I would love to be 20 and either infatuated or causing trouble in this class. Your students are fortunate beyond their possible, at this stage of their lives, appreciation.
By this point I've heard the grand narrative enough times to get restless. It could easily be turned into a graphic book like Caplan and Weinersmith's 'Open Borders' (and it would be a very good one), but I'm wanting to boil your deck down to questions on which the future seems to turn - and I'm going to bracket the possibility, for the sake of this discussion, that climate isn't the question that eclipses most others.
When I perform this exercise I'm left with an observation, a belief, and two questions.
The observation is that capitalism needs culture, needs a regulative culture, that can contain its dynamics - but culture is an emergent phenomenon (this statement is my belief), not a software program we can somehow re-write and expect to operate according to our intentions.
The first question is whether any society can guarantee the history-defying rights that you (rightly) point out that people believe they have?
My second question is, if the answer to my first question is "no" (as is implied by my belief concerning culture) then are we not reduced to a set of high-level remedies somewhat like those proposed by, say, Peter Turchin? We can counteract inequality through redistribution, we can address the problem of frustrated (and overproduced) elites, etc. It's a short list and the lesson I took from it was that we really don't have any tools to address cultural fragmentation other than money and jobs. There are all sorts of cracks programs of this type may not get into - can 'place-based' policies really work? - but they are what we have, and using them requires some kind of faith that that culture will find a better path if the material bases are covered.
Anyway, these were my takeaways from thinking for a year or so about "Slouching". It's been a fruitful engagement.
I don't usually do off-the-cuff comments, but here are mine on the problem of "slicing the pie", especially as new technologies + global markets continue to increase the rewards going to those well-positioned, lucky, and/or skilled enough to get in on the ground floor of new and lucrative industries.
Passive income is the key: the ability at a minimum to survive stretches where one's labor is unwanted or not available (due to sickness, etc.); ideally to be able to work much less or work for passion rather than money; if possible to have enough left over to fund personal development, start or invest in new businesses, etc.
Provision of passive income to the masses is most politically stable when one or more of the following conditions are met: a) its sources are the same as those used by the wealthy (e.g., personal house, rental properties, stocks and bonds), who would thus resist confiscation, devaluation, or over-taxation of such assets by governments; b) it can be represented as resulting from past personal effort (Social Security); c) it results from assets generally recognized as owned in common (Alaska oil dividend to residents); d) it is taken from politically less-favored and less-powerful groups; e) it is made abundantly clear to people where the income is coming from and what makes it possible. If none of these conditions are met then schemes will be seen as naked "redistribution" and will be vulnerable to attack and elimination.
This provides some possible avenues for providing passive income to the masses: 1) If houses (main source of most people's wealth) are to be made less valuable by YIMBY initiatives to build more of them, find ways to make owning stocks and bonds more attractive/possible for the masses (maybe by one-time grants to children?). 2) Make 401k/IRA-type vehicles more universal (e.g., automatic enrollment for everyone, government matching contributions, etc.). 3) More aggressively exploit spectrum sales, oil/gas/mineral/logging rights, etc., and send the resulting revenue directly to individuals. 4a) Hit new immigrants (only) with heavily progressive supplementary taxes, with rates reduced linearly for, say, a ten year period while they gain citizenship, and with an extra penalty period for undocumented immigrants. 4b) Have a special government-run fund take equity in new businesses, with claims on it equivalent to those of the most protected investors, in lieu of later corporate taxes. 5) Provide the resulting passive income to citizens (only) in the form of a monthly check with accompanying prominent and clear explanations of where the money came from.
I would love to be 20 and either infatuated or causing trouble in this class. Your students are fortunate beyond their possible, at this stage of their lives, appreciation.
By this point I've heard the grand narrative enough times to get restless. It could easily be turned into a graphic book like Caplan and Weinersmith's 'Open Borders' (and it would be a very good one), but I'm wanting to boil your deck down to questions on which the future seems to turn - and I'm going to bracket the possibility, for the sake of this discussion, that climate isn't the question that eclipses most others.
When I perform this exercise I'm left with an observation, a belief, and two questions.
The observation is that capitalism needs culture, needs a regulative culture, that can contain its dynamics - but culture is an emergent phenomenon (this statement is my belief), not a software program we can somehow re-write and expect to operate according to our intentions.
The first question is whether any society can guarantee the history-defying rights that you (rightly) point out that people believe they have?
My second question is, if the answer to my first question is "no" (as is implied by my belief concerning culture) then are we not reduced to a set of high-level remedies somewhat like those proposed by, say, Peter Turchin? We can counteract inequality through redistribution, we can address the problem of frustrated (and overproduced) elites, etc. It's a short list and the lesson I took from it was that we really don't have any tools to address cultural fragmentation other than money and jobs. There are all sorts of cracks programs of this type may not get into - can 'place-based' policies really work? - but they are what we have, and using them requires some kind of faith that that culture will find a better path if the material bases are covered.
Anyway, these were my takeaways from thinking for a year or so about "Slouching". It's been a fruitful engagement.
I don't usually do off-the-cuff comments, but here are mine on the problem of "slicing the pie", especially as new technologies + global markets continue to increase the rewards going to those well-positioned, lucky, and/or skilled enough to get in on the ground floor of new and lucrative industries.
Passive income is the key: the ability at a minimum to survive stretches where one's labor is unwanted or not available (due to sickness, etc.); ideally to be able to work much less or work for passion rather than money; if possible to have enough left over to fund personal development, start or invest in new businesses, etc.
Provision of passive income to the masses is most politically stable when one or more of the following conditions are met: a) its sources are the same as those used by the wealthy (e.g., personal house, rental properties, stocks and bonds), who would thus resist confiscation, devaluation, or over-taxation of such assets by governments; b) it can be represented as resulting from past personal effort (Social Security); c) it results from assets generally recognized as owned in common (Alaska oil dividend to residents); d) it is taken from politically less-favored and less-powerful groups; e) it is made abundantly clear to people where the income is coming from and what makes it possible. If none of these conditions are met then schemes will be seen as naked "redistribution" and will be vulnerable to attack and elimination.
This provides some possible avenues for providing passive income to the masses: 1) If houses (main source of most people's wealth) are to be made less valuable by YIMBY initiatives to build more of them, find ways to make owning stocks and bonds more attractive/possible for the masses (maybe by one-time grants to children?). 2) Make 401k/IRA-type vehicles more universal (e.g., automatic enrollment for everyone, government matching contributions, etc.). 3) More aggressively exploit spectrum sales, oil/gas/mineral/logging rights, etc., and send the resulting revenue directly to individuals. 4a) Hit new immigrants (only) with heavily progressive supplementary taxes, with rates reduced linearly for, say, a ten year period while they gain citizenship, and with an extra penalty period for undocumented immigrants. 4b) Have a special government-run fund take equity in new businesses, with claims on it equivalent to those of the most protected investors, in lieu of later corporate taxes. 5) Provide the resulting passive income to citizens (only) in the form of a monthly check with accompanying prominent and clear explanations of where the money came from.