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Rob Henderson also coined the term "luxury beliefs" which is one of the most apt name for something we've been witnessing lately ("defund the police" or "health

Rob Henderson also coined the term "luxury beliefs" which is one of the most apt name for something we've been witnessing lately ("defund the police" or "healthy at every size" or "marriage is just an oppressive institution of the patriarchy"). I highly recommend that other essay too https://nypost.com/2019/08/17/luxury-beliefs-are-the-latest-status-symbol-for-rich-americans/ https://nypost.com/2019/08/17/luxury-beliefs-are-the-latest-...

politician 5y ago
“Luxury beliefs” puts a name to a phenomenon that I’ve been wondering about. Like the availability of venture capital and calories, I strongly suspect there are many behaviors that will go away or retreat if the economy faltered. We’re seeing interest rates rise, so I suppose that I’ll get to see whether or not this is the case.
pydry 5y ago
Defund the police blew up because certain communities' only experience of police is of being harassed, beaten and robbed. It's hardly an attitude that's dripping with privilege. The backlash, on the other hand...
- nikanj 5y ago
  Counterpoint: it’s easy to support abolishing the police, when a clogged milk foamer is the biggest threat to your personal safety. Live in a wonderful sheltered community, say ”I don’t see why we would need law enforcement”
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    While it is true that there are people who actually do propose completely defunding police activity or abolishing the police, they are a tiny minority of those who took part in protests about police behavior towards non-white communities. It's so easy to make cheap digs about that handful of people instead of actually tackle the issues that this misnamed movement was/is really about. If it had actually been called "Redirect substantive parts of the funding currently going to the police to provide alternate mechanisms to address a variety of situations and crises", would you still find it appropriate to make jabs about the situation of some of those who supported it?
    - Taywee 5y ago
      > If it had actually been called "Redirect substantive parts of the funding currently going to the police to provide alternate mechanisms to address a variety of situations and crises", would you still find it appropriate to make jabs about the situation of some of those who supported it? No, because that's a rational and reasonable statement, where "defund the police" grabs attention, but is ultimately divisive and alienating. Like so many popular talking points, it's a complete failure of marketing and communication, and everybody who says it ends up having to redefine or explain it on a constant basis because on the surface it sounds completely irrational. Maybe it could have been more successful if the name actually reflected the goal. As-is, the supporters either actually believe in abolishing the police (which was also called for), or they are saying something they don't actually mean in a literal sense because it grabs more attention. The detractors in turn are only arguing with what a minority of the supporters actually even want, because we've grown so unconcerned as a society with actually conveying our points and getting people on our side, and more concerned with simply being noticed.
    - josephg 5y ago
      I hear what you're saying, but words matter. I can never support a slogan I explicitly disagree with. There's plenty of better slogans out there. I'd support "end police violence" or "stop killer cops" or something. Thats certainly much more catchy than the full slogan right now, which seems to be "Defund the police, but we don't really want to do that, even though some people in our movement actually do want that, but they're a minority - we swear. But we want political power anyway and it'll be fine - you can trust us". You can tell its a bad slogan because of how much oxygen gets spent explaining it. (Eg, right here)
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        "End Police Violence" has been a slogan in fact. It didn't really do much, precisely because not enough people who consider themselves unaffected by the risk of police violence were drawn in by it. By contrast "Defund the Police" definitely generated a "say what?" response from just about everyone, whether you agreed with it or not. As for the political power thing ... given the difficulty that existing politicians and political bodies have in exerting control over police authority, the idea that any new group would somehow be able to actually accomplish anything remotely close to abolition is crazy. Look at what happened in Minneapolis as an illustrative example: probably the closest to "actual abolition", and it just fizzled out completely.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    Ah, "latte-sipping liberal." edit: There's something correct here, because if you want to look for people who supported defund, they were probably working in food service, making you coffee.
  - HomeGear 5y ago
    “Defund the Police” was not an attempt at abolishing police. However, I do understand there are outlets that positioned it as such to gain emotional investment. The idea was to reallocate some of the police budget to mental health experts. The idea behind that idea is that we’d had better outcomes if mental health experts helped those having a breakdown (suicide attempt, etc) than armed police.
- seibelj 5y ago
  Gallop: 81% of black Americans want police to spend same amount or more time in their area https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-retain-local-presence.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-r... Defund the police is popular with nobody except rich liberals living in privilege bubbles. People in crime ridden areas especially don’t want it.
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    "Defund the police" is merely an agitational short slogan for "we need some other way of governing the safety of our communities, because this is clearly not working." Like many short and pithy slogans, it may not be communicating that message effectively at all. It's not like police forces are an eternal attribute of all civilizations. Modern policing is actually pretty young.
    - ryan93 5y ago
      They are an attribute of 100% of modern countries.
    - InTheArena 5y ago
      This is the flip side of the “take trump seriously, not literally” argument that went around trying to normalize him in the last election. There are people who absolutely Believe that any police force is a slave enforcement force (or derived from one) and a tool of white tool to subjugate others. To them it must be eradicated.
      - jayd16 5y ago
        In both cases, that's easily solved by actually considering the content of popular proposals instead of imagining what the proposals _might_ be.
      - mrwh 5y ago
        (Off-topic, but...) I recall an interview on KQED with an activist who absolutely was proposing to get rid of the entire police and carceral system. When asked how they would deal with, say, a murderer, their response was a) there'd be fewer murderers and b) there would be meditation between the murderer and the victim's family. I really wish the interviewer had asked, what happens if the victim doesn't have a family? Does this mean that rich murderers can pay their way out of any crime? Presumably it would! It was fascinating, partly because what was being described is a premodern world, in which crime is a purely personal matter and not the business of the state. It's a world of vendettas, in which the powerful operate with true impunity. I don't think the partisans of _really_ defunding the police appreciate this. (Note, I have a lot of sympathy with the idea that the police are doing too much, especially around mental health crises, and some funding could usefully be diverted, etc etc.)
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  I'm 100% sure you're not part of such a community. Neither am I, of course :) When polled, poor black people want more policing, despite also agreeing with much of the defunder critique. Knowing both options, they prefer flawed policing to being ruled by criminal gangs.
  - pydry 5y ago
    Im not American. The Americans I do know who really hate defund are the very definition of latte swilling liberals complaining about crime going up in their nice suburbs in SF, Portland and Seattle while... complaining bitterly about rich white liberals. The one supporter I do know lives a few blocks from George Floyd although the slogan seems to mean something different to her (transfer funds and responsibilities for mental health to social service departments).
    - softcactus 5y ago
      That's what most people mean when they say "defund". The problem is that America has an issue with being reactive instead of proactive. Instead of treating drugs and crime as an economics issue and getting ahead of it with social policies, we react to it after the fact and criminalize everything and pay for a standing army with zero accountability. Creating an arms race between gangs and police, with the average citizen paying twice-- once with their taxes and again with their freedoms.
      - BurningFrog 5y ago
        At least it's clear what Republicans mean by "Defund Planned Parenthood". If you have to keep explaining "when I say X, I really mean Y", you should maybe stop saying X.
        softcactus 5y ago
        "Reallocate Police Budgets" doesn't have the same staying power.
  - 5y ago
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Defund the police blew up because it was a simple sounding solution that outsiders could support while they didn't have to deal with the consequences. Actual members of impoverished and minority communities never supported it, they wanted more policing to keep their neighborhoods safe. The base of support was privileged members outside of those communities.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  You’re defending one luxury belief (“defund the police”) with another (“the black experience with police is exclusively one of victimhood”). Notably, your “backlash” includes 81% of black Americans according to Gallup.
- fundad 5y ago
  Agreed, Like any social program there is a constituency that supports policing. They experience far less violence and use the service an outsized amount.
empathy_m 5y ago
Is "you can have a two parent household with two full time jobs" also a luxury belief?
mediumiqsad 5y ago
Rob went to Yale. He's literally a luxury columnist.
- dijit 5y ago
  Where did this idea come from that we cannot see what exists outside of ourselves and our experiences? I can empathise with people who are nothing like me. I can understand silly things that people like me do, and how they must look to people who are not like me. It is only infant humans that can’t understand that anything exists outside of themselves. Are we all infants?
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Psychologists recognize that a surprisingly large percentage of people have no little to no ability to visualize abstractions or engage in mentally taxing feats of empathy. These people are more prone to believe that it’s only possible to obtain insight about a circumstance from only those individuals in said circumstance. When people comment about this, it generates confusion for people like you. :)
    - Cederfjard 5y ago
      What do I search for if I want to read up on that research?
      - mensetmanusman 5y ago
        Here could be an interesting starting point: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/726844v1.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/726844v1.full.pdf
        Cederfjard 5y ago
        Thanks!
  - flatearth22 5y ago
camgunz 5y ago
"luxury beliefs" feels to me like the right found a way to say "privilege" without actually saying it, haha.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  This isn’t the burn you intend. Henderson is talking about wealth/status privilege while the left uses “privilege” as a shorthand for racial or gender privilege. Henderson is clearly not ceding that point here (implicitly or otherwise).
  - camgunz 5y ago
    I don't think the left thinks of privilege solely as racial or gender privilege. Here's an article on "everydayfeminism.com" about the broad view progressives take on it: https://everydayfeminism.com/2014/05/income-vs-wealth/ https://everydayfeminism.com/2014/05/income-vs-wealth/
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > I don't think the left thinks of privilege solely as racial or gender privilege. The left doesn't thing of privilege as even primarily racial or gender privilege. (The people that do are centrists; the actual left centers class privilege, though there are leftists who see race/gender issues as important secondary/connected issues to class issues.)
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        You have it exactly backwards. Centrists center class privilege while leftists center race/gender/etc privilege. For example, when discussing racial inequality, leftists will tend to argue “disparity thus discrimination” while centrists (and moderates of all stripes, really) will argue that the mechanism is classist but it manifests as a disparity because the class distributions aren’t uniform across races. I certainly agree that historically leftists were very concerned about class, but that hasn’t been the popular analysis among American leftists for a decade.
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
I find his overall argument that it is "trickle down values" that are responsible for many of the overall social ills of the poor extremely lacking in evidence, and if anything I think he's confused cause and effect.
- sanderjd 5y ago
  Totally agree. I don't understand what the mechanism of values "trickling down" is meant to be. In my experience, none of the people "downstream" care or are even at all aware of what the "upstream" elites think. Like, is the claim really that the deadbeat dad in his 30s mentioned in the OP got his values from an academic seminar on family formation? It's incoherent...
  - gilmore606 5y ago
    The people downstream watch hours of TV shows and internet media every day, most of which is created by people with elite-aspirational values. They also receive the clear message that these values are elite values. This is how values trickle down.
    - sanderjd 5y ago
      So the claim is that popular TV shows reflect this particular strain of (supposed) elite values? Can you point me to some examples? > They also receive the clear message that these values are elite values. How do they receive that message, exactly?
- lesam 5y ago
  Especially since the argument seems to be that ‘elites’ actually live by one set of (good) values while somehow imposing ‘bad’ values or expectations on the lower classes. How exactly are these bad values communicated from the elites if they don’t live by them? How do the elites enforce the ‘good’ values among themselves without transmitting them to lower classes? I agree there is doublespeak about values among some elites, but I disagree that is the major source of single parent families.

politician 5y ago

“Luxury beliefs” puts a name to a phenomenon that I’ve been wondering about. Like the availability of venture capital and calories, I strongly suspect there are many behaviors that will go away or retreat if the economy faltered. We’re seeing interest rates rise, so I suppose that I’ll get to see whether or not this is the case.

pydry 5y ago

Defund the police blew up because certain communities' only experience of police is of being harassed, beaten and robbed. It's hardly an attitude that's dripping with privilege. The backlash, on the other hand...

nikanj 5y ago
Counterpoint: it’s easy to support abolishing the police, when a clogged milk foamer is the biggest threat to your personal safety. Live in a wonderful sheltered community, say ”I don’t see why we would need law enforcement”
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  While it is true that there are people who actually do propose completely defunding police activity or abolishing the police, they are a tiny minority of those who took part in protests about police behavior towards non-white communities. It's so easy to make cheap digs about that handful of people instead of actually tackle the issues that this misnamed movement was/is really about. If it had actually been called "Redirect substantive parts of the funding currently going to the police to provide alternate mechanisms to address a variety of situations and crises", would you still find it appropriate to make jabs about the situation of some of those who supported it?
  - Taywee 5y ago
    > If it had actually been called "Redirect substantive parts of the funding currently going to the police to provide alternate mechanisms to address a variety of situations and crises", would you still find it appropriate to make jabs about the situation of some of those who supported it? No, because that's a rational and reasonable statement, where "defund the police" grabs attention, but is ultimately divisive and alienating. Like so many popular talking points, it's a complete failure of marketing and communication, and everybody who says it ends up having to redefine or explain it on a constant basis because on the surface it sounds completely irrational. Maybe it could have been more successful if the name actually reflected the goal. As-is, the supporters either actually believe in abolishing the police (which was also called for), or they are saying something they don't actually mean in a literal sense because it grabs more attention. The detractors in turn are only arguing with what a minority of the supporters actually even want, because we've grown so unconcerned as a society with actually conveying our points and getting people on our side, and more concerned with simply being noticed.
  - josephg 5y ago
    I hear what you're saying, but words matter. I can never support a slogan I explicitly disagree with. There's plenty of better slogans out there. I'd support "end police violence" or "stop killer cops" or something. Thats certainly much more catchy than the full slogan right now, which seems to be "Defund the police, but we don't really want to do that, even though some people in our movement actually do want that, but they're a minority - we swear. But we want political power anyway and it'll be fine - you can trust us". You can tell its a bad slogan because of how much oxygen gets spent explaining it. (Eg, right here)
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      "End Police Violence" has been a slogan in fact. It didn't really do much, precisely because not enough people who consider themselves unaffected by the risk of police violence were drawn in by it. By contrast "Defund the Police" definitely generated a "say what?" response from just about everyone, whether you agreed with it or not. As for the political power thing ... given the difficulty that existing politicians and political bodies have in exerting control over police authority, the idea that any new group would somehow be able to actually accomplish anything remotely close to abolition is crazy. Look at what happened in Minneapolis as an illustrative example: probably the closest to "actual abolition", and it just fizzled out completely.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Ah, "latte-sipping liberal." edit: There's something correct here, because if you want to look for people who supported defund, they were probably working in food service, making you coffee.
- HomeGear 5y ago
  “Defund the Police” was not an attempt at abolishing police. However, I do understand there are outlets that positioned it as such to gain emotional investment. The idea was to reallocate some of the police budget to mental health experts. The idea behind that idea is that we’d had better outcomes if mental health experts helped those having a breakdown (suicide attempt, etc) than armed police.
seibelj 5y ago
Gallop: 81% of black Americans want police to spend same amount or more time in their area https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-retain-local-presence.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-r... Defund the police is popular with nobody except rich liberals living in privilege bubbles. People in crime ridden areas especially don’t want it.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  "Defund the police" is merely an agitational short slogan for "we need some other way of governing the safety of our communities, because this is clearly not working." Like many short and pithy slogans, it may not be communicating that message effectively at all. It's not like police forces are an eternal attribute of all civilizations. Modern policing is actually pretty young.
  - ryan93 5y ago
    They are an attribute of 100% of modern countries.
  - InTheArena 5y ago
    This is the flip side of the “take trump seriously, not literally” argument that went around trying to normalize him in the last election. There are people who absolutely Believe that any police force is a slave enforcement force (or derived from one) and a tool of white tool to subjugate others. To them it must be eradicated.
    - jayd16 5y ago
      In both cases, that's easily solved by actually considering the content of popular proposals instead of imagining what the proposals _might_ be.
    - mrwh 5y ago
      (Off-topic, but...) I recall an interview on KQED with an activist who absolutely was proposing to get rid of the entire police and carceral system. When asked how they would deal with, say, a murderer, their response was a) there'd be fewer murderers and b) there would be meditation between the murderer and the victim's family. I really wish the interviewer had asked, what happens if the victim doesn't have a family? Does this mean that rich murderers can pay their way out of any crime? Presumably it would! It was fascinating, partly because what was being described is a premodern world, in which crime is a purely personal matter and not the business of the state. It's a world of vendettas, in which the powerful operate with true impunity. I don't think the partisans of _really_ defunding the police appreciate this. (Note, I have a lot of sympathy with the idea that the police are doing too much, especially around mental health crises, and some funding could usefully be diverted, etc etc.)
BurningFrog 5y ago
I'm 100% sure you're not part of such a community. Neither am I, of course :) When polled, poor black people want more policing, despite also agreeing with much of the defunder critique. Knowing both options, they prefer flawed policing to being ruled by criminal gangs.
- pydry 5y ago
  Im not American. The Americans I do know who really hate defund are the very definition of latte swilling liberals complaining about crime going up in their nice suburbs in SF, Portland and Seattle while... complaining bitterly about rich white liberals. The one supporter I do know lives a few blocks from George Floyd although the slogan seems to mean something different to her (transfer funds and responsibilities for mental health to social service departments).
  - softcactus 5y ago
    That's what most people mean when they say "defund". The problem is that America has an issue with being reactive instead of proactive. Instead of treating drugs and crime as an economics issue and getting ahead of it with social policies, we react to it after the fact and criminalize everything and pay for a standing army with zero accountability. Creating an arms race between gangs and police, with the average citizen paying twice-- once with their taxes and again with their freedoms.
    - BurningFrog 5y ago
      At least it's clear what Republicans mean by "Defund Planned Parenthood". If you have to keep explaining "when I say X, I really mean Y", you should maybe stop saying X.
      - softcactus 5y ago
        "Reallocate Police Budgets" doesn't have the same staying power.
- 5y ago
s1artibartfast 5y ago
Defund the police blew up because it was a simple sounding solution that outsiders could support while they didn't have to deal with the consequences. Actual members of impoverished and minority communities never supported it, they wanted more policing to keep their neighborhoods safe. The base of support was privileged members outside of those communities.
throwaway894345 5y ago
You’re defending one luxury belief (“defund the police”) with another (“the black experience with police is exclusively one of victimhood”). Notably, your “backlash” includes 81% of black Americans according to Gallup.
fundad 5y ago
Agreed, Like any social program there is a constituency that supports policing. They experience far less violence and use the service an outsized amount.

empathy_m 5y ago

Is "you can have a two parent household with two full time jobs" also a luxury belief?

mediumiqsad 5y ago

Rob went to Yale. He's literally a luxury columnist.

dijit 5y ago
Where did this idea come from that we cannot see what exists outside of ourselves and our experiences? I can empathise with people who are nothing like me. I can understand silly things that people like me do, and how they must look to people who are not like me. It is only infant humans that can’t understand that anything exists outside of themselves. Are we all infants?
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  Psychologists recognize that a surprisingly large percentage of people have no little to no ability to visualize abstractions or engage in mentally taxing feats of empathy. These people are more prone to believe that it’s only possible to obtain insight about a circumstance from only those individuals in said circumstance. When people comment about this, it generates confusion for people like you. :)
  - Cederfjard 5y ago
    What do I search for if I want to read up on that research?
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      Here could be an interesting starting point: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/726844v1.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/726844v1.full.pdf
      - Cederfjard 5y ago
        Thanks!
- flatearth22 5y ago

camgunz 5y ago

"luxury beliefs" feels to me like the right found a way to say "privilege" without actually saying it, haha.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
throwaway894345 5y ago
This isn’t the burn you intend. Henderson is talking about wealth/status privilege while the left uses “privilege” as a shorthand for racial or gender privilege. Henderson is clearly not ceding that point here (implicitly or otherwise).
- camgunz 5y ago
  I don't think the left thinks of privilege solely as racial or gender privilege. Here's an article on "everydayfeminism.com" about the broad view progressives take on it: https://everydayfeminism.com/2014/05/income-vs-wealth/ https://everydayfeminism.com/2014/05/income-vs-wealth/
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > I don't think the left thinks of privilege solely as racial or gender privilege. The left doesn't thing of privilege as even primarily racial or gender privilege. (The people that do are centrists; the actual left centers class privilege, though there are leftists who see race/gender issues as important secondary/connected issues to class issues.)
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      You have it exactly backwards. Centrists center class privilege while leftists center race/gender/etc privilege. For example, when discussing racial inequality, leftists will tend to argue “disparity thus discrimination” while centrists (and moderates of all stripes, really) will argue that the mechanism is classist but it manifests as a disparity because the class distributions aren’t uniform across races. I certainly agree that historically leftists were very concerned about class, but that hasn’t been the popular analysis among American leftists for a decade.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

I find his overall argument that it is "trickle down values" that are responsible for many of the overall social ills of the poor extremely lacking in evidence, and if anything I think he's confused cause and effect.

sanderjd 5y ago
Totally agree. I don't understand what the mechanism of values "trickling down" is meant to be. In my experience, none of the people "downstream" care or are even at all aware of what the "upstream" elites think. Like, is the claim really that the deadbeat dad in his 30s mentioned in the OP got his values from an academic seminar on family formation? It's incoherent...
- gilmore606 5y ago
  The people downstream watch hours of TV shows and internet media every day, most of which is created by people with elite-aspirational values. They also receive the clear message that these values are elite values. This is how values trickle down.
  - sanderjd 5y ago
    So the claim is that popular TV shows reflect this particular strain of (supposed) elite values? Can you point me to some examples? > They also receive the clear message that these values are elite values. How do they receive that message, exactly?
lesam 5y ago
Especially since the argument seems to be that ‘elites’ actually live by one set of (good) values while somehow imposing ‘bad’ values or expectations on the lower classes. How exactly are these bad values communicated from the elites if they don’t live by them? How do the elites enforce the ‘good’ values among themselves without transmitting them to lower classes? I agree there is doublespeak about values among some elites, but I disagree that is the major source of single parent families.