Punctuality, hard work, self-sufficiency, rationality, pragmatism, conformity, ruthlessness, whatever made your factory out-earn its competitors.

From Book Review: First Sixth Of Bobos In Paradise by Scott Alexander.  Bobos in Paradise was written by David Brooks and published in 2000.  I have a copy but have never read it.  Brooks is the downmarket version of Malcolm Gladwell.  He does some interesting research and has some novel and interesting facts but his arguments tend towards facile and glib.  He is popular among a certain mainstream media, NPR-listening crowd but in terms of someone to help understand a marvelously complex world?  Not my cup of tea.  Too self-serving of his own chattering class.

Alexander also seems a little off-put as well.  But what I want to focus on is a particular paragraph in his review.

The old-money WASPs were mostly descendants of people who made their fortunes in colonial times (or at worst the 1800s); they were a merchant aristocracy. As the descendants of merchants, they acted as standard-bearers for the bourgeois virtues: punctuality, hard work, self-sufficiency, rationality, pragmatism, conformity, ruthlessness, whatever made your factory out-earn its competitors.

I take this to be Alexander's view of Brooks's view of WASPs.  

What jumped out at me were the last two descriptors, "ruthlessness, whatever made your factory out-earn its competitors."  I would not have guessed that most people would have used those to describe WASPs (if people even still recognize the stereotype anymore.)  I am not saying that Brooks's description of WASPs is right or wrong, just that it has an odd contrast.

The juxtaposition of those two descriptors with the preceding generally laudatory descriptions (punctuality, hard work, self-sufficiency, rationality, pragmatism, conformity) is striking to me.  

Taken as a whole, what other group stereotype does this describe?  Admirable immigrants!  South Asian Indians running motels, Dominicans running bodegas in New York, Ugandan Indians running newsagents in England, Chinese running restaurants and East Asians running laundries everywhere.  

All these sectors (restaurants, lodging, retail, laundering) are notoriously challenging.  They operate on thin margins, have low barriers to entry, and are prey to fluctuating economic cycles.  What are the attributes necessary for success?  Punctuality, hard work, self-sufficiency, rationality, pragmatism, and conformity.  While conformity has an air of criticism it is also praise - the ability to fit into a community and serve customers in their own fashion.  

What else do those sectors require?  "Ruthlessness, whatever made your factory out-earn its competitors."  There is never any margin for error or real financial breathing room in these sectors until you get yourself in a position to own a chain of them.  If your economic survival depends on the capricious winds of restaurants, lodging, retail, laundering, you have to demonstrate consistently "punctuality, hard work, self-sufficiency, rationality, pragmatism, conformity, ruthlessness, whatever made your factory out-earn its competitors."

Nouveaux WASPs would probably object to the class implications of being compared to recent bourgeois immigrants but I suspect that old traditional WASPs would very much embrace and take it as a sign of cultural success.  We still have economic vitality and refuse to slide into cultural lassitude!

And beside these admirable immigrants, what other stereotype does Brooks's description of WASPs sound like?  The crusty old New England farmer.  The original Puritan settlers.  Pragmatic, hard edged, crusty.  And always trying to be a better person.