation or their social circle.
Nitpick: Those people would usually be considered neurotypical, unless you think they have some congenital neurological condition that causes them to enjoy high scores. Which isn’t inconceivable, I suppose.
People are not equally competent, nor virtuous, nor do they deserve equal social power [emphasis added]
That people are not equally competent or “virtuous” is trivially true; that lacking these things means that it is less important that they have Fun is, in my experience, a common product of confused thinking. That you seem to have this as an instrumental goal of producing more total Fun is interesting; I would advise avoiding the word “deserve” to avoid confusion, though.
General Anti-Leftism: People are not equally competent, nor virtuous, nor do they deserve equal social power as compensation for their lack of ability at accruing institutional power (starting positions on such capital tho may best be equalized).
Could I ask you to taboo ‘deserve’ in this context?
Could I ask you to taboo ‘deserve’ in this context?
A society where extraordinary achievement due to skill or effort isn’t matched by appropriately rewards is neither aesthetically pleasing nor fun to live in. We should somewhat try and shape society according to this observation.
Please be careful not to treat these as one-place functions. Consider the position of a person who is now being told that despite their and their teachers’ and parents’ best efforts, they simply have not accrued enough “extraordinary achievements” to make (say) medical care for their chronic pain an “appropriate reward” for them. That person may not agree that this makes society more aesthetically pleasing or fun to live in.
[Unfinished Draft for Essay which will not be published as a Discussion or Main article]
Originally part of the above comment but I’ve decided it fits more as an independent essay. Still in a very rough draft form.
Democratic society: A vista of horror as seen by reactionaries
We want the sum of structural power over nature, the amount of wealth a society has available to be ceteris paribus as high as possible. Isn’t it interesting how Pareto Optimality while being one of the most reliably benign goals is systematically neglected in pursuit of the misfiring heuristics of our mind. The heuristics I speak of are the ones that do not understand institutional power and demand to use the same “social power” mechanism field tested and efficient only on Dunbarian scales for the distribution of resources in the large societies of civilized man. Note how this relates to a currently popular hypothesis on the origin of our intelligence as driven by the parts of the brain that deal with optimizing for social power by bending and breaking explicit rules.
This makes the last sentence of the liberal argument above sound suddenly terrifying.
It is I hope I have shown to me far more terrifying than your virtual Conservative feels it is.
!Unfinished!
tldr: Make it so that institutional power matches the virtues we claim to value rather than the ones our revealed preferences show we value in social power games. The former are mostly more conductive to civilization and the common good.
General Anti-Leftism: People are not equally competent, nor virtuous, nor do they deserve equal social power as compensation for their lack of ability at accruing institutional power (starting positions on such capital tho may best be equalized).
Social power today does not nor has it ever accurately matched contributions to wealth creation. Of course neither does “institutional” power perfectly match this. But there are good reasons to expect it to be a better fit, foremost of those is how it can leverage the neat information properties of markets.
I should emphasise I am not at all saying the nature of institutional power in our society can’t perhaps be reformed to more closely match this.
A response to Yvain’s article An analysis of the formalist account of power relations in democratic societies.
Social Power and Utility
No. Social Power is very much tied closely to Psychological Health. That people with lots of “structural power” are on average Psychologically healthier is mostly not the result of structural power. Higher IQ, conscientiousness, low time preference and other things that correlate with functionality and thus our social construct of “health” psychological and otherwise are what enables one to accrue what you term “structural power” in the first place. I’m not saying it is the sole source of it merely that social data shows the correlation is pretty strong in the modern US.
Is there any reason at all to think social animals such as ourselves would derive more psychological well being from “structural” than “social” power? In a terminal sense I mean. We have strong evidence people care about social power in itself a lot. “Structural power” is something that in itself excites only non-neurotypicals. Top earners may get excited about earning even more money much like gamers get excited about a high score. It only matters to them either because of their private fixation or their social circle. Having structural power is instrumentally useful, since we can leverage it into other things the monkey brain cares about like a candy bar or sex with a very skilled escort. In conversation on IRC Athrelon noted how this relates to the well known argument of “diminishing marginal utility of money”.
The dimishing marginal utility of “structural power”
The standard “liberal” position on it is approximately: “Structural power doesn’t matter for happiness and well being after a certain level so we should redistribute it directly via means such as progressive taxation.” Pause and think about this for a minute.
To use your example, wouldn’t Donalnd Trump get depressed about being being a laughing stock and buffoon who teenage girls can beat with impunity? Perhaps not Donald Trump personally for this exact example but to give examples someone like Howard Hughes certainly could become very miserable while having all the “structural power” in the world. People kill hemselves or completely cut contact with the outside world because of a lack of “social power”. Suicide for anyone above direst material poverty is usually about trying to escape this kind of suffering. Worse, the utility of those with social but not “structural” power over this individual would fundamentally derive from his misery.
Isn’t there something fundamentally ugly about that? Maybe it is worth in a utilitarian sense but it is a form of Omelas and carries all the burdens of proof real implementations of such scenarios do. If social power is not a good way to redistribute “structural” power and structural power while correlating with merit and mental health does not in itself buy that much happiness the scenario very much does come down to this.
And even if it was an excellent way to do so, note how structural power is fundamentally tied to the wealth creating mechanisms of society! Maybe white married middle class men are rather good at stewarding their material resources and wealth compared to some other demographics an incredible notion I know. But if true redistributing such power results in less wealth creation. Social power today does not nor has it ever accurately matched contributions to wealth creation. Of course neither does “institutional” power perfectly match this. But there are good reasons to expect it to be a better fit, foremost of those is how it can leverage the neat information properties of markets.
Nitpick: Those people would usually be considered neurotypical, unless you think they have some congenital neurological condition that causes them to enjoy high scores. Which isn’t inconceivable, I suppose.
That people are not equally competent or “virtuous” is trivially true; that lacking these things means that it is less important that they have Fun is, in my experience, a common product of confused thinking. That you seem to have this as an instrumental goal of producing more total Fun is interesting; I would advise avoiding the word “deserve” to avoid confusion, though.
Could I ask you to taboo ‘deserve’ in this context?
A society where extraordinary achievement due to skill or effort isn’t matched by appropriately rewards is neither aesthetically pleasing nor fun to live in. We should somewhat try and shape society according to this observation.
Please be careful not to treat these as one-place functions. Consider the position of a person who is now being told that despite their and their teachers’ and parents’ best efforts, they simply have not accrued enough “extraordinary achievements” to make (say) medical care for their chronic pain an “appropriate reward” for them. That person may not agree that this makes society more aesthetically pleasing or fun to live in.
To be clear; you’re saying that equal distribution of fun things is less fun? I can see how that’d be.
I’m a little confused by what you are saying? Do you believe the General Anti-Leftism, or oppose it?
Also, social power seems to me like a non-zero-sum thing. (possibly the amount that is non-zero-summable could be called respect.)
That part is the one I haven’t finished. Check out in a few days.
[Unfinished Draft for Essay which will not be published as a Discussion or Main article]
Originally part of the above comment but I’ve decided it fits more as an independent essay. Still in a very rough draft form.
Democratic society: A vista of horror as seen by reactionaries
We want the sum of structural power over nature, the amount of wealth a society has available to be ceteris paribus as high as possible. Isn’t it interesting how Pareto Optimality while being one of the most reliably benign goals is systematically neglected in pursuit of the misfiring heuristics of our mind. The heuristics I speak of are the ones that do not understand institutional power and demand to use the same “social power” mechanism field tested and efficient only on Dunbarian scales for the distribution of resources in the large societies of civilized man. Note how this relates to a currently popular hypothesis on the origin of our intelligence as driven by the parts of the brain that deal with optimizing for social power by bending and breaking explicit rules.
It is I hope I have shown to me far more terrifying than your virtual Conservative feels it is.
!Unfinished!
tldr: Make it so that institutional power matches the virtues we claim to value rather than the ones our revealed preferences show we value in social power games. The former are mostly more conductive to civilization and the common good.
General Anti-Leftism: People are not equally competent, nor virtuous, nor do they deserve equal social power as compensation for their lack of ability at accruing institutional power (starting positions on such capital tho may best be equalized).
I should emphasise I am not at all saying the nature of institutional power in our society can’t perhaps be reformed to more closely match this.