How Greenland’s Independence Could Catalyze Canada’s Balkanization

The Westphalian map of North America is fracturing before our eyes. For over a century now, the establishment has treated our continent’s borders as permanent, sacred lines etched immutably into polar ice. But they’ve been ignoring the deeper tectonics of history, resource economics, and indigenous self-determination.

If Nuuk moves closer to cutting its final colonial cords to Copenhagen, it will not merely be charting a path to liberate Greenland. It will instead be pulling the linchpin from an over-centralized, overly archaic Canadian confederation. Indeed, when Greenland successfully achieves full sovereignty, it won’t remain an isolated event for long.

It will light a fuse: a cascading domino of pent-up yearning for independence and newly nurtured secessionist sentiment will quickly roll across Canada, breaking this vast, centralized state apart into a more logical, decentralized alignment under a continental American umbrella.

Ottawa’s long era of continental neglect is approaching its terminal hour: an inevitable liberation of Greenland will provide the ultimate spark for a sweeping prairie fire of state collapse and geopolitical realignment.

Proximate Polar Pioneers: Nunavut and the Northwest Territories Will Lead the Way

The first dominoes to tumble would likely be from the High North. The artificial cartography of the 20th century explicitly severed the Inuit nation across colonial boundaries. Once Greenland secures its status as a sovereign state protected by an American aerospace shield, the structural logic for Nunavut to remain tied to a chronically underfunded Ottawa will disappear entirely.

Nunavut would likely be the first to follow Nuuk’s lead, exercising its inherent right to self-determination. For decades, Iqaluit’s economic autonomy has been stifled by federal mandates. By seceding from Canada, Nunavut can merge its multi-level indigenous governance model with a newly independent Greenland, creating a unified, greater Inuit maritime power.

The Northwest Territories (NWT) would quickly follow this northern exodus. The NWT’s vast mineral wealth—critical for the digital age—remains locked behind federal regulatory paralysis. A sovereign NWT, unburdened by Ottawa’s red tape, would logically align its economic and security architecture with Alaska and the Yukon. This would complete a contiguous, resource-rich northern buffer zone under a single, streamlined continental command structure.

Western Revolt: Alberta’s Financial Liberation

As the northern rim detaches, the economic engine of Western Canada will inevitably look for its own exit. Alberta’s grievances against the Laurentian elite are structural, deep-seated, and entirely justified. For generations, federal equalization formulas have systematically plundered Albertan energy wealth to subsidize the political dependencies of Eastern Canada.

Fiscal Plunder: Ottawa drains billions annually from Calgary while actively sabotaging its industrial growth.

Pipeline Paralysis: Federal environmental mandates deliberately choke landlocked energy corridors to global markets.

Sovereignty Act: Alberta has already built the legal framework to nullify federal overreach.

Greenland’s transition to a high-growth, sovereign partner of America will provide Alberta with the ultimate blueprint. A newly independent republic of Alberta would no longer plead for market access. It could instead secure it directly through a bilateral strategic partnership with Washingtonl , seamlessly integrating its massive oil and gas reserves into the American energy heartland.

The Pacific Gateway: British Columbia’s Continental Pivot

With Alberta gone, British Columbia (BC) would face an existential geographic choice. Cut off from the rest of Eastern Canada by an independent prairie republic, Victoria could not remain an isolated outpost of a dying state. BC’s economic reality has always been oriented vertically along the Pacific Coast, rather than horizontally across the Rocky Mountains.

An independent British Columbia could execute a rapid continental pivot. The Cascadia corridor—stretching from Vancouver to Seattle and Portland—is already an integrated economic ecosystem. BC’s vast critical mineral deposits, clean hydropower, and strategic deep-water ports make it a natural titan of the Pacific Rim.

Freed from Ottawa’s strategic inertia, a sovereign BC could directly negotiate its own trade and security protocols with Washington and Tokyo. It would transform its coastline into the premier, unhindered gateway for democratic commerce across the Indo-Pacific.

Final Fracture: Quebec’s Unfinished Journey

The western and northern departures would leave the historical core of Canada fundamentally unsustainable. Quebec has kept one foot out of the confederation door for over half a century. The cultural, linguistic, and political friction between Francophone identity and Anglo-federalism is an unhealable wound.

• Linguistic Sovereignty: Quebec operates as a distinct nation in all but name.

• Hydro-Power Independence: Its energy grid is completely autonomous and globally integrated.

• Institutional Readiness: The province maintains its own civil legal code and international offices.

When Western Canada fractures, the remaining federal state will lack the financial capacity to appease Quebec’s nationalist aspirations. But Quebec’s secession would not be an act of chaotic rebellion; it would instead be the orderly final step of a decades-long march toward statehood. 

A sovereign Quebec would control the St. Lawrence River gateway, trading seamlessly with its neighbors while preserving its distinct cultural civilization free from Anglo-federal meddling, and its proximity to Nunavut would position it to be an emergent near-Arctic power unto itself.

New Continental Equilibrium

Critics within the obsolete foreign policy establishment will decry this potential balkanization as a dangerous collapse of order. They fundamentally misunderstand the nature of modern statecraft. The breaking of the Laurentian empire would not be an act of imperial chaos; it would be an act of democratic renewal.

The old Canadian confederation remains a product of British colonial architecture, designed to keep different regions artificially bound together against their natural economic inclinations. By allowing these distinct regions to find their true sovereign potential—just as Greenland is currently attempting to do—we can replace a hollow, dysfunctional federal state with a vibrant, high-growth brotherhood of independent nations.

Every single one of these emerging republics—from the pristine Arctic tundra of Nunavut to the vast and lucrative oil and gas fields of Alberta to the deepwater ports of Cascadia—shares a common destiny.  They will find their ultimate security, their market access, and their democratic baseline under a reimagined, pan-American umbrella. 

The era of Arctic and western neglect is drawing to a close. Greenland is writing the playbook, but if successful in its quest for liberty, the Canadian dominoes will quickly follow.

Greenland and the Spirit of 1776

On this sacred 250th anniversary of our Republic’s birth, to fully grok how the liberation of Greenland can fulfill our unextinguishable Spirit of 1776, we must discard the outdated notion that the Arctic is a frozen, peripheral wasteland. 

Throughout my career analyzing Arctic sovereignty, borderlands, and geopolitics, I have argued (since I was a young man in 1991) that the Far North is emerging as a central arena for global freedom, resource independence, and democratic sovereignty. Upon this July 4th’s sacred, quarter-millenium celebration of our liberty, this long-foreseen centrality has come to pass.

In my view, the Spirit of 1776 is not a static historical event: it is instead an ongoing, dynamic process of expanding self-determination, rolling back old-world colonial empires, and securing our continental perimeter against authoritarian overreach. 

To fulfill our Spirit of 1776 in the 21st century, the United States must extend its democratic umbrella northward! This is not an act of alliance-imploding imperial conquest as Denmark has sought to portray; rather, it is an inclusive act of collaborative liberation

By helping Greenland sever its last colonial ties to Europe and integrating it into North America’s hemispheric security and economic architecture, we can achieve three philosophical and strategic imperatives:

Continental Completeness: We complete the geopolitical vision of the Monroe Doctrine, ensuring North America is entirely governed by consent and free from European or Asian state interference.

Democratic Self-Determination: We empower the Kalaallit (Greenlandic Inuit) people with true economic and military independence, backed by American constitutional guarantees.

Frontier Ethos: We re-ignite the American pioneer spirit on the Arctic frontier, viewing the far north as a dynamic space for democratic civilization.

To help actualize this collabarative liberation, Greenland can craft a Constitution mirroring while customizing our own paradigmatic Constitution. Some key components could include the following.

A Proposed Constitution of the Republic of Kalaallit Nunaat

Preamble

We, the people of Kalaallit Nunaat, grateful to our ancestors who survived and thrived across the Arctic frontier, determined to preserve our culture, our language, and our environment, and committed to the universal principles of human liberty and democratic self-governance, do establish this Constitution for our sovereign Republic.

Article I: Sovereign Status and Geography

  1. The Republic of Kalaallit Nunaat is a sovereign, democratic, and independent nation encompassing the entire island mass of Greenland, its continental shelf, and its territorial waters.
  2. The sovereign power resides in the people, to be exercised through their elected representatives and direct democratic referendums.
  3. The official national languages are Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) and English.

Article II: Bill of Rights and Liberties

  1. Fundamental Rights: Every citizen is born free and equal in dignity. No law shall discriminate based on race, ancestry, language, or creed.
  2. Freedom of Expression: The right to free speech, a free press, and peaceful assembly shall not be abridged.
  3. Property and Private Enterprise: The right to private property is guaranteed. Free-market enterprise is the baseline economic system of the Republic, protected against arbitrary state nationalization.
  4. Indigenous Customs: The collective right of the Inuit people to hunt, fish, and manage local community lands in accordance with sustainable tradition is permanently protected.
  5. The Right to Bear Arms and Self-Defense: The right of the people to keep and bear arms for self-defense, protection against wildlife, hunting, and the security of the Republic shall not be infringed. No law shall prohibit the possession, carry, or responsible use of firearms by citizens. Licensing and registration shall be kept minimal and non-prohibitive to ensure remote families are never left defenseless against the elements or predators.
  6. Inherent Rights to Traditional Harvest and Lifeways: The right of citizens to engage in traditional hunting, fishing, gathering, and harvesting is an unalienable birthright. This includes the absolute right to harvest marine mammals, specifically whaling and sealing, as well as terrestrial fur trapping. The use, breeding, training, and deployment of sled dogs (Qimmit) for transportation and hunting is protected. No administrative regulation or international treaty shall penalize or restrict these practices. The local trade, consumption, or garment-making of legally harvested furs, skins, or traditional foods shall not be criminalized.
  7. Conversion of Ecological Zones to Subsistence Hunting Preserves: All lands previously designated as national parks, restrictive nature reserves, or ecological preserves under foreign administration are permanently converted into National Subsistence Hunting Preserves. The right of local populations to access these lands for subsistence hunting, traditional trapping, fishing, and temporary shelter is absolute and supreme over pure preservationist mandates.
  8. Family Sovereignty and Prevention of Child Removal: The family is the foundational and sacred unit of society. No agency of the state or external non-governmental organization shall have the authority to separate families or remove children from their parental home based on poverty, standard of housing, or adherence to traditional indigenous child-rearing practices. Separation shall be permitted only as an absolute last resort in instances of proven, severe physical harm, established by an independent jury of peers in a court of law. Preferential placement must be given to extended kinship networks and local community members.

Article III: Legislative Branch (Inatsisartut)

  1. Legislative power is vested in a unicameral parliament, the Inatsisartut, consisting of 31 members elected by proportional representation every four years.
  2. It has sole authority to pass domestic laws, levy taxes, approve national budgets, control and restrict immigration, and ratify commercial treaties.
  3. All laws concerning the extraction of critical mineral wealth require a three-fifths supermajority vote.

Article IV: Executive Branch (The Presidency)

  1. The executive power of the Republic is vested in the President, elected by direct popular vote for a term of five years, limited to two terms.
  2. The President serves as the Head of State, Head of Government, and Commander-in-Chief.
  3. Strategic Alliance Provision: The President has the constitutional power, with the consent of parliament, to delegate the external defense and aerospace protection of the Republic to the United States of America under a permanent Compact of Free Association.

Article V: Judiciary

  1. The judicial power is independent of the executive and legislative branches, vested in a Supreme Court and lower regional courts.
  2. The courts interpret the laws of the Republic, integrating western common law with traditional Inuit customary justice.

Article VI: Amendment and Ratification 

  1. Amendments to this Constitution may be proposed by a two-thirds vote of the Inatsisartut or by a petition signed by twenty percent of registered voters.
  2. An amendment becomes valid only when ratified by a majority vote of the citizens in a nationwide referendum.

Why This Fulfills the Spirit of 1776

Greenland’s current status under the Danish Realm represents a lingering anomaly of old-world European colonialism. While Nuuk has enjoyed increasing “Home Rule” and later “Self-Rule” governance, its security, defense, and monetary systems remain anchored in Copenhagen, with multiple levels of continuing dependency.

The Rejection of Imperial Feudalism: The Spirit of 1776 revolted against a small island nation in Europe governing a vast continent across the sea. Denmark’s management of Greenland inverse-mirrors this dynamic with a small continental nation governing a vast North American Arctic island. Facilitating Nuuk’s exit completes the decolonization of the Western Hemisphere.

Guarding the Empire of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson envisioned a continental space where democratic institutions could multiply safely. By more tightly integrating Greenland into America’s hemispheric perimeter, we can more ably protect critical minerals and contested seabeds from our rivals, while expandine the rule of law and the zone of liberty.

Self-Actualization of Indigenous Peoples: My scenario of liberation places the Kalaallit people at the center of their own destiny. By partnering with the United States, they trade a paternalistic European welfare state for a high-growth, constitutionally protected partnership, becoming absolute masters of their own nation.

It is time for their colonial dependency to end. It is time for the whole of North America to be free. It is time, on this sacred quarter millennium since America’s birth, for Greenland to declare its own independence, and to join us in the brotherhood of nations and free peoples. Let our 250th Independence Day become Greenland’s first!

Two Bald Eagles: Symbols of Divided Attitudes?

I spotted two Bald Eagles today in Cincinnati, which is really fitting for the Fourth of July. The two Bald Eagles—one indolent and one vigilant—capture not only the attitudes of two influential figures in American politics about this national symbol that was hotly debated till 1789, but they also reflect the fractured character of these United States.

You probably already know that Benjamin Franklin was an outspoken detractor of the bald eagle. He stated his disinterest in the national symbol in a letter to a friend:
“I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy. The turkey is a much more respectable bird and withal a true, original native of America.”

In contrast, President John F. Kennedy wrote to the Audubon Society:
“The Founding Fathers made an appropriate choice when they selected the bald eagle as the emblem of the nation. The fierce beauty and proud independence of this great bird aptly symbolizes the strength and freedom of America. But as latter-day citizens we shall fail our trust if we permit the eagle to disappear.”

The two Bald Eagles, which symbolize, in my estimation, two divergent historical viewpoints, show us that American history is splintered into sharp conceptions of the past as it has been politicizedly revised to forge a more perfect union. There is little question that the tendency toward seeking out varied intellectual interpretations of US history is unabating and maybe essential to the growth of a mature republic. On holidays like the Fourth of July, however, a modicum of romanticism of the past is also required if revisionist histories make it harder and harder for the average person to develop a classicist vision of the Republic as a good—if not perfect—union and make it seem like a simple-minded theory. 

The two Bald Eagles aren’t just symbolic of the past; they also stand for partisanship and apathy in the present toward issues like inflation, NATO strategy, Roe v. Wade, and a variety of other divisive concerns. In addition, I learned there is an unfortunate debate on whether to have a 4th of July concert without hearing the 1812 Overture. For those who are not familiar, it is a musical composition by the Russian composer Tchaikovsky that has become a staple for July 4th events since 1976. 

In view of this divisiveness here is my unsophisticated theory of American unity for the present moment: Although the rhetoric of entrenched divisiveness and the rage of political factions—against internal conflicts and international relations—are not silenced by the Fourth of July fireworks, the accompanying music, festivities, and the promise of harmony, they do present a forceful antidote to both. So why have a double mind on a national ritual that serves as a unifying force and one of the few restraints on partisanship? Despite the fact that I am a resident alien, I propose preserving Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, arousing the inner dozing Bald Eagle, and making an effort to reunite the divided attitude toward all challenges. The aim, in my opinion, should be to manifest what Publius calls in Federalist 63 the “cool and deliberate sense of community.”

Have a happy Fourth!

Some Monday Links

Shadows of the First World War loom over Germany’s ambiguous response to Russia (New Statesman)

The Wild West Outpost of Japan’s Isolationist Era (Narratively)

Vivid glimpses of life on an artificial island – called Dejima – in Nagasaki Bay. Dejima was a Dutch outpost and the sole trading route between an isolationist Japan and the rest of the world (meaning the Dutch, that had privileged access, and also the Chinese) from mid-17th to mid-19th century. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and its oriental, chauvinist Dunmer, obviously drew inspiration from the era.

The West’s Struggle for Mental Health (WSJ)

Picked it form Marginal Revolution’s assorted links. Paywalled, but I somehow briefly skimmed it and sensed “post-Christian” world stuff, à la Jack Curtis.

Some Monday Links

How to Tell Africa’s History? (LA Review of Books)

Lost in Translation (Commonweal)

The Attack of Zombie Science (Nautilus)

Yogurt’s Long Journey (Tablet)

Diego Rivera by Francisco de la Mora and José Luis Pescador review – rumbustious hymn to a radical artist (The Guardian)

Rivera has been featured in NOL a few times.

Some Monday Links

The First World War battle that actually went to plan (Prospect)

The Eyes Have It (Quillette)

Kinship Is a Verb (Orion)

Vishnu used a similar play of words here.

How the University of Austin Can Change the History Profession (Law & Liberty)

New York, plus ça change: Chinatown under threat (Crimereads)

Some Monday Links

Will We Ever Get Beyond The Nation-State? (Noema)

Free and Worldly (The Baffler)

The utopian 1920s scheme for five global superstates (Big Think)

Some Monday Links

The Essential James Buchanan (Cafe Hayek)

Defounding America (The New Criterion)

Marketplace Morality: From Masks to Veganism (The Walrus)

Some Monday Links

Freedom through Knowledge: Liberalism, Censorship, and Public Health in Early Planned Parenthood Campaigns (History of Knowledge)

Can Structural Changes Fix the Supreme Court? (Journal of Economic Perspectives)

The Health Care Crucible (The Baffler)

What I learned in my bachelor’s degree

I took my bachelor’s degree in History between 2001 and 2005. All the people I asked told me that the course I took was the best in the country. I suppose they were right, but today I understand that they were predominantly talking about the graduate program at the same school. A department with a good master’s and doctoral degree does not necessarily translate into a good undergraduate degree, in the same way that good researchers and writers are not necessarily good teachers. Most of my professors were very bad teachers. I hope to be saying this without bitterness or arrogance, just realizing that although they were good academics, they were mostly not good at imparting knowledge.

Perhaps one of my professors’ difficulties in transmitting knowledge was precisely the constant questioning about the validity of transmitting knowledge. Brazilian pedagogy is strongly influenced by a form of social-constructivism created by educator Paulo Freire. Freire strongly insisted that teachers could not be transmitters of knowledge, but that students created knowledge on their own, and that teachers were, if at all, facilitators of this process. At least that’s what I understood or is what I remember from my pedagogy classes. Paulo Freire’s pedagogy is admittedly a translation of Marxism into the teaching field: students are the oppressed class, teachers are oppressors. Freire wanted pedagogy to reflect a classless society. The result, in my view, was that teachers were terrified of being seen as “the owners of the truth”.

My bachelor’s degree had the bold goal of training teachers and researchers at the same time. In my view, this created a difficulty: students needed to learn to cook and be food critics at the same time. It was not an easy task for people of 18, 20 years of age. Most classes ended up being quite weak. Another problem is that my post-Marxist professors wanted us to have a critical attitude: we needed to be critical of everything that was understood as “traditional”. This ended up creating distrust in the students’ minds: if everything is to be criticized, what should I believe? Of course, contradictorily what professors said should not be criticized, especially the proposition that everything should be criticized. In general, the program tended to generate people of 18, 20 years boisterous or confused. Or both.

Another experience of my bachelor’s degree was the encounter with party politics. In my high school, I had little contact with highly politicized people or student unions. The same cannot be said of my undergraduate studies! I met many people who were already involved to some degree with political parties, always on the left. Some people say that Christians are the main reason churches are empty. I can say something similar about my undergraduate colleagues. It is largely thanks to them that I became conservative. The hypocrisy, the aggressiveness, the arrogance of many of them made me suspect that there was something very wrong with the left. It took a few years, but eventually, I discovered classic liberal or libertarian authors and found my intellectual home.

But there were positive things about my undergraduate studies as well. Undergraduate was my first great opportunity to leave home a little more. I met some people with whom I am still friends today. And I had some good classes too. Some professors were more conservative, and largely ignored the department’s directives. Their classes were more traditional, more expository, more dedicated to informing us about things that happened in history, without much questioning. I remember a quote from my professor of Contemporary History I (roughly equivalent to 19th century): “when writing your paper, don’t say “I think … ”. You don’t think anything. When you are in the master’s or doctorate, you will think something. Today, simply write “the so-and-so author says …”. Be able to understand what the authors are talking about. That is enough for you today ”. There were also professors who were able to introduce a more critical perspective but in a less radical way.

Perhaps my biggest disappointment with undergraduate is that I almost didn’t get to teach History. The education system in Brazil is essentially socialist. The government assumes that everyone has the right to free, good quality education. And you know: when the government says you have a right to something, you’re not gonna get it, it will be expensive and of poor quality. The life of a teacher in Brazil is quite harsh. I have several friends in the teaching profession, and I am very sorry for them. Maybe I should have listened to my mom and study engineering.

But I don’t want to end it bitterly! I studied History because I really wanted to be a teacher. I still think that being a teacher is a beautiful vocation. Unfortunately, in Brazil, this vocation ends up being spoiled by the undue state intervention. I also studied History simply because I liked History, and I still do. If I had the mind I have today, possibly I would have studied something else. But I didn’t, and I am grateful for the way my life happened.

Evolution in Everything: Handwriting

There’s a whole set of simple but profound lessons that, if I were being lazy, I might call “the economic way of thinking.” We move through a hand-me-down world, solving some problems and creating new problems, adjusting and adapting, and shaping the world that we pass on to the next generation.

I just stumbled on a lovely example in an article about ballpoint pens and the end of cursive. A technological change changed the nature of handwriting, but the structure of human capital lagged behind. Specifically, the widespread adoption of ballpoint pens meant the old way of writing–how to hold the pen, how to form the letters, etc.–was poorly suited to the tool being used. This should have been an opportunity to test unchecked assumptions (e.g. about what the “correct” way to write is) but instead an inefficient practice (cursive writing with a bic pen) persisted in the face of increasing obsolescence.

I particularly like the idea of trying something new (fountain pens) can lead to a realization that some old method has a lot more going for it than was obvious to the non-alert.

I wonder how many other mundane skills, shaped to accommodate outmoded objects, persist beyond their utility. It’s not news to anyone that students used to write with fountain pens, but knowing this isn’t the same as the tactile experience of writing with one. Without that experience, it’s easy to continue past practice without stopping to notice that the action no longer fits the tool. Perhaps “saving handwriting” is less a matter of invoking blind nostalgia and more a process of examining the historical use of ordinary technologies as a way to understand contemporary ones. Otherwise we may not realize which habits are worth passing on, and which are vestiges of circumstances long since past.

How the Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive

Learning takes time. So in a dynamic society, it’s natural that there will always be some sort of practice outliving its utility. The only other way I see is stagnation: no new methods, no new problems, and we eventually setting into a “making the best of it” equilibrium.

The discovery of each of these inefficiencies creates some pocket of entrepreneurship. Sometimes it’s a massive, market oriented bit of entrepreneurship–like Bic industrializing the process of making cheap, reliable pens. Sometimes it’s a niche community of hobbyists (who might be incubating the next big thing). But that entrepreneurial reaction to inefficiency is pretty exciting. Realizing how my bad handwriting is the outcome of a technical problem makes me want to try fountain pens.

Sunday Poetry: Halal Cookery by the SS

First of all: Happy New Year Peeps!

I am trying my best to get some routine in blogging by sticking to this series. However, I do not know if I can still pull it off during the upcoming finals. We will see.

This week’s Poetry is less poetic yet very much informative (at least to me). David Motadel in his book “Islam and Nazi Germany’s War” reconstructs the bizarre relationship between Nazi Germany and Islam (and thus sheds light on another Myth of the Nazi Regime). What sounded completely counterintuitive to me, was this short passage on the halal cookery courses organized by the SS:

“In the end, both the Wehrmacht and the SS also took Islamic food regulations into consideration. In his instructions of 1942, Niedermayer ordered to ensure that the dietary requirements of Muslim soldiers, especially the ban on pork, were respected. Similar instructions were issued for Arab Wehrmacht soldiers. The SS went even further here. In July 1943, Himmler personally instructed Berger to find out “what Islam prescribes to its soldiers with regard to food” and added that he wanted to ensure that religious rules were observed. Shortly afterwards, Berger informed Himmler that the soldiers were not allowed to eat pork or drink alcohol. The Reichsführer-SS reacted promptly and ordered: “All Islamic members of the Waffen-SS and the police are granted as an unbreakable special right that, in accordance with their religious rules, they are never given pork as well as sausage containing pork and never alcohol to drink. An equally valuable diet is guaranteed in any case.” The SS even organized halal cookery courses near Graz.”

I wish you all a pleasant Sunday.

The nonexistent moral decay of the west

Humankind’s struggle with moral is of course nothing new, it rather inherent to our nature to revolt against the meaningless world and the manmade system of reason. Furthermore, moral values vary over a specific period of time swinging from rather high moral standards to very low ones. Regarding morality as an abstract compass guiding our thought, goals and behaviour, Economist, in general, are not known for dealing in depth with the metaphysical reason behind our behaviour yet they explore and explain human actions through our surrounding incentives, which also structure and direct our action. Economist such as Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson or William J. Baumol have explored these changes in human behaviour through changing incentive structures thoroughgoingly.

However, folks mourning the moral decline of today’s west often fail to provide concrete evidence for their argument. They either cherry-pick events or legislatures to infer a macro trend inductively or they lose themselves in difficult language trying to somehow save their argument by making it incomprehensible. I cannot help feeling that mourning the moral decay of the west has somehow become a shibboleth for eloquently expressing the “Things used to be way better back then” narrative. However, I admit that there were probably a couple of sociological papers who have covered this issue very well which I am unaware of. Contrary, the public debate was dominated by a few grumpy intellectuals holding the above-named attitude. I was recently provided with a very concrete set of indicators to measure moral decline while digging through Samuel P. Huntington’s infamous classic “The clash of civilization” from 1996. He states that there are five main criteria which indicate the ongoing decline of moral values in the West. [1]

After being provided with a concrete framework to quantify the moral decline of the west, I was keen to see how the moral decline of the west has developed in the 20 years since the book has first been published in 1996. Although I also take issue with some of these indicators to measure moral decline, I avoid any normative judgement in the first part and just look at their development over time. Furthermore, since Samuelson himself mostly takes data from the USA representing the West, I might as well do so too for the sake of simplicity. So, let’s see what happened to moral values in the West in the last years by checking each of Huntington’s indicator one by one.

1. Increasing antisocial behaviour such as acts of crime, drug use and general violence

Apart from the global long-term trend of declining homicides, we can also observe a recent downward trend in the reported violent crime rate since 1990 in the USA. Scholars agree that the crime rate is in an extreme decline. Expanding the realm towards Europe, you will see similar results (see here).

1Source: Statista

Despite these trends, the public (as well as some intellectuals as well I assume) vastly still holds a distorted perception of the crime rate. The sharp decline in actual crimes strongly contradicts the fact that a majority of the people still uphold the myth of increasing crime rates.

2

Source: Pew Research Center

Regarding drug use in the USA, it is important to mention that the absolute amount of illicit drugs consumed has slightly gone up since 1990. This development is mostly driven by an increasing  consumption of marijuana: Use of most drugs other than marijuana has stabilized over the past decade or has declined., states the National Institute on drug abuse in 2015.

Contrary, the number of deadly injections are increasing. However, the share of the population with drug use disorders has remained on the same level of 5.3% over the last 20 years.

2. Decay of the family resulting in increasing divorce rates, teenage motherhood and single parents

It is hard to measure the “Decay of the family” itself. Luckily, Huntington further concretizes his claim by naming some of the measurable effects. There is nothing much to do to refute these statement except for looking at the following graphs.

a) Firstly, the divorce rate is sharply declining.

3

Source: Statista

b) Second, teenage pregnancy rates are also dropping since 1990.

4Source: National Vita Statistics Report

c) Third, the number of Americans living in single parenthood is not increasing drastically since 1990.

5Source: Statista

I often take issue when (especially conservative) scholars mourn the declining importance of family. Even if there are certain indicators which would back up Huntington’s claims, he does not name them himself. While it is indeed true that “family” as an institution is undergoing changes, there is no evidence (at least named by Huntington) to back up the claim of a decline of its importance.

3. Declining “social capital” and voluntarism leading to less trust.

It is indeed true, that the adult volunteering rate declined from early 2000 to 2016 from 27.4% to 24.9%. Interestingly, it recently bounced back to a new high in 2018, hitting the 30% target. Really the only point where one must agree to Huntington’s claim is the decrease of interpersonal trust as well as trust in public institutions. This trend is indeed very worrisome considering that trust is a major factor for flourishing societies.

4. The decline in work ethic

The research here is a little bit tricky and points in both directions. Although there has been wide academic coverage of the millennial work ethic scholars could not find a consensus on this issue. Its is especially difficult to extract the generational influence from other key determinants of work ethic, such as position or age. Academics warn to mistake the ever-ongoing conflict between young vs. old with the Boomer vs. Millenial conflict. I haven’t settled my opinion on this one. These Articles from Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today provide a good overview of both sides of the medal.

5. Less general interest in Education

This indicator is particularly interesting for me because as a member of the 90’ generation, I have experienced quite the opposite in Germany. But let’s have a look at the data.

Despite ranking only in the middle in a global country comparison, the US students still made a huge leap in terms of maths and reading proficiency, which only slowed down in 2015:

6

Source: Pew Research Center

Furthermore, the overall educational level of the USA continues to rise, resulting in the fact that  “the percentage of the American population age 25 and older that completed high school or higher levels of education reached 90% [for the first time ] in 2017.” Contrary, there are still major differences when one looks at features like race or parent household (See here), but the overall trajectory of the educational level is sloping upwards.

What do these criteria measure?

As you can see, there is little to no evidence to empirically back up the claim of western moral decay. Furthermore, while many case studies have shown that lack of interpersonal trust, lack of education or a declining work ethic can pose a great threat to society, I refuse to see a connection (a no known to me study disproves me here) between (recreational) drugs consumption, alternative family models, increasing hedonism and moral decline. Thus I believe that many advocates of the moral decay theory regard it as an opportunity to despise developments they personally do not like. I do not imply that everyone arguing for the moral decline of the west is unaware of the global macro-trends which heavily improved our life, but I highly doubt their assumption, that we are currently in a short-to-medium term “moral recession”. Even when one upholds the very conservative statements such as drug consumption adding to moral decline, is hard to argue that we are currently witnessing a moral decay of the west. Contrary, It may be true that Huntington has observed something different in the period before publishing “The clash of civilization” in 1996. Of course, I myself witness the ongoing battle against norms on the increasing hostility towards the intellectual enemy in the west, but one should always keep in mind the bigger picture. Our world is getting better – in the long- and in the short-run; There is no such thing as a moral decline of the West.


[1] Huntington, Samuel P. (2011): Kampf der Kulturen. Die Neugestaltung der Weltpolitik im 21. Jahrhundert. Vollst. Taschenbuchausg., 8. Aufl. München: Goldmann (Goldmann, 15190). P. 500

On the rift between economics and everything else

The line is often heard: economists are “scientific imperialists” (i.e. they seek to invade other fields of social science) jerks. All they try to do is “fit everything inside the model”. I have this derisive sneer at economists very often. I have also heard economists say “who cares, they’re a bunch of historians” (this is the one I hear most often given my particular field of research, but I have heard variations involving sociologists and anthropologists).

To be fair, I never noticed the size rift. For years now, I have been waltzing between economics and history (and tried my hand at journalism for some time) which meant that I was waltzing between economic theory and a lot of other fields. The department I was a part of at the London School of Economics was a rich set of quantitative and qualitative folks who mixed history of ideas, economics, economic history and social history. To top it all, I managed to find myself generally in the company of attorneys and legal scholars (don’t ask why, it still eludes me). It was hard to feel a big rift in that environment. I knew there was a rift. I just never realized how big it was until a year ago (more or less).

There is, however, something that annoys me: the contempt appears to be self-reinforcing.  Elsewhere on this blog (here and here) (and in a forthcoming book chapter in a textbook on how to do economic history), I have explained that economists have often ventured into certain topics with a lack of care for details. True, there must be some abstraction of details (not all details are useful), but there is an optimal quantity of details. And our knowledge grows, the quantity of details necessary to answering each question (because the scientific margin is increasingly specialized) should grow. And so should the number (and depth) of nuances we make to answer a question.  There is a tendency among economists to treat a question outside the usual realm of economics and ignore the existing literature (thus either rushing through an open door or stepping in a minefield without knowing it).  The universe is collapsed into the model and, even when it yields valuable insights, other (non-econs) contributors are ignored.  That’s when the non-econs counter that economists are arrogant and that they try to force everything into a mold rather than change the mold when it does not apply. However, the reply has often been to ignore the economists or criticize strawmen versions of their argument. Perceived as contemptuous, the economists feel that they can safely ignore all others.

The problem is that this is a reinforcing loop: a) the economists are arrogant; b) non-economists respond by dismissing the economists and ridiculing their assumptions; c) the economists get more arrogant. The cycle persists. I struggle to see how to break this cycle, but I see value in breaking it. Elsewhere, I have made such a case when I reviewed a book (towards which I was hostile) on Canadian economic history. Here is what I said for the sake of showcasing the value of breaking the vicious circle of ignoring both sides:

These scholars (those who have been ignored by non-economists) could have easily derived the same takeaways as Sweeny. Individuals can and do engage in rent-seeking, which economists define as the process through which unearned gains are obtained by manipulating the political and social environment. This could be observed in attempts to shape narratives in the public discourse. According primacy to the biases of sources is a recognition that there can be rent-seeking in the form of actors seeking to generate a narrative to reinforce a particular institutional arrangement and allow it to survive. This explanation is well in line with neoclassical economics.

This point is crucial. It shows a failing on both sides of the debate. Economists and historians favorable to “rational choice” have failed to engage scholars like Sweeny. Often, they have been openly contemptuous. The literature has evolved in separate circles where researchers only speak to their fellow circle members. This has resulted in an inability to identify the mutual gains of exchange. The insights and meticulous treatments of sources by scholars like Sweeny are informative for those economists who consider rational choice as if the choosers were humans, with all their flaws and limitations, rather than mechanistic utility-maximizing machines with perfect foresight (which is a strawman often employed to deride the use of economics in historical debates) . In reverse, the rich insights provided by rational choice theorists could guide historians in elucidating complex social interactions with a parsimony of assumptions. Without interaction, both groups loose and resolutions remain elusive.

See, as a guy who likes economics, I think that trade is pretty great. More importantly, I think that trade between heterogeneous groups (or different individuals) is even greater because it allows for specialization that increases the value (and quantity) of outputs.  I see the benefits of trade here, so why is this “circle of contempt” perpetuating so relentlessly?

Can’t we just all pick the 100$ bill on the sidewalk?

Prices in Canada since 1688

A few days ago, I received goods news that the Canadian Journal of Economics had accepted my paper that constructed a consumer price index for Canada between 1688 and 1850 from homogeneous sources (the account books of religious congregations). I have to format the article to the guidelines of the journal and attach all my data and it will be good to go (I am planning on doing this over the weekend). In the meanwhile, I thought I would share the finalized price index so that others can see it.

First, we have the price index that focuses on the period from 1688 to 1850.  Most indexes that exist for pre-1850 Canada (or Quebec since I assume that Quebec is representative of pre-1850 Canadian price trends) are short-term, include mostly agricultural goods and have no expenditures weights to create a basket. Now, my index is the first that uses the same type of sources continuously over such a long period and it is also the first to use a large array of non-agricultural goods. It also has a weights scheme to create a basket.

PriceIndexCanada

The issue of adding non-agricultural goods was especially important because there were important differences in the evolution of different types of goods. Agricultural goods, see next image, saw their nominal prices continually increase between the 17th and 19th centuries. However, most other prices – imported goods, domestically produced manufactured goods etc. – either fall or remain stable. These are very pronounced changes in relative prices. It shows that reliance on agricultural goods price index will overstate the amount of “deflating” needed to arrive at real wages or incomes.  The image below shows the nominal price evolution of groupings of goods as described above.

PriceIndexCanada2

And finally, the pièce de résistance! I link my own index to other existing post-1850 index so as to generate the evolution of prices in Canada since 1688. The figure below shows the evolution of the price index over … 328 years (I ended the series at 2015, but extra years forward can be added). In the years to come, I will probably try to extend this backwards as much as possible at least to 1665 (the first census in Canada) and will probably try to approach Statistics Canada to see if they would like to incorporate this contribution into their wide database of macroeconomic history of Canada.

PriceIndexCanada3