trenton-woodcox

[trenton-woodcox]

Despair, Decay, and the Death of Democracy

Among the ever-growing list of alarming and perplexing phenomena that plague our world, none are so disturbing to me as the act of the individual voting against their own interests.  

Exploring that sentence requires some groundwork; for the purposes of this post, I’ll be restricting my speech to the United States. I should also come clean and admit, I’m as Democrat as they come, and gaped in horror watching the results flood in that night in 2016. If you yourself are relatively Left, you may understand where I’m coming from when I refer to contemporary Republican voters as “voting against their own interests”; if you find yourself more to the Right, have mercy, and bear with me for a bit.

Understanding an “interest” is foundational to this discussion. In his work Democratic Voting and the Mixed-Motivation Problem, Jonathan Wolff distinguishes interests from what he calls the “common good”, the moral. For Wolffe, issues in Democracy arise from this conflict between those voters who vote in their own interests—those outcomes that they stand to personally gain from—and voters who vote for the sake of the common good, regardless of whether they stand to individually gain from such an outcome themselves[1].

Wolffe’s analysis is important in the light it sheds by simultaneously being a perfectly accurate descriptor of electoral politics, despite being foundationally wrong. Normatively, the conflict Wolffe describes relies on their being a divergence between that which is in the interest of the individual and that which is the common good; or, to simplify, that which is the interest of the many. I reject this distinction; I challenge Wolffe to show me a scenario in which the interests of the many does not, with consideration of time and under the proper application of logic, coincide with the interests of the individual.

The truth of this assertion is evident in modern America; neighborhoods with fewer evictions see lower crime rates, for example. Even if I myself may never be under threat of eviction, an additional tax levied on me by my tenant’s union that contributes to a fund for those residents experiencing financial trouble is in my interest, despite the upfront cost to my person, as it everts a greater cost down the line (crime). One could analyze healthcare, an outstanding example of this principal at work; one pays into a collective, despite potentially never reaping direct benefits from the fund that payment goes towards. Even if one never leans on that fund to assist with sickness or injury, however, indirect benefits are experienced in the form of a healthier, more stable community. This assumption rests at the core of our theory of economics, even; the more people in an economy are succeeding, the stronger that economy is, and thus the greater benefits reaped by all those who participate.

In the words of Alexis de Tocqueville, later rephrased by economist Joseph Stiglitz, this concept of “self-interest, rightly understood” means “appreciating that paying attention to everyone’s self-interest—in other words, the common welfare—is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate well-being.”

My normative gripes with Wolffe are not to discredit his descriptive claims, however; we know full well that this conflict between the perceived-self-interest and the common good occurs. One need only look at Louisiana, where voters time and gain elect officials and vote for polices that sabotage the very programs and land citizens depend on for their livelihood [2]. The descriptive truth of Wolffe’s analysis relies upon the same logical error he makes in not considering “self-interest, rightly understood”, but on the part of the electorate; I assert that individual voters do not rightly understand their self-interest, as evident by Bobby Jindal’s repeated reign over Louisiana, among prominent policy issues; from climate change, to healthcare, to—of course—the election of Donald Trump, who preyed upon not just this lack of understanding by voters, but on a perfect storm of despair that made them uniquely vulnerable to a populist demagogue promising quick and simple solutions to immediate problems.

Thanks to economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, we know that white, working class Americans have seen dramatic falls in wellbeing relative to historical levels for their demographic [4]. Globalization, despite its many boons, brought with it a flight of jobs and a stagnation of wages, who in turn bring about social decay and chronic despair. In lieu of these falls, we have implemented little in the way of social programs to act as nets. We also know from Monnat & Brown that those communities that saw such staggering decreases correlated with support for Trump in 2016, as illustrated in the figure attached.

Both pairs of researchers offer us some explanation as to why these groups have such strong correlation with support for Trump, despite him and his polices being (objectively, in my view, thought that’s a post for another time) against their interests. For one, such profound place-level despair can make one proportionally desperate for solutions. A candidate like Donald Trump, with his clear and digestible message explaining away decades of social and industrial decay as a consequence of immigration and globalization—paired with equally succinct solutions such as “better trade deals” and “building the wall”—can resonate with that fear and desperation, prey upon it, even for traditionally Democratic voters. This effect is compounded for voters who feel the Democratic party has not articulated an adequate pro-working-class message, or has passed policies meant to help the poor at the expense of the working class. Add in perceived arrogance at the impregnability of the Democrats “Big Blue Wall” in the Midwest, and it’s not so hard to understand so many voted Red at the ballot box in 2016, against their own interests or not [3].

In the words of Monnat & Brown themselves: “When you’re driving by shuttered factories with boarded up windows, watching nightly news reports about drug overdoses, and seeing more of your neighbors sign up for disability instead of working, the message that “America is great already” simply does not jibe with your own reality.”

Understanding what an interest is, how we define our interests, and why people vote against their interests is tempting to view as purely academic; I encourage readers who feel this way to look again toward “self-interest, rightly understood”. That so many vote against their interests is not merely a problem for them, but for the rest of us as well; we share this nation, this economy, this society. With the advent of the internet and ongoing globalization, our interconnectedness will only grow with time. The interests of our neighbor are more relevant to our own than ever before.  

That said, what can we do? What does all this mean for Democracy, the vehicle by which we satisfy ours and our neighbor's interests?

On this, I can only speak so much. The prescription is bleak; the root of the problem lies in the individual’s inability to rightly understand their own interests. This seems an unsolvable problem; perhaps education can address it, but that education can only be delivered if constituents recognize its value and elect to pass such reforms—despite the inevitable monetary costs. This problem persists for programs that one could implement to address despair, as well; wage hikes, healthcare reform, environmental protection—each of these polices would make headway against the despair that makes these communities so vulnerable to manipulation, and each would meet significant resistance on account of that manipulation. This is not conjecture, but evident; time and time again Republican emissaries have influenced these communities to vote against such policies (again, see Louisiana) [4].  

Equally worrying is the prospect that these the rest of us are one despair-inducing recession away from finding ourselves equally ripe for manipulation voting against our own interests, with little recourse.

The picture we are left with is one of a sickening feedback loop; communities suffer some unforeseen economic disaster, find themselves in despair and vulnerability, and have that experience preyed upon such that they become yet more vulnerable.  

It’s still unclear to me whether this represents a fundamental failing of Democracy, a phenomenon our system of governance is simply unequipped to control for, or if some alteration to current systems could break this loop. Perhaps single transferrable vote, a more proportional system of representation, could mitigate the impacts of entities like the Republican party such that despair-remedying policies could be pushed through. This, of course, relies on the assumption that whatever parties may come to life with proportional representation do not ally themselves with the Right—a gamble if there ever was one.

It's also possible the answer lies outside our current system of governance; perhaps in some more Technocratic alternative. If so, we must place out hopes in miracles and revolutions.

Works Cited:

Wolff, J. (1994). Democratic voting and the mixed-motivation problem. Analysis, 54(4), 193–196. doi: 10.1093/analys/54.4.193

Hochschild, A. R. (2016). Strangers in their own land: anger and mourning on the American right. New York: The New Press.

Monnat, S. M., & Brown, D. L. (2017). More than a Rural Revolt: Landscapes of Despair and the 2016 Presidential Election. Journal of rural studies, 55, 227–236. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2017.08.010

Gawande, A., Tolentino, J., & Heller, N. (2020, March 16). Why Americans Are Dying from Despair. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/23/why-americans-are-dying-from-despair

[trenton-woodcox]

"13th” Critique

13th does a lot in the way of shedding light on the situation regarding black Americans experiences not just with the US justice system, but with racism as it functions in our broader political and social world.

The film begins by clearly defining the status quo for the viewer, showing America's staggering prison population relatively to other developed nations, as well as throwing up stats that illustrate just how overwhelmingly black the US prison population is (we later get a factoid that says 1 in 3 black men will face prison time, a truly staggering statistic, to really drive this point home).  

After defining the here and now, the documentary proceeds to walk us through the historical context that delivered the status quo—beginning with black flight from the war-torn South to impoverished ghettos in the urban North. We learn about the replacement of slavery with indentured servitude, then Jim Crow, and later the dog-whistles we see today. One of these dog-whistles is the stand-in of “tough on crime” for “tough on black people”. The conditions of poverty that lead to crime afflicted black populations far more than other demographics, on account of the legacy of slavery saddling black families with generational poverty. Conservatives realized this, and thus the dog-whistle was born; after all, no one wants crime, right? It was an electorally feasible way to institutes polices that would disproportionately negatively impact black people. This was later amplified as “Tough on crime” became not just an electorally feasible platform, but a necessity for any candidate seeking public office—the kind of thing each candidate had to lay claim to. Thus, the entirety of the mainstream political spectrum was subscribed to functionally anti-black policy positions—from Nixon’s excessive policing to Reagan’s War on Drugs.

We also learn about many black leftist leaders, and how public institutions like the FBI worked tirelessly to quash their movements—driving activists out of the country, labeling them terrorists, and sometimes killing them outright.  

This double-threat of institutional racism and state-sponsored uprooting of grassroots leadership helps explain how the situation got as bad as it is today; there are other factors brought up as well that fit into this picture, from the effects these polices have had on creating a kind of self-hatred among balck people, to private organizations like ALEC and the companies it represents manipulating the policymaking process for profit at the expense of black people.

Needless to say, by the end of the film, we can identify a wide array of problems that explain today’s crisis with prisons and their primarily black populace. Overall, I think this movie does a very good job of communicating the situation and its causes to the average viewer; while a multi-faceted issue, I didn’t find any of this too difficult to follow or otherwise poorly presented.

Additionally, the claims made are very well sources; whenever significant claims are made or data presented, we’re usually given the information by an on-screen expert who has their name ad credentials/occupation displayed. This makes it easy to understand the authority these claims are founded on. I never felt like I was being fed nonsense, and generally thought the evidence provided was sound.  

One aspect I found interesting was how the film incorporated the conservative perspective; they include representatives from conservative boards, Alec, etc. While I’ve little sympathy for these people, I think including their perspectives is extremely valuable towards building effective rhetoric. After all, with most left-leaning individuals, this film is preaching to the choir; it should be aiming to be effective at raising awareness and buy-in from centrists and right-leaning moderates. Allowing more right-leaning speakers to relay their perspective will make that target audience feel heard and more open to what the film has to say. This was doubly effective, I think, as the representatives that were on-screen did (I think) a fairly poor job of defending their views, if at all, which works in the film’s favor.

There are two areas where I think the film falls short; the first is clearly defining solutions to existing problems. We can infer some solutions based on the issues the film highlight, to be sure; obviously Alec getting its hands out of policy would be beneficial, prisons having a profit-motive is probably not good, etc. However, fixing these things does not fix black poverty (though it would definitely help the situation), and at the end of the day we have a strong connection between poverty and crime that must be acknowledged. Additionally, while we recognize that our prisons are built for punishment rather than rehabilitation, and this is pointed out by the film, we are offered no picture of what effective rehabilitation for prisoners looks like. I understand these subjects may be tangential or out of scope for this film, but these are complex and interconnected issues. Plus, if we want people to go out and demand change and fixes, I think it's important to show them what a fix looks like—to give them a vision to advocate for.

Which brings me to my other big gripe; where’s the call to action? You’ve shown us all these problems; now what do you want us to do about it? Call our representatives? And say what? Protest? How, and where? It’s very frustrating to see such a developed piece on issues and watch it give no call to action for viewers. Without that, most people are going to watch the documentary, be upset for a few hours, and move on with their lives. I don’t understand why the authors of the film have handicap themselves in such a way.  

Regardless of the lackluster call to action/proposed solutions in this film, I generally thought it was very good. It does a wonderful job of showing where we are and how we got here. I’d recommend it to anyone seeking to understand our current situations with regard to the prison crisis.

[trenton-woodcox]

The Weird World of MTU Voter Turnout

The NSLVE study on MTU’s voter turnout is absolutely fascinating; definitely one of the better reads I’ve had this month, and I’m super glad I get to talk about political stuff for this assignment.

Much of this data was nothing special; Women and white people vote more, turnout is generally low across the board, yadday yaddaya—the usual stuff we expect from these studies, excepting tech’s comparatively low turnout with regard to other universities

The craziest thing to me, though--and perhaps the biggest takeaway from this data--is that there are three stats in here that fly in the face of national trends and I have no idea why.

Everything we know about voter turnout suggest that it increases with age and education (https://electionlab.mit.edu/research/voter-turnout & http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/demographics). For Michigan Tech, it actually decreases (see turnout by class, age, and undergraduate vs graduate is the NSLVE study).

Like, it substantially decreases—we’re talking multiple percentage points. My first thought as to why this might be the case was that the trend was a consequence of workload; as age and education increase, it’s my experience that a student’s life becomes more hectic as class difficulty increases and responsibilities pile on. Perhaps this workload, and even the stress it causes for some, creates a lack of time and/or motivation—a form of role conflict--for students to vote? I followed this lead by looking at the NSLVE’s aggregate study across all US universities (https://idhe.tufts.edu/sites/default/files/NSLVE%20Report%202012-2016_1.pdf) But no; look! LOOK! As an aggregate, colleges are in line with what we’d expect given national data of the general pollution; Tech is an exception in this regard!

Why? What could be causing this?

In desperation for some sort of explanation: “Is...is it the weather? Many elections take place near winter...are people just so demoralized by the weather they won’t vote? Perhaps the weather combined with increased workload pushes older Tech students over the edge into despair?” Naturally, I had to look at other cold, dark, freezing institutions.

Apparently, there’s some disagreement over the coldest universities, but I gathered a view that frequently showed up on lists and checked their turnouts.  

Northern Illinois - https://www.niu.edu/huskies-vote/_pdf/student-voting-rates-report.pdf

Concordia - https://www.allinchallenge.org/wp-content/uploads/Concordia-University-St.-Paul-NSLVE-2018.pdf

Minnesota State - https://www.allinchallenge.org/wp-content/uploads/Minnesota-State-University-Moorhead-NSLVE-2018.pdf

They’re all normal! It’s not the weather! Is it the area of study? Is it just that engineers don't vote? After all, the non-engineers make up a small portion of our demographics, especially those fields that boasted high turnout. Time to look at major engineering schools. For this part, I used this website (https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering-schools/eng-rankings) to identify the best engineering schools, then grabbed a university in similar ranking to Tech, one higher and one lower that also over-represented engineers.

Rochester Institute of Technology -https://www.rit.edu/studentaffairs/elections/sites/rit.edu.studentaffairs.elections/files/pdfs/2014-NSLVE-Report.pdf

Carnegie Melon - https://www.allinchallenge.org/wp-content/uploads/Carnegie-Mellon-University-NSLVE-2018.pdf

Florida Tech - https://www.allinchallenge.org/wp-content/uploads/University-of-Florida-NSLVE-2018-1.pdf

This was inconclusive, but the most promising, I think? Rochester doesn’t follow our turnout patter, and Florida follows the age pattern we have but when examined it’s clearly not the engineer's fault when examining the most recent election data. Carnegie, however, follows our pattern quite closely—catch being, while engineers are their largest field, they don’t have as drastic a proportion as us. Carnegie being the higher-ranking school of the four, with Tech coming in second, perhaps it’s not engineers that don’t vote, but engineers that go to high-ranking universities with their accompanying heavy workloads and rigorous requirements? it doesn’t help that not all of the data for other schools is of the same year that our data is. Ugh. I need so much more time to do this properly; I need to check every university, or have some way to more easily filter out demographics. The question of why Tech doesn’t conform to expected trends with regard to age/education is so interesting to me.

Speaking to our lower respective turnout in general, I don’t have much of an idea beyond conjecture based in personal experience. In my experience, STEM people tend to not care as much about politics and the broader social world—as stereotyping as that notion may be, and our field breakdown offers some support of that hypothesis—albeit weak support given the small n of non-STEM students. I also suspect location has something to do with it; we have an abnormally high absentee voting rate, which makes sense given how removed our location is from population centers relative to many other universities. That added barrier of requesting an absentee ballot may prevent many from voting. Tech also has a culture of introversion and a relatively weak community, I think; given that voting is a fundamentally social act, an act of community, I can see how feeling disconnected from that community can lower the drive to vote/participate in community. 

It’s hard to offer suggestions to combat this trend without understanding why it’s happening, but I think a good strategy in general is to make it clear to individuals how changes in the broader political landscape can come around and directly impact their lives. It feels like many are so disassociated with the realm of politics, it feel far away and irrelevant. Informational programs and intentional “Go Vote!” campaigns could help alleviate this. there are also many socioeconomic barriers to voting, such as time and transportation to do so; assigning less homework during election weeks (or better yet, demand an “I voted!” sticker for credit) and convenient shuttling to local clerks would be amazing.

On that disassociation point, I think a huge way to mend that a socialize Tech students back into the world of politics would be to allow protests on campus. As far as I’m aware, protest demonstrations are not allowed on campus. We have plenty of grass buffering our walkways that no one uses; let people pitch a booth or gather in these locations to demonstrate! Make politics real for Tech students, shove it in their face! We need to make politics and political actions the norm of Tech students if we want them to care enough about political activity to engage in civic duties.

All in all, I have so many questions about this data, and have not the time nor the information to find myself much in the way of answers or solutions.

[trenton-woodcox]

Religion, Identity, and Role Conflict

When it comes to roles, identity, and socialization, I can’t help but reflect on my religiosity. At the moment, I’m very atheist—so much so I’d almost describe myself an antitheist. It wasn’t always that way, though, and upon reflection its somewhat of a miracle that I’ve ended up where I am.

I was certainly raised religious. While not necessarily consistent church goers, my family was very much Christian, and tried to make it to Sunday church as often as was convenient. This in and of itself is a clear point of socialization; kids generally believe what adults tell them , I think, and having a pastor preach at you the word of God when your young is a pretty good way to get someone to buy into the Christian identity and take up the responsibilities and behaviors of that role. There were little, more nuanced things that, upon reflection, upheld my belief and taught me how to assume the role; for example, I was consistently scolded for the phrase “Oh my God” --taking the Lord’s name in vain, and all that. I was also encouraged to pray when I felt sad, or angry. I think these things reinforced in me the idea that this thing I believed in was real and important, and there was some value in sticking to the duties that came with being a Christian—duties like keeping a check on my doubt, which was a big one I’d totally fail at later. Nonetheless, if I had to perform as a Christian (and I have had to do so), I could knock the performance out of the park—which just goes to show the thorough socialization I’d had by my family and church about all the little behaviors and beliefs that come with the identity.

I first experienced role conflict with my faith upon entering high school. I became very political, and saw myself as having a role as a responsible citizen. My peers, being in a small rural town at that part of my life, also had especially fundamentalist views on Christianity. Based on their behaviors, it was signaled to me that the Christianity I was familiar with was not enough—it was not the proper way to fulfill the role. There were other beliefs and actions I had to subscribe to as well. This became most apparent when I’d talk politics with people. I found Christian teachings being used against me as an argument against my political positions—positions I saw as necessary to my role as a responsible citizen. Things like gay marriage and drug legalization were against the teachings of Christianity. All the data around climate change was false, since the Earth is only 6,000 years old—not to mention the hoax of evolution!

This conflict between to roles I saw myself occupying led me to seriously examine the substance and merits of each. I became severely disillusioned with not just my own faith, by faith and religion as a whole. By the end of my Sophomore year, my inner role conflict had led me to abandon my role as a Christian and identify heavily with the values of Atheism—values that were almost entirely self-cultivated, based on foiling the religiosity that was around me. I learned how to be an Atheist by reversing many of my Christian beliefs, and working against the Christians I argued with.  

From a functionalist perspective, my initial socialization into Christianity made sense; my community and family were Christian, and my adopting the same values is a mechanism that keeps the peace and streamlines my integration into the community/group. Likewise, once we moved to the small-town rural scene, this is what my peers were attempting to do for me, with regard to a more fundamentalist Christianity. It just so happened those attempts backfired horribly; I’m not sure how a functionalist can explain this happening very well. From a conflict theory perspective, it makes far more sense; religious people have power, as a massive electoral block. As I became a political person, I found myself advocating for positions that would decrease or undermine the power of that block by contradicting tenets of their faith. Hence, conflict ensues, as a struggle for power between ideological factions vying for political pull.

At the end of the day, I think becoming Atheist had positive implications for me. When I first dropped my faith, I was wayyyyy too firebrand and mean towards religious people, to be sure—in my defense, the people I went to school with were pretty terrible! However, in the long run, I’ve simmered down quite a bit, and I think my lack of faith has put me in a position where I can more honestly engage with and accurately interpret the world around me.

For that, I’m thankful!

[trenton-woodcox]

Developing vs Developed Countries: Fertility

NOTE: Maps and data points are pictured in the order they are referenced in the text. ALL DATA AND GRAPHS CITED AND PICTURED WITHIN CAN BE FOUND AT https://www.prb.org/worldpopdata/

For today’s post, I wanted to take a look at trends within and between developing countries and their developed counterparts. Among the many interesting discrepancies between these two groups, perhaps the most striking is the difference in fertility rates. Across the board, developed states have far lower fertility rates than developing states. Keeping this in mind, we can use other figures and data points with regard to parallel variables to speculate on why this is the case. Using the data at our disposal, our sociological imagination can conjure a variety of explanations. First and foremost, we notice a correlation between gross national income per capita and fertility rates; there is significant overlap. Using intuition, we can induct a few different explanations for why these two variables may be related. For instance, we know that higher-income nations feature more well-traveled citizens. That is to say, wealthy people tend to travel more. Anyone that’s ever traveled with a child knows that they can be quite the hassle for the journey. That being the case, the correlation between national income and fertility may be as simple as “wealthy people have less kids so they can travel more”.  

Alternatively, it could be that wealthier nations have less children because their healthcare (often a function of wealth) is such that infant mortality is lower, making it unnecessary to have several offspring in the hopes that at least one child survives. This theory is further supported by the stark differences we see in infant mortality between developed and developing nations, with developing nations having far higher infant mortality rates. That these high rates would lead to more children makes sense, intuitively—especially when one takes into consideration how important children are to the livelihood of many families living in developed nations. These are nations where, often, much of the land is still rural, with many families depending on agriculture for a living. In these families, having more hands to assist with labor can be a boon, incentivizing childbirth. What’s more, when the rate of infant mortality is so high, it makes sense to have multiple children—considering some may die. Developed nations face neither of these pressures, largely due to their wealth. Another explanation for the difference in fertility rates between developed and developing nations can be found in what percentage of married women utilize contraceptive methods. For this and the following data points, I decided to zoom in on two countries—one developing (Sierra Leone), and one developed (United States) --so has to create a more intimate and digestible picture. We can see that contraceptive usage among this social group is far higher in the United States than in Sierra Leone, which would—for obvious reasons—explain at least some part of the difference in fertility rates. These rates of usage may also be a function of wealth, however--as wealth offers more opportunities and accessibility for contraception.  I also examined data points between these two countries relating to the elderly. We can see that the United States features a far older population than Sierra Leone, which may explain the fertility gap in that older people may be less likely (if not less able) to reproduce. It also may be the case that, if people are living longer, there is less pressure to replace the existing labor force (as that labor is still alive). Lastly, I tried to look at the percentage of demand met with regard to family planning services between the two nations. Interestingly, I found that the United States—and most other developed nations—did not have data available on this point. However, nearly every developing nation with a high fertility rate was represented in the data. This leads me to wonder if this data point was specifically targeted at those nations where the percentage of demand met is unsatisfactory; after all, if your nation is adequately and consistently meeting the demand, there’s little reason to do the work to document that success. Alternatively, if that demand is not being met, documenting that failure can serve as a powerful driver towards reform.  While all this data is interesting, it should be emphasized how important the story it paints truly is. Both developing and developed nations are confronting serious issues with regards to their populations, whether that be a low fertility rate spelling disaster for the economy, or a high fertility rate leading to rampant poverty and/or child mortality. Understanding what elements feed into fertility is critical to devising solutions; we cannot address a problem without understanding it.

It should be noted that these hypotheses do not come without their qualifiers. Some data featured here is from differing years. Additionally, the choice to compare Sierra Leone and the United States was almost entirely arbitrary. As always, there's also the possibility of confounding variables and unseen factors. All of these issues serve to severely limit the explanatory power of these hypotheses and the data they rely on.