Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#191

Post by internaut » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 8:55 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #81

petewailes wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe the factory closing is a net benefit long term. Was losing millions of jobs in the farming sector a bad thing? Or the automation of the glass industry in the 1930's and 1940's that increased production and cleaned up emissions? Is the move to driverless vehicles and what that'll do to the logistics industry bad? There's lots of examples of people losing jobs. That's sad for the individual, but long term it's…

Sure, but telling an ordinary worker that they need to give up their livelihood in the now, for a net long term benefit that he or she may not live to see, is a hard sell.

Harder still when wage growth has been this anemic for this long.

The number of niches in the economy are not expanding.

When the average worker gets laid off, he or she stays laid off.

We could sprinkle the market with PhDs and it would solve nothing. The underlying issue is much more structural than the NYT wants to admit.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#192

Post by internaut » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 9:13 PM UTC

panglott wrote: post #168

todd8 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A classic text on the philosophical underpinnings of (US) liberalism with regard to economic redistribution policies is A Theory of Justice by John Rawls, a renowned professor of philosophy at Harvard. After reading Rawls, I'd suggest maybe reading Robert Nozick's libertarian leaning Anarchy, State, and Utopia . Nozick was another distinguished philosopher from Harvard writing about the same time as Rawls. Nozick com…

John Rawls is of course the right answer here, but it seems odd that you cite Hayek, Nozick, Sowell, &c., who are all diametrically opposed. The other one I'd recommend is John Stuart Mill.

I am not joking when I say I don't know a single liberal who has read Rawls or Mill.

In fact it is curious how little 'well educated' people read. They appear to absorb their opinions from Thomas Friedman and George Monbiot as if by osmosis.

That is not to say there don't exist conservatives or libertarians who also do not read books. Certainly I know religious conservatives who read very little outside of the Bible. I just also know a lot of college educated people whose houses are as bare as caves when it comes to books and most of them are liberal. They spend most of their time working long hours or frenetically socializing, not book friendly activities.

My guess is that few of any political conviction go to the source.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#193

Post by ArkyBeagle » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 9:40 PM UTC

fab13n wrote: post #72

I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening competitive mindset. So sure, one way is to protect myself and those I love behind a gated community. But that's pretty mu…

If they're wrong ( and oh so many are ) , "Adam Smith's sycophants" have a fundamental reading comprehension problem. He's nominally a tepid-right, Virginia school economist, but Russ Roberts frames "Wealth of Nations" as a drill down of "Theory of Moral Sentiments". Smith spends barrels of ink decrying rents.

Many, many people who espouse Smith just cherry-pick reinforcement from him. Now: having said that, I am no progressive. I'd actually be for redistribution if it could be shown to work; we can't even get insurance payments fo people from Hurricane Sandy right. There is just always a paucity of philsopher-kings. We're just not that smart. It takes decades for the permanent bureaucratic class to debug these things - look at the history of the relativelty simple ( and possibly brilliant ) ag. subsidy regime.

I don't think we have a good empirical handle on aggression. I've known too many wealthy people who I would not turn my back on. I've known too many saintly/salt-of-the-earth/shirt-off-their-back poor people. The proportions do not favor material comfort having much of a seat at the table.

The cultural more of "crushing people" kinda looks like a thing now, and it makes me modestly angry.

I view Smith as one element of the (very important) Scots Enlightenment, along with Hume, James Watt and all the others. Where those guys are/were right, they're still right. That's my bias, though.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#194

Post by ArkyBeagle » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 9:42 PM UTC

Kurtz79 wrote: post #120

fab13n wrote: post #72

I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening competitive mindset. So sure, one way is to protect myself and those I love behind a gated community. But that's pretty mu…

"I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening competitive mindset." That's mostly my rationale for being in favor of (moderate) wealth redistribution, which on surface…

The better argument is marginal value of a dollar. The argument against is that effective investment creates an at least pseudo public good.

It's a nuanced mess and ideology destroys any hope of it being well done.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#195

Post by ArkyBeagle » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 9:43 PM UTC

panglott wrote: post #182

fab13n wrote: post #72

I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening competitive mindset. So sure, one way is to protect myself and those I love behind a gated community. But that's pretty mu…

People who are willing to endure being a grad student in order to become a professor are probably relatively less motivated by monetary incentives.

Some people are grad students with an eye towards finance.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#196

Post by ArkyBeagle » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 9:47 PM UTC

newacct23 wrote: post #8

51% of college graduates voted for Romney in 2012 while only 48% for Obama Romney actually lost with highschool educated only and he lost significantly with postgraduate studies only getting 42% of the vote with Obama getting 55%. So really the trend is that academics are liberal, not the highly educated. (That 3% gap in college grads likely accounts for a larger percentage of the population than the massive 13% gap…

I have a BsCS; if I got an MsCS you could not much consider me any more educated than I already am. Examples abound of medical doctors who hold flatly a-scientific views.

Marxism is completely dependent on using narrative as a primary tool. It is also therefore a-scientific.

Narrow is the way...

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#197

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 9:47 PM UTC

fab13n wrote: post #72

I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening competitive mindset. So sure, one way is to protect myself and those I love behind a gated community. But that's pretty mu…

> monetary incentives don't work the way Adam Smith' sycophants pretend they do

Well, they certainly work the Adam Smith said they do, to wit: "The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers."

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#198

Post by ljw1001 » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 10:05 PM UTC

Because they're highly educated.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#199

Post by ArkyBeagle » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 10:06 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #176

harrumph wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Liberals do not refer to property as a mere social construct." Excellent point. Liberals are de facto capitalists.

Liberals are capitalists with a heart. Social democrats are capitalists with a heart and a brain. And personally, I think social democracy worked pretty ok except for the fact that it required a pretty strict anti-socialism, which meant that when the '70s arrived and the elite decided to "restore growth" by clawing back every concession to the working class and the human heart that they'd ever made under social democ…

I cannot imagine a single meaningful thing "the elites" could do to have a concession to the human heart. They best they can do is things like taking the boot of Jim Crow off the neck of people. That's not that far from the arsonist-fireman syndrome.

Most of the concessions to the working class are still with us. Everything except jobs. And for a while, "restoring growth" worked. my hobby horse for why it stopped is low interest rates and low inflation.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#200

Post by vowelless » Fri, Jun 03, 2016, 10:08 PM UTC

lake99 wrote: post #157

vowelless wrote: post #75

This has always confused me. There are some rich texts based on beautiful rigor on the side of the conservatives like freidman and Hayek. Goldwater also approaches things in a very principled manner. Arthur brooks' latest book is similar. On the other than, I have not come across any liberal text, yet, that makes a good convincing case for liberalism. I would love to get some recommendations. I'm interested in princi…

Your post confuses me, no offense intended. Friedman and Hayek called themselves liberals, not conservatives. The American progressive movement co-opted the word "liberalism". Before that, they called themselves "progressives". Is that what you're looking for? Todd8's comment below confuses me for the same reason. Rawls could be considered to be on the US-left. The other people he mentioned, except Gross and Levitt,…

Sorry about the confusion. In my mind conservative is fiscal conservatism, smaller government, more liberty, etc. Liberalism is about bigger government, larger social programs, sanitation of speech, etc.