EconTalk — Chris Arnade

On: Dignity.

Episode: N/A

Date: July 2019

Background: photographer, author, and former Wall St. trader. Traveled across America photographing and getting to know the addicted and homeless who struggle to find work and struggle to survive.

Key Subjects:

  • Human need for community and socializing.
    • Example: communities that evolve inside McDonalds in poorer areas.
    • [Human pro-social tendencies drive the emergence of social order – see also Blueprint].
  • Narrow road to financial well-being.
    • Path to financial well-being is narrow, weaving through elite (educational) institutions.
    • Driven by the emergence and dominance of post-industrial knowledge-based economy.
    • Widening gap between the educated (front row) and the non-educated (back row).
    • Growing number of people lack access to this “credential machine”:
      • Not aware of its existence.
      • Not willing or able to enter (for instance, can’t or don’t want to leave their homes).
      • Lack understanding of the “rules” (in order to be successful inside these institutions, you have to behave and think in certain ways).
    • The front row and back row:
      • Front row:
        • Tend to value things that can be measured.
        • Focus on credentials.
        • Better prospects of materialistic rewards.
        • Move around more easily (why limit yourself?).
        • Willing and able to pursue personal growth opportunities as and where they arise.
        • Break old and form new connections.
      • Back row:
        • Tend to value things that are more difficult to measure.
        • Non-credentialed forms of meaning.
        • Limited materialistic rewards; focus on intangible rewards (place, faith, community).
        • Less willing to move (“the problem of poverty is luggage”).
        • Less incentivized to pursue opportunities elsewhere (“why should they sell their luggage at a low, in a market that has crashed?”)
        • Retain and value existing connections.
    • [Trade-off between immediate material rewards of making new connections and longer term intangible benefits of deepening existing connections].
  • Tension between (the pace of) economic change and social displacement.
    • Positive story:
      • Economic change produces steadily rising standard of living.
      • Perhaps disproportionately so for the “front row”.
      • Globally good.
    • Negative story:
      • It can also disrupt communities, weaken social ties and leave groups of people behind.
      • Perhaps disproportionately so for the “back row”.
      • Locally bad.
    • Dangers of utilitarian (spreadsheet) thinking:
      • Add up the good and bad stories, when outcome is a net positive: proceed.
      • Unlikely to capture or properly quantify all of the good and bad outcomes.
      • Difficult to think through the first, second, third waves of (social) impact of economic changes:
        • For instance, the impact of a small town factory closing or brain drain (loss of jobs, loss of resources, loss of community stability, rise of drugs, dysfunction and suicides, etc.)
      • Alternative way of thinking or decision making:
        • What is morally right to do [but how do you determine that..?]
        • A desire for a less materialistic outlook [pushing on a string…?]
    • Limit to the amount of change humans are capable of dealing with over a given period of time.
      • What matters is the pace of change (“the first derivative of change”).
      • If the pace of change is too fast, can be socially disruptive:
        • Loss of meaning, loss of connectedness, loss of dignity.
        • [Loss of social cohesion, loss of long-term deep connections].
      • The challenge is to determine the appropriate pace of change.
      • For instance, is it possible or beneficial to have a less-free market system, dialing down the level of economic growth?
      • The way it unraveled, is the way it will be put back together.
        • Not through economic policies.
        • Through the ongoing evolution of culture and norms.
          • Changing social norms of what is acceptable and not acceptable change.
          • [Fast enough? Forceful enough?]
  • The value of religion.
    • First, utilitarian: access (no barrier to entry), like-minded people.
    • Then, essential tool: for people living at “the boundary conditions”.
    • Acceptance that some things “can’t be figured out”.

Key Takeaways:

  • Path to financial well-being is narrow, weaving through elite (educational) institutions.
    • Growing number of people lack access to this “credential machine”
  • Trade-off between immediate material rewards of making new connections and the longer term intangible benefits of deepening existing connections.
  • Tension between (the pace of) economic change and social displacement.
    • Difficult to think through the first, second, third waves of (social) impact of economic changes.
    • If the pace of change is too fast, can be socially disruptive.

Worth Listening:

9/10

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