Results for “status” 4109 found
Should whales have the status of legal persons?
Indigenous leaders of New Zealand, Tahiti and the Cook Islands signed a historic treaty that recognizes whales as legal persons in a move conservationists believe will apply pressure to national governments to offer greater protections for the large mammals.
“It’s fitting that the traditional guardians are initiating this,” said Mere Takoko, a Māori conservationist who leads Hinemoana Halo Ocean Initiative, the group that spearheaded the treaty. “For us, by restoring those world populations we also restore our communities.”
Conservationists have good reason to believe they will succeed: In 2017, New Zealand passed a groundbreaking law that granted personhood status to the Whanganui River because of its importance to Māori, New Zealand’s Indigenous people.
And:
Legislation would be built around several pillars: monitoring, penalties for killing whales and even whale insurance. A $100 million fund would back the initiative.
“When you recognize a whale as a legal person — that doesn’t mean they’re human — they’re a legal person, meaning you can endow them with certain rights,” said Ralph Chami, the project’s head economist. “And with that comes a responsibility that if you hurt or bring harm to a whale, then there are remedies.”
Here is more from Remy Tumin at the NYT, interesting throughout.
How much does status competition lower Korean fertility?
Using a quantitative heterogeneous-agent model calibrated to Korea, we find that fertility would be 28% higher in the absence of the status externality and that childlessness in the poorest quintile would fall from five to less than one percent. We then explore the effects of various government policies. A pro-natal transfer or an education tax can increase fertility and reduce education spending, with heterogeneous effects across the income distribution. The policy mix that maximizes the current generation’s welfare consists of an education tax of 22% and moderate pro-natal transfers. This would raise average fertility by about 11% and decrease education spending by 39%.
Here is the full paper by Seongeun Kim, Michèle Tertilt, and Minchul Yum. Here is the version forthcoming in the AER.
Who feels the pinch of status competition?
Here is one interesting hypothesis:
Despite the persistence of anti-Black racism, White Americans report feeling worse off than Black Americans. We suggest that some White Americans may report low well-being despite high group-level status because of perceptions that they are falling behind their in-group. Using census-based quota sampling, we measured status comparisons and health among Black (N = 452, Wave 1) and White (N = 439, Wave 1) American adults over a period of 6 to 7 weeks. We found that Black and White Americans tended to make status comparisons within their own racial groups and that most Black participants felt better off than their racial group, whereas most White participants felt worse off than their racial group. Moreover, we found that White Americans’ perceptions of falling behind “most White people” predicted fewer positive emotions at a subsequent time, which predicted worse sleep quality and depressive symptoms in the future. Subjective within-group status did not have the same consequences among Black participants.
That is from a new paper by Nava Calouri, Erin Cooley, Lauren E. Philbrook. Via excellence.
Who is rising and falling in status in the NBA?
Falling:
Damian Lillard
Jordan Poole
Zion Williamson
Klay Thompson
Andrew Wiggins
Austin Reeves
Rising:
Embiid
Maxey
Porzingis
Haliburton
Curry (not Seth)
Dare I say Kyrie Irving?
Lebron, if that is even possible at this point, he is already GOAT
Greg Popovich
Wemby
Bam Adebayo
That is a lot of status reshuffling, but it seems to be happening pretty quickly and I suspect most of it will stick, with Kyrie Irving maybe still up for grabs. Others?
When I was over Auren Hoffman’s house, I bet (using play chips only) 70% that either Boston or Denver wins the title this year.
Willingness to pay for upper-caste status
How much are individuals willing to pay for privileged status in a society with systemic discrimination? Utilizing unique data on indentured Indians in Fiji paying to return to India, I calculate how much upper-caste individuals were willing to pay historically for their status. I show the lower bound of the value of the uppermost castes in north India equaled almost 2.5 years’ gross wages. The ordering follows hypothesized inter-caste hierarchies and shows diminishing effects as caste status falls. Men entirely drive the effects. My results show some of the first evidence quantifying caste status values and speak to caste’s persistence.
Here is the paper by Alexander Persaud, with data from the turn of the 20th century, via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
What rises and falls in status through the FTX story?
More than one MR reader has requested this post, so here goes:
Rises
- Common-sense morality
- Common-sense investing rules
- American corporate governance
- Boards, and nervousness about related-party transactions
- Coinbase
- Seen as stodgy and bloated for much of the past year. But run in the US, listed in the US, and properly segregating customer funds.
- Elon Musk’s ability to judge character
- Vitalik and Ethereum
- Circle, Kraken, and Binance
- Anthony Trollope, Herman Melville, and the 19th century novel. Books more generally.
- U.S. regulation of domestic exchanges – it is one of the things we seem to do best, and they created little trouble during 2008-2009, or for that matter during the pandemic
- CBDC, and sadly so
- Crypto forensics
- Twitter and weird anon accounts
- When would the trouble have been exposed if not for Twitter? And much of the best coverage came from accounts with names like Autism Capital.
- Some critics (like Aaron Levie), too.
- Bitcoin
- After a cataclysm for the crypto sector, it’s down about 15% over the past month. That’s less than the S&P 500 lost during the worst month of the GFC.
Falls
- Effective Altruism
- A totalizing worldview that has enabled some undesirable weirdness in different places.
- Valorizing “scope sensitivity” and expected value leads people violently astray.
- Being unmarried (and male) above the age of 30
- Being on the cover of magazines
- And if you see “the next Buffett”, run.
- Appearing with blonde models
- Buying Super Bowl ads and sponsoring sports and putting your name on arenas
- “Earn to give” as both a concept and a phrase
- Mrs. Jellyby
- The concept of self-custody
- Weird locations for corporate offices
- Venture capital
- Our ability to see crazes for what they are in the moment
- This is not just, or even mainly, about crypto
- Drugs
- Adderall and modafinil, perhaps stronger stuff also played a role.
- The children of influential faculty
- Do they grow up witnessing low-accountability systems and personality behaviors?
What else? I thank several individuals for their assistance with this post.
Might the status of India and Pakistan fundamentally change?
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is the LiveMint version, here is one excerpt:
The status quo between India and Pakistan is temporary. The world should start thinking about a future in which the two nations have a fundamentally different relationship.
Full reunification, of course, is difficult to imagine. But there are many possible options that fall short of that: a loose confederation, a NAFTA-like trade structure, a military alliance, even a broader regional reconfiguration under which each nation loses some territory but the remaining parts move closer together.
And:
What about arguments on the other side? They are mostly longer-term.
First, it’s worth noting that major changes in borders — whether through conquest, secession or unification — are the historical norm. In this respect, the post-colonial era is an anomaly. One view is that this era of relative stability will continue. Another is that it will prove temporary, and frequent border changes will become common once again — just as the border between Russia and Ukraine is being contested again.
If this second view is correct, India and Pakistan are hardly such longstanding, well-defined nations that they are natural candidates to stay exactly as they are. Both their borders and their political arrangements can quickly change.
Just think how unlikely today’s configuration in the Middle East might have seem fifty years ago. We now have Iran as the enemy of Israel and America, a democratic Iraq, a devastated Syria, a wealthy UAE friendly with Israel, a rather passive Egypt at peace with Israel, and Lebanon no longer the jewel of the region, among other major surprises. Get over your recency bias!
I suspect Ethiopians and Eritreans will have a relatively easy time digesting this argument.
Who gains and loses status from the war in Ukraine?
Today I will focus on the losers, with another post to follow on those who have gained status. Here goes:
1. An entire generation of German politicians.
2. Those who argued that the Russia misinformation machine was swinging major outcomes such as Western elections. Said misinformation machine just doesn’t seem that good!
2b. Those who argued the UFO footage was possibly of a Russian military craft.
3. Putin. And the coterie of Eurasianist intellectuals surrounding him, including Dugin. And various strands of the American right wing.
4. The anti-nuclear power crowd, and much of ESG more generally. Too much posturing, too few practical solutions and now the whole thing bites.
5. China, with India in contention but working somewhat to remedy the damage.
6. President Obama, for mocking Romney’s concern over Russia, in one of their debates.
7. People who spent most of their time debating The Woke, on either side of the issue.
8. Commentators and political scientists who saw the initial conflict as primarily about the eastward expansion of NATO. Putin’s war aims have shown this to be false (while to be clear Putin does also hate the eastern expansion of NATO). Desire to obliterate and absorb the nation of Ukraine far predates the history of NATO.
9. People who said “the next war will all be about cyber.” There is probably more cyberconflict going on than we are aware of, but still…
Who else?
Writers and status
The problem isn’t that writing generates status, but rather that this status is grossly out of proportion to the wages they are earning in the market. Amongst other problems, this selects for people who value status over wages (often because they are independently financially secure). In this light it’s not surprising the community has become so geographically concentrated – there are enormous rewards to living with the people the most recognize and grant this status. This is not unto itself a problem until that concentration is part of greater demand for what is already some of the most expensive real estate in the world. I’d wager there are more than a few writers with non-trivial followings out there whose Brooklyn lifestyle is a net monetary loss every month. Thats bad, but honestly I think its even worse than it sounds.
And:
Status rewards incentivize geographic concentration, which will in turn intensify herding behavior. If the bulk of your compensation is in-group status, you’re going to want to spend as much time with that group as possible. Your social life will become more important than ever. That also means, however, that anything that might risk disdain or ostracism within the group is to be avoided whenever possible. This means opinions, particularly on subjects that don’t directly impact your life, will tend to become more and more homogeneous over time. It also means hypotheses born of motivated reasoning i.e. the next mayor will be super progressive or want to “defund the police” can acquire a life of their own and quickly evolve from idea spoken aloud in a Brooklyn cocktail bar to universally accepted truth within an insular community. This classic herding phenomenon is relative to the broader world in this case because this particular community spends its working hours delivering the news to us.
Status Quo Bias
Here is the lead sentence from a CNN piece on vaccine boosters:
Even though the biopharmaceutical company Pfizer has announced that it might be time to consider giving a third dose of its coronavirus vaccine to people, many doctors and public health officials argue that it’s more beneficial to get shots into the arms of the unvaccinated right now than to boost those who are already fully vaccinated.
Delaying the 3rd dose to get out more 2nd doses is a perfectly reasonable position. What’s interesting is that today delaying the 3rd dose is conventional wisdom and yet this is exactly the same argument that I made for delaying the 2nd dose, i.e. first doses first (FDF), back in December of 2020. At that time, however, the argument was controversial. My point, isn’t that FDF has won the argument. My point is that what we are seeing, then and now, is status quo bias.
In December, status quo bias meant that people wanted to find a reason to stick with the status quo, i.e. 2 doses, and so they argued that delaying the second dose was “risky.” Today, people still want to stick with the status quo and so they argue that third doses are “risky”, i.e. delaying the third dose is now the less risky idea. The argument–it’s smart to protect more people with fewer doses–hasn’t changed but, without even realizing it, people are now making the argument that they once denied.
The logic hasn’t convinced people but previously the logic opposed the status quo and now it supports the status quo so what was once denied is now accepted. What was in December the riskier choice now becomes the safer choice. With motivated reasoning, when the motivation changes so does the reasoning.
Hat tip: Iamamish
Addendum: People will respond in the comments, but actually the situations are different. Indeed, things are different and the situation has changed. But that’s not the only or even the primary driver. If we had started with a 3-dose regimen, delaying the third dose would have seemed just as “risky” as delaying the second dose in a 2-dose regimen.
Addendum 2: The WHO today called for a moratorium on boosters until more countries are vaccinated.
Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 vote
This study evaluates evidence pertaining to popular narratives explaining the American public’s support for Donald J. Trump in the 2016 presidential election. First, using unique representative probability samples of the American public, tracking the same individuals from 2012 to 2016, I examine the “left behind” thesis (that is, the theory that those who lost jobs or experienced stagnant wages due to the loss of manufacturing jobs punished the incumbent party for their economic misfortunes). Second, I consider the possibility that status threat felt by the dwindling proportion of traditionally high-status Americans (i.e., whites, Christians, and men) as well as by those who perceive America’s global dominance as threatened combined to increase support for the candidate who emphasized reestablishing status hierarchies of the past. Results do not support an interpretation of the election based on pocketbook economic concerns. Instead, the shorter relative distance of people’s own views from the Republican candidate on trade and China corresponded to greater mass support for Trump in 2016 relative to Mitt Romney in 2012. Candidate preferences in 2016 reflected increasing anxiety among high-status groups rather than complaints about past treatment among low-status groups. Both growing domestic racial diversity and globalization contributed to a sense that white Americans are under siege by these engines of change.
Here is the article, by Diana C. Mutz, via someone on Twitter whom I have forgotten!
Why the low status of opposition to child abuse?
Michael Kaan emails me:
Hi Tyler, I’m a healthcare professional in Canada and a long-time reader of your blog. For the past couple of years, observing the culture wars and various elections, I’ve noticed that child abuse is an extremely rare topic among the cultural left: the highly visible progressive segment that drives wokeness, is culturally powerful, etc. You know what their dominant concerns are. (On the right it’s basically non-existent.)
While there’s nothing obviously wrong with their attention to sexual and racial discrimination, the energy put into it is disproportionate to the massive social cost of child abuse. Rates vary around the world, but in general it looks like about 30% of all children globally suffer some sort of serious maltreatment each year, often many times a year, repeated over multiple years.So one can easily estimate that billions of people have experienced this. In other words, more people have been abused as children than have experienced war, famine, or epidemics.
The impact and costs of this have been measured (low academic achievement, health problems, low earnings, drug and alcohol use, etc.), and child abuse is sometimes lethal. What puzzles me is why it has no legs politically. Among the woke crowd, if child abuse is mentioned it’s usually in terms of discrimination against girls or sexual minorities. But there are really no prominent voices actively campaigning to mitigate child abuse generally.Why is this? Is it overly complex? Is the phenomenon too widely dispersed demographically, so that an evil agent group isn’t easily identified? Does its persistence foreground chronic failures of the welfare state (if that’s the case)? Is it boring?
For a start, I would note that virtually everyone is again child abuse, so opposing it doesn’t make anyone significant look worse. But I am sure there is much more to it than that.
Fast Grants, a project of Emergent Ventures against Covid-19, status update
As you may recall, the goal of Fast Grants is to support biomedical research to fight back Covid-19, thus restoring prosperity and liberty.
Yesterday 40 awards were made, totaling about $7 million, and money is already going out the door with ongoing transfers today. Winners are from MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Rockefeller University, UCSF, UC Berkeley, Yale, Oxford, and other locales of note. The applications are of remarkably high quality.
Nearly 4000 applications have been turned down, and many others are being put in touch with other institutions for possible funding support, with that ancillary number set to top $5 million.
The project was announced April 8, 2020, only eight days ago. And Fast Grants was conceived of only about a week before that, and with zero dedicated funding at the time.
I wish to thank everyone who has worked so hard to make this a reality, including the very generous donors to the program, those at Stripe who contributed by writing new software, the quality-conscious and conscientious referees and academic panel members (about twenty of them), and my co-workers at Mercatus at George Mason University, which is home to Emergent Ventures.
I hope soon to give you an update on some of the supported projects.
How does isolation change status-seeking?
That is the topic of my new Bloomberg column, excerpt:
The plunge in status-seeking behavior is yet another way in which the lockdown is a remarkable and scary social experiment. One possible consequence is that many people won’t work as much, simply because no one is watching very closely and it is harder to get that pat on the shoulder or kind word for extra effort.
Worse yet, for many people social approbation compensates for economic hardships, and that salve is now considerably weaker. Time was, even if you were unemployed, you could still walk down the street and command attention for that one stylish item in your wardrobe, or your cool haircut, or your witty repartee. Now there’s no one on the street to impress.
Americans are learning just how much we rely on our looks, our charisma and our eloquence for our social affect. As Sonia Gupta asked on Twitter: “Extremely attractive people, I have a genuine question for you, no snark: What’s it like to not be getting the regular daily social attention you might be accustomed to, now that you have to stay inside and isolate from others?”
…To some extent this status erosion is liberating. It may cause a lot of people to reexamine perennial questions about “what really matters.” There are other positive effects: fewer peer-related reasons to go out and spend money, for instance (do you really need that new jacket, or to try all the hot new restaurants?). That will help make tighter budgets or even unemployment more bearable. Some socially anxious people may even feel they are better off.
Yet overall this is a dangerous state of affairs.
There is much more at the link.
Who and what will rise and fall in status?
A reader asks:
will we see a post from you with predictions of ‘risers & fallers’ in our new coronowartime world?…What are your predictions for (semi-) permanent changes in status of various insititutions & ideologies in the new times?!
Here goes:
Risers
Health care workers — duh, and much deserved.
The internet and the tech community more broadly — Their institutions have performed the best, and even Anand G. has more or less recanted.
Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea
Peter Thiel, who numerous times cautioned us about the fragility of globalization and global supply chains.
State capacity libertarianism
The NBA and Adam Silver — They led the charge to shut things down.
Surveillance — It worked in parts of East Asia, and Europe’s unwillingness to use it will cost many lives.
Telemedicine
Science and scientists
Balaji Srinivasan, who saw it all coming on Twitter.
Individuals who can create structure for themselves — the true winners of lockdown.
The Federal Reserve System and Jay Powell — hail QE Infinity!
Losers
The FDA, CDC, and WHO — ouch.
Social justice warriors — who cares about your microaggression these days?
Rudy Gobert — will never be in the running for “Defensive Player of the Year” ever again. That said, his being Covid-positive led to the closing of the NBA and may have benefited America more than any other NBA player “action” has done, ever. He has since given a good deal of money to charity and ought to go up in status.
Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York.
Bolsonaro, López Obrador, and populism more generally.
Academics in the humanities — have they added much to our understanding of the situation, or to our response?
The media. No matter what you think they might deserve, they just seem to keep on going down in status. Bet on the trend!
Mixed
Various “right wing types,” of varying degrees of fringe, were early on this issue. But I suspect they will rise in status only within their “in groups.” Same with Matt Stoller.
Triage — we had to do it, and we did it unflinchingly. But in the “social record,” will this go down as OK, or as horrifying and “we can’t ever let this happen again”? Or maybe we’ll just forget about it, and pretend those silly philosophers doing trolley problems are wasting our time.
Donald Trump and also China. I’ll delete any comments that discuss these, because as topics they do not encourage subtlety of response. No matter what you may think is a just outcome here, in predictive terms the paths of these reputations are still difficult to call.
I thank C. for some assistance with this post.