Social-Climbers Vs. Stuff-Builders

Saw news of another one of those ‘liberal gene’/'what makes a liberal’ studies. I won’t bother linking it because (1) you will have no trouble finding it if you really care and (2) it’s so stupid and pointless. I wonder why academic researchers are so interested in studying psychological/biological differences between conservatives and ‘liberals’, in which it miraculously turns out that conservatives are conservatives because they are fearful/closed-minded whereas ‘liberals’ are ‘liberals’ because they are adventure-seeking and open-minded? Hah hah. I do enjoy me some funny rhetorical questions.

I’m not going to do a study of my own (because it’s so stupid and pointless) but here is the broad outline of what my alternative thesis would be. I’ll give credit to this Marginal Revolution commenter for coming quite close to the truth by saying

people want free-market competition in areas where they are strong, and protection and regulation in areas where they are weak

To expand on this a bit, one would therefore expect the following patterns to cluster together.

• eloquence, charisma, and charm – i.e., ability to win large numbers of other people over, be ‘cool’
• a system in which the above traits by themselves, with no additional effort, make you well-rewarded and maximally powerful over other people – i.e., ‘liberalism’ (leftism)

Similarly, these go together:

• foresight, focused work-ethic, ability to build things, devotion to close friends and family
• a system in which the people with these traits get to keep the maximal fruits of their labor in the things and institutions they build – i.e., conservatism

A lot of other things simply follow from these two disjoint polarities of human skill (social-climbing, vs. stuff-building). This explains why ‘liberals’ view the government as a form of extended family whereas conservatives view the government as, at best, an intrusion into their family. It explains why ‘liberals’ want a maximally-powerful state whereas conservatives want basic defense from the state and little else. It explains why ‘liberals’ are impressed by degrees and awards (i.e. credentials and accolades that socially-skillful people have won from navigating social institutions) whereas conservatives are skeptical of them. It explains why conservatism is so closely aligned with minimizing taxes (letting stuff-builders keep the stuff they build) whereas at times it seems that almost the entire motivating drive of ‘liberals’ is to always and ever-increasingly make taxes as high as possible (to maximize the amount of stuff that is aggregated under the control of the credentialed charismatics).

This is why the archetype of a ‘liberal’ is Barack Obama – accoladed and credentialed up the wazoo, eloquent in a vague and substanceless way, easily able to win large numbers of strange people and acquaintances over (while apparently having few actual close friendships), never has accomplished or built an actual tangible thing in his life. It’s far more difficult to identify the archetype of a conservative – it might be, say, Sam Walton of Wal-Mart, though people probably don’t know enough about him to be sure, or for calling him an ‘archetype’ to actually be useful. This is because if conservatism had an archetype, it would have to be someone who is not a politician (or ‘celebrity’) at all, the modern vocation of ‘politics’ being essentially antithetical to everything conservatives stand for.

The point is, it’s easy to identify these two orthogonal human skills – social skills, and building/industriousness skills – that correlate with ‘liberalism’ and conservatism respectively. Both skills are useful, of course. But it’s only natural that people who see themselves as naturally, lopsidedly better (whether due to genetics or not) at one or the other are attracted to a social system that maximally rewards their particular skill set.