Does Visiting South Africa Make You More Right-Wing or More Left-Wing?
12th June 2024
Tyler Cowan, an economist at George Mason University in D.C.
The right-wing tendencies are easiest to explain. South Africa is obviously much wealthier than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, and of course Westerners play a larger role in its history and also in its present. You can put different glosses on that, but a variety of those paths lead to right-wing conclusions. The left-wing lessons are more novel to ponder, here are a few.
Cowan is generally libertarian, and when dealing with libertarians, labels such as ‘right-wing’ or ‘left-wing’ really say more about which Modern Political Tribe one belongs to than it does to the labelee. Generally libertarians tend to be realistic about Noticing, so he’s got that going for him.