All-In Summit: "Luxury Beliefs are Status Symbols" with Rob Henderson

00:00:00.000 | Okay

00:00:01.680 | Well buckle your seatbelt because I think this next thing is probably going to shake some of your thinking

00:00:08.060 | if you guys have want to be

00:00:11.360 | Provoked one of the most provocative books you can read

00:00:15.620 | Is by a gentleman by the name of Charles Murray called?

00:00:20.400 | I think it's called breaking apart anyways. It's it's basically a study on sociology and

00:00:27.280 | There's a guy a younger version named Rob Henderson who I randomly met on the internet a few years ago

00:00:34.000 | And Rob story is pretty incredible. This is a guy that had a drug-addicted mother. He bounced around foster care his whole life

00:00:42.160 | he

00:00:44.120 | Dropped out of high school

00:00:45.040 | I think he joined the Air Force left the Air Force and then went to Yale and then got a PhD from Cambridge

00:00:52.720 | But he has had an incredibly hard life, but is an incredibly happy

00:00:58.120 | kind thoughtful human who's pretty introspective about

00:01:03.080 | Just society and sociology and people

00:01:06.800 | If you don't have a chance to follow Rob on Twitter, I highly encourage you to do it. He's got an incredible

00:01:12.560 | newsletter

00:01:15.400 | it's just fascinating stuff about human psychology and

00:01:19.160 | He's gonna give us a little presentation then we're gonna have a conversation. So Rob Henderson everybody

00:01:45.960 | I did graduate high school 2.2 GPA bottom third of my class

00:01:49.760 | So I've I've been developing this framework of luxury beliefs for a couple of years now

00:01:56.500 | So we'll just jump right in we'll start with with a puzzle

00:01:59.480 | what do top hats have in common with defunding the police or

00:02:04.960 | romanticizing unmarried parenting or divorce or promoting careerism over attentive care for children and

00:02:13.200 | Family before we get into it Chamath told you a bit about my unusual background. I was born here in Los Angeles

00:02:19.480 | I grew up in foster homes here in LA and all around, California

00:02:23.000 | I fled as soon as I could

00:02:25.000 | enlisting in the military when I was 17 and then later attended Yale on the GI Bill and tend a PhD from University of Cambridge and

00:02:33.120 | Throughout what will Yale was a very different environment for me. I learned at Yale that there are more

00:02:39.240 | students from families in the top 1% of the income scale than the entire bottom 60% and some of those personal experiences along with my

00:02:46.120 | sort of academic research led me to a

00:02:48.880 | Discovery, which is that luxury beliefs have to a large extent

00:02:54.120 | replaced luxury goods

00:02:56.840 | Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while often inflicting costs on the lower classes now to be clear

00:03:04.840 | I'm not saying that luxury goods no longer signify status

00:03:07.520 | Rather are making the point that luxury goods have become a noisier indicator of status

00:03:11.440 | and as a result luxury beliefs have

00:03:14.240 | Arisen and as well as we'll see later a core feature of a luxury belief is that the believer is comfortably insulated from the

00:03:22.060 | consequences of his or her

00:03:24.520 | belief

00:03:25.760 | So there are multiple components to this luxury belief idea, but it starts with Thorsten Waeblin

00:03:30.440 | He was an economist and sociologist in the late 19th century and in 1899

00:03:35.000 | He published a book called the theory of the leisure class and one of the core insights of this book

00:03:40.520 | Is that because we can't be certain about the financial status of other people a good way to size up their means is to see

00:03:48.040 | Whether they could afford

00:03:50.040 | Expensive and costly goods. So in Waeblin's day, these were things like tuxedos and top hats and evening gowns pocket watches and monocles

00:03:58.240 | partaking in expensive leisurely activities like golf or beagling

00:04:03.240 | attending expensive and lavish events kind of like

00:04:07.020 | So there's a

00:04:12.520 | There's a great line in this book

00:04:17.120 | Waeblin somewhat tongue-in-cheek

00:04:19.920 | Suggests that even even butlers are status symbols

00:04:22.240 | He writes that the the chief use of servants is the evidence they afford of the master's ability to pay

00:04:28.040 | So these findings were later echoed a few decades later by the French sociologist Pierre Bordieu in a classic

00:04:34.880 | work in sociology called distinction a social critique of the judgment of taste and

00:04:39.320 | This in this book Pierre Bordieu coined this term cultural capital

00:04:43.400 | and the idea was that the upper segment of society would convert their material resources into

00:04:49.800 | Avenues to express and and perform

00:04:54.960 | social class through what he called the dispositions of mind and body

00:04:57.880 | developing intricate and expensive tastes

00:05:01.400 | knowledge of

00:05:03.360 | wine and art and other rarefied cultural domains

00:05:06.200 | Taste customs opinions habits. He used this term distance from necessity

00:05:10.880 | In other words only people who did not work blue-collar jobs manual labor

00:05:17.200 | Could afford to invest the time and the resources

00:05:19.640 | into performing

00:05:22.720 | the class mannerisms of that top segment

00:05:25.320 | so one of the points that beer people do and Waeblin made was that in order for a symbol a status symbol to

00:05:33.220 | Signify status it has to be rare

00:05:36.100 | It has to be exclusive difficult to obtain costly to purchase once a status symbol is freely available to the masses

00:05:42.400 | The Elise will subsequently abandon it

00:05:44.400 | So there are historical examples of this one that I like here them in the Middle Ages in Europe

00:05:49.920 | Spices were difficult to obtain and costly to purchase only the elites could afford them

00:05:54.680 | But as European societies colonized India and the Americas and other regions of the globe the cost of spices

00:06:00.880 | subsequently declined and the mass public commoners in Europe were able to obtain spices and in response many European elites

00:06:08.560 | decided that spices were vulgar and

00:06:10.720 | Under the reign of Louis the 14th court chefs banned sugar and spice from all meals except for desserts

00:06:18.480 | There's another example here dueling in the American colony so dueling was initially a

00:06:22.680 | Practice primarily engaged in by aristocrats. It was a you know, it was something that only gentlemen partook in for honor

00:06:30.560 | Famously one of America's founding fathers Alexander Hamilton was killed in a duel against Aaron burr

00:06:36.240 | but gradually this practice that was initially confined to the elite spread throughout the colonies and

00:06:42.840 | As a result the elites abandoned this practice and then it was subsequently outlawed in the late 19th century

00:06:48.560 | So distinction is the key motive here now a couple of years ago

00:06:54.000 | There was a great book by the author Michael Knox Barron called wasps the splendors and miseries of an American aristocracy

00:07:00.280 | And in this book Barron writes about white Anglo-Saxon Protestants

00:07:05.400 | So this was the American ruling class from roughly the mid 19th to the mid 20th centuries

00:07:09.480 | And Barron points out that wasps had mixed feelings about their fellow Americans

00:07:14.520 | He writes that many wasps viewed ordinary Americans as sunk in moronic darkness

00:07:19.760 | And he writes that it is a question whether a high wasp ever supported a fashionable cause

00:07:24.060 | Without some secret knowledge that the cause was abhorred by the Bulgarians

00:07:27.520 | In other words many wasps would support certain movements and causes and express certain beliefs

00:07:33.160 | Because they were so at odds with conventional opinion and it made them look sophisticated and interesting and it allowed them to distance themselves

00:07:39.680 | from the commoners

00:07:41.680 | And so sometimes when I talk about luxury beliefs when I talk about status people will say Rob

00:07:46.720 | Is it really true that elites care so much about status? Is it really something that's so important to them?

00:07:50.520 | And the answer is yes

00:07:52.520 | The sociologist Emil Durkheim understood this when he wrote the more one has the more one wants since

00:07:58.920 | Satisfactions received only stimulate instead of filling needs and this is supported by two recent studies both published in

00:08:06.280 | 2020 by two independent groups of researchers. This is a replicated finding

00:08:09.920 | The result was that relative to lower status individuals higher status individuals have the strongest desire for wealth and status

00:08:16.920 | So these researchers collected

00:08:18.920 | objective measures of status things like socio-economic status level of income occupational prestige

00:08:24.800 | educational attainment and found that people who are at or near the top of these measures were the most likely to agree with

00:08:31.840 | Statements like it would please me to be in a position of power over others

00:08:35.320 | I enjoy having influence over those around me and similar statements involving wealth as well

00:08:41.040 | So this is something that that's important to understand the strong desire for status the strong desire for distinction

00:08:47.040 | So that's one component of luxury beliefs

00:08:49.320 | The other is that this top segment of society also wields disproportionate influence over culture and over policy

00:08:55.760 | There was a study in 2014 that received a lot of attention which found that strong support

00:09:00.160 | From high-income Americans doubles the likelihood that a policy will be adopted

00:09:03.600 | So these are Americans in the top income decile roughly people who earn a hundred and seventy seven thousand dollars or more per year

00:09:09.120 | This group wields a lot of influence

00:09:11.640 | But it's important to understand that this group is often insulated from

00:09:16.320 | The detrimental effects of some of their policy preferences if the outcomes do not are not favorable

00:09:22.000 | So this is important to their insulated from from the consequences of their preferences

00:09:27.200 | So what is an example of a luxury belief? Well in 2020 the defunded the police movement gained a lot of momentum

00:09:34.480 | And in early 2021 you gov ran a survey

00:09:39.120 | They collected data from a representative sample of Americans and found that the well they found overall

00:09:44.360 | Americans were very much against defunding the police, but when they broke down the results by income category

00:09:50.280 | They found that the highest income Americans were by far the most supportive of defunding the police

00:09:54.560 | There was another survey of just Democratic voters and found that white Democrats were far more supportive of defunding the police

00:10:00.040 | Than black and Hispanic Democrats

00:10:02.240 | And so as a result despite the fact that most people didn't want this many cities across the u.s

00:10:07.040 | Subsequently reduced spending for police departments here in LA in New York

00:10:11.560 | Chicago Seattle and and many other cities as well

00:10:13.880 | And this has contributed to the violent crime wave that we've seen over the last couple of years

00:10:18.160 | So these are figures from the US Census Bureau Bureau before 2020

00:10:23.720 | which

00:10:24.960 | Helps to understand who are the primary victims of crime?

00:10:28.640 | So in the US relative to those earned

00:10:30.840 | $75,000 or more per year the poorest Americans are seven times more likely to be victims of robbery seven times more likely to be victims of

00:10:37.280 | Aggravated assault and 20 times more likely to be victims of sexual assault

00:10:41.360 | And again, this is before 2020 if anything these differences are probably more pronounced. So it's important here to understand that

00:10:49.600 | That that to not stop crime is to actually victimize the poor. This is luxury belief

00:10:54.360 | Here's another luxury belief

00:10:57.400 | Torching your own social capital over the last couple of years. It's become

00:11:01.320 | trendy among cultural elites to

00:11:04.320 | promote this idea of burning bridges social ties over disagreements over social or political views and

00:11:11.520 | If you're an upper upper middle class person if you're highly educated

00:11:16.760 | Geographically mobile in all likelihood you can probably afford to burn a lot of social bridges and in all likelihood

00:11:22.880 | You'll be just fine. But if you're a person who lives at or near the margins of society

00:11:27.000 | it would be

00:11:29.640 | Unwise to burn your relationships with friends families employers colleagues neighbors and so on and so

00:11:36.640 | Expressing this luxury belief may make you look dedicated to your cause of choice

00:11:41.200 | but if this belief

00:11:43.880 | Spreads throughout society this would this would have detrimental effects for people who are less fortunate

00:11:49.360 | but

00:11:51.160 | For me the luxury belief that has had the most wide-ranging

00:11:54.200 | societal consequences

00:11:56.960 | Has been the denigration of the two-parent family. So here are a couple of headlines

00:12:02.200 | Let's call the whole thing off. The author is ending her marriage. Isn't it time you did the same?

00:12:06.840 | And the nuclear family is no longer the norm good by the way

00:12:10.640 | I don't mean to pick on the New York Times here

00:12:11.880 | I've written there and I've had friends who've written there

00:12:13.800 | But but these are headlines that many cultural least these are ideas that cultural elites believe should be introduced

00:12:18.440 | Into society among the educated public

00:12:20.720 | To be implemented into culture and into policy. So the erosion of family structure. So in nine in 1960

00:12:28.480 | 95% of American children regardless of social class were raised by both of their parents

00:12:35.400 | And for the upper class for the upper 20% of Americans

00:12:40.600 | It dropped slightly by 2005 to 85%

00:12:43.080 | So it was 95% dropped slightly to 85% for poor and working-class Americans those in the bottom 30%

00:12:49.040 | It was 95% in 1960 and it plummeted to 30% by 2005

00:12:53.320 | Now if you visit working-class blue-collar communities in the US it is an anomaly to see children raised by both of their parents

00:13:01.720 | Where I grew up I had five close friends in high school and of the six of us

00:13:06.520 | None of us were raised by both of our parents. There was me raised in foster homes

00:13:09.960 | I had two friends raised by single moms one friend raised by a single dad

00:13:13.520 | I had another friend who was raised by his grandmother

00:13:15.520 | Because his mom was addicted to drugs and his dad was in prison

00:13:18.400 | That is a pretty common snapshot of like what neighborhoods look like in poor and working-class communities now

00:13:24.800 | Now there's an element of duplicity here for this luxury belief and some others as well

00:13:29.920 | Which is when you ask college graduates about their opinions on family formation and family structure

00:13:36.600 | Only a minority only 25% of college graduates think couples should be married before having kids. That's what they say

00:13:42.360 | In other words 75% of college graduates either hold a neutral position or think that maybe they shouldn't be married before having kids

00:13:50.360 | But then what do they actually do?

00:13:51.880 | Well, the vast majority of children born to college graduates are raised by two married parents

00:13:56.360 | Only about one in ten children born to a college-educated mother is born out of wedlock. So there's this mismatch between words and deeds

00:14:06.240 | And here you can see

00:14:07.960 | The sort of shocking rise and out of wedlock births and this is primarily concentrated again among the poor and the working class it continues

00:14:13.840 | To rise up until about 1920. It was below 5% It skyrocketed since 1960 continues to climb

00:14:19.320 | So we're we're in unforeseen territory now where children in impoverished environments who could stand to benefit the most

00:14:26.080 | From two attentive parents are the least likely to have them

00:14:30.680 | And sometimes when I talk about the issue of the family people want to discuss the economics of this

00:14:35.920 | There was a study a few years ago

00:14:37.720 | Which found that if you wanted to equalize life outcomes for children raised in single-parent homes

00:14:41.440 | this would require a redistribution of $59,000 a year to single parents to equalize educational and occupational outcomes for

00:14:49.480 | Children to match those of two parent families and I think this is an interesting study and I think

00:14:55.160 | Economics shouldn't be downplayed, but I think it does

00:15:00.280 | Highlight the sort of narrow way that many elites think about family

00:15:04.080 | One way to think about this is if you were to ask a child who has two attentive parents

00:15:09.520 | Hey, we're gonna take one of your parents away, but it's okay because we're gonna give you $59,000 a year

00:15:13.760 | I think very few kids would accept that deal

00:15:16.840 | There's more to life than just educational occupational outcomes

00:15:20.840 | There's a there's a sort of a blind spot here about the social and emotional penalties children receive when they don't have two parents available

00:15:29.920 | So wrapping up here

00:15:31.920 | Luxury beliefs are the new status symbols ideas movements causes

00:15:35.320 | Pierre Bordieu in another one of his great books the forms of capital wrote the best measure of cultural capital is undoubtedly the amount of

00:15:41.680 | time devoted to

00:15:43.040 | Acquiring it so only through the the process of going to an expensive University

00:15:48.160 | Listening to the right podcasts reading the right books being immersed in the right environments knowing that you're supposed to say unhoused instead of homeless

00:15:54.360 | You know the updating your vocabulary. These are ways for you to signify. I'm a member of this upper segment of

00:16:00.240 | society

00:16:01.520 | In an interview a couple of years ago the NYU professor Scott Galloway

00:16:05.160 | Said the strongest brand in the world is not Apple the strongest brands are MIT Oxford and Stanford academic society

00:16:10.160 | We're no longer public servants for luxury goods. These are the places where luxury beliefs are birthed people pay money

00:16:15.160 | They convert their economic capital into cultural capital they learn the right opinions to express in these institutions

00:16:20.160 | but again luxury belief holders are often insulated from the consequences of their beliefs so as

00:16:28.040 | Costly as these beliefs are to obtain for the affluent in terms of downstream consequences

00:16:32.760 | They're even more costly for everyone else, and I'll leave it at that period of my book. Thank you

00:16:37.200 | You ended with something that

00:16:51.040 | Is something that's very important to me that I that I talked to you about before which is

00:16:57.280 | The destruction of the nuclear family and the impact that has had on US society

00:17:02.240 | I

00:17:03.960 | Think it's important to just expand a little bit more

00:17:06.560 | And I'll give you this provocative lead-in which is talk about you know maybe

00:17:10.360 | LBJ and the Great Society and the war on poverty and you know there's a very famous website

00:17:15.400 | What the fuck happened in 1971 calm like all of this stuff just just

00:17:19.520 | Discuss that again, maybe in a little bit more detail for us. Well. Yeah, I mean there has been a sort of this backfiring effect

00:17:25.880 | I think

00:17:27.480 | We we just we focus a lot we concentrate a lot on the economic

00:17:31.760 | circumstances of families and how this may contribute to deprivation dysfunction negative outcomes for kids, but

00:17:38.440 | One thing that I've learned through reading a lot of developmental and evolutionary psychology research and the things that I write about is that

00:17:47.020 | Childhood instability is worse than childhood poverty for

00:17:51.480 | future outcomes

00:17:53.520 | so in terms of criminality or educational attainment

00:17:56.560 | growing up in a very unstable environment is actually worse than

00:18:01.180 | Impoverishment and even when you control for income

00:18:05.240 | Instability is still strongly associated with negative outcomes for kids in other words a kid who's raised by a rich family

00:18:13.280 | But say there's a lot of divorce and addiction and a lot of trauma in that family environment

00:18:18.320 | That kid will grow up to most likely have worse outcomes than a kid who's raised in a poor family with two parents who?

00:18:24.600 | prioritize attentive care and stability

00:18:26.960 | And so I think we yeah, we retreat to discussions of economics because no one wants to talk about values

00:18:31.420 | No one wants to talk about family anymore

00:18:32.920 | I think the Great Society was kind of an example of this of oh, we're gonna solve this all through economics

00:18:37.040 | It's this kind of vulgar materialism

00:18:39.040 | When you know now we're seeing the sort of downstream consequences since since the late 60s

00:18:44.800 | Yeah, I mean the the data point that that may be shocking for some people is in you know black families as an example

00:18:50.920 | the economic incentive to not get married

00:18:53.160 | on

00:18:55.280 | You know today dollar adjusted basis was like 92,000 to a black woman to not get married and have a child

00:19:01.120 | Explain what that means how that meaning like, you know, Lyndon Johnson's welfare movement was about uplifting a lot of people

00:19:07.940 | But unfortunately it created these

00:19:10.640 | Deep negative consequences that took years to build up and through economics through economic incentives. It was paying you to not be married

00:19:18.440 | And so what what happened people didn't get married and so it started to create these effects that have been compounding and and again

00:19:25.560 | In this weird way in which we work if you have the right label

00:19:29.740 | You know, like for example freeberg has made this statement

00:19:33.280 | But like, you know

00:19:33.760 | We can't talk about how bad the inflation reduction act is is because it's called the inflation reduction act frame the same way at LBJ

00:19:39.920 | You know, it was this was the war on poverty. And so all of a sudden you sounded like some, you know

00:19:45.020 | Insensitive Luddite if you're like, well, I'm against the war on poverty. Well, no, you're not who would be against that

00:19:50.480 | So we never really had a chance to talk about it

00:19:53.080 | You know Graham Allison actually had some points about this yesterday as well

00:19:56.480 | when we were talking the one we've talked about about Rob is the framing of

00:20:00.400 | People who are homeless versus people who are addicted to drugs, you know in

00:20:09.080 | this sort of

00:20:10.800 | Why would you arrest somebody who is homeless and who is and they actually have a home and they're choosing to live on the street

00:20:17.720 | And they have resources and we pay for this in San Francisco and the the issue here

00:20:22.300 | I think it is in framing and incentives because you actually get paid to come to San Francisco where we also have the lowest cost of

00:20:29.600 | deadly fentanyl

00:20:32.280 | Understanding of how

00:20:35.600 | relationships and societies often work often material prosperity coincides with no longer needing to build relationships anymore or it

00:20:42.960 | Sort of redirects the incentive structure such that you you no longer want to work or do certain things anymore

00:20:49.000 | I mean, it's funny when I talk to sort of more affluent Americans and and you know

00:20:54.600 | I talked to them about what's going on with the sort of what's the underclass in in the US

00:21:00.700 | I'll suggest that a lot of these

00:21:03.120 | Problems a lot of these communities are afflicted by by poverty

00:21:06.080 | But then when I travel to developing countries non-industrialized countries poor countries and and I talked to them about what's going on in the States

00:21:12.800 | They say that's because America is too rich. That's the problem. You know, you don't need to build relationships anymore

00:21:17.120 | I mean often if you visit, I mean I was in I was in Malaysia recently and

00:21:20.240 | the

00:21:22.080 | The poor neighborhoods there are you know, they're far different than the poor neighborhoods that that I grew up in in terms of just sort of material

00:21:27.880 | Scarcity and yet

00:21:32.240 | People know their neighbors they get married

00:21:34.480 | They take care of their friend family and their friends and a lot of this is because you know in America

00:21:39.420 | even if you're poor your

00:21:40.960 | material prosperity is relatively higher than a lot of other countries and therefore you no longer need to

00:21:44.480 | Build relationships quite as much as as you used to

00:21:47.440 | There was a line in The New Yorker a couple of years ago sort of this

00:21:51.800 | This is a profile piece on poverty in America

00:21:53.660 | But one line that stood out to me was that

00:21:55.660 | Before the Great Society being poor meant being hungry and now being poor means being on food stamps

00:22:00.920 | Which isn't a pleasant thing to be on food stamps

00:22:02.720 | But it no longer means that you're actually starving the way that you would in the past

00:22:05.680 | So material prosperity and inequality means something different now

00:22:08.760 | Where does society go at the limit of all of this?

00:22:12.920 | Yeah, I think one thing that we could do is

00:22:16.560 | So so Melissa Kearney, she's a professor of economics at the University of Maryland

00:22:21.280 | She just released a book called the two-parent privilege and she points out a lot of this sort of the economic issues

00:22:26.660 | And I think that's you know, it's fine

00:22:28.360 | But I again I think that's kind of a narrow-minded way of looking at this

00:22:30.960 | but one thing that she points out that I really like is that elites could do sort of more to to promote values to

00:22:35.600 | sort of what

00:22:36.720 | Preach what you practice there are ways that we could just speak more about this

00:22:40.600 | I think a lot of a lot of people who agree with a lot of my writing and the things that I say

00:22:44.720 | They're reluctant to express this publicly

00:22:46.320 | It's kind of you know

00:22:46.960 | One reason why they like me is because I'll say it but I think you

00:22:50.200 | one one sort of obligation or duty you have if you are a fortunate member of society is

00:22:55.880 | To accept that you may take some slings and arrows for promoting values that you know are good

00:22:59.560 | You know if you've lived a fortunate life

00:23:02.080 | That yeah, there's there's that kind of noblest oblige that I think that we've lost if there's a message to folks here about how

00:23:11.920 | We should be telling

00:23:13.920 | Other people what some of those high-level values are what would you tell us to be promoting more that we don't I mean?

00:23:20.160 | I think yeah marriage attentive care for for children

00:23:23.920 | I think that that is that is a big one. I mean it's really interesting when I talk about

00:23:27.480 | Marriage a lot of people immediately pivot and they say well

00:23:31.520 | Are you saying that it's bad to be a single parent?

00:23:34.080 | Are you trying to what denigrate single moms and this seems to be the only domain where people make this suggestion if if you say

00:23:40.320 | We should we should applaud college graduates no one ever says oh does that mean we're insulting people who didn't go to college is that?

00:23:45.240 | What you're saying and no that's not what we're saying you can you can praise one thing and confer status on on an activity

00:23:50.320 | And that doesn't necessarily imply that you're trying to denigrate everyone else

00:23:54.000 | So I think this is something that we could do focus more on sort of family

00:23:57.080 | early

00:23:59.120 | Development issues for young kids again childhood instability is a far greater predictor than poverty and yet we spend so much time talking about economics

00:24:06.480 | Where do you put some of these social movements that you know

00:24:17.160 | Now take up and occupy a lot of space in society

00:24:21.040 | Where do those fit in in this construct of yours?

00:24:24.360 | Yeah, a lot of the movement cancel culture. You know trans etc like how do you how do you how do you bucket sort?

00:24:31.040 | All that's I mean a lot of that is those are many of them are luxury beliefs

00:24:34.500 | if you look at data in terms of

00:24:38.360 | self-censorship is one that I've that I've been been writing about and concentrating on if you look at the data for

00:24:44.560 | Americans who report self-censoring for fear of damaging their employment prospects or getting fired

00:24:50.100 | It actually increases the more educational attainment someone has so for people who?

00:24:55.320 | The highest level of education is a high school diploma about 25% of Americans say that they self-censor

00:25:01.800 | Whereas for people with college graduate for college degree, it's 33% and then for people with postgraduate degrees. It's 44%

00:25:08.880 | Because they have more to lose and they know and they can anticipate what's going to happen

00:25:14.240 | Right because because cancel culture and all these things are actually worse

00:25:17.880 | We had this conversation with the vague on the podcast where I asked him because he's been very outspoken about his religious beliefs

00:25:23.960 | And I asked him a two-part question. Do you think there's anything wrong with being gay?

00:25:26.600 | And then no and then hey, what do you think of trans and in the fact that?

00:25:30.840 | Trans issues have become such a prominent issue in this election

00:25:35.600 | When it affects such a small number of people is perplexing

00:25:40.200 | Well, I think yes moral movements often become intertwined with with status

00:25:44.380 | So for a long time, there's the gay marriage issue and because you know, I I cited that the book on wasps

00:25:50.320 | You know if a cause is abhorred by the Bulgarians, you know, and and so for a long time

00:25:54.560 | that was the case with with gay marriage, but then once a

00:25:56.840 | Great, you know a majority of Americans supported this cause I think a lot of highly educated

00:26:03.520 | Activists decided to move on to this next issue

00:26:05.520 | And so there's there's just kind of you know

00:26:07.440 | And any any time an opinion is at odds with conventional opinion?

00:26:10.240 | It becomes more enticing to promote because it signifies that you're not a commoner

00:26:14.120 | Is that because of social media and is it waning?

00:26:17.480 | Some of it is I think because of social media

00:26:21.240 | social media scales

00:26:24.280 | Right, you you know, you you can't you can't punch a thousand people in the face at once

00:26:28.840 | But you can get a thousand people to attack one person online all at the same time and damage their reputation

00:26:33.520 | So I think that does have something to do with it. So people become afraid of expressing certain opinions

00:26:39.320 | But but

00:26:42.240 | Is it I mean, I don't think that it's going to change

00:26:45.080 | I think we're sort of we are seeing a bit of a when you know, some people call it the vibe shift

00:26:48.960 | It's slowly changing people are speaking more openly and criticizing cancel culture more

00:26:52.880 | But I think part of the reason why it's dying is because a lot of people have already been canceled

00:26:57.360 | Well, it's also exhausting, you know, it's like really we're we're going to attack another person because their beliefs are slightly different

00:27:05.360 | And I think it's one of the things we've tried to do on the on the podcast is say hey

00:27:09.720 | Let's just have a conversation about these issues

00:27:12.040 | And be thoughtful about it and we don't hurt anybody's feelings

00:27:17.000 | But we do need to talk about some of these things in an intellectually honest way whether it's homeless whether it's black lives matter

00:27:23.960 | January 6 whatever we try to have an intellectually rigorous open-minded discussion and it feels to me like that has started to tip over

00:27:31.920 | I I see it very distinctly that

00:27:34.700 | You can only you know be canceled for your opinion if you allow them to cancel you

00:27:40.120 | Momentum is such that you try something for long enough when it eventually doesn't work. You try something else

00:27:46.440 | I think society has a resilient way of just doing that

00:27:49.820 | And so maybe people are realizing that cancel culture will not solve the problems that they care about

00:27:55.280 | I think it's well said and there has to be a different way Robin in the developed world

00:28:00.400 | Does the rise of luxury beliefs?

00:28:03.580 | Give rise to the populist movements

00:28:07.360 | I remember I would travel in the Midwest a lot. I work with farmers and rural communities

00:28:13.480 | I would go out to these rural communities. I meet with farmers and there was always ridicule about how Californians were arguing about

00:28:19.680 | the gender sign on bathrooms when their local conversation was can I make money this year and

00:28:24.800 | I hate being dependent on the government and I would hear this everywhere

00:28:27.760 | I would go in rural communities in the US and I was like Donald Trump's gonna win

00:28:32.160 | I mean, he's just he is the voice of this group

00:28:35.900 | But it seemed to me that that is what really triggered the sentiment for populism

00:28:43.460 | It's not just about not having enough money

00:28:45.600 | but it's about seeing the inanity in some the view the perceived inanity of

00:28:51.040 | these luxury beliefs

00:28:54.200 | From a group that that isn't afforded that luxury. Yeah

00:28:58.040 | Well, I think a lot of working-class people can sense that you know

00:29:00.880 | Many many members of that elite segment of society don't really have their best interests in mind

00:29:05.700 | They can see sort of it's it's not even just they don't share your values

00:29:09.000 | They're sort of intentionally promoting values that could undermine your communities and there's the kind of

00:29:13.840 | disdain and so

00:29:15.840 | Yeah, just briefly returning. I think even even social media may actually be contributing to some extent

00:29:20.560 | I mean now people can go online and just see how

00:29:24.240 | Yeah, how mentally limited a lot of elites are just by looking at their Twitter profiles or the things that they say things that they

00:29:33.000 | write about whatever

00:29:35.000 | Expressions that they have online and I think this is also sort of, you know

00:29:39.240 | It's sort of behind the curtain moment of wow, exactly. This is like that. This is who's leading the country

00:29:44.120 | This is or this is who who leads the most prestigious institutions

00:29:47.380 | And so yeah, I think there is a there's a bit of that as well. Can you talk about a little bit?

00:29:52.440 | Just back to family and marriage for a second. You wrote something about

00:29:56.280 | You know large numbers of sexual partners a sort of dating culture the hookup culture

00:30:03.080 | Can you just tie those two things together and one observation that I had and maybe it was because I read your stuff

00:30:09.000 | I then noticed that there seems to be these small green shoots of people who are being celebrated from getting married quite early now

00:30:15.120 | They tend to be stars

00:30:16.480 | But there is this interesting trend

00:30:18.480 | and I thought wow this could be one of these things where you're now starting to model a

00:30:23.280 | Very different set of choices when you're 23 and 24 word, you know

00:30:26.680 | Nobody would have thought today you would get married and this obsession with matchmaking and maybe a better way than swiping

00:30:33.800 | Right would be to be thoughtful about the values your partner has

00:30:38.400 | Yeah, I think there is an element of status here. I mean when tinder and a lot of the dating apps took off in around 2012

00:30:43.400 | In 2012 most Americans didn't have have cell phones yet or smartphones rather

00:30:48.960 | But then now that everyone has a smartphone and now that everyone's on the dating apps

00:30:53.120 | It has lost a bit of that

00:30:54.960 | exclusivity a lot of that sort of signifier of

00:30:56.960 | Status and I think this is one reason why we're seeing a lot of a lot of affluent people sort of shift back to trying

00:31:02.560 | to meet online

00:31:03.800 | Or rather in person to meet in person

00:31:06.920 | And yeah, I think

00:31:08.920 | Promiscuity all of these things. I had a friend a couple of years ago

00:31:12.840 | Who you know, he told me, you know Rob when I so so he was a student at an elite university

00:31:18.840 | And he said when I set my dating app radius to one mile just right out right around the University

00:31:24.040 | Most of the female profiles he saw these were fellow students and he said something like a third of them in the bios

00:31:30.560 | They said, you know, I'm you know poly or casual or not looking for anything serious and then when he extended the radius

00:31:36.760 | To the outskirts of the university, which is a more sort of blue-collar area same age range, you know

00:31:41.880 | Whatever, you know, it was a 20 to 24 year old women or something

00:31:44.640 | He said that the majority of the women he saw were single moms

00:31:46.880 | And so sexual promiscuity looks very different depending on your social class how much money you come from and so on

00:31:53.920 | Okay, we need to wrap you can follow Rob Henderson on Twitter and

00:32:00.840 | and sign up for his sub stack

00:32:02.840 | sub stack, yeah

00:32:04.840 | Well done Rob

00:32:06.840 | Thanks for doing it

00:32:08.840 | Thank you Rob

00:32:10.840 | *outro music*

00:32:12.840 | *outro music*

00:32:15.840 | *outro music*

00:32:17.840 | *outro music*

00:32:22.840 | *outro music*

00:32:26.840 | ♪ Oh, we know our lead ♪

All-In Summit: "Luxury Beliefs are Status Symbols" with Rob Henderson

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