11 ms·

The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)

97 points by dgudkov 6y ago

rossdavidh 6y ago
Should put (2013) in the title. Especially important in this case, I think.
mdorazio 6y ago
This is basically "the decline of America, in charts" and it's pretty depressing to read. A lot of the information here confirms that things started broadly going south at the end of the 1970s and never really recovered. Also interesting is looking at the longer-range charts and seeing how much World War II really unified America on many different fronts.
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  Is it too simplistic to ask if the difference in cooperation is the inevitable result of the Greatests being raised in squalor, contrasted against Boomers who were raised in the midst of plenty? Serious question, wondering if that sort of extreme poverty in formative years followed by cannon fodder type war leads to the kind of people who are better able to team up?
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times. —G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain I can say for sure that growing up in the Depression really shaped my grandparents’ viewpoints, tendency to use it up/wear it out/make it do/do without, and save their pennies to ensure their kids wouldn’t experience what they did.
    - watwut 6y ago
      That phrase is however not true looking at history. Hard times creat hard men, but those very often proceed to inflict hard times on other people - creating hard times for themselves too. The historical atrocities and many cruel laws were acts of men who fancied themselves strong. And they were strong and able to acquire power. And they themselves were result of hard times.
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  I think of what happened to much of the anglosphere (including the US) after 1970s as a reversion to the historical mean. The economic and social investment that went into the WWII war-effort and the postwar period created a bubble of prosperity that produced real improvements for pretty much everyone from 1945 to the 1970s. Unfortunately, this level of investment has not been sustained. Now the investment bubble is over, we're reverting to the kind of nasty, brutish, and uncertain life that has been the normal state of affairs for much of history. The rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s (under Reagan in the US; Thatcher in the UK; Mulroney in Canada; etc) and the disinvestment that followed made the stagnation in living standards--and increasing socioeconomic insecurity--for the median person inevitable. I don't see a way to turn things around, as the social disinvestment of the 1980s has eroded social ties to the point that no one is willing to pay for the kind of collective projects (infrastructure, education, a public commons) that would improve conditions for the median person. Far too many people find it comforting to blame the other for a declining society rather than understand that societal-level problems require societal-level solutions.
  - jariel 6y ago
    "The rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s (under Reagan in the US; Thatcher in the UK; Mulroney in Canada; etc) and the disinvestment that followed made the stagnation in living standards--and increasing socioeconomic insecurity--for the median person inevitable." If you meant to say the total opposite of that, then maybe! Inequality may be up, but material standards of living for everyone but the poorest are way, way up, and it's a little ridiculous because it's obvious and palpable for anyone who was alive at the time. By almost conceivable material measure: the amount of travel, safety, life choices, entertainment, access to healthcare (we used to go in when we were sick, now we go in due to age related issues) - 'Heart Surgery' used to be a very scary thing, now it's literally 'outpatient' basis (my aunt got a 'heart stunt' home same day - this is like Science Fiction). Cars are faster, better safer, we have access to all the world's information (to know what 'Russia' was in the 1980's you had to go down to a library and check out a book to read about it). Tthe notion you can go in this magical thing called a 'mobile phone' and have any number of super cheap gadgets delivered to you from literally all the way around the world - China - for just a few dollars, was unthinkable. Walmart is the most benevolent thing imaginable for poor people: they can buy every material need under the sun for very little, something impossible before. I have family members with 'regular government jobs' - not part of the elite, they live in a giant new home, new cars, every toy under the sun for their kids. When I was young got fruit and candy in my stocking at Christmas, everyone I knew wore 'hand-me-downs', nobody took foreign vacations (we drive to Florida and stayed in motels), people did not have fancy sporting gear, 'long distance' calls on the telephone were very expensive. Material prosperity has exploded, and it really strains credibility for people trying to argue otherwise. Ownership and capital has not been spread evenly - the financial surpluses of globalisation has gone into the pockets of the 1%, but the productive surpluses have mostly gone into the pockets of the 85%. The 'losers' of the economy of those who lost their jobs due to globalisation and can't afford to participate in the game.
- ativzzz 6y ago
  Based on historical trends, and according to the article, this isn't necessarily a decline but just a downward cycle. "Social cooperation waxes and wanes in most complex societies, following a long cycle. This is a generic pattern in not only our own society but also in ancient and medieval empires" Whether it is a decline or not depends on whether there are enough strong external enemies to destroy the US during the downturn.
  - suifbwish 6y ago
    Actually our civilization has not been around long enough to say that there are cycles. Sure there are events of similar nature that occur but to view it as a cycle is sort of reaching
- nathanvanfleet 6y ago
  I am pretty sure you could get a similar graft if you took a big bucket of yeast and dumped a bunch of sugar in. Right at the beginning you'd have massive expansion and productivity. Everyone is happy and getting along. Then as the sugar slowly disappears and everyone is fighting for resources, it seems like somehow no one is cooperating. That's kind of the plot from 1945 to today as America has completely calcified itself, run down the unions and shut down its factories.
- onecommentman 6y ago
  The charts in question are income disparities (1% v other), membership rates in volunteer organizations, trust in US government, a “polarization index” two guys in Political Science came up with, filibustering since 1960, judicial confirmation rates and an Ngram on two terms. All basically Cold War era time series. These charts have lead the commenter to declare “the decline of America”. This data basically defines for the commenter “the decline of America”. That seems to me an overly-expansive extrapolation from the data... Thank you for sharing that.
droffel 6y ago
The 1970s seem to be a place where many different indicators diverge. https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
- losteric 6y ago
  Perhaps a consequence of cold war domestic "anti-communist" culture warfare?
  - mcguire 6y ago
    That was much stronger in the 50s and possibly in the 80s.
- averros 6y ago
  The most important structural thing which happened in 70s was going off the gold standard. This resulted in financialization of economy and thus skyrocketing inequality (asset holders benefit from rampant inflation while labor loses). Inequality results in growing tensions between rich and poor (urban tech/financial elites and rural deplorables these days).
- ardy42 6y ago
  > https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ Correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems like a gold bug website, advocating for "hard" money (e.g. gold or bitcoin). I'm pretty sure the answer they want you to find is that in 1971 the US ended convertibility of the dollar to gold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system. It's actually a pretty clever persuasive trick (ask a question designed to lead someone down a specific research path and "self-discover" your true message (a trick thats's coincidentally also used by QAnon: https://www.axios.com/qanon-video-game-cbbacb1e-969c-4f07-93cd-69e41bc6feeb.html https://www.axios.com/qanon-video-game-cbbacb1e-969c-4f07-93...). However, the argument of those graphs is pretty much correlation = causation. I'm not economist or historian, but I do know that a lot was going on starting in the 70s (recession followed by the rise of neoliberal economics, among others), that may offer a better causal explanation than gold.
grecy 6y ago
From the outside looking in, there's nothing strange about it at all. In stark contrast to every other developed country, America has built into a very individualist society. In so many aspects of life it comes down to "me before us". Healthcare, education, work, welfare and so much more. With everyone scrambling hard to make ends meet, violence and anger are always just under the surface. Either you get in and take yours for you, or you get left horribly behind. Ben Harper said it best - "Everyone I know is in the fight of their lives."
- umvi 6y ago
  That's one way of framing it. The other way of framing it is that individual liberties are more valued than group securities in America. For example the individual liberty to own a firearm is (currently) more valued than the group security of not having firearm related deaths. Group securities require giving up individual liberties. Hard to say which way is "better" or "winning". America is divided on which way to move. One side optimizes for life over liberty, the other side optimizes for liberty over life. You can see it happening right now with covid. One side cares more about preserving lives, the other side cares more about preserving liberties.
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    Right to bear arms was about not allowing (British) government suppression, which was seen as a group security actually.
  - grecy 6y ago
    For sure, I didn't say it was "bad", I just said it's not "strange" that cooperating has disappeared. The system is designed in a way that discourages it.
  - 3np 6y ago
    And yet, the same country that normalized globally that it should be a jailable offense to grow the wrong plant, or reshare information attached with a license. "Liberty for me but not for you", I think.
  - 6y ago
ojnabieoot 6y ago
It is extremely problematic to claim that cooperation declined in America after the 1960s without even mentioning civil rights. Americans are certainly cooperating more insofar that it’s no longer literally illegal for gay people to have a relationship, or that black families on vacation no longer need a book indicating which gas stations and hotels will actually serve them. The fact that white people are meaner to each other - particularly liberal v. conservative - than they used to be is in fact directly (albeit not solely) related to this, as with the polarization in formal political parties. Seeing the decline after the 1960s is really not a mystery if you think about how American society drastically changed due to Democrat-led legislation passed in 1964 and 1965, right when the graphs started nosediving.
- Fellshard 6y ago
  Ahhh. So recalcitrant bigotry is your answer?
  - kingnight 6y ago
    I think the parent makes a very astute point and this response is handwaving away a huge amount of undeniable social change that is being dismissed.
  - bsanr2 6y ago
    People (specifically, the people who ran our public discourse) used to agree that having a persecuted underclass was acceptable. Now, some people do and some people don't, and as is common among groups who disagree about a fundamental aspect of how society should operate, there is some tension.
    - Fellshard 6y ago
      I believe this to be an intentional misread and malattribution of intent of modern discourse.
      - bsanr2 6y ago
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m463 6y ago
I think it's the economic inequality he mentioned. If the middle class was easier to achieve and sustain - even in rough times like right now - people would have the time and maybe desire to interact with society around them.
- deleted 6y ago
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howlgarnish 6y ago
(2013), but quite predictive of the situation today. The Atlantic has a current story about where Turchin thinks we're headed, and it's from reading:
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  Direct link for the curious: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/can-history-predict-future/616993/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/can-his... I don't agree with Turchin's thesis that the US is in trouble because it's producing too many elites who don't have places in upper society. If anything, America's elite problem is under-competition rather than over-competition. American elites don't compete with each other in any meaningful way; they conspire with each other to exploit the public. Notice that nominally opposing businesses both funded California prop 22 to entrench the right of these elites to under-pay their workers. This kind of elite collusion is endemic across American society. The reason American society is in danger is that decades of elite collusion, combined with the intentional use of cultural wedge issues as electoral levers, have left many Americans economically vulnerable and has misdirected their anger at minorities rather than at the people who have picked their pockets clean. Vulnerable and angry people are prime targets for demagogues, and that's how the US wound up with Trump. The evolution of American social divides into issues of morality (see eg: https://imgur.com/a2dTuWZ https://imgur.com/a2dTuWZ , or https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/reaching-out-to-trump-voters-unity-155002625.html https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/reaching-out-to-trump-voters-... ) in recent years has likely damaged American society irrecoverably. People who have diametrically opposed moral worldviews can't work together.
  - rossdavidh 6y ago
    If you think the tone of Congressional or Presidential debates is undercompetitive in recent times, compared to several decades ago, you have a very different opinion than I do.
tchock23 6y ago
I recall reading research (which I can’t seem to find now) that showed how prior to WW2 the political and social discourse in America was about how to build a stronger country and democracy, and how after the war that shifted to how to build a stronger economy - which dominates our conversations and goals to this day. I wonder if this shift in the nature of our discussion is a factor. We’ve moved from social norms to market norms, which has brought with it less cooperation.
- mesh 6y ago
  There is some discussion related to this in Adam Curtis's Century of the Self: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self where there was a concerted PR effort after World War 2 to associate Democracy with Capitalism, (as a push back against some of the more social policies of Roosevelt.
olivermarks 6y ago
2013 article, so before the hyper partisan media induced fear and frenzy which really started in 2016, and has made media moguls fabulously wealthy while severely damaging the fabric of American society and enabled divide and rule confusion IMO
- toyg 6y ago
  What year were you born? One could say exactly the same about 1992, or the Reagan years, or even Kennedy’s election.
  - burner831234 6y ago
    One could, but studies have shown this partisan extremism was really rooted in the need for a subgroup to get as much representation as they could: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-ri... Basically turning the republican party into a pod party
    - onecommentman 6y ago
      You’ll have to provide more evidence to support the extreme statement that the “Republican party is a pod party” than a 2014 article in Politico. Also, what is a pod party? I’d be delighted to meet a pod party member, bless their pea-picking hearts. I’m guessing we have differing definitions...
  - bleepblorp 6y ago
    2020 is far, far worse than 1992 was. 1992 didn't have former White House officials calling for current officials to be beheaded for disloyalty. Unlike the ACA under Obama, the Republican response to Clinton's dead-on-arrival healthcare plan didn't involve establishment GOP figures calling for 'a second amendment solution.' The current wave of senior GOP figures disputing the legitimacy of the election -- to the point of looking for ways for pro-Biden states with Republican state governments to dismiss the results and send pro-Trump electors to the electoral college -- is also unprecedented in modern history. America is in dangerous territory and it is much worse than it was in the 1990s.
clarkmoody 6y ago
For many more charts pointing to a decline in all sorts of metrics centered on an important event in 1971: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
mwkaufma 6y ago
Love to see graphs without units of historical quantities that would be impossible to measure.
29athrowaway 6y ago
Some companies are larger today than in the 50s, which means that in some ways, we are more collaborative now. Are we more altruistic? that's different. Today, there are many easy ways to never meet your neighbors or your community at large. You can go home and turn on your TV, browse the Internet, or whatever. You can also be a part of an online community that is geographically sparse and never meet any of its members in real life. If you never meet people in real life, how can you assist them if they need something? How can you display an altruistic behavior? Perhaps you may answer some questions for free, or upload a free tutorial to YouTube, but will you be able to do other good deeds that require a physical presence? no. What is your motivation for being altruistic? In the 50s, organized religion indoctrinated people from a young age to believe that a deity would reward them if they were altruistic. Those beliefs are now in decline. People now have a different utility function in their heads: they don't want to go to heaven, they want to enjoy their lives according to humanist values.
seneca 6y ago
The US was a wildly more homogeneous place before the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act [0]. For all of the benefits draining the rest of the world of their most ambitious brings, it also destroys social solidarity, trust, and cooperation [1]. The upshot is that the study suggests this is hopefully a short term problem. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_... 1: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9477....
- bantunes 6y ago
  Wasn't it also much more homogeneous before the waves of German, Irish, Chinese and Italian waves of emigration much earlier than 1965?
  - rossdavidh 6y ago
    While I would not at all wish to return to ethnic homogeneity (to the extent that ever existed), there was a very real downturn in immigration into the U.S. from FDR until LBJ. FDR was quite opposed to allowing immigration in, perhaps at least in part due to the very high unemployment that he was trying to address. The tight restrictions stayed in place for several decades.
dkobia 6y ago
Jon Meachum boils this down to two statistics in The Soul of America... "Only 17 percent of Americans trust the government (down from 77 percent in 1955), and average household income is $58,000, some $70,000 less than what a family of four needs for a middle-class life."
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zcw100 6y ago
The only thing remarkable here is how you can lament the disappearance of cooperation in America and not mention Jim Crow.
wombatmobile 6y ago
At the end of the article, Turchin says "Yes, Americans watch more TV, but is this really why they bowl together less? Yes, news media is reducing everything to five-second sound bites, but is this why we have the political gridlock?" Media scholar, NYU professor Neil Postman examined the cultural impact of television in his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. America was the most literate nation in the world in the 17th century. Between 1640 and 1700, the literacy rate for men in Massachusetts and Connecticut was somewhere between 89 percent and 95 percent, quite probably the highest concentration of literate males to be found anywhere in the world at that time [1]. The male literacy rate in England did not exceed 40 percent. For 250 years, books, town hall meetings, leaflets, and then newspapers, were how Americans exchanged civic ideas and conducted public discourse. When Lincoln debated Douglas in 1858, they took turns speaking for one hour each, then were each allowed an hour and a half to reply. Newspapers reported every point in detail. From the 1950's onwards, the American news business moved from the typographical domain of newspapers, to the ephemeral world of television, with profound consequences. Marshal McLuhan cut to the chase with his aphorism, "the medium is the message". What he meant is that the UI and information dynamics of each media type determine what sorts of conversations and discourse can be communicated, and what is excluded. Typographical media encouraged history, background, and timeless reflection of countervailing arguments and analyses. Television changed that by chopping news into 30 second pieces, with no background understanding required, infrequent depth, and a change of topic after every 3 stories for a message from our sponsor, after which you'd return to something completely different. News has become entertainment. Entertainment has become trivia and indulgences. Because TV news omits historical background, precludes detailed argument, and butchers context, it changes the nature of public discourse, which determines the public officials we elect, the policies they enact, and the corporate consequences of the flow of money from consumer advertising, which is what television (and now online "news") exists to serve. - - - [1] Hart, James D. The Popular Book: A History of America's Literary Taste. New York: Oxford University Press, 1950.

97 points by dgudkov 6y ago

Should put (2013) in the title. Especially important in this case, I think.

This is basically "the decline of America, in charts" and it's pretty depressing to read. A lot of the information here confirms that things started broadly going south at the end of the 1970s and never really recovered. Also interesting is looking at the longer-range charts and seeing how much World War II really unified America on many different fronts.

bilbo0s 6y ago
Is it too simplistic to ask if the difference in cooperation is the inevitable result of the Greatests being raised in squalor, contrasted against Boomers who were raised in the midst of plenty? Serious question, wondering if that sort of extreme poverty in formative years followed by cannon fodder type war leads to the kind of people who are better able to team up?
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times. —G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain I can say for sure that growing up in the Depression really shaped my grandparents’ viewpoints, tendency to use it up/wear it out/make it do/do without, and save their pennies to ensure their kids wouldn’t experience what they did.
  - watwut 6y ago
    That phrase is however not true looking at history. Hard times creat hard men, but those very often proceed to inflict hard times on other people - creating hard times for themselves too. The historical atrocities and many cruel laws were acts of men who fancied themselves strong. And they were strong and able to acquire power. And they themselves were result of hard times.
bleepblorp 6y ago
I think of what happened to much of the anglosphere (including the US) after 1970s as a reversion to the historical mean. The economic and social investment that went into the WWII war-effort and the postwar period created a bubble of prosperity that produced real improvements for pretty much everyone from 1945 to the 1970s. Unfortunately, this level of investment has not been sustained. Now the investment bubble is over, we're reverting to the kind of nasty, brutish, and uncertain life that has been the normal state of affairs for much of history. The rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s (under Reagan in the US; Thatcher in the UK; Mulroney in Canada; etc) and the disinvestment that followed made the stagnation in living standards--and increasing socioeconomic insecurity--for the median person inevitable. I don't see a way to turn things around, as the social disinvestment of the 1980s has eroded social ties to the point that no one is willing to pay for the kind of collective projects (infrastructure, education, a public commons) that would improve conditions for the median person. Far too many people find it comforting to blame the other for a declining society rather than understand that societal-level problems require societal-level solutions.
- jariel 6y ago
  "The rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s (under Reagan in the US; Thatcher in the UK; Mulroney in Canada; etc) and the disinvestment that followed made the stagnation in living standards--and increasing socioeconomic insecurity--for the median person inevitable." If you meant to say the total opposite of that, then maybe! Inequality may be up, but material standards of living for everyone but the poorest are way, way up, and it's a little ridiculous because it's obvious and palpable for anyone who was alive at the time. By almost conceivable material measure: the amount of travel, safety, life choices, entertainment, access to healthcare (we used to go in when we were sick, now we go in due to age related issues) - 'Heart Surgery' used to be a very scary thing, now it's literally 'outpatient' basis (my aunt got a 'heart stunt' home same day - this is like Science Fiction). Cars are faster, better safer, we have access to all the world's information (to know what 'Russia' was in the 1980's you had to go down to a library and check out a book to read about it). Tthe notion you can go in this magical thing called a 'mobile phone' and have any number of super cheap gadgets delivered to you from literally all the way around the world - China - for just a few dollars, was unthinkable. Walmart is the most benevolent thing imaginable for poor people: they can buy every material need under the sun for very little, something impossible before. I have family members with 'regular government jobs' - not part of the elite, they live in a giant new home, new cars, every toy under the sun for their kids. When I was young got fruit and candy in my stocking at Christmas, everyone I knew wore 'hand-me-downs', nobody took foreign vacations (we drive to Florida and stayed in motels), people did not have fancy sporting gear, 'long distance' calls on the telephone were very expensive. Material prosperity has exploded, and it really strains credibility for people trying to argue otherwise. Ownership and capital has not been spread evenly - the financial surpluses of globalisation has gone into the pockets of the 1%, but the productive surpluses have mostly gone into the pockets of the 85%. The 'losers' of the economy of those who lost their jobs due to globalisation and can't afford to participate in the game.
ativzzz 6y ago
Based on historical trends, and according to the article, this isn't necessarily a decline but just a downward cycle. "Social cooperation waxes and wanes in most complex societies, following a long cycle. This is a generic pattern in not only our own society but also in ancient and medieval empires" Whether it is a decline or not depends on whether there are enough strong external enemies to destroy the US during the downturn.
- suifbwish 6y ago
  Actually our civilization has not been around long enough to say that there are cycles. Sure there are events of similar nature that occur but to view it as a cycle is sort of reaching
nathanvanfleet 6y ago
I am pretty sure you could get a similar graft if you took a big bucket of yeast and dumped a bunch of sugar in. Right at the beginning you'd have massive expansion and productivity. Everyone is happy and getting along. Then as the sugar slowly disappears and everyone is fighting for resources, it seems like somehow no one is cooperating. That's kind of the plot from 1945 to today as America has completely calcified itself, run down the unions and shut down its factories.
onecommentman 6y ago
The charts in question are income disparities (1% v other), membership rates in volunteer organizations, trust in US government, a “polarization index” two guys in Political Science came up with, filibustering since 1960, judicial confirmation rates and an Ngram on two terms. All basically Cold War era time series. These charts have lead the commenter to declare “the decline of America”. This data basically defines for the commenter “the decline of America”. That seems to me an overly-expansive extrapolation from the data... Thank you for sharing that.

droffel 6y ago

The 1970s seem to be a place where many different indicators diverge. https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

losteric 6y ago
Perhaps a consequence of cold war domestic "anti-communist" culture warfare?
- mcguire 6y ago
  That was much stronger in the 50s and possibly in the 80s.
averros 6y ago
The most important structural thing which happened in 70s was going off the gold standard. This resulted in financialization of economy and thus skyrocketing inequality (asset holders benefit from rampant inflation while labor loses). Inequality results in growing tensions between rich and poor (urban tech/financial elites and rural deplorables these days).
ardy42 6y ago
> https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ Correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems like a gold bug website, advocating for "hard" money (e.g. gold or bitcoin). I'm pretty sure the answer they want you to find is that in 1971 the US ended convertibility of the dollar to gold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system. It's actually a pretty clever persuasive trick (ask a question designed to lead someone down a specific research path and "self-discover" your true message (a trick thats's coincidentally also used by QAnon: https://www.axios.com/qanon-video-game-cbbacb1e-969c-4f07-93cd-69e41bc6feeb.html https://www.axios.com/qanon-video-game-cbbacb1e-969c-4f07-93...). However, the argument of those graphs is pretty much correlation = causation. I'm not economist or historian, but I do know that a lot was going on starting in the 70s (recession followed by the rise of neoliberal economics, among others), that may offer a better causal explanation than gold.

grecy 6y ago

From the outside looking in, there's nothing strange about it at all. In stark contrast to every other developed country, America has built into a very individualist society. In so many aspects of life it comes down to "me before us". Healthcare, education, work, welfare and so much more. With everyone scrambling hard to make ends meet, violence and anger are always just under the surface. Either you get in and take yours for you, or you get left horribly behind. Ben Harper said it best - "Everyone I know is in the fight of their lives."

umvi 6y ago
That's one way of framing it. The other way of framing it is that individual liberties are more valued than group securities in America. For example the individual liberty to own a firearm is (currently) more valued than the group security of not having firearm related deaths. Group securities require giving up individual liberties. Hard to say which way is "better" or "winning". America is divided on which way to move. One side optimizes for life over liberty, the other side optimizes for liberty over life. You can see it happening right now with covid. One side cares more about preserving lives, the other side cares more about preserving liberties.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  Right to bear arms was about not allowing (British) government suppression, which was seen as a group security actually.
- grecy 6y ago
  For sure, I didn't say it was "bad", I just said it's not "strange" that cooperating has disappeared. The system is designed in a way that discourages it.
- 3np 6y ago
  And yet, the same country that normalized globally that it should be a jailable offense to grow the wrong plant, or reshare information attached with a license. "Liberty for me but not for you", I think.
- 6y ago

ojnabieoot 6y ago

It is extremely problematic to claim that cooperation declined in America after the 1960s without even mentioning civil rights. Americans are certainly cooperating more insofar that it’s no longer literally illegal for gay people to have a relationship, or that black families on vacation no longer need a book indicating which gas stations and hotels will actually serve them. The fact that white people are meaner to each other - particularly liberal v. conservative - than they used to be is in fact directly (albeit not solely) related to this, as with the polarization in formal political parties. Seeing the decline after the 1960s is really not a mystery if you think about how American society drastically changed due to Democrat-led legislation passed in 1964 and 1965, right when the graphs started nosediving.

Fellshard 6y ago
Ahhh. So recalcitrant bigotry is your answer?
- kingnight 6y ago
  I think the parent makes a very astute point and this response is handwaving away a huge amount of undeniable social change that is being dismissed.
- bsanr2 6y ago
  People (specifically, the people who ran our public discourse) used to agree that having a persecuted underclass was acceptable. Now, some people do and some people don't, and as is common among groups who disagree about a fundamental aspect of how society should operate, there is some tension.
  - Fellshard 6y ago
    I believe this to be an intentional misread and malattribution of intent of modern discourse.
    - bsanr2 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

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m463 6y ago

I think it's the economic inequality he mentioned. If the middle class was easier to achieve and sustain - even in rough times like right now - people would have the time and maybe desire to interact with society around them.

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howlgarnish 6y ago

(2013), but quite predictive of the situation today. The Atlantic has a current story about where Turchin thinks we're headed, and it's from reading:

bleepblorp 6y ago
Direct link for the curious: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/can-history-predict-future/616993/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/can-his... I don't agree with Turchin's thesis that the US is in trouble because it's producing too many elites who don't have places in upper society. If anything, America's elite problem is under-competition rather than over-competition. American elites don't compete with each other in any meaningful way; they conspire with each other to exploit the public. Notice that nominally opposing businesses both funded California prop 22 to entrench the right of these elites to under-pay their workers. This kind of elite collusion is endemic across American society. The reason American society is in danger is that decades of elite collusion, combined with the intentional use of cultural wedge issues as electoral levers, have left many Americans economically vulnerable and has misdirected their anger at minorities rather than at the people who have picked their pockets clean. Vulnerable and angry people are prime targets for demagogues, and that's how the US wound up with Trump. The evolution of American social divides into issues of morality (see eg: https://imgur.com/a2dTuWZ https://imgur.com/a2dTuWZ , or https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/reaching-out-to-trump-voters-unity-155002625.html https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/reaching-out-to-trump-voters-... ) in recent years has likely damaged American society irrecoverably. People who have diametrically opposed moral worldviews can't work together.
- rossdavidh 6y ago
  If you think the tone of Congressional or Presidential debates is undercompetitive in recent times, compared to several decades ago, you have a very different opinion than I do.

tchock23 6y ago

I recall reading research (which I can’t seem to find now) that showed how prior to WW2 the political and social discourse in America was about how to build a stronger country and democracy, and how after the war that shifted to how to build a stronger economy - which dominates our conversations and goals to this day. I wonder if this shift in the nature of our discussion is a factor. We’ve moved from social norms to market norms, which has brought with it less cooperation.

mesh 6y ago
There is some discussion related to this in Adam Curtis's Century of the Self: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self where there was a concerted PR effort after World War 2 to associate Democracy with Capitalism, (as a push back against some of the more social policies of Roosevelt.

olivermarks 6y ago

2013 article, so before the hyper partisan media induced fear and frenzy which really started in 2016, and has made media moguls fabulously wealthy while severely damaging the fabric of American society and enabled divide and rule confusion IMO

toyg 6y ago
What year were you born? One could say exactly the same about 1992, or the Reagan years, or even Kennedy’s election.
- burner831234 6y ago
  One could, but studies have shown this partisan extremism was really rooted in the need for a subgroup to get as much representation as they could: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-ri... Basically turning the republican party into a pod party
  - onecommentman 6y ago
    You’ll have to provide more evidence to support the extreme statement that the “Republican party is a pod party” than a 2014 article in Politico. Also, what is a pod party? I’d be delighted to meet a pod party member, bless their pea-picking hearts. I’m guessing we have differing definitions...
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  2020 is far, far worse than 1992 was. 1992 didn't have former White House officials calling for current officials to be beheaded for disloyalty. Unlike the ACA under Obama, the Republican response to Clinton's dead-on-arrival healthcare plan didn't involve establishment GOP figures calling for 'a second amendment solution.' The current wave of senior GOP figures disputing the legitimacy of the election -- to the point of looking for ways for pro-Biden states with Republican state governments to dismiss the results and send pro-Trump electors to the electoral college -- is also unprecedented in modern history. America is in dangerous territory and it is much worse than it was in the 1990s.

clarkmoody 6y ago

For many more charts pointing to a decline in all sorts of metrics centered on an important event in 1971: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

mwkaufma 6y ago

Love to see graphs without units of historical quantities that would be impossible to measure.

29athrowaway 6y ago

Some companies are larger today than in the 50s, which means that in some ways, we are more collaborative now. Are we more altruistic? that's different. Today, there are many easy ways to never meet your neighbors or your community at large. You can go home and turn on your TV, browse the Internet, or whatever. You can also be a part of an online community that is geographically sparse and never meet any of its members in real life. If you never meet people in real life, how can you assist them if they need something? How can you display an altruistic behavior? Perhaps you may answer some questions for free, or upload a free tutorial to YouTube, but will you be able to do other good deeds that require a physical presence? no. What is your motivation for being altruistic? In the 50s, organized religion indoctrinated people from a young age to believe that a deity would reward them if they were altruistic. Those beliefs are now in decline. People now have a different utility function in their heads: they don't want to go to heaven, they want to enjoy their lives according to humanist values.

seneca 6y ago

The US was a wildly more homogeneous place before the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act [0]. For all of the benefits draining the rest of the world of their most ambitious brings, it also destroys social solidarity, trust, and cooperation [1]. The upshot is that the study suggests this is hopefully a short term problem. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_... 1: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9477....

bantunes 6y ago
Wasn't it also much more homogeneous before the waves of German, Irish, Chinese and Italian waves of emigration much earlier than 1965?
- rossdavidh 6y ago
  While I would not at all wish to return to ethnic homogeneity (to the extent that ever existed), there was a very real downturn in immigration into the U.S. from FDR until LBJ. FDR was quite opposed to allowing immigration in, perhaps at least in part due to the very high unemployment that he was trying to address. The tight restrictions stayed in place for several decades.

dkobia 6y ago

Jon Meachum boils this down to two statistics in The Soul of America... "Only 17 percent of Americans trust the government (down from 77 percent in 1955), and average household income is $58,000, some $70,000 less than what a family of four needs for a middle-class life."

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zcw100 6y ago

The only thing remarkable here is how you can lament the disappearance of cooperation in America and not mention Jim Crow.

wombatmobile 6y ago

At the end of the article, Turchin says "Yes, Americans watch more TV, but is this really why they bowl together less? Yes, news media is reducing everything to five-second sound bites, but is this why we have the political gridlock?" Media scholar, NYU professor Neil Postman examined the cultural impact of television in his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. America was the most literate nation in the world in the 17th century. Between 1640 and 1700, the literacy rate for men in Massachusetts and Connecticut was somewhere between 89 percent and 95 percent, quite probably the highest concentration of literate males to be found anywhere in the world at that time [1]. The male literacy rate in England did not exceed 40 percent. For 250 years, books, town hall meetings, leaflets, and then newspapers, were how Americans exchanged civic ideas and conducted public discourse. When Lincoln debated Douglas in 1858, they took turns speaking for one hour each, then were each allowed an hour and a half to reply. Newspapers reported every point in detail. From the 1950's onwards, the American news business moved from the typographical domain of newspapers, to the ephemeral world of television, with profound consequences. Marshal McLuhan cut to the chase with his aphorism, "the medium is the message". What he meant is that the UI and information dynamics of each media type determine what sorts of conversations and discourse can be communicated, and what is excluded. Typographical media encouraged history, background, and timeless reflection of countervailing arguments and analyses. Television changed that by chopping news into 30 second pieces, with no background understanding required, infrequent depth, and a change of topic after every 3 stories for a message from our sponsor, after which you'd return to something completely different. News has become entertainment. Entertainment has become trivia and indulgences. Because TV news omits historical background, precludes detailed argument, and butchers context, it changes the nature of public discourse, which determines the public officials we elect, the policies they enact, and the corporate consequences of the flow of money from consumer advertising, which is what television (and now online "news") exists to serve. - - - [1] Hart, James D. The Popular Book: A History of America's Literary Taste. New York: Oxford University Press, 1950.