Here's Tyler Cowen collecting a bunch of responses to Bryan Caplan on the decline of marriage.
What are felt ethics? Felt ethics are evolved repsonses which promoted long-term self-interest in the ancestral evironment. For instance...fulfilling promises, and forgiving slight errors.
What Murray's book (yet to read) seems to be showing is that the lower classes, which have a lack of two important traits (IQ and patience), are especially hard-hit by the decline of social morality, which is the backup plan against the failure of both game-theoretic analysis, and the general willingness to persevere.
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12 comments:
How would you (or he) define "lower classes"?
Kent,
Statistically.
Murray's book shows that there has been a massive divergance in social outcomes across social classes.
Rich (top 10% incomes) people almost all stay married, follow traditional-ish morality, work huge hours, and have high IQs.
Poor (bottom 20% incomes) people are almost entirely unmarried (never-married or divorced), work low hours, have low IQs.
This is a statistical analyis, though, and you appear to be an outlier on at least some of those dimensions.
I wasn't complaining, just wondering. And, I read the article after I posted the comment.
I was curious if "class" had anything to do with things other than wealth.
I am not married, but am in a long-term non-relationship. According to the IQ tests I have taken (willingly or not) my IQ isn't low, but I definitely am in the bottom 20% (or worse) in the way of income. I work long hours, for almost no pay (which may indicate a flaw in IQ tests).
So, in general I agree with his analysis.
It kinda does...who you hobnob with... there is still the "Bobos in Paradise" kinda social class markers that are independent of wealth, but the correlate pretty hard.
Rich folks have a certain set of characteristics, and it really doesn't match up with poor folks.
And more and more...rich folks only EVER talk to other rich folks, with no contact with the not-rich. There are outliers...the 2 rich guys in a small town...but mostly no.
Oh, and I have tons of patience and am not generally very impulsive.
I think I could be a passable "rich guy". I've got the eccentricities down pat.
I'm getting more convinced that "taking shit from the man" is pretty high on the list of traits necessary to get to rich (except strange cases).
Neither you nor I have it in great quantities.
I think you are right. I see things other people go through for a dollar and think "Why do they put up with that?" The dollar generally isn't worth it to me. It's like flying. Sure, it is probably a safer, faster form of travel, but I'm just not willing to subject myself to the gropes or scans and being treated like property and a criminal. It baffles me that airlines can find any customers anymore.
Kent, the "classes" in question here are SWPL (progressive elites) versus NASCAR (proles). (I hasten to add that those are my characterizations, not Murray's.) Have you taken Murray's quiz? It might help you see what he is talking about.
I haven't. Do you have a link to that quiz?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/77349055/Coming-Apart-by-Charles-Murray-Quiz
HT:
http://www.isegoria.net/2012/01/how-thick-is-your-bubble/
Took me a while to get around to the quiz, but I just took it and scored 47. Yet, I don't fit very well at all with his characterization because he is assuming an upwardly mobile arrow, while mine is going in the opposite direction. Growing up we were very solidly middle class, but I have not been there since being on my own. Plus, the past 5 years have been an anomaly judged against the 5 years before that, which was an anomaly judged by the 8 years before that- and so on.
Kent,
That's awful close to my personal score...It says you have (a lot of) contact with the non-SWPLs, even if you're not "naturally" there.
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