Can We Trust Deliberation Priests?
In Science, academic “deliberation” experts offer a fix for our political ills: Citizens to express their views … overabundance [of] … has been accompanied by marked decline in civility and...
View ArticleSpeculator-Chosen Immigrants
On immigration, the big political tug-o-war axis today is: more or less immigrants. But if you want tug the rope sideways, both to oppose polarization and to have a better chance of adding value, you...
View ArticleRevolt of The Public
Martin Gurri’ book The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium has gotten *lots of praise. For example, Tyler: I am reading this splendid book for the first time. It...
View ArticlePopulists Like Late Bloomers
Late bloomers … possess qualities that can only be acquired through time and experience. They tend to be more curious, compassionate, resilient and wise than younger people of equal talent. (more) We...
View ArticleThe Persistence of Poverty
On Bryan Caplan’s recommendation, I just read The Persistence of Poverty, by Charles Karelis (2007). Karelis seeks to explain these patterns: Five patterns that have been common among the poor in many...
View ArticleLow Prestige Hurts More
It can feel terrible to feel unwanted. Unwanted by schools, labor markets, sport teams, music bands, acting troupes, or romantic partners. We feel bad when we feel unwanted, and we often pity others to...
View ArticleOur Prestige Obsession
Long ago our distant ancestors lived through both good times and bad. In bad times, they did their best to survive, while in good times they asked themselves, “What can I invest in now to help me in...
View ArticlePaternalism Is About Status
… children, whom he finds delightful and remarkably self-sufficient from the age of 4. He chalks this up to the fact that they are constantly lied to, can go anywhere and in their first years of life...
View ArticleQuality Regs Say ‘High Is Good’
95% think doctors should be licensed. … 96% oppose legalizing crystal meth. (more) One of the main ways that our world is not libertarian is that it is full of government rules requiring minimum...
View ArticleStatus Apps Are Coming
A person’s social status is a consensus of those nearby on that person’s relative social value and power. Which factors count how much in this status vary across societies and subcultures. (They...
View ArticleDreamtime Social Games
Ten years ago, I posted one of my most popular essays: “This is the Dreamtime.” In it, I argued that, because we are rich, Our descendants will remember our era as the one where the human capacity to...
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Honest Putdowns
What do people want? Surely one thing they want is to not be insulted or put down by others. Yet if you ask people what personal features they most aspire to improve, the features they pick have no...
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Our Hidden Motive To Submit
Dominance and submission are deeply embedded in animal and primate psychology, yet foragers had a strong norm against both, though they embraced the somewhat similar concept prestige. And we humans...
View ArticleRulesy Folks Push Paternalism
“The Tudor landowning justice of the peace (J.P.) was the greatest of of paternalists, rivaled only by the Tudor judges and privy councilors who who controlled the J.P.s. … They wanted to regulate the...
View ArticlePrestige in US Today
Lauren A. Rivera’s Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs is a depressing book because it tells how the world works: Pedigree takes readers behind the closed doors of top-tier investment banks,...
View ArticlePrestige As Mob-Enforced Dominance
Humans distinguish two kinds of status, about which we are quite moralistic. There’s the good kind, prestige, and the bad, dominance. These are commonly described as pro-social vs. selfish: Social...
View ArticleSix Struggles Surrounding Status
Struggle For Function – These are struggles that individuals and organizations have to achieve non-status things. Keep a boat from sinking, don’t burn dinner, or have a wedding plan work out. Your...
View ArticleExperts Versus Elites
Consider a typical firm or other small organization, run via a typical management hierarchy. At the bottom are specialists, who do very particular tasks. At the top are generalists, who supposedly...
View ArticleMore on Experts Vs. Elites
When a boss issues a new order, usually the main thing he or she is fighting with is the effects of his (or a prior boss’) previous orders. It can take time to undo their effects. And subordinates who...
View ArticleIs Status-Seeking A Context-Neglecting-Value?
The main evolutionary function of sex for humans is obviously procreation. Yet our deep values regarding sex don’t seem to pay that much attention to info we have about if procreation is likely to...
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