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Eugine_Nier comments on Is Kiryas Joel an Unhappy Place? - Less Wrong
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Depending on which groups you're talking about this isn't completely obvious.
I think you're looking only at the superficial memes. It's entirely possible that there are more subtly cultural factors, e.g., belief in progress, openness to new ideas, that are responsible for both our development of modern technology and our adoption of different attitudes toward women. Of course, now that the technology has been invented, they can import it without necessarily importing the memetic baggage.
Also, as Eliezer pointed out here even the most liberal person from the 18th century, say Ben Franklin, if transported to today would be so shocked by all the changes to prevailing morality that he might even conclude that the monarchists were right about man not being fit to govern himself. Well, Franklin didn't get to see the future so we live in a democracy today. However, the people in developing countries can see where our path leads, and they may very well choose not to follow it.
Well, that is basically the modern prevailing doctrine, though of course it's never spelled out so bluntly. The contemporary respectable opinion pays lip service to the idea of democracy in the abstract, but as soon as any really important issues are raised, it is considered incontrovertible that policy should be crafted by professional bureaucracies under the gentle and enlightened guidance of accredited experts. In fact, one of the surest paths to being scorned as a low-status extremist or troglodyte is to argue that an expression of popular will should override the decisions favored by the expert/bureaucratic establishment in some particular case.
Is this as true in non-US countries at is true in the US?
Generally speaking, it is even more true of other countries that are commonly recognized as democratic, though in some places that have authentic local democratic traditions there are still strong holdovers (e.g. in Switzerland). In Europe, in particular, the EU institutions are almost completely insulated from any real popular input.
Not that this is a wholly bad thing, of course. Democracy works only in very specific cultural conditions that can't be established and reproduced at will, and arguably only on small scales. Otherwise, it usually produces a rapid and often bloody disaster. Thus, I'd say that the present standard of having a bureaucratic oligarchy with a veneer of democratic institutions is almost everywhere less bad than authentic democracy would be. (Though I'm not too terribly optimistic about its prospects either.)
I get the impression that it's even worse in Europe.
So my impression was based on this data:
This kind of tendency in the US is connected to a desire for bipartisanship
which comes from a veto-point-ridden legislative system
which is not a common feature in Europe
In Europe I understand that it's accepted that the people put a party in power and the party decides what happens, vs. in America people think that a grand bargain between the elites of both parties is necessary - but that is not necessarily what you're talking about.
From what I've seen here in France, you'd have something like what Vladimir_M describes without bipartisanship. I prefer the French system with runoff elections, which means that "minor parties" have a real chance, because it brings bigger diversity of positions to public debates, which seems healthy for political and intellectual life (and it may make politics less polarized than in the US, though they are still quite polarized).
But despite those aspects, I don't think it changes much for the relationship between the bureaucracy and elected officials.
OK, I am thinking of something different.
Most European countries have multi-party systems, which have an even greater need for negotiations and compromise. Also Europe has the EU whose bureaucratic institutions are far more developed than its democratic ones.
This is an extremely good comment.
Well we may all be well and truly doomed. Or we may not be.
We don't have a lot of evidence one way or another in this regard.
I THINK our memes are strong enough that we can incrementally lift people out of the shadows.
I think that a belief in progress in European culture was the result, not the cause, of progress.
But I don't know.
& aren't Amish people exactly those Ben Franklins?
I don't think so at all. Many become ex-Amish. Yet during the 18th century it wasn't an option to become ex-18th century. Likewise, no matter how innately conservative an American is, very few will be monarchist, and will instead espouse positions that were once only espoused by those with contrarian or radical natures. See also evaporative cooling of group beliefs.
Not to mention the Amish at least know of so many modern things.
Except perhaps for those who lived long enough, and hung out in the right circles, to become 19th century?
Would you agree that all of the people who are still Amish take a Ben Franklin - like stance?
The Ben Franklins we are discussing no of modern things. Ben Franklin himself, who did not know of modern things, brought us closer to modernity because he thought 1800 was better than 1750.
If Ben Franklin knew about 2000, it is theorized, he might be so horrified that he would reject 1800 as leading to (gasp!) 2000, and so not invent fire departments and electricity and democracy, hyperbolically speaking.
Those who choose to remain Amish make this same choice.
The correct response to our Amish is more-or-less the correct response to developing country holdouts or to time-traveling Ben Franklins. This could include:
Developing better arguments to convince them to join modernity.
Improving conditions for ourselves until our awesomeness convinces them to join modernity.
Letting them take up more and more land.
Letting them take up the same amount of land but not allowing them to get additional land (through an increased price of land due to increased population density?)
Leaving them be but preventing them from raising children to think the same way.
Something more radical and ethically dubious.
Something different but no more radical.
I'd go for a combination of these two. To the extent that their way works better, let them reap the economic rewards for such; to the extent that our way works better, let them either recognize and emulate or drown in their own willful ignorance.
The best strategy is not the strategy that maximizes long-term resource ownership.
If a given population is expanding and buying up a particular sort of real estate, my first guess is that they have a comparative advantage at making use of that sort of real estate and are more-or-less rationally taking advantage of that. People using comparative advantages to produce gains from trade is one of the cornerstones of the modern economy, from which everyone involved tends to benefit. Are you advocating taking resources away from those who could demonstrably make better use of them, for ideological reasons, and if so under what conditions?
So suppose group A has a rule of never taking loans from outside, and never selling capital or real estate to outside. It seems like they should be able to slowly grow in size even if they are very inefficient, no?
Essentially the problem is if the Amish discount the future less than we do, they win the future.
So maybe the problem is that we're discounting the future more than is morally appropriate? Can we fix that?
Not really. Without some edge over other potential uses for that land, they'd eventually overstretch and collapse (if they loan to each other, even in hopeless cases), or reach an equilibrium where they're losing land to things like property taxes, probate, and adverse possession as fast as they're buying it up.
I can imagine a future scenario where Amish people own all arable land on Earth and everybody else lives in skyscrapers, arcologies, space stations, or some combination thereof. It seems weird, sure, but 1) I would take that as strong evidence that they're simply better at making use of arable land, since they'd still be selling food to everyone else and competing with e.g. terrain-independent hydroponics, and 2) they seem to have little or no interest in expanding beyond the agriculture and specialty-manufacturing industries, and that's the kind of thing where who does it isn't as important as how well it gets done.
Shortsightedness has a well-known tendency to lead to longterm losses, yes. This goes back to basic rationality: if someone else is doing what you claim to want to do, and doing it better than you are, you'd better either start doing it their way, or figure out what you really want.
I forgot about property-taxes and things.
I think that those are basically, pretty much, a way of us unfairly stealing their land.
However there are no ethical issues with it - so I think that makes sense.
As we become more awesome, property values + property taxes will rise until low-tech agriculture cannot compete.