very interesting discussion. There are intellectuals who have a more right-ward lean like Jordan Peterson. But to me, at least, there's an obvious reason for the leftward lean of intellectuals. Intellectuals observe the human condition and see that the vast majority of humanity exist under conditions that are far from ideal. They experience poverty and a lack of opportunity which cannot be wholly explained by a failure of the majority of humanity to fully exploit the chances they have in life. It is timely that the university scandal in the United States has illustrated how the wealthy rig the system in their favour. When you consider that intellectuals have a guiding principle which focusses on how to make the lot of the masses better it is inevitable that they would have a bias that argues against the status quo. How could they not? And that bias, at least at the moment, has to be leftward.
The difficulty is where the rubber meets the road. How can we create economic systems that are fairer, more meritocratic, that enable the best most capable people to achieve? This is the challenge that intellectuals generally try to resolve. The forces on the other side, those that argue in support of the status quo, do so on the basis of self interest and realism. I have a lot of sympathy for realists. We have seen the practical application of communistic systems that have attempted to make the step towards greater social justice an instantaneous leap. But this has been shown to have failed numerous times over the last century. That doesn't mean that the attempt should be abandoned. The data from failed attempts should feedback into the intellectual discussion so that the next efforts at social justice might achieve more success. It's important to remember that we are currently living in an age where we see more people than ever before moving out of poverty. More people than ever before being educated. There are real successes even as we see crushing inequities.
I have a generally centre right bias, and in an ideal system I would advocate limited government and the promotion of greater human freedoms. I would be lying though if I didn't acknowledge the current inequities in the system. This is one of the reasons I find someone like AOC fascinating at the moment. Both she and Elizabeth Warren have advocated higher taxation for the wealthy and there has been a predictable reaction on the right labelling that socialism and being intellectually dishonest about what it all means. The fact that these women are advocating higher taxes is not of itself socialism. If you look at the period of highest economic growth in the 20th century 50s - 60s the highest marginal rates of tax were by todays measures extreme. But income inequality was lower with higher growth than the era we live in now. Why is that? Well for one thing there was, if not a recognition, at least a reality that the focus of economic development was for society as a whole. That is not the case now. I can identify when this all changed. It was the early 70s, the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, a time when there was crippling inflation, the costs of production had gotten out of control. The remediation was correct at the time... the returns to capital had been allowed to deteriorate in comparison to the costs to labour and something needed to be done to correct that. Enter Margaret Thatcher. We are now in an era where the reverse has happened. The returns to labour have been allowed to deteriorate in comparison to the returns to capital. I fear that something dramatic has to happen to right the balance. I don't know how that happens, but I'm fairly sure that there will be a rebalancing. Any time these rebalancings happen there is a necessary political shock. It's going to happen, it will likely be ugly, all we can do is watch. Perhaps AOC is the Margaret Thatcher of this current era
