Bryan Caplan has advocated creating and living in a Bubble, but I think his Bubble is different from the kind you are writing about. If I happen to be blown into a Bubble, is there some way to get into the beneficial kind and avoid the detrimental type? Food for froth...
Does his bubble account for the millions of strangers moving to America once his plan for total open borders is enacted? I guess his bubble is either impenetrable or that the consequences of importing millions of new people would never dent his personal bubble—either way, he might just be right.
I am all for bubbles of the monkish withdrawal from the world kind (if that's your thing), but to hurl utopian molotov cocktails like "open borders" at the society that feeds and protects you and your family just strikes me as reckless—it actually reminds me more of one of those kids who picks fights then hides behind his older brother when things get too hot.
When I am Emperor I will import a few thousand members of Hamas and the Taliban and have them move next door to Mr Caplan, with their kids sharing the same schools.
In fairness to Caplan - and be clear, like you I do not agree with him on fully open borders - he has explicitly said that people who represent a physical risk can/should be barred (and so Israel is the one place in particular he acknowledges cannot have open borders).
I appreciate your wanting to be fair, and don't want to be strident, but I feel like "people who represent a physical risk can/should be barred" is the kind of thing you say when you're working backwards from a premise you've already embraced and need to justify/defend it.
No matter how many "people who represent a physical risk" are "barred" there remains the simple fact that when different tribes of males end up adjacent and competing for resources (financial, sexual or otherwise), there will always be the potential for violent conflict—and this goes even for chimps and apes!
People like Caplan who've lived their whole lives in school and/or the library seem to have no theory of mind in re human aggression, as they have very little, so they have an idealized view of humans and our capabilities and malleability. Intellectuals cling to their precious utopian visions no matter how many times reality provides contradictory answers, and no matter how unnecesarily disruptive they prove to be.
Our thinking classes have a great deal of knowledge but very little wisdom.
“People like Caplan who've lived their whole lives in school and/or the library seem to have no theory of mind in re human aggression, as they have very little, so they have an idealized view of humans and our capabilities and malleability. Intellectuals cling to their precious utopian visions no matter how many times reality provides contradictory answers, and no matter how unnecesarily [sic] disruptive they prove to be.”
…and NOW it’s clear you’ve read very little of Caplan. Which I would encourage you to do.
Even as I strongly disagree with him on this one issue, if you’d read his stuff you’d know he’s got ANYTHING but “an idealized view of humans and our capabilities and malleability”.
And I’m willing to go out on a limb that based on my having read a lot of Caplan and on your above statement - and in particular your final sentence - Caplan’s likely got a lot more wisdom than you do.
If one is to win an election, especially a close one, expand your base by seeking more votes. Belittling half of the American people by calling them deplorable or fascists isn't the way to get that accomplished.
I had seen that Lawrence Welk clip before, and it remains an exceptional cultural artifact. I'm a very late Boomer (some argue that I'm actually *not* a Boomer, I'm something called "Generation Jones"?) and I admit that many of later generations' complaints about Boomer cluelessness are on point. But we came by that honestly, inherited from our equally clueless parents. My limbic system can still recreate the flood of embarrassment I felt when my mom asked 17-year-old me to explain "gay" to her.
I told my mother that she had no right to call her cohort "The Greatest Generation" because they raised my generation, thereby invalidating the sobriquet.
Sure, but most of us don't associate ONLY with people who match our preferences in toto. Tocqueville marvelled at 19th century America's overlapping interest groups. A and B might be in different religious groups, but they're likely in the same neighborhood or business association or social club etc. You naturally developed some affinity/empathy for most people through one channel or another. Now, it's total separation. People who wouldn't think of joining a hiking club that includes members of the opposite political party.
I will say, if everyone's mind is already made up and not going to change, why do the polling results continue shifting by larger than the margin of error?
1) Not by much. 2) Margin of error is a more precise, scientific concept than is warranted by polling methodologies. 3) We're now only 36 days out. 4) People lie to pollsters, and I suspect contemporary events have a significant effect on how people lie from week to week. 5) My writing is a bit tongue-in-cheek.
The fact you find yourself frequently voting AGAINST one of the presidential candidates, instead of for the other, is a sad commentary on the state of American politics. Many years ago America had a candidate for president who voters voted FOR, and to show just how apolitical he was, remember that he was asked by both parties to run as their candidate. Likely because he had done such an inspiring job in his first career. Alas, as old as I am (almost as old as dirt), I was not old enough to vote for Ike, but I liked him. (Wish I had kept my I Like Ike pin.)
That Lawrence Welk clip was hilarious! Thanks for sharing. I wish we could ask the singers if the knew what they were singing about.
Or, it's possible that today most people would say "Who is Ike?" ... Reminds me that on a long travel day years ago I visited both the Eisenhower and Truman museums - Salina, Kansas and Independence, Missouri.
I've been to the Gerald Ford Museum in Grand Rapids. The most frightening thing there was a room dedicated to mid-1970s clothing styles. The horror, the horror.
1.I hesitate to cross you (and you did say "may") but after considerable thought, I can't remember Gerald Ford being blasted as a Nazi during his time in office.
2. On the "I still like Ike" joke, I remember a variant from the Kennedy years Supposedly businessmen were wearing the button with the Ike slogan, followed by "Hell, I even miss Harry."
You may be right, but ... ... . In Spring 1940, Yale Law student Gerald Ford belonged to an isolationist group--a precursor to the America First Committee--at Yale Law School. Their petition said, “We demand that Congress refrain from war, even if England is on the verge of defeat.” But, again, you may be right.
I salute the neologism “enbubbling,” though I would have said “embubbling” oneself.
The bubble in this usage a species of container. By contrast, when bubbles are not containers, as when a foam is generated for shaving or for extinguishing fires, I suppose that is enbubbling.
I know several who have not yet decided if they will vote for Harris or Trump, so.
I prob will vote for neither, but will vote for those running for Congress, State and local positions.
In fact the vote for local Pols is far more significant a vote than a vote for either reprobate Pres candidate.
Hard to figure out which of Harris or Trump will be worse of the two and one person i know who hates Trump said he will vote for Trump due to one and only one issue for him that he thinks Dems fail on but is important to him.
Lawrence Welk again. I wrote an essay about Lawrence Welk for Freshman English class years and years ago. People told me about Branson, Missouri, and all of the great shows -- seems like Lawrence Welk on steroids. Is it a bubble there or a time warp?
Look Fat. I'm pretty sure you don't have to be in a bubble to look at some facts and still wonder how somebody votes for a guy who has dementia, showered with his daughter, made his drug addled son his bag man, has been wrong on every major foreign policy decision, plagiarized his rear end off, invented absolutely silly exaggerations about his life story, helped spend us into 45 T in debt.
That's not classic cognitive dissonance or bias confirmation. Them's the Facts Jack.
My whole point is that one can reasonably argue that either is worse--or that they are equivalent. My only point is that some people lack the capacity to comprehend why someone might disagree with their assessment. I certainly have my notion as to who is worse. But I at least understand why some of my friends hold the opposite viewpoint. There is a peculiar asymmetry. I have yet to have any Trump supporter say "I don't understand why people don't like Trump" and ask me to explain. I've had numerous well-read, intelligent, thoughtful Biden supporters say to me "I don't understand why people don't like Biden" and ask me to explain.
Hehe. Got you. I'm just a little dense. And maybe I do live in a bubble, but I try to peek outside. :) occasionally.
As an aside, can you reasonably argue that price controls, taxing unrealized gains, the green new deal grift, snipping the bits off kids is a good plan for society? Strip the personalities away. Just look at the policies. One path brings authoritarian centralized misery and death. The other individual rights, liberty and a decentralized prosperous economy. But I guess this is a stupid question since "one man's socialism is another man's neighborliness."
I'm unaware of any party that's currently pushing "individual rights, liberty, and a decentralized prosperous economy." Even the the Libertarian Party seems to have abandoned libertarian ideas. That doesn't mean I don't view some better (or worse) than others.
An interesting well stated, thought provoking list. As to #3 and #4, how then to explain why all the effort to flood the media with ads to convince us to vote for their candidate. Could it be that the media and political pundits live in the biggest, thickest bubbles and the rest of us, while living with a set of values and convictions, are mostly bubble-less? I confess to some bubbly-ness, but I don’t think it’s a permanent condition - or strictly one dimensional.
We all live is a bubble of our choice but some can see outside or through their bubble to the wider world. I agree it is easier if you are a conservative/classical liberal because we are awash in liberal/leftist media. I do understand why people would vote for Harris over Trump. They usually use emotion or quote a media talking point but they don’t like to talk about policy. I know many people who are turned off by President Trump but will vote
for him because of policy. The people and friends I have trouble with are those that live in opaque bubbles. They will say things like they can’t vote for Trump because of what he said about Charlottesville. I try to explain what why saw was not his whole statement and would send them the clip for their review. They respond that it wouldn’t change their mind and they don’t want to see it. It reminds me of my son who after seeing a movie about a
Civil War Veteran in Japan teaching one side how to fight a “modern” war was annoyed when the classroom discussion took the movie to be true. Even the teacher said that it could have happened and they could discuss the change in Japan shown in the movie as true. She lost my son as an interested student, but moved many of the class into the bubble the media loves.
The bubble problem is especially acute among journos. An article in Politico Magazine by Jack Shafer and Tucker Doherty reported that as of 2016 more than half of publishing employees lived in counties which Hillary Clinton carried by more than 30 percentage points. Three-quarters of all internet publishing workers live either in the Boston-New York-Washington-Richmond corridor or else in the west coast crescent from Seattle-San Diego to Phoenix. Since conformity is the most basic principle of social psychology, the coastal liberals who comprise the majority of journos regard their groupthink as unquestionable facts which only the stupid or wicked find questionable.
When the executives of the failing Big Three auto makers went to Congress in 2008 to ask for a taxpayer bailout, a reporter from ABC News asked them how they had traveled. The answer was that they had traveled as they were accustomed to, by corporate jet, at a cost of $20,000 per person. The reporter asked them how their companies could justify asking for $25 billion from the taxpayers when they were rich enough to afford luxury travel for their executives? According to "Crash Course", by Paul Ingrassia, "The CEO's bolted like a Corvette peeling away from a stop light, which only made the damage worse when their hasty retreats were replayed on the evening news." Like all other bubble dwellers, they were terrified when someone pierced their bubble.
Ingrassia went on to say that "Corporate jets were as integral to executive live in Detroit as the free cars, free car washes and free gasoline in the company parking garage." Yet, getting a new company car every six months and having it serviced and refueled in the company garage means that the auto executive never knows what it is like to buy and own one of his company's cars. He never has to pay a car note, haggle with a car salesman ("I'll go see if my manager will approve this deal"), or get a four-year-old car repaired. He not only lives in a bubble, but an opaque bubble.
Interesting. Charles Murray's book, "Coming Apart," is largely about the development of bubbles. He describes his Iowa hometown in the early 60s, when high-level corporate executives lived in the same neighborhoods as their plumbers. The rich had slightly larger homes and maybe a pool. A generation later, the executives of the same big companies now lived secluded in gated communities in the larger cities.
In "The Velvet Rope Economy", Nelson Schwartz argues that segregation by income is a deliberate and profitable marketing strategy. For instance, Disney can make a lot of bank charging hundreds of dollars an hour for the privilege of skipping the line at Disney World. There is a good reason all modern stadiums and ballparks feature skyboxes. "This pattern, a Versailles-like world of pampering for a privileged few on one side of the velvet rope, a mad scramble for basic service for everyone else--is being repeated in one sphere of American society after another."
Bryan Caplan has advocated creating and living in a Bubble, but I think his Bubble is different from the kind you are writing about. If I happen to be blown into a Bubble, is there some way to get into the beneficial kind and avoid the detrimental type? Food for froth...
Does his bubble account for the millions of strangers moving to America once his plan for total open borders is enacted? I guess his bubble is either impenetrable or that the consequences of importing millions of new people would never dent his personal bubble—either way, he might just be right.
I'm not sure it's different. https://www.econlib.org/archives/2012/03/my_beautiful_bu.html There's some virtue to knowing that you're in a bubble. But you're still in a bubble.
Lord, did that reek of smug.
I am all for bubbles of the monkish withdrawal from the world kind (if that's your thing), but to hurl utopian molotov cocktails like "open borders" at the society that feeds and protects you and your family just strikes me as reckless—it actually reminds me more of one of those kids who picks fights then hides behind his older brother when things get too hot.
When I am Emperor I will import a few thousand members of Hamas and the Taliban and have them move next door to Mr Caplan, with their kids sharing the same schools.
Social Justice in action! lol
In fairness to Caplan - and be clear, like you I do not agree with him on fully open borders - he has explicitly said that people who represent a physical risk can/should be barred (and so Israel is the one place in particular he acknowledges cannot have open borders).
I appreciate your wanting to be fair, and don't want to be strident, but I feel like "people who represent a physical risk can/should be barred" is the kind of thing you say when you're working backwards from a premise you've already embraced and need to justify/defend it.
No matter how many "people who represent a physical risk" are "barred" there remains the simple fact that when different tribes of males end up adjacent and competing for resources (financial, sexual or otherwise), there will always be the potential for violent conflict—and this goes even for chimps and apes!
People like Caplan who've lived their whole lives in school and/or the library seem to have no theory of mind in re human aggression, as they have very little, so they have an idealized view of humans and our capabilities and malleability. Intellectuals cling to their precious utopian visions no matter how many times reality provides contradictory answers, and no matter how unnecesarily disruptive they prove to be.
Our thinking classes have a great deal of knowledge but very little wisdom.
“People like Caplan who've lived their whole lives in school and/or the library seem to have no theory of mind in re human aggression, as they have very little, so they have an idealized view of humans and our capabilities and malleability. Intellectuals cling to their precious utopian visions no matter how many times reality provides contradictory answers, and no matter how unnecesarily [sic] disruptive they prove to be.”
…and NOW it’s clear you’ve read very little of Caplan. Which I would encourage you to do.
Even as I strongly disagree with him on this one issue, if you’d read his stuff you’d know he’s got ANYTHING but “an idealized view of humans and our capabilities and malleability”.
And I’m willing to go out on a limb that based on my having read a lot of Caplan and on your above statement - and in particular your final sentence - Caplan’s likely got a lot more wisdom than you do.
thanks!
“If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole.”
― Raylan Givens, Justified
Love that quote.
If one is to win an election, especially a close one, expand your base by seeking more votes. Belittling half of the American people by calling them deplorable or fascists isn't the way to get that accomplished.
Apparently not. :)
Yeah, stick to calling them “bitter clingers”; that one worked… 😏
I had seen that Lawrence Welk clip before, and it remains an exceptional cultural artifact. I'm a very late Boomer (some argue that I'm actually *not* a Boomer, I'm something called "Generation Jones"?) and I admit that many of later generations' complaints about Boomer cluelessness are on point. But we came by that honestly, inherited from our equally clueless parents. My limbic system can still recreate the flood of embarrassment I felt when my mom asked 17-year-old me to explain "gay" to her.
Okay. Explain “gay” to me, please.
I told my mother that she had no right to call her cohort "The Greatest Generation" because they raised my generation, thereby invalidating the sobriquet.
There's more to bubbles than politics. Anyone who can choose his friends, colleagues, and clients lives in a bubble.
Clients not so much, but can't *everyone* choose their friends, and to a certain degree their colleagues?
Sure, but most of us don't associate ONLY with people who match our preferences in toto. Tocqueville marvelled at 19th century America's overlapping interest groups. A and B might be in different religious groups, but they're likely in the same neighborhood or business association or social club etc. You naturally developed some affinity/empathy for most people through one channel or another. Now, it's total separation. People who wouldn't think of joining a hiking club that includes members of the opposite political party.
Great one Robert
I will say, if everyone's mind is already made up and not going to change, why do the polling results continue shifting by larger than the margin of error?
Not often by much, lately.
1) Not by much. 2) Margin of error is a more precise, scientific concept than is warranted by polling methodologies. 3) We're now only 36 days out. 4) People lie to pollsters, and I suspect contemporary events have a significant effect on how people lie from week to week. 5) My writing is a bit tongue-in-cheek.
The fact you find yourself frequently voting AGAINST one of the presidential candidates, instead of for the other, is a sad commentary on the state of American politics. Many years ago America had a candidate for president who voters voted FOR, and to show just how apolitical he was, remember that he was asked by both parties to run as their candidate. Likely because he had done such an inspiring job in his first career. Alas, as old as I am (almost as old as dirt), I was not old enough to vote for Ike, but I liked him. (Wish I had kept my I Like Ike pin.)
That Lawrence Welk clip was hilarious! Thanks for sharing. I wish we could ask the singers if the knew what they were singing about.
American politics do not suffer a shortage of sad commentaries.
My neighbor across the street when growing up put out an election sign, this was probably '68 or '72, that said "I still like Ike".
Today, it would be torn down, and his house would be vandalized.
Significantly, he may be the only post-WWII Republican president or presidential candidate who was not referred to as a Nazi. That tradition began when Harry Truman called the moderate, soporific Tom Dewey a Nazi. Truman said Dewy's election would imperil liberty. Of course, Dewey was instrumental in recruiting Ike four years later. https://www.nytimes.com/1948/10/26/archives/president-likens-dewey-to-hitler-as-fascists-tool-says-when-bigots.html
Or, it's possible that today most people would say "Who is Ike?" ... Reminds me that on a long travel day years ago I visited both the Eisenhower and Truman museums - Salina, Kansas and Independence, Missouri.
I've been to the Gerald Ford Museum in Grand Rapids. The most frightening thing there was a room dedicated to mid-1970s clothing styles. The horror, the horror.
1.I hesitate to cross you (and you did say "may") but after considerable thought, I can't remember Gerald Ford being blasted as a Nazi during his time in office.
2. On the "I still like Ike" joke, I remember a variant from the Kennedy years Supposedly businessmen were wearing the button with the Ike slogan, followed by "Hell, I even miss Harry."
You may be right, but ... ... . In Spring 1940, Yale Law student Gerald Ford belonged to an isolationist group--a precursor to the America First Committee--at Yale Law School. Their petition said, “We demand that Congress refrain from war, even if England is on the verge of defeat.” But, again, you may be right.
Ike was swell. During his presidency, his son and their family lived around the corner from my current house!
I salute the neologism “enbubbling,” though I would have said “embubbling” oneself.
The bubble in this usage a species of container. By contrast, when bubbles are not containers, as when a foam is generated for shaving or for extinguishing fires, I suppose that is enbubbling.
I did find "enbubbling" out there on the web. The New York Times has used the word, though I suppose that should probably make me suspicious of it.
As I said, to my ear that is correct in some contexts but not others.
I know several who have not yet decided if they will vote for Harris or Trump, so.
I prob will vote for neither, but will vote for those running for Congress, State and local positions.
In fact the vote for local Pols is far more significant a vote than a vote for either reprobate Pres candidate.
Hard to figure out which of Harris or Trump will be worse of the two and one person i know who hates Trump said he will vote for Trump due to one and only one issue for him that he thinks Dems fail on but is important to him.
Easy to figure out which will be worse. Pick one. You can’t go wrong.
They SAY they haven't decided.
That Welk clip was hilarious! Thanks
Lawrence Welk again. I wrote an essay about Lawrence Welk for Freshman English class years and years ago. People told me about Branson, Missouri, and all of the great shows -- seems like Lawrence Welk on steroids. Is it a bubble there or a time warp?
Good question!
Look Fat. I'm pretty sure you don't have to be in a bubble to look at some facts and still wonder how somebody votes for a guy who has dementia, showered with his daughter, made his drug addled son his bag man, has been wrong on every major foreign policy decision, plagiarized his rear end off, invented absolutely silly exaggerations about his life story, helped spend us into 45 T in debt.
That's not classic cognitive dissonance or bias confirmation. Them's the Facts Jack.
Cornpop Knows.
My whole point is that one can reasonably argue that either is worse--or that they are equivalent. My only point is that some people lack the capacity to comprehend why someone might disagree with their assessment. I certainly have my notion as to who is worse. But I at least understand why some of my friends hold the opposite viewpoint. There is a peculiar asymmetry. I have yet to have any Trump supporter say "I don't understand why people don't like Trump" and ask me to explain. I've had numerous well-read, intelligent, thoughtful Biden supporters say to me "I don't understand why people don't like Biden" and ask me to explain.
Hehe. Got you. I'm just a little dense. And maybe I do live in a bubble, but I try to peek outside. :) occasionally.
As an aside, can you reasonably argue that price controls, taxing unrealized gains, the green new deal grift, snipping the bits off kids is a good plan for society? Strip the personalities away. Just look at the policies. One path brings authoritarian centralized misery and death. The other individual rights, liberty and a decentralized prosperous economy. But I guess this is a stupid question since "one man's socialism is another man's neighborliness."
I'm unaware of any party that's currently pushing "individual rights, liberty, and a decentralized prosperous economy." Even the the Libertarian Party seems to have abandoned libertarian ideas. That doesn't mean I don't view some better (or worse) than others.
Harsh, but fair.
An interesting well stated, thought provoking list. As to #3 and #4, how then to explain why all the effort to flood the media with ads to convince us to vote for their candidate. Could it be that the media and political pundits live in the biggest, thickest bubbles and the rest of us, while living with a set of values and convictions, are mostly bubble-less? I confess to some bubbly-ness, but I don’t think it’s a permanent condition - or strictly one dimensional.
Good theory and great observations.
We all live is a bubble of our choice but some can see outside or through their bubble to the wider world. I agree it is easier if you are a conservative/classical liberal because we are awash in liberal/leftist media. I do understand why people would vote for Harris over Trump. They usually use emotion or quote a media talking point but they don’t like to talk about policy. I know many people who are turned off by President Trump but will vote
for him because of policy. The people and friends I have trouble with are those that live in opaque bubbles. They will say things like they can’t vote for Trump because of what he said about Charlottesville. I try to explain what why saw was not his whole statement and would send them the clip for their review. They respond that it wouldn’t change their mind and they don’t want to see it. It reminds me of my son who after seeing a movie about a
Civil War Veteran in Japan teaching one side how to fight a “modern” war was annoyed when the classroom discussion took the movie to be true. Even the teacher said that it could have happened and they could discuss the change in Japan shown in the movie as true. She lost my son as an interested student, but moved many of the class into the bubble the media loves.
The bubble problem is especially acute among journos. An article in Politico Magazine by Jack Shafer and Tucker Doherty reported that as of 2016 more than half of publishing employees lived in counties which Hillary Clinton carried by more than 30 percentage points. Three-quarters of all internet publishing workers live either in the Boston-New York-Washington-Richmond corridor or else in the west coast crescent from Seattle-San Diego to Phoenix. Since conformity is the most basic principle of social psychology, the coastal liberals who comprise the majority of journos regard their groupthink as unquestionable facts which only the stupid or wicked find questionable.
When the executives of the failing Big Three auto makers went to Congress in 2008 to ask for a taxpayer bailout, a reporter from ABC News asked them how they had traveled. The answer was that they had traveled as they were accustomed to, by corporate jet, at a cost of $20,000 per person. The reporter asked them how their companies could justify asking for $25 billion from the taxpayers when they were rich enough to afford luxury travel for their executives? According to "Crash Course", by Paul Ingrassia, "The CEO's bolted like a Corvette peeling away from a stop light, which only made the damage worse when their hasty retreats were replayed on the evening news." Like all other bubble dwellers, they were terrified when someone pierced their bubble.
Ingrassia went on to say that "Corporate jets were as integral to executive live in Detroit as the free cars, free car washes and free gasoline in the company parking garage." Yet, getting a new company car every six months and having it serviced and refueled in the company garage means that the auto executive never knows what it is like to buy and own one of his company's cars. He never has to pay a car note, haggle with a car salesman ("I'll go see if my manager will approve this deal"), or get a four-year-old car repaired. He not only lives in a bubble, but an opaque bubble.
Interesting. Charles Murray's book, "Coming Apart," is largely about the development of bubbles. He describes his Iowa hometown in the early 60s, when high-level corporate executives lived in the same neighborhoods as their plumbers. The rich had slightly larger homes and maybe a pool. A generation later, the executives of the same big companies now lived secluded in gated communities in the larger cities.
In "The Velvet Rope Economy", Nelson Schwartz argues that segregation by income is a deliberate and profitable marketing strategy. For instance, Disney can make a lot of bank charging hundreds of dollars an hour for the privilege of skipping the line at Disney World. There is a good reason all modern stadiums and ballparks feature skyboxes. "This pattern, a Versailles-like world of pampering for a privileged few on one side of the velvet rope, a mad scramble for basic service for everyone else--is being repeated in one sphere of American society after another."