Dissecting the Common Good: Elijah Emery on the work of Michael Sandel, Part 2

Do you ever wonder what binds our society together in the pursuit of something greater than ourselves? Elijah Emery joins me on an intellectual expedition to dissect the layers of political philosophy, scrutinizing the enigmatic notion of the common good through the critical lens of Michael J. Sandel. Together, we venture into the historical intricacies of democracy, expertise, and the challenges that arise when professional politicians and a growing bureaucracy claim to represent our collective interests. We confront the conservative and reactionary stances on the 'good' and delve into the prevailing currents of legal originalism and leftist hermeneutics, all while tracing the conundrums of meritocracy and the evolving identities within the American political landscape.

As we navigate the societal upheavals of our time, from the redefinition of traditional marriages to the rise of ideological incels, we illuminate the critical shifts in community dynamics and the therapeutic roles that have emerged to fill the voids of modern life. The conversation turns to the replication crisis in psychology, the tangled web of gentrification and political allegiances, and the undercurrents of dissatisfaction that course through the veins of meritocratic institutions. Witness how our discussion cuts through the complexity of these social issues, shining a light on the intertwined strands of class, identity, and ideology that shape the fabric of contemporary America.

Our journey culminates in a provocative examination of the paradox that lies at the heart of democratic governance: how do we reconcile the necessity of expertise with the foundational principles of democracy? We grapple with the role of randomness in societal sorting, consider the shifting perceptions of the military's place in our society, and reflect on the role of political dynasties in shaping our nation's narrative. Join us for this compelling foray into the labyrinth of governance, meritocracy, and the relentless quest for a fair and just society, as we lay bare the paradoxes and possibilities that define our collective search for a common good.

Transcript

C. Derick Varn : 1:35

Hello and welcome to VARM blog, and today we join Elijah Emery again For actually talking about the tiny and merit what becomes of the common good by Michael J Sandel, and there's a couple of topics we wanted to talk about.

C. Derick Varn : 1:53

Although I think it's interesting, this theme in Sandel's work, and maybe why he considers himself a communitarian, is this idea of the common good, because a common good and I know this is going to sound weird from a leftist, but it's one of the most pernicious ideas I think I've ever heard of in general political thinking, because no one has any idea how to define it. Ever thinking, because no one has any idea how to define it. Ever like um, and you know, if you go back to like, uh, the technocratic end of the you know of, like french political liberalism, you know, through technocracy, all the way back, actually arguably to, to, to the virtue engineers and the Jacobins and the Mountain, you have this strain of using the common good in a way that actually is what Sandel is objecting to, which is basically as a justification for the underlying power basis as it exists.

C. Derick Varn : 2:57

Right and as a justification for what would be seen as expert meddling in that power base. So not just the status quo, but we get to maintain the status quo Effectively, effectively, and we're democratic. But everything's actually decided by managers. And I do think in the conservative complaints about modern American political thinking and world political thinking, because they're even more mad about this in Europe, where I think it's also arguably more actually a thing, there is an assumption that elite opinion of experts, it's legitimate.

C. Derick Varn : 3:41

So I remember arguing with a liberal friend of mine because it's a liberal socialist, uh, john corman, um, and I'm gonna have him back on the show one day and we'll finish this debate because I wanted to get into our differences. But you know, one of the the arguments I had with him is he he thought that like, well, you know, we need to save democracy but also we need professional politicians because policy needs to be done by professionals. And I was like those are two diametrically opposed impulses and you cannot actually justify them. And almost every liberal I know, and most non-liberals really, because if we get into what even conservatives or reactionaries want to replace this stuff with, they actually do think that they know the good too and it's not really the common opinion or the common consensus. They only appeal to that rhetorically.

Elijah Emery: 4:33

Yeah, they want natural law.

C. Derick Varn : 4:35

Yeah, and natural law for them is basically god things like me with. Also, we should be pretty clear on this, because it's not like they want. The desantis is not trying to instill 2000 year old church tradition he's.

Elijah Emery: 4:54

He's not an integralist. Uh, you know, he's not consistent enough to be one.

C. Derick Varn : 5:01

No, but the kind of integralist and corporatist right which I am going to start talking more about on my other show once we get through Dugan. I think we're going to go to one of these guys next. I think we have to admit that their vision of what say the strong gods are to bring that up is still, largely speaking, both technocratically implemented. I mean, one of the ironies of DeSantis' world is it massively expands government bureaucracy everywhere, because now you not just need all the technical things, you now need moral specialists on everything to weigh whether or not a math equation has social and emotional learning, which is secretly communism in it, I think yes and it's good.

Elijah Emery: 6:10

No, I'm joking, but you're completely right about this. I think yes and it's good that are ostensibly dedicated to simplicity, such as originalism, within the field of law. What it actually does is it clamps down on the acceptable styles of interpretation in a way which requires expertise at interpreting what textualism entails and in that way, makes law more inaccessible, because there's only a certain number of techniques which are accepted.

C. Derick Varn : 6:46

Interestingly, I've been doing things on hermeneutics because I realized that most leftists actually don't really understand that. They're engaged in that all the time and thus they do. Bad hermeneutical interpretations are, and I and I don't just mean like on the, on the popular level, I mean on even in uh, academics right now, like marxist academics, their hermeneutics are hidden, and often hidden from themselves, and there's just big assumptions being made that are taken for granted, that they don't even understand, their readers don't share. So there's like a, there's a total lack of access or the state things that are interpretive as truth, et cetera, and that's just from a lack of realization. That's what's going on with. Interestingly, the reason why I bring this up in law is it mirrors the kind of what we call like the literal critical method of of OG fundamentalists, and I don't mean that in the slur form, I mean that literally in the.

Elijah Emery: 7:53

It's all there on the page. You just have to unlock the secret beta.

C. Derick Varn : 7:56

Yeah, like I mean it, also like the people who call themselves fundamentalists in response to liberal, to Protestant, liberal Anglicanism in the 19th century, that there is a direct parallel between that style of interpretation and originalism. And while sometimes I am, you know, there have been times where I'm more sympathetic to originalism than like the living constitution shenanigans, because I've always found that, like, yeah, to be somewhat dishonest. Supreme Court and other conservative jurist juridical bodies actually operate.

Elijah Emery: 8:43

they don't operate on originalist principles, except for like weirdos, like Scalia, I mean not even because, if you know, if he operated on originalist principles, he'd be like supporting reparations based on the 13th amendment um right, well, he might.

C. Derick Varn : 8:57

He. Actually I think he secretly harbored originalist principles that the 13th and 14th amendments are invalid. But I you know he's never said that. Yeah, for those of you who don't know, that's an old conservative argument that since you didn't have, since the Civil War states were excluded from the adoption of those amendments, that they don't count um, yeah, but any the point?

Elijah Emery: 9:23

the point is that, like, yes, it's, it's a specific interpretation of what is supposed to be a universally applicable hermeneutic um, and I I think this is actually relevant to the tyranny of merit, because one thing, the connection to the common good is that a regime of expertise um, trains people in a specific method of interpretation. Uh, and that interpretation is that the common good is equated to a situation where there's greater levels of expertise, there's more complication in society and there's a reconciliation between democracy and expert rule in some way. And I think that Sindel's common good pushes back on this, which shows both the flexibility of what the common good entails and also highlights the inadequacies of the expert model of the common good.

C. Derick Varn : 10:27

I mean to tie this up.

C. Derick Varn : 10:29

I think this is part of Sindel's larger communitarian project, like, if you go back to his book on democracy, he talks about the move from a civic republic to an administrative state, to an administrative state in crisis, which was his last revision to that book.

C. Derick Varn : 10:47

And when you read his administrative state book, particularly given where conservative arguments have gone now and I know leftists actually don't tend to follow conservative arguments, they don't tend to follow conservative arguments, they tend to follow flashy reactionary arguments. But that is where a lot of conservative ire is focused is on the administrative state. And ironically and this is one of the things where I think they do kind of have a point the administrative state is seen by a lot of liberals as better able to bring about democratic will because it's not tied in deliberation, um, and they point out well, but it's effectively arbitrary will because even the executive branch can only really do anything about it by like gutting it. It doesn't. There's no, there's not that many checks on it because it's not even part of the constitutional checks balance system. It wasn't really supposed to be a thing at the federal level. It clearly the framers kind of invented it at the state level.

C. Derick Varn : 11:45

If you read like the ward republic stuff by jefferson, he clearly thought it was going to be actually at the municipal level yeah um, problems with that are problems of scale and problems of the fact that, like jefferson, just assumed yeoman farming culture was going to be the thing forever. And I know that's thrown out by Marxists often to just like discount the founding fathers. But when you actually read what Jefferson and co were writing, it may like all of a sudden, like even the more democratic ones, of which jefferson was um, you start seeing their big flaws like they don't have a way to deal with. They don't have a way to deal with the fact the economy is already outstripping their, their civic vision of administration they're living in the 18th century right, um, although even in the 18th century you were already beginning to see that taxed.

C. Derick Varn : 12:37

I mean, that's sort of the whole thing that led to revolution in the first place. But the it's something to think about when you think about today, when we talk about like, like, why doesn't the American vision seem uniquely undemocratic? It's because more and more functions have been moved to levels that are less democratic, responsible, that we're not envisioned as being there. Um, in response to just fundamental changes, and I'm not just the economy, I actually think that it's. I don't want to be a vulgar market and say it's just the economy, but but it's a lot of it's the economy. Like the number of powers the federal government has attenuated itself through the Commerce Clause is kind of amazing, but kind of also fair.

C. Derick Varn : 13:29

And then you work in law. But it's always amazed me also weird carve-outs to that, such as insurance law, law which is, by a supreme court thing, a local, a state issue, somewhat disastrously. So, yeah, um and um. And so you, you know you have these kind of economic regulations in the united states. They're with each other but also calls other regulations that you know, for example, like we call it kluge. Yeah, absolutely um, and sandell's big about this, but he's also actually right that part of the problem here is that the complexity the experts need to manage is also somewhat caused by the experts themselves with and not and in sandell's world. I don't think he thinks, and I don't either, that it was intentional no, it was it.

Elijah Emery: 14:33

What you do is you commit to one style of governance and you need to continually invest in it, and then that ends up supplanting other things over a long period of time. Uh, like, I don't think it was a nefarious plot for the most part, um, to build an administrative state.

C. Derick Varn : 14:49

It just turns out that once you build an administrative state, you need to continually buttress it now what's interesting about sandel and I almost pulled out another book by him that I had back there to talk about this Because it's actually kind of a parallel to this book and I know he means it to be a parallel to this book Because it has the same airport cover which is Another book about the common. It's another book about the common good, but it's what markets can't buy. So interestingly for most people who critique elite, you know um elite development, although we will give the, the, the, the patrick denis of the world, credit that they don't do this. But they posit market controls to that. And actually sandell has a whole nother book about why market controls do not do that. They because they they can't arbitrate values. In that sense they treat all values as equal. Their definition of rationality is necessarily circular.

Elijah Emery: 15:55

He mentions this in the critique of merit from the right in this book, where he he talks about how right wing critics of merit seek to eliminate the distinction, or sorry, to distinguish, value and merit. They say that value is arbitrary and determined by society and merit is internal and determined by the common good. But he points out that if you're incentivizing value it's really hard to keep those categories separate and that's one reason why say the right libertarian critique of meritocracy often collapses, which I think you see very intuitively in the fact that it does make some like Reaganomics makes more sense. If you believe that personal morality is an effective check on the rapaciousness of market behavior, that people will simply behave well. It turns out that if you have incentives for them to behave poorly uh, boring extraordinary cases most people will behave as the incentives dictate and in fact the value system will change to accommodate those incentives.

C. Derick Varn : 17:07

And you know where this can become clear in a way that's not moral or feels less moral to people. Health policy, when we think about what it means to be poor in the US, a fairly risk country, versus what it means to be poor in Europe or Canada, and in all cases there's more negative outcomes. There's outcomes that are imposed upon people. There's also outcomes that are self-reinforcing behavior that maybe an individual can opt out, but the incentives don't indicate that most people can. But just to put it, just to put it very clearly, like obesity in America is class related and I know, like that's not, that's not become a thing, that's that either side likes to say. Because you know, we're in the the moment of, of fat acceptance, which I think is. I think actually as a social movement, is a good thing. But I think when you're, when we're talking about like that, in regards to accepting what is objectively shitty policy, incentives for people, is a bad thing.

Elijah Emery: 18:25

Yeah, you shouldn't morally judge someone for being fat, right, that makes a lot of sense. You should also make it very easy for people to be healthier than they currently are, which is not an effect of moral judgment. It's an effect of food policy and the fact that our cities are designed to wrap cars.

C. Derick Varn : 18:46

I was going to say it's a city policy. I mean, like the moment I left the United States and just had tacit walking encouraged into my life, I dropped like 50 pounds, like, and that's not, that's not an exaggeration, even and and so like that was. That was a wake-up moment for me because that was a social policy issue that doesn't even seem directly related. It wasn't what michael pollan was talking about at the time. I remember, because this was in time when michael pollan was like the biggest thing and if you want to see that you look at this like, like, for we have things right now that make stable marriages a class good and up to and including dating apps, but that's actually like the least of your problems.

C. Derick Varn : 19:32

Now, should stable marriages be a good? I don't know that's. You know, having two, having one, two, three, four or five parents help with the raising kids is definitely by parents. I mean, alloparent um is definitely better than one um. Do they need to be married? I don't know, because normally, when you're looking at the, the marriage studies that you're actually looking at as like co-parenting models and it doesn't really matter who fills in those roles, as long as the roles are filled in by multiple people.

C. Derick Varn : 20:11

But our incentive structure for, say, poor women is actually really bad across the board. Say poor women is actually really bad across the board. Um, and I think about this also for example, when someone becomes an ideological incel, um, I think they're lost to humanity for the most part. But I do think, and I do think liberal rhetoric around this has actually gotten better in the last four or five years than it was six or seven years ago when the intel phenomenon first started. Um, because liberal rhetoric then was like oh they're, you know, the only thing that would cause people to do this is privilege, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like this is not listen to what these guys say.

Elijah Emery: 20:52

This is not a privileged discourse no, they only have low employment outcomes and live in rural areas where they don't see that many people.

C. Derick Varn : 21:01

Right. It's a community destruction, outcome of which a pernicious ideology that works off of the idea of privilege comes in and fills in. That makes that attractive, because hating people like that, hating women like that for people with no access to to women, is not, actually, does not necessarily make a lot of like. It's not socially reinforcing in ways that help most people who get involved in it, certainly, um. So so, to tie this back into this though, what's interesting about the discourse about, say, incels is not that we treated this as a social problem, and when we do see it as a social problem, it's treated like the Jordan Peterson. Well, women should just have to marry incels. It like. It's like no, you're not looking at the larger context that creates this problem. Um, because you are looking at this from the standpoint of individual merit and education, because I can tell you what I see every time someone talks about this, even in a compassionate way.

C. Derick Varn : 22:14

Uh, and I've seen it in article after article recently well, if men would get off the video games and invest a little bit of themselves and do therapy and do whatever, a lot of this stuff would go away and I'm like okay, but why is all that not happening? Because most people do want that and I know they want it. Because stupid therapy TikTok exists because people can't get this stuff Right Like you have apps like that. Yeah yeah, cupid therapy TikTok exists because people can't get this stuff Right, like you have apps like Verival now, yeah, which is just about like.

Elijah Emery: 22:46

I mean, it is about making therapy accessible to the masses. It's just like the worst kind and it's completely inadequate.

C. Derick Varn : 22:54

And we see this more and more. I've been reading all this Mark Fisher stuff from not even a decade ago and the assumption is that you're going to throw pills at people. I'm like we don't do that anymore. That's already falling apart. That was falling apart, actually, when he was writing about it. Now we give like the shittiest, like Zoom level version of cognitive behavioral therapy at people for 100 bucks a pop and, you know, with some financial aid to make it cheaper than that I mean.

Elijah Emery: 23:23

I think it also comes back into the community argument from earlier, which is that the best therapists approximate the role of a priest or a rabbi or a teacher, somebody who you trust, who's in a position of earned authority and you think is qualified to give you advice, and who you trust. So, even though it is a market relationship, the goal is to make it feel as little like that as possible but, using the money, still insulate yourself from some of the norms that, uh, that come up in in, say, friendship, where you don't want to overburden someone Right, um and uh, you know, in this way it's the market stepping in to provide people with friends, sort of uh, just a very odd type of friendship.

C. Derick Varn : 24:17

Well, and this is one of these things where I I where, like, I'm not in the anti-psychiatric movement I don't want people to understand that but where I'm somewhat. I understand how it's come up over and over again.

Elijah Emery: 24:28

Yeah no, I'm pro. I'm pro therapy, right, I'm.

C. Derick Varn : 24:32

But I do recognize what, what it's meant to do uh or what, what its role, its role is, I should say well, my thing is like I don't know what a priest is going to do for you if you have borderline personality disorder for real, but like it's it is. Um, but the spectrum of what people go to therapists for has dramatically expanded because, partly in response to the expansion of a prior treatment so that we could medicalize that. Um, a lot of that medicalization has turned out to be on, like most of the psychological stuff, on less than sound ground, which is which is interesting, that that doesn't come up in this book, actually, that how much of the expertise has been undone by experts finally monitoring themselves, um, often in in weird scenarios like me. Discovering that the origins of the replication crisis started with the crisis in parapsychology was something that blew my mind. And for people who keep on saying, can you show me a paper about this? I can't, there is a couple of Lancer articles and then an episode of the Constant.

C. Derick Varn : 25:49

For people who want to pick this up to get where I got it from, there's not one thing where they set out to do the replication standards in a way that made certain kinds of parapsychological uh results more valid, and and then, when they applied it to all this positive psychology stuff too. It's where it started falling apart, so it's it's interesting to know that. Um. Now, what I find interesting about that, though, is, while that's been weaponized in this, in this kind of populist uprising moment, it actually comes out of academic discourse itself, and that's the irony of so much of this anti-meritocratic stuff is and this anti-pmc stuff as well, um is that it comes out of people who either know that this is a problem and that, but they're trying to save their merit. I mean, I think part of sandell's goal here, as much as like reinstituting the common good in society, is also to save the merit the, the intellectual institutions that he sees as operating on a meritocratic basis, because he's afraid of the cost of them going away.

Elijah Emery: 27:07

Yeah look, I think that's also motivating this, and I don't think like people necessarily see that, but there's a whole lot like I mean I think you honestly see this in the social base of left-wing politics in the United States, which is like downwardly mobile educated people, People who gained entrance to the bureaucratic system for the most part, I mean you see this in like, say, the gentrifier class which voted in AOC and votes in most of the left-wing electeds AOC and votes in most of the left-wing electeds.

C. Derick Varn : 27:39

Yeah, I mean, there's a reason why that stuff comes out of like man. This is going to get me in trouble when you look at, for example, that where the most progressive parts of of the democratic party come from the if not from Michigan and refugee communities AKA Ohana Rana and Rishi Turley, because I have actually asked people to think like why does the squads people, women of color, vote differently than all the other women of color in the Senate Cause they kind of do. Where's that coming from? You know, why is the black congressional conference not the same as the squad and it?

C. Derick Varn : 28:22

There's two things and one is is like some of its refugee community issues, and the other is it's this gentrifier class that honestly and this messes up the narrative is often of color, because you're talking about rich immigrants moving into, the children of rich immigrants who are now educated, who benefited from two or three generations coming back into their own communities, but they're now.

C. Derick Varn : 28:50

They are gentrifiers too, even though it's their communities and they have and they make political allegiances with a lot of like progressives who live in those communities as well, because the other great irony of American politics is that the part of American politics that talks the most about race, until recently anyway is also, objectively speaking, and poll after poll, poll the whitest part of american politics. Yeah, and that irony has just not like. I mean, people bring it up, um, but it's just you. You know, I, I'm like progressives are literally way whiter than the general public because they're also way more educated, and what they take for the opinion of color and this is a, this is an adolf reed point, um, but wendy's right on is actually people who, demographically, more look like them than they look like the average person of the quote community of color which they're representing.

Elijah Emery: 29:57

Yeah, and this, this isn't I'm going to say again just for the listeners this isn't a moral judgment. I want to make sure that we're very clear on this.

C. Derick Varn : 30:06

This is a fact.

Elijah Emery: 30:08

This is a fact, and I also think that it's relevant to Sindel's critique, because the people who are most disconcerted with with meritocracy are people who have gained access to meritocratic institutions and have lost in the game of meritocracy for a variety of reasons. You see this in conservative critics of meritocracy who are disappointed that they have to give up their conservative viewpoints because the meritocracy has a liberal bias.

C. Derick Varn : 30:41

um and something that it that I think has moved from something an administrative bias that looks like liberalism to an actual liberal bias, like I feel like. I feel like that's real in a way that we can statistically prove. Um, and and ironically, when conservatives started complaining about it, it was not actually super real yet. Um, because they started complaining about it in the 90s. I really started complaining about it with, with william buckley, back in the day, but when they, when it, when it really became a dominant talking point was in the rush limbaugh era, it was not yet true. There was still a fair amount.

Elijah Emery: 31:18

There were entire fields that you could predict more than economics I mean especially in the corporate, just the corporate elite, like it was not a situation where there was a liberal bias but now, like finance is a liberal institution for the most part.

Elijah Emery: 31:33

Um, you know, not like, not like left wing I got liberal in the way they use it, but it it's a liberal institution, they're Bidenists.

Elijah Emery: 31:42

And then on the left, the critics of meritocracy are people who have been exposed to the extraordinary financial costs of meritocracy and the fact that not all access to the meritocracy is created equal to the meritocracy is created equal. Participation in more left-wing positions I mean jobs like going into social work or something which require a great deal of educational commitment and a large amount of time in university are way too expensive, and that's one reason, you see, that the big flashpoint between Warrenists and Sanders supporters, or one of many flashpoints, was how much student debt should be canceled, because this is a cost which is impressed upon people who have access to the meritocratic system and the meritocratic institutions but have lost a lot of money participating in it and that has had weird knock-on effects and ways that confuse people, like a of a patron of mine was talking about journalists as pmc and like power and and I'm the irony about journalism is it used to be a profession that you could go with little to no education, community college startup, get in there.

C. Derick Varn : 33:07

As long as you were literate, you know you needed to go to high school education. That was it, and so there was a lot of working class journalist. What ended that actually is complicated, but it wasn't a pmc conspiracy. It was actually market derivatives which caused the the at the local ad base to fall apart, largely due to the internet, the, the expansion of surviving media to need to be diffused over large groups of areas, so you needed to have people with more kinds of access, leading to there being less jobs in it, and that you actually needed to have people who could take a job that was relatively high prestige because of access, but relatively low paying, which favors the children actually, not the up and coming of elite. So it's exactly the people you're talking about like downwardly mobile elite people.

Elijah Emery: 34:07

And I saw that in real time I start for people don't know, I I trained.

C. Derick Varn : 34:11

My initial training was to be a science journalist, way, way back before I fucked with law, before I fucked with philosophy and literature, and I saw this trend happening and people like me were like well, I can't, there's no way I can compete in this field if I have to not get paid for four or five years.

Elijah Emery: 34:30

Yeah, and this I mean. This is one reason why critiques of merit are so potent. Now there's a bigger market base to buy critiques of merit, because more people have been exposed to its inadequacies, and so the meritocracy, which I think Sindel portrays as relatively strong, is in a weaker position as a justification for rule than it has been in probably 70 years.

C. Derick Varn : 34:58

No, and this is something that I see missing. I keep on filling this in and sundell, but he doesn't do this. Uh, I have talked a lot about a new phase of of of technocracy that isn't technical and this and I'll admit I sound like a conservative when I say this like that is therapeutic and moral, because you have these complex systems that these people objectively cannot manage, and it is becoming clear that the meritocracy for a lot of these things is not manageable. Now, I'm not talking about like, like health care expertise, like, yes, someone can learn how to be a good heart surgeon.

Elijah Emery: 35:41

I'm talking about like operating a bureaucracy yeah, operating a bureaucracy dealing with like reforming schools, like school reform movement, frankly, has largely given up, um, even right now, either from the right, where they're like simplify it by eliminating sex ed, or from the left, where it's like simplify it by not offering advanced math classes because minorities do worse at them. It's a deregulatory impulse, honestly, because it's recognized as unmanageable.

C. Derick Varn : 36:38

Right. I mean and this was something that I have been harping about the left for a long time, because there's a lot of the left that's half in my Marxio-socialist world and half in progressive world and they don't see that. Marxists, for example, tend to not actually be super happy about regulation as a means to fix social policy, and the reason why we don't one is you want to talk about creating a new class, have to have a bunch of regulators handle everything, and you will hear liberals balk at this, and I'm like eventually, you also can't regulate everything. Like the cost of the, of maintaining the data systems alone, becomes almost as onerous as a as a physical input. Um, then actually doing the thing and schooling is where this is abundantly clear.

C. Derick Varn : 37:35

One of the things that I've talked to people about against like the david graber tendency. You know, david graber basically has a form of this and bullshit jobs. It is kind of actually the same thing sandella's doing, um, but he's putting it as why everyone feels like their job is bullshit. He doesn't believe in marxist alienation, so he has to come up with another way, and it's because he's like all these jobs are non-productive. The thing is, though, these jobs aren't coming out of nothing. They're not actually created to create more jobs. They're created so that people can monitor the work that other people do. To recognize, um, to recognize the problem, like the problems of regulation. And interestingly, in a book that people don't like as much by david graber, he does kind of get at this. Interestingly, in a book that people don't like as much by David Graeber, he does kind of get at this and it's a book called the Utopia of Rules where he realizes this next step. But he thinks this is almost like a conspiracy to employ all these people and in some ways it can become that, see higher ed. But I don't think that's the case in, say, in like primary and secondary education, um, where this is just rampant and it has no like. We are simplifying, dropping programs and stuff. But very few people have looked at fact that, like every school board I know, is triple the size of what it was and it can't be cut back.

C. Derick Varn : 39:00

All those positions are now essential. Why are they essential? Because actually they meet government oversight regulations most and for people who go, oh, that's liberal, no, a lot of them also came from NCLB days, which have only been paused but they still have to be generally maintained Like. So both the left and the right in the conventional sense here, not in, like my sense, um, have contributed to this problem in trying to fix it. You know, I mean, if you think, like we were talking about uh desantis a little while ago, and like that impulse right um, which creates, like all these, like moral czars, um and more paperwork, and even like even its attempts at transparency, because it's deliberately designed to clue up the system, actually leads to other problems and it's creating kinds of problems in florida that are like that people should really look at, for example, that florida can't get enough teachers, which is why it has that crazy rule that if, like, you're a spouse of a military person, that, like that, you could go be a teacher.

Elijah Emery: 40:07

That is not just a good patriotic, like that's the cost of sanchez, it's a desperation to deal with the fact that there's, like, physically not enough teachers to teach the kids um, which is especially important because school takes care of everything in society. It takes care of nutrition, it takes care of, like, training you not to be racist. Now it takes care of child care. It's it's an overburdened institution because it's all we have.

C. Derick Varn : 40:35

But I mean and this is particularly true in the United States, because basically every social institution and most familial ones are replaced by it, and, frankly, when, when people opt out of it, what do they have to do? Well, you have to go back to a parent, usually a woman, staying at home, to replicate the labor, yeah, and, and a lot of people can't afford it. Except that and this is an interesting crisis that we're in right now, again, sandell doesn't deal with, but it actually is tied into his meritocracy thing, because one of the things that biden is we need more care workers. Well, why do we need more care workers? So that people can go back to work. Because, like, getting women back into the workforce while also having them have children is crucial for the us economy in the long run.

C. Derick Varn : 41:26

As long as immigration stymied, um, and why is immigration stymied? And again, that's tied into meritocratic impulse as well, like who was pro-immigration? Well, it used. It used to be corporate people and highly skilled labor, you know, because we could do brain drain in other countries. And now that that's ending, you're seeing, you know, you're seeing a policy develop around that.

C. Derick Varn : 41:52

I mean, this is what I want progressives to understand from this conversation. Actually, this is what I want progressives to understand from this conversation actually. And you and I are going to have a conversation for my patrons where we go into this explicitly, not just frame this on Dell, but like, if your argument is expertise and you don't have it, and then your argument is moral and you don't have that either is moral and you don't have that either. Um, or you don't understand the morality of the general public because you're actually in an expertise mind, trying to fool it as a moral mind or whatever. Um, you hit a wall with this stuff where you can't like.

C. Derick Varn : 42:34

You know progressives will say about immigration well, it's always something that the democrats will trade away for something else. And I'm like, well, it is because, frankly, your argument about it is purely moral and moral. A pure moral statement, particularly one that doesn't have a specific virtue or other corresponding goals, that is just based on altruism, will never fly at a mass level. It might fly as an individual morality, it's often going to fly, but that doesn't scale and that seems to really confuse progressives. But that's like. I can't think of society that's ever operated off of like, um, pure. I can think of societies that have made governmental decisions that may seem non-rational if they are within a value that is rational to that social system.

Elijah Emery: 43:29

Yeah, I mean, it's often, often, those decisions actually just amount to efforts at social reproduction, which is a rational goal, right, right, which is a rational goal, right. But you know, and honestly, how? How immigration was liberalized in America, which it was not liberalized by the Democrats, it was liberalized by Reagan was done not out of the kindness of people's hearts, it was done, uh, because there weren't enough european immigrants and we needed to oppose the soviet union.

C. Derick Varn : 44:07

You know well, that that's the reason why in the 65 the reason why in?

C. Derick Varn : 44:13

80 is. Everyone could see that when the baby boomers got old, you didn't have a tax base for them and they built up. And this is why I refer to the when people talk about generational politics being bullshit not in the case of the baby boomers, because our entire social system, including the, the school system that we're talking about we now used to hold everything together was built off the assumption of the growth rates and the maintenance rates Of the baby boom and that was maintained In Gen X and millennial generation, largely through immigration and integration. And now it's done and that's over. Which is you know? Which is why Zoomers, my friends, are a tiny generation comparatively.

Elijah Emery: 44:57

Like we look great and we have wonderful vibes, so I think that's okay good.

C. Derick Varn : 45:03

But you know, um, in in the long run I'm not. You know I talk about this in the long duray. I'm not even sure that it's going to be bad two or three generations down but we're in a moment of transition that people are unwilling to face right and, to be fair, we're not the only one who's going to face it.

C. Derick Varn : 45:22

Europe has already been facing it. And you want to talk about acting like they're? They're insane, you know. This is why there's such a right wing movement in Europe, is they? They they legitimately are about to are are aged completely out yet also have a high youth unemployment rate.

Elijah Emery: 45:46

Like that doesn't make any sense yeah, um similar like in japan and south korea too.

C. Derick Varn : 45:53

Yeah, yeah and and we're seeing it, and this is the peter zion thing. It's going to hit china actually super hard, starting now. It's starting now and and you're going to see like potentially a near a billion people just die of old age and and we haven't. Like when people like, oh, that's not a big deal, like we've never seen that before in human history, it's never happened. Like we've never seen, uh, us, multiple societies go through that at once, like I don't think we've seen societies, it's never happened at the scale. Um, there is no prior human norm to compare this to. Yet if it does not happen for people you know for, like the christian writer, or even some of the national cons who aren't particularly christians like, oh, we need to increase birth rates forever, I'm like that's not viable either, and you know it yeah so it's about managing the wind down right.

C. Derick Varn : 46:49

So, like, what do you do now that you actually have a natural occurring from relative prosperity, wind down of what has been considered a global resource problem? You know, um and the uh the the thing is, because this is standard this is the other problem I have with this book, and I didn't mention it before is it's is sandell cannot think of things not in this in terms of nation states, so he he can't see how this is going to interrelate in the future, like, even though he realizes this is a global problem. I think his his realization in china, of all places, that amongst elites this is a relatively common attitude, um, that, and that it's going to be a problem in china too. But I mean, what are the interesting things about? About, like, there's all these leftists who justify Chinese leadership and they'll also rail against the PMC, but then ignore that, like most of the the CPC lawyers.

C. Derick Varn : 47:56

Now, it's just there's less business owners than there are in the american political system. So it's like. When people like, oh, it's not bourgeois, I'm like okay, so it's pmc, but you hate them too, right? Except when they're chinese, I guess, like it's, it's interesting and in the case of some scholars, like comrade lu, I guess you can give it to her that she's explicit about that and also has a boner for fordism, even though she won't admit that that's what it is. Um for when the pmc, when her pmc was good, like she really likes. Like the establishment of the ada, for example, which I think is like, she's like, oh, that proved that when you know, doctors were moral. And I'm like, where do you want?

C. Derick Varn : 48:36

that was completely like that proves that uh hw was our greatest president yeah, um, no, no, not the americans with disabilities act, the american doctor, the apa, the american physician association, okay, like, like these early 20th century like carl, terrorizations, that like went on. They're the ones who stopped universal health care from happening. I know it's bizarre that you would celebrate that, but um, it's, but it tells you like, that's what people you know, that's what. What are the interesting things about? The critique of meritocracy is basically for this is not the case for sandell, but it is the case for some of the people. Sandell sites, like michael young, what they want is their 1950s fortis meritocracy back, which you're not gonna get like, like it's. That was the conditions that made that possible. Are you know?

Elijah Emery: 49:35

particularly one where where that's done through regulation instead of government largesse, like it was in the social democratic countries in Europe, just do not exist now I have a theory that a lot of critics of meritocracy want the WASPs back because it enabled them to do the two types of criticism that they like, which is the elite doesn't deserve it but is managing things as an elite, and so is easy to identify.

C. Derick Varn : 50:04

um, you know, it's like uh sandell contributes this a little bit when he's like undermine the efficacy of presenting meritocracy as uh natural by randomizing, you know, giving out acceptances at harvard or whatever yeah, he basically argues that elite university should, should, should, art, should like give stuff out by sortition, which I'm like okay, in so much that we don't make all universities elite, then sure, but like you know, yeah um, I mean, I mean, he, he also is like that's easier to do than just like, making harvard three times larger, which is like you know they're.

Elijah Emery: 50:46

I think they're about the same level of difficulty personally, um, in fact, it's probably easier to make elite universities larger, um, but they wouldn't be elite anymore. Yeah, then the, the uh, the yield rates would go down, the acceptance rates would go up. It'd be a terrible situation for everyone involved. Um, no, but I, I mean like that's the thing it's about. His critique of meritocracy is not really. It doesn't really culminate in eliminating meritocracy. It culminates in undermining it as a value system, um, which I think is inadequate personally, absolutely.

C. Derick Varn : 51:30

I mean, this is this is the problem with with a lot of these books is they can't imagine um like what would ensure you know, this is this is my uh, I guess, radically even, maybe not even socialist, but democratic take. What would um, what would make um some of these systems more responsive to political will is just like they have to be run truly by their community, and by that I mean like sacrifices, arbitration, all of it um, and I can't see like if you're gonna ask tenured professors to actually like really run a school, like really run it. They hate doing all that shit. They also hate like doing anything other than research. I mean, for the most part, I feel like it's um some of them like their elite classes likes teaching, yeah, um, but it's.

C. Derick Varn : 52:37

I mean, one of the weird things about the professor right now is like 90 of their job is not what any of them are interested in, but it's what the public actually views them. As for, I mean, um, the public does not realize that, for the professorial standpoint, and even from the standpoint of grants and whatnot, the research is what they do, um, in which case it's really stupid to pretend that you need a teaching core of researchers, particularly in things like the humanities, where that's just literally I don't want to say all humanities research is a waste of time, but there's a reason why really arcane forms of critical theory came to dominate, because it was a way to just pump out papers, um, and that is discrediting. The problem that you have is that's discrediting to all fields. Like there's a, there's a rational core to the dave rubin, james lindsey stupid fucking, you know sage paper critique that they did and the and it's not the socal thing, it's not that like ohcalled thing, it's not that like oh, ideological biases, it's actually that, like most publishing and applied research is bullshit in the sense that the action research methodological standards are weak in almost all cases and the theoretical frameworks are almost always semi-arbitrary, based off of the preferences of other forms of academia, and I know that makes people uncomfortable, but it is kind of the case for applied research.

C. Derick Varn : 54:22

We've been talking about a lot today, but it's my field, it's education. Like you can have things taught as facts in education schools that have been frankly debunked for a generation and a half, um, and yet not just will they be taught, you will get grants and charter schools opened off of it and people will talk about how it has an evidence-based efficacy, even though no one can even point out how you approve it Right now. That is a crisis of merit, unquestionably, and it shows up sometimes like, like people, for example, don't really take EEDs as seriously, seriously, you know, like, um, and yet when I think about some degrees that people do take seriously, I can see that they have the same structural flaw. Yeah, and for people go. Well, that doesn't apply to hard sciences. They still get funding. Increasingly they don't, and and they have to rely increasingly on the intelligence agencies, which I also want to in the military, which, which is actually not new.

Elijah Emery: 55:23

But no, but it is also, I mean, increasingly, if you want to be a serious researcher, you go to like raytheon or something. Uh, you know, like I've got a buddy or the dod or the dod. I've got a buddy who's um a like physics CS guy, super smart, and he's at Boston Dynamics. Now why? Because they would fund the thing he actually cares about, which is like studying waves, basically, you know, and he's not. That's just the way the system works. I'm not going to ask him to not work in that, because I want him to have a good job which prioritizes making it possible to fund things not just related to making the military work better, rather than sometimes getting benefits for the rest of society from military research that is not immediately applicable to producing weapons.

C. Derick Varn : 56:36

Right, and even then, usually it's farmed out arbitrarily to some and this also happens. I mean my brother, who's a, who is a conservative, who believes in socialized medicine.

C. Derick Varn : 56:47

Um, he's a fun guy in that sense, but uh, so he's based yeah, if you, if you want to, if you want to get him on a rant, have him talk about the privatization of, of, of nih funded private development. Because I was like, oh yeah, you always give me this shit about patent law, but most 60 of all drugs are developed either abroad or by net or by national, by uh or by nih, funding of which then is immediately privatized and turned over for their profits for an inordinate amount of time, like even though it was publicly funded, because the market doesn't fund this shit. And so your entire justification is a lie. And I'm going to tell you, my brother is a conservative. He used to be a Republican, now he's kind of a freelancer, but like it's. It's an interesting thing to look at because he's absolutely right, even from the standpoint of public policy. And he points out that, like it doesn't matter if it's democrats or republicans, they both do this, like, and they don't get money back from these corporations by giving them this research for free either.

Elijah Emery: 58:00

No, it's just that there's an insufficient will to do any type of deep reform.

C. Derick Varn : 58:07

Right and so and he thinks and I think he's right about this that this is why there's so much weird anti-medicine conspiracies in us society in particular is because people kind of half know this and then deduce wild conspiracies to explain it yeah, they're like covid was made to buttress the like profit rates of um big pharma companies through operation warp speed or something right, yeah, exactly which also is weird because those people are pro-trump and trump's but anyway.

C. Derick Varn : 58:43

Um, but there's a. There is a way in which, like, if you see the corruption in the system, you but you don't understand how it works and you don't understand the kluge and just the fucking apathy that led to it, and you also, weirdly, one of the things about one of the things I find interesting about the populist response to meritocracy that I don't think Sandel goes into enough, is that it weirdly actually grants meritocratic competence to these people a lot of the time. It just assumes they're morally reprobate.

Elijah Emery: 59:18

Yeah, no, I mean, it says that they're like hyper effective, it's, and but it also says that expertise is just like aligned with being immoral. Basically, right, which?

C. Derick Varn : 59:29

should be fair.

Elijah Emery: 59:30

You see on the left too, but it's usually just the cia, whereas white conservatives is all the government and most of business yeah, I think it's much more frightening for people to say that, like the experts actually don't really know what they're doing except in their very narrow field. Right the.

C. Derick Varn : 59:46

Joseph Tainter reality of it, which is like as your society gets more complicated, your experts necessarily become more narrow, and because of that, they outsource more of their thinking to other people and because of that, they outsource more of their thinking to other people and because of that, if it's a field that's not really its narrow niche, is not immediately applicable. There's really no one doing serious thinking in that area. What you want, is.

Elijah Emery: 1:00:12

I mean, what is an actually useful corrective is a situation where the vast majority of people are fairly good generalists.

C. Derick Varn : 1:00:22

Right, which is which is in our current educational environment not the generalist institutions are falling apart, yeah, yeah, I mean from liberal arts colleges to high school, like and I don't know.

Elijah Emery: 1:00:38

I was trying to, I was thinking about bringing this in this time but, uh, since I went to see my my dad's family, I didn't have time to add a new book. But there's this book called justice by lottery, which I don't know if you've ever read. Basically, it makes, uh, the argument for sortition as the way of organizing society, which I vaguely for. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I mean, it's a really fun book.

C. Derick Varn : 1:01:01

It's the Barbara.

Elijah Emery: 1:01:02

Godwin book? Yeah, I think so, and it does.

C. Derick Varn : 1:01:09

It seeks to reconcile the necessity of expertise with the desire for the genuine equality which can only be produced by randomness, by having, like doctors, spend four years being a doctor and then one year doing like a random job so you know one of the ironies where I get all defend the prc about um which is funny because you know I tend to be I've been told I'm too shy and critical by some people and then I'm told I'm a China stooge by others. I think you're just right. I do think, accidentally, the Cultural Revolution, rustification produced a very rigorous elite in China that is responsive, and what this book, this is one of the things when I'm talking about this book about. When people tell me about the China miracle, I'm like it's going to go away once the current educated specialists take control. So when this mass of old people dying, we are talking about a mass in a real sense here, of just natural causes, the kind of expertise with a huge amount of superstition through through urban to rural rustification.

C. Derick Varn : 1:02:27

That wasn't sortition, wasn't the aim of the policy, but is what achieved um, that makes chinese society more cohesive and there be less social distances between otherwise fairly isolated classes. That's going to go away. That does not exist in sandell mart, that does not exist in 20 somethings in china right now, and so this was why this is actually why mike davis is very one of the reasons of the other reasons he sees that as why there's a bonapartist tendency in China now, is because the old collective guard that was really invested in collective leadership for whatever reason, if you like Deng or not, if you like Mao or not experienced this as a mass social integration movement.

Elijah Emery: 1:03:15

I think that's gone. You also see this in the continuing lionization of military members as political leaders. It comes from a memory of the time when the draft was a sortitionist policy that could reasonably result in somebody who came from elite sectors and was being bred for leadership coming into contact with people who are very different from them and having to adopt a generalist mindset for at least a year or two of their life. And this is no longer the case either, because the military leadership has also been professionalized.

C. Derick Varn : 1:03:52

Right, which was which was predicted by.

Elijah Emery: 1:03:55

James Burnham which was predicted by James Burnham, though he didn't.

C. Derick Varn : 1:03:58

He didn't uh he didn't call how it was gonna get professionalized.

Elijah Emery: 1:04:01

No, no um, and he also did he.

C. Derick Varn : 1:04:04

He also overstated the case for like a continuing military elite governing the country oh no, I mean like, like you want to get me ranting, get me talking about how people who talk about how james burnham was right ignores what he actually said was gonna happen, because he's like eisenhower, will be in charge forever.

C. Derick Varn : 1:04:20

It's like yeah, he basically thought, basically we were going to have a hundred thousand eisenhowers and he didn't see. He did not see the universe. Like his fear about the managerial elite was not a fear of education the way it is, fuck it, let's just do that. I mean, if you read, like the new machiavellians, not just the managerial revolution, um, he says, fuck it, let's just like, double down on this elite and just make sure they're in our good free market military that will have the moral virtues from our entrepreneurial system to actually be a good elite, as opposed to the fascist who I kind of put my money on and World War II. I know he doesn't admit that, but he did. Are the? Are the communists or the socialists? Like he's just like that's how we're going to check this.

C. Derick Varn : 1:05:16

He didn't have a vision of business doing that Like and so, and in fact he actually thought that the, the need for professionals in business through through the limited liability stock company, would mean that they couldn't do it anymore. Um, and interestingly, in america you kind of get the worst of both worlds, or all worlds, because my whole thing is like Burnham was wrong about the explicit military power, but he was actually right that for some reason that's not entirely clear to me. No matter how unpopular even soldiers get, the military is broadly seen as a good institution, one because it gets a lot of people out of lumpenization. And you're right, it's almost like well, some of you just randomly, are going to get picked up by the government and if you don't die, you got actually social democracy in militant form, or at least Keynesianism in militant form. Now you don't anymore actually, but that was For a long time.

C. Derick Varn : 1:06:26

You did until drones. I mean, you did even up until the first part of George W Bush administration that really ends under Obama. Which is also why people are like, well, the poverty draft isn't real. I'm like, no, the poverty draft isn't real. I'm like, no, the poverty draft isn't real. But that's because, like you guys are still, we're picking up talking points from 2004 and maintaining them until 2012.

Elijah Emery: 1:06:46

Um, but also it's over now, but it doesn't mean it was never real, the poverty draft isn't real because, rather than having american boots on the ground, you increasingly have just like american guns being sent to foreign countries right or or yeah, are we, you know? Or under obama and trump drones right.

C. Derick Varn : 1:07:09

So it's just like it is.

C. Derick Varn : 1:07:13

It is a commodification in automation of what used to be, um, ironically, one of the few actually meritocratic things in the fucking country. Yeah, um and um, and it's always been the irony like when I know this was partly done to freak people out against the bush wars, but it was always ironic to me there were be all these calls to reinstate the draft during the iraq war. Right, it was always progressives doing it. Um, partly probably to freak young people out and in a lower information time period, but also because I think they and I think they really believe this and I think they are actually ironically right that us war policy was, was more responsive to public opinion when not because like the soldiers could end the war, likely like it wasn't. Like you know, mutinies ended vietnam, the vietcong did, but and I'm just going to reiterate that over and over again until people get it through their thick skull when they start boomers- did not end vietnam by they did not, they did not either in mutinies or at home the Viet Cong into Vietnam.

C. Derick Varn : 1:08:25

However, what radically, it did have an effect, because the military made sure that they were not going to have an unpopular war again. So how would you have an unpopular war with a conscript army? Well, instead of only going to war when it was, uh, democratically viable, aka when you're attacked, um, just get rid of the conscript army, like, keep it on paper, but so in absolute emergencies, you got it, I guess, but get rid of it as a principle. And now I'm going to say that the biggest check against that argument about the public being like that is the IDF. So you know.

Elijah Emery: 1:09:09

I mean they don't really have unpopular wars. The wars that they do are mostly pretty popular, is the thing. Yeah, Having having a conscript army is not a check on war. It's a check on wars that don't have uh broad social support right.

C. Derick Varn : 1:09:29

So, for example, it might not having a conscript army might not have stopped the iraq, the iraq war um, or well, maybe the iraq war but not, however, it probably would have shortened it by a dramatic, dramatically um and you actually do see that borne out even in conscript armies like the.

Elijah Emery: 1:09:48

If I mean 2006, lebanon did not last for like that long because most of israel did not like it um.

C. Derick Varn : 1:10:01

So for those of you like conscripts not going to fix everything no, no, I don't think that, but it's an illustration of the point. Like, in some ways, if you want a meritocratic world, getting into institutions has to be, frankly, just fucking arbitrary, yeah, um. Or it has to be like open to everyone, and then, and then the problem that you get is like, how do you figure out who gets training without it being gameable by the rich? And you know, if you're like me and you're like, well, we can do that after we have destroyed wealth as we knew it? Uh, then then I have an answer for that.

C. Derick Varn : 1:10:36

But in the immediate term, which is where we all live, I don't um, so you do need stuff like sortition, and I think sandell's right about that, but I do see, like, who fucking cares to some degree if, like, harvard is still super elite, but random, um, like that you just accept randomly. I do think ironically and this is one thing I'm going to agree with sandell about the push for holistic acceptance actually has made um elite bias worse in a way that is, he's absolutely objective.

Elijah Emery: 1:11:10

He's actually he's against that one. He. He talks about how the sat is like worse.

C. Derick Varn : 1:11:18

Yeah, I know I, I read that part and I was like yeah, you're right, you can game the SAT and the test system, but when you take it away, what happens? You can game other stuff more Right. And we see that because the institutions that have taken that stuff away are actually less economically diverse.

Elijah Emery: 1:11:35

He's in favor of having entrance based on high school grades.

C. Derick Varn : 1:11:41

That would make sense if high schools were uniform. This is where I I did sort of find him to be like. I don't think you understand the rest of the education system that well like, because high schools in america are like, like public schools are probably as class-coded as private schools are, if not more.

Elijah Emery: 1:12:03

So yeah, and and uh, I mean especially in the sciences also. Yeah, I mean it's, it's ridiculous, like I mean you see that where you're at um in the northeast in particular, in contrast also to where some of my family's at in the mountain west where, like they do not teach evolution, for example um, but we do teach evolution, but like the science, but you're still, in general, like sciences here, like are, even it shows that.

C. Derick Varn : 1:12:34

Like it's obvious in the south. Okay, but it's because, for a variety of reasons, the brutality of the school system is made obvious there. But like and I'm gonna be careful about how I say this, but one of the things I'll tell you, if you look at, for example, a middle tier state like utah, in education we have a very good graduation rate. That's the only thing people really count right now, because our test scores are invalid in general because of local laws and they're constantly in a fight with the feds, but we can't use it for anything. It's not valid because of that. So what do we have? Well, we have a graduation rate, which is what the federal government now focuses on. Focuses on what.

C. Derick Varn : 1:13:25

I can tell you that every major official in the state has admitted to me at conferences when I've asked this question. And yet they don't, and they've admitted it's bad, but they and they are concerned about it, but they don't know how to do anything about it because they're not willing to change policies. In fact, the policies that they change actually accelerate. This is that they want to get to graduation and wait up so bad that they've noticed that even for basic stuff, even students with elite grades like we're talking about, public school valedictorians will need to take remedial coursework in college. All right, coursework in college, alright. I want that to sit in with people and what that's led to in general is a weird thing amongst people your age, elijah, where the top 10% are hustling more than they've ever hustled in their fucking life. I mean, I'm hustling. The people in the elite schools are hustling more than they've ever hustled in their fucking life I mean that you, I'm hustling.

C. Derick Varn : 1:14:21

Yeah, the people in the elite schools are hustling more than ever, but 90 of the population has given up and that includes from good, good, class-coded public schools and private schools. That is like it is. It is become a like rat race of the top 10 and then nothing for anyone else and they're giving up on universities and they're giving it, but they're also not replacing it with, like vocational education or stuff like that there's just nothing, there's just nothing, and it's going to be a problem in about four or five years where we're going to start see that like the next I mean it's like like we're lacking skilled labor and yet we're problem.

C. Derick Varn : 1:15:01

I mean, it's like like we're lacking skilled labor and yet we're also not paying for skilled labor and we can't.

Elijah Emery: 1:15:05

And there's and we're not bringing in immigrants who are skilled laborers.

C. Derick Varn : 1:15:08

Yeah, because of, for political reasons, and that's, that's, bipartisan people. Um. So what do you have and I'm also not sure I'm going to say this too I'm not sure we have the ability to attract the same thing, because one of the things that, as India in particular, develops one, I think, the face of you know how do I say this without sounding like I'm promoting ethnic conspiracies conspiracies um, the face of the group that has somewhat liberal values but conservative policies on certain things, which which, in paleo-conservative terms, for vaguely anti-semitic reasons and vaguely truth reasons, was associated with jews and, later on, asians, um, we'll start seeing south asians be the face of that. So, for example, you have we talked about this last time we talked about like democratic voters who are supporting modi, but over time they're going to become just regular like neoconservatives, probably that if nikki haley and and, uh, vivek, uh kamaswami yeah, not vivek, because he's like a lunatic, but like Nikki Haley, right, but I think Vivek is a lunatic.

Elijah Emery: 1:16:23

Vivek is a good example of this, but his politics are not really amenable to this.

C. Derick Varn : 1:16:26

Bobby Jindal is another one, bobby Jindal, is a good example. You're going to see a lot more of that in the future and interestingly that's a mixture of the we don't let non-elite.

Elijah Emery: 1:16:43

But, I think the funny thing is you're going to see those people, that type of person with a D next to their name.

C. Derick Varn : 1:16:49

Oh yeah, I think, I think, I think that's, but that that was true with the, with the two other minority groups, that I don't want to start anti-pocrates against the two other minority groups, that I don't want to start anti-pogroms against. I mean that was true with Jewish Americans and with Asian Americans too, that they were pretty evenly divided amongst Republicans and Democrats until the racial backlash of 2008 I don't know about.

Elijah Emery: 1:17:18

I don't know very much about asian politics, but jewish politics I disagree with that. Um, they were pretty, I mean post fdr. They were pretty uniformly democratic. Um, but they would side in local elections and state level elections with the republican candidate.

C. Derick Varn : 1:17:38

Um, like a good example is uh, but jewish conservative jewish conservative leaders became the think tank of the gop oh, yeah, that's, that's, that's absolutely yeah, if you're talking about, if you're not talking about, the general community.

C. Derick Varn : 1:17:51

No, I mean, if you're talking about the leadership, I agree with you in the general, in the general community, what you saw was actually, um, an elite consensus that was, broadly speaking, liberal, um, and that that paradox led to anti-semites actually like coming up with theories about it. Um, uh, kevin mcdonald, I believe, was his name. Um, no, that's uh, it's mcdonald. Kevin mcdonald I don't want to slander, he's a guy from canada who was in kids and hall. But, um, a mcdonald guy who I don't want to slander, he's a guy from Canada who was in Kitson Hall, but a McDonald guy who I don't really want people looking up anyway, who came up with this idea about Jewish people promoting liberalism internally, but anyway, I'd like to reiterate to listeners Vaughn and I are both Jewish, yeah.

C. Derick Varn : 1:18:37

So, just so you know, I'm not encouraging you. This is true, I just know. I just know these theories. You're even religiously Jewish, like you are what I like to call a double, which is rare.

Elijah Emery: 1:18:53

All right.

C. Derick Varn : 1:18:58

So, anyway, my point about this is it leads to weird dynamics, um, and it leads to also like and I think we can even see this with like we mentioned this with educated black women in in. This is enough. And we mentioned this as a weakness of the book, because the politics of humiliation really don't seem to apply to minority communities in the same way, and particularly the black community in specific, where you think it would like um, I mean, I think, especially with the, the prime meritocrat of the past 30 years is barack obama right of who there is some resentment at because you know he's.

C. Derick Varn : 1:19:41

Because it does follow that pattern where we talk about where, like, oh you know, children of immigrants and or From either Africa or Caribbean and or mixed race people representing the community. But but despite some Adolf stuff that happened afterwards, that by and large was not a talking point any time during the Obama administration. It kind of came up in 2007.

C. Derick Varn : 1:20:09

And I think it came up cynically actually, but I don't know this, I can't prove this, but I kind of feel like it came from Clintonites in 2007, because Clinton had very much had the we represent the Arkansas white working class Democrat that was, and I know people think that's wow because of her 2016 run, but she did try to pull that stunt in 2007. And the other thing I think they did was Obama isn't black enough, you know, like. So you know, didn't work't work at all, right and so that, and so you're right. Like the poster, the poster child for meritocracy, uh, is in the united states, is barack obama. Um, you know, now there is complications to that narrative.

Elijah Emery: 1:21:00

Obama's white family is not just white, they're white elites who, by marriage, go back to the same people that the Bushes are related to, I mean, I think that is one reason he is the prime meritocrat, though he is broadly reflective of what meritocracy actually looks like is broadly reflective of what meritocracy actually looks like, right, um, which is like somebody kind of getting a chance through knowing somebody who had, who comes from the real, actual elite and working very hard, but like also, like them being so interrelated, has to be unable to separate.

C. Derick Varn : 1:21:40

One of the things that I think is interesting about Trump is Trump in some ways, actually, even though he comes from a relatively elite, bourgeois background. Compared to most people, he is not from the Brahmin old families of the United States and he's actually one of the first presidents who isn't. The other example is Kennedy, but they became a Brahmin family right.

Elijah Emery: 1:22:08

Well, biden is not from a Brahmin family either.

C. Derick Varn : 1:22:10

No, actually you're right, he was Clinton, so it used to be Democrats, actually relatively conservative Democrats, but it used to be Democrats, actually relatively conservative Democrats, but it used to be Democrats whereas, but, interestingly, what you have in Clinton and I know it's hard for us to remember this because we think of the Kennedys and Clintons as, like, the elites of the country, and they are now, but that's in one lifetime effectively, um, and the kennedys isn't too, but like, um, like we've seen the rise and fall of new, of new elite families twice, uh, in my parents lifetime, uh, so if you're a baby boomer, you you've seen two camelots, basically, and one, you don't have to deal with this collapse because, uh, the president gets assassinated and the other, everyone is sort of like pretending that they never felt like the clinton administration was a camelot in the first place, um, and then you have the obama.

C. Derick Varn : 1:23:15

Who's the parent, the, the, the, the poster child from another way too, is he doesn't change anything. Like, like Obama's institutional instincts were remarkably conservative, given the kind of policy and rep and what he represented to people, which was a massive shift in the democratic party towards its you know future, you know base at the time, and towards liberalism.

Elijah Emery: 1:23:43

Yeah towards liberalism. He won in 2008 largely because he voted against or he was an active opponent of the Iraq War.

C. Derick Varn : 1:23:49

Right, who's not an anti-war candidate in general, but you were right, he's an active opponent of the Iraq War, was pro-Afghanistan and people ignored that but and he but, and he was, and he was groomed for the position too. I mean, like Adolf Reed is right about that, about the Democratic Chicago machine. But I think one of the things that you get with Obama is also, even when you bring someone new and they represent something new into this meritocratic system because they are new, all right, let's compare this to Biden. You're right, biden doesn't come from an elite family. He's another, like his family's elite now, but it's because of him.

C. Derick Varn : 1:24:46

Uh, and similarly to the kennedys, you know the I I'm not surprised by biden and karachi scandals because they marry the kennedys and more than being catholic like um but uh, let's, let's ignore that for a second, um, biden comes up, right, but because he's an established name and he's established in the old guard of the of the party, even though he's not from this new part, he actually does have, within the meritocratic framework, the ability to appoint new elites in a way. Let's say he'd been John Edwards, for example, for people who remember that candidate. I also think he would have ended up having institutional pressure within the Democratic Party to be more conservative in appointees and whatnot, which is what we got with Obama. I think, ultimately, if they can get rid of someone like John Edwards, that's what they would have got with John Edwards or Howard Dean. For people who remember him I know I'm talking about people of your childhood, elijah but it was my teens.

Elijah Emery: 1:25:52

I'm knowledgeable enough to remember who these people were.

C. Derick Varn : 1:25:54

Yeah, I'm just remembering as like if people were talking about Gary Hart and when I was 22, what I know what they were talking about, because If people were talking about Gary Hart and when I was 22, I know what they were talking about Because that's literally the exact equivalent.

C. Derick Varn : 1:26:05

So I think it's interesting to think about what that has meant systemically, and I think we have to blame some of that on the racial politics of the United States. But I don't think it's just that. I think if we'd had any new strain of, if you had anything representing another new strain, because you just had a major strain change in the Democratic Party, because the Atari Democrats get manifested in an entirely new family, in the Clinton family, in this entirely new political clans and you know, you brought it up, you're actually right even the weird republicans like reagan actually came from old families. Uh, trump is weird in that and I should have stated this more accurately. He's weird and that he's in that on the gop side, like um, the democrats, since kennedy johnson comes from an old texas family. So I don't know how you count that.

Elijah Emery: 1:27:05

But like johnson grew up like destitute though, so it's a little weird. Yes, he comes from an old texas family, that but but was poor money and then, like he kind of made it back all right, carter came from just like middle class, I think.

C. Derick Varn : 1:27:20

Yeah, he was the middle, he, he, he is, he is truly a middle class out of nowhere kind of local politician from georgia, clinton, grew up like destitute um you know, although here lee ronald clinton does come from old power backgrounds, but not from the democrat party.

C. Derick Varn : 1:27:37

she comes from the Republican side actually, so like, but you're right, clinton comes from that the, the exceptions were actually the Democratic candidates that lost. Like, whenever Democrats try to pick like old family candidates, it's like the carries, for example, are the gores than they are. Um, they don't win, um, which, which is always interesting to me because I'm like the, the liberal impulse. There's a weird impulse in in liberal elites, and then I'm gonna shut off this into the conversation we go behind the patreon wall, um, but I think and by the way, uh, for those of you listening it, by the patreon wall and it will have been released like a month before this competition comes out um, the, there's a weird tendency in and uh and liberal elites to want to establish dynasties, actually like that's a, that's a real thing that I cannot explain, and yet there's no, there's literally no taste in and live and like, broadly speaking, left liberal democratic policy for that to actually happen, like I like.

C. Derick Varn : 1:29:02

I mean the kennedys are like the closest approximation and they collapsed right, the roosevelts are the other closest approximation, and they weren't even in the same fucking party, like it's it's. You just look at this and I'm like why do you guys have an impulse for this when, like, your own history indicates that you don't do this?

Elijah Emery: 1:29:23

yeah, like I mean you see this sometimes at like the state level, but not not these like multiple presidents, though, of course, like the first time, like the bushes were the first father and son duo since the adams, correct?

C. Derick Varn : 1:29:39

so it's just not very prevalent in american history, uh but there's a weird tendency to want it, yeah, and I don't know what that's about. Like people love their kids, man, maybe it's just, I don't know um, but weirdly it's not like uh, it's, it's not like it's not like uh, it's, it's not like, it's not. Like you know, the Bushes are encouraging Jenna Bush to go on and become a political figure. I mean, I find that. I find that interesting. I guess there was some push for that with Chelsea Clinton, but not a lot.

Elijah Emery: 1:30:16

I think one of the Bushes is actually like Texas railroad commissioner or something. Now, um, which is the position in charge of the oil, by the way, uh, in Texas? Um, but yeah, there's not, I don't know.

C. Derick Varn : 1:30:34

I mean, this is a conversation that will will have more data points in about 20 years, so it's kind of fruitless to engage in now which is interesting to me for this part of, for this argument about the tyranny of merit and this true thing in which merit has hidden that kind of. There is a real sense in which meritocracy in the united states actually has an aristocratic imperative in it. That's kind of hidden, but also it doesn't take that long to pull it apart, like c sandell, um, but what's weird about that is it actually doesn't establish political aristocracy that much it establishes like business aristocracy, business aristocracy, uh, administrative drift, trust fund kids, like so there is.

C. Derick Varn : 1:31:21

There is an aristocracy in the united states, but it's kind of it used to be in the same way it used to be right, it's not in.

C. Derick Varn : 1:31:31

And, interestingly, at the moment where the meritocracy seems to be breaking down, one of the things I think is interesting that, like sandell doesn't totally deal with is like the idea that that universities would be a general aristocracy, like a general meritocratic generator of natural aristocracy. Uh, and I know they would never say that that's what they're doing, but that's what you know, that's what they're doing, um, that's what they're doing. Um, weirdly, that actually comes with the democratization of the universities, because it's not like pre-gi bill, universities were particularly fucking, like um, non-meritocratic it just they weren't as essential of an institution to society. That's a baby boomer phenomenon, um, and it's one that, like nobody has a particularly good narrative for, because, like for all of the like you know, republicans, attacks on higher ed, they're totally still dependent on all that shit and they can't, um, they don't, they're not really trying to like dismantle it at all. You know not other you're like, yeah, they can mess with the humanities and call about the pc police, but like no one's calling for decredentialization generally, um, so I think that's an interesting that and that leads to like, I guess the the problem that sandow can't fix is what do you, how do you simplify a society where you could realistically call for like decriminalization?

C. Derick Varn : 1:33:09

You know, and the only thing I can come up with is like well, you need more radically democratic institutions to control, to control these people and make them responsive, you know, through being able to be replaced, but I don't know that you can just get rid of them tomorrow. There's no way to do that right, like someone's got to make sure the nuclear reactors don't blow up, like like that is real job and that's that. That goes back to that paradox that I was talking about with my liberal friend, where he doesn't entirely not have a point. You do have to have someone who knows how the nuclear reactor works. My, my thing is like how do you control them?

C. Derick Varn : 1:33:46

If you believe politics not the implementation of policy, but the creation of policy requires experts you can't really believe in um, in democracy, and believe that. I don't think and that that seems like that's a deeper problem than what sandell is actually dealing with. Um, and on that note, uh, we're gonna talk regular old us politics after the break behind the wall. I guess we kind of did that anyway, um thank you, elijah, we didn't actually.

C. Derick Varn : 1:34:20

More exactingly yeah, we'll do it in ways that will annoy people, and you can hear that Elijah and I differ on things, for example, that Elijah thinks you should vote and I think you should. I can't say what I think you should do, but so people can infer what they would like. All right, um and on that note, thanks for having me.