The Idealism of Every Era Is the Cover Story of Its Greatest Theft
00:11:38
Eric Weinstein: What you have to understand is that the idealism of every era is usually the cover story of a theft.
00:11:48Michael Knowles: I want to I want to pause there for a moment, say that again, because that strikes me as an important point.
00:11:52Eric Weinstein: Okay. The idealism, and the sloganeering, of every era is typically the fig leaf that is put over the greed of one party, goring the ox of another.
00:12:07Michael Knowles: So what would be an example?
00:12:08Eric Weinstein: Well, for example, in the 80s, you'll remember that competitiveness was a rallying cry, and competitiveness was about trying to get American unions to give up hard won advances, for the national good. So it was a patriotism that was associated with understanding, we're going to have to tighten our belts, we're going to have to get into fighting shape. And that was going to be painful, but we were all going to be better off on the other side. So after Patco was destroyedâagain, a problem of the Reagan time, what you then had was the next phase, which was We-Are-The-World. And the We-Are-The-World Globalization narrative was about breaking the bonds that tie our fellowâourselves to our fellow Americans. So the idea is, if we could just get rid of the rights of hillbillies and Appalachians, of blacks, of various people inside of the U.S., what we could then do is relocate all of these factories and various opportunity overseas and get access to other labor. And then when Bill Clinton and Dick Morris figured out that the Republicans had this great thing going, they wanted to get in on the act. So they got really aggressive about it. And then we have things like NAFTA. And one of the really interesting things that you have recently is people like economist Brad DeLong, who was one of the architects of NAFTA, admitting, you know, tearing off the mask and saying, you do realize that, what we were optimizing was a social welfare function that was intrinsically social Darwinism because it actually benefited you by the cube of your wealth. And then his point was, I don't understand why we're getting so much hate, look at all the good we did for peasants in Mexico, which is a little bit of a weird thing to say when you trick American voters into voting something and then after the fact, you say, sure, it may have made some of you worse off in Ohio and Michigan, but look at all the good it's doneâ
00:13:58Michael Knowles: For the other country.
- Eric Weinstein, July 23, 2020 on Verdict with Ted Cruz
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I have been talking about this for at least 25 years.
And for at least 25 years there has been active suppression of that discussion by the US research complex. That is, US taxpayers fund a research complex that generally views itself as post-national and beyond US jurisdiction.
âAcademic espionageâ may become an increasingly familiar term in the coming years https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-19/harvard-yale-other-elite-schools-have-a-foreign-money-problem
The biggest problem with this is that other nations remain nations. China isnât post-national. Oil kingdoms arenât post-national. South Asia isnât. Nor is Russia.
By underfunding science we opened the door to a âpost-national delusionâ which spread to justify funding research.
The easiest place to see this is to ask âwho does the work in university labs?â The sad answer: âItâs not technically work if we can technically reclassify the workers as âstudents and traineesââThat opened the door to China et al because we donât pay US scale for ânon-workersâ.
In short, universities fashion an idealism about a post-national world that is the exact shape of a well placed fig-leaf to cover the needs for funding underfunded science. The rationalization precisely matches the need to make up the shortfall. The solution is thus paradoxical.
The solution may be to fund the very people who are causing the problem at a US market level of stability & ease that hasnât been seen in 50 years. That feels awful to me. But you wonât be able to stop this problem with every researcher worrying about grants, labor, tenure, etc.
The idea of requiring K-12, four years of undergraduate, 5-7 years of graduate labor, 4 years of post-doctoral labor, and perhaps 6 years of tenure track before getting a permanent job is beyond psychotic. That could be 30 years of constant preparation for a first permanent job.
We need to end the current system. Either fund it properly again on US scale expectation, or pull the plug.
The deep problem with Academic espionage is that weâre trying not to pay for research. You can bitch as much as you want. But until we pay true costs, this will continue.
Thanks Kwame! Interested to hear feedback on it.
[I should just note here that these introductory musings at the beginning of recent episodes constitute standalone audio essays from me; any complaints folks might have, should not be counted against the guest or main interview.] https://x.com/kwamesompimpong/status/1257141048461021185
Sorry. His tweet seems to have been deleted. It referenced the first solo section of my most recent episode of The Portal with @wolfejosh. Itâs a theory that each institutional idealism is usually a cover story for a wealth/power transfer occurring during its era of popularity.
The Official Idealism of every age is usually the cover story of its thefts.
With that said, we eagerly welcome âThe Great Resetâ from the @wef and our friends in Davos.
#Canada's @JustinTrudeau is repeating @WEF script verbatim, admitting that govt's are 'using the pandemic' and #lockdown in order to enact their #GreatReset, like #BorisJohnson and #Biden, Trudeau is using #Davos's #BuildBackBetter marketing slogan.
We never voted for this...
I tried to warn about this. Oddly, it seems to have no impact.
Once again: âThe idealism of every era is usually the cover story of its greatest thefts.â
Just apply it now to Effective AltruismâŚand after a while seeing the pattern becomes second nature: