The Democrats are still reeling from their crushing defeat––a shellacking, as Obama might have put it––in this year’s presidential election. Eight years ago, when they first lost to the MAGA movement, I received the news with shock, anger, and sorrow.  This time around, I was shocked not by the election result, but by the fact that so many Democrats were seemingly caught off guard again, by what appeared to be a rather predictable outcome.

I don’t claim to have any above-average understanding of American politics.  All that I did was read Wall Street Journal, pay attention to Poly Market, and listen to podcasts like Honestly with Barry Weiss, All In, Megyn Kelly Show and Joe Rogan.  That was enough for me to conclude, several weeks ahead of the election, that Trump was going to win easily despite all polls said otherwise.

What is even more surprising is that the Democrats still cannot agree on why they lost so badly. According to Nancy Pelosi and Rachel Maddow, their party did nothing wrong.  They lost simply because they were up against a global anti-incumbent wave set in motion by pandemic-induced inflation.

Bernie Sanders begs to differ. In a scathing post-election statement, he scolded the Democratic Party for abandoning working class people and attributed its humiliating loss to their mass defection.

Biden’s age and ego were frequently cited as another culprit: had he not attempted to run again and allowed a proper primary to run its natural course, the liberals might have rallied around a stronger candidate than the hastily anointed Kamala Harris.

Others grudgingly conceded that the Biden administration has misread and mishandled the immigration crisis at the border.  While Trump’s lie about “dog-eating-aliens” was debunked and ridiculed, the truth is he succeeded in keeping the spotlight on an issue that progressives struggled to defend.   In the end, even the sanctuary cities in blue states had lost their appetite for more migrants arriving on the buses sent by the governors of the border states.

What else?

Interestingly, many Democrats become defensive on culture issues, especially when “wokeism” or “DEI” was cited to explain their defeat.     In a recent episode of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart got into a testy argument with his guest about the role DEI may or may not have played in the election.  John Oliver, a Stewart disciple, similarly pushed back against this theory on his well-regarded Last Week Tonight Show.  For full disclosure, I am a big fan of both men. However, I find their dismissive attitude unconvincing and unhelpful.

Like it or not, many conservatives regularly discuss culture issues in apocalyptic terms. Should the liberals at least try to sympathize with their concerns and emotions, if not meet them halfway?

When I watched Elon Musk’s stump speeches at Trump rallies––I know, I am not supposed to––I immediately noticed the man’s fixation on culture issues. This election, he often told the audience in an uncharacteristically solemn voice, is our last chance to save Western Civilization.  Many people would find this proclamation preposterous.  Isn’t Trump supposed to be the greatest threat to our democracy, the crown jewel of the Western Civilization? Has Musk really gone crazy, as alleged in a popular pre-election sticker liberals rushed to put on their Teslas?  If he has, then madness must have infected many others.  Liz Truss, a former British Prime Minister, used very similar language in a recent Wall Street Journal Opinion piece.  “Mr. Trump,” she wrote, “can do more than end wokeism and kickstart the American economy: he can save the West.”

If you have read Douglas Murray’s The War on the West, you would better understand where this sentiment comes from.  Murray describes a civilization under attack from within and without, yet few in the West see the eminent and grave danger.   The book is meant to be a rallying cry, a logical prelude to fighting back, now signified by Trump’s resounding electoral victory––I suppose that’s how most Trump supporters, Musk and Truss included, read it.

The War On the West is first and foremost a culture war.

On one side of the battleground stands the Western canon, which prides itself on its profound contributions to philosophy, science, literature, and the arts. Through the Enlightenment movement and the Industrial Revolutions, the canon has brought sustained economic growth, extraordinary prosperity, and human flourishing. Thanks to these accomplishments, Western civilization has dominated the world for centuries—politically, militarily, economically, and culturally. Seen from the vantage point of the West, humanity has ascended to an unprecedented height under its hegemony, and the ascent still shows no sign of abating.

This conventional wisdom, however, has been relentlessly challenged by an anti-Western intelligentsia since the end of World War II—led by authors like Jean-Paul Satre, Michel Foucault, and Edward Said.  Murray conceded that the rise of anti-Westernism was an inevitable correction to a prolonged and repressive colonial order.  However, that correction quickly turned into an overcorrection and, in recent years, has deteriorated  to a full-blown assault—not on the misdeeds and atrocities of the imperialist Western empires of the past, but on Western civilization as a whole.  In the mind of these anti-Western warriors, the hegemonic culture of the West is fundamentally racist, greedy, power-hungry, hypocritical and sometimes genocidal.  It would never voluntarily abdicate power and control on other peoples and civilizations.  This might sound like hyperbole.  But how else could one make sense of the famous chant led by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, an American civil rights icon, “Hey hey, ho ho, Western Civ has to go?”

In fact, Edward Said, who was educated at Princeton and taught at Columbia, described Europeans almost exactly this way.   “Every European,” he wrote in his masterpiece Orientalism, “in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist and almost totally ethnocentric.”   Regarding the work of Michel Foucault, another towering intellectual of post-colonial studies, Murray has this to say:

Taken in its totality, his work is one of the most sustained attempts to undermine the system of institutions that had made up part of the Western system of order. His obsessive analysis of everything through a quasi-Marxist lens of power relations diminished almost everything in society into a transactional, punitive and meaningless dystopia.

Thus, to Foucault, Said, and their enthusiastic followers, there is almost nothing good to be said about the West.  Murray rejected this absolutist anti-West sentiment, though much of his defense is built around some form of whataboutism.

Murray points out that racism, often considered an original sin of the West, existed in non-Western societies as well.   For example, many Chinese dialects refer to foreigners as “gui” (Ghost), instead of “ren” (human).  As a Chinese person, I can confirm he was not far off. I would add that the Chinese once used derogative terms for different foreigners: “yangguizi” (foreign ghost) for the Westerns, “xiaoguizi” (little ghost) for Japanese, “bangzi” (stick) for Koreans, A’san (little wretch) for Indians and so on.

Another anecdote mentioned by Murray surprised me. According to him, Kang Youwei, a prominent scholar and reformer during the late Qing Dynasty, argued that white people or “yellow” people should be rewarded if they were willing to marry black people,  because their sacrifice could help “purify humankind.”

Murray acknowledges the enormous pains and sufferings that the transatlantic slave trade inflicted on Africans but insists that the West was not alone in the guilt of perpetuating this ancient and horrific institution. Slave trade was rampant in the Arab World—we know so little about it today only because, according to Murray, the Arabs systematically castrated their slaves.  Brazil and Ottoman Empire continued the slave trade decades after the costly Civil War ended slavery in North America in the early 1860s.  By that time, the British Empire has long outlawed the practice and spent a fortune to police the oceans and to compensate the companies for their lost “assets”—in fact, so much debt was taken on to foot the bill that the British taxpayers did not pay it off until 2015.

Murray also questions “the notion that colonialism is always and everywhere a bad thing.” In fact, many nations that emerged in the postcolonial world failed spectacularly, sometimes subjecting their people to far greater misery than under colonial rule.  Murray even thinks it is unfair to blame the Europeans for “stealing” the Americas from the native peoples, because “the whole history of our species was one of occupation and conquering” until the modern era.  Also, do we really believe American Indians and Aztecs would have fared better if their land were “discovered” by someone else?  These arguments are far from airtight, but they are not complete nonsense either.

Murray is also exasperated by the defamation and purging campaign against the historical figures revered in the West.   In recent years, these efforts have escalated from critiques in books and magazines to violent protests and acts of vandalism.

It has become fashionable on the left to desecrate or destroy the statues of people who have done or said anything judged as incompatible with the latest edition of the progressive code of conduct.

Voltaire was canceled because he had invested in the French East India Company and made a racist comment about Africans in a book.

John Lock was canceled because he owned stock in companies involved in the slave trade.

Thomas Jefferson was cancelled because he not only owed slaves but also impregnated one—that second offense had to be a sexual assault because, evidently, a slave could not give a valid consent.

Even the reputation of Abraham Lincoln, once described by Tolstoy as a man “bigger than his country,” was in serious trouble, partly due to his alleged mistreatment of American Indians.  He also made racist comments, and once advocated for deporting Black people from the United States altogether.

The cancellation that truly sent Murray into a frenzy—given that he is British—was that of Churchill, whose racist worldview was no secret to any student of history.  Churchill must be canceled, Murry writes indignantly,

because as long as his reputation stands, the West still has a hero; (he must be canceled because) they want to kick the “white men,” they want to kick at the great man view of history; and they want to kick at the holiest beings and places of the West.

This culture war has spilled out from the realm of intellectual quarrels into many aspects of social life in the West.

DEI initiatives feature prominently in Murray’s narrative. While few would disagree with their noble objectives, in practice, these programs often conflict with the other values long cherished in the West, such as meritocracy and equal opportunity (rather than equal outcomes). This has led to great confusion about the trade-offs between pursuing equity and rewarding merit.

In certain quarters on the left, the word “merit” itself has acquired a racist connotation. So have any quantitative tools, such as the SAT or GRE, designed to assess merit or produce a ranking in a population.  Suffice it to cite one quote from Ibram X. Kendi, whose radical antiracist writing Murray repudiated repeatedly in his book:

Standardized tests have become the most effective racist weapon ever devised to objectively degrade Black minds and legally exclude their bodies.

Regardless of their professed goals, many DEI programs have been downgraded to a campaign to make all institutions in the nation—political offices, universities, big corporations— “look like its population.”   DEI is considered such an inherent, unequivocal good that its arrival must be hastened.    It is not enough if everyone agrees and strives to achieve it; a great leap forward is needed to make it a reality now, at least in appearance first.  An article published in The New York Times during July 2020—which I read about in Murray’s book—captures this burning ideology perfectly. Its tagline reads: “To Make Orchestras More Diverse, End Blind Auditions.”

The war on the West has become disturbingly close to a direct assault on “whiteness”, including  white people.  In its extreme form, Murray contends, the rhetoric not only bear all the hallmarks of racism, but sounds “protogenocidal.”  If you think he suffers from paranoia, consider the following anecdotes from the book:

• A New York Times contributing editor claims that whiteness is “a virus that, like other viruses, will not die until there are no bodies left for it to infect.”
• Arizona Department of Education declared white babies can begin to express racial prejudice when they are only three months old, and at the age of five they “remain strongly biased in favor of whiteness.”
• Author Robin DiAngelo wrote in White Fragility that “white people were all racist,” and that white people who refute this truism “were simply providing further evidence of their racism.”
• A mandatory DEI course for Coca-Cola employees suggest they need to be “less white, less arrogant, less certain, less defensive, less ignorant and more humble.”

These words remind me of how the bourgeoisie and landlords were denounced and vilified during the politically engineered mass frenzies in China between 1949 and 1979. The difference is that, at least in theory, the bourgeoisie and landlords could redeem themselves by relinquishing their social status and properties. How can white people convincingly relinquish their whiteness?

Perhaps the worst development of all is the intolerance of different opinions.  In many cases, this intolerance turns to bullying, intimidation, even threats of persecution against anyone who dares to voice support for dissenting voice.  As Murray laments,

It is so often made clear that whether you’re a math teacher or a partner in a vast multinational firm, the cost of raising your head above the parapet can lead to your whole career crashing down around you. And it can happen from asking the simplest of questions, asserting a provable truth, or simply acknowledging a belief that everybody held until the day before yesterday.

For the record, I’m not sure how much Murray has overstated his case here.  However, it does not take that many precedents—and I have heard of many—for most people to learn the lesson and voluntarily shut their mouths. Even if only a fraction of the population finds their freedom of speech infringed with impunity, democracy can suffer a terrible setback, possibly irreversible damage.

If Elon Musk is to be believed, it is this grave concern that compelled him to turn Twitter into X at a considerable financial cost to him personally.  Musk might well be wrong and have even made Twitter much worse, but I find no particularly good reason to doubt his sincerity and motives.

I read The War on the West long before this election, having heard of it on a podcast (either Sam Harris or Bari Weiss). I remember it as a thriller: intense, controversial, but highly informative—an eye-opening experience in some ways. I suspect most Democrats won’t receive the book well—that is, if they can muster the patience to finish it at all. However, it would be a mistake for them to reject such a book out of hand. They ought to read it, if only to crack the mystery that is still haunting them after eight long years: why so many voters cast their presidential ballots for a demagogue who, in their minds, talks so much, knows so little, has so many character flaws and so few moral virtues.

Some Democrats may dismiss The War on the West as yet another conspiracy theory from the right. Many more may conclude, with the usual self-righteousness and condescension, that they are fighting it for the right side of history. But I am convinced if they do not change course and tactics, they will continue to lose this war—and more elections in the years to come.

Marco Nie, Wilmette

November 30th, 2024

If J.D. Vance were not a candidate for the US vice presidency in this election cycle, I would never have read his famed memoir by now.  Memoirs are not among my favorite genres, and reading one written by a 30-year-old Yale Law alumnus turned venture capitalist seemed like a waste of time.   Don’t get me wrong—I have no doubt that someone with Vance’s résumé is smart, ambitious, and hard-working, and their life may even be interesting.  However, stories of such prodigies are abundant in this country, thanks to popular culture’s obsession with them. While these successes are well-deserved and respectable, they hardly inspire any curiosity or excitement in me.

Now that Vance is on the ticket for the highest office in the land, paired with the most controversial and divisive politician in generations, his memoir suddenly becomes a window into his inner world—his beliefs, values, and preferences that could profoundly shape the future of this country.    My interest was also piqued because Vance was known for his anti-Trump stances—he famously compared his current running mate to Hitler. Would his book reveal any clues about his 180-degree turn on Trump? Was his change of heart simply political expediency or the result of some sort of epiphany? In any case, I felt this was a book I needed to read, even if I did not want to.

Given my relatively low expectations, Vance’s book was a surprisingly smooth and thought-provoking read.  As a competent writer, he knows how to command the attention of the reader through storytelling.  I was never bored, partly because the lives of hillbillies—white working-class people from rural, mountainous regions of the United States—feel so alien to me. Of course, I’ve heard about the “white working-class,” but never before had I been brought so close to the vivid details of their day-to-day lives.

Vance’s maternal grandparents were from Appalachian Kentucky, which they left for the Midwest at a young age. Vance speculates that his grandmother’s unexpected teenage pregnancy may have hastened their departure. However, they were largely part of a broader wave of Appalachian people migrating to America’s industrial heartland in search of better opportunities.   The young couple settled in Middletown, Ohio, where Vance’s grandfather secured a blue-collar job in the steel industry, which, in those good old days, paid well enough to support a middle-class family.

Vance’s mom was a good student in high school—even the salutatorian, according to the book. However, her life was derailed after she became a single teenage mother.  Following her first unsuccessful marriage, she married a few other men and dated many more, but gave birth to only one more child, the lucky J.D.  The central plot of the book revolves around how young Vance grew up with a mother who led a tragically chaotic life and was rarely able to provide him with anything resembling a normal home.   He never had a stable father figure—the introduction of a new father to the home always brought an escalating series of dramas that ended with the disintegration of the family.  Mostly, the destructive force seemed to come from Mom—at least that’s the impression one gets from reading the book. Here is how Vance described one of the episodes unfolding after Mom moved in with Matt, one of her boyfriends (or husbands, it’s not entirely clear).

Living with Mom and Matt was like having a front-row seat to the end of the world. The fighting was relatively normal by my standards (and Mom’s), but I’m sure poor Matt kept asking himself how and when he’d hopped the express train to crazy town. It was just the three of us in that house, and it was clear to all that it wouldn’t work out. It was only a matter of time.

Vance was deeply troubled by his mother’s “revolving door of father figures”—it must have felt like a disgrace that tainted the honor of the extended family.  He recalled being set off by a Facebook post from a 13-year-old girl pleading with her mother to stop changing boyfriends. Sympathizing with the young girl, Vance lamented,

for seven long years, I just wanted it to stop. I didn’t care so much about the fighting, the screaming, or even the drugs. I just wanted a home, and I wanted to stay there, and I wanted these goddamned strangers to stay the fuck out.

It wasn’t just boyfriends and drugs. Mom once threatened to kill him by crashing the car they were riding in, forcing Vance to flee while she pursued him in a rage. The ordeal ended only when the police came to take her into custody. I paused for a long time after reading about this horrifying event, trying to imagine how I would have coped as an 11-year-old boy in that situation—I’m not sure I would ever fully recover from such trauma.

After the incident, Vance struck a deal with Mom: he lied to the judge to keep her out of jail, and she agreed to let him decide where he wanted to live. In the ensuing years, Vance would live briefly with his biological father, then with his half-sister Lindsay on and off (while his mother was either in treatment centers or otherwise unable to care for them), and finally with his grandma—the Mamaw—after the freshman year in high school.

The constantly shifting family structure and endless domestic violence Vance endured in his youth must have left an indelible mark on his psyche.  Even as an adult, he regularly has nightmares in which Mom is the monster chasing him in a treehouse.   He writes that he “used words as weapons”, because he had to survive in a world where “disagreements were war”.    He had to fight hard to control the “demons” within him, feeling they were “as much an inheritance as his blue eyes and brown hair.”

Sociologists have shown that children experiencing such family instability often face severe developmental challenges.   According to Vance, he would have succumbed to them had it not been for Mamaw and his sister Lindsay, who provided him with a semblance of stability and much-needed emotional and material support when he needed them most.  Mamaw was his savior, protector and hero. Without her, Vance would probably never have made it out of Middletown, let alone earned a J.D. from Yale and become a disciple of Peter Thiel.  Looking back at his high school years, Vance wrote,

Those three years with Mamaw—uninterrupted and alone—saved me. I didn’t notice the causality of the change, how living with her turned my life around. I didn’t notice that my grades began to improve immediately after I moved in.

Yes, the book is about a poor kid achieving the American dream despite the odds stacked against him.  The young author can be forgiven for wanting to brag about it—his achievements do seem like a small miracle when you realize how close he was to complete ruin. However, the book is also about more than that.

Vance tries to generalize his lived experiences—his struggles as well as his triumphs—to those of his neighbors in Middletown, of hillbillies, and more broadly, of the white working class. He notes that many families in these groups faced similar problems. In fact, his grandparents had their fair share of domestic violence and alcoholism.  To help understand the nature of the violence, it is worth noting that Mamaw once tried to kill her husband by literally setting him on fire after he broke his promise to never get drunk again.

Vance describes his communities as a world of “truly irrational behavior.”  Wherever he looked, he saw only desolation, indolence, and cynicism. But who or what is responsible for the predicament of his people?

It appears that Vance has been pondering this question since his teenage years. While the book is, to some extent, an effort to seek answers, it is by no means a formal and comprehensive analysis. Instead, his thoughts are scattered throughout the book, often presented as spontaneous rants inspired by some random anecdotes. His opinions are nuanced—remarkably so for a writer in his thirties.

To Vance, the hillbilly elegy is, above all, an economic story. In the booming postwar era, vibrant communities sprang up around manufacturing centers in what is now America’s infamous Rust Belt. Yet, these communities, heavily reliant on specific well-compensated blue-collar jobs, were inherently fragile and vulnerable to disruption. When those jobs were lost to globalization and technological advancements, workers and their families faced drastic lifestyle adjustments. Those unable to adjust—often people without advanced degrees or resources—became the “truly disadvantaged.” They found themselves trapped in communities where meaningful social support is scarce. These people were Vance’s family, neighbors, classmates, and friends.

As economically disadvantaged as the hillbillies might be, Vance argues that their conditions are further worsened by several cultural and psychological traits.

The first of these traits is the belief that one’s choices and efforts don’t matter. According to Vance, hillbillies often assume those who “make it” are either naturally gifted or born into wealth and influence. In this view, hard work is not nearly as important. Vance, once influenced by this mindset himself, vehemently rejects it. Before joining the Navy, he doubted whether he had what it took to succeed, even as Mamaw insisted he was destined for something great. Only after enduring Marine Corps boot camp and excelling as a military journalist did he realize that he had been consistently “underselling” himself, mistaking a lack of effort for inability.

Vance urges hillbillies to take personal responsibility for their failures and to stop making excuses. A case in point is Mom. Although Vance acknowledges that genetics and upbringing may have contributed to her substance abuse and erratic behavior, he also believes she bears much of the responsibility. No one, he argues, should be granted “a perpetual moral get-out-of-jail-free card.”

Hillbillies share a deep-seated skepticism toward institutions: news media and politicians are seen as incessant liars, and universities, especially elite ones, are believed to be rigged against their children. This distrust reinforces a sense of helplessness and discourages engagement with society. The logic seems clear: if the path forward is blocked by liars and grifters, why try at all?  To his credit, Vance holds modern conservatism accountable for failing its “biggest constituent.” He writes, “Instead of encouraging engagement, conservatives increasingly foment the kind of detachment that has sapped the ambition of so many of my peers.” According to Vance, it’s the message of the right—that “it’s your government’s fault you’re a loser”—that has planted seeds of cynicism and despair in these communities.

Hillbilly families also have a massive parenting problem. Teachers feel powerless to help their students succeed in school because, as one teacher allegedly told Vance, these kids are “raised by wolves” at home. The cause of poor parenting, it seems, has more to do with culture than economics.  Even for those who do live in poverty, their basic material needs—food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and school supplies—are rarely at risk.  Mom always made sure Vance and Lindsay had the “trendiest Christmas gifts,” even if it meant spending money she didn’t have.  And Mom seems not alone in her desire to indulge her children’s craving for extravagant gifts. What seems lacking is a fundamental appreciation for raising kids to become educated, responsible individuals. Their actions ultimately harm the children, but they don’t care enough to change course.  As Vance observed,

We don’t study as children, and we don’t make our kids study when we’re parents. Our kids perform poorly in school. We might get angry with them, but we never give them the tools to succeed.

Are there solutions to the problems in these communities? Vance didn’t think so, especially not in the form “a magical public policy or an innovative government program.”  Public policy can help, he writes, “but there is no government that can fix these problems for us.”  In fact, Vance frequently points out—like a true conservative—how government intervention can make bad problems worse. His greatest frustration appears to be with welfare.   He describes, often with exasperation, instances like a neighbor who has never worked a day in her life but unabashedly complains about other welfare recipients abusing the system; or a jobless, drug-addicted acquaintance who often buys T-bone steaks at a grocer, which Vance could not afford while working part-time at the same grocer.

To Vance, the welfare system not only rewards and perpetuates indolence but also creates resentment among those who work hard to earn an honest living. He argues that welfare is one of the main reasons “Appalachia and the South went from staunchly Democratic to staunchly Republican in less than a generation.” His objections feel passionate and authentic, though a bit ironic, given that both he and Mamaw were once welfare recipients themselves.

Vance urged hillbillies to stop “blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies” and to start asking themselves what they can do to make things better. But how? Vance admitted he didn’t have answers. However, he did suggest that his people might look to coastal elites—the new friends he made at Yale and in Silicon Valley—as potential role models, because

their children are happier and healthier, their divorce rates lower, their church attendance higher, their lives longer. These people are beating us at our own damned game.

If memory serves me well, the book never mentions Trump by name, so we don’t actually know what Vance thought of him back then.   That said, Vance the VP candidate is no longer the young Silicon Valley investor who wrote Hillbilly Elegy nearly a decade ago.  He has now enthusiastically embraced much of the MAGA agenda. He converted to Catholicism not long ago, reviving his once abandoned career as a devout Chrisitan.  He speaks fondly of government-imposed tariffs as if it is a panacea to the economic plight of the American working class. On social issues, he remains staunchly conservative—pro-life, pro-family, pious and patriotic.  I am sure many progressives find Vance unbearably repulsive: the sleazy, heartless spin of January 6, the adamant opposition to abortion rights, the sexist slur of “childless cat lady”, and the list goes on.   However, if you read Hillbilly Elegy, you can at least understand the origins of his politics and behaviors:  he was trained, as a child, to weaponize words to win petty battles, he longed for families where kids enjoy safety and stability, and he hated women who mistreat their children.

By now, I’ve listened to many of Vance’s interviews, with both friendly and hostile hosts. It’s clear to me that he possesses a talent rare even among politicians: the power of persuasion. His performance at the Vice-Presidential Debate was nothing short of a political masterpiece, a testament to his extraordinary abilities. He was attentive, respectful, articulate, and persuasive, yet he also conveyed a strong sense of fortitude and conviction. His countenance and tone remained steady throughout, projecting a stoic image remarkably mature for his age—I think that is a gift from his troubled upbringing.

Whatever happens next week, I have my fingers crossed that this man may use his political genius for the good of the American people.

Marco Nie, 11/2/2024

David Boyce and Huw Williams are both esteemed transportation scholars, each with their distinct areas of expertise. With their long and distinguished careers closely intertwined with the development of travel forecasting as an intellectual discipline, it is only fitting that they have chosen to write a book about its past, present and future.

I know Professor Boyce well. My master’s advisor, Professor Der-Horng Lee at the National University of Singapore, studied under Boyce while pursuing his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Lee’s own master’s advisor, Huey-Kuo Chen from Taiwan’s Central University, was also one of Boyce’s doctoral students during his tenure at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This means I am either Boyce’s academic grandchild, or great grandchild, depending on how you count. Thanks to Lee I was well aware of this academic lineage even before I came to the U.S. in the early 2000s. When I joined Northwestern University as an Assistant Professor in 2006, Boyce was serving his alma mater by teaching transportation system courses as an adjunct professor. It took me a while to process the surreal news that I would now be a colleague of my academic forebear.

During my first meeting with Boyce in Evanston, IL, I learned about his joint book project with Williams, which had already been in progress for several years. The book was an ambitious and intriguing endeavor aimed at reflecting on the achievements, missteps, and challenges in our field. It was finally published in 2015, nearly 12 years after they began the project. Shortly afterward, I was asked to oversee the translation of the book into Chinese, a project that would take another five years. Through this process, I had to read the book cover to cover — and between the lines — several times, ensuring I understood every word and phrase. It was a time-consuming and occasionally frustrating task, to be sure, but a rewarding learning experience nonetheless. Ultimately, it is this rare opportunity that inspired me to share in this essay what I learned from the book and the insights it brought to light.

You may find a preprint of the paper at ssrn. Also check the following podcast automatically generated by Notebook LM  based on a PDF of the paper I fed to it.

I was attracted to A Culture of Growth because I heard the book provides answers to the Needham question (李约瑟难题), namely why China, despite its early and significant achievements in technology, fell so far behind the West during the critical developmental phases of modern science.  Until I opened the book, I didn’t realize it was written by a Northwestern economist, Joel Mokyr, whom a friend in the economics department described as a leading authority on economic history.

Although Mokyr addresses the Needham question extensively in the final chapter, the book is neither motivated by nor primarily focused on that question.  Quite the contrary—if you read the book closely, you can’t miss Mokyr’s dismissal of the question itself. To him, what begs the question isn’t why China—or any other civilization, for that matter—failed to invent modern science, but rather why Europe succeeded. The book is devoted to providing an explanation.

Mokyr’s theory builds on Cardwell’s Law, which states that technological innovation tends to slow down or stagnate once an organization, economy, or civilization reaches a peak accomplishment. The stagnation occurs because the beneficiaries of the status quo become complacent and resist major creative disruptions that could threaten their dominance. Crucially, they often have the power to “suppress further challenges to entrenched knowledge” by either incentivizing would-be challengers to do their biddings or persecuting them as heretics.

How did Europe manage to break the spell of Cardwell’s Law? Mokyr attributed this success to Europe’s “fortunate condition that combined political fragmentation with cultural unity.” This unique environment gave rise to what he called a “Republic of Letters,” a loosely connected federation where intellectuals could freely exchange, contest, refine, and publish ideas across the borders of competing polities. This republic, along with the “market of ideas” it nurtured, rose gradually after the Middle Ages.

Europeans, following Bacon, began to recognize that knowledge could and should be harnessed for society’s material benefit, and that its creation, dissemination, and utilization should be a collective effort.  That is not to say the Republic of Letters was brought about by any concerted effort. Often motivated by the pursuit of lucrative patronage positions, the founding members of the republic sought to build strong reputations among their peers. This motive, in turn, pushed them to support free access to knowledge and uphold the right to challenge any idea, regardless of its origin.

The republic had no inherent hierarchy, except for the one that naturally emerged through fierce but largely free competition for peer recognition, based on a shared understanding of what constitutes merit.   Scholars who rose to the top of the pecking order often did fabulously well for themselves, attracting a “disproportionate amount of fame and patronage.”   They also became recruitment tools for the Republic of Letters and role models for future generations.  Newton was one such superstar whose influence as a model scientist is hard to overstate.  Mokyr wrote of Newton,

he was knighted, elected to Parliament, and became quite wealthy. In 1727 he was given a splendid funeral and interned in a prominent place in Westminster Abbey. Voltaire remarked that he was buried like a well-loved king.

Once the market of ideas took shape, it was sustained by Europe’s favorable geopolitical conditions.   On the one hand, political fragmentation meant that neither scholars nor their patrons could easily monopolize the market of ideas by blocking the entry of potential competitors or buying them off. Incumbents quickly realized that such maneuvers only pushed innovation into the hands of their rivals, ultimately undermining their own competitive advantage.   On the other hand, cultural unity allowed knowledge production and dissemination to benefit from scale. From an economic perspective, scale reduces the fixed costs of production, which is key to profitability and financial viability. It also created a network effect, meaning that scientists could learn from a relatively large pool of peers—standing on the shoulders of many giants, as Newton famously put it.

Mokyr’s “culture of growth” matured during the Enlightenment, an intellectual and cultural movement that promoted the progressive improvement of society through the expansion and application of useful knowledge, while advocating for more inclusive political institutions. In hindsight, it was clear why the Enlightenment played such a pivotal role in Mokyr’s theorization: it was the precursor to the Industrial Revolution, which triggered an unprecedented phase of economic growth that lifted much of humanity above subsistence living standards.

An interesting aspect of Mokyr’s theory is its focus on what he calls cultural entrepreneurs—or thought leaders, in today’s parlance—who played an outsized role in the evolution of the culture of growth. Mokyr believed that useful knowledge was created by “a minute percentage of the population” whose primary occupation is, in Adam Smith’s words, “to think and or to reason” for “the vast multitudes that labour.”  In fact,

 what the large majority of workers and peasants knew or believed mattered little as long as there were enough of them to do what they were told by those who knew more.

While Mokyr’s assessment is supported by historical evidence, I imagine many would find such an unapologetically elitist view of cultural development difficult to accept. For me, it feels almost antithetical: growing up in China, my history and political science teachers repeatedly taught, with absolute certainty, that it was proletariats who, through class struggle, drove societal progress and historical development.

Mokyr’s theory can explain why China experienced a burst of intellectual development during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770 – 221 BCE).  There are striking similarities between the geopolitical conditions of China in this classical era and those of Europe after the High Middle Ages: numerous relatively small states engaged in intense and perpetual competition for dominance, a vast territory with diverse terrain, and a shared cultural tradition including language, institutions, and faith.  Many cultural entrepreneurs—collectively known as “Hundred Schools of Thought”—emerged at this time and left indelible marks on the Chinese Literary Canon.  Like their European counterparts nearly two millennia later, these intellectuals built their reputations by creating and sharing knowledge, and when opportunities arose, they happily crossed the borders of rivalry states to seek more profitable employment for their skills.

As mentioned earlier, in Europe, the greatest achievement of the market of ideas was the Enlightenment. In China, however, a similar market of ideas culminated in a political philosophy that blended Confucianism and Legalism—what I shall refer to as “Confuleg” for lack of a better term (in Chinese, 儒法, or more precisely儒表法里).

Confuleg went on to become the political philosophy that underpinned the key institutions of the Qin-Han Empire, the first to truly unify what is now China under a powerful and centralized state. In the ancient world, this was a towering achievement—socially, politically, and economically. In fact, the state model based on Confuleg was so successful that one could argue, to some extent, China still operates in its long shadow even today.  However, Confuleg’s ascent to hegemony in China was effectively a death sentence for the market of idea.

Since the Qin-Han empire, China has seen dynastic succession once a few hundred years, each usually accompanied by an extended period of turmoil, violence and destruction.

When China is ruled by a centralized state, the Republic of Letters cannot survive, as Mokry’s theory predicts.  Since the best employment opportunity for intellectuals could only be found in the state’s bureaucratic system, producing new knowledge or earning a reputation among peers no longer promises financial security.  Instead, survival requires pledging allegiance to the state (i.e., the emperor himself), internalizing the principles of Confleg as one’s own beliefs and values, and excelling the exams designed to test the ability to memorize and interpret classical texts.   More importantly, the state does not tolerate any competition with its monopoly over ideas.  Questioning the state-sanctioned ideology is viewed not only as heresy but as an act of treason, often carrying the gravest of consequences.

When the centralized state collapsed, one might expect that the ensuing chaos and factional warfare would create an environment favorable for a thriving market of ideas. After all, isn’t that exactly what happened during the Warring States period? Not quite.    The Chinese Canon maintained its powerful grip on intellectuals through these turbulent times. It even survived the brutal and repressive Mongol rule, which lasted nearly a century.  Why?

David Hume (1711 – 1776) observed that few Chinese after the classical period had courage to “dispute what had been universally received by their ancestors.”  John Stewart Mill (1806 – 1873) echoed this view, noting that Chinese tended to “govern their thoughts and conduct by the same maxims and rules,” and as a result (emphasis mine),

they have become stationary—have remained so for thousands of years; and if they are ever to be farther improved, it must be by foreigners.

Today, these words may sound condescending, if not outright discriminatory. However, I often wonder what China might be like today had Westerners never forced their way in. Would it still more or less resemble the world under the reign of Emperor Qianlong in the late 1700s?

Beyond conformity to the same maxims, most Chinese thinkers shared a peculiar, pessimistic nostalgia for a world once ideal and perfect but irretrievably lost. Mokyr identified this trait among the Neo-Confucians—the followers of Cheng Hao, Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming—who dominated the intellectual world during the Ming dynasty.  These scholars regarded antiquity, Mokyr wrote, as “the ideal period, followed by a decline, with no guarantee that the world would ever be better.”   However, the mindset did not originate form Neo-Confucians; it can be traced back to Confucius himself, who lamented the disintegration of the Western Zhou institutions he regarded as ideal, writing

Zhou observed the two preceding dynasties, flourishing with culture and refinement! I follow the Zhou. (周监于二代，郁郁乎文哉！吾从周)

It is hardly surprising that such an inherently backward-looking worldview would become an obstacle to new ideas.

What does Mokyr’s theory suggest about the future of innovation in human society?

The Republic of Letters that once thrived in pre-industrial Europe has long since disappeared, replaced by a vast scientific enterprise supported by a plethora of public and private institutions. However, some key principles from the old republic remain.

First, freedom of expression is still a foundational value. In universities, this is institutionalized through tenure, ensuring that professors’ livelihoods are protected from those who dislike their ideas. Second, a scholar’s value continues to be largely determined by their reputation among peers. This is why peer review, whether for publications or grants, remains the gold standard in academia, despite frequent criticisms of inefficiency, inconsistency, and unfairness.

The value of the science enterprise as an indispensable pillar of modern soceity is almost universally recognized today. Thanks to globalization, science has truly become a global affair: ideas, money, and scholars can now move freely across borders.   This all sounds uplifting until you realize where innovations are first made and adopted still matters a lot.  As Chris Miller explained in Chip War, leadership in science and technology has been the cornerstone of America’s national security strategy.   Until recently, the open science enterprise has served this strategy pretty well.

From pioneering semiconductors to exploring space, from mapping the human genome to advancing artificial general intelligence, the U.S. has consistently led the way. While much of this success can be attributed to America’s global hegemony, her strong commitment to the core values of liberal democracy—free speech, property rights, and limited government—must have also played a crucial role, according to Mokyr’s theory.

The meteoric rise of China apparently has shaken America’s faith in open science.  Reasonable people can disagree on the nature of the current Chinese regime; but few can claim with a straight face that Chinese citizens enjoy much political freedom, as the term is usually understood in the West.  The Chinese do not elect their leaders through open and free elections; their speech is tightly monitored and censored; and they are largely ruled by law, rather than being protected by the rule of law.  In theory, such an environment should be hostile to the market of ideas, hence innovations.

Yet, China has made remarkable strides in science and technology since the turn of the century. By 2025, China is projected to produce nearly twice as many STEM PhD graduates annually as the U.S.  In 2022, Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific publishers, reported that China had surpassed the U.S. to claim the top spot in the Nature Index for natural sciences. Additionally, a recent report indicated that by 2024, China was home to 369 unicorn startups (compared to about 700 in the U.S.), with nearly a quarter focused on AI and semiconductor sectors. Companies like Huawei have become such formidable tech giants that Chris Miller asks nervously in Chip War: “Could the United States allow a Chinese company like this to succeed?”

China’s rapid advances in science and technology raise a fascinating question that Mokyr’s theory seems unable to fully address: can innovation flourish and economic growth be sustained under an authoritarian regime like modern-day China?

If China were isolated from the global science enterprise, I would respond with a resounding “NO.” History has shown that when intellectuals are not allowed to freely speak their minds—as seems to be the case in China today—the market of ideas withers, dragging down opportunities for creative disruption and sustained economic growth.  However, could China simply grab the fruits produced by the global science enterprise, without ever having to maintain a thriving market of ideas of her own?  Could Chinese intellectuals and entrepreneurs continue to be creative and productive in advancing science and technology, even while their other rights, including freedom of speech, are severely impaired?

These are open questions.  However, the U.S., understandably anxious about her security, is not taking any chances. In recent years, she has taken drastic steps to restrict China’s access to cutting-edge technology and to limit interactions between the scientific communities of the two nations, particularly in areas with potential national security implications.   It is disheartening to see the leader of the free world openly retreating from a foundational principle of that world: that science should be freely accessible to all for progress and prosperity.   America’s China Initiative may also lend credibility to the popular narrative of Chinese nationalists that the so-called Westerns values are mere disguise for self-interests –– or worse, deep-seated racism against non-white people.

It is too early to determine whether America’s isolation measures will be effective, or even necessary, in curbing China’s ambition to lead global innovation in the coming century. What we can say with some certainty is that a less open science enterprise will be less vibrant and productive, and likely a less desirable place for scholars, especially those who are stuck between a rock and a hard place.  Politicians and strategists who support the China Initiative argue that this is a price worth paying to protect our freedoms and uphold the liberal world order. Only time will tell if they are right.

Marco Nie， Wilmette

September 22， 2024