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I agree with you that emphasizing grit is a good recipe for optimizing perfect success. However fetishizing grit is a terrible guiding principal for public pol

by skohan 6y ago

I agree with you that emphasizing grit is a good recipe for optimizing perfect success. However fetishizing grit is a terrible guiding principal for public policy. Having grown up in the US, I think this is one of the biggest reasons for the deep dysfunction we have seen there in the past few decades. The value for "the pursuit of happiness", and almost religious belief in meritocracy places the blame for failure on the shoulders of the individual in the eyes of society, and helps to create an environment where courts and legislators can dismantle safety nets, and fail to support the population in times of collective crisis. In times like we are living through, where there are a great many forces beyond the control of the average citizen which have the power to utterly wipe them out financially, it can be actively harmful to tell people that each individual is the master of their own destiny. We can and should expect and contribute to a collective good as well.

rayiner 6y ago
The almost-religious and in fact religious belief in meritocracy is what made the US wealthy. Not just at the beginning; it’s a culture that keeps being replenished through waves of immigration. I tend to agree that from the perspective of public policy we should take a more systematic view. But as I said, I think how we want politicians to view to world for public policy purposes is different than how we want people (individually and collectively) to view the world.
- skohan 6y ago
  > religious belief in meritocracy is what made the US wealthy Is it really though? For instance, in the post-war period of the 1950's which is often taken as the period where the American Dream was in full force, organized labor was much stronger in the US than it is today, and a huge chunk of the population was essentially inserted into the middle class through the GI bill, which was really a social welfare program when it comes down to it. I think the degree to which individual grit gave rise to American prosperity is often over-stated, and the degree to which it was a result of collective action is often overlooked.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    The US was, per capita, the richest country in the world by 1820-30.
    - metabagel 6y ago
      What if you subtracted the wealth created by slavery?
      - rayiner 6y ago
        You usually compare countries in terms of GDP or GDP per capita, which is a measure of production and not “wealth.” By 1820, the US was producing more per person than Western Europe: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/seminars/seminars/conferences/econchange/programme/maddison.pdf https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/seminars/seminars/co... That measure inherently excludes the “wealth” represented by ownership of enslaved people. It includes what those people produce, but the “per capita” measure also includes enslaved people in the denominator. The production of enslaved people represented a small fraction of the economy—about 5% of GDP during the peak of the cotton boom: https://fee.org/articles/no-slavery-did-not-make-america-rich; https://fee.org/articles/no-slavery-did-not-make-america-ric... see also https://jacobinmag.com/2019/08/how-slavery-shaped-american-capitalism https://jacobinmag.com/2019/08/how-slavery-shaped-american-c... More importantly, you can’t increase a country’s overall level of production by enslaving people. Its basic economics—unfree labor misallocates labor resources to industries controlled by slave owners. Slavery obviously redistributes wealth from enslaved people to a slaveholding aristocracy, but that comes at the expense of economic growth for the country overall. This is true both theoretically and empirically. As shown in the GDP chart linked above, the end of slavery didn’t produce an economic collapse, as you would expect of it really was responsible for America’s productivity. There was not even a dip. In fact, ending slavery made America richer, exactly as economic theory would predict: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/09/ending_slavery.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/09/ending_slavery.html
        watwut 6y ago
- triceratops 6y ago
  > The almost-religious and in fact religious belief in meritocracy is what made the US wealthy I thought it was the abundant resources, rule of law, respect for property rights, free slave labor (for the first ~200 years, including before independence), and wave upon wave of immigrants who through self-selection were highly motivated and risk-taking. The post-WW2 prosperity was largely due to a lack of competition from other developed nations.
  - JamesBarney 6y ago
    > free slave labor (for the first ~200 years, including before independence) Do you think a free person or an enslaved one produces more economic value? If we decided to enslave everyone with green eyes tomorrow do you think GDP would grow or shrink? Just because a certain practices makes certain individuals wealthy does not mean it makes the society wealthier. > self-selection were highly motivated and risk-taking This is beliefs seems to be very entangled with belief in a meritocracy. If you believe hard work and risk taking doesn't pay off why work hard and take risks. If you believe hard work and risk taking does pay off, well than that sounds a lot like belief in meritocracy to me.
  - rufus_foreman 6y ago
    Which areas do you think suffered economically compared to the US due to not using slave labor in the 1700s and 1800s? And if slave labor were an important component driving the relative wealth of the US, wouldn't you expect the abolition of slavery to decrease the relative wealth of the US? But that isn't what we see in the decades after the abolition of slavery in the US: "In the last third of the 19th century the United States entered a phase of rapid economic growth which doubled per capita income over the period. By 1895, the United States leaped ahead of Britain for first place in manufacturing output." See also, "Gilded Age".

by skohan 6y ago

rayiner 6y ago

The almost-religious and in fact religious belief in meritocracy is what made the US wealthy. Not just at the beginning; it’s a culture that keeps being replenished through waves of immigration. I tend to agree that from the perspective of public policy we should take a more systematic view. But as I said, I think how we want politicians to view to world for public policy purposes is different than how we want people (individually and collectively) to view the world.

skohan 6y ago
> religious belief in meritocracy is what made the US wealthy Is it really though? For instance, in the post-war period of the 1950's which is often taken as the period where the American Dream was in full force, organized labor was much stronger in the US than it is today, and a huge chunk of the population was essentially inserted into the middle class through the GI bill, which was really a social welfare program when it comes down to it. I think the degree to which individual grit gave rise to American prosperity is often over-stated, and the degree to which it was a result of collective action is often overlooked.
- rayiner 6y ago
  The US was, per capita, the richest country in the world by 1820-30.
  - metabagel 6y ago
    What if you subtracted the wealth created by slavery?
    - rayiner 6y ago
      You usually compare countries in terms of GDP or GDP per capita, which is a measure of production and not “wealth.” By 1820, the US was producing more per person than Western Europe: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/seminars/seminars/conferences/econchange/programme/maddison.pdf https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/seminars/seminars/co... That measure inherently excludes the “wealth” represented by ownership of enslaved people. It includes what those people produce, but the “per capita” measure also includes enslaved people in the denominator. The production of enslaved people represented a small fraction of the economy—about 5% of GDP during the peak of the cotton boom: https://fee.org/articles/no-slavery-did-not-make-america-rich; https://fee.org/articles/no-slavery-did-not-make-america-ric... see also https://jacobinmag.com/2019/08/how-slavery-shaped-american-capitalism https://jacobinmag.com/2019/08/how-slavery-shaped-american-c... More importantly, you can’t increase a country’s overall level of production by enslaving people. Its basic economics—unfree labor misallocates labor resources to industries controlled by slave owners. Slavery obviously redistributes wealth from enslaved people to a slaveholding aristocracy, but that comes at the expense of economic growth for the country overall. This is true both theoretically and empirically. As shown in the GDP chart linked above, the end of slavery didn’t produce an economic collapse, as you would expect of it really was responsible for America’s productivity. There was not even a dip. In fact, ending slavery made America richer, exactly as economic theory would predict: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/09/ending_slavery.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/09/ending_slavery.html
      - watwut 6y ago
triceratops 6y ago
> The almost-religious and in fact religious belief in meritocracy is what made the US wealthy I thought it was the abundant resources, rule of law, respect for property rights, free slave labor (for the first ~200 years, including before independence), and wave upon wave of immigrants who through self-selection were highly motivated and risk-taking. The post-WW2 prosperity was largely due to a lack of competition from other developed nations.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  > free slave labor (for the first ~200 years, including before independence) Do you think a free person or an enslaved one produces more economic value? If we decided to enslave everyone with green eyes tomorrow do you think GDP would grow or shrink? Just because a certain practices makes certain individuals wealthy does not mean it makes the society wealthier. > self-selection were highly motivated and risk-taking This is beliefs seems to be very entangled with belief in a meritocracy. If you believe hard work and risk taking doesn't pay off why work hard and take risks. If you believe hard work and risk taking does pay off, well than that sounds a lot like belief in meritocracy to me.
- rufus_foreman 6y ago
  Which areas do you think suffered economically compared to the US due to not using slave labor in the 1700s and 1800s? And if slave labor were an important component driving the relative wealth of the US, wouldn't you expect the abolition of slavery to decrease the relative wealth of the US? But that isn't what we see in the decades after the abolition of slavery in the US: "In the last third of the 19th century the United States entered a phase of rapid economic growth which doubled per capita income over the period. By 1895, the United States leaped ahead of Britain for first place in manufacturing output." See also, "Gilded Age".