Winter Holidays: Persistent Parties and Democracy, Genetic Engineering, Traditional Wives
For the online Winter Holidays Open, three motions have been announced:
• In emerging democracies, this house would break up persistently dominant political parties. (rounds 1 and 2)
• Assuming the technology exists, this house supports genetic engineering to make humans more resistant to the effects of climate change. (rounds 5 and 6)
• This house, as the feminist movement, would publicly denounce “tradwives”. Infoslide: A “tradwife” is a woman who prefers to take a traditional or ultra-traditional role in marriage, including the beliefs that a woman’s place is in the home and that wives should be under a husband’s protection. Some have chosen to leave careers in business or in public life to focus instead on their families and raising children, and some have turned to social media to extol the virtues of their lifestyle. (Grand Final)
Posts on the economics of past Winter Holidays Open motions are here plus a short video on a past motion, Nutrition, Basic Needs, Migration (for”donate after basic needs” motion).
For this year’s motions, economic principles can again assist and prepare World Schools debaters in their research. And to start with, the promise and peril of genetic engineering seems relevant for all three motions.
Many past and present World Schools motions project dystopian futures. Dystopian: “relating to or denoting an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice.” From George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, to Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, dystopian novels show what could happen “if present trends continue.”
Ira Levin authored many best-selling dystopian novels which were later made into popular movies, including Rosemary’s Baby and The Boys from Brazil. For the emerging democracies motion, Levin’s The Perfect Day is relevant and his novel The Stepford Wives casts a dystopian light on the “Tradwives” motion.
This Perfect Day is set in a totalitarian future where everyone works together for the common good. Most enjoy a sense of purpose and, thanks to weekly medications avoid ever feeling depressed, anxious, or angry. Wei, the novel’s key Chinese leader is today’s Xi (see Xi Jinping’s Terrifying New China, The Atlantic, November 15, 2021)
The central planners in This Perfect Day‘s work to engineer future citizens who won’t need these weekly doses of tranquilizers and anti-depressants Genetic research identified who the planners thought should marry and have children and who should not. A future society of healthy and unmedicated citizens would freely devote themselves to the common good.
Do Emerging Democracies Need “New Men” or New Parties?
New Soviet man, Wikipedia
From its roots in the mid 19th and early 20th centuries, proponents of communism have postulated that within the new society of pure communism and the social conditions therein, a New Man and New Woman would develop with qualities reflecting surrounding circumstances of post-scarcity and unprecedented scientific development
A challenge to emerging democracies–often in less-developed countries–has been long-standing ethnic, religious, and tribal histories of conflict that enable activists and politicians to quickly stir up ethnic fears and hatred.
Also, many “emerging democracies” developed from authoritarian governments, as in South Korea, Taiwan, and Chile. Each had authoritarian leaders and single political parties that allowed some market reforms and international investment.
South Korea, Taiwan, and Chile expanded rapidly to prosperity and only after reaching middle-income did they transition to (or emerge as) democracies. Such success stories encourage some conservatives to advocate for temporary authoritarian governments. However, economist William Easterly, author of The Tyranny of Experts, has pointed out that just as many examples exist of other authoritarian leaders who helped wreck their economies (and many more examples have occurred since).
Among other challenges for emerging democracies is the very definition of democracy.
Development economists make the case that the main challenges for emerging democracies are institutional. In emerging democracies, who gets to decide which enterprises are allowed to get funding to operate. Who controls permits for everyday decisions, like starting a new business, purchasing land to build a home? What is to be the scope of freedom in personal, family, religious, and enterprise decisions?
Two of the most important concepts in any discussion of liberty are state and society. But it is often far from clear what any given person means by those terms. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that the definitions can shift dramatically depending upon the theoretical approach of the speaker. Virtually all individualists agree that there is some distinction to be drawn between a state and a society. But exactly where the line should be drawn has been the subject of active debate, at least since the writings of the seventeenth-century English classical liberal John Locke.
The German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer spearheaded an analysis of these key terms in his classic work, The State (1914). Oppenheimer defined the state as “that summation of privileges and dominating positions which are brought into being by extra-economic power.” He defined society as “the totality of concepts of all purely natural relations and institutions between man and man.”1 He contrasted what he termed “the political means” with “the economic means” of acquiring wealth or power. The state uses the political means-in other words, force—to plunder and exploit society, which uses the economic means—in other words, cooperation. Thus, for Oppenheimer, the state was the enemy of society. …
Defining State and Society (The Freeman and Independent Institute)
Is the U.S. (or E.U.) a democracy or a republic? Democracy, and therefore “emerging democracies,” has changing and challenging definitions. People get to vote directly (to put Socrates to death, for example), or to elect representatives. But what power should those representatives have? And beyond representative democracy are bureaucratic states most (say 99%) government officials are unelected (everyone at State, Treasury, Commerce, FDA, CDC, NIH, FBI, CIA, IRS, etc.). What roles do voting and political parties play in when rule-making is in the hands of a expansive multi-layered unelected bureaucracy?
World Schools debaters researching this motion can discover a broader understanding of democracy as the various institutions of democratic countries: voting, parties, separation of powers among legislative, judicial, executive branches, states/provinces, and federalism, freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press.
For stable and prospering societies, voting, politics, and parties play a limited role because families, enterprises, associations, and other civil society institutions coordinate most of daily life.
For decades the view was that assistance from developed countries could play a major role in the transition from poverty to prosperity. The documentary Poverty, Inc. however, is critical of foreign aid and emphasizes the importance of both local enterprises and access to the global economy.
POVERTY, INC. | Official Trailer
In Egypt (and most of North Africa/Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa, most enterprises are informal. Everyday people struggle to get permits to start a business or title to the land under their homes.
It matters little what the political parties are if police, state regulators, and crony capitalists (businessmen subsidized by the state and protected from competition) restrict who can launch new enterprises.
Democracy is about the political process, about electing leaders of government. Political parties play a major role in politics and elections, but have limited influence on the economic lives of everyday people. Everyday people search for work with enterprises, and look to the exchange economy. They thrive with the “oxygen” of economic freedom. The World Bank Ease of Doing Business Index (recently discontinued) measured how difficult it is to start a legal enterprise in emerging democracies. Often it takes weeks or months of requesting permits from state officials. For examples see: Doing Business In Iraq, The Atlantic, February 10, 2011)
Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto outlines these challenges in books, studies, and documentaries, which, again, have little to do with political parties or elections. Perhaps one could argue that persistent political parties play a central role in over-regulating new enterprises to protect and subsidize existing politically connected “crony capitalist” companies.
Globalization at the Crossroads shows the extensive role of informal law and enterprises in emerging democracies. Also, the lack of economic freedom led to the Arab Spring across North Africa and Middle East as shown in Unlikely Heroes of the Arab Spring – Full Video
The Economic Freedom Index page at the Fraser Institute shows the world through this matrix as an alternative to just emerging or established democracy.
Then comes Genetic Engineering for Changing Climate
Assuming the technology exists, this house supports genetic engineering to make humans more resistant to the effects of climate change. (rounds 5 and 6)
Critics of energy usage (and CO2 emissions) worry that if billions more in the developing world have access to cars, airplanes, rockets, refrigerators, washing machines, and air conditioning, emissions would increase dramatically.
So could people possibly get coding changes to improve their comfort and capacity to live and work at higher temperatures? Perhaps genetically adding gills for a flooded world? Waterworld Official Trailer #1 – Kevin Costner Movie (1995)
After one identifies genes to help people thrive in a changed climate, would it be ethically justifiable to edit the genome to enhance the ability to adapt? This question has been affirmatively answered by some agricultural and animal geneticists: “Is Editing the Genome for Climate Change Adaptation Ethically Justifiable?” (AMA Journal of Ethics)
However, among major problems: Even the most extreme predictions of global warming are much less than the climate changes experienced by relocating a few hundred miles toward the equator. People seem to be able to adapt, or suffer some.
Enough wealth and energy for air conditioners is key for the millions of Americans who have relocated from Chicago, Detroit, or Cleveland to Atlanta, Houston, or Dallas. This is not to minimize projected climate change, but just to point out the reality of climate differences by latitude, elevation, and time of year.
Another challenge is that even the IPCC no longer projects significant warming or more extreme weather conditions: see” New Confirmation that Climate Models Overstate Atmospheric Warming and Interview: Climate Change – A Different Perspective with Judith Curry: Part II (Climate Etc., December 4, 2021)
Then The Stepford Wives: robots or cult-captured, or genetically engineered…
A time and a place for everything. Mothers usually enjoy spending time with their babies and young children. And babies and young children enjoy being with parents (especially mothers!). Caring for babies and toddlers 24/7 is of course a challenge and having help from extended family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins) helps.
But children grow up. Teens are ready to venture out. So another way to look at the “tradwife” story could be just taking time off to raise children. For two, three, or more children, time is devoted to caring, cleaning, and cooking for kids, and to keeping them from hurting themselves or each other.
The “tradwives” narrative is about more than raising children and debaters should research both advocates and critics.
In the critical corners is: The Conversation Tradwives: the women looking for a simpler past but grounded in the neoliberal present. With “neoliberal” in the title, the article is likely to offer a socialist critique of capitalism (few except critics use “neoliberal”). Economic narratives play a key role. The authors claim:
The current toxic always-on work culture must be understood as a key factor facilitating the rise of this retro-movement. As overload work culture has become common in many developed countries, governments have also been cutting vital resources that help support families and communities.
Western societies progressed from agriculture to industry then to service economics. Wages are higher, work days shorter and less dangerous, and since the 1970s, women entered the formal workforce.
The authors present a narrative of things getting worse, workdays longer, life more hectic, and wages pushed down (by “relentless competition,” deregulation, globalization, outsourcing, and the decline of unions). Well, which is it? Has life gotten better for everyday workers and women, or worse?
Economic and social reality are complex. With billions of workforce and family life changes year by year, where should we look for clues to the most relevant changes?
Advocates of traditional marriage and wives might argue that past arrangements help protect women and maintain marriages. If husband and wife have equal “votes” on family decisions, who breaks a tie? Do too many “ties” and unsolved disagreements lead to divorce?
In 2020 nearly 19 million children, amounting to 25 percent of all children in the U.S., were living in single-parent families. That percentage is nearly three times the level in 1960 of 9 percent. America’s proportion of children living with a single parent is more than three times the worldwide level of 7 percent.
Of course for a great many marriages a compromise is reached, often informally. The husband is allowed to believe he is in charge and gets his way with major decisions. But he knows (or soon learns) some issues require deferring to his wife.
The Conversation article lists Alena Petitt and her website The Darling Academy as advocate for “tradwives” lifestyle. And, of course, for a traditional housewife, Alena Petit seems to be running a dynamic enterprise as well as a household.
On the economics side of this motion, I’d like to make a couple observations. Life is full of choices and the appeal of careers as learning and social experiences, plus for earning extra income for independence have appeal to many. But also, many jobs soon become drudgery.
Consider the career of an airline pilot or flight attendant. For young people, flying around the country or the world, seeing sights, staying in hotels, eating out, is a wonderful opportunity for a while. But after some years, most of the sights have been seen and serving drinks or even piloting becomes a lot less exciting.
Concerning the complaints about “neoliberalism” and “overload work culture” and “cutting vital benefits.” Well, wages and welfare benefits have never been higher. Low and middle income families struggle though with far higher housing and health care costs.