Average Is Over

Lexington, of The Economist, has a tantalizing review of Tyler Cowen's new book, Average Is Over.

"It describes a future largely stripped of middling jobs and broad prosperity. An elite 10-15% of Americans will have the brains and self-discipline to master tomorrow’s technology and extract profit from it, he speculates. They will enjoy great wealth and stimulating lives. Others will endure stagnant or even falling wages, as employers measure their output with “oppressive precision”. Some will thrive as service-providers to the rich. A few will claw their way into the elite (cheap online education will be a great leveller), bolstering the idea of a “hyper-meritocracy” at work: this “will make it easier to ignore those left behind”.

Mr. Cowens's vision is neither warm nor fuzzy. In his future, mistakes and even mediocrity will be hard to hide: eg, an ever-expanding array of ratings will expose so-so doctors and also patients who do not take their medicines or otherwise spell trouble. Young men will struggle in a labour market that rewards conscientiousness over muscle. With incomes squeezed, many Americans will head to the sort of cheap, sun-baked sprawling exurbs that give the farmers'-market-and-bike-lanes set heartburn. Many will accept rotten public services in exchange for low taxes. This may sound a bit grim, but it reflects real-world trends: 60% of employers already check the credit ratings of job applicants; young male unemployment is high and migrants have been flooding to low-tax, low-service Texas for years."

I like a cozy, semi-dystopic read more than the average bear, and I wonder if, even though it is written by a popular economist, it could be categorized under the speculative fiction category Synova recently spoke of. I tend to agree with Cowen's predictions, due to my Technium influenced worldview. Matthew Yglesias of Slate takes a less sanguine view of this future, and feels that we should not go gently into that good night.

"So I would take the message [of Cowen's conclusions] to be something like "politics is really important just as it always has been and people ought to get more fired up about some ideas that aren't  at the current forefront of the congressional agenda." Cowen's actual message seems to be that we ought to make ourselves more complacent, and that these somewhat bleak trends he forecasts aren't really all that bad if you look at them in the right light. But I don't quite see why. If good public policy were easy, there wouldn't be so much poverty and misery in the world. But if good public policy were impossible, there wouldn't be any success stories and "growth miracles" and "trente glorieuses" and so forth."

Still, it seems a somewhat acceptable future. People will receive healthcare and have a fairly large degree of freedom. There are worse things than a semi-benevolent elite ruling a semi-happy world. It would be up to the people, both the rich and not rich, to come to terms with themselves and how they will live their lives.   

The Economist

Slate

h/t rhhardin

Neo-feudalism in California

Author Joel Kotkin, of The Daily Beast, views the conditions in California as neo-feudal and he breaks down the population into four sections:

"The Oligarchs: The swelling number of billionaires in the state, particularly in Silicon Valley, has enhanced power that is emerging into something like the old aristocratic French second estate. Through public advocacy and philanthropy, the oligarchs have tended to embrace California’s “green” agenda, with a very negative impact on traditional industries such as manufacturing, agriculture, energy, and construction...

The  Clerisy: The Oligarchs may have the money, but by themselves they cannot control a huge state like California, much less America. Gentry domination requires allies with a broader social base and their own political power. In the Middle Ages, this role was played largely by the church; in today’s hyper-secular America, the job of shaping the masses has fallen to the government apparat, the professoriat, and the media, which together constitute our new Clerisy. The Clerisy generally defines societal priorities, defends “right-thinking” oligarchs, and chastises those, like traditional energy companies, that deviate from their theology.

The New Serfs: If current trends continue, the fastest growing class will be the permanently property-less. This group includes welfare recipients and other government dependents but also the far more numerous working poor. In the past, the working poor had reasonable aspirations for a better life, epitomized by property ownership or better prospects for their children. Now, with increasingly little prospect of advancement, California’s serfs depend on the Clerisy to produce benefits making their permanent impoverishment less gruesome... 

The Yeomanry: In neo-feudalist California, the biggest losers tend to be the old private sector middle class. This includes largely small business owners, professionals, and skilled workers in traditional industries most targeted by regulatory shifts and higher taxes. Once catered to by both parties, the yeomanry have become increasingly irrelevant as California has evolved into a one-party state where the ruling Democrats have achieved a potentially permanent, sizable majority consisting largely of the clerisy and the serf class, and funded by the oligarchs..."

Although in this article the new serfs are considered part of the Democratic majority (along with the Oligarchs and the Clerisy), they are kept from property ownership because of high real estate prices, which in turn are influenced by tight land-use regulations. For example there are restrictions on the building of detached houses in favor of concentrating people in high-rises, with the goal of addressing environmental concerns. These issues affect not only the new serfs, but the yeomanry as well, and the article sites the inability of a biomedical engineer earning $100,000 per year to buy a house in Orange County. 

The article ends with the interesting insight that Gov. Brown, being a former Jesuit, is well-suited to run a feudal system, and then sounds the warning that California's class system may influence American class structure in the future.

Daily Beast