In Cato Unbound, Donald "Cafe Hayek" Boudreaux and Jerome Barkow debate the relative merits of more rapid diffusion of cultural mutations.  Mr Barkow is the sceptic.  He starts with an explanation of the ways in which evolutionary stable strategies emerge slowly: mutation, selection, and adaptation cannot be rushed.



I have some technical books on evolutionary game theory to read, some of which might go through a lot of careful algebra to achieve only modest improvements on arguments Armen Alchian or George Stigler offered in prose, three generations of economists ago.  And if you're tempted to question why there's a lot of mathematical formalism to codify "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," understand that being able to identify the conditions under which imitation does not confer evolutionary advantage might start with precisely that codification.

The speed with which possible evolutionary stable mutations emerge and diffuse might be one dimension along which the conventional wisdom breaks down.  That apppears to be one of Mr Barkow's arguments.



At heart,  Mr Barkow might be writing about agglomeration economies.  High-in-status in an isolated community, or the knowledge base of an isolated community, might be locally well-adapted, but make that isolated community larger, or allow the isolated community freer intercourse with other communities, and ideas can have more fruitful sex.  That appears to be Mr Boudreaux's rebuttal.

The saecular challenge, however, might be in the tension between the benefits of specialization and mutual [inter]dependence and the benefits of like working with like. Both confer evolutionary advantages, the evolutionary advantages are different, and there's no self-evident optimal path.
We are now experiencing a growth in class-based politics not seen since the New Deal. During the long period of generally sustained prosperity from the ’50s to 2007, class issues remained, but were increasingly subsumed by social issues—civil and gay rights, feminism, environment—that often cut across class lines. Democrats employed liberal social issues to build a wide-ranging coalition that spanned the ghettos and barrios as well as the elite neighborhoods of the big cities. Similarly, Republicans cobbled together their coalition by stressing conservative social ideas, free-market economics, and a focus on national defense; this cemented the country club wing with the culturally conservative suburban and exurban masses.
The old orders enumerated in that passage are fracturing, something that Mr Kotkin contemplates in his essay.  Although emergence will find a way, there are no guarantees that the transition from equilibrium to equilibrium will be pretty.

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