It’s very interesting that 3 things most often cited as evidence of economic failure are the same things that DO NOT have to compete globally: Housing, Healthcare, Education. If you showed angry people that income chart (left and right) they would probably sputter a bunch before saying something about how unaffordable or crappy one (or all) of those 3 things are. And then they would then blame Globalists / Neolibs / NeoCons / Lizard People / Oprah clones. Rich people who make lots of money from a global economy are kind of super fucking annoying but they are not the problem with our fact-free post-competence culture or our garbage healthcare / housing / education. That all rests with us.
That housing, health care, and education -- three major costs for most families -- by-and-large are not competed globally (I mean, I guess they are a bit, but not as much as most things) is an excellent point.
By the time the 2026 midterms roll around, huge chunks of fire struck LA will still be waiting for permits to begin submitting designs for home plans to the five committees who will take their turn finding if the "environmental justice impacts scores" meet the standards......
It will not go unnoticed by Trump. Blue zones suck at those three things in unique and terrible ways, with Health care probably being the one they will own the most thanks to the PPACA, as this is where Red and Blue zones get effected similarly.
I think Newsom is aware of that and is pushing to get the permits moving along. The people in Boulder Creek who lost their houses in 2020 and never got permits to rebuild are going "Hey!"
The way I would put it is that neoliberalism did make us rich. We just don't feel rich because we already spent that wealth on bad housing policy and overstaffed universities. And Iraq.
It's like how the richest cities tend to be the most poorly run. Because they can afford it.
That’s just because the cost of unbalanced trade is wadded up into the national debt and becomes too abstract for most people to understand or care about.
Me: Is there an opposite to Dunning Kruger effect where people are too smart to know that they are condescending or not reaching the people they think they are?
It: "Yes, there is a concept that could be considered the opposite of the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's sometimes referred to as the "Curse of Knowledge" or "Expertise Bias."
While the Dunning-Kruger effect describes how people with limited knowledge in a domain tend to overestimate their abilities, the Curse of Knowledge describes how experts struggle to remember what it's like to be a beginner. Experts often have difficulty communicating effectively with non-experts because they unconsciously assume others share their background knowledge, vocabulary, and mental frameworks.
This can manifest in several ways:
- Using jargon or technical language without realizing it's not commonly understood
- Skipping over explanatory steps that seem "obvious" to them but are crucial for beginners
- Being real smug douche (ok, that's mine)
The term was first popularized by economists Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein, and Martin Weber in a 1989 paper, though the concept has been observed in communication studies and education for much longer.
It's a common challenge for teachers, technical writers, and anyone trying to communicate specialized knowledge to a broader audience. The more expert you become in a field, the harder it can be to remember what it was like not to know what you now know."
And, of course, researchers, probably the kind of people we're talking about, name it as humblebrag. Dammit, I know too much and now I have to talk to an ape. Curse you, God of knowledge and intelligence. Why me? [shakes fist and exeunts left]
There is also the point that the necessary background is a large, long, step-wise achievement in learning and trying to convey it in a quick article approachable to a novice without skipping many logical connections along the way is so difficult that few can come close and none can master. And I say "none" after much thought. Even articles written by scientists for scientists in other fields,regularly omit how something was learned and only report, as best they can, what is the new conclusion in their field. And that type of report leaves one with little insight concerning how solid this new information actually is.
There's a big city park near where I live in Cincinnati, and a (very) small part of it is slated to be turned into a dog park soon. A group of local protesters have been writing anti-dog-park messages in chalk at the site. Their most recent chalk messages have invoked "the oligarchs" and their nefarious role in this disastrous, owl-disturbing dog park.
I don’t think Sanders knows what the word means. Oligarchy is rule of the few. I think what he actually means is “plutocracy,” which is rule of the wealthy.
I guess in a way we do have oligarchy since a vanishing small percentage of people vote in primary elections, which are the most important election for most members of the house. I don’t think Bernie is referring to his vote supporters, though.
Bernie got so much of he supposedly always wanted on trade with Trump’s trade war. Trump even sounds like Sanders - Trump mentioned dolls, Sanders used deodorant as an example. Of course, I doubt the cost of deodorant is an issue for your average sanders supporter, for multiple reasons.
You just wrote a column fantasizing about what would happen if Trump brought back Prima Nocta, which is something most people know from Braveheart if they know it at all. Author, read thyself. I realize it was in the service of some larger point, but in the movie it was the dicta of a deeply evil king and the Lord who takes advantage is savagely killed. It wasn't exactly a kitchen table issue. I think there is just something in the liberal and visceral dislike of Trump that just causes this to break out like a rash. Oligarchy just isn't really the problem. Its that, besides "Lets stop from Trump from doing anything he tries to do" Democrats don't have a cohesive or unified message, or anything like a general agreed plan about what to do. "Lets go back to what we were doing before Trump messed it up" was the message that got Biden elected and then when people saw what Democrats actually did with that chance, namely, pass an orgy of new spending and let in as many millions of people from around the world who care to get here and then resettle them at public cost", they promptly went back to Trump.
Oligarchy Schmologarchy, until the public trusts that Democrats have a different plan besides Net Zero evisceration of the economy and Government "nudging" with steel pipes to our heads to eat less, have less, drive less and live less, Sen. Murphy can say whatever he wants, it wont make a real difference. No one is voting for Democrats because even Democrats dont know what that means.
My take of what people mean when they complain about “the oligarchy” (these days) is their dissatisfaction with the way Musk suddenly got himself a bunch of power due to his money and wrecked the government.
Just my 2c that’s something that I really worry about. Hence my warm feelings towards anyone else that conveys that concern to me in 1 word.
Perhaps these signs should be read as a Captain Obvious-level statement of fact instead of as the latest shibboleth. And even then it's not true - what about Don King? Elvis? Robert De Niro?
I thought this was Bernie trying to force another term from European political discourse onto an American context, like his fumbling with “socialism” and “social democracy” a while back. If anything, people know “oligarchs” as referring to a certain delightful class of Russian super rich. Or as Barry Blitt explains:
Criticism of oligarchs would be stronger from a party that didn’t have Superdelegates and an unknown number of operatives that ruled for a senile president. Admittedly Bernie was against both those, but it doesn’t help the Democrat cause.
1) Leftist language is annoying, and "oligarchy" is leftist.
2) A large number of Americans have no idea what "oligarchy" means.
3) Prominent leftist figures such as Bernie Sanders don't know what the word means, or DO know and use it mistakenly anyway, and in any event are wrong.
I really can't argue with you on (1). You have posted many times on annoying leftist language, and I think it's safe to say you've done your homework. That's not intended sarcastically, by the way; your commentary on this subject is thoughtful and funny.
Also on (2), it's undoubtedly true that many of us are clueless on what "oligarchy" means. But I expect many of those people THINK it means something like "a society with a lot of income inequality".
On (3), I think you may be missing an important part of the puzzle. If we use "oligarchy" to mean "a form of government where power is concentrated in the hands of a small group of individuals", the poster child is, of course, Russia.
We call the mega-billionaires who run that country, watched over by the loving grace of Putin, as "oligarchs" for a reason. They own around $625 billion (6.25 trillion rubles), or about 26% of Russia's GDP. The top 1% own between 48% to 56% of the nation's wealth.
In comparison, the Forbes 400 own 3.4% of US wealth, and the top 1% own about 31%.
The Gini coefficient for the US is 0.39 (highest in the G7). Russia's is 0.405.
So the US is not as staggeringly unequal as Russia, but we're working on it! All the measures of inequality have been rising steadily for the past 40 years, and we are approaching levels not seen for 100 years.
So what? As you point out, there is so much infighting that we can't really say that a handful of rich guys run everything. But the very richest Americans already have political influence vastly exceeding that of even the middle-class. Their influence controls much of our politics, and is only increasing under Trump, infighting or no. This, I think, is what Bernie Sanders was talking about. Like you, I wish he would use words accurately. But we would not go much farther down this road before the US walks, talks and quacks a lot like an oligarchy.
Eh I think the dispute over whether oligarchy is accurate is a bit too cute. Pretty much everyone agrees that Russia has oligarchs (I suppose one could distinguish between having oligarchs, being oligarchic, and being an oligarchy), and you see a very similar dynamic there w/ Putin. I think it’s been a very long time since anyone’s used the term in the classical sense, rather than to describe a mafia state.
Honestly, I disagreed with the oligarchy charge *until* this administration. Oligarchic power is very clearly what both Trump and Musk want for themselves. Thiel and now even Yarvin are common ideologues. My favorite pieces on what’s going on with Silicon Valley “titans of industry” are Ganz’s on boss-ism and Farrell on “exit”… like, it’s actually really clear that these are people who see themselves as and aspire to be more like oligarchs in the contemporary sense.
I don’t really think the argument over language is important, I default to “king” stuff, I think because to me it gets at the ego, hatred for rule of law, and sheer un-American nature of what’s going on. But different people talk differently and talk to different people with different ideas 🤷♂️ On the campaign trail I think it matters a lot what a candidate says. I’m not super worried about the name on a placard for an “off season” rally so long as it keeps people moving and isn’t obviously false or destructive.
My feeling about using "oligarchy" to rally political support: I doubt one in ten MAGAts could define "Marxist," yet the GOP has no hesitation about using this word each and every day.
It’s very interesting that 3 things most often cited as evidence of economic failure are the same things that DO NOT have to compete globally: Housing, Healthcare, Education. If you showed angry people that income chart (left and right) they would probably sputter a bunch before saying something about how unaffordable or crappy one (or all) of those 3 things are. And then they would then blame Globalists / Neolibs / NeoCons / Lizard People / Oprah clones. Rich people who make lots of money from a global economy are kind of super fucking annoying but they are not the problem with our fact-free post-competence culture or our garbage healthcare / housing / education. That all rests with us.
That housing, health care, and education -- three major costs for most families -- by-and-large are not competed globally (I mean, I guess they are a bit, but not as much as most things) is an excellent point.
By the time the 2026 midterms roll around, huge chunks of fire struck LA will still be waiting for permits to begin submitting designs for home plans to the five committees who will take their turn finding if the "environmental justice impacts scores" meet the standards......
It will not go unnoticed by Trump. Blue zones suck at those three things in unique and terrible ways, with Health care probably being the one they will own the most thanks to the PPACA, as this is where Red and Blue zones get effected similarly.
I think Newsom is aware of that and is pushing to get the permits moving along. The people in Boulder Creek who lost their houses in 2020 and never got permits to rebuild are going "Hey!"
Don’t worry, it wasn’t an original thought. I think I heard it from Jonah Goldberg.
The way I would put it is that neoliberalism did make us rich. We just don't feel rich because we already spent that wealth on bad housing policy and overstaffed universities. And Iraq.
It's like how the richest cities tend to be the most poorly run. Because they can afford it.
"....but they are not the problem with our fact-free post-competence culture or our garbage healthcare / housing / education. That all rests with us."
Agree.
That’s just because the cost of unbalanced trade is wadded up into the national debt and becomes too abstract for most people to understand or care about.
Me: Is there an opposite to Dunning Kruger effect where people are too smart to know that they are condescending or not reaching the people they think they are?
It: "Yes, there is a concept that could be considered the opposite of the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's sometimes referred to as the "Curse of Knowledge" or "Expertise Bias."
While the Dunning-Kruger effect describes how people with limited knowledge in a domain tend to overestimate their abilities, the Curse of Knowledge describes how experts struggle to remember what it's like to be a beginner. Experts often have difficulty communicating effectively with non-experts because they unconsciously assume others share their background knowledge, vocabulary, and mental frameworks.
This can manifest in several ways:
- Using jargon or technical language without realizing it's not commonly understood
- Skipping over explanatory steps that seem "obvious" to them but are crucial for beginners
- Being real smug douche (ok, that's mine)
The term was first popularized by economists Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein, and Martin Weber in a 1989 paper, though the concept has been observed in communication studies and education for much longer.
It's a common challenge for teachers, technical writers, and anyone trying to communicate specialized knowledge to a broader audience. The more expert you become in a field, the harder it can be to remember what it was like not to know what you now know."
And, of course, researchers, probably the kind of people we're talking about, name it as humblebrag. Dammit, I know too much and now I have to talk to an ape. Curse you, God of knowledge and intelligence. Why me? [shakes fist and exeunts left]
As illustrated by this xkcd:
https://xkcd.com/2501/
There is also the point that the necessary background is a large, long, step-wise achievement in learning and trying to convey it in a quick article approachable to a novice without skipping many logical connections along the way is so difficult that few can come close and none can master. And I say "none" after much thought. Even articles written by scientists for scientists in other fields,regularly omit how something was learned and only report, as best they can, what is the new conclusion in their field. And that type of report leaves one with little insight concerning how solid this new information actually is.
There's a big city park near where I live in Cincinnati, and a (very) small part of it is slated to be turned into a dog park soon. A group of local protesters have been writing anti-dog-park messages in chalk at the site. Their most recent chalk messages have invoked "the oligarchs" and their nefarious role in this disastrous, owl-disturbing dog park.
To be fair, if you draw a Venn diagram of "oligarchs" and "owls", there's not much overlap.
I don't know why I missed it earlier, but I feel like there's maybe an “owl-igarchy” joke in there somewhere.
Cartoon Owls lend themselves to whihs and monocle's Jeff! It's the underbrain!!!
I don’t think Sanders knows what the word means. Oligarchy is rule of the few. I think what he actually means is “plutocracy,” which is rule of the wealthy.
I guess in a way we do have oligarchy since a vanishing small percentage of people vote in primary elections, which are the most important election for most members of the house. I don’t think Bernie is referring to his vote supporters, though.
Bernie got so much of he supposedly always wanted on trade with Trump’s trade war. Trump even sounds like Sanders - Trump mentioned dolls, Sanders used deodorant as an example. Of course, I doubt the cost of deodorant is an issue for your average sanders supporter, for multiple reasons.
You just wrote a column fantasizing about what would happen if Trump brought back Prima Nocta, which is something most people know from Braveheart if they know it at all. Author, read thyself. I realize it was in the service of some larger point, but in the movie it was the dicta of a deeply evil king and the Lord who takes advantage is savagely killed. It wasn't exactly a kitchen table issue. I think there is just something in the liberal and visceral dislike of Trump that just causes this to break out like a rash. Oligarchy just isn't really the problem. Its that, besides "Lets stop from Trump from doing anything he tries to do" Democrats don't have a cohesive or unified message, or anything like a general agreed plan about what to do. "Lets go back to what we were doing before Trump messed it up" was the message that got Biden elected and then when people saw what Democrats actually did with that chance, namely, pass an orgy of new spending and let in as many millions of people from around the world who care to get here and then resettle them at public cost", they promptly went back to Trump.
Oligarchy Schmologarchy, until the public trusts that Democrats have a different plan besides Net Zero evisceration of the economy and Government "nudging" with steel pipes to our heads to eat less, have less, drive less and live less, Sen. Murphy can say whatever he wants, it wont make a real difference. No one is voting for Democrats because even Democrats dont know what that means.
Just getting people to use the term can count as victory.
If I talk about the dangers of "white nationalism" or, alternatively, "welfare queens," then a bunch of other stuff comes along for the ride.
And you can feel the people getting ready to type their replies that one of those things isn't real.
But the point isn't if it's real. It's just to put the seed in your head that there's a problem, whether it's true or not.
Decent point. Having your political adversaries use your terminology is a definitive home court advantage.
My take of what people mean when they complain about “the oligarchy” (these days) is their dissatisfaction with the way Musk suddenly got himself a bunch of power due to his money and wrecked the government.
Just my 2c that’s something that I really worry about. Hence my warm feelings towards anyone else that conveys that concern to me in 1 word.
The directive to use the word "kings" has apparently been promulgated from Central Command.
If you drive through New Canaan, you are seeing lawn signs saying "No Kings since 1776"
Perhaps these signs should be read as a Captain Obvious-level statement of fact instead of as the latest shibboleth. And even then it's not true - what about Don King? Elvis? Robert De Niro?
The Hive Mind has a new quip it thinks is clever
Wouldn’t a modern oligarch be more like a duke or baron? There’s only one king in a monarchy. Or are those signs referring to King Orange?
They are referring to Trump.
I thought this was Bernie trying to force another term from European political discourse onto an American context, like his fumbling with “socialism” and “social democracy” a while back. If anything, people know “oligarchs” as referring to a certain delightful class of Russian super rich. Or as Barry Blitt explains:
Oligarchs: A Field Guide
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/oligarchs-a-field-guide
I don’t believe in UFOs. I think it’s all a bunch of oligarchy.
I don’t believe in astrology; I’m a Sagittarius and we’re skeptical.
- Arthur C Clarke
Criticism of oligarchs would be stronger from a party that didn’t have Superdelegates and an unknown number of operatives that ruled for a senile president. Admittedly Bernie was against both those, but it doesn’t help the Democrat cause.
Thank you for confirming my hunch that neoliberal isn’t really a word.
This post seems to make three arguments:
1) Leftist language is annoying, and "oligarchy" is leftist.
2) A large number of Americans have no idea what "oligarchy" means.
3) Prominent leftist figures such as Bernie Sanders don't know what the word means, or DO know and use it mistakenly anyway, and in any event are wrong.
I really can't argue with you on (1). You have posted many times on annoying leftist language, and I think it's safe to say you've done your homework. That's not intended sarcastically, by the way; your commentary on this subject is thoughtful and funny.
Also on (2), it's undoubtedly true that many of us are clueless on what "oligarchy" means. But I expect many of those people THINK it means something like "a society with a lot of income inequality".
On (3), I think you may be missing an important part of the puzzle. If we use "oligarchy" to mean "a form of government where power is concentrated in the hands of a small group of individuals", the poster child is, of course, Russia.
We call the mega-billionaires who run that country, watched over by the loving grace of Putin, as "oligarchs" for a reason. They own around $625 billion (6.25 trillion rubles), or about 26% of Russia's GDP. The top 1% own between 48% to 56% of the nation's wealth.
In comparison, the Forbes 400 own 3.4% of US wealth, and the top 1% own about 31%.
The Gini coefficient for the US is 0.39 (highest in the G7). Russia's is 0.405.
So the US is not as staggeringly unequal as Russia, but we're working on it! All the measures of inequality have been rising steadily for the past 40 years, and we are approaching levels not seen for 100 years.
So what? As you point out, there is so much infighting that we can't really say that a handful of rich guys run everything. But the very richest Americans already have political influence vastly exceeding that of even the middle-class. Their influence controls much of our politics, and is only increasing under Trump, infighting or no. This, I think, is what Bernie Sanders was talking about. Like you, I wish he would use words accurately. But we would not go much farther down this road before the US walks, talks and quacks a lot like an oligarchy.
Well said. This post is extremely pedantic.
If only some sage of the Left had adopted the bold strategy of scolding their allies for improper word choice earlier.
Eh I think the dispute over whether oligarchy is accurate is a bit too cute. Pretty much everyone agrees that Russia has oligarchs (I suppose one could distinguish between having oligarchs, being oligarchic, and being an oligarchy), and you see a very similar dynamic there w/ Putin. I think it’s been a very long time since anyone’s used the term in the classical sense, rather than to describe a mafia state.
Honestly, I disagreed with the oligarchy charge *until* this administration. Oligarchic power is very clearly what both Trump and Musk want for themselves. Thiel and now even Yarvin are common ideologues. My favorite pieces on what’s going on with Silicon Valley “titans of industry” are Ganz’s on boss-ism and Farrell on “exit”… like, it’s actually really clear that these are people who see themselves as and aspire to be more like oligarchs in the contemporary sense.
I don’t really think the argument over language is important, I default to “king” stuff, I think because to me it gets at the ego, hatred for rule of law, and sheer un-American nature of what’s going on. But different people talk differently and talk to different people with different ideas 🤷♂️ On the campaign trail I think it matters a lot what a candidate says. I’m not super worried about the name on a placard for an “off season” rally so long as it keeps people moving and isn’t obviously false or destructive.
My feeling about using "oligarchy" to rally political support: I doubt one in ten MAGAts could define "Marxist," yet the GOP has no hesitation about using this word each and every day.