There's an amazing passage in I think Edgeworth going on about the insensitivity of the brutish Irish to pain. And Mill's theory of higher pleasures is not unrelated to his role in the East India Co.
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A small theory: In the modern sequence from the inegalitarian "natural" or "extractive" state to an "inclusive" or "open-access" liberal political order, those just on the outside of inclusion always use an ideology of equality to justify their claim to share in power, but...
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actually universal equality of rights and status freaks out the insiders, so those on the doorstep of inclusion *need* a way to find a basis for inequality within an ideology of equality to assure elites that letting *them* in doesn't imply letting everyone in.
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So the development of liberal egalitarianism ends up crazily schizophrenic. The refinement of an ideology of equality creates demand for new ways to limit the expanding scope of equality--for justifying new bright lines of inequality. And science turned out to be the ticket.
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So I don't think the scientific racism of the enlightenment is *all* about colonialism. I think it falls out of the domestic democratization/growth cascade, too.
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And I think that's what we're seeing NOW. We don't yet have a fully inclusive economic/political order. But because we're near the end-game, it's not feasible to justify greater equality for women and non-whites with a scope-limited insider/outsider ideology of equality.
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So the egalitarian/progressive side of liberalism has stopped supplying it's own limiting principle. Grafting new "scientific" justifications of hierarchy onto a basic liberal value, free speech, is a bid to conserve the Enlightenment tradition of gerrymandering equality.
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Replying to @willwilkinson
Not clear to me that American society is getting less hierarchical, which is why your analysis of the progressive side of things perhaps needs a little more cynicism.
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Replying to @DouthatNYT
I think I see what you're saying. But you can't doubt the gains in legal, political, economic & social standing for women and non-whites. E.g., my dad didn't face much labor market competition from women, blacks, and descendants of non-white immigrants, but my son will face tons.
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Replying to @willwilkinson
Yes (to a point) the hierarchies that privilege white men qua white men have weakened. Educational hierarchies, OTOH ...
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A lot of the rise of credentialism is a way to keep power in hands of elite. History of the British Civil Service entrance exam is good example.
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An exam introduced to replace a more or less closed recruitment system with an increasingly meritocratic approach. A good idea, basically.
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