I suggest reading Mann and Ornstein on the intellectual foundations behind modern US conservativism. They are both historians of politics and 20 years ago were

I suggest reading Mann and Ornstein on the intellectual foundations behind modern US conservativism. They are both historians of politics and 20 years ago were considered supremely centrist and above the fray. What they say about (American) conservatism is sobering. Another good source is Josh Greene’s book on Bannon. That book describes how Bannon used GOP billionaire money (Mercer) to intentionally try to radicalize young tech-savvy men for the conservative cause. Bannon realized (and Prager around the same time) that with some propaganda he could persuade young mostly-white men to vote for the pro-billionaire agenda of the Republicans. I won’t say more here to avoid getting into politics on HN. But check out those sources for more info. —- On the the square root phenomenon, I wonder whether this arises due to the experience required to be very productive at creative work. Factory workers have little ability to be twice as productive as their peers. But the best salespeople and programmers can easily be many times as productive as at the entry-level. There’s a nonlinear function of experience and skills. I bet one could build some automata/stat mech type models of this. (And it’s not even clear you need to care about interactions). See if nonlinearities in productivity as a function of experience (and as importantly, luck- and maybe talent) hold in soft fields and creative fields.