This post’s title from an album the Irish program at my local jazz station has been promoting.
Some years back when I watched Saturday Night Live regularly, and everyone complained about how much better it was when Chris Farley/Mike Myers/Eddie Murphy/Bill Murray was on the show, one of the writers appeared on Weekend Update (no, not Tina Fey) to point out an anomaly. He was the only Jew on the comedy team, which he explained was like an NBA team with just one black dude. The list of other names sounded more like a St. Patrick’s day arrest lineup.
Listening to the Greg Cochran interview I recently linked, the point he made about the Irish getting mixed up with everyone else on earth set some gears in motion that hadn’t clicked before. Brad Delong & Paul Krugman have been complaining about the decline of the Chicago School recently, and even Chicago-educated quasi-monetarist Scott Sumner agrees. The modern Chicago school is represented by the likes of John Cochrane, Kevin Murphy and Casey Mulligan (at least they aren’t Ed Prescott, whose surname is more Anglo) together with the odd Huizingas and Zingales. Hmm. The old Chicago school (alright, not the Old Chicago school of Knight & Viner) was represented by the likes of George Stigler, Milton Friedman, Gary Becker and Julian Simon. Brian Doherty noted how so many of the founders of the modern libertarian movement were Jewish in Radicals for Capitalism, and Half Sigma just made the same point recently. I brought up a similar point at his blog in defense of Austrian economics when he tried to associate it with anti-semitism, and he replied that the people I listed were either dead or very old.
Is there any point to my rambling? SNL, as well as the Chicago and Austrian schools have all seen better days, and in those days seemed more Jewish than they are now. Might we theorize that the ethnic composition of an intellectual enterprise shifting from Jewish to Irish is akin to rats leaving a sinking ship?
For those wondering about Armenians, Armen Alchian of the Chicagoite colony at UCLA is matched today by Lee Ohanian (damn, just an apostrophe away from Irish!). While Alchian worked with Harold Demsetz, Ohanian writes with Harold Cole, another Anglo surname. Daron Acemoglu was born in Turkey but is ethnically Armenian and teaches at the Salt Pole university MIT. Economists in America are increasingly foreign, which may make my hypothesis less and less relevant as time goes on. Among those extra-ethnic economists is Narayana Kocherlakota, who might suggest that I have no idea what I’m talking about.
Entitled to an Opinion 
November 5, 2009 at 12:28 am
Trouble is, if you’re reduced to slamming those with the last name of “Cochrane”; that doesn’t leave you much room to support someone called “Cochran” does it?
November 5, 2009 at 1:00 am
I’m proud to say I’m about 1/3 Armenian, fwiw.
November 5, 2009 at 3:40 am
So are you jewish?
November 5, 2009 at 4:46 am
Reminds me of a topic I think should be resolvable but is unresolved: Is the outsized intellectual accomplishments of Jews particularized in the Shtetl-to-Cosmopolitan 20th century ashkenazi jews such as Einstein, Feynman, and Landau -or is it more universalized to Jews over time and geography (Maimonedes, Spinoza, etc.)?
Sort of like, were Anglos functionally hegemonic since the Elizabethan era, or did it start more recently in the Victorian or post WWII era?
November 5, 2009 at 6:03 am
(Maimonedes, Spinoza, etc.)?
Can you continue the list? How long could you make it? I think that answers your question.
November 5, 2009 at 7:16 am
I have no opinion on the “Hebes to Hibernians” declining intellectual trend, but thanks for the Cochran link. I suppose I’ll get around to reading his book, once I have my university’s library order it. (I’m cheap.)
November 5, 2009 at 9:05 am
I’m not really slamming Cochrane or those other Chicagoans, I don’t have the domain competence to notice fatal errors obvious to Delong. But it does seem to me that they do not have the intellectual prestige that prior Chicagoites did.
Greg Cochran thinks the Sephardic Jews were more intelligent than their neighbors, but because they lived in the Muslim world their neighbors weren’t as bright as Europeans (pre-diaspora Jews were not considered notable for their wits, though Greeks were). I think he also said that they were not as highly segregated into white-collar occupatiosn as Ashkenazi Jews were.
Were Anglos hegemonic since the Elizabethan era? For some reason I thought France was the dominant power once Spain declined.
Fwl, no I’m Scottish & Irish.
November 5, 2009 at 10:33 am
It’s not particularly surprising that the Jewish percentage in various fields has declined. It just mirrors a gradual decline in the nation’s Jewish population, what with intermarriage and other demographic changes.
I would suspect that many of the Irish-surnamed economists and others are IINO (Irish In Name Only). Most probably have other ethnicities in their backgrounds and have little if any Irish ethnic identity.
Peter
November 5, 2009 at 9:47 pm
TGGP,
Maybe hegemonic is the wrong word. I’m thinking chess. When did it simply become x-moves to a win?
I recall reading that the anglos efficiently spread Newton’s mathematical innovations for their competitive advantage, but the Spanish Armada was a couple generations before that.
There’s a famous sea battle during the Spanish Armada (I forget the name) where it seems to me the British demonstrated an advantage in technology and strategic intelligence, that I don’t think the anglosphere has ceded.
As for pre- modernity jews, Christianity itself is probably the best indicator of jewish intelligence, if viewed as a constructed ideology. There’s also the creation of capitalist networks: I think it’s hard to get a bead on how good jews were at capitalism and media manipulation prior to the 20th century.
It’s true that the greek geniuses weren’t crowded out of their space by jewish competition, but the greek and roman gods were toppled by a jewish one.
So I still consider it unresolved whether jewish “genius” is particular or universal.
There’s also women. Their changing status seems a bit mysterious to me too -given the many ways they can outcompete men in the present. The mainstream explanations I’ve read don’t seem intuitively plausible.
In contrast, blacks and indigenous people have behaved and achieved over historical periods of time in a more predictable and intuitive way, it seems to me.
Probably the same with the Irish and the Scottish. They seem to have the stereotypes of average intelligence white folks and smart white folks respectively, both in the USA and in Europe.
November 5, 2009 at 10:05 pm
BTW:
Israel GDP per capita: $28,900
Ireland GDP per capita: $48,640
(both these figures seem to vary by source; but Ireland does tend to beat out Israel)
November 8, 2009 at 7:21 pm
you forgot to include a few outer provinces of Israel in your calculation
NYC, Miami and Beverly Hills
November 8, 2009 at 8:41 pm
I think they were all rich before the founding of Israel. Perhaps we should say Israel is a colony of NYC, Miami and Beverly Hills.
November 5, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Peter:
It just mirrors a gradual decline in the nation’s Jewish population, what with intermarriage and other demographic changes
Good point, I hadn’t thought of that. I did mention the greater numbers of foreign-born economists, but didn’t think about shifts in the composition of native-born whites.
I would suspect that many of the Irish-surnamed economists and others are IINO (Irish In Name Only). Most probably have other ethnicities in their backgrounds and have little if any Irish ethnic identity.
I resemble that remark!
HA:
When did it simply become x-moves to a win?
I don’t think there were some strategic steps taken in the Elizabethan era that resulted in British dominance. I’m reading Greg Clark right now, and the question of “Why England” is a major concern of his. He thinks that the long-lasting stability (it is the “happy isle”) with wealthier folks replacing the poor with their greater descendants is the cause. They had an advantage over China & Japan because they were so filthy that disease kept them at a lower Malthusian maximum population density.
I’m no expert on the armada. I had heard the English had swifter ships, more long-range cannons, and homefront advantage while the Spanish were hit by bad weather.
Christianity is believed to be very Hellenized, borrowing from many tropes common from the pagan cults of that era along with elements from Zoroastrianism. We know that there were many gentile converts when the apostle Paul was around, and his influence is thought to have made the early church less Jewish in character.
It’s not just that Greek geniuses weren’t crowded out by Jewish competition, but that Jews weren’t really that of as competitors way back when. They were just another pastoral tribe among pastoral tribes.
They were noted for their market networks before the 20th century (though not media manipulation until after emancipation as far as I’m aware), but this again seems to have been a post-diaspora phenomena.
I guess men could act collectively to lower the status of women, but its hard to do so when you’re so integrated. The shift away from manual labor to activities requiring more conscientiousness (Cochran suggested that men might becoming more “feminized” as a result of civilization in the audio diavlog) seems to explain a large chunk of it.
Blacks and indigenous people are more separate, less integrated. Everybody has a mother, successful men have wives & often sisters and daughters.
Thorfinn:
A bit surprised by those numbers. I thought Ireland’s economic rise was pretty recent, and its average IQ is supposed to be somewhat low by European standards. Israel’s government is not regarded as very pro-growth, but I had heard it improved a lot around the 70s/80s (with most of its kibbutzes dissolving as a result). Armenia’s per capita GDP is estimated at $6,300. They’ve been free from communism for a while, so I don’t know what they’re excuse is.
November 5, 2009 at 11:11 pm
I remember in an internet debate noting Israel’s relatively low per capita GDP -beyond what could be accounted for by “it’s due to non-jews” –but maybe not beyond what could be accounted for by “it’s non-ashkenazis”.
At the same time, a popular statistic I’ve heard is that Israel has more publicly traded companies on US stock exchanges than any country except Canada.
And apparently Israel doesn’t just have the most engineers per capita, it holds that record by a ridiculous margin, dwarfing the 2nd place country (USA).
I’ll also note the average (and median) jew or anglo is probably very dumb compared to our popular notions of a smart, successful person (someone smart enough to be a university professor in a professional field, such as a professor of finance or neurology). I think ashkenazi jews have an IQ of 105-110 as average or median, and professors tend to be 125+?
I’m guessing our cohort is 140 territory.
Yeah this is overreductionist, so I’m writing more about my intuitions than facts here.
November 5, 2009 at 11:49 pm
Hopefully Anonymous,
Sephardic and Mizrahi (not to mention Yemeni, Ethopian, and Cochin) Jews probably do pull down the average.
Another puzzle is that there are plenty of Israeli tech start ups, but few brands or large companies. For some reason, you don’t see senior managers build up institutions. Which is a little surprising, as one of the biggest determinants of corporation size is society-level trust.
TGGP,
Keep in mind Armenia has had poor relations with Turkey, it’s biggest border, and is landlocked to boot. Much of its economy is managed by a handful of families in an oligarchic fashion. Yet it’s still managed something like five-fold growth in the last fifteen years.
November 6, 2009 at 11:20 am
Shouldn’t such rapid growth be a warning sign rather than a signal of robustness?
November 6, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Thor,
What comparatively sized nation has more brands or large companies?
If seen as an ashkenazisphere, rather than an Israelisphere, I suspect they’re doing pretty good.
At the same time, I think it’s a failure of Ashkenazi social technology (or maybe a success of Anglo countersocial technology) that the Israeli Ashkenzis have failed to turn their geographic neighbors into a peaceful worker and consumer population. I think there’s an old joke that Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia should be natural allies, since they respectively have the technology, population, and natural resources to be a superpower.
November 6, 2009 at 8:55 pm
“What comparatively sized nation has more brands or large companies?”
Sweden: Ikea, Volvo, H&M, Ericsson, Saab, etc. I can’t think of even one Israeli brand or large company. What are some large companies in Israel?
November 6, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Switzerland is of Israel’s size, and certainly has a lot more big companies, and famous brands: Rolex, Omega, Swatch, TAG Heuer, Credit Suisse, UBS, Nestlé, Novartis…
November 8, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Watches, Banks, Chocolate and Drugs, they’re definitely onto something
November 6, 2009 at 9:22 pm
I read a bit about Armenia’s economy & history in Wikipedia. It noted they’d had really fast growth, but also poor governance. Under the influence of Clark, I’m inclined to view institutions as endogenous and so still wonder what the deal is.
Israel is minority Ashkenazi (by a slim margin, I think), but it is said to be dominated by them like Singapore is by ethnic Chinese. On the other hand, I’ve heard some claim that it is the government which is dominated by Ashkenazi while the business sector is more Sephardic, just as Afrikaaners dominated the S.A government and the English ran the businesses.
I’m surprised Japan doesn’t have more engineers per capita. They’re supposed to be substituting robots for a servant class.
A country where the average person was neurology prof level would be…quite out of the ordinary.
I’m guessing our cohort is 140 territory.
Are you talking about us blogosphere shit-kickers? I took an internet version of Raven’s Progressive Matrices once and was about +1 SD. My SAT is 1460, ACT is 34, there are formulas use to translate that into IQ and I think they’re below that.
Thorfinn:
I concur on organization size. Countries like Italy have lots of small firms. Scott Shane made that point in response to the NYT Economix bloggers a little while back.
melendwyr:
Was England’s rapid growth starting with the industrial revolution a warning sign? Was it warning sign for Hong Kong?
H.A:
I like your joke. It reminds me of Huntington’s discussion of why the islamic civilization does not have a “core” state. Lots of different states have reasons to make the claim, but none has the whole package over others.
I don’t doubt a lot of successful Israeli brands exist, but I can’t name any of the top of my head.
An interesting interview on business innovation in Israel appeared in the Atlantic recently.
November 6, 2009 at 9:51 pm
I tried finding information on large Israeli companies, but they don’t seem to exist. It seems that most, if not all, small Western European countries have more well-known brands and large enterprises.
Fukuyama argued in his “Trust” that societies with low levels of trust among strangers cannot easily build large multinational companies. In such countries, the big companies are usually wedded to the state. The defense contractor Israel Aerospace Industries seems to be the largest company in Israel.
November 6, 2009 at 10:18 pm
TGGP,
I can’t name any of the top of my head.
Then they don’t exist.
JL,
Looking into it, it does appear that Israel is a distrusting society. 56% say you cannot trust others–those are Italy/South Korea type numbers. I had assumed otherwise; it’s possible that the amount of diverse geographical and linguistic background of Jews all over the world beats out IDF-unity.
HA,
Lack of ties to Arabs really hurts exports in particular, as geography is a huge determinant of trade. Belgium for instance has seven times as many exports as Israel; but an economy less than twice as large. Belgium is Israel’s second largest trade partner (diamonds) but Israel doesn’t rank very high for Belgium.
They really should give the Arabs whatever land they like; and start taking over the middleman merchant role across the region. This is a niche now being filled by Turks and Lebanese.
November 7, 2009 at 2:01 am
I’m surprised my comment on large companies and brands emerging out of the ashkenazisphere went unoticed.
Judging the ashkenazisphere using Israel might be a bit like judging the Anglosphere with Australia. I’m not sure Israel is where the primary ashkenazi talent went.
November 7, 2009 at 10:45 am
Regarding Israel and Armenia, comparative advantage is also probably a factor when looking at the relative economic success of Jews/Armenians in Western countries versus in their own countries.
Being classic “middle-man minorities” and having great abilities and talents pertaining to such a group can translate into great wealth in countries without as strong a native middle-man class. If you’re in, say, a country with a large, successful economy and you’re more able than the native middlemen and can outcompete them, then you would make a huge fortune as a financial intermediary handling/trading financial assets that have great value from the underlying economic activity to which they are claims.
November 7, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Sailer says armenians can really rack up the dough as long as they are not in Armenia. This is consistent with high /g/ and relatively modest cooperation/trust. The latter is a large-scale property of groups. It’s not like you can be highly cooperative/trusting by yourself and therefore prosper far beyond the median in your low-cooperation society – quite the opposite.
> As for pre- modernity jews, Christianity itself is probably the best indicator of jewish intelligence
I would point to Job, the Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes, which are the greatest written works in the world to me (and to Nietzsche and Mencken). A slightly better legacy than Marx, Freud, and Boas, I’d say! I used to think this might imperil the Cochran-Harpending theory, but I’m not sure. The Book of Job may not be all that /g/-loaded. It may have more to do with the sort of idealism that made Marx, Freud, and Boas so /g/-oozingly stupid. Let us breed our idiot-savant ashkenazi to the most prosaic, utilitarian, and empirical scotch and english empiricists available, then we will have a happy lineage.
November 7, 2009 at 12:55 pm
By written works, I meant specifically works of art.
November 7, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Might we theorize that the ethnic composition of an intellectual enterprise shifting from Jewish to Irish is akin to rats leaving a sinking ship?
I’m not sure. Weren’t many Buckleyites in the 1950’s and 60’s Irish?
Interestingly, the Buckley Golden Age was notable for its comparative paucity of Northern WASPs. I recall an article in Taki’s which noted how Rothbard was perplexed by how poorly represented WASPs were in the early National Review days.
November 7, 2009 at 3:47 pm
This is all that remains of the article I remebered:
http://www.takimag.com/site/flag/46805
Entry: WASPy conservative non-WASPs
Link: http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/waspy_conservative_non_wasps#46805
Post contents:
The old Protestant Right (I don’t want to use the term WASP) may not be completely dead, though it may be comatose. The late Murray Rothbard was taken aback by the paucity of Protestant intellectuals and leaders in the postwar Right. Certainly the great mass of GOP voters are still Protestant, but they don’t have much influence over the big issues like foreign policy. There are some exceptions in the western world: the current Tory PM of Canada, Stephen Harper, is a Protestant evangelical who cannot be fitted into neo- or paleo- categories. If Protestant conservatives wrote more books and articles, and thus reversed a 50 year intellectual decline, perhaps they’d give the neocons a run for their money.
Sent at: 2009 11 07
November 7, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Entry: WASPy conservative non-WASPs
Link: http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/waspy_conservative_non_wasps#46805
Post contents:
The old Protestant Right (I don’t want to use the term WASP) may not be completely dead, though it may be comatose. The late Murray Rothbard was taken aback by the paucity of Protestant intellectuals and leaders in the postwar Right. Certainly the great mass of GOP voters are still Protestant, but they don’t have much influence over the big issues like foreign policy. There are some exceptions in the western world: the current Tory PM of Canada, Stephen Harper, is a Protestant evangelical who cannot be fitted into neo- or paleo- categories. If Protestant conservatives wrote more books and articles, and thus reversed a 50 year intellectual decline, perhaps they’d give the neocons a run for their money.
Sent at: 2009 11 07
November 7, 2009 at 5:34 pm
To whoever is comparing Israel with Switzerland: Israel is 60 years old as a country and its high-tech economy is less than half that. Swiss companies like Novartis can trace their institutional history back to the mid 18th century.
A reason you might not know of any Israeli brands is the prevalence of anti-semitism and and anti-zionism is not conducive to building global consumer brands. Most Israeli companies are thus technology providers to larger companies where that is not a factor. Ie, I know an Israeli CEO of a company that provides imaging software to Japanese camera companies; the company has offices in Israel and Ireland as well as the US and (I think) Romania. You’ve never heard of his company but there’s a good chance you’ve used their software. He’s married to an Irishwoman for what that’s worth.
November 7, 2009 at 6:06 pm
The apologetics for Israel’s economy are getting a little ridiculous.
Just compare it to Finland, which has an economy about the size of Israel, despite the fact that Israel has 50% more people. It also has a number of large companies and brands–some of which, like Nokia, are international superstars.
Israel has no Nokia. Even among new tech companies, which are new worldwide, there is no Google, Microsoft, or Apple. There are few large companies within Israel–which you can’t blame anti-semitism for.
Yet this is exactly what you’d expect if you knew that Finland was a high-trust society and Israel was low-trust. Israel is rich in human capital and smarts, but severely lacks in social and organizational capital. That’s why they, like the Armenians, do better abroad where they can specialize. They would be better off with more MBAs and fewer engineers per capita.
November 7, 2009 at 6:07 pm
I was working on a cuttingly sarcastic reply for you about Israel. Unfortunately, I first looked up the par-cap GDP of Israel in wolfram alpha, and it is still climbing sharply and has been for decades, so you’re right.
November 7, 2009 at 6:10 pm
My above message was for Traven. But Finland’s per cap is growing like heck too:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=finland+gdp+per+capita
Does that look like it could possibly be in constant dollars, though? I think not. You’d think wolfram would be cool enough to put thing in constant dollars – and make sure to say so.
November 7, 2009 at 6:11 pm
OK, this says $5,000 per capita for the USA in 1970. Obviously not constant dollars (LAME!).
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=usa+gdp+per+capita
November 7, 2009 at 7:18 pm
I’m not sure I can see why Israel needs to apologize for not being Finland or Switzerland.
The number of unsupported assumptions in your postings is rather high. Let’s see:
– big companies are inherently preferable to networks of small companies;
– there is something cultural differentiator of high-trust vs low-trust;
– Israel is low-trust;
– high-trust cultures tend to create large corporations compared to low-trust.
All of these seem highly questionable if not completely backwards. For instance, big corporations are not a sign of a high-trust culture. It takes more trust to organize economic activity via market transactions than via the command structure of a corporation, so this seems backwards (of course there are many other factors that determine the size of corporations).
The real parameter of interest is not “trust” but how willing people are to link their fate to the large institutions of society, that is, collectivism vs. individualism, with people who are “company men” considered collectivist. Japan and Finland rank high on this scale. Israel is an interesting case because the founding generation was extremely collectivist, to the point where for a few decades there were viable voluntary collective agricultural settlements, and had a high degree of loyalty and service to the state. Later generations of immigrants did not share these values, and in particular the Russian Jews had an antipathy to collectivism based on their Soviet experience. This fueled the more entrepreneurial Israeli culture we see today.
November 7, 2009 at 7:56 pm
No one said Israel or Armenia needs to apologize. We are just analyzing why it is like it is. Personally I don’t give a damn about money. Some of what you call unsupported assumption were supported above. As for the high trust low trust measure, it wasn’t invented on this thread; there are publications about it.
November 7, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Another thought is ashkenazi israelis perhaps should be judged more like Botswana Anglos than Finlanders or Swiss. They’re a large minority within their sovereign nation, not a supermajority population.
November 7, 2009 at 8:34 pm
It occurs to me that Singapore Chinese (which someone mentioned earlier) is probably a very good comparison point.
November 7, 2009 at 8:43 pm
mtraven, nations like Japan or Finland may or may not be more collectivist in some respects than Israel, but that’s orthogonal to what we’re discussing here. The US, the UK, and the Netherlands, for example, are traditionally considered to be very individualistic societies, yet all of them have managed to build large numbers of huge private enterprises, just like the famously collectivist Japan. Clearly, individualism and collectivism in the sense you talk about have nothing to do with it.
Fukuyama’s thesis is that in low-trust societies people tend to trust only the members of their extended family, which makes it difficult to turn family businesses into larger companies. In high-trust societies, he argues, people outside the nuclear family are treated pretty much the same whether they are kin or not, which has led to lots of voluntary associations of non-kin, including big corporations.
Incidentally, I don’t think large companies are “inherently preferable” to small ones. I’m just interested in finding out why Israel has so few large businesses despite the famous Jewish commercial acumen. Fukuyama’s theory is a possible explanation.
November 7, 2009 at 9:00 pm
JL,
It seems like Israel successfully creates nonfamily businesses, with corporate structure based on technocratic/competency rather than kinship networks. It’s that they sell out successful start-ups rather than grow them into global companies. I’m not sure the three things are related (global brands, large corporations, and counterintuitively low per capita gdp -the third on that list seems the most separable from the others).
November 7, 2009 at 10:11 pm
HA,
TGGP’s link suggests that many business enterprises form between IDF buddies, which are kinship networks in another way.
The link between global brands and large corporations seems obvious–you need a large company to sell overseas and gain brand appeal–but you’re right that there is no definite link between this and low GDP/capita, though I think there are some suggestive links (large Galbraithian firms can use their brands and market power to generate profits).
But the important thing is that these are all salient facts about Israeli economy and society, and don’t require apology.
November 7, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Per capita GDP in OECD Low Trust societies:
South Korea: $16,470
Italy: $30,340
High Trust:
Japan: $35,590
Finland: $36,800
November 8, 2009 at 12:00 am
As someone with extensive experience living and working in both Korean and Japan, I’m unconvinced by the various studies and arguments from people like Fukuyama that split Korea and Japan into low and high trust societies, respectively. They could just as easily be reversed. I think Fukuyama and others categorize S Korea and Japan in this way partly because it fits their claims and theories better, not because it really works.
November 8, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Becker’s comment seems intuitively plausible to me, though I don’t have any data to back it up. It’s a wild intuition mismatch for me to call South Korea a “low trust” society, compared to almost any other society.
November 7, 2009 at 10:28 pm
JL — are you implying that Israel’s technology sector is organized around kinship lines? That’s completely absurd. We aren’t talking about Hasid diamond dealers here.
The individualism of Anglo cultural is vastly overstated. There is an individualist streak, to be sure, and it’s economically important, but the majority of the citizens of the US and UK are obedient corporate drones just like the rest of the industrialized world. The culture of big corporations is not a place where individualists thrive.
November 7, 2009 at 11:00 pm
^ That’s a lot less convincing than an empirical examination of individualism, however imperfect, using surveys.
November 8, 2009 at 11:33 am
The Inductivist used some surveys to analyze the connection between trust and wealth of nations. The only wealthy low-trust nations were France, Finland and Singapore.
Doug, your point about the complementary character of middlemen reminded me of Steve Sailer’s point that the U.S is lucky to have a “market dominant majority” rather than minority, a role middlemen often take. There should be gains from trade, but we tend to see cognitive elites congregating in wealthy countries, and more specifically major cities within those countries. It would seem there are a lot of spillover effects from having a community full of them, and from that we might have expected more from Israel.
On the distinction between the Israelisphere and the ashkenazisphere: Yuri Slezkine wrote of a revolt by young Jews against Jewishness, with the Zionists attempting to redefine Jews as Appollonians. Becoming agriculturalists, forming kibbutzes and forming a strong military were all explicitly conceived of as rejecting their previous way of life. Today the kibbutzes are fading away, but they are still supported as important to their defenses and former kibbutzniks are said to be very influential in politics today. That could explain a bit why we see such economic differences today.
I used to like the book of Job a lot when I was religious, but now I just see it as something I could grab onto to rationalize my belief in belief in a deity that came to resemble Azathoth. I’m inclined to think both the Bible and Atlas Shrugged are greatly overrated as literary works because their devotees have wrapped up their aesthetic and ideological/religious attachments to them.
mtraven:
It’s pretty well established that richer countries tend to have more big businesses as a share of their economy. That’s what my Scott Shane link was getting at. We don’t necessarily have to like it. I don’t like that government spending tends to increase as countries get richer and technology advances, but empirically that seems to be the case. As other commenters pointed out, we aren’t just talking out of our ass when it comes to trust (although I was doing just that in the original post). If you’re going to critique that it would be best to present some evidence or cite some arguments showing that body of literature to be mistaken.
My statement about an “excuse” could plausibly be read as requiring an apology, but I was just being snarky.
I don’t know if IDF buddies should be considered “kinship”. I bet many businesses in high-trust countries are created by university buddies.
I had previously scoffed when people said Arabs/Muslims were second-class citizens in Israel because they weren’t subject to conscription, but if the IDF really does dominate the economy as much as suggested in the linked interview, there may be some truth to that. I think they are allowed to enlist voluntarily, but I’m not sure.
JL says that individualism leads to large corporations (not connected to the state) citing the Anglosphere as an example. Then mtraven denies that they’re all that individualistic because of their large corporations! That kind of argument isn’t going to get anywhere. Is there an available metric of individualism that could be agreed upon to compare nations?
Razib just put up a post at SB GNXP that might be relevant.
November 8, 2009 at 10:04 pm
we aren’t just talking out of our ass when it comes to trust…
I didn’t notice any citations to anything except Fukuyama. I haven’t read his book but from the summaries I’ve seen on the web in seems like unsupported garbage. Is there some objective way to measure “trust”, or is it merely based on cultural stereotyping? If you think, like Fukuyama apparently does, that the existence of large American companies like Wal-mart, AT&T, GM, IBM, or any others is based on some kind of magic cultural trust pixie dust then your experience of corporations is sadly limited.
Corporate organization is derived from military models, so the examples given of supposedly “high-trust” cultures that produce large corporations (Japan, Germany, and the US) suggests a much simpler explanation — these cultures are also among the most highly militarized (averaged over their recent history if not at the moment). Of course Israel also heavily militarized, so it’s not that simple. Israel’s military culture is relatively recent and less hierarchical than the others so perhaps that has something to do with it.
November 8, 2009 at 12:30 pm
“JL — are you implying that Israel’s technology sector is organized around kinship lines?”
A small firm can be easily supervised by its owners, who typically also manage the firm. So the question of trust does not really enter the picture here. Fukuyama’s argument is that low-trust countries can build large corporations, but only through heavy government involvement.
November 8, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Atlas Shrugged is both under- and over-appreciated, depending on whether people approve or disapprove of Rand’s ideas.
November 8, 2009 at 8:28 pm
The usual stats do say South Korea is a low-trust society (Samsung is a big business, but on the other hand lots of rioting). I think those tend to rely on surveying the attitudes of its citizens. Maybe we could look at “ease of doing business” surveys that might be less affected by the way different cultures answer questions?
We would expect A.S to be under-appreciated by those with ideological objections, but I think they are far less likely to have an opinion one way or the other and bother to read the book. Same thing for the Bible.
In the comments here Razib brings up the idea the Jews had the last laugh on the Romans via Christianity.
November 8, 2009 at 9:47 pm
In some non-obscure source long ago, I’ve seen corruption stats presented on a map, which were gotten by asking international businesspeople. Many of whom I presume had done business in a lot of countries. That would be a good methodology and perhaps it’s been done for trust.
T, you did read the King James Version right? Other stuff doesn’t cut it. Those King James thugz knew how to rap it.
A lot of people may get a religious thing out of the Hebrew bible, but only Nietzsche and Mencken called it literally beyond comparison with anything else written. They weren’t believers, but rather polemicists against christian faith (but worshippers of christian religious culture). Actually, I don’t know of anyone else who has claimed that there is one literally incomparable work of written art.
I’m a lifelong agnostic (and not a brink-of-faith one), so I never had that kind of thing going with the bible.
November 8, 2009 at 11:28 pm
I think followers are generally not as bright as originators, regardless of ethnicity, and hot new fields/art forms become old and boring. Modern physicists aren’t as prestigious as physicists from the 1920s, for example. And all TV shows end up jumping the shark or at least losing popularity if they’re on long enough, even if the people responsible for them don’t change. 2009 Trey Parker is less prestigious than 1997 Trey Parker.
November 9, 2009 at 12:05 am
mtraven:
I know other social scientists have furthered Fukuyama’s theme. I cited the Inductivist, who used the World Values Survey to find that richer countries are more trusting (and within the U.S northerners & whites are more trusting). You can check it out yourself. Israeli & Armenian respondents to the WVS had below average levels of trust. I already cited Scott Shane on richer countries having more big businesses. I don’t think your point about militarization is completely off. I think a more docile, atomized populace not characterized by feuding clans are more conducive to large impersonal organizations, whether corporations or states. Steve Sailer has noted that crime families are family-based because criminals can’t distrust others and being able to trust a partner in a deal greatly lowers transaction costs. One way to think about it is that people under effective states are like domesticated animals. A wild animal always has to be alert, but the domesticated animal can depend on its owner looking after it and so doesn’t have to take due diligence itself.
Eric, yes, I read from King James. I haven’t read many that try to stay faithful to the Hebrew original, but supposedly it’s quite different in style.
coldequation, I made the same point even before Jason Richwine did.
The international survey I was alluding to was Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. I think it is utilized in the Ease of Doing Business Index.
November 9, 2009 at 8:20 pm
The Scott Shane piece says nothing about trust.
The trust metric used by Inductivist is based on a single survey question, which is approximately worthless as a cross-cultural indicator (as the first commenter there points out rather well). Sorry, just not seeing a whole lot of there there. I mean, if somebody asked me a stupid question like “Can you trust people?” with a 1-bit answer, I have no idea how I’d answer but I guarantee you that it would be meaningless. Probably I’d laugh at it and refuse to answer.
Data is good to have, but it seems hopeless to try to pack a complex social phenomenon like “trust” into a single variable.
November 9, 2009 at 1:09 am
“If a translation gives a present tense when the original gives a past, or a past when it has a present; a perfect for a future, or a [… [……] …..] […….] a verb for a noun, or a noun for a verb, it is clear that verbal inspiration is as much overlooked as if it had no existence. THE WORD OF GOD IS MADE VOID BY THE TRADITIONS OF MEN.”
November 9, 2009 at 3:06 am
Such were the words of American literal translator Dr. Young. In reading him, I found that nearly all the ideas and tropes seem to be in the original. But there’s no way to see whether the choice of words in the original was as good as that in the KJV, unless you read Hebrew. Actually, it would help a lot to BE an ancient Hebrew. I think the KJV would barely suffer if redone under Young’s strictures – by the KJV people. The main problem with Dr Young’s translation is that Dr Young made it. Maybe there are better literal versions than his.
November 9, 2009 at 10:02 am
Eddie Murphy is Irish?
November 9, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Traven, I’ll join you on the survey-skeptic side of things.
TGGP is a “realized preference” man. Which is a little like behaviorism. Caplan doesn’t like going all the way with this, pointing out that most people do have unrealized desires. I’m not certain TGGP would disagree with that asterisk, so maybe they agree. But TGGP still probably thinks it’s just an asterisk and realized preferences are more important (for example, you care more about your cat being well fed than people in very poor foreign countries).
So, the above is not out of keeping with my view either, and lab psych would have carry more weight with me than surveys. Of course it can be criticized regarding its “ecological validity” (or invalidity). Fieldwork with stuff like leaving wallets on the sidewalk can get around that criticism and is interesting (though that’s trustworthiness, not trust itself). But of course it’s far, far harder to standardize.
November 9, 2009 at 10:04 pm
It’s tough to pack something complex like social trust into data, that’s true.
But I still haven’t heard of a single Israeli brand; nor have I heard any other convincing reasons why the Israel doesn’t have them; nor any reason why the country seems to do worse than you might expect.
November 9, 2009 at 11:34 pm
“realized preference” – is that like the Austrians’ revealed preference? if so, I thought TGGP hated the Austrians.
November 10, 2009 at 12:00 am
Yeah, that’s what I meant.
November 10, 2009 at 12:49 am
mtraven:
You’re right that Scott Shane didn’t talk about trust. His point was about the size of the small business sector in rich vs poor countries. The Inductivist made the connection between trust and how rich a country is.
Perhaps your answer wouldn’t mean much for you. But in the aggregate, if more people from group A say you can trust people while more people in group B says you can’t be too careful, if I have no priors contradicting it my guess would be the reason for the difference is that group A is more trusting. From what I can tell, areas where people are trusting have lower rates of corruption and groups that are trusting have lower crime rates (and presumably tend to interact more with more trustworthy people). That’s some evidence to me that the results are meaningful, though I admit cultural differences in how questions are answered could be adding significant noise.
Data is good to have, but it seems hopeless to try to pack a complex social phenomenon like “trust” into a single variable.
Could a rank-ordering be made of countries by how trusting their citizenry is? Doesn’t seem implausible to me.
I am in general a positivist and have behaviorist leanings (though I recognize it has short-comings, and recommend Steve Pinker’s “How the Mind Works” for a discussion of experiments supporting a computational model). I discount introspection a lot more than Caplan does (Robin Hanson also faults him on that respect), though I agree with his point that admissions against interest are more credible than self-serving statements.
Leaving wallets on the ground would be better. I don’t know what international data on that there is.
I don’t really hate Austrians. I’ve probably read more from the Austrian school than any of their rivals, if only because (having failed to make much headway in academia) they have put so much focus on evangelizing to laymen. I do think their epistemology is awful.
Eddie Murphy is a black Irishman, like Matt Dillon and Phil Lynott.
November 10, 2009 at 12:50 pm
I do think their epistemology is awful.
If you think their epistemology is awful, then you must think their economics is awful. Because their entire economics are derived from their strict epistemology.
November 10, 2009 at 10:05 am
I do think their epistemology is awful.
well if you think that their epistemology is awful, i can’t see how you wouldn’t think that their economics is awful. their entire economics is built upon their rather strict epistemology.
November 10, 2009 at 11:25 am
Can you tell me where you got the info about armenians being successful? Not that I’m doubting you but I am curious to see it for myself.
November 10, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Mark:
~(((~a)^(a->b))->(~b))
It is not the case that denying a premise entails denying the conclusion.
Ayn Rand insisted that people not just agree with her on capitalism but also on aesthetics, ethics, epistemology and so on. Most libertarians (including Austrians) would disagree.
Fwl, some googling turned up this.
November 10, 2009 at 9:34 pm
It is not the case that denying a premise entails denying the conclusion.
Ok. But as far as I can tell, you haven’t arrived at a view of economics similar to that of the Austrians through different premises or epistemology (such as empiricism or something). It’s not even clear whether you hold any positions on economics similar to the Austrians in the first place.
November 11, 2009 at 11:56 pm
How much do you know about my economic views?
It should be noted that Murray Rothbard could not derive the income and substitution effects from the basis he claimed was the only appropriate one and had to borrow them from mainstream neoclassical economics on an ad hoc basis. It is because of their similarities to mainstream economics that I can share many of their beliefs. The left wing of economists snip at texts like “Economics in One Lesson” and the economic beliefs of libertarians more generally as mere “Econ 101”, lacking the sophisticated nuances you learn in higher level courses. Evolutionary biologists do not think of creationism as “biology 101”.
November 13, 2009 at 3:40 am
It is because of their similarities to mainstream economics that I can share many of their beliefs.
So do you just follow mainstream neoclassical econ for the most part?
The left wing of economists snip at texts like “Economics in One Lesson” and the economic beliefs of libertarians more generally as mere “Econ 101″, lacking the sophisticated nuances you learn in higher level courses. Evolutionary biologists do not think of creationism as “biology 101″.
Not sure what exactly you meant by this. Could you explain? Thanks.
November 14, 2009 at 2:27 pm
TGGP,
Are you a free trader or a trade protectionist?
November 15, 2009 at 4:25 pm
My general heuristic is to accept that I am probably not smarter than the expert consensus and to consider their conclusions the most likely. I don’t put much stock in conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial, perpetual motion, rejection of anthropocentric global warming, creationism/intelligent design, or protectionism. I accept that the expert consensus can be wrong, so I don’t necessarily have strong commitments to particular beliefs.
November 15, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Nice articulation of the general heuristic of our cohort.
November 15, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Who is “our cohort”?
UPDATE: Robin Hanson’s most recent is very much on topic here. I admit to giving credence to “the experts who have considered question X” though as Hanson notes it can be gamed to exclude all but devotees of a theory.
November 16, 2009 at 5:23 pm
The people who use (or aspire to use) that general heuristic.
As for gaming, there’s no neat solution -it can always occur at the level of “who is an expert on x”. But there’s lots of space for more empirical inquiry in this area.
November 15, 2009 at 10:56 pm
so do you believe that race, gender, etc. is a “social construct”?
November 16, 2009 at 12:00 am
As it happens, I recently had an argument about that here.
November 24, 2009 at 12:26 pm
>>”He was the only Jew on the comedy team, which he explained was like an NBA team with just one black dude. The list of other names sounded more like a St. Patrick’s day arrest lineup.”
The modern SNL is not very funny because the current crop of people in front of the camera (which includes a number of Jews) are not as funny as the originals. A futher problem is that the modern show is PC, while the old show was exuberantly not.
I’ve looked up the full list of current writers on the show, which you might have done before writing this, and it’s not a very Irish list.
Humor is a matter of taste, of course, but Jewish humor has never struck me as being very amusing. It’s all overly intellectual (Mel Brooks) or overly parochial (Seinfeld). You end up thinking to yourself “Oh, yes, that’s funny” and smiling, rather than laughing from the gut.
The Stevospheres odd anti-Irish fetish is a subject for further study.
November 24, 2009 at 12:30 pm
>>”Brad Delong & Paul Krugman have been complaining about the decline of the Chicago School recently”
Recently? They are philosophically opposed to Chicago School economics and always have been. This reminds me of the way modern liberals like to long for the days of Reagan, Goldwater, and WFB. It’s just a way of taking a shot at the opponents of modern liberalism.
November 24, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Here is the current list of SNL writers, taken from the SNL website. It makes a mockery of your post.
Akiva Schaffer
Alex Baze
Bryan Tucker
Christine Nangle
Colin Jost
Doug Abeles
Emily Spivey
Erik Kenward
Hannibal Buress
James Anderson
Jessica Conrad
Jim Downey
John Lutz
John Mulaney
John Solomon
Jorma Taccone
Kent Sublette
Marika Sawyer
Michael Patrick O’Brien
Rob Klein
Ryan Perez
Seth Meyers
Simon Rich
Steve Higgins
November 24, 2009 at 1:39 pm
That’s an interesting concept, that jewish humor isn’t gut-bustingly funny.
Ranking subpopulations by humor, I think (Sicilian?) Italians are probably the funniest Americans, at least from the 1980s on (Anthony Cumia, Adam Carolla, Howard Stern, Artie Lange, among others).
I’d follow them with Wasps, Scots, Irish, Scot-Irish, Jews, and Black Americans, although I’m not sure the order.
Jews can be extremely gut-bustingly funny (check out Marc Maron’s WTF podcast) but I think they’re harmed by the power unfunny jews have in the media and culture.
Not many jewish comediens have apparently felt they had the cover to say something about Abe Foxman like Chris Rock did about Mayor Barry “The mayor’s black. The mayor smokes crack.”
If a Jew can’t beat Mel Gibson’s father to the alleged line “No jews died in the Holocaust. They all moved to Brooklyn.” then the notion that jews are the funniest people in the planet is going to take a hit, IMO.
Though to their credit, jewish comics seem to me to be shedding their politically correct shackles regarding jokes about jews, probably since around the time George W. Bush’s administration went south in public opinion.
November 24, 2009 at 10:46 pm
flenser:
The SNL episode I was referencing probably aired over a decade ago.
As it happens, I like both Mel Brooks and Seinfeld. I’ve never heard the the former described as “overly-intellectual”. A lot of his humor is rather broad.
The Stevospheres odd anti-Irish fetish is a subject for further study.
I don’t know about the rest, but I guess I’m just a self-hating Irishman.
I’d never heard of Anthony Cumia or Marc Maron. I don’t know much about Howard Stern, but I know he’s Jewish. If I was going to be naming the top Italian/Sicilian comedians I probably wouldn’t have thought of Carrolla or Lange.
I hadn’t heard the joke about the Holocaust/Brooklyn. Something like that does seem to be the thesis of denierbud.
November 30, 2009 at 7:58 pm
>>”I don’t know about the rest, but I guess I’m just a self-hating Irishman.”
I don’t know or care what you are, guy. I’m just pointing out that you are factually wrong.
Steve Sailer had an odd anti-Irish post up not long ago. Again, it’s not just that two seconds wih google proved his central contention wrong. Clicking on his own links proved his central contention wrong!
I find it curious when people I know to be quite intelligent and careful with the facts and research (you and Steve both) make such mistakes.
I had the misfortune to see a Mel Brooks movie recently – “Dracula: Dead And Loving It”. I’ve had root canals that were more entertaining. The man is not funny!
December 1, 2009 at 11:35 pm
I’ve never seen that movie, partly because I assumed it sucked.
The day after thanksgiving I mentioned the claim that Mel Brooks’ humor is “too intellectual” to my co-workers. They all thought that ridiculous, but they might have merely been in a guffawing mood since we had been cracking each other up with bits from Spaceballs through most of the lunch.
November 25, 2009 at 1:13 am
If I’m not mistaken, Howard Stern’s mother is Italian. His humor seems to me to be most in common with that of prominent Italian American comics like Cumia, Lange, and Carolla.
November 25, 2009 at 1:44 am
Wikipedia says both his parents are Jewish though he claims to be half-Italian.
November 25, 2009 at 4:46 am
I do remember hearing more recently claims that Stern’s lying about his mom being a non-jewish italian.
I’d be surprised if that’s true because I’ve heard him claim a non-jewish italian mother many times. I think there’d be a more mainstream debunking (like there was for Carlos Mencia) than a wikipedia page writeup.
November 25, 2009 at 5:57 pm
I checked out the wikipedia article and it does sound authoritative.
This may sound like an italians-are-the-funniest-americans of the gaps type argument, but that Stern would pick “I am half italian” as a lie might indirectly support it, a type of Goffman-type covering by aligning himself with the most common American archetype of a gut-bustingly funny person.
Sure there’s also the market expansion approach, but he could have lied about being any number of white ethnicities for that purpose.
Analogous cultural moments are Carlos Mencia downplaying his German-immigrant-to-Latin-America father and false allegations that Geraldo Rivera changed his name to hide that he’s half ashkenazi (although he is, he just didn’t have to change his name, because his ashkenazi is maternal).
So, if Stern is 100% ashkenazi, it still may support my intuition about italian american comics that he chose “I’m half italian” as his lie.
November 25, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Your Goffman theory is interesting, but I’d like to see some support that italians are considered gut-bustingly funny. I’ve heard it said that an Englishman’s humor is in the drawing room, a Frenchman’s in the bedroom and a German’s in the bathroom, but the Italian goes unmentioned. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a joke claimed to have come from Italy.
November 25, 2009 at 9:10 pm
have a look at this small Israeli company:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teva_Pharmaceutical_Industries
November 25, 2009 at 11:05 pm
My evidence Italian Americans are the funniest (I’m not commenting on Italians from Italy, who I think more to melodrama than epic comedy):
Anthony Cumia
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=videos&search_query=anthony+cumia&search_sort=video_view_count
Adam Carolla
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=videos&search_query=adam+carolla&search_sort=video_view_count
Artie Lange
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=videos&search_query=artie+lange&search_sort=video_view_count
This is the top bracket. But I think the bench overall is deep and still trumps any other discrete global subpopulation.
November 26, 2009 at 2:45 am
Your sample seems to draw heavily from radio personalities. The “morning zoo” stuff always annoyed me. In my neck of the woods it’s “Bob and Tom”. Fun fact: one of the two is Armenian, I forget which.
I regret the delay in linking to this. n/a quotes from John Murray Cuddihy’s “The Ordeal of Civility” a section titled Jews and Irish: Latecomers to Modernity. Contains a Talcott Parsons reference, which I usually only hear from Rafe Champion or maybe the OrgTheory gang.
November 26, 2009 at 3:18 am
I haven’t really listened to Bob and Tom, but I know they’re huge in the heartland.
I’m surprised you equate the people on my list with “Morning Zoo”. They seem to me to often be better epistemologists than the academics we discuss. I think the better description of their category is “cringe comics” rather than rather than radio personalities -and I think a lot of their humor work is done through rapidly expressed epiphanies about repugnant truths.
November 26, 2009 at 1:22 pm
I haven’t listened much to your examples either, so it was just my guess they fit in that category. I do remember Jim Norton’s “cringe comedy” on tv, and he apparently is a regular on Opie & Anthony.
November 28, 2009 at 3:37 am
When I say better epistemologists, I mean specifically regarding certain topics they specialize in regarding microsociology, macrosociology, social psychology, organizational behavior, and semiotics –using nontechnical language, of course.
November 28, 2009 at 2:19 pm
I don’t watch the show, but I found this interesting and thought you might like it in terms of Goffman-smarts/organizational behavior.
August 23, 2010 at 12:34 am
[…] “infrequently-asked questions.” This is an issue I’ve discussed extensively over at TGGP’s blog. Basically, here is the puzzle: Jews are among the most wealthy groups in America, with a median […]