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This week on The Big Show, we attempt to return to some sense of normalcy (while of course maintaining social distancing by at least 1,000 miles). Yes, we talk about that thing we’re all doing and what our new lives are like now. But then, we shift gears to visit with our good friend Ross Douthat, NYT columnist and podcaster (The Argument, which Ross co-hosts is one of our favorites) on the occasion of his new book., The Decadent Society. It’s a meditation on what happens when a rich and powerful society stops advancing and how the combination of wealth, technology, economic stagnation, political stalemates, and demographic decline (among other things) creates a “sustainable decadence” that could stick around for a long time. Needless to say, it’s a provocative conversation that we’d like to get your take on in the comments. Finally, we do round of What Are You Watching, and do a deep dive on toilet paper, courtesy of the Lileks Post of The Week.
Music from this week’s show: I.G.Y by Donald Fagen
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Well, we have moved from the absurd to the sublime. Now the discussion is about having a suitable regulatory regime to regulate the regulators? Problem solved! We just need another government regulatory oversight agency to oversee and codify the rules for the regulators of the regulators! We can do this all day… It’s regulations all the way down.
The bottom line here is that some have lost the ideal of, and aspiration for, freedom, liberty and personal responsibility. With that comes a mature acceptance of the consequences for not taking responsibility and the burden of living up to the ideals. Some just WANT to be managed, and told what to do every step of the way, and that extends to wanting everyone ELSE to be handled the same way. That is not the America I want for me or my family, or anyone for that matter. Limited government is a conservative principle, and that should be manifest as limited regulation as well. Not none, but limited.
I get where you’re coming from. In an ideal world men with calipers and clipboards wouldn’t show up one day and fine you for not having the Book of Warnings by the door instead of in the warehouse corner, but here we are.
At the risk of violating the CoC, I don’t think you’re well-versed in the particulars of petroleum distribution – and that’s okay! It’s hardly required know-how. I get that you trust the people who regulate the business more than the people who carry it out. That’s the standard statist presumption, and it’s your right to hold that view.
What’s your business?
Be honest, and honestly no recrimination or insult is intended: but have you ever actually run a business?
Do you think this is true?
This isn’t about just inconveniencing me. While you imply that I just shouldn’t have a dog in a city–too bad New Yorkers, for sure!–that’s pretty high and mighty of you. At the very least, it shows you really do think you know best.
My point was that there was no point in closing this dog park. Dogs don’t get Covid, and the people weren’t standing near each other. Ever. The park is plenty big enough for people to stand far apart from one another while their dogs played, and they did.
It doesn’t. I can talk about two things at once. I can’t stand petty tyrants anywhere around me, and I despise the ever expanding powers of the state.
I haven’t seen my parents in over a month.
Wow. That’s not a lot. That’s not how my family works. I see mine every Sunday at least. I greatly mind not being able to see them in this moment, but I understand this restriction–which we are honoring because we understand they are vulnerable–much, much more than the shut down of the world. This is something that bothers me because I love my parents, but it is not an arbitrary rule. It’s me pointing out that I do take Covid seriously, even though it causes pain outside of economic circumstances or dog parks.
Okay. And I guess they’ll get antibody cards at some point and go back to work? Gosh. That’s a horrible outcome for them. I’m being flippant, but there’s a great deal of play in the middle of acting like I’m immortal on a beach and being terrified of touching a doorknob outside. Covid is not an automatic death sentence. It is not Ebola. That would be terrifying.
@jameslileks, I love it when you get in there and mix it up. More please!
Re: Mention at the end the most interesting exchange with Ross Douthat of a possible new cold war
Being a bit older than the stalwart four, I may have a slightly different perspective on the Cold War I, in whose early stages the Soviet Union ostensibly intended to win, with all of us living under Communism. I remember Berlin, both sides, of many decades ago. While there was talk (on the Communist side) of “peaceful coexistence,” only the truly deluded (of whom I am now thinking?) would have thought of honeymooning in a Communist state.
And yet I think of all my family members and friends who have happily visited China. (I was there months before Tiananmen, foolishly convinced that the country was on its way to becoming an open society.) When a year or so ago I purchased in Italy the cheapest cellphone available, I didn’t bother to notice until it was too late that it was made by Huawei, and even then I more or less shrugged.
My point is that if we are indeed facing a new cold war, it will be distinctly different from the conflict with the Soviet Union, from which none of us, as I remember, bought Christmas toys. At the same time, the siren call of Communism (or “liberationist” romanticism) will surely be absent. Even the sort of people who were apologists for Castro and the Sandinistas will not be strongly inclined to harbor illusions about any ideology that Beijing has to offer humanity.
In its last days, the Soviet system was on the defensive. As we in Japan are well aware, China’s leaders, even now, are on the offensive, and they project not ideas but rather raw power. The temptation will indeed be to adopt at least some of their tyrannical ways, not because we admire them but rather because we fear defeat.
I hope that Peter Robinson will soon be taking walks once again in his beloved park. He makes an excellent point!
Something I don’t think we’ve talked much about in this discussion is the difference between distant and local authorities. Both can be overweening and destructive, but we generally have considerably more recourse to fix local problems than we do to change the entrenched bureaucracy.
I think pro-regulation folks (KE, for example) generally favor that regulation-from-the-very-top approach. It’s just more efficient, after all, to have one rule for everyone (or 100,000 rules for everyone, whatever). KE’s comments in #90 regarding education, that there’s just “too much experimentation going on,” seem to invite the benevolent hand of expert intervention to create that uniformity and consistency he seems to crave. (The fact that I might agree about the value of a return to old-fashioned three-R’s education is beside the point; I don’t want it mandated from on high.)
I kind of loved that.
I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the report you are referencing, but here is a very simple, elegant and timely way to think about equipment from Huawei: Understand that Huawei components are infected with a potentially deadly CCP virus, and that all equipment and systems that it comes into contact with will become infected as well.
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This reminds me of long ago when my children were first entering the local school system. There was a “special magnet school” that offered traditional modes of teaching, but it was hard to get into and had a long wait list. I was not surprised that it was so popular, but I was shocked that traditional teaching was not THE default practice system-wide. You had to go to the “experimental” program to get it!
Interesting back and forth with Mr. Lileks. Just this week a judge stopped the Keystone pipeline again because billions of barrels of oil might leak over a mile to drip on an Indian Reservation.
There *isn’t a shred of logic to any of these protests.
That’s because they’re not actually about “the pipeline”. They’re about stopping the use of oil generally. (And the more conspiratorially minded might say that they’re really about crushing modern industrial society.)
And keeping Warren Buffet’s oil trains running, which are more likely to crash and cause a spill.
And that’s an interesting point as it relates to regulation. The regulatory state is easily “weaponized” by those with interests that go far beyond the particular industry being regulated. It’s a dangerous thing to have lying around.
No, it’s not about another level of regulators over the regulators. (Actually, there’s already Congress for that, if they chose to exercise it. But that’s another subject.) Indeed, that would be the case only if you expect there to be “flexibility” and then the amount of “flexibility” would likely end up being determined by the regulators of the regulators. But the way it is, the regulators determine what the standard is to be met, and basically how flexible they want to be about it.
My point is that, if only for overall fairness and knowing-what-the-rules-are-in-advance, the standard needs to be codified. Because if regulators can just glance and say “that looks good enough” you end up with other problems.
I wish I didn’t have these pesky word-count limits.
It’s really not about trusting the regulators more. And I can’t think of anyone I admire more on this site, if not in the whole country. But it does seem at times like your viewpoint is skewed because that’s the business your family is in. The people around that business just want to know that a tornado or whatever won’t end up with their roof getting oil-soaked and then ignited, even if it might be a one-in-ten-thousand-years event that the odds say won’t happen for another 9,970 years because Lileks Oil has been in business for 30 years and there hasn’t been one yet.
Ridiculous? Yes, in a way, but probability doesn’t always work the way people think – hasn’t New Orleans had like two hundred-year floods in the last 10 years, or something?
Also there are other issues to deal with, such as if the regulators say that Company A has to do something that Company B doesn’t have to do because Company B is up on a hill or something, then Company A argues – perhaps rightly – that the government has given their competitor an unfair advantage.
As for my own business, I went into computer programming for a variety of reasons: No license required, it’s about electronics which I like, it’s generally high-tech which I like, and I really hate doing the same thing over and over again, whether it’s making burgers or doing chemical analysis of water quality or what-have-you. Computer programming means I basically get to write a program ONCE, and then the COMPUTER does the same thing over and over, perhaps millions or billions of times, as Ghod intended.
Actually I think education – and most other things – should be regulated at the local level. But it doesn’t seem like @jameslileks would be less upset by having Minnesota or even Minneapolis telling the family business to build a berm of certain capacity, than if a federal agency does it.
Local parents and school boards probably think that’s the way it is now, but in many senses it really isn’t. But my point would be that once the parents and school boards decide what the curriculum should be etc, that should be the end of it. Teachers shouldn’t be experimenting on their students. Many/most of them really aren’t that smart themselves. Including my brother, who taught for 30+ years before retiring recently. They should be following lesson plans developed by people with more experience, more intelligence… The teachers are more like enlisted people on the field of battle, they are not all little generals of their own armies (of students).
There aren’t enough Nobel-winning chemists for every Dick and Jane to have the top-notch science teacher their parents think they deserve. And even if their were, if all those great minds are teaching science classes, who is going to invent all the next great stuff that the whole world benefits from?
Bottom line, most teachers are going to be average or below average, just like everyone else. (When I went to college, the GPA of those going into Education was lower than the athletes.) And the structure of the institution needs to take that into account.
My point too. That’s what people want, and that’s what they think they’re getting at the public schools. But they’re wrong.
Yes, but one solution to that is not electing Democrats. If people elect Democrats and then complain about over-regulation, well, I don’t have much sympathy. Sorry, New York. And California. etc.
But if a serious claim of “there should be no regulation of any kind!” is off the table, then the rest is basically just details.
Perhaps apropos of nothing, the father of a friend of mine in High School and college, who also happened to live just 2 blocks away, owned and operated a Chevron service station. (At that time, independent owner-operators still existed. I guess they don’t any more.)
I remember his father often complaining about how expensive it was to keep inventory, etc. “Interest rates are too damn high!” And not just during the Carter years.
Seemingly the day after he retired, and began relying on investment income etc, the lament switched to “Interest rates are too damn low!”
I’m guessing the “traditional” school got shut down on some pretext.
Unions hate anything that exceeds the mediocre.
I read somewhere on Ricochet, I think it was, that a “traditional” “magnet” school somewhere, operated by the teacher’s union attempting to show they could do it better than private business, was shut down. I’m not sure if that was actually because they couldn’t compete price-wise, or maybe they suddenly realized it was working too well…
Or, maybe they found out the union members couldn’t actually TEACH…
And isn’t it sad when traditional, and long-proven, methods of education have become the “experiment?”
We’re independent, and hardly unique – a lot of stations are independently owned. The brands supply the product, the livery, and access to the branded credit cards. They don’t want to be involved in the logistics of selling milk and jerky. The convenience-store chains are another matter. They’re all about the milk and jerky, and gas is just the thing that gets people to the stores.
Environmental regs killed a lot of the independents around here, but that’s another story.
You can’t set interest rates by a Soviet style committee, which is what we do now. The pandemic just accelerated the mess they created.
If you can’t save in fiat and get a clear 2% over inflation, civilization is going to break down.
If the whole education system was atomized except for the taxes that are collected, the value proposition go straight up
There really were no convenience-store-gas-stations then, like in the early 1970s, and where self-service was not allowed. (Oregon.) 7-11 and (K) and other little places sold only groceries, and beer. And cigarettes, of course. Lots and lots of cigarettes. No wine or liquor, since only the state-controlled liquor stores sold those. The Arco AM/PM places started coming later, but not that many, again since there was no self-service. At that time, where I lived, all the other Chevron stations were company-owned. And there was a company-owned Texaco station across the street from my friend’s father’s Chevron, which he also complained about because he said (true or not, I couldn’t say) that Texaco and Chevron both gave their company-owned stations better prices than he got from them. When he retired, Chevron wouldn’t allow another independent owner to take it over, so he wound up selling it back to them.
I think I’ll pass on Mr. Douthat’s book. His analysis of our country’s decadence didn’t strike me as particularly compelling or deeply thought out. If this decadence does exist, he should have referenced his own newspaper as a major contributor.