I want to sell out after college. And you should too.
What do I mean by selling out? In my case, as of now, it means helping provide economic analysis for lawyers who represent corporations in court — otherwise known as ‘economic consulting’. The analysis offered can range from demonstrating why Google search is ‘inherently competitive’ to defending Volkswagen from allegations of consumer fraud after its infamous low-emissions scandal. And these are merely the cases that are featured on the front pages of these firms’ websites.
How can such a job not be morally objectionable? Economic consulting firms have contributed to the approval of hundreds of mergers and acquisitions that eliminate competition and quash entrepreneurship. It is not a coincidence that most of the premier economic consulting firms were started during the 80s and 90s as corporations started growing mightily. With their analysis, consolidation of corporate power became acceptable again, to the point where corporate tyranny has started existing, in the case of Google and other tech companies. Corporation after corporation comes to economic consulting firms, seeking testimony from their contracted economists that absolves them of any claims of consumer fraud, discrimination, poor labor practices, or straight-up lying to the public.
But my newsletter is not about my career aspirations nor is it about the history of a shadow industry that silently helps destroy our country, two topics that would unfortunately align. Rather it is about the collective mindset of those who possess power that make jobs like these morally justified — and how that mindset can be defeated. From the alternative mindset, economic consulting firms contribute to the welfare of us, the consumers, by feeding off of the government’s indifference towards antitrust laws. Which is good, right? Forget the fact that Facebook, this past week, censored the entire nation of Australia — isn’t it nice that Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct Messages are synced now?
It’s not solely the niche field of economic consulting. Countless other prestige jobs such as banking, management consulting, and corporate law, which I discussed extensively in a past newsletter serve similar roles in growing corporate power. Even corporations need lawyers, as Neal Katyal, Obama’s former Solicitor General, might say and for a company alleged to have profited off of child labor to be represented by anyone but the best of the best would be unconscionable!
Katyal is an anomaly, in that he went as far as arguing in front of the Supreme Court that the child laborers on cocoa plantations should not be allowed to sue corporations such as Nestle that encouraged their enslavement. Yet, most people who are important make decisions driven by the same ideology that provokes Katyal’s unbridled desire to defend the malicious acts of corporations. Think of the U.S Chamber of Commerce or the majority of the U.S Senate as examples of groups that share this ideology. An ideology, which is ambidextrous, that prides itself on pragmatism and moderation — two vague and misguided labels that mean little except for the maintenance of the status quo. A status quo that, to simplify, distrusts representative democracy and puts excessive faith in unrepresentative elites who often advocate for more centralized corporate power and government that is not lesser in size, but lesser in efficacy.
I don’t like these people if you couldn’t tell.
However, I refuse to believe that the ‘Status Quo Defenders’ as a collective group are evil and make decisions out of selfishness, in pursuit of pure profit. What many may perceive as evil, is really just a twisted method of change influenced by an ideology that often relishes privatized solutions for public problems. To me, creating change that expands opportunity and reduces inequalities does not mean wiping out the entire concept of an elite class in a Marxist rebellion or even installing a disruptive populist leader that swears they will represent the people. Nor does it mean expanding ‘Corporate Social Responsibility' programs or donating millions of dollars to nonprofits, policy think tanks, and NGOs, as the Status Quo Defenders, who occupy C-Suite positions and boards of directors, may have you believe.
Real change takes place when the ideology underlying the status quo is dismantled and defeated. Changing the minds of the Status Quo Defenders or replacing them all together is a tried and true approach to creating change.
Conflict versus Mistake Theorists
My rather tame perspective on changemaking most likely comes from my lack of boldness and deep-rooted yearning for institutional acknowledgment. I like hating on economists and lawyers with University of Chicago and Harvard educations — but it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want one. Think tanks such as the Center for American Progress, which serve as quasi-policymaking bodies, provide an army of policy wonks ready to suit up as Status Quo Defenders on CNBC — but it doesn’t stop me from applying to an internship there this summer (hope they don’t see this).
Underneath the guise of a principled, swash-buckling blogger, I am merely a hypocritical child. But my hypocrisy can be resolved and explained through understanding the dichotomous relationship between ‘conflict theorists’ and ‘mistake theorists’.
Weeks ago, the New York Times nastily unearthed the identity of the blogger behind ‘Slate Star Codex’. The blog was written by a San Francisco psychiatrist under the pseudonym Scott Alexander and covered psychology, politics, medicine, and philosophy among other topics. He has gained a dedicated following of ‘rationalists’, fellow psychiatrists, academics, and philosophy nerds and has also now moved to Substack. One of the first articles I read from him was about his theory of ‘conflict versus mistake’. It’s an easy read that goes through example after example to illustrate how to distinguish a ‘Conflict theorist’ from a ‘Mistake theorist’.
In short, a conflict theorist is your local elite-hating nihilist crusader who believes the world is so far gone that the only method to bring about change is through a unified rebellion amongst ‘The People’ against ‘The Elites.’ You can find them on 4chan message boards as well as r/communism. They believe that policy wonks and technocrats are all bought off by elites and that real change could not take place through reform because the infrastructure through which reform takes place is rigged against ‘The People’. ‘The People’ know what’s best and we should stop patronizing them. Giving them a direct path to decision-making would increase our ability to solve social and economic issues. Conflict theorists often fall (or rise?) to the ‘Us versus Them’ dynamic that I wrote a lot about in my last newsletter. And ‘Them’ often becomes the ‘Mistake theorists’.
Mistake theorists embrace intelligence and debate above all else. Democracy is fine and dandy but why listen to people who believe climate change is a hoax? To a mistake theorist, a revolution may work but what would happen after the working class has seized the means of production? If, however, advocates for a revolution had Brookings Institution write some policy briefs backed by thorough research, then maybe mistake theorists would listen to them — before the revolution took place. You can find mistake theorists on r/neoliberal (and r/socialdemocracy for the European folks who I am acting like are subscribed to me).
So where does my theory of changemaking fit in?
I share attributes from both types of theorists. My newsletters are essentially predicated on me being able to incorporate the biography of an economist, former government official from a former administration, or elite figure that I don’t like, into a broader theme about why elites suck. But on the other hand, I believe that working your way up to becoming CEO of Goldman Sachs and deleting the company is a preferable and easier pathway to change than leading a revolution or even something tamer such as a grass-roots congressional or senatorial campaign. I cheered on the Bernie Sanders campaign because of his promises to defeat Washington insiders and take on the establishment. Yet at the same time, I religiously watch House of Cards and revel at the prospect of becoming an insider and part of the ‘establishment’.
From both historical evidence and honestly an innate desire to have the following opinion, I staunchly believe in a reformist method of progress. Not by compromising, cutting deals in Congress, and checks and balances, but by more aggressive methods such as appointing the right people to the cabinet, wielding executive power, eliminating the filibuster, and even packing the courts. Learning about the UK parliamentary system, I looked positively upon the level of accountability as well as autonomy that the governing body had. Whichever party was in power, could push the policies that they were elected on forward with fewer obstacles to overcome. I don’t distrust the idea of technocrats contributing to governance. They just have to be the right technocrats. Preferably the ones who share my opinion. Kidding of course. But not really.
My aggressive reformism is not some distorted way of saying I am right and the people who agree with me should govern. Instead, it is dependent on ideals that admire intelligence, competency, and debate, while recognizing the pitfalls that an excessive infatuation with such attributes, combined with a disregard for non-performative sympathy, have brought upon our country.
The New Dealers
The historical evidence that I cite as evidence for why aggressive reformism can work is Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration and the army of policy wonks that went to war to defend it.
Through the power of untapped executive power, an extremely competent group of public officials, clearly outlined goals, and the power of democracy, FDR was able to take on and eventually replace the pre-existing elites that tanked the country into the Great Depression before him. These were figures such as Warren G. Harding and Herbert Hoover who were Presidents before him during the 1920s, bad-faith actors such as former Treasury Secretary and monopolist Andrew Mellon, and elites such as J.P Morgan and William Randolph Hearst (subject of the 2020 film, Mank) — in other words, the OG Status Quo Defenders.
The underpinning ideology that bounded the OG Status Quo Defenders together was ‘Classical economics’, the precursor to the neoliberal ideology that I have written a lot about before and is dominant among powerful people today. Less taxation, less government spending, and less intervention in markets was what was cool during the 20s and led to figures such as Mellon who would simultaneously dip one foot in his business pursuits and then dip the other in government (is this a weird metaphor?), all while actually committing tax fraud during his time in office. Mellon was the king of corruption and oversaw the path to the downfall and suffering of the United States, yet is seldom blamed or brought up today. I think it is funny that the school Carnegie Mellon University is named quite literally after two of the most disastrous ‘Andrews’ of the late 19th and early 20th centuries — Andrew Carnegie, monopolist and father of performative philanthropy, and Andrew Mellon.
In the election of 1932 after the Great Depression was well underway, the Democratic National Committee, which did not hold democratic primary elections at the time, chose what they thought was the rather quiet, moderate Franklin D. Roosevelt to be their nominee that would defeat Herbert Hoover. While FDR was moderate, the circumstances were extreme. As FDR among other intellectuals such as John Maynard Keynes, who also gained prominence during the 30s, would say: the path to authoritarianism and fascism grows from weak and idle governments, and can be avoided with strong, democratic governance (not exact words, of course).
The global landscape of the 1930s was an exaggerated version of what we experience now. Democratic governments around the world were falling to authoritarianism, in the aftermath of World War I and the suffering of the Great Depression, just as democratic governments around the world currently are electing right-wing populist leaders in an age of economic inequality. In the present day, it is Trump in the US, Brexit in the UK, Marine Le Pen in France. Back then it was Mussolini in Italy, who in an ultra-free market Italy became obsessed with elite rule, and Hitler in Germany. FDR’s philosophy towards radical reformism was driven by his belief that it was a necessary and vital action that needed to be done before the US followed the same fate as Italy, in particular.
Contrary to contemporary changemaking, FDR’s approach did not involve gathering business leaders and nonprofit organizations to ask them to enact partnerships with each other that would save our country.
He alternatively assembled a ‘Brain Trust’ of economists, technocrats, academics, and policy wonks, who were what was considered heterodox at the time, and began using the best tool in the toolbox: government. He used the government to create jobs, through the famously excessive number of executive orders passed within his first 100 days. He used the government to infiltrate markets that normalized corruption and exacerbated economic opportunity for people. Just as Wall Street currently has had unmitigated access to credit from the Federal Reserve, FDR empowered the previously defunct independent agency called the ‘Reconstruction Finance Corporation’ to make credit more accessible to small banks, farms, and other less politically powerful sectors in the American economy. He used the government to take on monopolists who accumulated so much wealth and power through the 1920s, that they were marginally affected by the Great Depression while innumerable families suffered tragically. And finally, he used the government to make sure that he could use the government to do all the aforementioned things by controversially packing the court.
The people who helped him and even he himself were no ‘Conflict theorists’ per se. They were very much products of the system at the time. FDR was an Ivy League graduate and former corporate lawyer, and his Chairman of the Federal Reserve was a millionaire banker who did not hesitate to advocate for radical banking reform and the policy now popularly known as ‘stimmys’. One of his Secretaries of Treasury, William Woodin, was a leader of one of the companies that merged with 13 other companies to form the country’s biggest railroad monopoly. For an administration that arguably took the most aggressive stance against monopolies in American history, the appointment of Woodin is surprising.
The point is that these officials that FDR relied on to radically reform the country were sometimes the very people his administration was going after. Despite this apparent conflict of interest, the ‘insiders’ he chose were able to detach themselves from their corporate lives and use their ‘insider’ knowledge to influence policy and create some of the most positive economic change we have seen in America. Even more important, many of these officials shared with Roosevelt the belief that the federal government needed to be active and strong to promote economic stability and success in America. They were right and as a result, the pre-existing ideology of the 1920s endorsed by Mellon, Hoover, and Hearst was defeated. What followed was an era of relatively tranquil domestic life, at least if you were not a minority.
So basically, if former corporate titans and FDR administration alums Marriner Eccles and William Woodin were still able to retain status as regulatory/policymaking icons (in my world), then I can ‘sell out’ after college a little too — as long as I eventually end up being put in a position such as Federal Reserve Governor or Secretary of Treasury where I can redeem myself. Which I will speak into existence.
Today’s newsletter came out more disjointed than I would have liked, but I am releasing it anyway. I basically wrote a self-reflection about insecurities concerning my own hypocrisy disguised as a mini-historical summary of the FDR administration. I have learned from writing today’s article that within Scott Alexander’s Conflict versus Mistake theory framework, I am the most aggressive and radical Mistake theorist one can be while often masquerading around as a Conflict theorist. Hopefully, you learned something too.