Think of your favourite political movement, right now think of your favourite television executive producer.
See given the subject of this blog means that I’m guessing a fair number of people came up with feminism and Joss Whedon. Well guess what? You can combine the two in special fundraising screenings of Serenity for Equality Now. Go see if there’s one near you. You can also combine the two by watching Joss’s speech to Equality Now, where he answers the question he gets asked most often half a dozen different ways. Go watch it now (or if you’re on dial-up like me – start down-loading it) – I’ll wait.
I thought I’d honour these events by writing about the politics (OK I’m a geek and I have many different theories about the politics of Joss Whedon shows and I’ll go into them at a moments notice).
I think the politics of the television show are quite distinct from the politics of the movie. The movie says something – and we can argue about what that is, but it’s message is in the plot of the movie. The politics of the television show are less direct, they’re more about the world that was created, and less about the narrative of the individual episodes.
Live Free or Die
I first got involved with activism in university when I was 19. It was 1997 and the National government was looking to corporatise university education. A whole bunch of other people got involved with me – it was new and exciting. I was young, innocent and inexperienced. I remember having a conversation about politics with a Marxist, who seemed very grown-up to me, but now I think about it he was probably only 22. Anyway we were talking about our local social democractic party of the time the Alliance* social democracy and he said something like this:
In a way we agree with the National party – the country couldn’t afford free education and free health care, and all the rest of the Alliance’s policies [the Alliance was NZ’s social democratic party for a while there]. If the government introduced policies that radical then the capitalists would disinvest. Government’s have to run the country in the interests of capital.
Only he said it a little bit more annoyingly because he was a member of the International Bolshevik Tendency. Now I’m a little bit older now, and basically agree with what he said.
What does this have to do with Firefly? Well I think the politics of Firefly are a little bit like that – I think the Firefly can sustain either a libertarian or an anti-capitalist reading relatively easy – but I’m not sure the world they portray is particularly consistent with social democracy (or liberalism – if the term means much to you).
Now obviously I prefer the anti-capitalist reading, but I’ll go briefly into the libertarian reading, which I think is pretty self-explanatory. On Firefly the government is generally portrayed as the bad guy. The basic aim of the captain of the ship is to stay away from the government and stop them meddling in his life. I’m not at all surprised that libertarians can find the show appealling. I strongly suspect that Tim Minear leans towards libertarian politics, and that doesn’t surprise me (Tim Minear is the show-runner of Firefly who is not my secret tv boyfriend).
There are some serious problems with the libertarian reading – most importantly because no-one in the ‘verse takes private property particularly seriously.
The Materialist ‘verse
I think (and I don’t think this is particularly controversial) that the ‘verse is a capitalist one. I also think that capitalism doesn’t work for poor people in the ‘verse (just like it doesn’t work for poor people in the real world). We see people dying from work in the mines, because they’re not safe, we see the desperation of unemployment and we see capitalists using indentured labour owning a company town. These are real world problems, caused by real world capitalism. Joss set it up this way describing it as a world where there were laser guns, but not everyone could afford them.
This is more important than it should be. Most television denies any material reality for its characters. Grace Paley said that when you’re writing you should remember that all your characters have blood and money. For most TV characters money isn’t a reality, they have a bigger apartment and wardrobe than someone on their salary could ever afford, and whenever the writers get bored and decide to introduce a money based plot it is ridiculously unrealistic. On Firefly money, and class were real – they affected people’s lives and were the driving force in much of the plot.
This isn’t particularly radical (in the real world, it’s possibly quite radical on television). But I do think it makes an anti-capitalist reading consistent with the text. It’d be radical if it offered a solution, and it does – for a second – from Jaynestown (my favourite episode):
If the mudders are together on a thing, there’s too many of us to be put down…
It’s not quite a call to the barricades, but it’s a sign that at least some of the writers of Firefly live in the same world I do.
The Alliance
That’s the radical left reading and the radical right reading – it’s the social democrat reading that is most problematic. The Alliance, the government in the ‘verse, is not neutral – it maintains the power structures, and fights imperialist wars. Now this makes perfect sense to libertarians, because they believe that governments suck (although I’ve no idea what they think about imperialism, because litertarianism never made any sense to me – the only libertarian I’ve ever liked was Laura Ingalls Wilder). It makes sense to most left-wing radicals because we believe that the state tends to work in the interests of people with power, particularly the ruling class. It’s problematics for liberals and social democrats, because at best they have to believe that the state can be neutral.
Big Damn Movie
Serenity is slightly different. Not because the state is presented any more positively – poisoning people and creating unimaginable horrors is hardly neutral. In our comments someone described it as an ‘anarcho-libertarian’ – and I might agree, but I don’t consider that a compliment. The show has become about the small guys beating the big guys, not by building their strength through numbers, but by being smart and lucky. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t ring particularly true to me.
I prefer the indirect, realistic, politics of the show, to the straight-up, fantastic, politics of the movie. Give me Jaynestown over Serenity – I think I would have preferred Serenity if it had been told over a season – I think it would probably have been less fantastic that way (or maybe I just prefer TV to movies).
Also published on my blog.
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right now think of your favourite television executive producer.
That would be a null set. Not to detract from your post (and I loved Firefly, including all the very interesting female characters), but you’d have to be a TV geek to name a “favorite TV executive producer”. There are a few TV shows (outside of sports and news) that I like, but I can’t name the executive producer of any of them.
Speaking of a lack of reality on TV shows; the way people dress is way out of line. First, some of these folks look like they’re spending 3/4 of their income on clothing. Secondly, I work in a major urban area that’s fairly sophisticated (Chicago, U.S.). But any woman who came to work showing as much cleavage or legs as the great majority of female TV characters would be sent home, and would be fired if they kept it up.
but you’d have to be a TV geek to name a “favorite TV executive producer”.
True that. Mine is Ronald D. Moore, and that tells you everything you need to know about me for the purposes of this exercise.
Joss mentioned somewhere that The Alliance=mega-powerful corporations+the government, which complicates libertarian readings of the show. Or, y’know, would complicate such readings if it had ever really come up on the show itself. As it is, it’s quite libertarian.
As a wacky socialist liberal, I have a lot of the same issues with the power of big corporations as I do with the power of big government (namely, I don’t like their massive power). It’s a pity that they never got into such issues on the show, it could’ve been fun.
Battlestar: Galactica has some fun government/military/free citizens! conflicts, but not a whole lot of corporations.
Actually, no, it wouldn’t complicate things at all. We libertarians do recognize that private entities like corporations can and do exercise inordinate amounts of power when they align themselves with the state. The difference between libertarians and leftists on the issue of corporate power is that libertarians believe that corporations derive their power from the state, and that the most effective way to limit the power of corporations is to limit the power of the state. Conversely, leftists believe that corporations have power in their own right, and that the most effective way to limit this power is to grant even additional power to the state.
Some libertarians don’t particularly make much noise about the power of corporations because corporations are checked by competition from other corporations, and thus see the power of the state as a bigger problem. I don’t particularly see it that way, since I see the power of both as threatening individual liberty, and plus I think one of the reasons the state gets bigger is because corporations lobby for special treatment.
Libertarians for the most part don’t like activist foreign policy, which would include imperialism. Use of force against others and all that.
And I’ve always saw the poverty portrayed on Firefly as being blamed, not on Capitalism, but on the Alliance for winning the war and keeping all the spoils in the core. Good point about respect for property rights, though.
libertarians believe that corporations derive their power from the state, and that the most effective way to limit the power of corporations is to limit the power of the state.
By repealing all property laws? Decriminalizing mob violence against owners? You could remove the legal loopholes that benefit the owners, of course. But as I understand it, that wouldn’t help unless it has the effect of taxing the owners more or allowing people to sue them more easily.* Both of which would increase state power, yes?
*Or you could go with the mob violence option.
Hf, enforcing property laws is a legitimate task of government in the libertarian view (as is military action against enemies of the nation). We don’t want to weaken the state in that direction.
Yes, and therefore the fact that corporations derive their power from the state seems irrelevant. Libertarians want to strengthen that aspect of state power, not weaken it. As far as I can tell, their solution to corporate rule consists of making them change the name (from now on, we’ll call it Hilton rule).
I doubt Mal’s a pro-state Libertarian in any way.
Anarcho-capitalist / anarcho-libertarian folks tend to want to do away with corporations as well as the state, are perfectly fine with little utopian socialist communes banding together (remember the brothel in Heart of Gold or said unionistic Jaynestown) but they simply don’t belive that any system other than the property/capitalism standard could ever emerge.
Mal doesn’t like the big corporations because they’re powerful, evil and competing with him, not because they’re propped up by the state’s enforcement of property laws.
Mal’s politics, though certainly capitalist and libertarian, are lax and anarchistic. Joss and the rest of the writers are a feminist/liberal/progressive/moderate-lefty combination. (Joss has said he thinks the Alliance is generally OK despite it’s flaws … because it does statist stuff like provide free-health care on the inner planets)
As far as I can tell, their solution to corporate rule consists of making them change the name (from now on, we’ll call it Hilton rule).
LOL. A common belief.
The libertarian solution to corporate rule is:
(a) what’s the problem with corporate rule? Some corporate body, or set of bodies, is going to rule. Networks of privately organized bodies would seem to be reasonable candidates.
(b) we believe that worst elements of corporate rule, where it exists, are due to the fact that larger private entities (let’s call them corporations – but also remember that they include entities like unions, lobbying groups, and so on) have superior access to the levers of state power. Making the levers of state power less worth having therefore mitigates corporate abuse; if the state can’t shut down my software company on bogus pretexts, it makes it less worthwhile for Microsoft to own the state.
hf:
The problem isn’t that corporations have strong property rights—to the extent that that’s true, it’s a feature, not a bug—the problem is that they sometimes use their access to state power to violate the property rights of others, e.g. through subsidies and regulations.
William:
Anarcho-capitalist / anarcho-libertarian folks tend to want to do away with corporations as well as the state
Not all of us.
It was 1997 and the National government was looking to corporatise university education.
Maia, what does this mean?
I’m not sure that the movie (I haven’t seen the show) aligns well with any particular political theory, though it’s got some overlap with libertarianism. It’s actually about saying, “these are human beings, do not bend, fold, spindle, or mutilate” and that big arrogant government is an institution extremely likely to do the bending, folding, spindling, and mutilating.
It’s not about political theory because there’s no clear vision of how people can live well together except for the implication that they have to deal with each other as irreduceably weird individuals. Is there a word for that point of view?
I was disappointed in reading some interviews with Joss Whedon about Serenity and Firefly, published in Serenity: The Official Visual Companion in how he understood the setting and the viewpoints of the characters. Whedon’s basically a liberal and profoundly pessimistic. In those interviews, he made it clear that the core worlds of the Alliance are as close to utopian ideals as they can get, and their failings are due to irremediable flaws in human nature. Mal is supposed to be a reactionary, except for his opposition to slavery. The worlds that practice slavery are the worlds that were strongholds of the Independents in the war. The people on board the Serenity are the inevitable misfits that don’t fit in a highly structured society. In an odd way, Whedon posits his own views as exactly the sort of liberal views that libertarians attack, and Mal’s a libertarian. If you’ll recall Mal’s speech on why he was going to risk everything to reveal the truth about the colony to the rest of the universe, Mal made it clear that he saw the crux of the problem as the idea that progress is possible, which he denied.
Given that most of the lefties I know loved the show, my theory is that this is a case where the internal logic of the story and the characters ran away from the expressed intention of the author. As one of my comrades once said, propaganda is designed to allow only one interpretation, but art, by engaging in a dialogue with reality, allows of multiple interpretations.
If you think that the fact that governments and/or states can be bad is a flaw in socialist ideology I would agree that Firefly is difficult to interpret in a socialist manner. That would however make us socialists pretty stupid and unaware.
A state cannot be better than its citicens (laws against torture are, for example, more useful when people actually abide by them). Like Per Albin – the man who built the swedish welfare-state said (qouted and translated from memory): In a good family there are no stepchildren but everyone is taken care of equally and the same is true for the good state – we will not leave anyone on the outside.
I think socialists strive to make this world a good family for those who live here – a bit optimistic perhaps but if we don’t try we certainly will fail. And that is why I can see all of the character’s on Serenity voting for a socialist government.
And that is why I can see all of the character’s on Serenity voting for a socialist government.
Including the ones who fought a war to prevent the establishment of same? Seems a stretch.
Robert’s comment pretty much goes with what I was saying, that Whedon sees himself as a liberal, but he understands liberalism as the sort of nanny-state authoritarianism that libertarians despise. Mal’s that kind of libertarian.
Socialism, as I understand it, doesn’t appear in the setting.
However, if you bear in mind that Mal’s critique of Whedon’s politics is itself a product of Whedon’s mind, that Whedon is critiquing his own ideas, then the idea of an egalitarian society based on individual freedom is lurking in there somewhere, never entirely expressed — though the rebellion in Jaynesville comes closest. It’s interesting that none of the characters seems to understand what really happened.
Well, the desire for an egalitarian society based on freedom is there. Whedon, like Mal, doesn’t see a way to get from point A to point B (can’t hardly blame folk for not inventing magic). The conflict between the unresolvable desire for both freedom and equality provides a lot of the political energy of the ‘verse, IMHO.
Well Robert how do you know that the government of the Alliance (and that name alone really puts a stop to your theory) is socialist? Everything we see in the show suggests otherwise.
There is a wide gap between have and have-nots, hospitals and sick-care isn’t free to everyone, there seems to be no labour laws restricting hours, dangerous work or vacation time, I’ve seen nothing similar to public libraries whether personal computerpads for all and a common infonet or computercentrals in the towns where people could go. Actually the very facts that money plays such a big part in everyday life suggests otherwise – since in a socialist state there are checks and balances on what capital alone can achieve.
B, what you saw on the show is out on the frontier – where the people at now-cold war with the socialist state on the inner core worlds have to go.
Yes but even the parts that are about the core worlds show this divide between have and have-nots. Look at the Tams’ background story, and “Mrs Mal” or Wash’s choices. What do you see that suggests a socialist state?
I really see no evidence that that Alliance is a socialist state, none at all.
Foolish Owl – good points. I decided to write about the art as created, not about the intention. I had similar problems with the way Joss talked about the world he created, in particular the idea that the Alliance was some sort of utopia, and identified with feminism. Since we saw no evidence of that on the show, I don’t really know what he meant and can’t really analyse it.
I’m not sure I agree that Joss is a profound pessimist. His shows are all about creating your own family – whic is an optimistic act in and of itself. The idea that we are stronger together than we are alone is the single most optimistic idea I know, and it’s a recurrent theme throughout Buffy and Firefly.
I think it’d be easy to read quite a pesimistic message into the movie – that this is a good as it gets, and anyone trying to change the world for the better is just going to make things worse (although I think this analysis ignores the power dynamics of the show- the people who create trouble by trying to make things ‘better’ are those with power and they do that in their own interests)
But I’d read a different message, that a better world we might create won’t come by getting rid of our messy bits – because that’s essential to our humanity – it’ll become because of them. I think the crew of firefly succeeded because of who they were as people, not in spite of it.
Maia, there isn’t really any evidence in the movie/show (in today’s episode, the Preacher signs up for a Medicaid plan!); the evidence is what Joss has said. (He’s basically a democratic socialist, and he says that the Alliance is basically a benevolent, enlightened state); to me, that adds up to Alliance = Sweden with a vigorous foreign policy). YMMV.
One thing to keep in mind is that what many people (me included) would call a “mixed-market economy,” Robert would call a “socialist economy.” Sweden is a perfect example of this.
Ha ha! As a Swede I have to say that I find this really amusing.
One thing we have here is public accountability – everything written (including e-mails) by any public organisation is public property and must be handed out on request. The only exemption is sensitive private information like medical journals or what books you get at the library and specific military information (general info like the facts that projects exist is public – the location might be secret). During the cold war spies just used to send back public info since the recieving countries usually believed what they got was classified material anyway. (Our policy of an open society has actually caused us trouble with the EU who wants to classify everything.)
I could actually see this happening in the US, Italy, or some other country where the distance between citicens and government is great and media is heavily biased – but not in Sweden or Scandinavia.
Robert which interview are you talking about specifically? I
I agree that part of the problem is terminology. The ‘verse is clearly a capitalist economy, therefore it can’t have a socialist state. I’m not even convinced how mixed the market is – we never see a single shred of evidence of a social welfare system, and we see in the movie that they’ve privatised the police in the outer planets, which is a rather extreme form of commodification.
Although there’s no evidence that the inner planets operate in a way that resembles what I’d think of as social democracy, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did, and I think it’d fit with the ideas of a materialist ‘verse. One of the advantages of imperialism (and the Alliance is obviously imperialist whatever else it is and isn’t) is that you can reward the working class at home, by doubly exploiting the working class abroad.
RonF I didn’t see your question. But how could I turn down an invitation like that to rant in full. New Zealand universities are all publicly owned institutions and until 1989 there were no fees for attending university in New Zealand. The last 15 years have seen serious changes in the way tertiary education was organised and funded. In 1997 the National Party, which was in power at the time (they’re the right wing party, but their policies probably resemble Democrats more than Republicans), decided to change the funding model so that universitiy’s would be run like business. We’ve had a lot of privatisation in New Zealand over the last 20 years, and corporitisation, leaving things state owned but making them run like businesses, is often the precursor to that. I was opposing those changes, as were a number of other people.
How’s that for thread drift?
PS Robert – Amp explained Medicaid to me recently – it’s really not socialist.
Robert which interview are you talking about specifically?
The one I linked to.
I agree that part of the problem is terminology…Amp explained Medicaid to me recently – it’s really not socialist.
Yes. That’s my fault. As a memetic minority around here, I should probably put asterisks around some of the words I use, where I know our definitions for those words is going to vary.
Just out of curiosity and random individuality – and in a post about Serenity/Firefly, any comment made on that basis is automatically on-topic – what about Medicaid isn’t socialist?
From my point of view, Medicaid and Medicare are related, so if you don’t mind I’ll lump them together somewhat. (The main difference is that Medicaid is needs-based, while Medicare is an entitlement, and Medicare is specifically for old people.)
It seems to me like the main non-socialist thing about it is that you’re not entitled to get onto Medicaid if you have a certain income level. And that level, speaking very broadly, is about at the level where a person of reasonable prudence ought to be able to spend about as much on their own health care as a person getting the public service. If you can shift for yourself, you’re expected to, in other words.
Robert, without knowing hardly anything about medicaid and medicare, isn’t the problem that individuals have to pay the hospitals for their care? Please correct me if I’m wrong.
As far as I know, the co-pays or other fees for Medicare/Medicaid recipients are low. I think that Medicare has some means testing – the more you make as a senior citizen the more you have to contribute to get the Medicare benefits. I think the benefits are pretty decent, however, as even quite wealthy older people I have known use Medicare rather than just paying cash.
So it works like some kind of insurance system where you pay in and get the care as needed?
What I actually meant was that when hospitals are state-owned there is no need to consider patients monetary status at all. As I understand it this (insurance, medicare, how affluent a patient is) takes lot of time and energy on everyones part.
For me there’s a couple of requirements before I’d consider describing a program socialised. It’d have to be paid for by progressive taxes, and it’d have to involve the public ownership of the assets involved, it would also have to be universal. Obviously neither Medicare and Medicaid are universal. I don’t know whether or not medicaid involves public ownership but my impression is that either it doesn’t, or that whether or not it does depends on the states (I’m sure you can let me know). I’m under the impression that both Medicaid and Medicare are paid by regressive taxes.
Back to Joss, sorry I missed the link Robert – you said:
See I’m already having problems with the different between democratic socialist and social democrat. Where I come from social democrat usually means a liberal with a little more integrity – someone who wants to go back to say 1972. Whereas Democratic Socialist means anything from a uncommitted radical to a Marxist. The only reason I don’t stalk Joss is because the Pacific is in the way, and I don’t know enough about his politics to know where on the left his politics fall.
Even more importantly just because he describes the Alliance as a benevolent enlightened state, doesn’t mean that it’s his idea of a perfect state. I don’t think Joss ever says it’s a socialist state (he does say that it stands for feminism, but I don’t have the vaguest idea of what he means by that).
So it works like some kind of insurance system where you pay in and get the care as needed?
For Medicare. For Medicaid you just show up. It works more like a free system with a veneer of payments; my understanding is that the Medicare payments are there to provide some disincentive/brake on casual use, not to bring in real revenue. (The guy who really just wants some attention and doesn’t have anything wrong with him might refrain from clogging up the doctor’s office if it’s going to cost him $25 to get seen.)
Maia –
Medicare is universal; you pass an age milepost, you’re in. I’m really not sure about the progressive/regressive nature of the taxes involved; the US tax system is mixed, with some components being highly progressive (income taxes) and others being flat or regressive (retirement taxes).
I don’t know enough about Joss’ politics to make a definitive statement; I would wager with 70% confidence that he’s a democratic socialist in the American mold rather than the European or Pacific. Meaning, comfortable with markets and entrepreneurial economic organization, but desiring a very strong government-provided safety net and extensive bootstrapping for the people on the bottom of the ladder. I don’t know what that would be called on your side of the pond.
Soo, I’ll just plunge in and go totally OT.
Every party says that that is what they want. What their politics actually lead to might vary.
From what I understand even our right-wing parties would seem left-wing in the US. On the other hand our socialist demokrat government has made some decisions that would seem right-wing to you. (And too me – I actually see them as being in the center rather than on the left-wing – though it’s a big party with many fractions.)
I think that it is our proportional democracy that makes our system work for the best more often than not.
I am also very proud to say that when ALL of the establishment, all the money, every media, the government and the opposition both, was for Sweden joining the Euro, people read up on all the facts and argued and discussed in the streets and everywhere else and the people voted no to the Euro. My younger sisters stood on the square in the town where they lived then every day after school – giving people information and answering questions.
We are the proof that legwork and superior arguments pays off.
B, my understanding jibes with yours. Your right-wingers are our Democrats.
Any party that holds power ends up having to make some “right-wing” (and some left-wing) decisions, or the state goes kerplunkt.
I think Sweden has a great system, on balance; the difficulty with is it that there are unique Swedish strengths and circumstances that aren’t replicable outside your unique position. Milton Friedman once had an amicable debate with a Swedish economist who said that “in Sweden we have no poor people”; Friedman’s riposte was that in America, among Swedes, we have no poor people either.
It’s nice to know that Milton Friedman was racist, as well as having awful economic policies.
Maia, what is racist about his statement?
Implying that there’s some kind of connection between being Swedish and not living in poverty is racist.
How?
And he didn’t imply it. He stated it. And it’s empirically true. There are no (or very, very few) Swedes who live in poverty.
Is it racist to note objectively true things?
By “Swedes,” do you think M.F. meant first-generation Swedish immigrants, or do you mean Americans of Swedish decent?
If the former, I suspect the statement is correct, but it’s also meaningless – very few legal, first-generation immigrants of any nationality are poor, due to selection effects. (There are a few specific historic exceptions, involving the US government deliberately seeking very poor immigrants to do jobs like railroad work).
If the latter, I’m wondering how you can be sure that Americans of Swedish decent are less likely to be poor than Americans of other backgrounds. It’s not like there aren’t any poor white people in the US. (I assume that most Swedes are white, although to tell you the truth it’s not like I’ve ever been to Sweden.)
In neither case is M.F.’s argument particularly clever or telling. The main reason M.F.’s argument, as quoted by you, is defensible is that it’s so unspecific and undeveloped that you can’t pin it down to mean anything at all. Why does he (or you, since you thought it worth quoting) think that Swedes in the US aren’t poor?
I misquoted him, btw – it was Scandinavians, not Swedes. A distinction without a difference to some of us, no doubt. (I eagerly await Tuomas’ cry of outrage.)
I can’t be sure of it, if by “sure” you mean in possession of peer-reviewed studies. I just know it to be true. (In the case of Scandinavians living in Scandinavia, it’s indisputable. Those countries have incredibly low poverty rates in general.) I’ve met people all over the country, from all ethnic groups. They all have lovely diversity, etc. But I never met any poor Swedes; the poorest Swedes I’ve ever met were people living in voluntary austerity while they gathered resources for some great project.
The economist was asserting that Scandinavians weren’t poor because of their wonderful economic system. Friedman thought that Scandinavians in America (and in Scandinavia) weren’t poor because the individual (rather than systemic) factors that bear on poverty have been savagely beaten out of their cultural and genetic inheritances by a few millenia of the harsh conditions of Scandinavia. When you live on the Arctic Circle, if you are lazy, you die. If you are stupid, you die. If you are antisocial, you die. And so on. Cultural institutions are subject to the same pressures. So Scandinavian immigrants to the US were drawing from a pool of people whose cultures told them “work or die” and whose genes had gone through the same filter.
There are work or die genes? Which some ethnicities have more than others? That’s not at all racist (and completely lacking in evidence).
I don’t know what a “work or die” gene is, so I can’t answer that question.
There are ethnic group differences, largely based on isolation and natural selection for local environmental conditions, on a variety of traits. Some are small, some are fairly large; I don’t believe that’s controversial. (If it is controversial, how do you explain the adaptations of skin color, eyelid structure, body hair, and the like among racial groups historically living under particular sets of conditions, without invoking group differences founded in genetics? Is it racist to know that Eskimos have really high levels of body fat?)
You didn’t answer my questions. How is it racist to think there’s a connection between being ethnically Swedish and not living in poverty? And, is it racist to notice objectively true things?
The economist was asserting that Scandinavians weren’t poor because of their wonderful economic system. Friedman thought that Scandinavians in America (and in Scandinavia) weren’t poor because the individual (rather than systemic) factors that bear on poverty have been savagely beaten out of their cultural and genetic inheritances by a few millenia of the harsh conditions of Scandinavia. When you live on the Arctic Circle, if you are lazy, you die. If you are stupid, you die. If you are antisocial, you die. And so on. Cultural institutions are subject to the same pressures. So Scandinavian immigrants to the US were drawing from a pool of people whose cultures told them “work or die” and whose genes had gone through the same filter.
That is just dangerously close to the racist ravings of JimB in his comment (7/4 at 6:21PM) over at Pandagon (link).
Not to mention overly simplistic and unsupported by any evidence thus far. Human beings are so wildly successful because of their ability to adapt and to learn. So, it’s possible that Scandinavians survived so well because they adapted to conditions and learned the best way to succeed in those conditions. You know, as opposed to having the stupid and the lazy die out without passing on their genes.
Everyone keeps saying this idea is racist. And then I ask “how”? And the original questioner doesn’t answer. And then someone else comes in and says “this is racist”.
From what folks here have said, racism is power + prejudice, with some quibbles maybe about what kinds of power count or don’t count. But this scenario doesn’t appear to have either power or prejudice involved. Nobody’s oppressing anybody; nobody’s making any claim of superiority or supremacy. All that’s being asserted is that one particular little group has – to borrow the evolutionary language that Jake is using – adapted and learned a particular set of character traits that has served them well, in one narrow area. (Jake – adapted means that your gene pool has been selected for the traits that are good for the environment you’re in. Learned means that your culture has done the same. So you’re saying exactly what Milton Friedman said.)
I don’t understand how this idea of Mr. Friedman’s is in any way “racist”. I wish someone would explain it to me.
Forgive me Robert, but that is just stupid. And up til a little over hundred years ago Sweden was one of the very poorest countries in Europe – Finland and Norway were even worse off. As to genes – at the time when Sweden was so poor Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world and one fifth of Swedes today are immigrants. There really is no correlation.
Nor is Sweden much wealthier than other countries when you look at our BNP – what wealth we, as a society, have stem directly from our high taxes and system of redistibution throughout society. I believe that our culture of cooperation and consensus (that is we discuss an issue until all can agree) is the key.
Robert,
It is racist in the sense that we see a group as inferior or superior based on an extremely simplistic notion of how evolution works and the effects of environment on evolution over an extremely short (evolutionarily speaking) timeframe.
Also, the difference between “adaptable” (see my words “ability to adapt”) and “have adapted” is significant. One (“adapted”) refers to changes in the organism over time, the other (“adaptable”) refers to an organism’s ability to survive in varied environments. It is, perhaps, a subtle distinction, but it is an extremely important one.
I believe that you are also misunderstanding the term “learned” as I have attempted to use it. When you learned to read, was that something that your culture did or did you, individually, acquire that ability? Please don’t go into the cultural development of reading. If you prefer, substitute “swim” or “dress” for “read.”
Nobody’s oppressing anybody; nobody’s making any claim of superiority or supremacy.
Nobody here except for you, of course, with your claim that, in terms of poverty, Swedes (or Scandinavians) are superior. Combine that claim with a total lack of supporting evidence tying that to the genetics to which you also refer and, yeah, it sounds suspiciously like racism.
with your claim that, in terms of poverty, Swedes (or Scandinavians) are superior.
Superior? To whom?
All I’ve said is that this group, under this set of circumstances and environmental conditions, has this descriptive characteristic.