1) Jean Raspail's Camp of the Saints explores this issue presciently.

2)The advent of blogging has given me intellectual envy, as I read the thoughts of so many people, so much smarter than myself on a daily basis.

age of resentment? no, because those who feel like losers & resent will have fewer kids because they feel down on themselves. only the cheerfully mediocre will reproduce :) and of course, those with success don't have times for kids!

Did anyone watch The Apprentice? It started out as an all-woman team vs. an all-men team. The women won four-in-a-row. Once "The Donald" mixed up the teams, the women fell apart as 7 women in a row got fired.

And NO, the women didn't win just because they used sex, though they did. They planned better and had better ideas. The men's team made major mistakes in each of the first four episodes.

I know it's not a double-blind experiment, but it was interesting.

This reminds me of the educational research that has found something it called "stereotype threat". When some racial groups feel they are competing only against themselves, they perform on average much much better than they do when they're competing against other groups. Meaning that if you tell a group of black students that the copy of the SAT they are taking is specifically designed for them so as not to be biased, the racial gap in scores dramatically decreases.

Andursonne, I've read some pretty effective critiques of the research you cite that claim the subjects knew what result the researchers wanted to get and behaved accordingly.

Does this mean women are dumb?

Does this mean women are dumb?

Are we headed for a new age of resentment? I certainly hope not. In many ways, the 20th century was the century of resentment. Both communism and nazism fed on feelings of popular resentment that were free-floating in nature, but based I think (especially communsism) on feelings of class resentment growing out of the aristocratic past.

Anyway, your suggestion that tv images of bourgeous comfort and consumerism in the West is feeding resentment on the part of the left-out in the Islamic world is interesting. In this country, the rich often keep a deliberately low profile, but Madison Avenue and the realities of Hollywood make that impossible for the upper middle class lifestyle that so many Americans strive for. The irony, of course, is that this lifestyle is not nearly so fulfilling as it appears -- but one never finds that out til he gets there. So what to do? I myself have been advocating a much more materially-moderate but leisure-rich way of life based on the concept of universal part-time employment. In a nutshell, both parents would work part-time doing routine wage work and in their free time would build their own houses, have gardens, raise their own kids, cook and eat at home, and take care of their aged parents and grandparents, who would live under a separate roof and the other end of the garden in a kind of extended family homestead (1 or 2 acres). People would not retire at any set age, but would continue working for as long as they were able, taking easier jobs as their strength declines. There would be no nursing homes (you die at home in your bed, surrounded by your family), no daycare, and a lot less fast food. Small towns of from ten to thirty thousand could develope around industrial parks located out beyond exurbia, based on families and neighborhoods living this way. Their would be more walking, bicycles, and low-speed econo cars for shopping in a central mall of some sort, with regular high-speed cars available to rent for trips to the city or further afield. If such a lifestyle were humanly satisfying (its more or less the way I live myself) then, I think, there would be a less cause for resentment and envy. Who gives a shit about all that glitter if you've got a good things going in your own neck of the woods?

Luke,

The problem is that most people more stuff and more status. At the same time every company that sells consumer goods and services has a vested interest in running advertisements portraying the good life as enabled by their goods and services. You can advocate for a different style of life but your message is competing with a lot of other messages that are telling people to think in ways inconsistent with what you are advocating.

Nursing homes: But taking care of old folks takes huge amounts of work and a lot of their kids are either unwilling or unable to provide that care.

Day care: But many mothers want to work or if they are single or the husband isn't making enough they need to work.

Fast food: I agree with Tyler Cowen that the quality of fast food is going to increase dramatically.

Ricky Vandal, you Jenna Bush lover you,

It is not a simple matter of which sex is smarter. Women are, on average, better at verbal and human relations skills. Men are better at math and some of the economically more valuable spatial reasoning skills. But motivation and values and people react to different forms of competition play a bigger role.

Women are not earning as much in part because they aren't as motivated to pursue some of the higher paying jobs. For instance, in medicine they gravitate toward family practice or pediatrics while men aim for some of the higher-paying specialties. Men are putting money at a higher priority in their decision-making about careers.

Luke,

I find your idea rather pollyanna-ish. I heard a lot of that back in the eighties with predictions of smaller work-weeks etc. The working week grew and worker responsibilities grew. Productivity grew and the least productive went on the dole while the rest of us worked harder.

You may find your lifestyle rewarding, but most of humanity apparently disagree with you. I think it is well-known that most people tie their own self-images and ideas of self-worth to their ability to produce. Most of humanity will just accept the competitive advantages they have over you and strive for more.

Bob Badour and Randall,

I know it sounds hopelessly utopian, and maybe it is. I will say, however, that I did a Gallup Poll back in the mid-1970's, when I first got this idea, and two-thirds of the country expressed an interest in living this way, either "definitely" or "probably." As for ideas of self-worth and the ability to produce, building one's own house (even with some professional help) is one of the most satisfying things there is for a lot of people (not saying its for everybody, btw, and most likely not for you two: but I am thinking in terms of average joes). Taking care of people when they get old does sound icky -- unless they happen to be the people you care about more than anyone in the world, namely, your own family. A couple of years ago my favorite maiden aunt died in our home; we had lots of help (hospice in particular) and it was the singly most rewarding experience in my life. Besides, which way would you prefer to die: in a nursing home being cared for by strangers, or surrounded by the only voices on earth that can really give you comfort?

As for corporations having a vested interest in consumerism, etc., this is just one more form of consumerism: what's being consumed here is leisure and quality time doing the stuff that gives the most pleasure: eating and talking and playing with our kids, hanging out, doing chores, etc. Corporations compete against each other all the time, with no quarter given (think of what Wal-Mart did to small-town America; and then to K-Mart). It's a never ending story.
A

I hope to stay around until the sun goes nova (or maybe a little longer.) I suppose my second choice would involve some girl's jealous boyfriend. If I cannot have either of my top two choices, I hope I go quickly in a tragic sleeping accident.

Amy Chua's book `World on fire' has exactly the same argument.

Amy Chua's book `World on fire' has exactly the same argument.

I've posted previously on Amy Chua's argument and her book. Yes, I've certainly been influenced by her arguments. Though her arguments don't seem as original to me as they seem to others. Many years ago I read some of Thomas Sowell's books about racial preferences and conflicts between minority and majority groups around the world. But my guess is that Sowell was not read much by liberals and so Chua's arguments seem more new to them. She's certainly performed a useful service by updating that argument and writing to a different audience.

Speaking of Sowell, I ought to write a blog post on his latest book abour racial and ethnic preferences in 5 different countries.

But why should I compare myself with celebrities? Mass culture has also brought a huge number of people to my attention who are far inferior to me on many different scales.

"What is good? Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.

What is evil? Whatever springs from weakness.

What is happiness? The feeling that power increases--that resistance is overcome."

--Nietzsche, The Antichrist (2)

Not sure I agree with your interpretation of resentment -- in a political context, yes, I think there is an opportunity to illuminate one's "schaudenfreude" and exploit it (e.g. class warfare), but in the long run, we've seen that for economic purposes, individuals group together to find optimal outcomes. (Nash equilibrium). Ethnic groups, sexes, religions, nations, whatever.

Separately, and this is from my own acedotal observations after 30 years in business, most successful large organizations recognize the need to see that everyone's boat is lifted. Some, like the database software company Oracle, encourage an all-out "every man for himself" backstabbing environment, but the most successful companies in history -- IBM, for example, find ways to maximize the opportunities for many to succeed, both economically and in terms of peer rewards, which often leads to further success. Bad hires obviously occur, and they are culled from the team over time. But a group that is innately distrustful of one another will disintegrate over the long run.

I don't have anything useful to add, but this post is quite thought-provoking. Thanks.

=darwin

For those of you out there looking for more answers try looking at Robert H Frank's book "Choosing the right pond". If you consider the economics of status, yes humans have an inbuilt desire for recognition and acceptance, yes local relativity is more important than whats happening overseas however, the deregulation of world capital and labour markets and the everpresent growing information and communication technology has effectively increased the size of the pond we live in.

If the world economy continues with the capitalist ideal that economic growth is the object of a good society, what hope do we have? The inequality gap is increasing every day. Increased consumption of goods wont improve true happiness (money cant buy love), happiness lies in the interactions between people. Look at whats happening in cuba, Easterlin (1973) showed that cubans have a higher personal happiness ratings than most other world countries yet the gross domestic product/ per head produced in cuba is not very high. If the lower income in cuba doesn't explain why they're so happy perhaps we should not be so concerned about the importance of economic goals for society.

One other thing to remember is that the unbridled competition for status amoung individuals, the need to keep up with the jones's, is important to our health. Many studies have been conducted that show that low status individuals suffer from more bouts of ill health than high status individuals and in many circumstances we as individuals have to compete to keep our sanity.