Environmentalism isn’t new at all, people have been doing conservation for hundreds of years. Also objectively global heating is a huge threat to all of our quality of life, you can’t argue against that without ignoring huge amounts of scientific evidence.
You are kind of conflating radicals with liberals. That the poor are better off under a Denmark type system is fairly clear to me, provided that GDP is the same. Like how college is not only free in Denmark, but even students are paid a modest stipend so that they can focus on studying and not working on the side.
This is very different from the idea of a Soviet type system. The old Marx (Das Kapital) did not even endorse such a system (the young Marx, Communist Manifesto did), and it was largely the continuation of Sergei Witte's system under the Tzar. As Russia had basically no bourgeoisie, he founded businesses from the Tzar's money and foreign investors. Not only they were mostly state-owned, their main customer was also the state, like making steel for the sake of railroads and weapons, so markets were not really relevant. Why anyone thought it is a good idea to export that model to other countries is a mystery. It is something you do when you have no bourgoisie, no private capital, no investors. The Soviet collectivized agriculture was kind of ironic - their primary role model was the American agribusiness, who kept hammering that modern agriculture is science, not farming. So they figured then they can just do it that way, the state certainly can hire scientists to run the farms. They completely ignored that American scientific agriculture was based on having extremely good quality land due to a , this meant that if the scientific methods were suitable for farming a lot of acres, it did not matter that the yield per acre was kind of low even in the US. That model just did not work anywhere else in the world with worse land.
Note about college in Finland: It’s free, IF you can get in, and the vast majority of people cannot. That’s the tradeoff. Also they artificially limit the number of people who can become doctors, lawyers, etc based on estimates of need.
Not saying that there isn’t reason to make those tradeoffs, just saying they are very clear tradeoffs.
Artificial limits look like a good thing to me - really the supply should follow demand. 39% of college educated vs 51% in the US - sounds about right, I think there must be at least 12% in the US who perform a job that should not really require a degree. Something paid by the hour, like first-level IT support. In the avg European country that is done by people who have only a high school degree, albeit from a school with extra IT classes.
>That the poor are better off under a Denmark type system is fairly clear to me, provided that GDP is the same.
"Become Denmark" is not a button you can simply push. Many countries experience dismal results from adopting "social democracy". Odds are good that the United States would experience dismal results if we went further down that path: https://substack.com/@cavemaneconomist/note/c-251401402
>Like how college is not only free in Denmark, but even students are paid a modest stipend so that they can focus on studying and not working on the side.
We already have too many college graduates in the US. My sister, a fresh grad, just completed a long, grueling job search. College grads working at Starbucks is a well-worn cliche. Why would we subsidize college even further than we currently do? Since the college graduate experiences a bump in earnings, why shouldn't they fund their own studies? Why should taxpayers foot the bill so the college grad can get rich?
>This is very different from the idea of a Soviet type system. The old Marx (Das Kapital) did not even endorse such a system (the young Marx, Communist Manifesto did), and it was largely the continuation of Sergei Witte's system under the Tzar. As Russia had basically no bourgeoisie, he founded businesses from the Tzar's money and foreign investors. Not only they were mostly state-owned, their main customer was also the state, like making steel for the sake of railroads and weapons, so markets were not really relevant. Why anyone thought it is a good idea to export that model to other countries is a mystery. It is something you do when you have no bourgoisie, no private capital, no investors. The Soviet collectivized agriculture was kind of ironic - their primary role model was the American agribusiness, who kept hammering that modern agriculture is science, not farming. So they figured then they can just do it that way, the state certainly can hire scientists to run the farms. They completely ignored that American scientific agriculture was based on having extremely good quality land due to a , this meant that if the scientific methods were suitable for farming a lot of acres, it did not matter that the yield per acre was kind of low even in the US. That model just did not work anywhere else in the world with worse land.
The USSR took farmland and workers which were able to feed Russia, and using top-down, state-directed, centrally planned "science-y" schemes, made it so those same farmland and workers were unable to feed Russia.
The fundamental problem with socialism is that it's vaporware. It's a critique of capitalism and some handwavey suggestions for what a replacement would look like. But it's not a detailed description of a replacement system which would actually work. That's why socialism tends to fail almost everywhere it is tried: https://iea.org.uk/publications/socialism-the-failed-idea-that-never-dies/
Social Democracy can work in ethnically homogeneous places. It starts to fall apart with diversity. Compare Sweden and Denmark. There's a reason Los Angeles, CA is one of the most low trust spots in the US.
An interesting comment, but you also do a thing that left-of-center people often do when making these comparisons. That is, you highlight an area where Denmark is more Socialist than the US, but you cherry pick and ignore crucial details that mitigate the distinction.
In particular, although college is free in Denmark (for Danes and nationals of certain other European countries), students must academically qualify. College isn't free in the US, but there is a lot of subsidy (pell grants, subsidized loans, government funding of colleges) and one can receive these subsidies and attend college even without a high school diploma. You can never go to college in Denmark without a high school diploma, and there are NO loopholes.
Admittedly, Denmark's system seems better to me. Higher ed should be gatekept by grades and test scores, I think. Make sure K-12 is strong, but if someone isn't academically prepared for higher ed, what's the point?
Anyways, I really wanted to point out this tendency I see a lot. It's deeply misleading to tout how wonderful Denmark's higher education system is relative to the US, while leaving out the crucial fact that the US system is far more egalitarian with respect to who actually qualifies for these generous benefits.
[It's worth acknowledging that college attendance is a few percentage points higher in Denmark, so the admissions criteria aren't impossible, clearly, but we are definitely more egalitarian here in doling out subsidy independent people f academy x merit.]
Sorry to refer to that truthiest of truthy authors Gladwell, but has there not been passed an irreversible tipping point where social elites in education and media have adopted leftism? Does it not seem a little like the moderates in 1917 Russia wagering on elections to the Duma to hope clear-thinking balanced academics could reverse the tide?
"It seems to be in the nature of ideology to convert ideological tenets and value judgments into descriptive facts/concepts in the mind of the ideologue." - this does not apply only to the minds of ideologues, but to all of us. Shameless plug, but I just joined and currently publishing a series of essays which will be followed by a book covering this topic in length.
About this case in particular: the problem with these ideologically driven researchers prejudicing their own work is not that they are ideologically driven - because again, we all are, and cannot consciously circumvent it - but it is that their guiding ideology is that of justification rather than judgement. They are activists with a scientist badges. Their ideology is one that is already past the finding rather than searching for it. So the problem is really not that they have an ideology - because it's impossible to operate and do anything without one - but that they have embraced the wrong ideology to help them fulfill their role with integrity.
Trying to find any worthwhile content on this platform while wading through an endless parade of self-gratifying clickbait nonsense makes me wonder if I had been transported back in time to the 1970s, and left in a suburban shopping mall.
I hope to see your name in future research, as it's something that is soroly (?) needed.
To give some food for thought, it is hard to come up with a single left-wing opinion that is unacceptable. Maybe advocating for genocide, but I think even that could be excused as justified under some causes.
Contrast it with right-wing opinions, where the line between the acceptable and unacceptable goes at wanting to lower taxes.
So, being a communist is a way for any psycho to have a hateful position, and I would say this goes all the way back to Adorno, who couldn't understand why the working class voted for Nazis instead of the communists (as he considered the natural party for them). So he invented (or at least popularized) the authoritarian personality and the f-scale.
I did research on this and could write a lot more.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.
...
I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist. [...] I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you’re maybe wrong, that you ought to do when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen."
These self-described "activists" aren't even pretending to engage in bending-over-backwards or working to avoid fooling themselves. Calling their work "science" is essentially stolen valor. It borrows un-earned prestige from scientists who actually did good work and developed accurate theories which allowed us to transform our world.
Even if the effects of CO2 on warming the atmosphere are undeniable that doesn't mean the solutions offered by leftist environmentalists are the right ones. It doesn't even mean there's a problem to be solved. We're almost at 2030 and the effects of warming have been modest overall.
For my money, issues like habitat destruction and the introduction of invasive species are far more pressing environmental issues and don't get nearly enough attention since all the focus is on "carbon".
The author never disputed these claims. Perhaps try reading the post again?
There is the science of AGW, sure, but then there is a whole ideological and policy apparatus that dictates how society should be re-organizrd to address the problem. Any approach involves tradeoffs and thus comes into contact with values. When we ask why people are not environmentalists, we are not only saying they deny AGW, we are also criticizing them for not being on board with the solutions the organized environmental movement has converged upon.
If anyone wants another deep-dive, with lots of actual examples of his studies, I wrote this piece on Jost as "the most hypocritical social scientist". https://backcountrypsych.substack.com/p/the-most-hypocritical-social-scientist
Environmentalism isn’t new at all, people have been doing conservation for hundreds of years. Also objectively global heating is a huge threat to all of our quality of life, you can’t argue against that without ignoring huge amounts of scientific evidence.
You are kind of conflating radicals with liberals. That the poor are better off under a Denmark type system is fairly clear to me, provided that GDP is the same. Like how college is not only free in Denmark, but even students are paid a modest stipend so that they can focus on studying and not working on the side.
This is very different from the idea of a Soviet type system. The old Marx (Das Kapital) did not even endorse such a system (the young Marx, Communist Manifesto did), and it was largely the continuation of Sergei Witte's system under the Tzar. As Russia had basically no bourgeoisie, he founded businesses from the Tzar's money and foreign investors. Not only they were mostly state-owned, their main customer was also the state, like making steel for the sake of railroads and weapons, so markets were not really relevant. Why anyone thought it is a good idea to export that model to other countries is a mystery. It is something you do when you have no bourgoisie, no private capital, no investors. The Soviet collectivized agriculture was kind of ironic - their primary role model was the American agribusiness, who kept hammering that modern agriculture is science, not farming. So they figured then they can just do it that way, the state certainly can hire scientists to run the farms. They completely ignored that American scientific agriculture was based on having extremely good quality land due to a , this meant that if the scientific methods were suitable for farming a lot of acres, it did not matter that the yield per acre was kind of low even in the US. That model just did not work anywhere else in the world with worse land.
Note about college in Finland: It’s free, IF you can get in, and the vast majority of people cannot. That’s the tradeoff. Also they artificially limit the number of people who can become doctors, lawyers, etc based on estimates of need.
Not saying that there isn’t reason to make those tradeoffs, just saying they are very clear tradeoffs.
Artificial limits look like a good thing to me - really the supply should follow demand. 39% of college educated vs 51% in the US - sounds about right, I think there must be at least 12% in the US who perform a job that should not really require a degree. Something paid by the hour, like first-level IT support. In the avg European country that is done by people who have only a high school degree, albeit from a school with extra IT classes.
>That the poor are better off under a Denmark type system is fairly clear to me, provided that GDP is the same.
"Become Denmark" is not a button you can simply push. Many countries experience dismal results from adopting "social democracy". Odds are good that the United States would experience dismal results if we went further down that path: https://substack.com/@cavemaneconomist/note/c-251401402
>Like how college is not only free in Denmark, but even students are paid a modest stipend so that they can focus on studying and not working on the side.
We already have too many college graduates in the US. My sister, a fresh grad, just completed a long, grueling job search. College grads working at Starbucks is a well-worn cliche. Why would we subsidize college even further than we currently do? Since the college graduate experiences a bump in earnings, why shouldn't they fund their own studies? Why should taxpayers foot the bill so the college grad can get rich?
>This is very different from the idea of a Soviet type system. The old Marx (Das Kapital) did not even endorse such a system (the young Marx, Communist Manifesto did), and it was largely the continuation of Sergei Witte's system under the Tzar. As Russia had basically no bourgeoisie, he founded businesses from the Tzar's money and foreign investors. Not only they were mostly state-owned, their main customer was also the state, like making steel for the sake of railroads and weapons, so markets were not really relevant. Why anyone thought it is a good idea to export that model to other countries is a mystery. It is something you do when you have no bourgoisie, no private capital, no investors. The Soviet collectivized agriculture was kind of ironic - their primary role model was the American agribusiness, who kept hammering that modern agriculture is science, not farming. So they figured then they can just do it that way, the state certainly can hire scientists to run the farms. They completely ignored that American scientific agriculture was based on having extremely good quality land due to a , this meant that if the scientific methods were suitable for farming a lot of acres, it did not matter that the yield per acre was kind of low even in the US. That model just did not work anywhere else in the world with worse land.
The USSR took farmland and workers which were able to feed Russia, and using top-down, state-directed, centrally planned "science-y" schemes, made it so those same farmland and workers were unable to feed Russia.
The fundamental problem with socialism is that it's vaporware. It's a critique of capitalism and some handwavey suggestions for what a replacement would look like. But it's not a detailed description of a replacement system which would actually work. That's why socialism tends to fail almost everywhere it is tried: https://iea.org.uk/publications/socialism-the-failed-idea-that-never-dies/
Social Democracy can work in ethnically homogeneous places. It starts to fall apart with diversity. Compare Sweden and Denmark. There's a reason Los Angeles, CA is one of the most low trust spots in the US.
An interesting comment, but you also do a thing that left-of-center people often do when making these comparisons. That is, you highlight an area where Denmark is more Socialist than the US, but you cherry pick and ignore crucial details that mitigate the distinction.
In particular, although college is free in Denmark (for Danes and nationals of certain other European countries), students must academically qualify. College isn't free in the US, but there is a lot of subsidy (pell grants, subsidized loans, government funding of colleges) and one can receive these subsidies and attend college even without a high school diploma. You can never go to college in Denmark without a high school diploma, and there are NO loopholes.
Admittedly, Denmark's system seems better to me. Higher ed should be gatekept by grades and test scores, I think. Make sure K-12 is strong, but if someone isn't academically prepared for higher ed, what's the point?
Anyways, I really wanted to point out this tendency I see a lot. It's deeply misleading to tout how wonderful Denmark's higher education system is relative to the US, while leaving out the crucial fact that the US system is far more egalitarian with respect to who actually qualifies for these generous benefits.
[It's worth acknowledging that college attendance is a few percentage points higher in Denmark, so the admissions criteria aren't impossible, clearly, but we are definitely more egalitarian here in doling out subsidy independent people f academy x merit.]
*independent of academic merit
Sorry to refer to that truthiest of truthy authors Gladwell, but has there not been passed an irreversible tipping point where social elites in education and media have adopted leftism? Does it not seem a little like the moderates in 1917 Russia wagering on elections to the Duma to hope clear-thinking balanced academics could reverse the tide?
"It seems to be in the nature of ideology to convert ideological tenets and value judgments into descriptive facts/concepts in the mind of the ideologue." - this does not apply only to the minds of ideologues, but to all of us. Shameless plug, but I just joined and currently publishing a series of essays which will be followed by a book covering this topic in length.
About this case in particular: the problem with these ideologically driven researchers prejudicing their own work is not that they are ideologically driven - because again, we all are, and cannot consciously circumvent it - but it is that their guiding ideology is that of justification rather than judgement. They are activists with a scientist badges. Their ideology is one that is already past the finding rather than searching for it. So the problem is really not that they have an ideology - because it's impossible to operate and do anything without one - but that they have embraced the wrong ideology to help them fulfill their role with integrity.
You can't achieve action in a horizontalized mediasphere operating words and narratives.
These are designed to confuse is and develop conflicts in meaning.
Simple.
Stop pretending anything else. Any retrofitted fantasies of "social" "psychology".
Trying to find any worthwhile content on this platform while wading through an endless parade of self-gratifying clickbait nonsense makes me wonder if I had been transported back in time to the 1970s, and left in a suburban shopping mall.
I hope to see your name in future research, as it's something that is soroly (?) needed.
To give some food for thought, it is hard to come up with a single left-wing opinion that is unacceptable. Maybe advocating for genocide, but I think even that could be excused as justified under some causes.
Contrast it with right-wing opinions, where the line between the acceptable and unacceptable goes at wanting to lower taxes.
So, being a communist is a way for any psycho to have a hateful position, and I would say this goes all the way back to Adorno, who couldn't understand why the working class voted for Nazis instead of the communists (as he considered the natural party for them). So he invented (or at least popularized) the authoritarian personality and the f-scale.
I did research on this and could write a lot more.
Richard Feynman once said:
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.
...
I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist. [...] I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you’re maybe wrong, that you ought to do when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen."
https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm
These self-described "activists" aren't even pretending to engage in bending-over-backwards or working to avoid fooling themselves. Calling their work "science" is essentially stolen valor. It borrows un-earned prestige from scientists who actually did good work and developed accurate theories which allowed us to transform our world.
Even if the effects of CO2 on warming the atmosphere are undeniable that doesn't mean the solutions offered by leftist environmentalists are the right ones. It doesn't even mean there's a problem to be solved. We're almost at 2030 and the effects of warming have been modest overall.
For my money, issues like habitat destruction and the introduction of invasive species are far more pressing environmental issues and don't get nearly enough attention since all the focus is on "carbon".
The author never disputed these claims. Perhaps try reading the post again?
There is the science of AGW, sure, but then there is a whole ideological and policy apparatus that dictates how society should be re-organizrd to address the problem. Any approach involves tradeoffs and thus comes into contact with values. When we ask why people are not environmentalists, we are not only saying they deny AGW, we are also criticizing them for not being on board with the solutions the organized environmental movement has converged upon.
Climate scientists study the atmosphere, not economic policy. Environmentalists don't study anything, they are activists.