The Economics of Cthulhu: Why The Right Always Loses
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice - Martin Luther King
In 2016, Donald Trump told us “We are going to win so much you may even get tired of winning”. Needless to say, he was somewhat optimistic. The writer Curtis Yarvin has explained that the future is almost always more leftwing than the past. Take any individual from 150 years ago, they were probably imperialistic, anti-democratic, ‘racist’, patriarchal, religious authoritarians. If they were around today they would be considered ‘far-right’. In fact, if any left-wing politicians kept the same views over the last 20 years, they would be considered fringe right today. Obama and Clinton could oppose gay marriage in the 2000s, now they would not even dare criticise trans women competing in women’s sports.
For recent history, Yarvin’s hypothesis fits. He states his theory as saying ‘Cthulhu always swims left'. Cthulhu being H.P. Lovecraft’s monstrous tentacled god which all must worship! In the fiction, Cthulhu is prophesied to slowly wake from his slumber, descending humanity into chaos and insanity. The culture war is the wrath of Cthulhu.
Unfortunately, Yarvin does not clearly explain why Cthulhu swims left. He says the right represents order, the left is anarchy and entropy. The left is power-hungry, the more anarchy the more power there is to share around. It attracts those who want the thrill of taking power, so the left gains more and more power, till our political system becomes unworkable. The rightist who supports centralising power to create order, cannot afford to share it to win more supporters. Or at least that’s my most charitable interpretation of what Yarvin is saying, his explanation is not too clear, although I do think he is on the right track. Moreover, why can the right’s drive to create order not rally enough strength to take power? It’s not obvious that the argument works.
A common attack is that the Cthulhu theory is a mere tautology arising from our definitions of left and right. The right wants to conserve, whereas the left is the coalition for change. If there is any political change, it will be by definition ‘left wing’. I don’t think this is fair, there are times in history when the right has won change. There really was some permanent rollback of the state in the 80s and 90s, however small that victory may have been.
If we are to be confident that Cthulhu will keep moving left, we need a theory of left and right and a theory for why the left wins. I wish to present you with both - the first is bio-leninism, the second is the median voter theorem.
The blogger Spandrell came up with the theory of Bio-leninism, which holds that the right represents the interests of the ‘virtuous’, those with traits that would win wealth, awards and prestige in a meritocratic society. The left represents the weak, those who wish to take the wealth and prestige from the virtuous. This seems to fit history. The right has represented the nobility, the bourgeoisie and the capitalists. The left represents the poor, the working class, women, ethnic minorities, social deviants and those ‘sexual minorities’ that would likely be shunned and poor without support from the state to raise their status. Moreover, the theory fits the statistical evidence on the individual differences between the left and right. The left are poorer, they are uglier, they are more likely to be mentally ill and they are even physically weaker. The left literally represents the weak, the right represents the strong.
Yes, the theory of bio-leninism is not very flattering to the Left. But I should note their weakness does not necessitate the left always being wrong. There are of course moral justifications for supporting the weak, at the expense of the strong. Might is not always right.
The left-wing coalition understands that they must keep power over the government or they would be far worse off under a meritocratic system. As such, the left-wing individuals make very loyal supporters. A politician or a king that elevates a minority’s status can always rely on their support. Spandrell does a greater analysis of these dynamics of bio-Leninism.
This theory of left and right fits very well into our theory of politics - the median voter theorem. Let’s imagine a democracy with voters of a range of incomes. They vote on one policy - an income tax to fund a universal basic income. The poor want higher taxes and welfare and the richer want lower taxes and lower welfare, so they vote accordingly. Only the policy which can get the majority of voters will win. As such, the person with the median income gets the deciding voter and decides the tax level. The poorer the median voter is, ie. the more skewed the income distribution is towards the rich, the higher the level of taxes he will vote for.
Take the distribution above, the x-axis is income and the y axis is the density of people. There are many poor people and only one Bill Gates. Basically, they will gang up to steal Mr Gates’s wealth. Alex Tabarrok explains the theory here.
Of course, this model can be extended. For a start, we don’t need democracy. The rich may pay armies to quell dissent, but there's only so much dissent they can quell. The number of supporters always matters. The policies that win will always have to attract enough people - they cannot only be of benefit to the richest person or the poorest person. Moreover, the policy question does not have to be about income. All sorts of goods, such as status and jobs, are distributed across the population and may be redistributed with political action. For example, status and prestige can be redistributed with affirmative action, monuments and what is taught in schools. In our model, the bio-leninist left wants to redistribute status and income towards them and the strong right wants even more for themselves, or at least not to lose too much.
So under this model of politics, what causes political change?
The median voter supports more redistribution the more unequal the distribution of goods is. If the top 1% are super-rich he can increase taxes a lot and for a big paycheck. If the top 1% are barely different from the average family, raising taxes will hurt the median voter but give him only a very small basic income in return.
The median voter also supports more redistribution the more the rich’s work is inelastic to tax rises - if the rich are only weakly discouraged from working by the tax then the median voter will tax them more. The more the rich and powerful will sit back and take it, the more they get taxed. This is the logic of the Laffer curve. The more the rich go ‘John Galt’ and stop working or leave the country, the less the median voter is willing to tax them.
Under our model, the left can only keep winning if society always becomes more unequal and the strong always become more apathetic to being attacked. I’m going to argue both these phenomena are occurring and caused by economic growth. So long as we become richer, Chtulhu will inevitably swim further left. Yes, I’m going to argue for a quasi-Marxist historical materialism.
Since at least the 1970s wealth and income inequality have been increasing. More generally for our purposes, the rich are richer than ever before, creating more wealth that others want to redistribute. The 19th-century version of BAP, ‘Ragnar Redbeard’ foretold the rise of the socialists, saying
"The guarded treasure halls and iron-clad temples of modern kings and presidents, high priests and millionaires, are positively the richest the world has ever known... Here, then, is opportunity on a colossal scale. Here is the goal of the Cæsars, Nebuchadnezzars and Napoleons in the days that are coming"
More generally we see rising inequalities in other respects. Mass migration promoted by left-wing parties, to support their power, has created inequalities arising from ethnicity. The strange rise of mental illness is creating an inequality in contentment and happiness that is reflected in our politics. The LGBT cult has created a contagion of trans, bisexual and other sexual identities that leave many feeling like they are victims of society. Women in the workplace have made gender inequalities salient that were not before. Sexual inequality is increasing with few men taking most of the women (note the incels are technically right-wing because they believe in a more meritocratic, less feminist society, they would have greater access to sex). Falling intelligence and a possibly widening gap, due to assortative mating, is leading to more low IQ people who may wish to redistribute status from the smart.
These rising inequities which are causing a leftward shift in our politics, are very similar to Peter Turchin’s theory of elite overproduction. More people than ever are going through higher education to attain elite status, but there’s only so much elite status to go around creating a desire for redistribution, be it through taxes, affirmative action or prestige more broadly. Note that whilst the right are richer, the left are more educated - they have tried to get riches and status and failed. Robert Nozick thought this was why professors are left-wing - they are smart and feel entitled to status and riches but have little. Academics who disagree with the statement ‘In the current society, school achievement is an important predictor of individuals’ income’, are more likely to express anti-market sentiment.
Socioeconomic development not only increases the amount of wealth that can be redistributed, but it also increases inequality. Inequality seems to only fall during crises like war and depressions, and even then only sometimes. In recent history, economic growth is associated with rising inequality.
Economic development allows for greater rewards in ‘winner takes all’ scenarios. This is because we can make goods more ‘non-rivalrous’, selling the same product to more and more people at once. When millions can watch a football game, top players can attract much higher pay. When women can choose from thousands of men with the swipe of a screen, the best men take more of the rewards. The printing press, radio and television, the internet and Substack, all increase and redirect profits to only the best content creators. As economist Tyler Cowen has argued, ‘average is over’.
So economic growth will inevitably encourage more redistribution in the median voter model. GDP keeps Cthulhu swimming. Economic growth also makes us more complacent and willing to accept redistribution from us.
Right-wingers are normal, well-adjusted people who want to get on in their life and just want ‘to grill’. As Richard Hanania has pointed out, this means they lose. Right-wingers are less likely to donate money to political parties, they are not willing to lose friends over different politics and they are too afraid to publicise their beliefs lest they lose their jobs and get cancelled. If a right-wing prophet appeared asking us to pick up our cross, he would not even have 12 apostles.
Economic growth makes the right wealthier so we now have too much to lose to pick a fight. The middle-class boomer is not going to fight HR’s affirmative action or diversity training when he has a nice salary and pension to protect. And so civil rights lobbyists and HR know they can get away with creating an ever more oppressive work environment. By contrast, the ugly leftists that make up Antifa have nothing to lose in their violence. We are ultimately living through the plot of Brave New World, where in a dystopian world with unlimited comforts, no one is willing to give up their wealth by fighting the system. When wealth accumulates, men decay. Good times create weak men etc.
Just as the rich who keep working when taxed allow themselves to be taxed more in the median voter model. The increasing comforts of modernity encourage the right to just put up with the woke attack.
With three components - economic growth, bio-Leninism and the median voter theorem, we have shown why Cthulhu always swims left. Absent economic and societal collapse, can we do anything to fight back against Cthulhu?
I know I said the median voter theorem can even help us understand non-democratic societies, but being less democratic can help against Cthulhu. If the ruling party needs the support of only 30% of the population instead of 50%, it can offer less redistribution. For example, giving monetary policy to independent central banks has prevented the left-wing from attaining votes by redistributing income using the money printer.
Creating the incentives for the right to resist Cthulhu, requires the right to be radicalised, indoctrinated into putting their beliefs above their material comfort. This is frankly hard.
The easier method to slow Cthulhu is to find a way to reduce the disparities in outcomes and status that cause the left-wing demands for redistribution. For a start that simply means making society composed of more healthy, wealthy people and fewer people weak and wanting. This can be achieved with immigration controls and in the future, it will involve embryo selection.
Without changing demographics, we can also improve the status and wealth of the left’s supporters so they no longer need to take it from others. This has a name - Tory Socialism, which aims to pre-emptively make the poor richer and employed, discouraging them from demanding costly redistribution. The problem with Tory Socialism is that it is often still socialism. We need policies that can give left-wing supporters more status, prestige and wealth without undermining our own.
The solution is to create new cultural norms that raise the status of the weak. Have you noticed that self-help is right-wing? From Jordan Peterson to pick up artists, the right-wing is trying to get you lifting weights, cleaning your bedroom and dating girls. Conservative cultural norms, such as religion, have similar goals. As Marx noted, religion is the opiate of the masses, providing dignity to the poor. A cult of motherhood, seen in our past and in fascist societies, gives women more status without taking jobs from men or putting women in STEM. Praising traditional gender norms will limit the rise of trans and bi populations who want society to give them goods for being ‘victims’. The right’s move into a kind of counter-culture movement trying to spread these healthy memes is exactly how we win.
When the weak have these cultural norms, changing society to redistribute more will only hurt themselves. Happy mothers gain nothing from women in STEM initiatives. The proud working class do not want hand-outs and their employment makes them suspicious of economic attacks on their employer.
Whilst economic growth makes the left’s rise inevitable, understanding Cthulhu can help us respond and defend ourselves. If we fail, then the weak will dominate the strong.