The golden goose of bourgeoise values

An excellent thread from W. Bradford Wilcox.

1. Gotta disagree w/ much of @DavidAFrench here for underplaying the role that elites and major economic, political, civic & cultural forces have played in the fall of the American working classhttps://t.co/V19RZ7yinU

— W Bradford Wilcox (@WilcoxNMP) January 5, 2019

This is much the same point made by Charles Murray in Coming Apart.

The upper two quintiles of those in income and wealth, the most prosperous and privileged, achieve that position through quintessential bourgeoise values - they work hard, they value education, they marry and then have children, they save, they invest in their community, they elect to participate in civic organizations, they mind their manners and choose to respect others. Bourgeoise values are constraining but richly rewarding.

It used to be that government and institutions such as churches, education, etc. all worked hand-in-hand to at least nominally signal the value of those bourgeoise values.

Post-World War II, not as policy but as social practice, we have lost that signaling. We no longer signal to everyone the overwhelming advantage of bourgeoise values. Those who entered the upper quintiles, as always happens everywhere throughout time, wanted to enjoy their prosperity by reducing the social constraints imposed upon them. They shifted public policy and institutional policy away from bourgeoise values.

They wanted the freedom of sex (via the technology of the pill), they wanted abortion easily available, divorce on demand, fewer punishments for deviant behavior, etc. They weren't libertines. They just wanted the capacity to selectively indulge if and when they wished without hinderance or cost to them from society.

Already exhibiting and practicing the bourgeoise values, they were able to have the best of both worlds. All the benefits from bourgeoise values in terms of stability and prosperity but also all the freedoms from social stigma. It worked for them.

But social norms and bourgeoise values are not a tap that is easily calibrated. You can't do a five percent adjustment here, a ten percent adjustment there. It tends to be all or nothing. You either create an environment which fosters bourgeoise values or you create an environment which is inimical to bourgeoise values.

Consequently, the desire of the upper quintiles to free themselves selectively from the burden of social norms never took into account the loss of signal and loss of social norm enforcement on those in the middle and especially those in the lower quintiles of wealth and income. That loss of norms and signals and the discipline of bourgeoise values has been horrendous in its impact. And the prosperous proceed blindly on, ignoring the toll.

They want the freedom from constraints from social norms for themselves while denying others the benefits of those very social norms.

It is one of the most nefarious trade-off decisions we have chosen and now lament the abysmal conditions of those without bourgeoise values. But it didn't happen by accident. It was chosen through billions of individual decisions by our upper quintiles population. Having killed the golden goose of bourgeoise values, we are left wondering how we might bring it back.