Now that I've started to make a little hobby out of photography, I'm noticing how pervasive the digital approach has become further down the line from initially capturing light on film rather than on a digital sensor.
These are differences of kind, not degree, and given how widespread the changes have been, they deserve more thoughtful study than just, "Well, neither of the two methods gives results that look horrifically awful, so the winner is the one that's more convenient for producers and consumers." In the hands of professionals, digital may not look awful, but it doesn't look better than film. (Everyone else's digital pictures do produce a weaker response in the viewer than their film snapshots from 20-30 years ago.)
Understanding the many ways in which digital has crept into the formerly analog world of still and motion pictures requires looking into each stage of the process from opening the shutter to viewing the final result — not only what differences there are between shooting on film vs. digital in the first stage. I've covered those differences at the capturing stage in two earlier posts here and here.
When you have your film developed, every lab will offer you the option to not have any prints made, but to receive a digital medium like a CD, USB, or external hard drive, which contains the final positive images in digital form, which were made from digital scans of the chemically developed film negative (more on that in the next post).
Of course you can still opt for prints on light-sensitive paper, just like in the good old days, but there must be a fairly large demand for a digital final product for it to be even offered, let alone as the first choice. Isn't the whole point of shooting on film to view the final result on developed photographic paper? My sense is that professional photographers who want to enter competitions or make a banner are more likely to still make prints on photographic paper, and that the hobbyists who shoot on film are maybe only half in favor of making prints, and half in favor of getting a CD of scans.
The CD option is cheaper than making the prints, but usually only about half as expensive, so I don't see that as the main reason a hobbyist would choose the CD. It is more likely due to the greater ease of digitally manipulating the images on the CD in Photoshop, if you didn't agree with the corrections made by the lab, as well as sharing them over the internet.
If you aren't so obsessed with over-riding the lab's corrections (which I would trust more than I would myself dicking around in Photoshop), and if you don't feel the need to share every single picture you've ever taken with everyone else in the world, then the CD offers no greater convenience.
And the price you pay is in displayed image quality — if they're on CD, you get to see them on an LCD computer screen of greater or lesser quality, perhaps or perhaps not set to the same monitor settings that the correction work was done under. Prints look striking on their own and do not rely on further technology to view them. For the handful of halfway decent pictures that a hobbyist might take, out of a roll of 24, it's no pain to scan them yourself later.
Amateurs wildly over-estimate the return on investment (in time, effort, and money) for using Photoshop to improve their initial exposures. Work more on getting a proper exposure next time, not about endlessly re-touching the majority of today's pictures that were less than you'd hoped for.
I also detect a huge drop in the attention paid to composition in the digital age — amateurs are now obsessing over light levels, contrast, color, etc., when they haven't even taken an interesting picture in the first place. With little room for post-processing in the film days, folks devoted more thought and effort to the skeleton of the image rather than its flesh, except for advanced photographers whose compositions came more effortlessly.
Here we see a parallel in the world of motion pictures, where scarcely 5% of theaters in America right now are equipped with optical film projectors. So even if you shot your movie on film, it will be projected from digital images on an external hard drive. That was a neat, cheapy idea for me and my friends during our freshman year of college back in 1999, when we used to sneak into a nearby class building at night, hook up a laptop to the digital projector in a small classroom, and watch the rip of a DVD on a much bigger screen than we could have back in our dorms.
But for making a trip out to a movie theater, wanting to be wowed by the experience, digital projection only offers a case of blue balls (while charging three times as much as they used to). I wonder how much of the drop-out culture among movie-lovers is an effect not just of the plot, acting, etc., of recent movies, but of digital shooting and projection. The drop-outs might not be able to articulate all of the many separate things that are turning them off visually. It's just a gestalt sense of how different — how crappy-looking movies have become since the mid-to-late 1990s.
One aspect that has been analyzed is how underlit the digital projectors are in practice, something that Roger Ebert among others remarked on a few years ago when the conversion to digital projectors had really begun to take over. Whether this is due to a different type of lightbulb in digital projectors, to leaving 3D lenses on them when projecting 2D movies, or whatever else, movies in the digitally projected age just don't look as brilliant as they used to.
In the next post, we'll take a look at digital creep at the intermediate stages of the photographic process.
September 21, 2014
September 18, 2014
The geography of transplant Senators
An earlier post explained why status-striving times would lead toward more of a carpetbagger pattern among those seeking and holding political office. The norms of laissez-faire and winning at any cost will allow strivers to leave their own neck of the woods if the competition is too stiff, and strike at a softer target.
This predicts that where the locals are not very deeply rooted themselves, transplant politicians will have greater success. Weakly rooted locals could be very recent transplants, or they could go back just a generation or two at most.
Our President is weakly rooted in the country he is in charge of, as was Chester A. Arthur (to a lesser extent) back in the original Gilded Age. But they are not transplants from another nation. To uncover carpetbagger behavior, we need to look at a lower level. Senators are both powerful and important players, as well as easy to study: they represent a state, so we only need to look at how rooted they are in that state (whereas Representatives represent districts, and mayors control cities).
How should we measure a person's connection to a place, from deeply to weakly rooted? We could look further back into their family history or look at where they currently have family ties and get a better picture, but for ease of study I'm going with an individual-level measure.
I looked at where they were born, where they went to high school, where they graduated from college, and where they received an advanced degree. Where they went to high school seemed like the best single measure of where they were from. Where they were born was fairly good, too, but it's not uncommon to be born in one place and move during early childhood to another, where you come of age. College and professional school attendance is a weaker level of connection, but at least it's something. The least rooted people didn't even go to school where they live.
Why not things like operating a business? By the time you can successfully operate a business, your brain is no longer impressionable, and you no are no longer imprinting on your surroundings. You may like the place, and the place may like you, you may even intend to stay there for the rest of your life, but it is still your adoptive place. Following its norms and interacting with its locals is like speaking a second language with native speakers, a language you had to study and learn because it was not your mother tongue.
The same goes for starting a family in a certain place: by that age, you're no longer impressionable.*
I've put the entire table of Senators and their rootedness at the end of this post for those who want to dissect it further. Some interesting findings:
Nearly 1/3 of the Senators (29 or 30) did not come of age in the state they now represent.**
Rootedness is not associated with party: 17 of 53 Democrats, 10 of 45 Republicans, and 2 of 2 Independents were not rooted in their state. Setting aside the Independents, the apparently higher rate of rootlessness among Dems was not statistically significant (p = 0.4). Even throwing in the Independents, who show a strong bias toward being outsiders, gave only a marginally significant link between party and rootedness (p = 0.1).
However, Republican transplants headed to states where they would not upset the partisan status quo -- Arizona, Kentucky, Idaho, Utah, etc. Conservatives don't like rocking the boat, so it's unlikely that Republican citizens and office-seekers would invade, say, Minnesota and in one great big electoral troll, transform it into a staunch red state.
Fun fact: John McCain, who LARPs as a Wild West gunslinger, is an East Coaster. He was born in Panama, raised in the DC suburbs of Virginia, went to college in Maryland, and only headed out West at the age of 41 after leaving the Navy. Also, Orrin Hatch, while always a member of the Mormon culture whose center is in Utah, was born and raised around Pittsburgh.
Democrat transplants are more shameless, and were more likely to head toward "swing states" that used to be red but are now blue -- Colorado, Virginia, North Carolina. This is part of the broader trend in the population of blue-staters colonizing red states that were formerly thought to be flyover wastelands or southern backwaters. But hey, if Manhattan wannabes could gentrify Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, and Jersey City in... New Jersey, then surely the NY and DC wannabes can gentrify Virginia and North Carolina.
Regardless of party, which states have elected the least rooted Senators? Both of the state's Senators are outsiders in Colorado, Indiana, New Mexico, and Virginia. Of these, the worst offenders are Colorado's and Virginia's. Michael Bennet (D-CO) was born in India, went to high school in DC, and did undergrad and above in Connecticut. Mark Udall (D) at least comes from the region: he was born and went to high school in Arizona, and did undergrad in Massachusetts. Mark Warner (D-VA) couldn't be any newer to Old Dominion -- born in Indiana, high school in Connecticut, undergrad in DC, and law school in Massachusetts. He serves with Tim Kaine (D), who hails from even farther away in the Midwest: born in Minnesota, high school and college in Missouri, law school in Massachusetts.
The following states have one Senator who did not come of age in their state: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maine, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Wyoming.
These states have at least one Senator who has no roots there at all, from birth, high school, college, or advanced education: California, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.
The Mountain states are pretty rootless themselves (what fraction of the population was born and raised there), so naturally they're more open to transplant leaders. New England citizens are fairly rooted, but their would-be leaders have brain-drained out of the region. New Englanders are fairly demoralized, so they don't mind being led by outsiders. The farther out toward a coast, the more transplant friendly. The closer-in toward flyover country, the less.
Notice that the centers of Establishment power (not to be confused with cultural influence) tend to have local Senators -- New York, Texas, Illinois (i.e. Chicago). Every power-seeker with impressive credentials and a ruthless attitude would be attracted to them, so local roots is one of the few traits that could tip the scales toward one or another. The power-seekers who would fail in their own state are going to head out to others -- every state has two Senate seats up for grabs, unlike the House seats that are proportional to population.
Local office-seekers in the colonized states would have an advantage in rootedness, but in credentials and ruthlessness are not going to stand up to the carpetbaggers.
Unless of course the local voters prize rootedness above fancy credentials. Much of the Deep South learned this lesson with the original carpetbaggers during the first Gilded Age, and the region is now mostly impenetrable by faggotizing foreign forces.
The following states have both Senators who were raised locally from birth through their highest education level: Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, and South Carolina. Voters in these states don't trust politicians who haven't spent their entire lives there. That's quite a barrier to status-strivers -- not only does it keep out the carpetbaggers, it also ostracizes the local boys who got too big for their britches and went off to an elite college or law school, none of which are in these states. Lord only knows what degenerate influences they could bring back into their home state after becoming infected in college out-of-state.
The following have one Senator who is fully local: Alaska, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Washington, and West Virginia. Voters in these states are willing to give a pass to one of their Senators, but the other one must have lived their entire lives there.
A final reflection: one Senator from Maryland is fully local, and the other one was born, went to high school, and took a law degree there, but went to college in nearby Pennsylvania. So, strange as it may seem, Marylanders demand more rootedness from their officials than Virginians. But like I said before, these days hardly anyone from Virginia is from Virginia. I attribute this to Maryland having been a greater seat of power historically, and hence had a long entrenched Establishment, whereas Virginia was a center of the military but not of the broader power structure, and so proved more vulnerable to colonization.
Particularly when you move outward from DC, where the strivers all want to be. To the northwest, Montgomery County has had ring after ring of wealthy suburbs for many decades, and PG County and northeast toward Baltimore has been a no-go ghetto for just as long. On the Virginia side to the south and west, you have to go pretty far down south toward Richmond to reach anything like a PG County or Baltimore ghetto barrier. Before then, McLean is just about the only major center of Establishment wealth and power. Otherwise, the more middle-class Arlington and Fairfax counties right outside of DC were ripe for colonization by blue-state transplants.
It's depressing to think that what saved Maryland from becoming as fucked-over politically as Virginia is having a longer history of incredibly wealthy and powerful people squatting on the desirable land near DC, and frightening levels of crime, drugs, and violence around Baltimore. Whereas the more egalitarian and white counterpart regions of Virginia had neither Establishment muscle nor scary black hordes to discourage would-be colonists.
Of course, Virginia would not have needed to deter gentrifiers if it were not located right next to a central target of status-strivers. Ditto for North Carolina if it were not home to Research Triangle. You can be egalitarian and homogeneous far away from power centers, like the Dakotas.
But once that kind of place finds itself near a power center, its egalitarian and homogeneous qualities will only amplify its attractiveness to carpetbaggers who could give a shit about preserving those very qualities -- "You mean I get to hipsterize an up-and-coming nabe, NOT have to pay out the ass to dislodge an entrenched elite, AND not have to save on rent by living near violent dark-skins? AWESOME SAAAAUCE."
The carpetbaggers hoard their gold, truck in immigrants to pay lower wages for their upscale lawn maintenance, in-home foster care for career-mommy's neglected children, and so on and so forth. In a few short generations, the whole place is wrecked, and it will take a miracle to rebuild it, if it happens ever. Still, the fact that citizens in the Deep South have managed to throw up barriers, having preserved the memory of being stung by carpetbaggers over 100 years ago, shows that the phenomenon can be reversed and guarded against in the future.
I wanted to focus mainly on the geography of carpetbagging, although there are surely other ways to analyze the data on Senators' level of rootedness. Compared to the Senate as a whole, are carpetbaggers more likely to be male? Older or younger? Incumbent or entrant? Etc. I don't think there will be as many illuminating patterns there -- just what it takes to be an amoral entrepreneur. The main interest here is which places are more affected, and why.
You could also look into which states produce the most Senators, or which colleges and law schools, to study the "over-production of elites." If there are too many aspiring elites on the East Coast, they'll have to head somewhere else like Colorado, where local elite production is not so kicked into overdrive.
* You may intend for your kids to grow up there, which is a way of casting your lot with your adoptive place -- but then you might very well move the family to some other place. That won't sting as much for transplant parents either.
Childless cosmopolitans shop around for the city and neighborhood that are most to their liking and within their price range, a geographical decision that may change several times and by large distances during adulthood. But the same is true for family-raising suburbanites in status-striving times. Wherever mommy and/or daddy can find a higher-status job, enjoy a higher-status house, lifestyle, and so on, is where they're going to go -- whether the kids are already attached to some place or not.
Urbanites feel less anxious city-hopping because they expect certain things to be in place no matter which particular cosmopolis they're setting off for, and the same is true for suburbanite parents who don't mind uprooting their children because, they rationalize, the suburbs are all basically the same (in a good way), so what does it matter which particular 'burb the kids are growing up in this year?
Obviously having no kids provides even less friction for location-hopping, but raising a family does not provide as much glue in status-striving times to qualify the parents as being rooted in a place.
** I put Cornyn as rooted in Texas even though he graduated high school in Japan, where he stayed for only two years while his father was stationed there in the military. He was born, went to college, and got his law degree in Texas.
Appendix: Rootedness of American Senators, 2014
These are sorted alphabetically by state for two groups -- transplants first, then natives. Transplants have a value in the final column, age at which they began residing in their state if they're not a native. Natives have a blank in this column. The age estimates are close-enough guesses, based on graduating college, beginning law school, etc., or using other dates from their biographies to ballpark the age in question. You can sort the table however else you want in a spreadsheet program.
This predicts that where the locals are not very deeply rooted themselves, transplant politicians will have greater success. Weakly rooted locals could be very recent transplants, or they could go back just a generation or two at most.
Our President is weakly rooted in the country he is in charge of, as was Chester A. Arthur (to a lesser extent) back in the original Gilded Age. But they are not transplants from another nation. To uncover carpetbagger behavior, we need to look at a lower level. Senators are both powerful and important players, as well as easy to study: they represent a state, so we only need to look at how rooted they are in that state (whereas Representatives represent districts, and mayors control cities).
How should we measure a person's connection to a place, from deeply to weakly rooted? We could look further back into their family history or look at where they currently have family ties and get a better picture, but for ease of study I'm going with an individual-level measure.
I looked at where they were born, where they went to high school, where they graduated from college, and where they received an advanced degree. Where they went to high school seemed like the best single measure of where they were from. Where they were born was fairly good, too, but it's not uncommon to be born in one place and move during early childhood to another, where you come of age. College and professional school attendance is a weaker level of connection, but at least it's something. The least rooted people didn't even go to school where they live.
Why not things like operating a business? By the time you can successfully operate a business, your brain is no longer impressionable, and you no are no longer imprinting on your surroundings. You may like the place, and the place may like you, you may even intend to stay there for the rest of your life, but it is still your adoptive place. Following its norms and interacting with its locals is like speaking a second language with native speakers, a language you had to study and learn because it was not your mother tongue.
The same goes for starting a family in a certain place: by that age, you're no longer impressionable.*
I've put the entire table of Senators and their rootedness at the end of this post for those who want to dissect it further. Some interesting findings:
Nearly 1/3 of the Senators (29 or 30) did not come of age in the state they now represent.**
Rootedness is not associated with party: 17 of 53 Democrats, 10 of 45 Republicans, and 2 of 2 Independents were not rooted in their state. Setting aside the Independents, the apparently higher rate of rootlessness among Dems was not statistically significant (p = 0.4). Even throwing in the Independents, who show a strong bias toward being outsiders, gave only a marginally significant link between party and rootedness (p = 0.1).
However, Republican transplants headed to states where they would not upset the partisan status quo -- Arizona, Kentucky, Idaho, Utah, etc. Conservatives don't like rocking the boat, so it's unlikely that Republican citizens and office-seekers would invade, say, Minnesota and in one great big electoral troll, transform it into a staunch red state.
Fun fact: John McCain, who LARPs as a Wild West gunslinger, is an East Coaster. He was born in Panama, raised in the DC suburbs of Virginia, went to college in Maryland, and only headed out West at the age of 41 after leaving the Navy. Also, Orrin Hatch, while always a member of the Mormon culture whose center is in Utah, was born and raised around Pittsburgh.
Democrat transplants are more shameless, and were more likely to head toward "swing states" that used to be red but are now blue -- Colorado, Virginia, North Carolina. This is part of the broader trend in the population of blue-staters colonizing red states that were formerly thought to be flyover wastelands or southern backwaters. But hey, if Manhattan wannabes could gentrify Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, and Jersey City in... New Jersey, then surely the NY and DC wannabes can gentrify Virginia and North Carolina.
Regardless of party, which states have elected the least rooted Senators? Both of the state's Senators are outsiders in Colorado, Indiana, New Mexico, and Virginia. Of these, the worst offenders are Colorado's and Virginia's. Michael Bennet (D-CO) was born in India, went to high school in DC, and did undergrad and above in Connecticut. Mark Udall (D) at least comes from the region: he was born and went to high school in Arizona, and did undergrad in Massachusetts. Mark Warner (D-VA) couldn't be any newer to Old Dominion -- born in Indiana, high school in Connecticut, undergrad in DC, and law school in Massachusetts. He serves with Tim Kaine (D), who hails from even farther away in the Midwest: born in Minnesota, high school and college in Missouri, law school in Massachusetts.
The following states have one Senator who did not come of age in their state: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maine, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Wyoming.
These states have at least one Senator who has no roots there at all, from birth, high school, college, or advanced education: California, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.
The Mountain states are pretty rootless themselves (what fraction of the population was born and raised there), so naturally they're more open to transplant leaders. New England citizens are fairly rooted, but their would-be leaders have brain-drained out of the region. New Englanders are fairly demoralized, so they don't mind being led by outsiders. The farther out toward a coast, the more transplant friendly. The closer-in toward flyover country, the less.
Notice that the centers of Establishment power (not to be confused with cultural influence) tend to have local Senators -- New York, Texas, Illinois (i.e. Chicago). Every power-seeker with impressive credentials and a ruthless attitude would be attracted to them, so local roots is one of the few traits that could tip the scales toward one or another. The power-seekers who would fail in their own state are going to head out to others -- every state has two Senate seats up for grabs, unlike the House seats that are proportional to population.
Local office-seekers in the colonized states would have an advantage in rootedness, but in credentials and ruthlessness are not going to stand up to the carpetbaggers.
Unless of course the local voters prize rootedness above fancy credentials. Much of the Deep South learned this lesson with the original carpetbaggers during the first Gilded Age, and the region is now mostly impenetrable by faggotizing foreign forces.
The following states have both Senators who were raised locally from birth through their highest education level: Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, and South Carolina. Voters in these states don't trust politicians who haven't spent their entire lives there. That's quite a barrier to status-strivers -- not only does it keep out the carpetbaggers, it also ostracizes the local boys who got too big for their britches and went off to an elite college or law school, none of which are in these states. Lord only knows what degenerate influences they could bring back into their home state after becoming infected in college out-of-state.
The following have one Senator who is fully local: Alaska, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Washington, and West Virginia. Voters in these states are willing to give a pass to one of their Senators, but the other one must have lived their entire lives there.
A final reflection: one Senator from Maryland is fully local, and the other one was born, went to high school, and took a law degree there, but went to college in nearby Pennsylvania. So, strange as it may seem, Marylanders demand more rootedness from their officials than Virginians. But like I said before, these days hardly anyone from Virginia is from Virginia. I attribute this to Maryland having been a greater seat of power historically, and hence had a long entrenched Establishment, whereas Virginia was a center of the military but not of the broader power structure, and so proved more vulnerable to colonization.
Particularly when you move outward from DC, where the strivers all want to be. To the northwest, Montgomery County has had ring after ring of wealthy suburbs for many decades, and PG County and northeast toward Baltimore has been a no-go ghetto for just as long. On the Virginia side to the south and west, you have to go pretty far down south toward Richmond to reach anything like a PG County or Baltimore ghetto barrier. Before then, McLean is just about the only major center of Establishment wealth and power. Otherwise, the more middle-class Arlington and Fairfax counties right outside of DC were ripe for colonization by blue-state transplants.
It's depressing to think that what saved Maryland from becoming as fucked-over politically as Virginia is having a longer history of incredibly wealthy and powerful people squatting on the desirable land near DC, and frightening levels of crime, drugs, and violence around Baltimore. Whereas the more egalitarian and white counterpart regions of Virginia had neither Establishment muscle nor scary black hordes to discourage would-be colonists.
Of course, Virginia would not have needed to deter gentrifiers if it were not located right next to a central target of status-strivers. Ditto for North Carolina if it were not home to Research Triangle. You can be egalitarian and homogeneous far away from power centers, like the Dakotas.
But once that kind of place finds itself near a power center, its egalitarian and homogeneous qualities will only amplify its attractiveness to carpetbaggers who could give a shit about preserving those very qualities -- "You mean I get to hipsterize an up-and-coming nabe, NOT have to pay out the ass to dislodge an entrenched elite, AND not have to save on rent by living near violent dark-skins? AWESOME SAAAAUCE."
The carpetbaggers hoard their gold, truck in immigrants to pay lower wages for their upscale lawn maintenance, in-home foster care for career-mommy's neglected children, and so on and so forth. In a few short generations, the whole place is wrecked, and it will take a miracle to rebuild it, if it happens ever. Still, the fact that citizens in the Deep South have managed to throw up barriers, having preserved the memory of being stung by carpetbaggers over 100 years ago, shows that the phenomenon can be reversed and guarded against in the future.
I wanted to focus mainly on the geography of carpetbagging, although there are surely other ways to analyze the data on Senators' level of rootedness. Compared to the Senate as a whole, are carpetbaggers more likely to be male? Older or younger? Incumbent or entrant? Etc. I don't think there will be as many illuminating patterns there -- just what it takes to be an amoral entrepreneur. The main interest here is which places are more affected, and why.
You could also look into which states produce the most Senators, or which colleges and law schools, to study the "over-production of elites." If there are too many aspiring elites on the East Coast, they'll have to head somewhere else like Colorado, where local elite production is not so kicked into overdrive.
* You may intend for your kids to grow up there, which is a way of casting your lot with your adoptive place -- but then you might very well move the family to some other place. That won't sting as much for transplant parents either.
Childless cosmopolitans shop around for the city and neighborhood that are most to their liking and within their price range, a geographical decision that may change several times and by large distances during adulthood. But the same is true for family-raising suburbanites in status-striving times. Wherever mommy and/or daddy can find a higher-status job, enjoy a higher-status house, lifestyle, and so on, is where they're going to go -- whether the kids are already attached to some place or not.
Urbanites feel less anxious city-hopping because they expect certain things to be in place no matter which particular cosmopolis they're setting off for, and the same is true for suburbanite parents who don't mind uprooting their children because, they rationalize, the suburbs are all basically the same (in a good way), so what does it matter which particular 'burb the kids are growing up in this year?
Obviously having no kids provides even less friction for location-hopping, but raising a family does not provide as much glue in status-striving times to qualify the parents as being rooted in a place.
** I put Cornyn as rooted in Texas even though he graduated high school in Japan, where he stayed for only two years while his father was stationed there in the military. He was born, went to college, and got his law degree in Texas.
Appendix: Rootedness of American Senators, 2014
These are sorted alphabetically by state for two groups -- transplants first, then natives. Transplants have a value in the final column, age at which they began residing in their state if they're not a native. Natives have a blank in this column. The age estimates are close-enough guesses, based on graduating college, beginning law school, etc., or using other dates from their biographies to ballpark the age in question. You can sort the table however else you want in a spreadsheet program.
| state | senator | party | birth | hs grad | uni grad | adv grad | age residing, transplants |
| AZ | John McCain | R | Panama | VA | MD | 41 | |
| CA | Barbara Boxer | D | NY | NY | NY | 25 | |
| CO | Michael Bennet | D | India | DC | CT | CT | 30s |
| CO | Mark Udall | D | AZ | AZ | MA | 22 | |
| CT | Richard Blumenthal | D | NY | NY | MA | CT | 20s |
| DE | Tom Carper | D | WV | OH | OH | DE | 27 |
| GA | Saxby Chambliss | R | NC | LA | GA | TN | 20 |
| ID | Jim Risch | R | WI | WI | ID | ID | 20 |
| IN | Dan Coats | R | MI | MI | IL | IN | 27 |
| IN | Joe Donnelly | D | NY | NY | IN | IN | 20 |
| KY | Rand Paul | R | PA | TX | TX | NC | 30 |
| MA | Elizabeth Warren | D | OK | OK | TX | NJ | 43 |
| ME | Angus King | I | VA | VA | NH | VA | 28 |
| NC | Kay Hagan | D | NC | FL | FL | NC | 25 |
| NE | Mike Johanns | R | IA | IA | MN | NE | 23 |
| NH | Jeanne Shaheen | D | MO | PA | PA | MS | 26 |
| NM | Tom Udall | D | AZ | AZ | AZ | NM | 27 |
| NM | Martin Heinrich | D | NV | MO | MO | 24 | |
| OR | Ron Wyden | D | KS | CA | CA | OR | 23 |
| PA | Pat Toomey | R | RI | RI | MA | 30 | |
| RI | Sheldon Whitehouse | D | NY | NH | CT | VA | 30S |
| UT | Orrin Hatch | R | PA | PA | UT | PA | 20 |
| VA | Mark Warner | D | IN | CT | DC | MA | 30s |
| VA | Tim Kaine | D | MN | MO | MO | MA | 25 |
| VT | Bernie Sanders | I | NY | NY | IL | 23 | |
| WA | Maria Cantwell | D | IN | IN | OH | 25 | |
| WI | Ron Johnson | R | MN | MN | MN | 24 | |
| WV | Jay Rockefeller | D | NY | NH | MA | 28 | |
| WY | John Barrasso | R | PA | PA | DC | DC | 30 |
| AL | Richard Shelby | R | AL | AL | AL | AL | |
| AL | Jeff Sessions | R | AL | AL | AL | AL | |
| AK | Lisa Murkowski | R | AK | AK | DC | OR | |
| AK | Mark Begich | D | AK | AK | |||
| AZ | Jeff Flake | R | AZ | AZ | UT | ||
| AR | John Boozman | R | LA | AR | AR | TN | |
| AR | Mark Pryor | D | AR | AR | AR | AR | |
| CA | Dianne Feinstein | D | CA | CA | CA | ||
| CT | Chris Murphy | D | NY | CT | MA | CT | |
| DE | Chris Coons | D | CT | DE | MA | CT | |
| FL | Bill Nelson | D | FL | FL | CT | VA | |
| FL | Marco Rubio | R | FL | FL | FL | FL | |
| GA | Johnny Isakson | R | GA | GA | GA | ||
| HI | Mazie Hirono | D | Japan | HI | HI | DC | |
| HI | Brian Schatz | D | MI | HI | CA | ||
| ID | Mike Crapo | R | ID | ID | UT | CT | |
| IL | Dick Durbin | D | IL | IL | DC | DC | |
| IL | Mark Kirk | R | IL | IL | NY | DC | |
| IA | Chuck Grassley | R | IA | IA | IA | ||
| IA | Tom Harkin | D | IA | IA | IA | DC | |
| KS | Pat Roberts | R | KS | KS | KS | ||
| KS | Jerry Moran | R | KS | KS | KS | KS | |
| KY | Mitch McConnell | R | AL | KY | KY | KY | |
| LA | Mary Landrieu | D | VA | LA | LA | ||
| LA | David Vitter | R | LA | LA | MA | LA | |
| ME | Susan Collins | R | ME | ME | NY | ||
| MD | Barbara Mikulski | D | MD | MD | MD | MD | |
| MD | Ben Cardin | D | MD | MD | PA | MD | |
| MA | Ed Markey | D | MA | MA | MA | MA | |
| MI | Carl Levin | D | MI | MI | PA | MA | |
| MI | Debbie Stabenow | D | MI | MI | MI | MI | |
| MN | Al Franken | D | NY | MN | MA | ||
| MN | Amy Klobuchar | D | MN | MN | CT | IL | |
| MS | Thad Cochran | R | MS | MS | MS | MS | |
| MS | Roger Wicker | R | MS | MS | MS | MS | |
| MO | Roy Blunt | R | MO | MO | MO | MO | |
| MO | Claire McCaskill | D | MO | MO | MO | MO | |
| MT | Jon Tester | D | MT | MT | MT | ||
| MT | John Walsh | D | MT | MT | NY | ||
| NE | Deb Fischer | R | NE | NE | NE | ||
| NV | Harry Reid | D | NV | NV | UT | DC | |
| NV | Dean Heller | R | CA | NV | CA | ||
| NH | Kelly Ayotte | R | NH | NH | PA | PA | |
| NJ | Bob Menendez | D | NY | NJ | NJ | NJ | |
| NJ | Cory Booker | D | DC | NJ | CA | CT | |
| NY | Chuck Schumer | D | NY | NY | MA | MA | |
| NY | Kirsten Gillibrand | D | NY | NY | NH | CA | |
| NC | Richard Burr | R | VA | NC | NC | ||
| ND | Heidi Heitkamp | D | MN | ND | ND | OR | |
| ND | John Hoeven | R | ND | ND | NH | IL | |
| OH | Sherrod Brown | D | OH | OH | CT | OH | |
| OH | Rob Portman | R | OH | OH | NH | MI | |
| OK | Jim Inhofe | R | IA | OK | OK | ||
| OK | Tom Coburn | R | WY | OK | OK | OK | |
| OR | Jeff Merkley | D | OR | OR | CA | NJ | |
| PA | Bob Casey, Jr. | D | PA | PA | MA | DC | |
| RI | Jack Reed | D | RI | RI | NY | MA | |
| SC | Lindsey Graham | R | SC | SC | SC | SC | |
| SC | Tim Scott | R | SC | SC | SC | SC | |
| SD | Tim Johnson | D | SD | SD | SD | SD | |
| SD | John Thune | R | SD | SD | CA | SD | |
| TN | Lamar Alexander | R | TN | TN | TN | NY | |
| TN | Bob Corker | R | SC | TN | TN | ||
| TX | John Cornyn | R | TX | Japan | TX | TX | |
| TX | Ted Cruz | R | Canada | TX | NJ | MA | |
| UT | Mike Lee | R | AZ | UT | UT | UT | |
| VT | Patrick Leahy | D | VT | VT | VT | DC | |
| WA | Patty Murray | D | WA | WA | WA | ||
| WV | Joe Manchin | D | WV | WV | WV | ||
| WI | Tammy Baldwin | D | WI | WI | MA | WI | |
| WY | Mike Enzi | R | WA | WY | DC | CO |
September 16, 2014
Light-on-dark color schemes, the standard for camera body and lens settings
Image gallery first, then some discussion.
In the visual display of information, one of the most basic yet unappreciated choices that designers make is the color and lighting scheme — mostly dark, mostly light, or a mixture of both. Using opposite ends of the spectrum allows for a separation of background and foreground, to help the information stand out better for the viewer.
Whether to use light-on-dark or dark-on-light may seem like a matter of taste, but the more I've looked into it, the more it appears that light-on-dark functions better when the goal is to be more actively focused, while dark-on-light works better when passive consumption is the intended use.
Bright colors jump out from a dark background more than dark colors from a bright background, since our visual system has adapted to link less intense light levels with further-away distance of a light source. This helps us to track and manipulate figures when they are bright against a dark background. Dark figures against a bright background strikes us as unnatural, as though they were being harshly back-lit and appearing as stark shadows. It taxes the brain to hunt after figures and move them around when they're dark against a bright background.
If you've ever spent a few hours in front of Microsoft Word, you know that fatiguing feeling of staring into a spotlight, and the text looking more like stencils. And we all know how much we need to squint to make out a black-on-light-gray LCD screen, if it's farther away than arm's reach and below 90-pt font size. The same is true for newsprint, but it's not such a drag there since we're only passively reading it, and close-up, rather than actively composing the articles.
Despite the functional advantage of light-on-dark for the purpose of paying close attention, color schemes are also subject to the whims of fashion, as well as attempts to fuse the active and passive modes of using the technology, in the ever-important quest for convenience and efficiency.
Earlier posts here and here went through some comparisons from the areas of computer office programs and household alarm clocks, both of which have unfortunately drifted toward dark-on-light schemes since sometime in the '90s. It seems to be part of the general reaction against bright colors and high contrast in the visual culture. In the case of word processors, there has also been a shift toward fusing the initial composing stage and the final reading stage of text documents, where the end reader's need for skimming over what looks like a printed page has won out over the writer's need for a less fatiguing scheme during the far longer composition process.
Those examples came from electronic domains. Is it simply a matter of medium — light sources that are bright vs. dark — and not the basic color scheme itself? No: the settings on camera bodies and lenses have come in light-on-dark schemes for 40-odd years now, and their colors are made in hard materials rather than emitted light.
The reason for their widespread adoption on cameras is the same as it has been in other areas where light-on-dark is standard — the photographer actively manipulates the controls and pays close attention to their readings, to make sure everything goes according to plan. Under- or over-exposure — an image that is too dark or too bright — could result from neglecting to properly set and check the settings for film speed, shutter speed, and aperture size. Bright colors on a black background make inspection easier and faster, especially if you're changing them from one shot to the next.
Some older cameras did feature black-on-light-gray schemes, although that may have been due to a still-developing understanding of the visual principles, an immature state of the art at the construction stage, or not offending Midcentury values about what machines ought to look like. Here is an early example that shows how much more difficult it is to read the settings at a glance when the scheme is dark-on-light. You can see the markings all right, but not so much what they say.
By around 1980, the light-on-dark scheme had become the standard, even on cameras whose product branding was black-on-light-gray. Below is the Canon AE-1 Program, which has that black-and-chrome style that was popular in the '70s, and whose non-functional text is set against a light background — black text for the brand name, and unreadable light green text for "Program" in the model name on the front (not shown). The text on the main settings, however, is light-on-dark. So, when opposing color schemes were chosen for different parts of the same camera, light-on-dark won out where active manipulation and close attention were needed.
Sadly, as elsewhere in today's visual culture, new cameras are trying to shift the color scheme toward monochrome or dark-on-light, despite the greater difficulty of use. Black-on-light-gray LCD screens are now common, whereas light displays from the '80s were bright red against black, for example when the viewfinder displayed the aperture and/or shutter speed settings.
Navigating the endless menus on digital cameras has not gotten that bad yet — for point-and-shoot models, it's more like the white-on-blue scheme of word processors from circa 1990, while SLR models may even have white-on-black menus. Still, things are heading in the direction of the LCD look, not toward bright text against a black background.
As for settings carved onto the body itself, the SLRs are still good at using white text on black bodies. But compact cameras come almost exclusively in silver — just like all technology these days — so that their scheme is dark-on-light. This is clearly due to the fashion for Space Age silver-based schemes. Back in the '80s, when chiaroscuro was popular, compact cameras came in black bodies with white text.
Once the social-cultural cycle leaves its cocooning phase and becomes more outgoing, exciting color schemes will come back into fashion, so don't count on the ultimate disappearance of light-on-dark schemes for cameras, or anything else. In the meantime, it's worth studying and discussing what functional effects these opposing color schemes have across various uses of some piece of technology, and not just leave it all up to fashion.
In the visual display of information, one of the most basic yet unappreciated choices that designers make is the color and lighting scheme — mostly dark, mostly light, or a mixture of both. Using opposite ends of the spectrum allows for a separation of background and foreground, to help the information stand out better for the viewer.
Whether to use light-on-dark or dark-on-light may seem like a matter of taste, but the more I've looked into it, the more it appears that light-on-dark functions better when the goal is to be more actively focused, while dark-on-light works better when passive consumption is the intended use.
Bright colors jump out from a dark background more than dark colors from a bright background, since our visual system has adapted to link less intense light levels with further-away distance of a light source. This helps us to track and manipulate figures when they are bright against a dark background. Dark figures against a bright background strikes us as unnatural, as though they were being harshly back-lit and appearing as stark shadows. It taxes the brain to hunt after figures and move them around when they're dark against a bright background.
If you've ever spent a few hours in front of Microsoft Word, you know that fatiguing feeling of staring into a spotlight, and the text looking more like stencils. And we all know how much we need to squint to make out a black-on-light-gray LCD screen, if it's farther away than arm's reach and below 90-pt font size. The same is true for newsprint, but it's not such a drag there since we're only passively reading it, and close-up, rather than actively composing the articles.
Despite the functional advantage of light-on-dark for the purpose of paying close attention, color schemes are also subject to the whims of fashion, as well as attempts to fuse the active and passive modes of using the technology, in the ever-important quest for convenience and efficiency.
Earlier posts here and here went through some comparisons from the areas of computer office programs and household alarm clocks, both of which have unfortunately drifted toward dark-on-light schemes since sometime in the '90s. It seems to be part of the general reaction against bright colors and high contrast in the visual culture. In the case of word processors, there has also been a shift toward fusing the initial composing stage and the final reading stage of text documents, where the end reader's need for skimming over what looks like a printed page has won out over the writer's need for a less fatiguing scheme during the far longer composition process.
Those examples came from electronic domains. Is it simply a matter of medium — light sources that are bright vs. dark — and not the basic color scheme itself? No: the settings on camera bodies and lenses have come in light-on-dark schemes for 40-odd years now, and their colors are made in hard materials rather than emitted light.
The reason for their widespread adoption on cameras is the same as it has been in other areas where light-on-dark is standard — the photographer actively manipulates the controls and pays close attention to their readings, to make sure everything goes according to plan. Under- or over-exposure — an image that is too dark or too bright — could result from neglecting to properly set and check the settings for film speed, shutter speed, and aperture size. Bright colors on a black background make inspection easier and faster, especially if you're changing them from one shot to the next.
Some older cameras did feature black-on-light-gray schemes, although that may have been due to a still-developing understanding of the visual principles, an immature state of the art at the construction stage, or not offending Midcentury values about what machines ought to look like. Here is an early example that shows how much more difficult it is to read the settings at a glance when the scheme is dark-on-light. You can see the markings all right, but not so much what they say.
By around 1980, the light-on-dark scheme had become the standard, even on cameras whose product branding was black-on-light-gray. Below is the Canon AE-1 Program, which has that black-and-chrome style that was popular in the '70s, and whose non-functional text is set against a light background — black text for the brand name, and unreadable light green text for "Program" in the model name on the front (not shown). The text on the main settings, however, is light-on-dark. So, when opposing color schemes were chosen for different parts of the same camera, light-on-dark won out where active manipulation and close attention were needed.
Sadly, as elsewhere in today's visual culture, new cameras are trying to shift the color scheme toward monochrome or dark-on-light, despite the greater difficulty of use. Black-on-light-gray LCD screens are now common, whereas light displays from the '80s were bright red against black, for example when the viewfinder displayed the aperture and/or shutter speed settings.
Navigating the endless menus on digital cameras has not gotten that bad yet — for point-and-shoot models, it's more like the white-on-blue scheme of word processors from circa 1990, while SLR models may even have white-on-black menus. Still, things are heading in the direction of the LCD look, not toward bright text against a black background.
As for settings carved onto the body itself, the SLRs are still good at using white text on black bodies. But compact cameras come almost exclusively in silver — just like all technology these days — so that their scheme is dark-on-light. This is clearly due to the fashion for Space Age silver-based schemes. Back in the '80s, when chiaroscuro was popular, compact cameras came in black bodies with white text.
Once the social-cultural cycle leaves its cocooning phase and becomes more outgoing, exciting color schemes will come back into fashion, so don't count on the ultimate disappearance of light-on-dark schemes for cameras, or anything else. In the meantime, it's worth studying and discussing what functional effects these opposing color schemes have across various uses of some piece of technology, and not just leave it all up to fashion.
September 12, 2014
With the smartwatch, Jobs' gay successor has undermined Apple's conformist aesthetic and obsession with gadgets
Leave it to a homo to so fundamentally misunderstand Apple's appeal to its zombie cult audience. (Gays are at best culture-bearers but more often destroyers.)
They want gadgets that double as fashion accessories, not fashion accessories that double as gadgets. Look at how much time, money, and effort went into designing not the gadget per se, but the forty-thousand variations intended to cater to a rainbow of unique design aesthetics. Except that geeks have no strong aesthetic preferences — they just want a gizmo that looks design-y, so they don't feel uncultured while they channel surf on BuzzFeed in public.
And they don't want all those forty-thousand looks and feels to choose from. Not only because they lack a set of aesthetic values that would move them toward some and away from others. It's missing the whole point of these gadgets-as-status-symbols — bystanders must be able to instantly recognize that you've got one of those things. Once they come in so many different shapes, colors, materials, and textures, onlookers will have to spend an extra ten seconds to recognize your watch as an Apple-branded product. And the watch face doesn't have a bigass Apple logo slapped on top of it like their laptops do. Just think of how many lost recognition points that could mean in practice!
The smartwatch can only succeed as a fashion accessory, not as a proper Apple device. Techno-geeks aren't very into fashion, so it's no surprise their reactions have been tepid. Even if you were into watches as fashion accessories, you're probably going to go with something from a company that specializes in designing and making watches. Lord knows hardly anyone will use them to tell time, if they're already tethered to their smartphones.
The fact that the project has gotten this far goes to show how terrified every person who works for Apple still is of questioning anything that the leader and his appointees propose. Any halfway observant person could have told them what I just said, and pointed out how contrary it is to what made them so successful. And not in a trial-and-error, experimental way, where it may fail but may become the next big thing. It's not experimental at all, just a 21st-century take on those geeky calculator watches from 25 years ago.
Then again, maybe someone did try to raise a stink but felt the weight of the authority structure reminding them how replaceable they are, if they insist on acting disloyal to the leader (even if loyal to the larger interests of the company).
In either case, it will be joyous to see the Apple megachurch disintegrate after the death of its visionary guru, as the midnight launch pew-fillers become disillusioned with increasingly more desperate and ridiculous successors. It sure has been a long time coming.
They want gadgets that double as fashion accessories, not fashion accessories that double as gadgets. Look at how much time, money, and effort went into designing not the gadget per se, but the forty-thousand variations intended to cater to a rainbow of unique design aesthetics. Except that geeks have no strong aesthetic preferences — they just want a gizmo that looks design-y, so they don't feel uncultured while they channel surf on BuzzFeed in public.
And they don't want all those forty-thousand looks and feels to choose from. Not only because they lack a set of aesthetic values that would move them toward some and away from others. It's missing the whole point of these gadgets-as-status-symbols — bystanders must be able to instantly recognize that you've got one of those things. Once they come in so many different shapes, colors, materials, and textures, onlookers will have to spend an extra ten seconds to recognize your watch as an Apple-branded product. And the watch face doesn't have a bigass Apple logo slapped on top of it like their laptops do. Just think of how many lost recognition points that could mean in practice!
The smartwatch can only succeed as a fashion accessory, not as a proper Apple device. Techno-geeks aren't very into fashion, so it's no surprise their reactions have been tepid. Even if you were into watches as fashion accessories, you're probably going to go with something from a company that specializes in designing and making watches. Lord knows hardly anyone will use them to tell time, if they're already tethered to their smartphones.
The fact that the project has gotten this far goes to show how terrified every person who works for Apple still is of questioning anything that the leader and his appointees propose. Any halfway observant person could have told them what I just said, and pointed out how contrary it is to what made them so successful. And not in a trial-and-error, experimental way, where it may fail but may become the next big thing. It's not experimental at all, just a 21st-century take on those geeky calculator watches from 25 years ago.
Then again, maybe someone did try to raise a stink but felt the weight of the authority structure reminding them how replaceable they are, if they insist on acting disloyal to the leader (even if loyal to the larger interests of the company).
In either case, it will be joyous to see the Apple megachurch disintegrate after the death of its visionary guru, as the midnight launch pew-fillers become disillusioned with increasingly more desperate and ridiculous successors. It sure has been a long time coming.
September 11, 2014
Incarceration within the status-striving and inequality cycle: Prison boom driven by careerist prosecutors
Periods of rising inequality and status-striving are marked by a punitive rather than a rehabilitative approach to criminal justice.
The dog-eat-dog norm says you shouldn't care if someone's life will be permanently screwed up by going to jail, regardless of their offense. You've stayed out of jail, and that's all that matters. You aren't going to be the one who has to deal with their assimilation back into society — let someone else work with and live next to those who've been shaped by the hard-time lifestyle. And if you can get politicians to shift the costs around, you may not have to pay too much for their incarceration either.
The all-in-it-together norm says that criminals ought to pay for their offenses, but that those seeking retribution should accommodate their wishes with those of the general public, who would prefer not to have to pay for incarceration, let alone have to live next to or work with someone who's been shaped by prison norms rather than normal society norms for however-long they were locked up.
Seeking vengeance poses a substantial risk of innocent bystanders getting caught in the crossfire, in one way or another. Promoting stability within the community will necessarily be opposed to fanning the flames of vengeance, however righteous the avengers feel their cause to be.
When communal cohesion loses its moral appeal, therefore, vengeance against criminals — regardless of the severity of their crimes, or indeed whether they're actually guilty or innocent — will be allowed to grow unchecked. Soon enough, criminal punishment will develop into a mass spectator bloodsport. Feeling a daily endorphin rush from tuning into other people's punishment is the ultimate grassroots expression of the dog-eat-dog morality.
It is no coincidence that bloodsports rise in popularity during periods of increasing status-striving, societal instability, and inequality — the UFC and World Star Hip Hop in our time, or the ancient gladiators who became a mass spectacle only after the Pax Romana had given way to the Imperial Crisis of the third century through the eventual disintegration during the fifth.
Where exactly in the criminal justice hierarchy does responsibility lie for the current boom in the prison population? It seems to be located at the stage of prosecutors deciding to file felony charges for a given arrest, which takes place at the county level rather than higher up. Crime rates are down since a peak in 1992, arrests per crime are not up, and neither are conviction rates per felony case, nor prison admissions per conviction. Drug offenses are not directly driving the boom either, as they are a small chunk of incarcerations (although they're much greater at the level of arrests).
This analysis comes from Pfaff (2012), "The micro and macro causes of prison growth," an easily readable and chart-packed article that you can read for free here. Some excerpts:
The flat incarceration rate during the Great Compression, and soaring rate since the '70s, establishes the link with the status-striving and inequality cycle. It's clear how sending more arrestees to prison will widen inequality by growing a larger lumpenprole class. Where does status-striving fit in? We know it must be with prosecutors, so it's not hard to imagine the story.
When status-striving was shameful, prosecutors didn't try to puff up their own ego and lard up their career resume with over-zealous felony charges against arrestees. Once status-striving became approved and encouraged, they did what everyone else in the economy had started doing.
Rising levels of status-striving lead to an over-production of lawyers (see Peter Turchin's discussion here), and they need somewhere to go for status and job security. If they were skilled at performing before a general audience of voters, they sought election into the legislature or the executive branch of government. If they were good at crunching numbers and pursuing enrichment at all costs, they went into mergers & acquisitions at a Biglaw firm. If their comparative advantage lay more in vindictiveness and sadism, they set up shop in the local prosecutor's office.
It's hard for a lowly prosecutor to get nationally famous or command salaries at the level of the big dogs (Senators, Wall St. lawyers). So they devote most of their energies at the county level, becoming locally famous as pitbull prosecutors. Local / mediocre status is better than no status, and if you're a JD flunkie, this may be your only real shot at making a name for yourself and getting paid well.
As this trend gets worse, prosecutors will become widely reviled as self-serving zealots rather than neutral agents of justice for the public. The incarceration rate will then turn down as it did during the Great Compression, for better or worse.
Here is a final graph from Pfaff's article, showing not incarcerations per capita, but incarcerations per crime — how likely is a crime going to result in someone getting sent to jail?
Now we see that incarceration rates per crime committed actually fell through the '60s and '70s. This is the pendulum swinging too far in the opposite direction — the criminal justice system aiming too much toward accommodation that even violent crimes were less and less likely to result in an incarceration. So does too much vindictiveness bring about rehabilitation, and too much rehabilitation bring about vindictiveness.
The dog-eat-dog norm says you shouldn't care if someone's life will be permanently screwed up by going to jail, regardless of their offense. You've stayed out of jail, and that's all that matters. You aren't going to be the one who has to deal with their assimilation back into society — let someone else work with and live next to those who've been shaped by the hard-time lifestyle. And if you can get politicians to shift the costs around, you may not have to pay too much for their incarceration either.
The all-in-it-together norm says that criminals ought to pay for their offenses, but that those seeking retribution should accommodate their wishes with those of the general public, who would prefer not to have to pay for incarceration, let alone have to live next to or work with someone who's been shaped by prison norms rather than normal society norms for however-long they were locked up.
Seeking vengeance poses a substantial risk of innocent bystanders getting caught in the crossfire, in one way or another. Promoting stability within the community will necessarily be opposed to fanning the flames of vengeance, however righteous the avengers feel their cause to be.
When communal cohesion loses its moral appeal, therefore, vengeance against criminals — regardless of the severity of their crimes, or indeed whether they're actually guilty or innocent — will be allowed to grow unchecked. Soon enough, criminal punishment will develop into a mass spectator bloodsport. Feeling a daily endorphin rush from tuning into other people's punishment is the ultimate grassroots expression of the dog-eat-dog morality.
It is no coincidence that bloodsports rise in popularity during periods of increasing status-striving, societal instability, and inequality — the UFC and World Star Hip Hop in our time, or the ancient gladiators who became a mass spectacle only after the Pax Romana had given way to the Imperial Crisis of the third century through the eventual disintegration during the fifth.
Where exactly in the criminal justice hierarchy does responsibility lie for the current boom in the prison population? It seems to be located at the stage of prosecutors deciding to file felony charges for a given arrest, which takes place at the county level rather than higher up. Crime rates are down since a peak in 1992, arrests per crime are not up, and neither are conviction rates per felony case, nor prison admissions per conviction. Drug offenses are not directly driving the boom either, as they are a small chunk of incarcerations (although they're much greater at the level of arrests).
This analysis comes from Pfaff (2012), "The micro and macro causes of prison growth," an easily readable and chart-packed article that you can read for free here. Some excerpts:
Over the past four decades, prison populations in the United States have exploded. As Figure 1 demonstrates, from the 1920s (when reliable statistics first become available) through the mid-1970s, the incarceration rate hovered around 100 per 100,000 people. These rates were so stable that a leading criminologist argued in 1979 that political pressures would continue to keep the rate around 100 per 100,000. Thus, the subsequent quintupling of the incarceration rate over the next forty years, with the prison population growing by over 1.3 million inmates, was an unexpected and unprecedented development. . .
As I show below, we know the answer to the micro question much better than that to the macro. On the micro side, data indicate that at least since 1994, prison growth has been driven primarily by prosecutors increasing the rate at which they file charges against arrestees. None of the other possible sources seems to matter: arrests (and arrests per crime), prison admissions per felony filing, and time served have generally been flat or falling over that time. . .
Thus, sentence length does not appear to drive prison growth, implying that admissions must be doing the heavy lifting. . .
Between 1994 and 2008, filings grew by 37.4% and admissions by a nearly identical 40%. This is actually a more remarkable number than it might first appear. As Figure 5B demonstrates, this is a period of declining arrests: in my thirty-four state sample, arrests fell by 10.1%, slightly above the national decline of 8.4%. Thus, filings and admissions rose significantly during a period when the number of defendants declined sharply. . .
The flat incarceration rate during the Great Compression, and soaring rate since the '70s, establishes the link with the status-striving and inequality cycle. It's clear how sending more arrestees to prison will widen inequality by growing a larger lumpenprole class. Where does status-striving fit in? We know it must be with prosecutors, so it's not hard to imagine the story.
When status-striving was shameful, prosecutors didn't try to puff up their own ego and lard up their career resume with over-zealous felony charges against arrestees. Once status-striving became approved and encouraged, they did what everyone else in the economy had started doing.
Rising levels of status-striving lead to an over-production of lawyers (see Peter Turchin's discussion here), and they need somewhere to go for status and job security. If they were skilled at performing before a general audience of voters, they sought election into the legislature or the executive branch of government. If they were good at crunching numbers and pursuing enrichment at all costs, they went into mergers & acquisitions at a Biglaw firm. If their comparative advantage lay more in vindictiveness and sadism, they set up shop in the local prosecutor's office.
It's hard for a lowly prosecutor to get nationally famous or command salaries at the level of the big dogs (Senators, Wall St. lawyers). So they devote most of their energies at the county level, becoming locally famous as pitbull prosecutors. Local / mediocre status is better than no status, and if you're a JD flunkie, this may be your only real shot at making a name for yourself and getting paid well.
As this trend gets worse, prosecutors will become widely reviled as self-serving zealots rather than neutral agents of justice for the public. The incarceration rate will then turn down as it did during the Great Compression, for better or worse.
Here is a final graph from Pfaff's article, showing not incarcerations per capita, but incarcerations per crime — how likely is a crime going to result in someone getting sent to jail?
Now we see that incarceration rates per crime committed actually fell through the '60s and '70s. This is the pendulum swinging too far in the opposite direction — the criminal justice system aiming too much toward accommodation that even violent crimes were less and less likely to result in an incarceration. So does too much vindictiveness bring about rehabilitation, and too much rehabilitation bring about vindictiveness.
September 6, 2014
Transplant politicians in status-striving times
When the popular mindset switches from trying to accommodate others to advancing the self, people's pursuits resemble one or another kind of a get-rich-quick scheme. (Or get famous quick, or get fashionable quick, or get erudite quick, etc. if they are pursuing non-financial status contests.)
One consequence of restless ambition is leaving behind the place where you have roots to head off for greener pastures. Aside from your own neck of the woods not being the most likely place to dominate some career, strivers are drawn to places where they won't be recognized by those they're aiming to profit from. Everyone back home may know you're the used car salesman type, but not the naive folks who just met you yesterday. They must also want a place where shame cannot be brought down upon them — talk about a major brake on doing whatever it takes. Shame only stings when it comes from those who you're tied to deep down — some transplant could give a shit if his adoptive community tried to shame him.
And of course, it's not just the politicians but the potential voters who are more likely to be transplants in status-striving times. How could Colorado and Virginia vote for a liberal President? Simple: nowadays hardly anyone from Virginia is from Virginia. Transplant voters are going to be more open to a transplant politician not only because of their shared status as newcomers, but because shared values and goals have drawn them both away from their places of origin.
Climbing the corporate ladder and worshiping big business, for one thing. Or maybe the newcomers are immigrants looking to get rich quick by re-locating to America for work. Although these groups are striving within opposite poles of the class spectrum, they are guided by the same mindset nonetheless. Not to mention the natural love that profit-maximizers have for cheap immigrant labor.
I've been looking through current federal elected officials to see how rooted they are within the place whose voters elected them. I've put together the data on Senators, and am working on the Governors (members of the House of Representatives will take a lot longer to investigate). But for now, how about just looking at the highest elected official of all, President Obama?
Half of his family is not only unrooted in America but in all of Europe and broader Indo-European culture. It's rooted in Africa, and not even the part of Africa that has had some influence in America via the West African slaves. His step-father is equally unrooted in America, Europe, or Indo-European culture. Worse yet, he's not rooted in the same place that Obama Sr. is from — it's a different remote part of the world.
His mother's side is rooted around Kansas, but she went chasing after high status in the Pacific Northwest, Hawaii, and Indonesia. Indonesia goes without saying, but Hawaii is not a core American region either. He might as well have been born and raised in Guam or Puerto Rico. Hawaii was not even a full state of the union two years before he was born there. And even after it did become a state, it was full of other transplants, unlike if he'd been raised back near Wichita where his mother's family is from.
Going to college "on the mainland" doesn't root you there, anymore than it would for a Puerto Rican who left the island for college in New York.
So we have a President who is not rooted in the country he controls. It's no wonder he doesn't really seem to give a damn what happens to it, one way or another. He's not intent on laying waste to it, just wholly apathetic — "Whatever, let it burn, as long as the fire doesn't reach the golf course." It's worse to think about what his double election says about the voters — so transient themselves that they don't even recognize how foreign he is. Although they wouldn't care if they did, and might award him bonus points for being on the same wavelength.
Was there a previous time when the President was weakly rooted in this country, compared to his countrymen, perhaps having a father who came from abroad? If the link is with status-striving, then we ought to look into the long Gilded Age, from roughly 1830 to 1920.
I started with Grant, only on the basis of how corrupt his administration was. But no dice there. A few clicks later into the 1880s, and there he is — Chester A. Arthur, who assumed office after Garfield was assassinated, but who was well liked enough by the end of his term that he could have been elected to a second term, if he hadn't retired and died soon after completing his first.
Arthur's father was a man from the Ulster region in Ireland who had moved to Canada as an adult. Arthur's mother was from just across the border in Vermont. However, he did not move to America on her behalf; rather, they wed in Canada, and their first child was born there as well. Arthur's parents only moved back to America six or seven years before he was born (although at least it wasn't in Hawaii).
As a young adult, Arthur made a display of supporting the Irish nationalist cause, not unlike Obama's black political awareness that hit in young adulthood.
Both came from leading political machines of their day, Arthur from New York and Obama from Chicago.
And in one of the most uncanny passages I've read on Wikipedia, we learn that Arthur's obscure family and national origins and upbringing led many of his opponents to spread rumors about him not being a natural-born citizen, and therefore ineligible to serve as President. Plus ca change...
Certainly he was not as disconnected from American society growing up as Obama was, but Arthur's parents were also limited by the state of technology in the 1820s — no railroads traversing the country — and by the size of the American territory within which they could have traveled in pursuit of just the right spot. In the 1820s, "going west" meant out to Buffalo, not to the plains, the mountains, or the Pacific. Who knows where his family would have roamed around to, if his footloose Scotch-Irish father had a wide open continent to choose from, and affordable airfare?
And his case was still in contrast to just about every other President before him. James Buchanan and Andrew Jackson also had one or both parents who came to America from Ulster, although they were born 40 to 60 years before Arthur, when more Americans would've been recent transplants. Their presidencies fall within the long Gilded Age anyway.
In the first Gilded Age and the second, most of the carpet-bagger behavior happens below the national level, like moving from one state to another in pursuit of becoming a Senator or a Governor. The natural-born citizen requirement rules this out for nation-hopping into the Oval Office.
And yet look at how unrooted the President may still be, provided that the citizens are too busy trying to get rich quick to care about what outside loyalties their national leader may have. Hey, as long as he helps us get ours, then let him do whatever he wants on the side (see also: Bill and Monica).
One consequence of restless ambition is leaving behind the place where you have roots to head off for greener pastures. Aside from your own neck of the woods not being the most likely place to dominate some career, strivers are drawn to places where they won't be recognized by those they're aiming to profit from. Everyone back home may know you're the used car salesman type, but not the naive folks who just met you yesterday. They must also want a place where shame cannot be brought down upon them — talk about a major brake on doing whatever it takes. Shame only stings when it comes from those who you're tied to deep down — some transplant could give a shit if his adoptive community tried to shame him.
And of course, it's not just the politicians but the potential voters who are more likely to be transplants in status-striving times. How could Colorado and Virginia vote for a liberal President? Simple: nowadays hardly anyone from Virginia is from Virginia. Transplant voters are going to be more open to a transplant politician not only because of their shared status as newcomers, but because shared values and goals have drawn them both away from their places of origin.
Climbing the corporate ladder and worshiping big business, for one thing. Or maybe the newcomers are immigrants looking to get rich quick by re-locating to America for work. Although these groups are striving within opposite poles of the class spectrum, they are guided by the same mindset nonetheless. Not to mention the natural love that profit-maximizers have for cheap immigrant labor.
I've been looking through current federal elected officials to see how rooted they are within the place whose voters elected them. I've put together the data on Senators, and am working on the Governors (members of the House of Representatives will take a lot longer to investigate). But for now, how about just looking at the highest elected official of all, President Obama?
Half of his family is not only unrooted in America but in all of Europe and broader Indo-European culture. It's rooted in Africa, and not even the part of Africa that has had some influence in America via the West African slaves. His step-father is equally unrooted in America, Europe, or Indo-European culture. Worse yet, he's not rooted in the same place that Obama Sr. is from — it's a different remote part of the world.
His mother's side is rooted around Kansas, but she went chasing after high status in the Pacific Northwest, Hawaii, and Indonesia. Indonesia goes without saying, but Hawaii is not a core American region either. He might as well have been born and raised in Guam or Puerto Rico. Hawaii was not even a full state of the union two years before he was born there. And even after it did become a state, it was full of other transplants, unlike if he'd been raised back near Wichita where his mother's family is from.
Going to college "on the mainland" doesn't root you there, anymore than it would for a Puerto Rican who left the island for college in New York.
So we have a President who is not rooted in the country he controls. It's no wonder he doesn't really seem to give a damn what happens to it, one way or another. He's not intent on laying waste to it, just wholly apathetic — "Whatever, let it burn, as long as the fire doesn't reach the golf course." It's worse to think about what his double election says about the voters — so transient themselves that they don't even recognize how foreign he is. Although they wouldn't care if they did, and might award him bonus points for being on the same wavelength.
Was there a previous time when the President was weakly rooted in this country, compared to his countrymen, perhaps having a father who came from abroad? If the link is with status-striving, then we ought to look into the long Gilded Age, from roughly 1830 to 1920.
I started with Grant, only on the basis of how corrupt his administration was. But no dice there. A few clicks later into the 1880s, and there he is — Chester A. Arthur, who assumed office after Garfield was assassinated, but who was well liked enough by the end of his term that he could have been elected to a second term, if he hadn't retired and died soon after completing his first.
Arthur's father was a man from the Ulster region in Ireland who had moved to Canada as an adult. Arthur's mother was from just across the border in Vermont. However, he did not move to America on her behalf; rather, they wed in Canada, and their first child was born there as well. Arthur's parents only moved back to America six or seven years before he was born (although at least it wasn't in Hawaii).
As a young adult, Arthur made a display of supporting the Irish nationalist cause, not unlike Obama's black political awareness that hit in young adulthood.
Both came from leading political machines of their day, Arthur from New York and Obama from Chicago.
And in one of the most uncanny passages I've read on Wikipedia, we learn that Arthur's obscure family and national origins and upbringing led many of his opponents to spread rumors about him not being a natural-born citizen, and therefore ineligible to serve as President. Plus ca change...
Certainly he was not as disconnected from American society growing up as Obama was, but Arthur's parents were also limited by the state of technology in the 1820s — no railroads traversing the country — and by the size of the American territory within which they could have traveled in pursuit of just the right spot. In the 1820s, "going west" meant out to Buffalo, not to the plains, the mountains, or the Pacific. Who knows where his family would have roamed around to, if his footloose Scotch-Irish father had a wide open continent to choose from, and affordable airfare?
And his case was still in contrast to just about every other President before him. James Buchanan and Andrew Jackson also had one or both parents who came to America from Ulster, although they were born 40 to 60 years before Arthur, when more Americans would've been recent transplants. Their presidencies fall within the long Gilded Age anyway.
In the first Gilded Age and the second, most of the carpet-bagger behavior happens below the national level, like moving from one state to another in pursuit of becoming a Senator or a Governor. The natural-born citizen requirement rules this out for nation-hopping into the Oval Office.
And yet look at how unrooted the President may still be, provided that the citizens are too busy trying to get rich quick to care about what outside loyalties their national leader may have. Hey, as long as he helps us get ours, then let him do whatever he wants on the side (see also: Bill and Monica).
September 4, 2014
Are generations the strongest form of an in-group?
All this talk about the Boomers being responsible for so much that's gone wrong economically and politically over the past 30-odd years got me thinking: why don't they moralistically preen about how oppressive their generation has been over other generations? Both the older ones who they threw overboard, like the Greatest Gen, and those they have tried to block from advancement, like Gen X?
After all, Boomers pioneered the art of publicly complaining about how one's in-group was responsible for keeping down some out-group, to whom it owed some kind of reparations. This is a stronger form of disloyalty than mere cultural defection. If some small chunk of the in-group feels like they don't identify with their culture, and want to join or at least affiliate with a more distant culture, what's the big loss to their in-group? Let 'em go. But when that small group of discontents wants to take something big away from their in-group and give it to the out-group, to correct what they see as unjust domination, now they plan on dealing a much larger wallop to Us in favor of Them.
What areas of life are subject to this thinking and action about correcting injustices between the in-group and the out-group? Whites and blacks, men and women, heteros and homos, those born into wealth and those who were not, and so on. These are all demographic groups whose membership is not a matter of choice, unlike a political party, church denomination, marital status, number of children, place of residence, etc. They have a sense of guilt from having been born into a dominant demographic group (whites, males), whose dominance is unjust and whose oppression of subordinate groups requires atonement.
In their minds, there's just something unnatural about one group being dominant, when its members were accidentally born into it, rather than admitted or elected on the basis of merit. The state of nature, they believe, is egalitarian, so that if whites come out ahead of blacks in economic life, it is a grossly artificial state of affairs, and could only have come about through concerted and sustained manipulation by the dominant group. With this new awareness — after a little "consciousness-raising" — they feel compelled to atone for the historical sins of the dominant group that they were accidentally born into.
But in all those cases, there is a natural inequality across groups that is biological rather than historical: whites have higher IQ on average than blacks, men produce tons more testosterone than women, heterosexuals are more capable of deferring gratification.
Whether this natural inequality ought to be allowed to show up in status inequality is a matter of debate, which is not important here. The point is: Boomers don't even realize, indeed they emphatically deny that these inequalities have a natural basis. They want so much social engineering to minimize these inequalities precisely because they believe that they have no natural basis, but are rather the outcome of so much social engineering by the current dominant groups in the opposite direction.
Thus, in their view, their sweeping plans are not introducing social engineering into an unregulated state of nature, but correcting an existing set of plans for social engineering (drafted and enforced by the dominant group for its own benefit) with a different set of plans in the opposite direction, in order to restore society back to the egalitarian state of nature.
You'll have to forgive this exploration of the Boomer mind, but it is crucial to understand the psychology behind their characteristic damning of the dominant in-groups that they belong to.
Why then don't they feel the same way toward dominant, manipulative, and greedy generations, when they belong to just such a group? Why do they indeed appear blind to the very facts of their dominance and destructiveness? Why do they go so far as to celebrate their generational in-group as a never-ending underdog victory for the causes of fairness and equality, and indulge any chance they get to insult the generational out-groups? It is so entirely opposite to their mindset and behavior in the cases of being born into a race, a sex, and a sexual orientation, where they are only too happy to show public disloyalty to the in-group.
They can't be so clueless as to not realize that your generation is another one of those groups you're born into. But unlike races and sexes, which have a history extending far back into the past, a generation is a one-of-a-kind collective entity. There were no Boomers before there were Boomers, so they have no historical sins to atone for. Any current high status they enjoy must therefore be an achievement based on merit, not an inheritance of privilege based on good luck at birth. And they feel no remorse over slandering generational out-groups because they, too, have no history — and hence no "legacy of oppression" that has contributed to their current marginal status. If your generation isn't doing as well as ours, that's your own fault for being too lazy, ignorant, and complacent. *
We could throw in the Silents with the Boomers, since they are co-conquerers within the Me Generation. But they aren't as strident as the Boomers, so they're more difficult to study. Overall the pattern is similar, though. Their one-of-a-kind generation was born into the Depression, then through hard work and merit — rather than Midcentury liberal policies and an older generation willing to vacate spaces in the economy — they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps into lasting prosperity. If you young 'uns can't do the same, you just don't got the grit that us old-timers do.
We don't need to look into Gen X or the Millennials because they are not dominant generations, and so could neither pass nor fail the test of loyalty detailed for the Boomers. It's not that X-ers and Millennials are genetically superior, or free from sin — if the historical forces had lined them up to be the ones who took over society, they would've been just as devoutly loyal to their generation as the Boomers have been to theirs.
People who think about generations have emphasized how one-of-a-kind they are, and how new ones are constantly being created, unlike other demographic groups that you're born into like race, sex, and class. But as far as I'm aware, they haven't followed that observation to see where leads. For one thing, it makes generations perhaps the most resistant to disloyalty among major groups. You'd have to go to blood relations to find a group that is equally unwilling to claim that their in-group has oppressed an out-group and needs to atone for it.
Thus in societies with weakening kinship ties, ties of generation will become primary. Kinship bonds are impossible to scale up to the level of a nation, but it is automatic for generations: everyone born in that nation at that time, growing up in those formative years, will feel like members of a great big family which, however dysfunctional, still needs to hold together to defend itself against hostile other generations. From kin group vs. kin group to generation vs. generation.
* In fairness, that charge is not wide of the mark for Millennials, but the Boomers had the same condescending view of Gen X, and of the much older pre-Boomer folks who they viewed as an entire generation of undeservedly rich layabouts ("Boo unions").
Even with the Millennials, generations are shaped as much by what's going on in the older generations as by what's going on in their own. Millennial childhoods were shaped by Boomer parenting practices such as everybody gets a trophy for being the best just the way they are, and nobody can criticize my awesome special little snowflake or there'll be hell to pay. And in the broader society, Boomers are squatting on all the jobs, now including low-level entry jobs such as supermarket cashiers as they come to realize that they'll need to keep working well into their senior years due to never saving and always racking up more debt.
If there are so few paths to make a living from honest hard work, why bother learning how to do it in the first place? Might as well follow the path of "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" — whine and hope that your parents or substitute parents in the economy and government will kick enough your way to shut you up for awhile. It's no different from the way that a negligent parent parks their bored child in front of a kaleidoscopic glowing screen and hands them some chips and soda, so that mommy can get back to being busy, rather than give them some chores to do around the house to encourage responsibility.
I don't claim this is the sole or even the primary cause behind the brattiness of the Millennials — only to point out these unseen ways by which the incumbent generations can stunt the entrant generations.
After all, Boomers pioneered the art of publicly complaining about how one's in-group was responsible for keeping down some out-group, to whom it owed some kind of reparations. This is a stronger form of disloyalty than mere cultural defection. If some small chunk of the in-group feels like they don't identify with their culture, and want to join or at least affiliate with a more distant culture, what's the big loss to their in-group? Let 'em go. But when that small group of discontents wants to take something big away from their in-group and give it to the out-group, to correct what they see as unjust domination, now they plan on dealing a much larger wallop to Us in favor of Them.
What areas of life are subject to this thinking and action about correcting injustices between the in-group and the out-group? Whites and blacks, men and women, heteros and homos, those born into wealth and those who were not, and so on. These are all demographic groups whose membership is not a matter of choice, unlike a political party, church denomination, marital status, number of children, place of residence, etc. They have a sense of guilt from having been born into a dominant demographic group (whites, males), whose dominance is unjust and whose oppression of subordinate groups requires atonement.
In their minds, there's just something unnatural about one group being dominant, when its members were accidentally born into it, rather than admitted or elected on the basis of merit. The state of nature, they believe, is egalitarian, so that if whites come out ahead of blacks in economic life, it is a grossly artificial state of affairs, and could only have come about through concerted and sustained manipulation by the dominant group. With this new awareness — after a little "consciousness-raising" — they feel compelled to atone for the historical sins of the dominant group that they were accidentally born into.
But in all those cases, there is a natural inequality across groups that is biological rather than historical: whites have higher IQ on average than blacks, men produce tons more testosterone than women, heterosexuals are more capable of deferring gratification.
Whether this natural inequality ought to be allowed to show up in status inequality is a matter of debate, which is not important here. The point is: Boomers don't even realize, indeed they emphatically deny that these inequalities have a natural basis. They want so much social engineering to minimize these inequalities precisely because they believe that they have no natural basis, but are rather the outcome of so much social engineering by the current dominant groups in the opposite direction.
Thus, in their view, their sweeping plans are not introducing social engineering into an unregulated state of nature, but correcting an existing set of plans for social engineering (drafted and enforced by the dominant group for its own benefit) with a different set of plans in the opposite direction, in order to restore society back to the egalitarian state of nature.
You'll have to forgive this exploration of the Boomer mind, but it is crucial to understand the psychology behind their characteristic damning of the dominant in-groups that they belong to.
Why then don't they feel the same way toward dominant, manipulative, and greedy generations, when they belong to just such a group? Why do they indeed appear blind to the very facts of their dominance and destructiveness? Why do they go so far as to celebrate their generational in-group as a never-ending underdog victory for the causes of fairness and equality, and indulge any chance they get to insult the generational out-groups? It is so entirely opposite to their mindset and behavior in the cases of being born into a race, a sex, and a sexual orientation, where they are only too happy to show public disloyalty to the in-group.
They can't be so clueless as to not realize that your generation is another one of those groups you're born into. But unlike races and sexes, which have a history extending far back into the past, a generation is a one-of-a-kind collective entity. There were no Boomers before there were Boomers, so they have no historical sins to atone for. Any current high status they enjoy must therefore be an achievement based on merit, not an inheritance of privilege based on good luck at birth. And they feel no remorse over slandering generational out-groups because they, too, have no history — and hence no "legacy of oppression" that has contributed to their current marginal status. If your generation isn't doing as well as ours, that's your own fault for being too lazy, ignorant, and complacent. *
We could throw in the Silents with the Boomers, since they are co-conquerers within the Me Generation. But they aren't as strident as the Boomers, so they're more difficult to study. Overall the pattern is similar, though. Their one-of-a-kind generation was born into the Depression, then through hard work and merit — rather than Midcentury liberal policies and an older generation willing to vacate spaces in the economy — they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps into lasting prosperity. If you young 'uns can't do the same, you just don't got the grit that us old-timers do.
We don't need to look into Gen X or the Millennials because they are not dominant generations, and so could neither pass nor fail the test of loyalty detailed for the Boomers. It's not that X-ers and Millennials are genetically superior, or free from sin — if the historical forces had lined them up to be the ones who took over society, they would've been just as devoutly loyal to their generation as the Boomers have been to theirs.
People who think about generations have emphasized how one-of-a-kind they are, and how new ones are constantly being created, unlike other demographic groups that you're born into like race, sex, and class. But as far as I'm aware, they haven't followed that observation to see where leads. For one thing, it makes generations perhaps the most resistant to disloyalty among major groups. You'd have to go to blood relations to find a group that is equally unwilling to claim that their in-group has oppressed an out-group and needs to atone for it.
Thus in societies with weakening kinship ties, ties of generation will become primary. Kinship bonds are impossible to scale up to the level of a nation, but it is automatic for generations: everyone born in that nation at that time, growing up in those formative years, will feel like members of a great big family which, however dysfunctional, still needs to hold together to defend itself against hostile other generations. From kin group vs. kin group to generation vs. generation.
* In fairness, that charge is not wide of the mark for Millennials, but the Boomers had the same condescending view of Gen X, and of the much older pre-Boomer folks who they viewed as an entire generation of undeservedly rich layabouts ("Boo unions").
Even with the Millennials, generations are shaped as much by what's going on in the older generations as by what's going on in their own. Millennial childhoods were shaped by Boomer parenting practices such as everybody gets a trophy for being the best just the way they are, and nobody can criticize my awesome special little snowflake or there'll be hell to pay. And in the broader society, Boomers are squatting on all the jobs, now including low-level entry jobs such as supermarket cashiers as they come to realize that they'll need to keep working well into their senior years due to never saving and always racking up more debt.
If there are so few paths to make a living from honest hard work, why bother learning how to do it in the first place? Might as well follow the path of "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" — whine and hope that your parents or substitute parents in the economy and government will kick enough your way to shut you up for awhile. It's no different from the way that a negligent parent parks their bored child in front of a kaleidoscopic glowing screen and hands them some chips and soda, so that mommy can get back to being busy, rather than give them some chores to do around the house to encourage responsibility.
I don't claim this is the sole or even the primary cause behind the brattiness of the Millennials — only to point out these unseen ways by which the incumbent generations can stunt the entrant generations.
September 2, 2014
"Boo unions" - another generational divide
This earlier post showed a generational divide in believing that your taxes are too high: compared to the Greatest Gen, Silents, and Boomers on one hand, Gen X and Millennials are far less likely to complain about their taxes, both within the same time period and during the same life stage. So it is not simply a matter of old vs. young, but of some birth cohorts remaining consistently higher than others in making "Boo taxes" a core civic value.
If the divide is that great for taxes, it must be part of a broader pattern of underlying differences. Pursuing that hunch, I looked into how people feel about labor unions.
The same person who loathes paying for what government provides is also going to start hyperventilating when the topic of organizing the workplace comes up. And historically, high taxes and an expansive union presence were both part of the Great Compression, while before and after, during the Gilded Age I and the Gilded Age II, taxes were lower (particularly for the wealthy) and the labor movement was marginalized.
The me-first / dog-eat-dog norm says everyone should look out for themselves, and if that means we get robber barons and Tammany Hall, then that's just the price we pay for enjoying laissez-faire individualism. The making-do / all-in-it-together norm says that the natural strife between workers and managers / owners needs to be dampened by collective bargaining in good faith.
Workers ought to accommodate managers by putting in an honest day's work — but they've already been doing that, so the main change must come from the managers and owners accommodating the needs of their workforce, rather than treating them like subhuman cogs in a machine, or a fungible commodity (man-hours of labor) that can be off-shored to cheaper foreigners or in-shored with a flood of cheaper immigrants.
And sure enough, we find the same generational divide over unions as we do over taxes. The General Social Survey asks a question about how much confidence you have in organized labor, one response being "hardly any." Respondents were restricted to whites only, since there are large racial differences across generations that might affect how pro- or anti-union a generation feels. The rest of the methodology is the same as in the post on taxes.
First, here is how the lack of confidence in unions has changed across time periods (years have been chunked into periods to give good sample sizes), separated by birth cohorts (e.g., the 1950 cohort includes those born from 1945 to 1954).
Overall the picture is the same as before, both the changes over time and the generational divide. The '70s and '80s saw a wave of anti-tax and anti-union sentiment across the pre-X generations, although the late Boomers (in solid yellow) were a holdout for awhile. Once taxes had been slashed and the labor movement pummeled by the end of the '80s, this sentiment subsided somewhat, particularly among the Greatest Gen cohorts. It has started to tick back upwards during the recession.
The band that includes the Greatest, Silent, and Booomer cohorts isn't quite as narrow as it was for taxes, but the separation of the Gen X cohorts is still clear. The red, orange, and yellow lines overlap a lot, while the blue ones stand apart from them. Millennials are even less anti-union than the X-ers; they aren't shown because they'd only appear in one period, and their changes over time couldn't be seen.
Now, take a look at how distrust of unions has changed over the lifetimes of each of the generations:
Once again, there's a single curving band along which the pre-X cohorts lie, while the X-ers are shifted noticeably below (albeit following a similar rise over their lifetimes). The earlier generations mostly hover between 35-45% distrusting unions, whereas the X-ers and Millennials will probably hover between 15-25%, or about half as distrusting as the Greatest, Silent, and Boomer cohorts.
This is a remarkable shift in mindsets when you consider that Gen X and Millennials aren't being fed a pro-union message. They simply came of working age when the harshest "Boo unions" battles had already been won. The only message they may have received about them was a non-message.
A cynic would say that it's their lack of familiarity with organized labor that allows them to entertain such benign views of them. But then most Boomers had no real experience with unions either when they were coming of working age, and that didn't stop them from jumping on the union-busting bandwagon. If anything, their experience was indirect, seeing their older Greatest Gen parents and relatives getting pensions and health care from having paid their union dues. Still, seeing the benefits wasn't enough to keep them from joining the laissez-faire revolution of the Me Generation.
Gen X and Millennials came of working age in the aftermath of that revolution, once the dismantling of the egalitarian-ish norms was more or less fait accompli. Seeing the neo-Dickensian ruthlessness and absence of fellow-feeling has made them skeptical of today's incarnation of Gilded Age laissez-faire cheerleaders.
It would not be accurate to say that they're enthusiastic about starting another labor movement, or that they have any idea what their ideal would look like — or even what the predecessor looked like 100 years ago. They're simply not kneejerk union-haters, and are keeping an open mind about some kind of unspecified collective organization to press for their needs once the economic shit really starts to hit the fan.
Lord knows they won't be able to count on politicians, neither could their counterparts in the late 1800s. Politicians only cater to demands for a wholesome workplace and economy once enough of the general public starts to raise the costs for political-corporate circle-jerking.
The last time around, the class war turned incredibly violent, primarily from the owners hiring private armies of Pinkerton guards to mow down striking workers in a hail of bullets. With the vast, militarized police forces of today's Gilded Age, I doubt they'll even need private armies this time around. On the other side, when the climate is frenzied enough, mobs of workers will take up arms, lob Molotov cocktails, and so on as well.
That's not ancient history, so hopefully this time around, both sides can keep the last time in mind, in order to steer clear of that much violence. Yet folks often have a way of believing that "this time is different," and pay no heed to the lessons of history.
GSS variables: conlabor, cohort, age, year, race
If the divide is that great for taxes, it must be part of a broader pattern of underlying differences. Pursuing that hunch, I looked into how people feel about labor unions.
The same person who loathes paying for what government provides is also going to start hyperventilating when the topic of organizing the workplace comes up. And historically, high taxes and an expansive union presence were both part of the Great Compression, while before and after, during the Gilded Age I and the Gilded Age II, taxes were lower (particularly for the wealthy) and the labor movement was marginalized.
The me-first / dog-eat-dog norm says everyone should look out for themselves, and if that means we get robber barons and Tammany Hall, then that's just the price we pay for enjoying laissez-faire individualism. The making-do / all-in-it-together norm says that the natural strife between workers and managers / owners needs to be dampened by collective bargaining in good faith.
Workers ought to accommodate managers by putting in an honest day's work — but they've already been doing that, so the main change must come from the managers and owners accommodating the needs of their workforce, rather than treating them like subhuman cogs in a machine, or a fungible commodity (man-hours of labor) that can be off-shored to cheaper foreigners or in-shored with a flood of cheaper immigrants.
And sure enough, we find the same generational divide over unions as we do over taxes. The General Social Survey asks a question about how much confidence you have in organized labor, one response being "hardly any." Respondents were restricted to whites only, since there are large racial differences across generations that might affect how pro- or anti-union a generation feels. The rest of the methodology is the same as in the post on taxes.
First, here is how the lack of confidence in unions has changed across time periods (years have been chunked into periods to give good sample sizes), separated by birth cohorts (e.g., the 1950 cohort includes those born from 1945 to 1954).
Overall the picture is the same as before, both the changes over time and the generational divide. The '70s and '80s saw a wave of anti-tax and anti-union sentiment across the pre-X generations, although the late Boomers (in solid yellow) were a holdout for awhile. Once taxes had been slashed and the labor movement pummeled by the end of the '80s, this sentiment subsided somewhat, particularly among the Greatest Gen cohorts. It has started to tick back upwards during the recession.
The band that includes the Greatest, Silent, and Booomer cohorts isn't quite as narrow as it was for taxes, but the separation of the Gen X cohorts is still clear. The red, orange, and yellow lines overlap a lot, while the blue ones stand apart from them. Millennials are even less anti-union than the X-ers; they aren't shown because they'd only appear in one period, and their changes over time couldn't be seen.
Now, take a look at how distrust of unions has changed over the lifetimes of each of the generations:
Once again, there's a single curving band along which the pre-X cohorts lie, while the X-ers are shifted noticeably below (albeit following a similar rise over their lifetimes). The earlier generations mostly hover between 35-45% distrusting unions, whereas the X-ers and Millennials will probably hover between 15-25%, or about half as distrusting as the Greatest, Silent, and Boomer cohorts.
This is a remarkable shift in mindsets when you consider that Gen X and Millennials aren't being fed a pro-union message. They simply came of working age when the harshest "Boo unions" battles had already been won. The only message they may have received about them was a non-message.
A cynic would say that it's their lack of familiarity with organized labor that allows them to entertain such benign views of them. But then most Boomers had no real experience with unions either when they were coming of working age, and that didn't stop them from jumping on the union-busting bandwagon. If anything, their experience was indirect, seeing their older Greatest Gen parents and relatives getting pensions and health care from having paid their union dues. Still, seeing the benefits wasn't enough to keep them from joining the laissez-faire revolution of the Me Generation.
Gen X and Millennials came of working age in the aftermath of that revolution, once the dismantling of the egalitarian-ish norms was more or less fait accompli. Seeing the neo-Dickensian ruthlessness and absence of fellow-feeling has made them skeptical of today's incarnation of Gilded Age laissez-faire cheerleaders.
It would not be accurate to say that they're enthusiastic about starting another labor movement, or that they have any idea what their ideal would look like — or even what the predecessor looked like 100 years ago. They're simply not kneejerk union-haters, and are keeping an open mind about some kind of unspecified collective organization to press for their needs once the economic shit really starts to hit the fan.
Lord knows they won't be able to count on politicians, neither could their counterparts in the late 1800s. Politicians only cater to demands for a wholesome workplace and economy once enough of the general public starts to raise the costs for political-corporate circle-jerking.
The last time around, the class war turned incredibly violent, primarily from the owners hiring private armies of Pinkerton guards to mow down striking workers in a hail of bullets. With the vast, militarized police forces of today's Gilded Age, I doubt they'll even need private armies this time around. On the other side, when the climate is frenzied enough, mobs of workers will take up arms, lob Molotov cocktails, and so on as well.
That's not ancient history, so hopefully this time around, both sides can keep the last time in mind, in order to steer clear of that much violence. Yet folks often have a way of believing that "this time is different," and pay no heed to the lessons of history.
GSS variables: conlabor, cohort, age, year, race
September 1, 2014
Incumbency and over-production of elites in journalism
Like most other people my age, I haven't watched the news on TV in a very long time, not since high school in the mid-to-late 1990s. At college I suddenly had access to hard copies of newspapers from around the world, and about the same time every major paper began distributing their content for free over the internet. Bye-bye TV news coverage.
So imagine my shock the other day when I caught a bit of the local news on the same NBC station I used to watch 15 to 20 years ago — and saw the exact same crew of anchors! I even remembered some of their names before they introduced themselves.
I headed over to NBC4's website roster to see who all was still there, and the answer was — everyone! Jim Handly, Wendy Rieger, Barbara Harrison, Pat Collins, Tom Kierein, and of course Jim Vance, who was already stumbling over his words in old age back in the '90s. The incumbency problem was worse than I'd suspected, as most of them began working for the station in the '80s (Vance was the only one there since the early '70s).
Sure, there are lots of new young reporters who I didn't recognize, but by the looks of who's still sitting in the anchors' chairs, they won't ever be moving up. Only one incumbent, Joe Krebs, is retiring.
You'd probably see the same thing for the anchors in your own neck of the woods, although I'm not interested enough in the topic to actually check into other major markets.
But we sure do see that at the national level. Starting in the early 1980s, three incoming anchors ruled the roost for the better part of a quarter-century (Brokaw, Jennings, and Rather). If old age did not get in the way, they would have kept at it even longer. Only Cronkite had a similarly long tenure during the Midcentury.
Now it's common to anchor some national news program or another for 20 years or longer. Katie Couric, Barbara Walters, Al Roker — the list goes on and on. And they all began their star roles during the '80s and afterward.
As a result of the big figures never stepping down from their Establishment positions, the soaring numbers of journalism majors have tried to carve out newer and ever more niche, er, niches for themselves. They're gonna be a somebody, somewhere.
That's why most websites nowadays have jumping-off links to more and more "new media" sites where, unlike on NBC Nightly News, you can read all about The 17 Ways You're Annoying Your Roommates, or The 11 Most Dishonest Lies That Republicans Are Spreading About Healthcare, or The 11 Most Dishonest Lies That Democrats Are Spreading About Gun Control, etc. etc. etc.
These new media types are not vying for the anchor spot on a national broadcast news program, and they may not even have a journalism degree like those who write for major newspapers. The point is that incumbency at the top and increasing interest in being a journalist has a ripple effect all the way out to those Weird New Trick sites.
You see the same phenomenon in late night talk shows. There were a bunch of variety and talk shows in the '40s during the heyday of radio, but they didn't continue to dominate the industry into the '60s and '70s. Carson was the only one to begin in the Midcentury and last for several decades, like Cronkite. (Dick Cavett, who was a hit in the '70s, didn't last for two decades.) Everyone else has been on since the '80s or early '90s, and were loathe to leave — Letterman, Leno, Conan. You can bet that Jon Stewart and Howard Stern will be clinging for dear life to their spots, too.
Daytime talk shows are no different. Phil Donahue was the only one to begin before the '80s and last for several decades. Oprah was on forever, Geraldo's been on in one form or another since the same time, even Maury Povich is still going after 20 years. Sally Jesse Raphael began in the early '80s and hung on for 20 years. Ellen and Rosie O'Donnell came along later and haven't been on for as long, but they were already coasting off of their stand-up / acting brand.
As with the nightly news, the incumbency problem has led to a proliferation of niche late-night and daytime talk shows to accommodate the widening ranks of aspiring talk show hosts.
Siskel and Ebert had a lock on reviewing movies for a TV audience, and were only stopped by death and cancer.
The only constant across all of these cases is the timing of their beginnings — circa the 1980s — and the generations of the incumbents — Silents and Boomers (Greastest Gen were happy to move aside after a brief stint). It doesn't matter if the scale is national or local, if the tone is serious or comic or trashy, if they're men or women, white or black, Jewish or Christian. The me-first / dog-eat-dog norms that have prevailed since the Me Generation of the '70s have ushered in an age of first mover advantage. They shoved the Greatest Gen aside, dug themselves in, and are only leaving due to the complications of old age.
This places them within the broader trend in the economy and government toward incumbency, rising numbers of aspiring elites, and new niches being carved out to give the strivers somewhere to go.
But niches can only grow so narrow and draw such tiny crowds. There are simply too many people aspiring to be a somebody in the world of journalism. When the trend toward status-striving and inequality turns around, we'll see people who don't mind reading the teleprompter or gabbing with the celebs du jour for five years before moving on to something else. And who won't think of their spot as a way to "build their brand" i.e. glorify themselves.
So imagine my shock the other day when I caught a bit of the local news on the same NBC station I used to watch 15 to 20 years ago — and saw the exact same crew of anchors! I even remembered some of their names before they introduced themselves.
I headed over to NBC4's website roster to see who all was still there, and the answer was — everyone! Jim Handly, Wendy Rieger, Barbara Harrison, Pat Collins, Tom Kierein, and of course Jim Vance, who was already stumbling over his words in old age back in the '90s. The incumbency problem was worse than I'd suspected, as most of them began working for the station in the '80s (Vance was the only one there since the early '70s).
Sure, there are lots of new young reporters who I didn't recognize, but by the looks of who's still sitting in the anchors' chairs, they won't ever be moving up. Only one incumbent, Joe Krebs, is retiring.
You'd probably see the same thing for the anchors in your own neck of the woods, although I'm not interested enough in the topic to actually check into other major markets.
But we sure do see that at the national level. Starting in the early 1980s, three incoming anchors ruled the roost for the better part of a quarter-century (Brokaw, Jennings, and Rather). If old age did not get in the way, they would have kept at it even longer. Only Cronkite had a similarly long tenure during the Midcentury.
Now it's common to anchor some national news program or another for 20 years or longer. Katie Couric, Barbara Walters, Al Roker — the list goes on and on. And they all began their star roles during the '80s and afterward.
As a result of the big figures never stepping down from their Establishment positions, the soaring numbers of journalism majors have tried to carve out newer and ever more niche, er, niches for themselves. They're gonna be a somebody, somewhere.
That's why most websites nowadays have jumping-off links to more and more "new media" sites where, unlike on NBC Nightly News, you can read all about The 17 Ways You're Annoying Your Roommates, or The 11 Most Dishonest Lies That Republicans Are Spreading About Healthcare, or The 11 Most Dishonest Lies That Democrats Are Spreading About Gun Control, etc. etc. etc.
These new media types are not vying for the anchor spot on a national broadcast news program, and they may not even have a journalism degree like those who write for major newspapers. The point is that incumbency at the top and increasing interest in being a journalist has a ripple effect all the way out to those Weird New Trick sites.
You see the same phenomenon in late night talk shows. There were a bunch of variety and talk shows in the '40s during the heyday of radio, but they didn't continue to dominate the industry into the '60s and '70s. Carson was the only one to begin in the Midcentury and last for several decades, like Cronkite. (Dick Cavett, who was a hit in the '70s, didn't last for two decades.) Everyone else has been on since the '80s or early '90s, and were loathe to leave — Letterman, Leno, Conan. You can bet that Jon Stewart and Howard Stern will be clinging for dear life to their spots, too.
Daytime talk shows are no different. Phil Donahue was the only one to begin before the '80s and last for several decades. Oprah was on forever, Geraldo's been on in one form or another since the same time, even Maury Povich is still going after 20 years. Sally Jesse Raphael began in the early '80s and hung on for 20 years. Ellen and Rosie O'Donnell came along later and haven't been on for as long, but they were already coasting off of their stand-up / acting brand.
As with the nightly news, the incumbency problem has led to a proliferation of niche late-night and daytime talk shows to accommodate the widening ranks of aspiring talk show hosts.
Siskel and Ebert had a lock on reviewing movies for a TV audience, and were only stopped by death and cancer.
The only constant across all of these cases is the timing of their beginnings — circa the 1980s — and the generations of the incumbents — Silents and Boomers (Greastest Gen were happy to move aside after a brief stint). It doesn't matter if the scale is national or local, if the tone is serious or comic or trashy, if they're men or women, white or black, Jewish or Christian. The me-first / dog-eat-dog norms that have prevailed since the Me Generation of the '70s have ushered in an age of first mover advantage. They shoved the Greatest Gen aside, dug themselves in, and are only leaving due to the complications of old age.
This places them within the broader trend in the economy and government toward incumbency, rising numbers of aspiring elites, and new niches being carved out to give the strivers somewhere to go.
But niches can only grow so narrow and draw such tiny crowds. There are simply too many people aspiring to be a somebody in the world of journalism. When the trend toward status-striving and inequality turns around, we'll see people who don't mind reading the teleprompter or gabbing with the celebs du jour for five years before moving on to something else. And who won't think of their spot as a way to "build their brand" i.e. glorify themselves.
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