Arnold Kling: Status Competition

Arnold Kling: Status Competition: "Arnold Kling's blog posting --

Gordon Wood, in Empire of Liberty, writes:

After all, wealth, compared to birth, breeding, ethnicity, family heritage, gentility, even education, is the least humiliating means by which one person can claim superiority over another; and it is the one most easily matched or overcome by exertion.

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The alleged goal of reducing economic inequality is trumpeted by people who want to strengthen inequality of political power. The goal is to entrench Harvard while delegitimizing those who are less educated. When push comes to shove, political income redistribution favors Insiders over Outsiders. Thus, the bailouts and the continued support for 'too big to fail.' In my view, the biggest threat to America's democratic tradition is not concentration of wealth. It is concentration of political power."

My comment:

> The alleged goal of reducing economic inequality is trumpeted by people who want to strengthen inequality of political power.

I consider myself a "Progressive", but I would nominate your statement as "Really Existing Progressivism described in 25 words or less".

Add " serving themselves" to the end, and you got a winner.

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Anyone who claims to be "Progressive" should explicitly state how they will avoid (or at least mitigate) a self-serving political regime. It is hardly "Progressivism" if the only thing guaranteed is self-serving arrangements by the well-connected self-described "progressives".

Four ideas, yesterday and today

Morality = emotion + cultural transmission + ability to abstract First, today, was listening to webcast... From EconLog, Arnold Kling:

"Moral Philosophy" "Will Wilkinson and Jesse Prinz. Highly recommended. You could easily spend four years at an Ivy League college and not have a class as interesting as this one."

Webcast on : bloggingheads.tv

• @13:20 Jesse Prinz, "'Emotions are the middle ground between _action_ and _thought_"
• @28:38 Jesse Prinz: "morality is inevitable, but morality is not universal
• @45:00 Morality = emotion + cultural transmission + ability to abstract

OK, "Morality = emotion + cultural transmission + ability to abstract". Then yesterday was thinking about three things: Politics & Societial Prescriptive Morality:

• what if you list the things that really disturb
• if you confess that, people will say you are: elitist, practically an enemy combatant, wrong, unreasonable
• you could lose your: livelyhood, carreer, friends, recognition
• in Third World countries, you could lose your life, if you are on the wrong side of political conflicts
• the end result - consider working outside of public politics

Fame & Publicity:

• what if you contrast who does and who does not deserve positive fame and publicity
• if you confess that, people will say you are: elitist, wrong, unreasonable
• the end result - consider working outside of public notoriety

but then I was thinking, if morality is tied to emotion, it is not easy to control.

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You owe it to the world to be Progressive, Happy, Effective:

1. Happy, Effective and Progressive
2. Unhappy, Uneffective and Progressive
3. Happy, Effective and Reactive

When we consider people who are Progressive, but also Unhappy and Uneffective, we are supposed to see that they just need help to expand their responses, and not to criticize them, because they are just doing the best they can. But don't people who are Reactive deserve the same understanding?