This was touched upon heavily in the book 'The Righteous Mind' by Jonathan Haidt, an amazing book if you're interested in this sort of thing and part of Bill Gate's reading list where I first found it.
This quote (by Bertrand Russell) stood out: "Social cohesion is a necessity, and mankind has never yet succeeded in enforcing cohesion by merely rational arguments. Every community is exposed to two opposite dangers: ossification through too much discipline and reverence for tradition, on the one hand; and on the other hand, dissolution, or subjection to foreign conquest, through the growth of individualism and personal experience that makes cooperation impossible."
I blame the Cold War and decades of counter-collectivism propaganda.
An entire generation grew up in that atmosphere... they became the nation's teachers and leaders, influencing the opinions of subsequent generations. Game theory shows small changes in behaviors and opinions can have massive downstream impact, as demonstrated by this interactive demo: http://ncase.me/trust/ (HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14864183).
I haven't had any luck finding studies or data on this topic. The key would be voter turn-out for each party bucketed by age for the past few decades of elections.
If my propaganda theory holds true, the Republicans would see a popularity boost that ages at roughly 1 year per year. That segment would be ~50-80 around now, which does match recent voting data (older voters consistently skew conservative) - but historical data is needed to track a bulge over time and disprove the "naive youngsters vote liberal" narrative.
I disagree. It seems to be that collectivism, ironically, has made cooperation impossible rather than individualism. The government has taken on the role of "taking care" of your neighbor, so everyone stopped. Government guarantees you healthcare and income in retirement, so there's no need to have a family big enough to take care of you. And as the kid, your parents are taken care of, so your role is diminished. When a hurricane comes through and damages your neighbor's rooftop there's no need to pick up your tool belt, FEMA is going to cut them a check. People feel like they don't need to get involved in charity work such as feeding the hungry because the government takes care of that for the most part. Each one of those items and countless others seem like a great idea individually, but collectively it's destroying the social fabric of our nation.
I'm not sure I follow his thought process on why "through the growth of individualism and personal experience that makes cooperation impossible." On a simple personal level, I'm for individualism and cooperation, so I'm not seeing the inherent conflict. Perhaps it's a matter of definitions?
Cooperation used to be by free association through civic organizations. As the government has grown in scope, it has eclipsed these, and it really isn't surprising that civic society has declined as a result.
When people freely participate in civic activities, they are being generous. There is no coercion. When government does the same thing, it is coercive. The activity does not occur unless taxes are collected. Choice goes out the window.
I've heard many people ask why they should volunteer or help out others, when they're already paying lots of money in taxes to "take care of those problems".
This is the final tragedy of the government intervention. It turns activities where people are helping people into programs that solve problems.
If there is a massive hail storm and my neighbor's roof is damaged and needs to be repaired, the reason all the neighbors don't pitch in and give him a new roof is insurance, not the government. You know, free market insurance. The part of your story about people pitching in has more to do with the skill sets of people back then vs now; even with all the desire in the world, I couldn't raise a barn.
And in the case of hurricanes, yes, the government does step in because even insurance companies can't afford that scale of loss. And if you look at the aftermath of things like Hurricane Katrina, yes, there was a lot of community involvement in coping with the losses.
There was more than enough misery to go around 100 years ago, and heaven help you if you weren't a member of the in-group. I'd much rather have the government help me out than having to pretend to be a member of the church, or whatever was required to be acceptable in such communities.
So you are proposing that high cooperation is dependent on low government intervention. This seems incorrect. In Denmark for example there is a far more interventionist state than in the US, while membership of associations and clubs is also very high.
Your point is well written but you seem to be referencing some past golden age of inter-person cooperation before "big government" got involved. I'm not saying your wrong but anytime our thoughts lead us to imagine the past as a place wth less problems, it's a good clue we're maybe thinking about the situation less well than we could.
In your mind, when you imagine the 1920's, or the 1960's, do you think that there were incredibly high levels of
cooperation between people? I don't want to put a huge burden of evidence of you, but am curious.
Also if anyone gets a chance please look into the book "The Way We Never Were" by Stephanie Coontz. Good examination of American family trends and activities over time.
The government hasn't recently grown in scope, in any meaningful way. Since the 1980's, the government as percent of GDP has stayed about the same 30-35% ... our taxes are lower and our 'welfare' is arguably lower than in the 80s, so if it was growth of government, you'd see it it correlated with that
I know it is cool to blame everything on the government, but ...
That must be why citizens of other countries like Australia and the UK are awfully uncooperative and uncharitable, right? /s
I also hate this idea that helping the poor should be left to personal whim. "Programs that solve problems" sounds more effective and egalitarian than "people helping people" if you ask me.
It's called leading by example: do you want a government that shows people it's important to care about others, or do you want a government that doesn't care about it's people? A government that sets the example by lying, ignoring people that can't pay healthcare, can't pay for education, and basically shows it's all a fight about who gets to keep most money?
What example would you have citizens rather follow?
Also, if you think it coercive you are basically admitting your democracy isn't working. Otherwise it wouldn't be coercion but executing on the whishes of the people voting.
I don't think the scope of the government action has anything to do with civic activities. Take a step back and look across the Atlantic: plenty of European countries have both large government action and very active civic societies.
>I've heard many people ask why they should volunteer or help out others, when they're already paying lots of money in taxes to "take care of those problems".
Seems to me like it's rather tangential to the true source of political division in America, in which both sides now tie ideas/facts to one of two "teams" / political parties, and actively reject discussion about something that appears to hurt their team or benefit the other. See: Republicans and global warming, Democrats and national debt, either party and any bad decision by a President of their party.
Doesn't help that when one side is wrong, the other makes sure to kick some dirt in the face and rub it in as long as possible.
Rise of "hot" media (radio, TV, social), decline of civility. Utterly unoriginal observation (McLuhan, Postman, many others).
While it lacks the satisfying simplicity of your government has a monopoly on violence, err, banality worldview, it does have some basis in objective reality.
> This is the final tragedy of the government intervention. It turns activities where people are helping people into programs that solve problems.
It's interesting that you think this is a tragedy. The point of such programs is to solve significant human problems, such as feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless. This seems to me to be a superior goal to the alternative you propose, which seems to be to allow some altruistic people to feel good about themselves.
I think the coercion argument is nonsense. There are all kinds of coercion including economic coercion that happens in free markets.
It also ignores vastly top end income tax rates for nearly 4 decades, which weren't less than 75%. And ignores the relatively higher taxes in other countries where people, where trust in government is much higher than in the U.S.
Taxes should be seen as fair, and increasingly Americans think that you can avoid taxes by having clever accoutants and attorneys. Leona Helmsley "We don't pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes" is an example of how tax burden has changed.
The weight shifts but the overall value stays relatively constant: Quebecers give less than most Americans to homeless people because there are lots more social programs in place. Overalk, those in need get roughly the same amount of support.
While I found this quite interesting, and I'm as concerned about some of these trends as the next person, I was eerily reminded of some of John Robbins's stuff graphing meat consumption against incidence of diseases and his kind of casual thinking about causation. We have so many datasets available now that it's so easy to graph things against each other and notice things that may be coincidentally related, or even causally related, and then tell some kind of story about where the relationship came from. And I remember that there's even a funny web site that tries to underscore the difficulty in reasoning from these associations.
In this case, the n-grams chart really exemplified this for me. There are so many influences on the frequency of a word, including lexical substitution of a word by its synonyms, changes in spelling, and increased or decreased interest in a topic regardless of whether that interest is positive or negative.
For example, check out the long-term decline in avarice in America! It's profound!
We have so many datasets available now that it's so easy to graph things against each other and notice things that may be coincidentally related, or even causally related, and then tell some kind of story about where the relationship came from.
Yeah, it's a fun website -- but you could say that about just about any claimed correlation.
Meanwhile, for those who have been around long enough to have a sense for the 'barometric' changes he's talking about -- the shift in the basic, underlying "we're-all-in-this-together" ethos has been not just noticeable, but profound. Probably a lot more work needs to be done to find a solid statistical basis behind this observation (if this is at all possible).
But by and large (aside from the singe n-gram example, which I agree smells like cherry-picking), it's not like his arguments are simply frivolous.
This is due to the entrenchment of neoliberalism since the 70s (famously Reagan in the 80s), the ideology that government's sole responsibility is to enforce free markets, any other function of government is bad, and that every aspect of life should be dictated by free markets. Margaret Thatcher's "there is no such thing as society, only individuals" sums it up. Rising wealth inequality is simply a byproduct of this.
When we're indoctrinated to suppress our humanity and see each other as self-interested profit-maximizing businesses rather than people, then it shouldn't come as any surprise that we're less cooperative.
Way to take that Thatcher quote out of context in order to reverse its meaning.
What she really said was:
"No government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first… There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate."
While I don't doubt this contributed, it also presumes that government is the main driver of social interation, which itself implies a non-participatory philosophy of the person..
If you are correct, how then did this philosophy get into place to begin with?
I would argue that it is more likely the rise of corporatism in the post war era which brought massive disruption of 'organic' social networks and through the large-scale transformation of economic activity from small businesses into larger ones removed much of the need for societal participation.
mass media, the decline of religious life, and the entrance of women into the workplace also likely are major factors - we can entertain ourselves, don't hear moral/values in a community, and have fully 1/2 of the house dedicated to matters of societal rather than economic concern
Here's a question. Do you belong to any organization which chooses its leaders democratically? That is, you get to vote, there's more than one candidate, and the incumbents and their designated successors sometimes get kicked out?
Do you belong to any organization which has member meetings in which members can vote and make decisions binding on the organization?
Do you belong to any organization which chooses its leaders democratically?
Yes. I belong to a university, the academic governance of which rests in the Senate. True, it's not a completely elected body -- almost 1/4 of its members are administrators holding ex officio seats -- but over 3/4 of the Senate is elected by Faculty, Students, and Convocation.
Many IEEE sub-groups have democratic elections. Most of my college organizations had elections and large turnover. My condo has elections, though it is difficult to find individuals who even want to run (and commit the necessary time.) The congregation I belong to had elections.
Nothing 'strange' about this at all; to a first-order approximation, it's the inevitable byproduct of the transformative shift in the society's governing ideology over the same timespan:
>Almost 200 years ago that discerning observer of social life, Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote about the exceptional ability of Americans to form voluntary associations and, more generally, to cooperate in solving problems that required concerted collective action. This capacity for cooperation apparently lasted into the post-World War II era, but several indicators suggest that during the last 3-4 decades it has been unraveling.
>In these articles I argue that general well-being (and high levels of social cooperation) tends to move in the opposite direction from inequality. During the ‘disintegrative phases’ inequality is high while well-being and cooperation are low. During the ‘integrative phases’ inequality is low, while well-being and cooperation are high.
With economic inequality only getting worse [0, 1, 2] I can't help but wonder if there is also a decline in open source contributions? Or do our contributions increase because it provides visibility, and therefore increased economic opportunity, for those lower on the income scale?
What polarization is there in Washington? Or outside the beltway? What are the two poles? How people feel about transexuals? I don't see any polarization. The two parties are close together on almost everything. As the real differences fade, unimportant differences must be heightened. Trump is of that type - he makes a big show, but on what big issue in which he can get anywhere is he substantially far from the Democratic (or Republican) party? As real differences fade, the showmanship of there being a difference must increase, thus, Trump.
Even healthcare has no polarization. Both parties are agreed on what it should be. Any party acting as if it will do single player or scrap Obamacare is just showboating. Any changes that get through will be minor ones. It was a 60 Senator consensus vote of the middle-of-the-road consensus view of what healthcare would be. McCain's thumbs down to any major overhaul.
In the past two centuries the US went from a civil war to the intitial struggle of how to deal with the Great Depression. There hasn't been much polarization since that. Even the big squabble in the 1960s was over a non-issue - over a small, peasant country in Indochina. The cold war began cooling off in the early 1950s, and stayed cool, aside from occassional flare-ups in certain areas. By the 1970s, US conservatives were trying to figure out how to heat the cold war up again against the background of SALT and the Helsinki accords.
The political establishment is less polarized than ever nowadays. It's not like post-war France, where Joliot-Curie, Picasso, Sartre etc. were members of the largest political party in France - the PCF.
Your measure of polarization is talking about distance on a political spectrum. This is perhaps the correct way, since it's literally polar.
The vernacular "polarization" here would be better thought of as a measure not of conceptual distance, but of the intensity with which that distance is perceived.
The left and right are both very centrist (with some wacky outlier issues), but they perceive the other side as being very wrong, which allows for polarization regardless of actual political distance.
Lower frequency of compromise and bipartisan bills. I've seen it just from reading the papers and staying semi-aware of politics. My mother-in-law worked in DC for decades, and it was glaringly evident to her even when she retired a decade or so ago.
> The two parties are close together on almost everything.
Along certain axes, sure. They're both broadly corporatist, for instance.
But overall? Not even close, particularly since the rise of the Tea Party. I read through my House Rep's notes on the legislation each side advances / endorses / votes for, which makes their actual legislative priorities pretty clear. Not to mention knowing people whose health, environment, and/or job are impacted by those ideological differences.
Most of the time I see "there's no difference between the two parties" asserted, it seems like it's either being used as a justification for apathy, or as a rallying cry for a third party.
There's a fairly great Reddit post that I won't attempt so summarize here, but it walks through the party votes on major issues and highlights what I would consider a broader degree of difference.
Separately, something that really concerns me is gerrymandering - which has pushed for more extreme views on both sides as there are far fewer "mixed" districts.
If you watch/read/listen to pundits you'll see lots of polarization. Or go to Facebook and look at the comments on articles. Liberals are evil. Conservatives are dumb. You'll see all sorts of such comments.
Conservative media portrayed Obama as an extreme leftist when he was, in terms of policies, more in line with Eisenhower and Reagan. Look at the label of RINOs for Congressmen who vote the wrong way on a particular issue.
In the U.S. there is a lot of political polarization.
The proposed link between civic participation ("cooperation") and both inequality and political polarization is a strange one to me, since civic participation seems like it would be a local phenomenon, and both inequality and political polarization mostly show up as regional differences rather than differences within communities.
Sure, the political space between Allegany County, NY (low income and trump voting) and Westchester County, NY (high income and clinton voting) is huge. But if you go to an elk lodge in Allegany or a (i dunno) running club in Westchester, you're going to find that everybody there has basically the same politics and basically the same income.
Maybe we're a bit more varied here in the UK and this is anecdata but I'm a member of a running club that has at one end of the spectrum members of the Conservative party through to anarcho-vegans.
A decline in cooperation is probably a natural consequence of prosperity. Groups with more prosperous, empowered individuals see a decline in mutual cooperation over time, simply because it's not as necessary for their members to stick together.
Meanwhile, groups with fewer prosperous members tend toward the opposite behavior. They realize that the only way to compete with the "in group" is to gang up on them... or at least, that's what they tell themselves.
It hardly seems necessary to point to US electoral politics as a case in point.
It's hard to even imagine now. But presumably people sent them. They were helping. It was their war. Now the military probably buys 20 times the binoculars they'll ever use. At 20 times the price a citizen pays for them. And it's all run by career service bureaucrats. The taxpayers foot the bill but the specific expenses are unknown. And the war isn't the peoples war now. It's usually some kind of undefined action cheered on by think tanks and special interests and pumped up by news stories of terrorists. The citizens are mostly removed from the process, as it goes right on regardless of who they vote for. Unless they enlist, then they are involved, but that is less for principal now and more for a free college education or because what else to do?
This is what has changed in society. Life has become a faceless bureaucracy running on it's own agenda. Corporate, government, you name it. The concept of community is a pale shadow of what it once was. I don't know if this is better or worse, it's probably not great if your military has to beg for binoculars but seems the new hazards may be even more dangerous.
This is one of those questions where people can reference their pet Big Theory: corporate dominion, government coercion, individualism vs collectivism, insurance, secularization, leaderlessness...
It's hard to pin cultural changes to anything definiteively. So, my 2c with the same grain of salt...
Personally, I think it's the regionalism vs globalism dynamic. At least, I think that's the force acting on me.
We think of our political & cultural identities as part of a much bigger whole. Solidarity and identitiy are closely related. Take HN, for example. If HN was regional and something happened in our region then we'd be far more inclined mobalize. If we regulalry met in person to discuss ideas, we'd have more solidarity. We'd probably be an impactful force.
As an online group, we draw from a much bigger pool. The intellectual aspects are richer. But, the community is weaker.
TLDR, solidarity of mass culture, maybe. Could be something else.
In the specific measures of civic organizational membership, you have to put a lot down to women entering the workforce. People of my grandparent's generation (middle aged in the 50s and 60s) participated heavily in these activities, Elks and church in their case. A lot of the planning and organization of these groups was done by women who stayed home. Particularly after the kids had gone off to school, homemakers put a lot of effort into civic groups during the day. Now, of course, there were lots of women who worked, but there were enough women who didn't to keep these groups running. With women staying home now rare, especially after the kids are old enough for school, the people with free time to keep these organizations going don't exist. If you want to see a subculture where these organizations are still thriving, look at members of the LDS church.
Perhaps this has to do with the increasing heterogeneity of American society. The US probably looked more like Sweden, Denmark and Japan in the past. People may feel more compelled to partake in civil engagement and similar things like helping your neighbors out if you have the same background. At the very least you must trust the members of your community to play fair. Homogeneity comes at a cost but it's definitely useful to be able to assume correctly that you are a reasonable model for other people in your community.
They say nothing brings people together like a common enemy. I'm surprised no one has correlated the periods of 'good feelings' with incidence of war, at least of the ones that posed credible threats to the nation. The first polarization low immediately followed the war of 1812. From there polarization increased until WW1, at which point it abruptly halted, then plummeted through to the end of WW2.
My view is that people shouldn't be putting too much of their resources into collaboration, charity and helping their neighbors (only). Rather if they want to "do good" they should spend time and effort making the government better, more transparent, more accountable, less corrupt. A better government can better help everybody.
The dating market for men has become extremely difficult over the last few years (lots of factors for that), more and more men are unable to find a mate. Men are less inviting of other men from my observation as they are in deep competition with each other -- why risk having another man around when he might take your girl or reduce your chances? Apps, dating sites, clubs, and events are filled with men looking for women, don't expect them to be cooperative with you, you are their compitition.
I believe this is a factor in men becoming less cooperative.
There's a lot to unpack in that comment, and I'm not going to take a swing at much of it, except to say that you should be careful of confusing visibility with reality. Both the haves and the have nots are equipped with increasingly large megaphones (instagram, et al). Most people are regular, and guys have been "taking" other guy's girls since we were beating each other with sticks. The idea that this phenomenon is new or unnatural aims to make it easier to paint as unfair, and for the plaintiff to claim victimhood. Watch out for that. Lots of lonely guys trying to deflect blame away from their own shortcomings. It's not intellectually honest.
Anyway, I think the issue is one level up from that: Economic uncertainty in general, rather than strictly social/reproductive uncertainty. The former invites the latter.
tardygrad|8 years ago
This quote (by Bertrand Russell) stood out: "Social cohesion is a necessity, and mankind has never yet succeeded in enforcing cohesion by merely rational arguments. Every community is exposed to two opposite dangers: ossification through too much discipline and reverence for tradition, on the one hand; and on the other hand, dissolution, or subjection to foreign conquest, through the growth of individualism and personal experience that makes cooperation impossible."
losteric|8 years ago
An entire generation grew up in that atmosphere... they became the nation's teachers and leaders, influencing the opinions of subsequent generations. Game theory shows small changes in behaviors and opinions can have massive downstream impact, as demonstrated by this interactive demo: http://ncase.me/trust/ (HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14864183).
I haven't had any luck finding studies or data on this topic. The key would be voter turn-out for each party bucketed by age for the past few decades of elections.
If my propaganda theory holds true, the Republicans would see a popularity boost that ages at roughly 1 year per year. That segment would be ~50-80 around now, which does match recent voting data (older voters consistently skew conservative) - but historical data is needed to track a bulge over time and disprove the "naive youngsters vote liberal" narrative.
Consultant32452|8 years ago
pdwetz|8 years ago
ghthor|8 years ago
tomohawk|8 years ago
When people freely participate in civic activities, they are being generous. There is no coercion. When government does the same thing, it is coercive. The activity does not occur unless taxes are collected. Choice goes out the window.
I've heard many people ask why they should volunteer or help out others, when they're already paying lots of money in taxes to "take care of those problems".
This is the final tragedy of the government intervention. It turns activities where people are helping people into programs that solve problems.
tasty_freeze|8 years ago
And in the case of hurricanes, yes, the government does step in because even insurance companies can't afford that scale of loss. And if you look at the aftermath of things like Hurricane Katrina, yes, there was a lot of community involvement in coping with the losses.
There was more than enough misery to go around 100 years ago, and heaven help you if you weren't a member of the in-group. I'd much rather have the government help me out than having to pretend to be a member of the church, or whatever was required to be acceptable in such communities.
rmchugh|8 years ago
Bucephalus355|8 years ago
In your mind, when you imagine the 1920's, or the 1960's, do you think that there were incredibly high levels of cooperation between people? I don't want to put a huge burden of evidence of you, but am curious.
Also if anyone gets a chance please look into the book "The Way We Never Were" by Stephanie Coontz. Good examination of American family trends and activities over time.
okaram|8 years ago
I know it is cool to blame everything on the government, but ...
themacguffinman|8 years ago
I also hate this idea that helping the poor should be left to personal whim. "Programs that solve problems" sounds more effective and egalitarian than "people helping people" if you ask me.
ako|8 years ago
What example would you have citizens rather follow?
Also, if you think it coercive you are basically admitting your democracy isn't working. Otherwise it wouldn't be coercion but executing on the whishes of the people voting.
xaldir|8 years ago
jayd16|8 years ago
They'll say that no matter what the tax rate is.
lend000|8 years ago
Doesn't help that when one side is wrong, the other makes sure to kick some dirt in the face and rub it in as long as possible.
specialist|8 years ago
While it lacks the satisfying simplicity of your government has a monopoly on violence, err, banality worldview, it does have some basis in objective reality.
chimprich|8 years ago
It's interesting that you think this is a tragedy. The point of such programs is to solve significant human problems, such as feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless. This seems to me to be a superior goal to the alternative you propose, which seems to be to allow some altruistic people to feel good about themselves.
cmurf|8 years ago
It also ignores vastly top end income tax rates for nearly 4 decades, which weren't less than 75%. And ignores the relatively higher taxes in other countries where people, where trust in government is much higher than in the U.S.
Taxes should be seen as fair, and increasingly Americans think that you can avoid taxes by having clever accoutants and attorneys. Leona Helmsley "We don't pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes" is an example of how tax burden has changed.
dsjoerg|8 years ago
george_ciobanu|8 years ago
schoen|8 years ago
http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
In this case, the n-grams chart really exemplified this for me. There are so many influences on the frequency of a word, including lexical substitution of a word by its synonyms, changes in spelling, and increased or decreased interest in a topic regardless of whether that interest is positive or negative.
For example, check out the long-term decline in avarice in America! It's profound!
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=avarice&year_s...
Oh, wait, maybe we just stopped using the word "avarice" rather than the concept. :-)
Or, during this Second Gilded Age, our society actually started to become less atomized:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=atomized&year_...
... or maybe we just moved away from calling the phenomenon that.
kafkaesq|8 years ago
Yeah, it's a fun website -- but you could say that about just about any claimed correlation.
Meanwhile, for those who have been around long enough to have a sense for the 'barometric' changes he's talking about -- the shift in the basic, underlying "we're-all-in-this-together" ethos has been not just noticeable, but profound. Probably a lot more work needs to be done to find a solid statistical basis behind this observation (if this is at all possible).
But by and large (aside from the singe n-gram example, which I agree smells like cherry-picking), it's not like his arguments are simply frivolous.
blurbleblurble|8 years ago
My hunch is that the thing that most frequently trickles down in the trickle down economy is DEBT. I imagine distrust follows close behind.
RealityNow|8 years ago
When we're indoctrinated to suppress our humanity and see each other as self-interested profit-maximizing businesses rather than people, then it shouldn't come as any surprise that we're less cooperative.
didgeoridoo|8 years ago
What she really said was:
"No government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first… There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate."
cat199|8 years ago
If you are correct, how then did this philosophy get into place to begin with?
I would argue that it is more likely the rise of corporatism in the post war era which brought massive disruption of 'organic' social networks and through the large-scale transformation of economic activity from small businesses into larger ones removed much of the need for societal participation.
mass media, the decline of religious life, and the entrance of women into the workplace also likely are major factors - we can entertain ourselves, don't hear moral/values in a community, and have fully 1/2 of the house dedicated to matters of societal rather than economic concern
brian-armstrong|8 years ago
Animats|8 years ago
Do you belong to any organization which has member meetings in which members can vote and make decisions binding on the organization?
kevinnk|8 years ago
cperciva|8 years ago
Yes. I belong to a university, the academic governance of which rests in the Senate. True, it's not a completely elected body -- almost 1/4 of its members are administrators holding ex officio seats -- but over 3/4 of the Senate is elected by Faculty, Students, and Convocation.
TuringNYC|8 years ago
Camillo|8 years ago
efm|8 years ago
jackmott|8 years ago
kafkaesq|8 years ago
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-t...
That said, the various participation rates he's siting may presumed to be somewhat skewed by immigration.
RickS|8 years ago
metasean|8 years ago
>In these articles I argue that general well-being (and high levels of social cooperation) tends to move in the opposite direction from inequality. During the ‘disintegrative phases’ inequality is high while well-being and cooperation are low. During the ‘integrative phases’ inequality is low, while well-being and cooperation are high.
With economic inequality only getting worse [0, 1, 2] I can't help but wonder if there is also a decline in open source contributions? Or do our contributions increase because it provides visibility, and therefore increased economic opportunity, for those lower on the income scale?
[0]: http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/22/news/economy/us-inequality-w...
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonh...
[2]: https://twitter.com/lpolovets/status/890610260251033602
smith_winston|8 years ago
[deleted]
balance_factor|8 years ago
What polarization is there in Washington? Or outside the beltway? What are the two poles? How people feel about transexuals? I don't see any polarization. The two parties are close together on almost everything. As the real differences fade, unimportant differences must be heightened. Trump is of that type - he makes a big show, but on what big issue in which he can get anywhere is he substantially far from the Democratic (or Republican) party? As real differences fade, the showmanship of there being a difference must increase, thus, Trump.
Even healthcare has no polarization. Both parties are agreed on what it should be. Any party acting as if it will do single player or scrap Obamacare is just showboating. Any changes that get through will be minor ones. It was a 60 Senator consensus vote of the middle-of-the-road consensus view of what healthcare would be. McCain's thumbs down to any major overhaul.
In the past two centuries the US went from a civil war to the intitial struggle of how to deal with the Great Depression. There hasn't been much polarization since that. Even the big squabble in the 1960s was over a non-issue - over a small, peasant country in Indochina. The cold war began cooling off in the early 1950s, and stayed cool, aside from occassional flare-ups in certain areas. By the 1970s, US conservatives were trying to figure out how to heat the cold war up again against the background of SALT and the Helsinki accords.
The political establishment is less polarized than ever nowadays. It's not like post-war France, where Joliot-Curie, Picasso, Sartre etc. were members of the largest political party in France - the PCF.
RickS|8 years ago
The vernacular "polarization" here would be better thought of as a measure not of conceptual distance, but of the intensity with which that distance is perceived.
The left and right are both very centrist (with some wacky outlier issues), but they perceive the other side as being very wrong, which allows for polarization regardless of actual political distance.
mindways|8 years ago
Lower frequency of compromise and bipartisan bills. I've seen it just from reading the papers and staying semi-aware of politics. My mother-in-law worked in DC for decades, and it was glaringly evident to her even when she retired a decade or so ago.
> The two parties are close together on almost everything.
Along certain axes, sure. They're both broadly corporatist, for instance.
But overall? Not even close, particularly since the rise of the Tea Party. I read through my House Rep's notes on the legislation each side advances / endorses / votes for, which makes their actual legislative priorities pretty clear. Not to mention knowing people whose health, environment, and/or job are impacted by those ideological differences.
Most of the time I see "there's no difference between the two parties" asserted, it seems like it's either being used as a justification for apathy, or as a rallying cry for a third party.
maxerickson|8 years ago
Still not resolved (for example a couple of states have just recently been found to be in violation of the Voting Rights Act).
michaelbuckbee|8 years ago
https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6pc5qu/democrats...
Separately, something that really concerns me is gerrymandering - which has pushed for more extreme views on both sides as there are far fewer "mixed" districts.
yequalsx|8 years ago
Conservative media portrayed Obama as an extreme leftist when he was, in terms of policies, more in line with Eisenhower and Reagan. Look at the label of RINOs for Congressmen who vote the wrong way on a particular issue.
In the U.S. there is a lot of political polarization.
javajosh|8 years ago
The polarization is between those who prefer authoritarian leadership, and those who don't. The poles are defined primarily by personality.
acslater00|8 years ago
Sure, the political space between Allegany County, NY (low income and trump voting) and Westchester County, NY (high income and clinton voting) is huge. But if you go to an elk lodge in Allegany or a (i dunno) running club in Westchester, you're going to find that everybody there has basically the same politics and basically the same income.
Something else is going on here.
PoachedSausage|8 years ago
CamperBob2|8 years ago
Meanwhile, groups with fewer prosperous members tend toward the opposite behavior. They realize that the only way to compete with the "in group" is to gang up on them... or at least, that's what they tell themselves.
It hardly seems necessary to point to US electoral politics as a case in point.
pcmaffey|8 years ago
mythrwy|8 years ago
https://clickamericana.com/media/newspapers/why-the-navy-wan...
It's hard to even imagine now. But presumably people sent them. They were helping. It was their war. Now the military probably buys 20 times the binoculars they'll ever use. At 20 times the price a citizen pays for them. And it's all run by career service bureaucrats. The taxpayers foot the bill but the specific expenses are unknown. And the war isn't the peoples war now. It's usually some kind of undefined action cheered on by think tanks and special interests and pumped up by news stories of terrorists. The citizens are mostly removed from the process, as it goes right on regardless of who they vote for. Unless they enlist, then they are involved, but that is less for principal now and more for a free college education or because what else to do?
This is what has changed in society. Life has become a faceless bureaucracy running on it's own agenda. Corporate, government, you name it. The concept of community is a pale shadow of what it once was. I don't know if this is better or worse, it's probably not great if your military has to beg for binoculars but seems the new hazards may be even more dangerous.
netcan|8 years ago
It's hard to pin cultural changes to anything definiteively. So, my 2c with the same grain of salt...
Personally, I think it's the regionalism vs globalism dynamic. At least, I think that's the force acting on me.
We think of our political & cultural identities as part of a much bigger whole. Solidarity and identitiy are closely related. Take HN, for example. If HN was regional and something happened in our region then we'd be far more inclined mobalize. If we regulalry met in person to discuss ideas, we'd have more solidarity. We'd probably be an impactful force.
As an online group, we draw from a much bigger pool. The intellectual aspects are richer. But, the community is weaker.
TLDR, solidarity of mass culture, maybe. Could be something else.
cameldrv|8 years ago
PrimalDual|8 years ago
Mary-Jane|8 years ago
galaxyLogic|8 years ago
RachelF|8 years ago
Mistrust in America could sink the economy
https://www.economist.com/news/business/21726079-part-proble...
carapace|8 years ago
0x4f3759df|8 years ago
freech|8 years ago
georgeoliver|8 years ago
HillaryBriss|8 years ago
how have the benefits of membership in the Elks lodge or the FreeMasons (or whatever) changed since the 1970s?
coop-throwaway|8 years ago
I believe this is a factor in men becoming less cooperative.
RickS|8 years ago
Anyway, I think the issue is one level up from that: Economic uncertainty in general, rather than strictly social/reproductive uncertainty. The former invites the latter.