Brink Lindsey Guest-Blogging on Human Capitalism

By On October 7, 2012 · 5 Comments · In Announcements, Blog Administration

I’m happy to say that on Monday and Tuesday of this week, we’re going to be joined by Brink Lindsey who will be blogging about his new (cheap!) book, Human Capitalism, and some of the philosophical challenges and questions it raises.

Most readers of BHL will know Brink as the father of “liberaltarianism.” If you’re not, check out his presentation at this panel on “Liberals and Libertarians: Common Ground or Separate Agendas” at Princeton University, where he shares his thoughts alongside a few other fellows who might be familiar to our readers – Will Wilkinson, Jacob Levy, and John Tomasi!

Some of you will also remember Brink for his work at the Cato Institute, where he is now back as a senior fellow. He’s also a senior fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and the author of an excellent earlier book, The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture.

Here’s the blurb on Human Capitalism from Princeton University Press:

What explains the growing class divide between the well educated and everybody else? Noted author Brink Lindsey, a senior scholar at the Kauffman Foundation, argues that it’s because economic expansion is creating an increasingly complex world in which only a minority with the right knowledge and skills–the right “human capital”–reap the majority of the economic rewards. The complexity of today’s economy is not only making these lucky elites richer–it is also making them smarter. As the economy makes ever-greater demands on their minds, the successful are making ever-greater investments in education and other ways of increasing their human capital, expanding their cognitive skills and leading them to still higher levels of success. But unfortunately, even as the rich are securely riding this virtuous cycle, the poor are trapped in a vicious one, as a lack of human capital leads to family breakdown, unemployment, dysfunction, and further erosion of knowledge and skills. In this brief, clear, and forthright ebook original, Lindsey shows how economic growth is creating unprecedented levels of human capital–and suggests how the huge benefits of this development can be spread beyond those who are already enjoying its rewards.

 And here’s a short video of Brink discussing the book:

Please join me in welcoming him back to the blog!
 
  • http://www.facebook.com/les.nearhood Les Kyle Nearhood

    I love Brink Lindsey.

    The biggest problem of people who are falling behind is that they lose hope and do not do what is necessary to increase their potential. I used to have a well paying technical job which was made obsolete due to technology. But I have gone back to school, and I have not been afraid to change careers twice in my life, even very recently, and I am not young anymore.

    But you cannot quit. You have to keep learning all your life. The key is to get that message out to people who are unemployed or underemployed.

    • http://independent.academia.edu/DannyFrederick Danny Frederick

      It might also help if the government stopped paying them to do nothing.

  • http://frankhecker.com/ Frank Hecker

    “Most readers of BHL will know Brink as the father of ‘libertarianism.’” I think you mean “liberaltarianism.”

  • http://frankhecker.com/ Frank Hecker

    I enjoyed reading Human Capitalism and thought there was a lot of good insight there. I find it interesting and heartening that debates on economic inequality are starting to move beyond simplistic slogans (“the 1 per cent”, “the 47 per cent”, “class warfare”, “soaking the rich”, etc.).

    One thing I’d note is that this is not just a question of rich vs. poor, or skilled vs. unskilled labor. Even within the pool of relatively skilled workers there are “winner take all” dynamics that are leading to vastly different levels of rewards for workers who are not all that far apart in terms of skill level, motivation, etc. See for example Anil Dash’s recent posts “to less-efficient startups” and (as a proposed corrective) the “blue collar coder.”

  • Sean II

    At the end of that clip Lindsay makes the familiar Bismarkian argument that the market is in danger and needs to be rescued from a potentially revolutionary underclass.

    That ignores what seems to me a crucial fact: the “growing pressure to change the system” (i.e., replace the market with bureaucracy) does not come from the lower classes, nor indeed is that pressure even sincerely applied on their behalf.

    At least not in the United States. The market-smashers in my country are not just highly educated as a rule, they’re also filthy rich by any reasonable global or historical standard. Most are successful rent-seekers of one kind or another, who know “the poor” only as an abstraction to be mocked or pitied as the situation requires.

    It should go without saying, but…prison guards, public school teachers, trial lawyers, municipal workers, UAW members, grad students, hipsters, champagne socialists, and college professors are NOT members of a stirring underclass. If somebody came to set up a Paris Commune in their town, they’d shit themselves and die crying.

    When you look at the American poor, you see single mothers, urban blacks, rural whites, illegal immigrants, the unemployed young, sundry victims of the drug war.

    Those groups are not actually driving any of our political trends. They’re the ones being driven over!