I find myself somehow charmed by this no-room-for-satirization Austin Bramwell post. It perfectly exemplifies the quaint essence of elite American conservatism: a sense of grievance at the loss of exclusive WASP folkways.
For the well-heeled, perhaps the biggest problem with economic growth is that eventually one is forced to compete with the hoi polloi for non-manufacturable goods. In this example, to avoid entirely the snowboarding philistines, one ends up having to own a mountain. But in what kind of damnable world must a Yale man be that rich in order to carve virgin powder?
I feel Bramwell’s circle and its habits should be the subject of a careful ethnography, or declared endangered and legally protected, before all is lost. Perhaps he could be placed in a handsome diorama on weekends, so that snowboarding American slobs can contemplate first-hand just how much gracious living their vulgar appetites have displaced.
I love this so much, I can't think of what to say.
To me, one of the great unwritten stories of the boom 2000s was the regression of the elite university back towards insiderism and class stratification. It's impossible to pin down exactly, and there's precious little data, of course, as the universities would be the only ones capable of accumulating it and have a vested interest in not doing so. But it has been casually understood around the academy that as there has been more and more disposable wealth among the financial elite, there's been a swerve back towards elite/Ivy colleges as training grounds for the moneyed class. That never really fully stopped being the case, of course, but many significant gains were made. The last decade or so has seen a regression. The amount of money involved, and the number of legacy admissions, are staggering. (Legacy being generally defined not just as those with family member who are alums but also those who made “donations” to the specific universities.)
I've written at some length at my own blog about the financial and cultural realities that pushed universities to spend more and more, and thus seek more and more money in donations. That practice put enormous pressure on admissions departments to pay the piper. There's always a quid pro quo, and though the university publicly shuns these things, everyone knows how the game works. (Pretty much anyone involved in the financial arms of universities will have some unsubstantiated story about dollar figures literally being quoted to prompt admission.) So the number of legacy admissions grew to keep the endowment growing, and college admissions being zero sum, it inevitably pushed admissions away from meritocracy and towards the old system of elite privilege that the university has never quite left behind.
Why am I bringing this up here? Because I think it's part and parcel with what you're talking about in Bramwell's post. As the amount of money in the top echelons grew to such dizzying amounts, you had the old problem where material consumption is no longer a meaningful sorting mechanism. And, in fact, people just literally run out of things to buy that satisfy their urge to spend. When that happens, I suspect that many people start to desire the kind of consumption-independent sorting mechanisms of rigid class and aristocracy. I think there's a kernel of that in Bramwell's indignation; it's another lost WASPy folkway. Aristocracy, though, is a bit more manufacturable than mountains to ski on are. College is one of the easiest and most obvious vehicles to recreate it. And it's self-perpetuating. The more that elite education becomes the province of the moneyed elite, the more status there is in your kid being there, and the more desire people have to buy their kids in.
The key is that people think you can't buy your way into an elite education, even though you can. And that's everyone's favorite kind of aristocracy: the kind that people imagine is the product of merit. It's kind of a two-for-one: my kid goes here, so he's not one of those, and by the way, he's here because he's a genius.
Of course, now so much of that disposable wealth is gone, and wouldn't you know it, everyone you turn, plans for brand new science towers and tennis courts are getting put on ice….
I'm not sure this is fair. I agree that this is a conservative impulse, but not necessarily politically conservative.
The left hates to see its favored patterns disrupted, too.
Just look at how much they hate Walmart stores, suburban sprawl, fastfood restaurants, and practically any kind of development.
It's very common for people to view thier own preferences as privileged and others' as destructive. Especially when theirs came first. There are elitists on both sides.
And, on issues like these, the left is more likely to impose its preferences coercively via the state.
i thought it was a very fine post. in any case, you should interview mr. bramwell on free will. i think it would be quite amusing….
Will, I think you may be looking for this.
I think this is unfair. As Mr. Bramwell points out, skiing and snowboarding are in many ways incompatable. I don't sense snobbery in Bramwell's rant, but a love of a certain sport. This is akin to conflict between hikers and mountain bikers for the same trails; this sort of conflict is ubiquitous in public areas in the West.
And it is not as if snowboarders are some kind of “hoi polloi” in contrast to “Yalie” skiers. Both skiing and snowboarding are pastimes of the relatively affluent.
The difference is that ski areas are commercial enterprises. As a skier, I tolerate (barely) snowboarders because I know that many mountains could not stay in business without them. Also, I appreciate the minority of snowboarders who practice the kind of etiquette that makes it possible for many people to share a mountain (this has nothing to do with class or politics) instead of pushing an agressive, faux “bad boy” attitude that is uncivil in the extreme.
Very droll! I respond here: http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower#2543.
Matt is correct that my central point is that snowboarders and skiers compete with each other for scarce common resources — it's not a matter of class or ethnic conflict at all. However, for the record, I can see how my talk of “ancien regime,” vandals and the like made Wilkinson's reading a plausible one.
I nominate Whit Stillman for doing the history.
I second Matt's point. The difference between a skier and a snowboarder is essentially an aesthetic choice, neither of which I can afford at the moment, which produces a chuckle at the “old white men” canard invoked by the snowboarders in the article.
I think WASP aristocracy, as I touched on in a comment in some other post, generally laments the democratization of certain cultural institutions and former indicators of wealth. This is why the idea of naked capitalism, the vehicle for mass prosperity is such a vile concept – it represents the mode by which the articles of class and distinction become indistinguishable from the accessories of the lumpenproletariat.
Enough of this foolishness. The endangered species we should be caring about is the paleoconservative. If only we could a mating pair…
Objectivist Dating: http://www.theatlasphere.com/dating/index.php?p…
Close enough, eh?
I guess not. After all, to compromise one's principles is immoral, especially in the selection of a lover, whose compatibility is based upon intellectual respect ONLY! … That and a nice rack.
As a mostly skier and sometime snowboarder, I must add the snowboarding on powder is the absolute best. But if you happen to be skiing that day, then snowboarders suck because they scrape way more powder off the mountain per run than do skiers.
This is the best comment I've read in a long long time
look, all i know is that the hardest part about being a rollerblader is telling your dad you're gay. especially if he happens to be a skier, those guys are nazis.
Isn't this just an age/generation thing? How many 55 year old snowboarders do you see? Its basically older upper income elite (and I can say that because I am one) expressing disdain on younger (and “cooler”) upper income elite.
Similar to footbal/arena football and boxing/ultimate fighting “discussion”.
Oh and in the video, they both were at fault.
“the demands of the impudent” sez Austin
I have always been of opinion, that the complaints againft Providence have been ill-grounded, and that the good or bad qualities of men are the caufes of their good or bad fortune, more than what is generally imagined.
I muft, however, confefs, that this rule admits of an exception with regard to one moral quality; and that Modefty has a natural tendency to conceal a man's talents, as Impudence difplays them to the utmoft, and has been the only caufe why many have rifen in the world, under all the difadvantages of low birth and little merit. . .Mankind, wherever they fee Impudence, make account of Virtue and Wifdom; but wherever they obferve Modesty, ftrangely call her attendants Vice and Folly.
– On Impudence & Modefty, Solomon Hodgson, 1799
I find it hard to find what the Mr. Wilkinson finds objectionable about this. Does Bramwell call for government intervention? No. In fact he praises the private companies which are keeping their slopes
And it seems to me that Snowboarders are just about as WASP or non-WASP as skiers. In Southern California, we do see a lot of 'Asians' on the slopes but I'd say that if anything their proportionately more likely to ski than snowboard
The real ethnographic research should be into why people like Wilkinson (pretty WASP sounding that!) hate themselves, their ancestors, and their own culture so much. Number two would be why Libertarianism attracts people whose ancestors hail from Northwest Europe and just about no one else. There's a great sociobiology paper in there somewhere.
Austin:
The real issue, sadly, is climate change. There is less snow in Colorado for example than there used to be. There is less snow in the Alps than there used to be. Precipitation patterns the world over are changing, and this has made, and will make, snow even more of a battleground. Many ski areas will be forced to close, and others will have to move higher.
Last February I met the climate change manager for the city of Aspen. She described how she believed they already had about 20 days less snow than they used to and described actually trying to come up with a a space blanket that would cover the snow to keep it from melting – to keep snow into the summer! They are struggling to save snow.
If you are concerned with plenty of primo powder, what are you doing about climate change, so there will be enough snow for skiiers and snowboarders alike?
oedipus, a very disproportionate number of libertarians are of Jewish descent, or in other words from Central and (probably to a greater extent) or Eastern Europe.
Considering the disproportionate number of Jews in the 'public intellectual' and chattering classes, I think you are wrong, TGGP. Yes there is Murray Rothbard and (sort of) Milton Friedman). But they are dead. Now look at the masthead of 'Reason' for instance, and there are a lot of names like Cavanaugh, Wilkinson, Howley, Gillespie (sp?), Welch, etc. Now go over to, say, Slate — a conventional leftist site — the difference is striking, to say the least. Even their WASP sounding writers turn out to be Jews (Dahlia Lithwick — who knew? — has just posted a thinly disguised kvetch about how terrible it is to have to suffer yet another Christmas in America) And look at how they describe how to pronounce the governor of Illinois's name.
Bluh-GOY-uh-vich
Last Name Pronounced: “Bluh-GOY-uh-vich”
I meant disproportionate compared to share of population rather than of intellectuals. So we can also say that disproportionately few racial minorities are libertarians, which would fit with your point.
In Brian Dougherty's “Radicals for Capitalism” he notes that of the Big Five, only Hayek was not Jewish. Milton Friedman is not “sort of”, he's practically synonymous with libertarianism among the general public. Aside from him, Rothbard, Mises and Rand there's Rothbard's successor as “Mr. Libertarian” Walter Block, David Gordon and Israel Kirzner (both practicing Orthodox Jewish Austrian economists, with Kirzner also a rabbi), George Reisman, Daniel Klein, Steve Horwitz, Richard Epstein, probably over half the bloggers at Volokh, Arnold Kling, half of Bryan Caplan (though his dad was religiously a Catholic), Murray Sabrin, Sheldon Richman, Andrew Galambos, Frank Chodorov, Thomas Szasz, Robert Nozick and hordes of others.
I live in Illinois and that really is how his name is pronounced
The bit about Milorad Blagojevic was tongue-in-cheek, I had hoped that was obvious, although as someone who speaks Serbian/Croatian I'd pronounce it Blagojević, with the 'j' as in German and the vowels like in Italian or Spanish and the accent on the second syllable. No 'uh's' in there at all.
I've always found it interesting how few blacks are libertarian. Or, more accurately, how many blacks despite the overwhelming history suggesting otherwise think concentration of power & majority absolutism aren't terrible things in and of themselves.
Before anyone barks, I'm black. Yes, a black anarchist, the socio-political equivalent of a friggin unicorn.
Will, good eye on this. It reminds me of an article I read back when Dale Earnhardt died and Nascar fans gathered in mass in DC to honor him. I think it was in the American Spectator, but I am not sure. The article was a rant by a female DC elitist who was just horrified to have the unwashed southern savages in her city. The utter disdain and snobbery, and warning people to beware on the roads as the Nascar fans would surely bump them off the road with a will, was stunning.
You are right, they are an endangered class and the archivists best get to work before they are gone, or we will be doomed to forget them.
Can someone explain to me why, in the United States, the ethnic-religous designator “WASP” has become a class designator. It is true that, prior to 1960, almost all of the American elite were WASP, but it hardly follows that most WASPS were elite. Now, neither inference is a particularly good one. On TV, the stereotypical working class or underclass white is WASP or from New Jersey.
Um Pithlord this is so awkward. But here on Flybottle we can be factual, not PC, right?
Frankly to be WASP is to Episcopalian. Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, and Presbyterians need not apply, ok? “Anglo-Saxon Protestant” = Anglican.
Let us note that according to Duke's Lisa Keister, 12% of Episcopalian households are millionaires. 8% of Congressmen also ID as Episcopalian. This despite the fact Episcopalians form only 1.7% of the American population.
We can compare this to Jews. Jews likewise are less than 2% of the population, and yet 18% of their households are millionaires. About 8.5% of Congresspeople ID as Jews. And more than 35% of American Nobel prizes have been won by Jews.
These two groups clearly are wealthier and more influential than their mere numbers would suggest.
We could ask why. But that would be socially divisive. It could be an argument for an estate tax or a study in social networking and scholarship grants. You guys pick. I won't go there.
Let's compare to Catholics. They dominate in Congress; approx. 29% of Congressmen ID as Catholic. Yet only 4% of Catholic households, Keister says, are millionaires. Approx. 25% of the American population IDs as Catholic. In the Northeast, 40% of the population IDs as Catholic.
Baptists are a divided group: there are Baptists and Southern Baptists, as well as other smaller groups, so it is hard to count. But about 20% of Americans overall ID as some form of Baptist. However 40% of adults in the South ID as Baptist. 18% of Congressmen ID as Baptist, so that's about equal to their proportion in the population. Keister reports only 2% of Baptist households are millionaires.
The last US census reports that 8.9 million households were millionaire overall, out of 105 million households, or about 8.5% of all Americans may have a net worth of the Mil. I'm unsure if this includes the primary residence, which it probably does.
Or you could say we have lived recently through another Gilded Age despite recent economic, um, catastrophe, one in which vast numbers of Americans have achieved the Champagne Farce lifestyle of which the Founding Fathers dreamed. Yay, us! Capitalism works.
Anyway, the so-called “Culture Wars” make so much more sense when viewed through these demographics. But now Pithlord, you also see why WASP is a class designator.
How many 55 year old snowboarders do you see?
My mum. Well, she's 60 now, but close enough.
webgrrl
Snow seems fine this year for Colorado and Europe. The “hockeystick” story isn't holding up well at the moment.
Aspen
http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20081217/NEWS…
Alps
http://www.onthesnow.com/news/a/5049/alps-repor…
Don't bet too much on the catastrophic scenarios of Climate Change. Some of the science is not as well vetted as you might imagine. If you believed in the consensus of experts, you'd have stayed long in the markets until very recently, too.
Excellent, entertaining, useful reading, Thanks !!