2026-01-14
struggle with the beast
The Argument Podcast interview with Matthew Yglesias on individualism as core to liberalism, and Joseph Heath on colorblind meritocracy1.
Scott Alexander with a Claude Code themed edition of Bay Area House Party.
Dialectic Podcast interview with C. Thi Nguyen, who has a lot of opinions that I see as post-rat coded. Personally, I prefer when post-rat thought is set on top of the stable foundation that is the rationalist belief system, which generally provides better outcomes than leaving your preferred alternative implicit while criticizing things like legibility.
Corin Wagen on the recent emergence of biotech services companies. Unclear to me whether they won’t just be bought by vertical integrators, but my bias is that biotech would be better if it had a robust B2B-SaaS ecosystem.
Jodi Ettenberg linkthread.
On that note, Tanner Greer had an interesting article on WASPS and the history of the broader “Eastern establishment”. Now I think I understand why people keep describing Indian and Chinese-Americans as being in conflict, despite them seeming natural political allies as highly meritocratic assimilationist immigrants who work in similar fields, because the distinction between the Eastern and Southern bloc isn’t really about location, but one’s cultural predisposition on the honesty-humility axis. So if they can be let in, East Asians would prefer to be with the WASPS and German Jews, while Indians are more likely to prefer the Texans and Eastern European Jews. Unlike Greer, I think that although Vietnam weakened their dominance, the Establishment didn’t totally lose legitimacy until 2008, which led to the creation of the Tea Party and then the rise of MAGA. Previously, the path to enduring political power was through adaptation to Eastern norms, as performed by the Kennedys, Bushes, and Obama; more recently the possibility of leadership within the populist coalition has those that were previously Eastern clients presenting themselves with more natural Southern braggadocio, as part of the rightward shift of Hispanics, African Americans, Silicon Valley, and JD Vance.
Ironically, something like woke-encoded affirmative action is probably only be possible among a high-humility elite, because no other ruling class would treat themselves as an aggregate body, as if they were just another client group among the rest. In their rush to expand their demographic variety, the Eastern Establishment forgot that their ruling legitimacy comes from guarantees of competent rule, which requires meritocratic individualism. Unfortunately, the fact that they are currently unable to obtain consensus between various opposing outcome-driven ideologies like Abundance and antitrust is an indicator that elite status no longer guarantees intellectual competence (or perhaps never did), since at least one group has to be totally wrong. Presumably this is one reason why Democrats still remain broadly unpopular.