Election Thoughts and Takeaways

A few thoughts if for no other reason than having something to reply to a lot of direct messages with:

The Manosphere / Zynternet / What Happened With Men

I am slightly loathe to discuss this as a:

1. Man

2. A white man

3. A white, hetrosexual man

Because there are still some folks running around screaming in the comments at people like me as if that worked the first time.

I will just stay that if some broad demographic grouping is large enough to swing an election, then it has to be dealt with somehow. I did a lot of martial arts growing up and remember Rogan when he was a UFC announcer and comedian and have at times enjoyed his podcast. Doing a lot of martial arts means you understand some of the practicalities of being a police officer and say, dealing with someone on meth and armed. For anyone who wants to defund the police: turn up to your local dojo and seeing how you go with someone holding a plastic knife. I think a little appreciation for the lived realities of people who do security work can go a long way.

Similarly, what is being packaged by Jordan Peterson and the like is really some combination of stoicism and self-care without any broader reflection. Why is that appealing? Because there is a lack of competition. A lot of the discourse around men and masculinity is “do not be x” or worse “you cannot change and are terrible”. They mostly just want tasks and stuff to do! Bell Hooks has figured this out but strangely a very noisy segment of the left has not. On a more philosophical level a lot of men seek some outlet for what Greek philosophers called thumos and which Fukuyama has written a great deal about. Repackaging old wine (ancient wisdom) in new bottles (apps, podcasts, etc) is an old trick but it still works. People on the left would be well advised to work out how to sell good, constructivist things in better ways.

To that end the below might be part of the way forward. I have heard dumber ideas than ozempic to kick drugs and then straight to some kind of nice family friendly liberal dojo, dharma center or church. If a notable feminist theorist and what some would describe as a “finbro” can agree the strategy needs to change, well, maybe it does.

People Really Dislike Inflation

As noted here, here, here and here. Identifying the problem is now largely done but what to do about it and how to message around it is another. There are few issues here:

1. Can Causes of Inflation be Communicated? Can you communicate the endogenous and exogenous? Most empirical work on the inflationary episode during 2021-2023 has landed where Bernanke and Blanchard did: it was largely attributable to global shocks caused by energy, supply chain snarls （particularly in semiconductors) and food (also energy via nitrogen fertilizers). Is there any way for governments to communicate this or are they invariably going to get the blame? If you buy the inevitability story, then the decline of incumbents in the last year has echoes of Jimmy Carter. Australia has an election soon and this is far from an academic consideration for the Australian Labour Party.

2. What Can You Do About It? A lot, in my opinion. As written about extensively here and at Employ America measures to ensure supply resilience and stability via stockpiling, offtakes and more broadly defined industrial policy can be justified on security and monetary stability grounds alone without appealing to broader left projects. Democrats at time seem to get “the ick” in describing a more uncertain and volatile world and measures to mitigate and hedge against it. It is long past time to wade through the icky feelings and appreciate that these messages chime with messages that work for the right and to seize this ground.

3. Politically Can You Take Credit For What You Do? I believe Democrats can and should take credit for this. The CHIPS act and efforts to ensure secure supply of basic analog semiconductors alone mean that if half of Malaysia simultaneously gets COVID it is unlikely to take out US auto production again. Having the inputs to clean technology onshored means that supply and progress in that area should be more stable and that insanity in the Middle East has no bearing on how much sun falls in Texas or wind blows in Idaho. These really simple facts and messages somehow did not make it into male centric podcast world despite the fact you absolutely can do that as I did in this podcast with the Money of Mine guys.

Border Issues

A firm border policy combined with fairly liberal and nationally self-interested immigration is now bipartisan consensus in Australia and has taken numerous right-wing talking points and scare campaigns off the table. These battles were fought over twenty years ago in Australia and given the clear drift of opinion in the US accepting this reality sooner rather than later is not optional if Democrats want to win. If the latino part of the electorate does not want open borders, then trying to hold this position on behalf of a slim but well-funded group of activists is too high a price to pay. I suspect Democrats will be in a good position to push back on chaotic deportations in two years, but it is going to be important to understand where to draw the line here.

Geopolitics and America’s Place in The World

There are going to be pieces running for thousands of words and Fukuyama is as eloquent as ever. To get down to the nitty-gritty though: much of how the world is configured in terms of energy flows (fossil heavy, travelling long distances) and trade (long and complicated supply chains) presumes a degree of order and a lack of certain kinds of risks. Shipping rates may vary with fuel costs and the demand and supply balance of shipping capacity, but pirates have not impacted freight flows in the Red Sea a great deal in recent history. In comparison the Houthis have done and this represents something of a breakdown in trade risks due to changes in military technology availability and a lack of a hegemonic power that can and will enforce the rules. If the US continues to step back putting the supply closer to the demand and having more energy supply be local and renewable is going to be a persistent trend and that is before we get into any discussion of tariffs. A cold analysis of supply chain risk is likely to intensify many of the impulses of the Biden administration in CHIPS and the IRA but do so elsewhere.

This is going to lead to the rest of the world having to ensure their own security to a greater extent because it is quite clear from recent comments that US commitments are no longer there or capriciously conditional. A quick solution is kicking nuclear non-proliferation to the kerb and that is a much safer bet than anyone wants to admit right now. Similarly, buying US large ticket weapons programs to keep the US happy is much less appealing if the US is a fickle ally. Investing in drones and the platforms that countries actually need along with diversifying supply away from the US is sensible. I doubt this ends well for US defence contractors who get a lot of operating leverage out of exports. Ukraine’s ability to build a lot of capacity in-house during a war is likely to be copied by many others.

There will be many more unsuspected impacts of this but as Gary Gorton notes in his broad work on bank runs the migration from riskless to risky is seldom a smooth or gracious one and has a tendency to accelerate itself as in the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. That transition now applies to every single US commitment but especially so in the security sphere. Every edge on a supply chain graph now needs to be risk weighted appropriately and the configuration of production, storage and transport reoptimized. This is going to take years.