Institutions as Guard Rails

November 6, 2024
Posted by Jay Livingston

Half a score and seven years ago, I said something (here) that I am now rethinking:

Authoritarianism has always had some allure to some Americans, especially in times of crisis. In the Depression, people like Huey Long and Father Coughlin played to this sentiment with some success. But in the end they failed, and most people today have never heard of them. To some extent, it’s because of the eventual good sense of the American people. But more likely, our success in avoiding a Godfather government stems from the enduring institutions of our society and government. [emphasis added]

Now I am not at all sure about those institutions.

I was blogging in response to a HuffPo piece by Philip Slater, who was dismayed by the popularity of Mafia media — The Godfather, The Sopranos, Goodfellas, etc.

Americans love the mafia because it represents a totally authoritarian system in which mistrust, cynicism, slavish obedience, and rash, violent decisions prevail. That seems to be the kind of world most Americans are looking for today.

But Slater was thinking not just about the movies but about real-world politics as well:  “Americans were so willing to elect and re-elect the most secretive, despotic, and anti-democratic administration in the history of our nation.” He was talking about George W. Bush.

My take then was that what we like to see on the screen is not always what we want in real life.

Here is a system that rewards its virtues —loyalty, respect, honor — and punishes transgressions surely and swiftly. If your real world is full of uncertainty and moral ambiguity, if virtue is not always rewarded and wickedness not always punished, you might take comfort at the end of the day in the unclouded vision of the media’s mafias.

Now I’m thinking about that final sentence of my 2007 post, the one about “the enduring institutions of our society and government” that might act as guard rails.

America has now a elected a man who has already tried, with some success, to undermine or dominate the institutions that might constrain him — the courts and the rule of law, the legislature and the electoral process, the media. And he has promised to use the full powers of the presidency to continue this project, replacing the professionals in federal agencies with people chosen not for their experise and competence but for their loyalty.

What institutions are left?

The Party's Over

September 21, 2024
Posted by Jay Livingston

“Two pair wahr,” said the young woman next to me in the Place Aristide Briand in Carpentras. We were both there for the marché aux truffes, a truffle market held every Friday morning in the cold months. The waitress at the restaurant Thursday night had told me about it, so Friday morning I was up early to make the half-hour drive. I was early. A few dozen people were standing in a loose circle. The farmers, with their baskets of truffles and their hand-held balance scales, stood in the center. At 8:45, someone blew a whistle and trading started.

I had come just to see the market and take some photos, but I started talking with a couple of young women standing near me, and after a few minutes they were helping me buy a half kilo of truffles. I told them that I wanted to take them back to my friend in Paris, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to keep them for several days in the paper bag I was now holding.
    
They told me that I should go to the grocery store and get some rice, then to the droguerie (housewares store) and get “two pair wahr.” My so-so French had been adequate to the task so far, but here was a French word I did not understand. “Two pair wahr,” she repeated, and mimed prying a lid off a container.

Tupperware. Of course. You put the truffles in and fill it with rice. It won’t smell up the car, and when you do get back to Paris, whatever dish you decide to use the truffles in,, you’ll also have the best tasting rice you’ve ever had,

It was the only piece of Tupperware I ever bought.

Last week, Tupperware filed for bankruptcy.

Jeopardy III: Losing Their Religion. Again.

July 1, 2023
Posted by Jay Livingston

I didn’t see this when it happened nearly three weeks ago. None of the three Jeopardy contestants knew “hallowed be thy name.”



Nor, until now, was I aware of the distress and outrage it provoked.

For me, it was déja vu.

I was on Jeopardy fifty years ago. At the studio, before the taping began, they had some of the contestants do a practice round. Presumably, this was to help us feel comfortable with the cameras and lights and other aspects of the set. I was not one of those selected, so I sat nearby and watched. One of the categories on the board was The Bible.

“OK, let’s go,” came the voice from the control room. They ran through a few questions, and then a contestant, after answering a question correctly, asked for The Bible.

The plate with “$10"* on it slid up revealing the question which the host then read: “In the Book of Matthew, he says, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.”

Silence. Nobody rang in. Then over the speakers came the deep voice from the control room: “They don’t come any easier in this category, people.”

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* Yes, $10. The dollar values of questions then were 1/20 what they are now. For more on my Jeopardy appearances, see these earlier posts.

Not Ken Jennings, But . . .

Jeopardy II: Audiences — à la Goffman and ABC-TV

To Serve and Protect and Empathize

May 3, 2023
Posted by Jay Livingston

A friend of mine here in New York was the victim of a property crime, a larceny. The bad guys had broken into his car and taken whatever wasn’t locked down, mostly books as I recall (this happened a long time ago). He went to the local precinct to report it. Eventually the desk sergeant acknowledged his presence. “Somebody broke into my car and took all my stuff.”

“So what do you want me to do about it?” said the sergeant.

The officer’s response is understandable and quite reasonable. There’s no way the thief could be caught or the property recovered. Besides, this type of crime happened frequently. To fill out the paperwork or do anything would just be a waste of police time. My friend knew all this, but he was still not happy about the way the cops treated his victimization.

I remembered this anecdote when I saw some data from Portland showing low levels of satisfaction with a crime reporting system there. It also reminded me of the previous post about satisfaction with responses to medical questions. When people seek immediate medical advice online, they are more satisfied with the responses of a non-human (ChatGPT) than with those of a doctor. Doctors were five times more likely to get low ratings for both the quality of the information and the empathy conveyed. Three-fourths of their responses were rated low on empathy.

Something similar could be happening when people are victims of crime. In Portland, ss in many cities, victims of non-violent crimes can use the online reporting system rather than calling the cops. Most people find the system easy to use, and it frees police resources for other matters, but so far it’s not getting high marks. Only 16% of those who used it said they were “Satisfied” and nearly three times that many said they were “Dissatisfied.”

Could ChatGPT help?  As with medical reporting, the crucial factor is whether the police seem to be care about the case. People who received a call or email from the police in response to their online report were twice as likely to be satisfied, even though the callback sometimes came weeks after the victim had filed the report and even though many of the victims or property crime merely want a case number for insurance purposes.

ChatGPT or some similar program could send this kind of email and respond to questions the vicitm might have. I’m not sure what ChatGPT’s initial message would sound like, but it wouldn’t be, “So what do you want me to do about it?”  Putting ChatGPT on the case wouldn’t have any effect on the crime rate or the clearance rate, but it might make a difference in how people thought about their local police.