08-20-2016, 08:40 AM
Bob Butler Wrote:Mikebert brought up a point a while back that certain values can shift easier than others. People get different ideas on how the world works, different focuses on what goals ought to be pushed for to improve life. He has a point that beliefs that can be blatantly disproven by example can be superseded rather quickly. I'd also think values that are religious or emotional might have more staying power than objective ideas that can more clearly be shown to be false.
You are equating values with beliefs. They are different things. Values are hard to change because they contain a strong emotional or even spiritual content. Beliefs are logical constructs. The latter is amenable to “burned hand teaches best” experiences, the former, much less. Our issue is not values lock, (what we believe to be good) but belief lock (how we believe the world works).
Quote:Now, I might wish Mikebert could be proven right. It would be nice if people could just look at the world, see policies that didn't work, that aren't working, and just let go of old ideas that might no longer be effective.
They can and do. The issue is, current policies are working just fine for elites, so why change? The definition of elites are those who run the American state and its major institutions. By definition, it is they who are to be convinced that policies need to be changed. Look at the past 4Ts.
Revolutionary 4T: Things were not good for American commercial elites like John Hancock, who were constrained by British mercantile policy. Furthermore, British monetary policy repressed American businesses. British Indian and frontier policy constrained land speculators and created internal problems like the Paxton terrorists in Western Pennsylvania. When American elites got too frustrated they recruited a critical mass of non-elites to their cause, gained control of the colonial militias, and set up shop as an independent nation.
Civil War 4T: Things were definitively moving against the interest of Southern elites in the 1850’s. In 1860 what they perceived as an abolitionist party won the election. It seemed likely that within a fairly short period of time they would be stripped of 60% of their wealth. They tried to pull out of the union peaceably, but the North wouldn’t have it, and what they feared happened to them, but only because they lost the war.
Depression 4T: American elites faced challenges, including a real revolutionary situation at the end of the 1896-1920 Progressive Era. Elites apparently successfully addressed this threat (see Gabriel Kolko’s book about the Progressive Era being a conservative program, and Kitty Calavita on the motive for immigration suppression in the early 1920's) without addressing the core problem, economic inequality. Another way to put this is: problem was them, there are too many of them (elite proliferation) and they had too much of the pie. (see Peter Turchin’s stuff about secular cycles and elite proliferation).
The only way to solve this problem is for some elites to take a haircut and become less elite. Volunteers, anyone? That wasn’t ever gonna happen, except it did. Why? Because the capitalist economy had collapsed, taking fair number of elites with it. And so now there was elite motivation to DO something. So changes were made to salvage things for one subset of elites at the expense of another. How was this decided? Well liberal elites in the Democratic party were able to marshall superior forces and prevail over conservative elites in Republican party in the critical election of 1932. This election served as a political revolution in place of a real one.
Quote:This doesn't seem to be happening, though.
Well the economy hasn’t collapsed yet. Every time its tried, the elites have managed to shore it back up.
Quote:You and Eric are representative in being able to see only one side of the picture. Both of you have lots of company, clinging to the extremes. It seems that modern society is complex enough that many people cannot see things well enough to shift positions. I don't think it ought to be all that difficult to open one's eyes, to see all of America and its history rather than focusing on selective bits that reinforce what one wants to believe. Still, the partisan divide continues.
You make these fuzzy statements with no specific examples of what you mean. Can you give some specific examples where you apply what you are talking about in order to illustrate them.