Part of any effective turnaround is going to have to be getting a lot better at choosing who has power at every level. You can't have worse people over better ones, at all. That means judging people correctly exclusively on the the criteria that actually matter: intelligence (capability to be right on difficult problems), application of intelligence, good judgment, truth-seeking, loyalty to nationality (us vs. not us), class (noblesse oblige), independence from factions or parties, courage and disagreeableness to resist media-driven ideas, conscientiousness, integrity, competence, wisdom and dilligence. Not whether they're in with the crowd currently in power, conformist, popular, convincing, charming, look the part, agreeable, senior, ambitious, "disadvantaged", "minority", "underprivilaged", partisan, politically reliable, celebrity, "experienced", "educated". You can not select such people reliably with any current system. Not only that, you can pretty reliably rule out anyone that any current sytem selects.
The PRC is politically stifled but economically vigorous. The financial busts are disappointing for asset holders and job seekers but don’t destroy productive capacity; on the contrary they make it available cheaply for further business creation. The population pyramid is inverting as in most of the world but the working generation is still far larger than any country but India.
The top PRC leadership is stagnant but Xi has continued to purge all lower levels vigorously, including the military.
From 2016 to 2022 Russia tried to lead China on to see Taiwan as weak and vulnerable to decapitation. The 2019 Hong Kong crackdown and the 2021 save of Lukashenko from pro-European election winners looked easy, both in small polities that were traditionally politically passive. Putin, believing his own bullshit, reached to decapitate nearby Kyiv and failed miserably; this more than anything made Taiwan appear too risky to try to swallow. The repeatedly purged PLA and coast guard are left with exercises and petty harassment to make it look like they’re doing something on Taiwan. Blockade attempts would likely just piss the Taiwanese off, and would be difficult with Japan’s islands starting just off eastern Taiwan. Southern China’s tech and export complex would not like trade disruption any more than their Taiwanese neighbors.
This year’s Iran war has not made decapitation look any more effective. Israel against nonstate opponents has fallen into a habit of thinking they can be destroyed organizationally. Some contrasting American examples are Trist and Scott encouraging the disintegrated Mexican political scene to organize a new compromise government and sign a definite border treaty in 1848 to Polk’s annoyance; and leaving emperor Hirohito in place for the occupation.
Xi at the summit warned Trump that Taiwan was the critical issue in the relationship. Translation: status quo for now and don’t be tempted to say embarrassing shit like you do about most of the world.
The USSR dissolved because of nationalism. The USSR without the western republics but with Central Asia would be approaching a Muslim majority sometime soon. Russia instead chose the CIS as the next looser level of integration that Ukraine would agree to. China on the other hand has about 100 Han per each Uyghur.
Stalin also sorted nationalities into their own territories, so much that poorly sorted areas like Ferghana or Karabakh were suspected of being deliberately left as problems. The array of republics then straightforwardly transitioned to independent national states. Ironically labor migration from Central Asia started after the dissolution.
The USA instead dispersed its ethnicities. The CPUSA had proposed autonomy for the Black Belt in the 1930s; those areas have emptied out and Southern states are white majority including Northern migrants.
Russia was half of the USSR population and a plausible successor state. The largest US state is ⅛ of the US population.
I can't help but think your view of our own situation might be a trifle on the pessimistic side.
Since taking back control of the House, the GOP has had considerable leadership turnover, and the current Speaker, Mike Johnson, was born in 1972.
In the Senate, there is going to be a significant rejuvenation in the Republican caucus, based in part on retirements, in part on account of senators having been appointed to positions in the administration, and in part owing to successful primary challenges to aging incumbents by younger political figures. It seems likely there will be a leadership fight in the next Congress resulting in Thune's replacement as GOP party leader, likely by a much younger senator.
When Trump leave office in 2029, he is very likely to be replaced--assuming the Republicans win--by either Vice President J.D. Vance--born in 1984 (!) or Secretary of State Marco Rubio, born in 1971.
And my current, term-limited governor, Ron DeSantis--born in 1978--will be waiting in the wings. No doubt there will be others as well.
And as the Supreme Court ages out and its members die--or strategically retire--they will be replaced by far younger figures. Two of Trump's first term appointments were both born in the mid-1960s. His third, and Biden's only, appointment were both born in the 1970s.
So I beg leave to differ from your assessment.
I should add that none of this addresses the Democratic side, whose contours I freely admit I am less familiar with. But judging from the DSA insurgents--AOC and the most recent crop in NYC--I expect their senescent leadership is in for a rude awakening as well.
I suspect that the US and China's weaknesses due to this problem have not been taken advantage of by other countries because they have pretty much the same problem.
I was going to make a similar comment. As a political scientist by training, the key question to ask in this sort of analysis is, "...compared to what?"
The United States may have severe problems. But as you've pointed out, the PRC is no better off; nor is Russia or the EU. Indeed I think it fair to say that "Eurosclerosis" has reached the same pathological toxicity that the USSR had in the late 1980s.
Excellent post. I think that both the American and Chinese gerontocracy problem caused by selfishness. A desire for money, power, or status overrides the sense of responsibility.
A society that is focused on the individual, as the case with the United States, and becomes focused on acquiring more wealth, power, or status produces people who simply are not only narcissistic, they are irresponsible, and uncaring about the future that they are creating. Moreover, the people around them, who in the past might have encouraged their retirement, are likely to encourage the increasingly manipulable senior to stay. They too do not care about the future or the welfare of others, but only for themselves.
What the generations just before the Boomers had that the Boomers didn’t was the wisdom created by living through the exciting times of the previous century. The several generations of the nineteenth century that built up the country and their children who lived through the tumult of the first half of the twentieth century: the creation of the American System, the build up to the Civil War, and then war itself, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, the Great War, the Great Depression, the Second World War, and even the Cold War especially the Cuban Missile Crisis. All these events forced each generation to grow up, thinking about the world, about preparing for the next generation, not just about how to get rich; each generation also imparted some of their wisdom to the next as well.
The Boomers got the benefits of the work, and often great suffering, of previous century’s generations, but they either forgot or never received some of the wisdom.
I think that I can say the same thing about the Chinese with their century of humiliation, the civil war, the Japanese invasion, the Famine, the Cultural Revolution and all the reforms needed afterwards. All this created generations of mature, hard people who developed the wisdom even a fool gets from living.
I am glad you extended your Soviet analysis to CCP and US. I was trying to think of longer running government structures that lasted more than 70 years. Venice under the Doge model lasted 1100 years 697-1797; Iceland's Althing model lasted 3 centuries 930-1262.
I’m a boomer who worked for the feds till 2012, retiring at 65. I was in the upper echelon of managers/executives in my organization. Most of us were under Civil Service and retired by 70 - many earlier than I for second careers outside the govt.
Congress, of course, is a different matter, and in my view mandatory retirement at 72 would be good for all of them. The problem is not so much refusal to retire, but increasing longevity.
As a young boomer tangentially involved in anti-Vietnam War activism, I remember hearing the same complaints about the generation then in power, which had not yet been labeled the Greatest Generation: that Congress was a gerontocracy, that seniority rules favored the oldest and therefore most out-of-touch politicians, that they were all mentally stuck in WWII and couldn't see what was really going on. (I remember an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe around 1980 stating flat-out that the returning veterans of WWII should be our guide or our moral touchstone or something. They really thought they had all the answers by 1946.)
As for the reason the Greatest Generation was more willing to retire, I suspect that it was a response to the extreme social and political changes of the Vietnam War era. The America they had grown up and come to power in was gone. The America they had to live in was hardly recognizable. I suspect that some of them just didn't want to serve in a racially integrated government.
You've made my case for me. You concede the Greatest Generation retired and this lot won't, which is the whole argument. Rayburn left. O'Neill left. The boomers have to be carried out.
Your explanation is backwards, though. The federal workforce was already integrated. Black clerks all through Treasury and the Post Office, Frederick Douglass as Recorder of Deeds, Blanche Bruce as Register of the Treasury. That happened because federal jobs sat outside state-level Jim Crow. Then Wilson segregated it on purpose starting in 1913. Screens between the desks, separate bathrooms, demotions, and a new rule in 1914 requiring a photo on the application so they could weed people out by race. He told a delegation of Black leaders it was for their own benefit, then had Monroe Trotter thrown out of his office for pushing back.
So they didn't retire rather than serve in an integrated government. They came up inside the segregated version Wilson built, and the postwar push (Truman's 1948 order and everything after) was them taking back what a Democratic progressive hero had given away. If some of them didn't want to serve alongside Black colleagues, it's because the man who broke the integration that already existed spent eight years teaching them they shouldn't have to.
You have the depth of a bureaucrat, sir. But your premise is faulty. This one: "Even if the federal gerontocracy is dysfunctional, governance happens at multiple levels and through multiple institutions. State governments, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the military, the Federal Reserve, private institutions: all run on different selection mechanisms and different timelines." We have seen recently this conclusion is false since iron-clad edicts of 2020 have forced us to see the truth. America is done. The institutions you have not mentioned have been commandeered. Obama was right.
Part of any effective turnaround is going to have to be getting a lot better at choosing who has power at every level. You can't have worse people over better ones, at all. That means judging people correctly exclusively on the the criteria that actually matter: intelligence (capability to be right on difficult problems), application of intelligence, good judgment, truth-seeking, loyalty to nationality (us vs. not us), class (noblesse oblige), independence from factions or parties, courage and disagreeableness to resist media-driven ideas, conscientiousness, integrity, competence, wisdom and dilligence. Not whether they're in with the crowd currently in power, conformist, popular, convincing, charming, look the part, agreeable, senior, ambitious, "disadvantaged", "minority", "underprivilaged", partisan, politically reliable, celebrity, "experienced", "educated". You can not select such people reliably with any current system. Not only that, you can pretty reliably rule out anyone that any current sytem selects.
The PRC is politically stifled but economically vigorous. The financial busts are disappointing for asset holders and job seekers but don’t destroy productive capacity; on the contrary they make it available cheaply for further business creation. The population pyramid is inverting as in most of the world but the working generation is still far larger than any country but India.
The top PRC leadership is stagnant but Xi has continued to purge all lower levels vigorously, including the military.
From 2016 to 2022 Russia tried to lead China on to see Taiwan as weak and vulnerable to decapitation. The 2019 Hong Kong crackdown and the 2021 save of Lukashenko from pro-European election winners looked easy, both in small polities that were traditionally politically passive. Putin, believing his own bullshit, reached to decapitate nearby Kyiv and failed miserably; this more than anything made Taiwan appear too risky to try to swallow. The repeatedly purged PLA and coast guard are left with exercises and petty harassment to make it look like they’re doing something on Taiwan. Blockade attempts would likely just piss the Taiwanese off, and would be difficult with Japan’s islands starting just off eastern Taiwan. Southern China’s tech and export complex would not like trade disruption any more than their Taiwanese neighbors.
This year’s Iran war has not made decapitation look any more effective. Israel against nonstate opponents has fallen into a habit of thinking they can be destroyed organizationally. Some contrasting American examples are Trist and Scott encouraging the disintegrated Mexican political scene to organize a new compromise government and sign a definite border treaty in 1848 to Polk’s annoyance; and leaving emperor Hirohito in place for the occupation.
Xi at the summit warned Trump that Taiwan was the critical issue in the relationship. Translation: status quo for now and don’t be tempted to say embarrassing shit like you do about most of the world.
The USSR dissolved because of nationalism. The USSR without the western republics but with Central Asia would be approaching a Muslim majority sometime soon. Russia instead chose the CIS as the next looser level of integration that Ukraine would agree to. China on the other hand has about 100 Han per each Uyghur.
Stalin also sorted nationalities into their own territories, so much that poorly sorted areas like Ferghana or Karabakh were suspected of being deliberately left as problems. The array of republics then straightforwardly transitioned to independent national states. Ironically labor migration from Central Asia started after the dissolution.
The USA instead dispersed its ethnicities. The CPUSA had proposed autonomy for the Black Belt in the 1930s; those areas have emptied out and Southern states are white majority including Northern migrants.
Russia was half of the USSR population and a plausible successor state. The largest US state is ⅛ of the US population.
I can't help but think your view of our own situation might be a trifle on the pessimistic side.
Since taking back control of the House, the GOP has had considerable leadership turnover, and the current Speaker, Mike Johnson, was born in 1972.
In the Senate, there is going to be a significant rejuvenation in the Republican caucus, based in part on retirements, in part on account of senators having been appointed to positions in the administration, and in part owing to successful primary challenges to aging incumbents by younger political figures. It seems likely there will be a leadership fight in the next Congress resulting in Thune's replacement as GOP party leader, likely by a much younger senator.
When Trump leave office in 2029, he is very likely to be replaced--assuming the Republicans win--by either Vice President J.D. Vance--born in 1984 (!) or Secretary of State Marco Rubio, born in 1971.
And my current, term-limited governor, Ron DeSantis--born in 1978--will be waiting in the wings. No doubt there will be others as well.
And as the Supreme Court ages out and its members die--or strategically retire--they will be replaced by far younger figures. Two of Trump's first term appointments were both born in the mid-1960s. His third, and Biden's only, appointment were both born in the 1970s.
So I beg leave to differ from your assessment.
I should add that none of this addresses the Democratic side, whose contours I freely admit I am less familiar with. But judging from the DSA insurgents--AOC and the most recent crop in NYC--I expect their senescent leadership is in for a rude awakening as well.
I suspect that the US and China's weaknesses due to this problem have not been taken advantage of by other countries because they have pretty much the same problem.
I was going to make a similar comment. As a political scientist by training, the key question to ask in this sort of analysis is, "...compared to what?"
The United States may have severe problems. But as you've pointed out, the PRC is no better off; nor is Russia or the EU. Indeed I think it fair to say that "Eurosclerosis" has reached the same pathological toxicity that the USSR had in the late 1980s.
Excellent post. I think that both the American and Chinese gerontocracy problem caused by selfishness. A desire for money, power, or status overrides the sense of responsibility.
A society that is focused on the individual, as the case with the United States, and becomes focused on acquiring more wealth, power, or status produces people who simply are not only narcissistic, they are irresponsible, and uncaring about the future that they are creating. Moreover, the people around them, who in the past might have encouraged their retirement, are likely to encourage the increasingly manipulable senior to stay. They too do not care about the future or the welfare of others, but only for themselves.
What the generations just before the Boomers had that the Boomers didn’t was the wisdom created by living through the exciting times of the previous century. The several generations of the nineteenth century that built up the country and their children who lived through the tumult of the first half of the twentieth century: the creation of the American System, the build up to the Civil War, and then war itself, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, the Great War, the Great Depression, the Second World War, and even the Cold War especially the Cuban Missile Crisis. All these events forced each generation to grow up, thinking about the world, about preparing for the next generation, not just about how to get rich; each generation also imparted some of their wisdom to the next as well.
The Boomers got the benefits of the work, and often great suffering, of previous century’s generations, but they either forgot or never received some of the wisdom.
I think that I can say the same thing about the Chinese with their century of humiliation, the civil war, the Japanese invasion, the Famine, the Cultural Revolution and all the reforms needed afterwards. All this created generations of mature, hard people who developed the wisdom even a fool gets from living.
But now, it is glorious to get rich.
I am glad you extended your Soviet analysis to CCP and US. I was trying to think of longer running government structures that lasted more than 70 years. Venice under the Doge model lasted 1100 years 697-1797; Iceland's Althing model lasted 3 centuries 930-1262.
I’m a boomer who worked for the feds till 2012, retiring at 65. I was in the upper echelon of managers/executives in my organization. Most of us were under Civil Service and retired by 70 - many earlier than I for second careers outside the govt.
Congress, of course, is a different matter, and in my view mandatory retirement at 72 would be good for all of them. The problem is not so much refusal to retire, but increasing longevity.
As a young boomer tangentially involved in anti-Vietnam War activism, I remember hearing the same complaints about the generation then in power, which had not yet been labeled the Greatest Generation: that Congress was a gerontocracy, that seniority rules favored the oldest and therefore most out-of-touch politicians, that they were all mentally stuck in WWII and couldn't see what was really going on. (I remember an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe around 1980 stating flat-out that the returning veterans of WWII should be our guide or our moral touchstone or something. They really thought they had all the answers by 1946.)
As for the reason the Greatest Generation was more willing to retire, I suspect that it was a response to the extreme social and political changes of the Vietnam War era. The America they had grown up and come to power in was gone. The America they had to live in was hardly recognizable. I suspect that some of them just didn't want to serve in a racially integrated government.
You've made my case for me. You concede the Greatest Generation retired and this lot won't, which is the whole argument. Rayburn left. O'Neill left. The boomers have to be carried out.
Your explanation is backwards, though. The federal workforce was already integrated. Black clerks all through Treasury and the Post Office, Frederick Douglass as Recorder of Deeds, Blanche Bruce as Register of the Treasury. That happened because federal jobs sat outside state-level Jim Crow. Then Wilson segregated it on purpose starting in 1913. Screens between the desks, separate bathrooms, demotions, and a new rule in 1914 requiring a photo on the application so they could weed people out by race. He told a delegation of Black leaders it was for their own benefit, then had Monroe Trotter thrown out of his office for pushing back.
So they didn't retire rather than serve in an integrated government. They came up inside the segregated version Wilson built, and the postwar push (Truman's 1948 order and everything after) was them taking back what a Democratic progressive hero had given away. If some of them didn't want to serve alongside Black colleagues, it's because the man who broke the integration that already existed spent eight years teaching them they shouldn't have to.
You have the depth of a bureaucrat, sir. But your premise is faulty. This one: "Even if the federal gerontocracy is dysfunctional, governance happens at multiple levels and through multiple institutions. State governments, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the military, the Federal Reserve, private institutions: all run on different selection mechanisms and different timelines." We have seen recently this conclusion is false since iron-clad edicts of 2020 have forced us to see the truth. America is done. The institutions you have not mentioned have been commandeered. Obama was right.