Summary of Tracinski's "What Went Right"

I agree with most of Tracinski's "What Went Right" series. Before going into detail on what I disagree with, it will be useful to summarize the entire series and give a few comments.

Part 1: The Collapse of the Collapse of Civilization

Tracinski reviews the events of the twentieth century that pointed to an impending collapse of civilization: World War I, the Great Depression, Nazism and World War II, Communism and the Cold War, the Counter-Culture Rebellion of the 1960s, and the malaise of the 1970s. The trend was definitely toward a collapse, but for the next 30 years, starting around 1980, things turned around with an economic revival in America and Britain and the fall of Communism in 1989.

Tracinski points out that Objectivist literature, including The Intellectual Activist, did not pick up on the changes of the last thirty years and still predicts doom and gloom. I believe a big part of the non-collapse is due to the number of countries turning toward capitalism which he names: Japan and West Germany after WWII, the Asian Tigers of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, the former Soviet Bloc countries of Poland, Latvia, Estonia and the Czech Republic, and most recently the turn of China and India toward free market policies. These examples, in addition to the free market reforms of Reagan and Thatcher in America and Britain, are—in my view—the primary explanation of "What Went Right."

Part 2: The Implosion of the Population Bomb

In this part, Tracinski makes the case that non-Objectivists have changed the world for the better, giving detailed examples of Julian Simon exposing the myth of the Population Bomb and Manmohan Singh helping open up the economy of India. This seems like a no-brainer argument, except that many Objectivists (including myself up until a few months ago) have the notion that the only way to "save the world" is for it to accept Objectivism.

I'll add my own example to this list: Ronald Reagan believed in low taxes because he saw that high taxes produced less work when he was an actor:

"I think my own experience with our tax laws in Hollywood probably taught me more about practical economic theory than I ever learned in a classroom or from an economist, and my views on tax reform did not spring from what people called supply-side economics. At the peak of my career at Warner Bros., I was in the ninety-four percent tax bracket; that meant that after a certain point, I received only six cents for each dollar I earned and that the government got the rest. The IRS took such a big chunk of my earnings that after a while I began asking myself whether it was worth it to keep on taking work." [Reagan, An American Life]

Reagan had much more practical experience in economics beyond this one anecdote, particularly his work for GE and the influence of GE vice president Lemuel Boulware.

Part 3: Pajama Epistemology

In this part, Tracinski makes the case that the ideas that change the world can come from a "bottom-up" approach, as opposed to a "top-down" approach from philosophers. Since the actual people who end up changing the world—such as Julius Caesar, Thomas Jefferson or Ronald Reagan—are not actually philosophers, the question is: Where do these people get their ideas? Tracinski says it's a combination of both top-down and bottom-up.

The dominant belief in Objectivist circles is that the ideas come top-down from the philosophers, an idea which is based on a misinterpretation of a passage from Ayn Rand as discussed in this previous post. The basic point of part 3 is that good ideas can come from anywhere, and that good ideas can change history.

Incidentally, the "bottom-up" approach Tracinski writes with is why I subscribe to The Tracinski Letter and not The Objective Standard.  The latter is written with the "top-down" approach which is boring to me because there are very few new ideas—it mostly recycles Ayn Rand's writings which are not as good as the original.

Part 4: The Metaphysics of "Normal Life"

This part is where I got most of my thoughts for my post on Starting with Capitalism. Tracinski cites global capitalism, education in science and technology, and representative government as three institutions that encourage an acceptance of good philosophical principles, namely reason, individualism and liberty. I fully agree; this is my favorite part of his whole series.

A central idea is that people around the world see what we have in America and it compels them to want the same for themselves. They see our lives as "normal" in the sense that this is what's possible to humans, even though it is not how most people have lived throughout history or even how most people in the world live today. I believe the American example is changing the world for the better.

Part 5: The Summit and the Foundation

This is perhaps the most controversial part of Tracinski's series, wherein he gives examples of how philosophy in Ancient Greece and the Middle Ages did not move history, but followed it. I don't have a problem with this relationship between philosophy and history, as discussed previously in this post.

This is, in fact, the central idea of "What Went Right": The world did not collapse into another Dark Ages because people acted on good ideas based on their own experience induced from the bottom up, rather than getting the ideas handed down to them from professional philosophers. This certainly fits with what I've been reading in The Age of Reagan: 1980-1989, where Reagan changed the world based on principles he developed from the bottom up.

In the latter portion of Part 5, Tracinski talks about philosophy "as a new abstraction that integrates, preserves, and magnifies all of the knowledge produced by the scientists, economists, novelists, businessmen who came before it." I disagree with Tracinski on his view of philosophy which will be the subject of a future post.

Part 6: The War Between the Implicit and the Explicit

In this final part, Tracinski first summarizes the first five parts (similar to as I've done above) and reiterates the central idea that history can be moved by ideas developed from the bottom up rather than top-down from philosophy departments. He distinguishes between bottom-up ideas and top-down ideas as implicit or explicit philosophical ideas, respectively. Here is where Tracinski loses me. I believe there is no fundamental difference between an idea learned bottom-up or top-down, it's only a difference in the order of the steps in which one comes to understand the idea.

I ended up disagreeing with most of what Tracinski wrote in Part 6 because I don't like his ideas of "implicit knowledge" and "implicit philosophy." But my full critique will have to wait until a future post.

Tracinski finishes off by describing how bad philosophical ideas must be transmitted top-down through the universities because they cannot be induced bottom-up on their own. I agree with this and like the distinction he draws. It means the right ideas can be learned in two different ways that reinforce each other whereas bad ideas require people in positions of authority to teach them. It bodes well for the future as we develop more ways to spread knowledge.

To summarize, "What Went Right" examines the apparent paradox that the world hasn't accepted Ayn Rand's Objectivism yet it has improved over the last thirty years rather than collapsing. Tracinski's resolution of this paradox is that good ideas—ones that can change the world—can come from the top-down, i.e. from Objectivism, or from the bottom-up by any honest thinker focused on reality. This is a great insight which is important for anyone interested in fixing what's wrong with the world.