Aphorism 9: Talk is so Cheap, it is Often Nothing at All

I was discussing a social issue with a neighbor more than 10 years ago. I said something like "that really bothers me" or "I really care about that." He stopped me and said something like this:

"If you really cared about it, you would be doing something about it."

That stopped me in my tracks because the only thing I was doing was ranting. I think of this often when I hear the choruses of virtue signalers. They are almost everywhere. For instance, among those who Identify as Democrats, I constantly hear that the environment "is the most important issue" and that "it is an emergency situation" and that "no other issue comes close in importance."

This is what I hear, constantly, from Democrats whose life style is indistinguishable from the life style of the average Republican. They drive similar gas-guzzling vehicles. They go on gas-guzzling vacations. They live in fuel guzzling houses. They live far from their places of work. They don't car pool or (in my city) use mass transit or bike to work. They revel in getting take-out food and coffee sold by businesses that use single-use paper, plastic and foam wrappings. I'm still doing my research, but I found one 2013 study that concluded that Democrats generate only 5% less fossil fuel than Republicans per capita. They claim that this is an emergency situation but they don't act like it is an emergency situation. If you asked the average Democrat to turn their thermostat down 5 degrees in the winter and put on a sweater, they will look at you like you are insane.

Apparently, that gives them the right to claim that they "care" and that Republicans don't "care" about the environment.

The environment is merely one example of many. We are surrounded by virtue-signaling virtuosos of both political parties. But at least they all "care."

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Jonathan Haidt: “We Were Fooled in the 1990s into Thinking that Democracy was Easy.”

What happened to progress in the US? It seemed like we had a plan and a good track record for progress back in the 1990s. A lot of things happened, of course. That is the topic of this discussion involving Jonathan Haidt and John Wood Jr and April Lawson. Here's how Haidt set the table for the longer discussion:

We can go back to some of the ideas in The Righteous Mind, because that's the summary of my own work as a social psychologist who studies morality. What I've always tried to do in my work is look at evolution. What is human nature. How did it evolve. [What is the] interplay of human nature with culture? And of course, everything can change over the course of just a few decades, too. We're very dynamic species.

What I'd like to put on the put on the table here first: let's really lower our expectations for humanity. Okay. Now, this sounds depressing. But let's be serious here. What kind of creatures, are we? We are primates who evolved to live in small groups that dominate territory, in competition with other groups were really, really good at coming together to fight those other groups. Part of our preparation for doing that, I believe, is the psychology of religion, sacredness, tribal rituals. We have all this really complicated stuff we do that binds us to each other. This is a human universal. Every group has rituals. I'm a big fan of the sociologist Emile Durkheim.

And so from that kind of perspective we ought to still be pre-civilization times with very high rates of murder. And somehow we escaped that. Somehow we've had this incredible ascent. This unbelievably rapid ascent, in which we've gotten wealthier, smarter, healthier. We've made extraordinary progress on women's rights, animal rights, gay rights, the concern about the environment. So let's start by appreciating our lowly origins as really violent tribal creatures, and the way that we've rocketed up from

Okay, now, in the last 10 or so, years, 10 to 20 years, we've had a little bit of a come-down. I really want to put this not just in an evolutionary perspective, but in a recent historical perspective, because this, I think, is the key to understanding what is happening to us now. It is that we were fooled in the 1990s into thinking that democracy was easy. The founding fathers were under no such illusion. They knew that democracy is prone to faction. That's what Madison wrote about, especially in Federalist 10. They knew that democracy is generally self-destructed, so they gave us all kinds of safeguards, They tried to create a system that would not be so prone, a system in which these tribal, irrational emotional creatures might actually live together. And it worked. It worked pretty well. And it worked badly at times.

But by the 1990s, we had the the mistaken view, that if we just wait for Iran, and Russia and North Korea to develop market economies, they'll get prosperous, their people will demand rights. And this was true for China too. That people will demand rights. Liberal democracies will break out everywhere. Liberal democracies are the endpoint, the end of history.

And so that's the way those of us who live through--I'm older than you guys--but the late 20th century was an incredibly dangerous and an exciting time in which there was a victor and it was liberal democracy. Okay, but like in a lot of movies where it seems like there's an early denouement and everything's great? Well, we still have a lot of stuff to go and in the 21st century, things have really come down from there. So that's the backstory.

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Aphorism 8: Two Rules to Help Preserve Romantic Relationships

People sometimes ask me for advice regarding relationships and I laugh. I've been divorced twice and I've been in about a half dozen serious relationships that are, alas, no more.  Not that I regret a minute of this adventure.  As Tennyson wrote: "Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." And I truly celebrate vibrant romantic relationships, even though most of them fail, whether or not it is apparent to others.  What a strange prelude to "advice" that I suspect is mostly tongue in cheek.  Here are my two rules for preserving romantic relationships:

  1. Don't  expect your lover to change.
  2. Don't expect your lover to not change.

There you have it.  Good luck to all of us who are seeking love and affection out there!  The quest is worth it, regardless of the outcome.

Oh, and one more thing.  If you are in a marriage that fails and you need something to buoy your spirits, consider this advice from Louis CK:

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About Our Corrupt COVID Supply Chain

Matt Stoller's antitrust blog should be required reading for every American. Today's topic is the corrupt system behind COVID medical shortages. Here's an excerpt:

Today, corruption in these markets is so extreme that hospital executives themselves are often offered a cut of the fees from GPOs. In 2013, one analyst said that “many hospital executives who are part of the Premier alliance have learned to rely on that share back as an integral part of their annual compensation.” In other words, hospitals are buying supplies at inflated prices, and those suppliers use some of that extra money in direct bribes to hospital executives.

The legalization of kickbacks happened as a series of mergers in the 1990s consolidated power within the industry. In 1995, Premier Health Alliance, American Healthcare Systems, and SunHealth Alliance merged into the nation’s largest GPO, Premier. By 2017, the giants in the industry - Vizient, Premier, HealthTrust, and Intaler - came to manage $300 billion of hospital purchasing for 5000 health systems, or 90% of total medical supplies in the United States. These GPOs have deals with the three major distributors - McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health - which precludes any smaller distributors from getting into the business. At this point, 90% of generic medicines are bought by just four firms.

And this consolidation and restructuring of hospital buying has ruined the American supply chain, and prevented the ability to rebuild it.

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