November 2017 – Page 2 – Difficult Run

What are the Effects of Short-Term Incentives?

November 15, 2017 by Walker

Image result for carrot and stick ceo

I’ve written about the negative effects of corporate “short-termism” before. A new study takes a look at the criticisms of short-term incentives. The researchers explain,

Critics of short-term incentives argue that they lead the CEO to take myopic actions that boost the short-term stock price at the expense of long-run value. These critics however, rarely back this up with rigorous evidence. This is partly confirmation bias – willingness to accept ‘evidence’ that confirms one’s prior belief, no matter how flimsy. Since the current political environment is distrustful of businesses, people may be more willing to accept ‘evidence’ that CEOs act in ways that destroy value for personal gain. For example, a recent McKinsey study showed that firms that invested more have enjoyed superior long-run returns, and interprets this finding as “finally, evidence that managing for the long term pays off” (Barton et al. 2017).

…In our most recent work on the topic (Edmans et al. 2017b), we study the long-term consequences of short-term incentives by examining two corporate actions with similarities to investment cuts, but whose long-run consequences could be measured more accurately:

Repurchases: These boost the short-term stock price (Ikenberry et al. 1995). CEOs with short-term concerns might have incentives to undertake them. Also like investment cuts, repurchases can either be myopic (if financed by scrapping valuable projects) or efficient (if financed by free cash that would otherwise have been wasted). The long-term stock return measures the return that the firm obtains from the repurchased stock. So, unlike investment cuts, the long-term stock return can be used to diagnose the value implications of the repurchase, even if the return was not caused by the repurchase.

M&A: This has different advantages to repurchases. First, M&A has an announcement date, allowing us to cleanly calculate short- and long-term returns. Second, M&A is a much more significant event than an investment cut (or repurchase) – it is arguably the most transformative corporate decision that a firm can undertake – and so it is likely that at least a significant portion of long-run stock returns would be attributable to the M&A. Indeed, prior research (e.g. Agrawal et al. 1992) has used long-run stock returns to assess the long-term value implications of M&A.

Studying “the relationship between vesting equity and repurchases, and vesting and M&A announcements, between 2006 and 2015,” the researchers found that

a one-standard-deviation increase in vesting equity is associated with a 1.2% increase in a firm’s likelihood of conducting a share repurchase in a given quarter, compared to the unconditional repurchase probability of 37.5%. This translates into $6.16m annualised, compared to the finding in Edmans et al. (2017a) of an annualised fall in investment of $1.8m. While economically meaningful, this magnitude is also plausible: a too-large, myopic repurchase may have prompted the board to step in and block it. We find similar results for M&A. A one-standard deviation increase in vesting equity is associated with a 0.6% increase in a firm’s likelihood of announcing an M&A in a given quarter, compared with the unconditional probability of 15.8%.

…A one-standard-deviation increase in vesting equity is associated with an annualised 0.61% higher return over the two quarters surrounding a repurchase, but a 1.11% (0.75%) lower return during the first (second) year after the repurchase. For M&A, the negative association with long-run returns persists for longer. A one-standard-deviation increase in vesting equity is associated with an annualised 1.47% higher return over the two quarters surrounding an M&A announcement, but a 0.81%, 0.35% (insignificant), 0.72%, and 0.62% lower return in the first, second, and third, and fourth subsequent years.

They conclude,

The results are consistent with Graham et al. (2005), who used a survey to find that 78% of executives would sacrifice long-term value to meet earnings targets. We studied a CEO’s actual behaviour and found that short-term incentives indeed have negative long-term consequences. The current debate on CEO pay typically focuses on how big it is. As a consequence, in the UK and US, there will soon be disclosure of pay ratios. Our results suggest that the horizon of CEO incentives is a more important dimension to reform.

Speaking on campus and the ctrl-left

April 6, 2018November 14, 2017 by reece

Update: the full text of the speech is now online on its own post.

My university is home to a controversial Confederate War memorial.

It is a bronze sculpture of a college student carrying a rifle, commemorating the students at my university who left their studies and went to fight in the American Civil War for the Confederacy. On the base are three inscriptions, the middle of which shows the student in class, hearing the call of a woman representing duty urging him to fight. The side inscription speaks of honor and duty.

The statue has always been controversial, but recent events have brought the controversy back.

The university is holding an open panel, inviting the general public to share their thoughts. You just had to register, and the first 25 get to go.

Well, I have some thoughts on the monument, and I wanted to share them. So I signed up, and I wrote a speech (exactly 3 minutes in length), and I’ve been practicing it. On Wednesday, I anticipate getting to deliver the speech.

I would be pretty foolish to not be worried. Actually, on an issue this incendiary, I am pretty foolish to want to speak out at all.

For starters, there’s a chance my talk could anger white supremacist groups.

I am a white man with pale skin and reddish/blondish hair. I am married to a beautiful woman from Costa Rica, with caramel skin and these gorgeous black eyes you can just get lost in. We don’t have children yet, but we are both excited to meet them. I know they will be beautiful, like their mother. I hope my daughters look like her, with her dark skin and dark eyes and her raven black hair.

If you listen to what white supremacist groups actually say these days, then you’d know this is their raison d’être. They refer to it by the moronic title “white genocide” — the “diluting” of the “white race” through marriage of white people with people of other races.

Me and my family are the main thing that white supremacists march against.

In the speech I have planned, I think I make it clear that I consider the cause of the Confederacy in the American Civil War to be an unworthy cause — it was certainly not worth the lives of the men who died for it.

That might anger white supremacists, who would already have reason to despise my family.

But, I’m not afraid of angering white supremacists; they’re evil, but they don’t frighten me. Because I know they are a powerless group of isolated and outcast individuals with little to no social standing in their own communities, who are resorted to anonymous online forums for human contact. They are pathetic, and I’m not enough of a coward to shrink away from shadows in a basement.

White supremacy is, of course, evil. It cost me nothing to say that, and means nothing when I do say it, as everyone either agrees with it already, or is a white supremacist and doesn’t care what society thinks about them.

White supremacy is also stupid. It is lazy thinking. It is the kind of mental shortcut that the feeble-minded rely on. It is the sort of excuse that the weak-willed cower to, lacking the testicular fortitude to face their own inadequacies. It’s the kind of pseudo-intellectualism the internet is famous for, citing poorly analyzed statistics, when all it would take is meeting one normal, middle-class African American to see the fatuity of it all — that blacks and whites are the same race, because there is only the one race of Adam.

My comments might make them mad, but what are they going to do? Make memes about me?

There is also a chance my speech could anger Progressives on the ctrl-left. Actually, probably a much bigger chance. And that does scare me.

It scares me so much that I’m actually considering if I even want to speak at all. I have a speech written, and I’ve been practicing it, and I’ve shopped it with a number of friends, and I’ve made edits and timed it perfectly. But I’m thinking of not doing it at all.

I’m afraid of what the ctrl-left could do to me.

What is the ctrl-left? The label is a take on the alt-right designation, though the ctrl-left have been around for a lot longer. Maybe since the Bush administration. They are a political activist class — that is, they are a class of people with nothing else to do but be politically active. They are employed in universities, shutting down conservative voices. They are employed in news stations, selectively editing narratives and choosing which stories to give press time. They are employed at online opinion magazines, and spend all day opining on politics and culture. They are employed in Starbucks, and then spend 14 hours a day on twitter and tumblr investigating the lives of people they disagree with, trying to have them removed from their jobs, or shut down their youtube, facebook, or twitter to prevent them from sharing in electronic public forums. They are employed in tech companies enforcing “community standards” with bans and post removals, which on platform after platform seems to conveniently mean removing opinions on the right of American politics.

The ctrl-left, in essence, want to control what you are allowed to say, and punish you when you say what you are not.

The most recent explosion of this movement has been in antifa, the group of emotional children using acts of literal street violence to suppress and silence dissident voices in the public sphere — which is to say, they are a group of fascists. These jackbooted thugs have been taking to the streets, punching people in the face, smashing up their campuses in temper tantrums, setting fires, and generally acting exactly like the goosestepping authoritarians they are in order to stop people from saying anything that they don’t think people should be able to say anymore.

This latest expression of the ctrl-left doesn’t particularly worry me. I can take physical violence. I can take being punched in the face, or maced, or beaten with a club. I would consider it an honor, actually. Make my day.

What does worry me are the online Social Justice Warriors in the ctrl-left who have nothing better to do with their lives, apparently, than to seek new ways to punish people for wrongthink.

I work in academia. Tenured professors cannot get fired for refusing to attend their own classes for two years, but tenured professors have been fired for daring to injure the precious emotions of the ctrl-left. I’m a mere, lowly teaching assistant. I could lose my job, or be dismissed from school. I could be made unhirable in colleges and tech companies.

If my speech offends the wrong person, they could look to dig up all kinds of stuff on me.

It wouldn’t even be very hard to dig up stuff on me. For most of my life, I was a pretty terrible jerk. Just ask anyone who knew me in high school. Since high school, I have been slightly tolerable. If you had nothing to do but look for reasons to say crap about me, you could find crap to say about me. And the ctrl-left has absolutely nothing else to do.

But even if they can’t find dirt on me, the very act of disagreeing with their orthodoxy is a firable offense. They have power in universities and companies to crush whoever displeases them; and not only do they have it, but they use it.

I know this, so I generally go about my day and just grit my teeth and keep my mouth shut. My fellow students don’t have to keep their mouths shut, because they affirm the accepted dogmata of our thought guardians.

I let them talk and express opinions I disagree with and laugh at people who think the exact things I think and endorse ideologies I completely reject and say nothing, because I just want to get out of here alive, get my PhD, and maybe once I have a job I can rely on, maybe then I’ll be able to breathe again.

And the crux of the story is that I’m just sick of it. I am sick and tired of shutting up. I am done with being expected to receive with full docility the ramblings of this tumblr magisterium. I’m tired of feeling like I can’t speak my mind without retaliation and blowback, while others can express their politics unafraid.

I’m done. I’m done being shut up.

Realistically, I can probably expect nothing. I’m probably over-worrying myself. It’s unlikely anyone will really take notice. It’s an indoor event with a few dozen speakers, and who really wants to attend a meeting like that unless you’re speaking? Local news might pick it up, and they might run two seconds of my three minute speech (probably selectively edited to make it sound like I’m saying something completely opposite of what I’m saying), and then that’s probably it. Maybe some person I know might notice and say something, maybe a student would say they heard I spoke or something, but that’s about it.

In a rational universe, maybe that’s all there needs to be about it. I can just say what I think, people can hear it and agree or disagree with it, we can have back-and-forth, and then we go on our merry ways.

But this is not a rational universe, so who knows what I can expect.

(Authors’s Note and General Disclaimer: These are not the only two groups of people with opinions in this country. There are people opposed to the monument who are not part of the ctrl-left and who want civil dialogue and peaceful protest to lead the change. There are people in favor of the monument who are neither white supremacists nor part of the alt-right, and who want all people to be treated with the dignity due all human individuals. There are people on the left who also champion free speech, such as the ACLU, because free speech is not a partisan concern but the birthright of humanity. I know these people exist, because I know them; they are my family and friends and neighbors. With all of these people, I hope to see the American spirit of passionate but nonviolent engagement in the marketplace of ideas continue to drive political discourse. To the ctrl-left and alt-right, I pray that God has mercy on you and grants you repentance from your hatred, violence, and folly.)

Does Fact Checking Undo the Effects of Fake News?

November 14, 2017 by Walker

From a recent study:

Fake news or ‘alternative facts’ have become a key ingredient of Western political discourse. They are skillfully used by populist candidates to leverage fears and frustrations of the voters. The fake news efforts are often successful. For example, as Ipsos’ 2016 Perils of Perception survey shows, in all Western countries voters greatly overestimate the Muslim population in their countries. In France (where the gap between perception and reality is largest), the perceived share of Muslim population is 31% while the actual share is only 7.5%.

Can this sway elections? Recent work by Allcott and Gentzkow (2017) suggests that, even though false rumors about Hilary Clinton were more likely to be shared on social media, it is not clear whether they were pivotal in the 2016 US presidential election. In a recent paper (Barrera et. al. 2017), we show that misleading statements used by a populist politician can have substantial effects on voting intentions. Moreover, while fact checking of the populist’s misleading ‘alternative facts’ improves voters’ factual knowledge, it does nothing to undo the effect of these statements on policy views and voting intentions of voters.

During the 2017 French election, the researchers surveyed 2,480 participants “on political preferences and factual knowledge.” These participants were divided into 4 groups:

Group 1 (“Alt Facts”) read some of Marine Le Pen’s statements, including the one mentioned above. All the quotes had a similar structure: misleading statements were used as part of a logical link to reach a desired conclusion.
Group 2 (“Fact Check”) read the same Le Pen quotes along with the facts from the official sources on the very same issues; these facts were strikingly different from Le Pen’s misleading numbers.
Group 3 (“Facts”) read only the facts from the official sources without any ‘alternative facts’.
Group 4 (“Control”) didn’t read any text.

They found that inaccurate statements about migrants made by far-right politician Marine Le Pen were “highly persuasive, regardless of whether they were subsequently corrected. Both participants in the Alt Facts and Fact Check groups were 7% more likely to report intentions to vote for MLP.”

Our result that fact checking of a populist’s statements does not change the voters support of the populist candidate is consistent with findings of concurrent research conducted in the context of the 2016 US presidential election (Swire et al. 2017, Nyhan et al. 2017).

Does this mean that voters do not believe the corrections or do not trust the source? The answer is no. The majority of respondents in the Fact and the Fact Check groups answered the questions about facts at the end of the survey correctly…The Alt Facts treatment moved respondents away from the truth, but only slightly. Overall, we find strong evidence that respondents learn the facts and trust official sources more than Le Pen.

So what gives?

Overall, our results imply that once voters have learned the conclusions, correcting the fake facts can no longer shift their policy views.

Furthermore, it turns out that providing the facts may increase the salience of the immigration issue and by making voters more worried, can actually drive them toward Le Pen. We find that even participants in the Facts group are 4% more likely to vote for Le Pen than the control group – a significant difference – even they are not even reminded about the candidate during the experiment. (Immigration was a prominent issue in Le Pen’s campaign – much more so than for other politicians.)

Our results suggest that confronting alternative facts with correct numbers is not enough. To be effective, fact checking needs to be more than a journalists’ or pundits’ enterprise. The correct facts need to be embedded in a narrative with persuasive argumentation and conclusions – and delivered by a charismatic politician. The result of the 2017 French presidential election is consistent with this conjecture.

Politics Ruins Thanksgiving

November 15, 2017November 13, 2017 by Walker

I’ve noted before that politics makes us mean and dumb according to the social science.[ref]For more on what Jason Brennan calls political “hobbits and hooligans,” see the latest from Vox.[/ref] And now new evidence suggests that it erodes family relationships (and holidays) as well:

Animosity toward political rivals is not limited to the ballot box; implicit partisan biases manifest in discriminatory decisions at a rate higher than racial or gender biases. In surveys, parents have become less tolerant of their children dating and marrying across partisan lines, and observed dating and marital behavior segregates on politics more strongly than on physical attributes or personality characteristics. Political polarization impacts economic decisions in the public sphere, including where to work and shop, at higher larger than those caused by race, ethnicity, or religion.

We study whether politics strains close family ties by measuring family gathering durations. After the historically divisive and stressful 2016 presidential election, 39% of American families avoided political conversations during the holidays (10). Aversion to family political discussions largely spans both party and socioeconomic lines. In this context we study Thanksgiving, which in US election years, brings together family members with differing political views at a time of partisan salience. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many altered or canceled Thanksgiving plans in the wake of the 2016 election. Other families cut short their dinners if political arguments arose. Most political-personal studies rely on survey data, and lack the ability to broadly measure inflamed partisan antipathy and its effect on real-world behaviors such as spending time with friends and family.

This study analyzes how political differences affected 2016 Thanksgiving dinners through the merging of two novel datasets. A unique collection of smartphone location-tracking data from more than ten million Americans allows observation of actual (not self-reported) movement behavior, at extremely precise spatial and temporal levels. We combined this with a database of the national precinct returns for the 2016 presidential election to impute individual political leanings at the finest spatial resolution legally possible. By comparing the partisan bend of an individual’s home location and where they attended Thanksgiving dinner, we can test the relationship between political disagreement and time expenditure.

To further isolate the particular effect of election-year political partisanship, we compare time spent at Thanksgiving in 2016 with the Thanksgiving of the year before. That comparison suggests that our measured effect really is the result of heightened political rhetoric, and not an artifact of politically-correlated demographic or spatial sorting. Finally, since political advertising polarizes opinions and media coverage of polarization heightens dislike for opposing parties, we compare partisan rifts between families who live within a few miles of each other but on opposite sides of media-market boundaries, and find political advertising more than doubles our measured Thanksgiving effects (pgs. 1-2).

Their results?

Following the 2016 election, anecdotal media reports and online social media behavior demonstrated an avoidance of political confrontations among Democratic voters, findings our study corroborate. Republicans, however, were more sensitive to partisan differences at Thanksgiving dinners. Aggregating across the 77% of American adults who own smartphones, our results suggest partisan differences cost American families 62 million person-hours of Thanksgiving time, 56.8% from individuals living in Democratic precincts and 43.2% from Republican precincts. Political advertising eliminated an additional 3.3 million person-hours, 52.8% from Democratic precinct residents and 47.2% from Republican residents. We estimate 27 million person-hours of cross-partisan discourse were eliminated, which may provide a feedback channel by which partisan antipathy reduces opportunities for close cross-party conversations (pg. 5).

Happy Thanksgiving!

Taylor Swift — Still Not Feminist Enough

April 12, 2018November 12, 2017 by Ro

I’m pretty tired of the constant political onslaught (I mean, still #nevertrump, but remember when we used to talk about other things? no? Homestar Runner? cat memes?), especially from random famous people. But apparently this is blasphemous for anyone who thinks they are feminist, and Taylor Swift is the shining example.

The Washington Post has an article laying out the many “feminists” attacking T. Swift, along with some good commentary:

[Y]ou might think, given our current focus on women’s rights and dignity, that “Reputation” would land with a girl-power splash. But you’d be wrong. Very wrong. In fact, Swift is already under fire from feminist critics. And their attacks reveal something very ugly about modern feminism: While today’s feminists claim to champion the rights of all women, they speak only for women who agree with them – vocally, frequently and on demand…

The test of a feminist’s commitment should be how she treats women who are different from her. It shouldn’t matter if Swift agrees or disagrees, if she speaks or remains silent. We should applaud her ability as a person, independent, with her own heart and mind, to be who she wishes.

Taylor has been criticized (often throughout multiple articles) by Bustle, Salon, and The Daily Beast, among others. [ref]Some criticisms include using feminism only when it benefits her, not attending the women’s march, not speaking out against Trump, not vocally supporting Planned Parenthood, etc.[/ref] Buzzfeed seems to be the one of sole holdouts – having articles going back up to four years about her feminism.

I’m not sure what or who these kinds of criticisms are going to help. Nitpicking about being feminist “enough” can only make the movement look unnecessary. So ladies, let’s spend some more time attacking the patriarchy (I don’t usually say that literally, but the time is ripe) and leave our fellow sisters alone, including Ms. T-Swizz.

Does Population Diversity Lead to Economic Growth?: Evidence from the Age of Mass Migration

April 6, 2018November 11, 2017 by Walker

A brand new study seeks to answer the following questions:

“Does having a very diverse population at one point in time lead to persistently higher levels of economic growth?”
“Is the economic impact of diversity only evident in the short term, vanishing once the different population groups become part of the society’s ‘melting pot’?”

The researchers “assess these questions by examining the extent to which the high degree of cultural diversity in US counties generated during the Age of Mass Migration of the late 19th and early 20th centuries has left an enduring impact on the economic development of those US areas that witnessed the greatest heterogeneity in population. Their analysis

identif[ies] the presence of a strong and very long lasting impact of diversity on county-level economic development. Counties that attracted migrants from very diverse national and international origins over a century ago are significantly richer today than those that were marked by a more homogeneous population. Highly diverse counties after the Age of Mass Migration strongly benefited from the enlarged skillset and the different perspectives and experiences the arriving migrants brought with them and from the interaction among those different groups. The result was a surge of new ideas and a newfound dynamism that was quickly translated into lofty, short-term economic gains. These gains proved durable and, albeit in a reduced way, can still be felt today.

Yet the benefits of diversity came with a strong caveat: the gains of having a large number of groups from different origins within a territory (fractionalisation) only materialised if the diverse groups were able to communicate with one another (low polarisation). Hence, past population diversity in the US has become a double-edged sword: it has worked only where the different groups were able to interact, that is, in those places where the ‘melting pot’ really happened. Where such ‘bridging’ did not occur, groups and communities remained in their own physical or mental ghettoes, undermining any economic benefits from a diverse environment.

Moreover, the benefits from diversity have remained over time. Where high levels of diversity have been coupled with ‘bridging’ across groups – high population fractionalisation with low polarisation – the associated economic gains were felt in the short, medium, and long term. With the exception of the highly turbulent 1920s to 1940s, a strongly positive and robust impact of fractionalisation on regional income levels, as well as a negative one of polarisation is evident…The only change in this enduring relationship is that both connections, while remaining strongly statistically significant, became weaker after the 1920s.

They conclude,

At a time when many developed countries are rapidly closing down their borders to immigration, trying to shield what – particularly in the case of Europe and Japan – are still rather homogeneous populations from external influences and the perceived security, economic, and welfare threats often unjustly associated with migrants, restricting migration will limit diversity and is bound to have important and long-lasting economic consequences. By foregoing new migration, wealthy societies may be jeopardising not only the short-term positive impact associated with greater diversity, but also the enduring positive influence of diversity on economic development.

The large, positive, and persistent impact of societal diversity on economic development seen in the US would therefore be difficult to replicate – something that ageing and lethargic societies across many parts of the developed world can ill afford. However, if migration is to be encouraged, it is of utmost importance that mechanisms facilitating the dialogue across groups and, hence, the integration of migrants are in place to guarantee that diversity is transformed into higher and durable economic activity over the short, medium, and long term.

Do the American Alt-Right’s Ideas Have European Roots?

April 9, 2018November 10, 2017 by Walker

That’s what a recent essay in Foreign Affairs suggests. Political scientist George Hawley writes,

The [alt-right] is disorganized and mostly anonymous, making it difficult to study systematically, and until recently its definition was up for grabs. Throughout 2016, the term “alt-right” was often applied to a much broader group than it is today; at times, it seemed to refer to the entirety of Trump’s right-wing populist base. Since the U.S. presidential election, however, the alt-right’s nature has become clearer: it is a white nationalist movement that focuses on white identity politics and downplays most other issues. As the alt-right’s views became better known, many people who had flirted with the movement broke ranks, leaving it smaller but more ideologically cohesive.

Some have argued that the alt-right is simply the latest iteration of an old, racist strain of U.S. politics. And indeed, as a white nationalist movement, the alt-right’s ultimate vision—a racially homogeneous white ethnostate—is similar to that of earlier groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, and the National Alliance. Yet the alt-right considers itself new and distinct, in terms of both style and intellectual substance. Stylistically, it has attempted to distance itself from the ineffectual violence and pageantry of what it derisively calls “white nationalism 1.0,” instead preferring a modern aesthetic that targets cynical millennials on social media and online message boards. And ideologically, the movement represents a break from American racist movements of the past, looking not to U.S. history but to the European far right for ideas and strategies.

White nationalists like Richard Spencer draw on ideas from the European New Right:

The ENR first emerged in France in the late 1960s, at a time when the radical left was at its apogee and the country looked to be on the brink of revolution. In 1968, a group led by the young right-wing journalist Alain de Benoist founded the Research and Study Group for European Civilization (known by its French acronym, GRECE). This new think tank sought to provide a philosophical foundation for a new political order, one that rejected liberalism, communism, and the excesses of fascism.

The ENR was an unusual amalgamation of ideas from the beginning. Although it repudiated fascism and Nazism, the ENR drew inspiration from many of the same intellectual sources. Particularly important to the ENR were the so-called conservative revolutionary writers of Weimar-era Germany, including the legal theorist Carl Schmitt and the historian Arthur Moeller van den Bruck. Like these figures, the ENR envisioned a new path for Europe that rejected both Soviet communism and Anglo-American liberalism.

The ENR flirted with, but eventually rejected, a politics based on overt racism. Instead, the movement grounded its arguments in culture. ENR thinkers rejected the idea that all human beings are generally interchangeable and posited instead that every individual views the world from a particular cultural lens; inherited culture, that is, is a vital part of every person’s identity. They further argued that all cultures have a “right to difference,” or a right to maintain their sovereignty and cultural identity, free from the homogenizing influence of global capitalism and multiculturalism. The right of cultures to preserve their identity in turn implied their right to exclude or expel groups and ideas that threatened their cohesion and continuity.

…Yet the ENR also used left-wing theories and rhetoric. It adopted the New Left’s opposition to global financial capitalism and borrowed arguments about cultural particularity from anticolonial movements, concluding, for instance, that European colonial projects had been a mistake and that the United States was trying to Americanize every corner of the globe, destroying distinct cultures along the way. The ENR even supported anti-American populist uprisings in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa…The ENR was also strongly influenced by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, whose views on metapolitics and cultural hegemony contended that a political philosophy will attain lasting power only after it has won the battle of ideas, at least among elites. The ENR was pro–environmental conservation, as well.

Mainstream American conservatism paid no attention to the ENR, while even the “radical right in the United States…showed little awareness of the ENR until quite recently. This was also understandable, given the language barrier—the writings of de Benoist and others were mostly untranslated—and the ENR’s lack of interest in U.S. domestic politics. De Benoist’s careful avoidance of transparent racism also put him at odds with white nationalists in the United States, who wore their racism on their sleeves…Institutions affiliated with the alt-right are now working to translate books from ENR thinkers into English. The publishing company Arktos Media has put out a large catalog of these translations and is now part of the recently formed AltRight Corporation, which has become a significant hub of alt-right propaganda. Arktos has published works by de Benoist and Faye, the French-German ENR ideologue Pierre Krebs, and earlier right-wing radicals such as the Italian philosopher Julius Evola.”

Hawley notes that “it would be an exaggeration at this point to speak of a unified, global far-right movement. Yet members of the radical right on both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly adept at borrowing each other’s ideas and learning from each other’s successes and failures. Those who study these phenomena must maintain an international perspective. If a right-wing idea, tactic, or meme proves successful in one context, it will probably appear in others.”

An Accusation, An Exhortation

April 10, 2018November 7, 2017 by Nathaniel

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

We know that a key role of prophets is to serve as a voice of warning, but that voice is not often as stark as it was from Elder Perry in the Sunday afternoon session of the October 1977 General Conference:

I stand before you today to accuse many of the husbands and fathers who are within the sound of my voice and throughout the world of failing in your two major God-given responsibilities.

This talk is another in the long, long list of examples for how seriously the Church has been committed to the ideal of the family going back long before I was born. As Elder Perry says:

God in His divine plan ordained that marriage was to bring about his basic organizational unit, the family. The role of husband and wife was clearly defined from the very beginning. In the Lord’s plan, these roles are unchanged and eternal.

So that’s one of the recurring surprises for me as I go through these old General Conference talks. I didn’t know—and hadn’t expected—that the exact same ideas about the family would be taught to clearly and emphatically back then.[ref]I’d even heard from Mormon intellectuals that “the Family” was a recent innovation, and that back in the 1970s and earlier it had been “the Home”. This is hogwash. I haven’t noticed a single significant deviation in either substance or terminology between the topic as taught then and as taught now.[/ref]

The other recurring surprise for me has been how soft and gentle a lot of the language was. Yes, there is some rhetoric—especially on topics related to sexual morality—that is a lot harsher than what we’re used to. The word “abomination” got used a fair amount, and I don’t think we ever hear that at all these days. But when it comes to teaching about how fathers should treat their children and how husbands should treat their wives, the language is diametrically opposed to the stereotype of the stern, remote, authoritarian patriarch. The Church’s teachings on marriage and family—we’re supposed to believe—are some kind of anachronistic throwback to an era of rigid inflexibility. But when I read the words, what I find instead are things like Elder Perry’s story of how he was so besotted with his wife (after decades of marriage) that a random bystander at a car wash noticed and talked to his wife about it. He wraps up the story with: “Husbands, are your actions at all times a reflection of your love for wife?” Just for good measure, he reiterates: “it is a twenty-four-hour-a-day job to show appreciation and consideration for [your wife].”

Elder Perry’s talk is far, far from unique in this regard, and the cajoling words of the general authorities with regards to how fathers should treat their children are just as emotion and—for lack of better words—soft and squishy. I can’t find it offhand, but I know the word “cuddle” was used at least one in this general conference.

This is why I’m so glad I’m going back to read these talks for myself. There’s incredible value in knowing for yourself what the message has actually been all this time.

—

Check out the other posts from the General Conference Odyssey this week and join our Facebook group to follow along!

Identity Needed by G
To Become a Better People by Jan Tolman
Not a gospel of souvenirs by Marilyn Nielson

The Radical, Alien Nature of Early Christianity: Thoughts on Hart

November 30, 2017November 7, 2017 by Walker

Theologian David Bentley Hart has an interesting piece in The New York Times titled “Are Christians Supposed to Be Communists?” Hart writes:

If the communism of the apostolic church is a secret, it is a startlingly open one. Vaguer terms like “communalist” or “communitarian” might make the facts sound more palatable but cannot change them. The New Testament’s Book of Acts tells us that in Jerusalem the first converts to the proclamation of the risen Christ affirmed their new faith by living in a single dwelling, selling their fixed holdings, redistributing wealth “as each needed” and owning all possessions communally. This was, after all, a pattern Jesus himself had established: “Each of you who does not give up all he possesses is incapable of being my disciple” (Luke 14:33).

This was always something of a scandal for the Christians of later ages, at least those who bothered to notice it. And today in America, with its bizarre piety of free enterprise and private wealth, it is almost unimaginable that anyone would adopt so seditious an attitude.

While Christianity “was not a political movement in the modern sense,” it “was a kind of polity, and the form of life it assumed was not merely a practical strategy for survival, but rather the embodiment of its highest spiritual ideals. Its “communism” was hardly incidental to the faith.” He points out that “the New Testament’s condemnations of personal wealth are fairly unremitting and remarkably stark,” going on to cite Matt. 6:19-20, Luke 6:24-25, and James 5:1-6. “While there are always clergy members and theologians swift to assure us that the New Testament condemns not wealth but its abuse, not a single verse (unless subjected to absurdly forced readings) confirm the claim.”

The early Christians saw “themselves as transient tenants of a rapidly vanishing world, refugees passing lightly through a history not their own.” Many fourth and fifth-century theologians “felt free to denounce private wealth as a form of theft and stored riches as plunder seized from the poor. The great John Chrysostom frequently issued pronouncements on wealth and poverty that make Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin sound like timid conservatives.”

He concludes,

No society as a whole will ever found itself upon the rejection of society’s chief mechanism: property. And all great religions achieve historical success by gradually moderating their most extreme demands. So it is not possible to extract a simple moral from the early church’s radicalism.

But for those of us for whom the New Testament is not merely a record of the past but a challenge to the present, it is occasionally worth asking ourselves whether the distance separating the Christianity of the apostolic age from the far more comfortable Christianities of later centuries–and especially those of the developed world today–is more than one merely of time and circumstance.

While I think Hart is correct about the radicalism of the early Christian church, he only briefly mentions a major driving force behind their radicalism: they saw “themselves as transient tenants of a rapidly vanishing world.” The early Church was more-or-less a Jewish apocalyptic movement. Believing the world is going to end soon tends to produce radical practices.[ref]The same is true for early Mormonism.[/ref] And while the Book of Mormon may be a little more nuanced in regards to wealth,[ref]See Jacob 2:17-19.[/ref] it’s not by much.[ref]For example, see my essay in As Iron Sharpens Iron: Listening to the Various Voices of Scripture.[/ref] So what does our economic world look like today compared to that of 1st-century Palestine? Harvard historian Niall Ferguson writes,

Despite our deeply rooted prejudices against ‘filthy lucre’…money is the root of most progress…[T]he ascent of money has been essential to the ascent of man. Far from being the work of mere leeches intent on sucking the life’s blood out of indebted families or gambling with the savings of widows and orphans, financial innovation has been an indispensable factor in man’s advance from wretched subsistence to the giddy heights of material prosperity that so many people know today. The evolution of credit and debt was as important as any technological innovation in the rise of civilization, from ancient Babylon to present-day Hong Kong. Banks and the bond market provided the material basis for the splendours of the Italian Renaissance. Corporate finance was the indispensable foundation of both the Dutch and British empires, just as the triumph of the United States in the twentieth century was inseparable from advances in insurance, mortgage finance and consumer credit.[ref]The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, pgs. 2-3.[/ref]

What was Jesus’ economic world like? Religious studies scholar Philip Harland explains,

First, the ancient economy of Palestine was an underdeveloped, agrarian economy based primarily on the production of food through subsistence-level farming by the peasantry. The peasantry, through taxation and rents, supported the continuance of a social-economic structure characterized by asymmetrical distribution of wealth in favor of the elite, a small fraction of the population. Peasants made up the vast majority of the population (over 90 percent…)…[W}ealth in the form of rents, taxes, and tithes flowed toward urban centers, especially Jerusalem (and the Temple), and was redistributed for ends other than meeting the needs of the peasantry, the main producers. The city’s relation to the countryside in such an economy, then, would be parasitic, according to this view (pg. 515).

Bruce Longenecker of Baylor University provides the following estimates about Greco-Roman urban life (pg. 264):

3% of the population was wealthy (e.g., imperial to municipal elites).
17% had a moderate surplus (something like a middle class).
80% were just above, just at, or just below the subsistence level.

According to economist Edd Noell,

The direction of income to particular favored groups shaped attitudes toward wealth accumulation in first-century Palestine. Indeed, in the New Testament era, it can be argued that the rich or wealthy “as a rule meant [those who were] ‘avaricious, greedy’” (Malina 1987, 355), rather than those who held a specific level of net worth. The wealthy obtained their standing by extractive or redistributive actions; resentment was generated toward these individuals who “impose tributes, extract agricultural goods, and remove them for ends other than peasants want” (Hanson and Oakman 1998, 113). This notion dovetailed with the notion that participation in the economy was a zero-sum game. Schneider asserts that in Palestine “the rich were very often (though not always) people who had made a bargain with the devil Rome”; the gouging of the typical farmer through overpayment of taxes and other means suggests that “we will comprehend the New Testament better if we understand that financial advantage in Israel often implied direct involvement with political evil and injustice” (2002, 121). Hanson and Oakman add that “rich and powerful people could be looked upon as robbers and thieves as much as benefactors” (1998, 111) (pgs. 100-101).

Interestingly enough, this seems to fit the distinction between extractive and inclusive institutions outlined by Acemoglu and Robinson in their book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Power. Reviewing their book, philosopher Bas van der Vossen comments,

Inclusive institutions empower people across society, and thus tend to benefit all. Extractive institutions empower only some, and thus tend to benefit only small groups of people…On the economic side, inclusive institutions secure people’s rights to private property, including private property rights over productive resources, and allow these to be held broadly across society. These allow societies to experience the kinds of specialization, exchange, investment, and innovation that increase productivity…Extractive economic institutions, by contrast, are those that limit or altogether prevent the ability of people across society to individually own private and productive property, engage in commercial and profit-seeking activities, and enjoy the fruits of their investments and innovations. Such institutions stifle productivity.

…It is important to stress here that Acemoglu and Robinson do not deny that economic growth can occur under extractive institutions. Such ‘extractive growth’ can happen either because of strong policies of state investment in highly productive sectors of the economy (as in Caribbean slave-economies from the sixteenth until the eighteenth century, or the Soviet Union until the 1970s), or because pockets of inclusive economic institutions exist in a larger extractive setting (as in South Korea in the 1960s and 70s).

But such growth never lasts. Extractive economies sooner or later stop growing, or collapse altogether, due to a lack of innovation, state incompetence, conflict and corruption, or the withering away of whatever small inclusive parts may have existed. Only inclusive economic institutions, protected by inclusive political institutions, can offer the kinds of sustained investment, innovation, flexibility, and creative destruction that create a continued path of growth and prosperity (pgs. 68-69).

But here’s the clincher:

The philosophical literature on global justice and ethics contains disturbingly many theories that proceed in ways that are strangely disconnected from the best empirical studies about poverty and prosperity. Sometimes the empirical insights are simply set aside or even ignored. And even those who do engage with them or focus on the role of institutions frequently fail to see the forest for the trees. Hence, we read proposals for new global institutions (ignoring that the quality of domestic institutions is at least as important), we see arguments for extensive redistribution (ignoring that such policies will be counter-productive if not accompanied by institutional changes in developing countries), and so on.

The most important lesson that Why Nations Fail (and other works like it) contains for philosophers working on global justice is this: getting our economic institutions right is just as important as getting our political institutions right. And the evidence strongly indicates that this means endorsing market societies, with strong property rights over private and productive resources and economic freedom for all.

It is hard to say why these facts have been ignored or denied by philosophers for so long. Perhaps the hostility toward inclusive economic institutions is that they are seen as contestable parts of neoliberal, libertarian, or other free market perspectives. But this is to miss the point. Among the most exemplary inclusive countries are European welfare states like Denmark, Sweden, and Germany. Strong property rights and robust economic freedom are compatible with a variety of redistributive policies. Why Nations Fail is far from a libertarian manifesto. And if even those countries are too much market-oriented for our taste, well, I propose we get over it. There is simply too much at stake (pg. 74).

Now what’s my point? Do I think Hart is wrong? No. Far from it. I think he’s absolutely right about the text and the early Christians. However, the text has a specific historical, economic, and socioreligious context. And this context explains the condemnations of wealth and the lack of concern for material prosperity.[ref]Oddly enough, some sociological and textual evidence suggests that even Jesus and his closest disciples were financially well-off.[/ref] But in a world that hasn’t ended, how are modern Christians supposed to apply these alien and radical teachings? What about the Bible’s concern for the poor?[ref]The Law of Moses had rules in place to make sure the poor were provided for (Ex. 21:2-6; 23:10-11; 22:25-27; Lev. 19:9-10; 25:3-7, 25-27; Deut. 14:28-29; 15:12-15; 24:19-21; 26:12-13). The prophets consistently reminded Israel and its rulers of their obligations to the poor (Isa. 10:1-4; Amos 2:6-7; 4:1; Ezek. 18). Oppressors of the poor were considered wicked (Ps. 37:14; Prov. 14:31) and God himself would provide and protect the poor (Isa. 41:17; Ps. 140:12). The prophetic concern for the economically disadvantaged continued with the ministry of Jesus, who declared his mission to involve “preach[ing] the gospel to the poor” (Luke 4:18). Christ taught that to feed the hungry and thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, and host the stranger—“the least of these”—was to do so unto him (Matt. 25:35-40). In Jesus’ view, the one thing the rich man lacked was to “sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor…and come, take up the cross, and follow me” (Mark 10:21). The Christian charge to care for the poor continued in the early Christian communities, with Paul seeking a collection for the poor of the Jerusalem church (Gal. 2:1-10; 1 Cor. 16:1-4; Rom. 15:25-27). See also Michael D. Coogan, “Poor,” in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, ed. Bruce M. Metzger, Michael D. Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).[/ref] Does it matter that the poor in developed nations are richer than the rich in Jesus’ time and even today are some of the wealthiest people on the planet?[ref]Try playing around with different income adjustments at Giving What We Can. If you’re making $10,000 annually as a single person (a little over $2,000 below the 2017 U.S. poverty threshold), you’re still in the richest 20% of the world population. If you’re making $20,000 as a couple with two kids (over $4,000 below the 2017 U.S. poverty threshold), you’re still in the richest 20% of the world population. And this is just income. We’re not even touching on the innovations and technological advances that make life materially better today.[/ref] Does it matter that global markets and inclusive economic institutions have reduced extreme poverty to its lowest levels in human history?

Surely it matters. It has to. I can’t fathom that it wouldn’t. But this makes me ask a question that–as a committed Christian–bothers me a great deal: how relevant is the New Testament for today regarding practical matters? If the world hasn’t and isn’t ending any time soon, does it make much sense to “not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’” (Matt. 6:31, NRSV)? If the Kingdom of God is at hand, then financial concerns and the like are certainly trivial. But since the Kingdom is about 2,000 years late, what are we supposed to do? Concerns for and alleviation of the poor among early Christians must have been thought of as a relatively short-term deal, seeing that social and economic justice would be fully achieved in the soon-to-come Kingdom of God. But since we appear to be in for the long haul, do Jesus’ teachings need to be recontextualized? Do they need to be–to borrow Nephi’s words–“liken[ed]…unto us, that it might be for our profit and learning” (1 Ne. 19:23)? Or have we, as Hart suggests, truly strayed from the real intent of Christ’s words?

I’m not exactly sure. It’s a paradox I live with as one who is supposed to be a “stranger and pilgrim” (1 Peter 2:11) in a world that is getting better by virtually every empirical measure.[ref]Granted, I belong to a church that believes in continuing revelation, which somewhat eases the tension. But Mormonism is full of its own paradoxes.[/ref]

Maybe the paradox is the point. But it sure sucks at times.

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