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Why Conservatism Lost
It’s no secret that I’m gleeful about the crack-up in Conservatism. I’ve made that clear in audio-meetups and in the live chats. If I may be so bold, I would like to propose a simpler reason for the demise of Conservatism than many of the reasons currently floated by political analysts. It doesn’t involve climate change or demographics, and it is only somewhat related to economic growth. It is not beyond the control of Conservatives themselves. Conservatives caused their own demise for one reason, and that reason comes down to Conservatism’s lack of quantitative explanations for middle class problems.
Before I go deeper into this explanation, let me just add that Progressivism does not have this problem. Indeed, Progressive control of academia has allowed Progressives to analyze many discoveries made in economics, political science, mathematics, statistics, etc. and craft explanations for many of these phenomena through the development of models. Some of these models offer great insight, while others do not. Still, Conservatives have ceded academia to Progressives, and Progressives have been the ones to make the discoveries and apply an understanding of these discoveries to government policy. This is done directly, through government research institutions (such as the Federal Reserve), or indirectly through advice given by think-tanks and academics to Liberal politicians, who then seek to turn this advice into policy.
Now let me get back to Conservatism. Conservatives do not have the mechanism described above. Their contempt for academia has harmed them more than they would like to admit. In place of the above, Conservatives must rely upon comforting heuristics that are derived from nothing more than mere musings.
For example, consider trade. The government has mechanisms to recognize whether or not a country is engaging in harmful trade practices against the United States. The government has the means to act upon what it recognizes. The mechanisms and the means were developed through a mathematically rigorous process of creating a model of trade under certain assumptions, adding and removing assumptions to understand how this affects concepts of trade, and then using these assumptions (or lack of assumptions) to write a proof. This proof, which for the sake of an example we will suppose to be a proof of the optimal response by a government to dumping, then offers insight into what the government should do in a dumping situation. This rigorous explanation for dumping then makes its way to politicians (separate from bureaucrats at the federal trade agencies) who offer a solution to middle class communities that have been affected by dumping.
It is my understanding that the Conservative response to dumping, or any trade phenomenon for that matter, is to simply say something along the lines of “People are engaging in free exchange. If anyone tries to stop it, they are against freedom.” There is no proof that is offered. There is no deep and mathematically rigorous explanation. The framework does not exist to offer a policy prescription. Instead, Conservatives merely point to the musings of Hayek, Smith, Rand, or sometimes even Aristotle.
Now consider the above and apply it to any issues currently affecting the middle class. The Progressive can offer an explanation in quantifiable terms, with a policy based upon measurable outcomes. Conservatives can merely quote “great men and women” whose explanations for a particular phenomenon are no better than yours or mine (and often involve vague terms such as “freedom” and “virtue”). In so doing, they place many middle class issues and anxieties in a mystical twilight, seemingly beyond the realm of Man’s ability to measure. When Conservatives do this, they fail to assuage or confront the anxieties of their base, who ultimately turn to a bastardized version of Progressive explanations and solutions to their problems.
And that’s why you have Donald Trump.
And that’s why Conservatism lost.
Published in General
The latest George Washington University Battleground poll had Shrillary with 46% vs the Donald with 43%. For Trump to mive up so dramatically so quickly is amazing, so I am increasingly confident that, forget the nomination, Trump will trounce the Clinton crime family in the general election in a landslide.
Sorry I’m late to the party on this, but I wanted to make a few points:
For every middle class problem there’s an answer that’s clear, quantitative – and wrong. When talking about the economy you are dealing with a complex system that has billions of inter-related connections, and which can rarely be understood or ‘improved’ with econometrics or simple formulas.
Perhaps you could describe one of these progressive ‘discoveries’ in economics. Because in actual fact, what the progressives are advocating for are essentially the same old Keynesian formulas that have been around since the 1930’s. You know, the ones that Paul Samuelson used to predict that the end of WWII would throw the U.S. into a great depression because of the end of the biggest fiscal stimulus the world has ever seen. It’s the same belief system that economists used to claim that inflation and low growth could not happen at the same time, and therefore justified the same fiscal stimulus nonsense in the 1970’s. It’s the same belief system that caused economists in the 1990’s, including Alan Greenspan, to claim that the business cycle was a ‘solved problem’ and that central bankers had learned how to manage an economy to prevent recessions and depressions.
And in present day, these modern ‘scientific’ economic management ideas are the justification for ‘Abe-nomics’ in Japan, which has done everything people like you advocated, and which resulted in an overbuilt infrastructure, ruinous debt, and two decades and counting of stagnation.
Those ‘scientific discoveries’ in economics predicted that the U.S. stimulus plan would cause the economy to take off like gangbusters, but instead we got the slowest growth of any recession recovery in history. They also predicted that Britain’s ‘austerity’ would lead to a recession, and that never happened either. Nor did it happen in New Zealand or Canada, both of which undertook major periods of ‘austerity’ against the advice of progressive economists, and both of which had economies which rebounded strongly and paved the way for periods of long growth.
What you believe in isn’t science. It’s pseudo-science wrapped in mathiness to give it a nice new sheen.
There HAVE been breakthroughs in mathematics and economics in the past few decades, but they aren’t going to make you happy. The things we’ve learned most in the past few decades involve learning the limits of our ability to understand, predict, and control complex systems. Information theory has taught us about the limits of central planning.
You’re right about the political problem that conservatives face: We claim that these problems are complex, that central governments are not the appropriate tool for solving them, and that healthy societies do not spring from central planning. Progressives, on the other hand, will march out endless series of ‘experts’ who can sling a lot of BS in service of the idea that if you just elect the right people, everything will be better tomorrow.
This is the same problem doctors face against snake-oil salesman. Go to the doctor, and he’s likely to tell you that fixing your problems will require discipline, healthy habits, and refraining from doing some of the things you enjoy doing. On the other hand, the snake oil salesman will tell you that you can keep doing all the things you love, and all you have to do is take his special homeopathic nonsense water and all will be better.
Taking the nonsense water sure sounds easier than actually having to work hard at staying healthy. The only problem with it is that it doesn’t work.
Progressives sell snake oil. People like Trump promise a chicken in every pot if only you’ll vote for him and give him more power. That’s an appealing message to a lot of people who don’t want to look deeper. Conservatives and libertarians will tell you that the government is the problem, and that the solution is to take responsibility for your own life and your own actions, and put not your faith in ‘experts’ with a grand plan for your life backed by a computer model.
So yes, that’s a problem for conservatives. We have to figure out a better messaging strategy. But it’s not an argument for becoming a snake oil salesman. Because, you know, they are wrong and they cause a lot of damage before people figure that out.
You would do yourself a big favor if you stepped outside the world of statistics for a bit and studied some complexity theory. You might develop a little bit of humility regarding what econometrics and computer models can or can’t tell you about the behavior of complex systems. And human economies and social structures are about as complex as it gets.
You forgot the <drops microphone, walks off stage> at the end of that.
Wait for it…
Viruscop, you claim that science and math are on the side of the progressives. Well, the cornerstone of science is the acceptance that a scientific theory must pass various tests, including the ability to make predictions that can be tested. So, if you really want to be a scientist, you should look at the myriad failures of ‘scientific’ social planning around the world, the myriad failures of prediction for the results of Keynesian interventions, and admit that these ideas are failures and should be thrown on the ash heap of history along with the charred remains of that other favorite of left wing academics: communism. Or perhaps I should have used their preferred academic term for it: ‘scientific socialism’.
<drops microphone, walks off stage>
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