Okay Well buckle your seatbelt because I think this next thing is probably going to shake some of your thinking if you guys have want to be Provoked one of the most provocative books you can read Is by a gentleman by the name of Charles Murray called? I think it's called breaking apart anyways.

It's it's basically a study on sociology and There's a guy a younger version named Rob Henderson who I randomly met on the internet a few years ago And Rob story is pretty incredible. This is a guy that had a drug-addicted mother. He bounced around foster care his whole life he Dropped out of high school I think he joined the Air Force left the Air Force and then went to Yale and then got a PhD from Cambridge But he has had an incredibly hard life, but is an incredibly happy kind thoughtful human who's pretty introspective about Just society and sociology and people If you don't have a chance to follow Rob on Twitter, I highly encourage you to do it.

He's got an incredible newsletter it's just fascinating stuff about human psychology and He's gonna give us a little presentation then we're gonna have a conversation. So Rob Henderson everybody I did graduate high school 2.2 GPA bottom third of my class So I've I've been developing this framework of luxury beliefs for a couple of years now So we'll just jump right in we'll start with with a puzzle what do top hats have in common with defunding the police or romanticizing unmarried parenting or divorce or promoting careerism over attentive care for children and Family before we get into it Chamath told you a bit about my unusual background.

I was born here in Los Angeles I grew up in foster homes here in LA and all around, California I fled as soon as I could 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 Throughout what will Yale was a very different environment for me.

I learned at Yale that there are more 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 sort of academic research led me to a Discovery, which is that luxury beliefs have to a large extent replaced luxury goods 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 I'm not saying that luxury goods no longer signify status Rather are making the point that luxury goods have become a noisier indicator of status and as a result luxury beliefs have 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 consequences of his or her belief So there are multiple components to this luxury belief idea, but it starts with Thorsten Waeblin He was an economist and sociologist in the late 19th century and in 1899 He published a book called the theory of the leisure class and one of the core insights of this book 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 Whether they could afford Expensive and costly goods.

So in Waeblin's day, these were things like tuxedos and top hats and evening gowns pocket watches and monocles partaking in expensive leisurely activities like golf or beagling attending expensive and lavish events kind of like So there's a There's a great line in this book Waeblin somewhat tongue-in-cheek Suggests that even even butlers are status symbols He writes that the the chief use of servants is the evidence they afford of the master's ability to pay So these findings were later echoed a few decades later by the French sociologist Pierre Bordieu in a classic work in sociology called distinction a social critique of the judgment of taste and This in this book Pierre Bordieu coined this term cultural capital and the idea was that the upper segment of society would convert their material resources into Avenues to express and and perform social class through what he called the dispositions of mind and body developing intricate and expensive tastes knowledge of wine and art and other rarefied cultural domains Taste customs opinions habits.

He used this term distance from necessity In other words only people who did not work blue-collar jobs manual labor Could afford to invest the time and the resources into performing the class mannerisms of that top segment so one of the points that beer people do and Waeblin made was that in order for a symbol a status symbol to Signify status it has to be rare It has to be exclusive difficult to obtain costly to purchase once a status symbol is freely available to the masses The Elise will subsequently abandon it So there are historical examples of this one that I like here them in the Middle Ages in Europe Spices were difficult to obtain and costly to purchase only the elites could afford them But as European societies colonized India and the Americas and other regions of the globe the cost of spices subsequently declined and the mass public commoners in Europe were able to obtain spices and in response many European elites decided that spices were vulgar and Under the reign of Louis the 14th court chefs banned sugar and spice from all meals except for desserts There's another example here dueling in the American colony so dueling was initially a Practice primarily engaged in by aristocrats.

It was a you know, it was something that only gentlemen partook in for honor Famously one of America's founding fathers Alexander Hamilton was killed in a duel against Aaron burr but gradually this practice that was initially confined to the elite spread throughout the colonies and As a result the elites abandoned this practice and then it was subsequently outlawed in the late 19th century So distinction is the key motive here now a couple of years ago There was a great book by the author Michael Knox Barron called wasps the splendors and miseries of an American aristocracy And in this book Barron writes about white Anglo-Saxon Protestants So this was the American ruling class from roughly the mid 19th to the mid 20th centuries And Barron points out that wasps had mixed feelings about their fellow Americans He writes that many wasps viewed ordinary Americans as sunk in moronic darkness And he writes that it is a question whether a high wasp ever supported a fashionable cause Without some secret knowledge that the cause was abhorred by the Bulgarians In other words many wasps would support certain movements and causes and express certain beliefs Because they were so at odds with conventional opinion and it made them look sophisticated and interesting and it allowed them to distance themselves from the commoners And so sometimes when I talk about luxury beliefs when I talk about status people will say Rob Is it really true that elites care so much about status?

Is it really something that's so important to them? And the answer is yes The sociologist Emil Durkheim understood this when he wrote the more one has the more one wants since Satisfactions received only stimulate instead of filling needs and this is supported by two recent studies both published in 2020 by two independent groups of researchers.

This is a replicated finding The result was that relative to lower status individuals higher status individuals have the strongest desire for wealth and status So these researchers collected objective measures of status things like socio-economic status level of income occupational prestige educational attainment and found that people who are at or near the top of these measures were the most likely to agree with Statements like it would please me to be in a position of power over others I enjoy having influence over those around me and similar statements involving wealth as well So this is something that that's important to understand the strong desire for status the strong desire for distinction So that's one component of luxury beliefs The other is that this top segment of society also wields disproportionate influence over culture and over policy There was a study in 2014 that received a lot of attention which found that strong support From high-income Americans doubles the likelihood that a policy will be adopted So these are Americans in the top income decile roughly people who earn a hundred and seventy seven thousand dollars or more per year This group wields a lot of influence But it's important to understand that this group is often insulated from The detrimental effects of some of their policy preferences if the outcomes do not are not favorable So this is important to their insulated from from the consequences of their preferences So what is an example of a luxury belief?

Well in 2020 the defunded the police movement gained a lot of momentum And in early 2021 you gov ran a survey They collected data from a representative sample of Americans and found that the well they found overall Americans were very much against defunding the police, but when they broke down the results by income category They found that the highest income Americans were by far the most supportive of defunding the police There was another survey of just Democratic voters and found that white Democrats were far more supportive of defunding the police Than black and Hispanic Democrats And so as a result despite the fact that most people didn't want this many cities across the u.s Subsequently reduced spending for police departments here in LA in New York Chicago Seattle and and many other cities as well And this has contributed to the violent crime wave that we've seen over the last couple of years So these are figures from the US Census Bureau Bureau before 2020 which Helps to understand who are the primary victims of crime?

So in the US relative to those earned $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 Aggravated assault and 20 times more likely to be victims of sexual assault And again, this is before 2020 if anything these differences are probably more pronounced.

So it's important here to understand that That that to not stop crime is to actually victimize the poor. This is luxury belief Here's another luxury belief Torching your own social capital over the last couple of years. It's become trendy among cultural elites to promote this idea of burning bridges social ties over disagreements over social or political views and If you're an upper upper middle class person if you're highly educated Geographically mobile in all likelihood you can probably afford to burn a lot of social bridges and in all likelihood You'll be just fine.

But if you're a person who lives at or near the margins of society it would be Unwise to burn your relationships with friends families employers colleagues neighbors and so on and so Expressing this luxury belief may make you look dedicated to your cause of choice but if this belief Spreads throughout society this would this would have detrimental effects for people who are less fortunate but For me the luxury belief that has had the most wide-ranging societal consequences Has been the denigration of the two-parent family.

So here are a couple of headlines Let's call the whole thing off. The author is ending her marriage. Isn't it time you did the same? And the nuclear family is no longer the norm good by the way I don't mean to pick on the New York Times here I've written there and I've had friends who've written there But but these are headlines that many cultural least these are ideas that cultural elites believe should be introduced Into society among the educated public To be implemented into culture and into policy.

So the erosion of family structure. So in nine in 1960 95% of American children regardless of social class were raised by both of their parents And for the upper class for the upper 20% of Americans It dropped slightly by 2005 to 85% So it was 95% dropped slightly to 85% for poor and working-class Americans those in the bottom 30% It was 95% in 1960 and it plummeted to 30% by 2005 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 Where I grew up I had five close friends in high school and of the six of us None of us were raised by both of our parents.

There was me raised in foster homes I had two friends raised by single moms one friend raised by a single dad I had another friend who was raised by his grandmother Because his mom was addicted to drugs and his dad was in prison That is a pretty common snapshot of like what neighborhoods look like in poor and working-class communities now Now there's an element of duplicity here for this luxury belief and some others as well Which is when you ask college graduates about their opinions on family formation and family structure Only a minority only 25% of college graduates think couples should be married before having kids.

That's what they say In other words 75% of college graduates either hold a neutral position or think that maybe they shouldn't be married before having kids But then what do they actually do? Well, the vast majority of children born to college graduates are raised by two married parents 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 And here you can see 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 To rise up until about 1920. It was below 5% It skyrocketed since 1960 continues to climb So we're we're in unforeseen territory now where children in impoverished environments who could stand to benefit the most From two attentive parents are the least likely to have them And sometimes when I talk about the issue of the family people want to discuss the economics of this There was a study a few years ago Which found that if you wanted to equalize life outcomes for children raised in single-parent homes this would require a redistribution of $59,000 a year to single parents to equalize educational and occupational outcomes for Children to match those of two parent families and I think this is an interesting study and I think Economics shouldn't be downplayed, but I think it does Highlight the sort of narrow way that many elites think about family One way to think about this is if you were to ask a child who has two attentive parents Hey, we're gonna take one of your parents away, but it's okay because we're gonna give you $59,000 a year I think very few kids would accept that deal There's more to life than just educational occupational outcomes 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 So wrapping up here Luxury beliefs are the new status symbols ideas movements causes 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 time devoted to Acquiring it so only through the the process of going to an expensive University 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 You know the updating your vocabulary.

These are ways for you to signify. I'm a member of this upper segment of society In an interview a couple of years ago the NYU professor Scott Galloway Said the strongest brand in the world is not Apple the strongest brands are MIT Oxford and Stanford academic society We're no longer public servants for luxury goods.

These are the places where luxury beliefs are birthed people pay money They convert their economic capital into cultural capital they learn the right opinions to express in these institutions but again luxury belief holders are often insulated from the consequences of their beliefs so as Costly as these beliefs are to obtain for the affluent in terms of downstream consequences They're even more costly for everyone else, and I'll leave it at that period of my book.

Thank you You ended with something that Is something that's very important to me that I that I talked to you about before which is The destruction of the nuclear family and the impact that has had on US society I Think it's important to just expand a little bit more And I'll give you this provocative lead-in which is talk about you know maybe LBJ and the Great Society and the war on poverty and you know there's a very famous website What the fuck happened in 1971 calm like all of this stuff just just 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 I think We we just we focus a lot we concentrate a lot on the economic circumstances of families and how this may contribute to deprivation dysfunction negative outcomes for kids, but 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 Childhood instability is worse than childhood poverty for future outcomes so in terms of criminality or educational attainment growing up in a very unstable environment is actually worse than Impoverishment and even when you control for income Instability is still strongly associated with negative outcomes for kids in other words a kid who's raised by a rich family But say there's a lot of divorce and addiction and a lot of trauma in that family environment 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?

prioritize attentive care and stability And so I think we yeah, we retreat to discussions of economics because no one wants to talk about values No one wants to talk about family anymore I think the Great Society was kind of an example of this of oh, we're gonna solve this all through economics It's this kind of vulgar materialism When you know now we're seeing the sort of downstream consequences since since the late 60s Yeah, I mean the the data point that that may be shocking for some people is in you know black families as an example the economic incentive to not get married on You know today dollar adjusted basis was like 92,000 to a black woman to not get married and have a child Explain what that means how that meaning like, you know, Lyndon Johnson's welfare movement was about uplifting a lot of people But unfortunately it created these Deep negative consequences that took years to build up and through economics through economic incentives.

It was paying you to not be married 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 In this weird way in which we work if you have the right label You know, like for example freeberg has made this statement But like, you know 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 You know, it was this was the war on poverty.

And so all of a sudden you sounded like some, you know Insensitive Luddite if you're like, well, I'm against the war on poverty. Well, no, you're not who would be against that So we never really had a chance to talk about it You know Graham Allison actually had some points about this yesterday as well when we were talking the one we've talked about about Rob is the framing of People who are homeless versus people who are addicted to drugs, you know in this sort of 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 And they have resources and we pay for this in San Francisco and the the issue here 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 deadly fentanyl Understanding of how relationships and societies often work often material prosperity coincides with no longer needing to build relationships anymore or it Sort of redirects the incentive structure such that you you no longer want to work or do certain things anymore I mean, it's funny when I talk to sort of more affluent Americans and and you know I talked to them about what's going on with the sort of what's the underclass in in the US I'll suggest that a lot of these Problems a lot of these communities are afflicted by by poverty 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 They say that's because America is too rich.

That's the problem. You know, you don't need to build relationships anymore I mean often if you visit, I mean I was in I was in Malaysia recently and the 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 Scarcity and yet People know their neighbors they get married They take care of their friend family and their friends and a lot of this is because you know in America even if you're poor your material prosperity is relatively higher than a lot of other countries and therefore you no longer need to Build relationships quite as much as as you used to There was a line in The New Yorker a couple of years ago sort of this This is a profile piece on poverty in America But one line that stood out to me was that Before the Great Society being poor meant being hungry and now being poor means being on food stamps Which isn't a pleasant thing to be on food stamps But it no longer means that you're actually starving the way that you would in the past So material prosperity and inequality means something different now Where does society go at the limit of all of this?

Yeah, I think one thing that we could do is So so Melissa Kearney, she's a professor of economics at the University of Maryland She just released a book called the two-parent privilege and she points out a lot of this sort of the economic issues And I think that's you know, it's fine But I again I think that's kind of a narrow-minded way of looking at this but one thing that she points out that I really like is that elites could do sort of more to to promote values to sort of what Preach what you practice there are ways that we could just speak more about this I think a lot of a lot of people who agree with a lot of my writing and the things that I say They're reluctant to express this publicly It's kind of you know One reason why they like me is because I'll say it but I think you one one sort of obligation or duty you have if you are a fortunate member of society is To accept that you may take some slings and arrows for promoting values that you know are good You know if you've lived a fortunate life 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 We should be telling 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?

I think yeah marriage attentive care for for children I think that that is that is a big one. I mean it's really interesting when I talk about Marriage a lot of people immediately pivot and they say well Are you saying that it's bad to be a single parent? 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 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?

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 And that doesn't necessarily imply that you're trying to denigrate everyone else So I think this is something that we could do focus more on sort of family early 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 Where do you put some of these social movements that you know Now take up and occupy a lot of space in society Where do those fit in in this construct of yours?

Yeah, a lot of the movement cancel culture. You know trans etc like how do you how do you how do you bucket sort? All that's I mean a lot of that is those are many of them are luxury beliefs if you look at data in terms of self-censorship is one that I've that I've been been writing about and concentrating on if you look at the data for Americans who report self-censoring for fear of damaging their employment prospects or getting fired It actually increases the more educational attainment someone has so for people who?

The highest level of education is a high school diploma about 25% of Americans say that they self-censor Whereas for people with college graduate for college degree, it's 33% and then for people with postgraduate degrees. It's 44% Because they have more to lose and they know and they can anticipate what's going to happen Right because because cancel culture and all these things are actually worse We had this conversation with the vague on the podcast where I asked him because he's been very outspoken about his religious beliefs And I asked him a two-part question.

Do you think there's anything wrong with being gay? And then no and then hey, what do you think of trans and in the fact that? Trans issues have become such a prominent issue in this election When it affects such a small number of people is perplexing Well, I think yes moral movements often become intertwined with with status So for a long time, there's the gay marriage issue and because you know, I I cited that the book on wasps You know if a cause is abhorred by the Bulgarians, you know, and and so for a long time that was the case with with gay marriage, but then once a Great, you know a majority of Americans supported this cause I think a lot of highly educated Activists decided to move on to this next issue And so there's there's just kind of you know And any any time an opinion is at odds with conventional opinion?

It becomes more enticing to promote because it signifies that you're not a commoner Is that because of social media and is it waning? Some of it is I think because of social media social media scales Right, you you know, you you can't you can't punch a thousand people in the face at once But you can get a thousand people to attack one person online all at the same time and damage their reputation So I think that does have something to do with it.

So people become afraid of expressing certain opinions But but Is it I mean, I don't think that it's going to change I think we're sort of we are seeing a bit of a when you know, some people call it the vibe shift It's slowly changing people are speaking more openly and criticizing cancel culture more But I think part of the reason why it's dying is because a lot of people have already been canceled 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 And I think it's one of the things we've tried to do on the on the podcast is say hey Let's just have a conversation about these issues And be thoughtful about it and we don't hurt anybody's feelings 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 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 I I see it very distinctly that You can only you know be canceled for your opinion if you allow them to cancel you Momentum is such that you try something for long enough when it eventually doesn't work.

You try something else I think society has a resilient way of just doing that And so maybe people are realizing that cancel culture will not solve the problems that they care about I think it's well said and there has to be a different way Robin in the developed world Does the rise of luxury beliefs?

Give rise to the populist movements I remember I would travel in the Midwest a lot. I work with farmers and rural communities I would go out to these rural communities. I meet with farmers and there was always ridicule about how Californians were arguing about the gender sign on bathrooms when their local conversation was can I make money this year and I hate being dependent on the government and I would hear this everywhere I would go in rural communities in the US and I was like Donald Trump's gonna win I mean, he's just he is the voice of this group But it seemed to me that that is what really triggered the sentiment for populism It's not just about not having enough money but it's about seeing the inanity in some the view the perceived inanity of these luxury beliefs From a group that that isn't afforded that luxury.

Yeah Well, I think a lot of working-class people can sense that you know Many many members of that elite segment of society don't really have their best interests in mind They can see sort of it's it's not even just they don't share your values They're sort of intentionally promoting values that could undermine your communities and there's the kind of disdain and so Yeah, just briefly returning.

I think even even social media may actually be contributing to some extent I mean now people can go online and just see how 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 write about whatever Expressions that they have online and I think this is also sort of, you know It's sort of behind the curtain moment of wow, exactly.

This is like that. This is who's leading the country This is or this is who who leads the most prestigious institutions And so yeah, I think there is a there's a bit of that as well. Can you talk about a little bit? Just back to family and marriage for a second.

You wrote something about You know large numbers of sexual partners a sort of dating culture the hookup culture Can you just tie those two things together and one observation that I had and maybe it was because I read your stuff I then noticed that there seems to be these small green shoots of people who are being celebrated from getting married quite early now They tend to be stars But there is this interesting trend and I thought wow this could be one of these things where you're now starting to model a Very different set of choices when you're 23 and 24 word, you know Nobody would have thought today you would get married and this obsession with matchmaking and maybe a better way than swiping Right would be to be thoughtful about the values your partner has 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 In 2012 most Americans didn't have have cell phones yet or smartphones rather But then now that everyone has a smartphone and now that everyone's on the dating apps It has lost a bit of that exclusivity a lot of that sort of signifier of 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 to meet online Or rather in person to meet in person And yeah, I think Promiscuity all of these things.

I had a friend a couple of years ago Who you know, he told me, you know Rob when I so so he was a student at an elite university And he said when I set my dating app radius to one mile just right out right around the University Most of the female profiles he saw these were fellow students and he said something like a third of them in the bios They said, you know, I'm you know poly or casual or not looking for anything serious and then when he extended the radius To the outskirts of the university, which is a more sort of blue-collar area same age range, you know Whatever, you know, it was a 20 to 24 year old women or something He said that the majority of the women he saw were single moms And so sexual promiscuity looks very different depending on your social class how much money you come from and so on Okay, we need to wrap you can follow Rob Henderson on Twitter and and sign up for his sub stack sub stack, yeah Well done Rob Thanks for doing it Thank you Rob *outro music* *outro music* *outro music* *outro music* *outro music* ♪ Oh, we know our lead ♪