From: jimruttshow8596
Glenn Loury is an academic economist and public intellectual known for his scholarly contributions to various fields and his social criticism [00:00:50]. His work has touched upon welfare economics, income distribution, game theory, industrial organization, and natural resources economics [00:00:52].
Early Economic Focus and Influences
Loury’s initial academic interest was primarily technical, focusing on mathematics and economic theory [00:50:53]. He describes his early focus as being “interested in the proof, the theorem, the method, the technique, the stochastic process, the asymptotic properties, the dynamic system, the stability conditions” [00:50:59].
His mentors encouraged him to consider the broader implications of his work. Thomas Schelling, a Nobel-honored game theorist and economist, influenced Loury with his awareness of the “strategic complexity of a social interaction” [00:05:28].
Another significant influence was Richard Eckaus, a development economist at MIT, who advised Loury that as a Black person in economics, there would always be “demands on you… to have something to say about poverty and about inequality and about racism and discrimination and slavery” [01:02:53]. Eckaus encouraged Loury to prepare himself to address these issues [01:03:09].
This led Loury to integrate social concerns into his abstract theoretical work:
“I wanted to apply the theorizing. The theorizing was, I have a Markoff chain… stochastic process… what are the conditions sufficient to know that regardless of the initial distribution characteristic of this stochastic process the asymptotic behavior of it will be of a particular kind, you know, it’ll go to a stationary state… because I want to use that stationary state as a sufficient statistic for the inequality embodying content of the transition process” [01:04:47]
He applied this to understanding inequality in society, modeling the “outcome of dynamic income producing processes for individual families” [01:06:16].
Loury also introduced the concept of “social capital” in his dissertation to analyze whether historical discrimination against Black people would eventually “wash out” even with equal opportunity [01:06:42]. He found that if social processes (like stable neighborhoods, cross-racial interactions, and family development) were also affected by race, then economic inequality would not necessarily disappear, even with economic market equality [01:07:51].
Political Ideologies and Public Policy Stances
Loury’s political ideologies and views on economic systems and public policy have evolved throughout his career.
Early Career and Neoconservatism
While at MIT, he identified as a “technic guy” [00:50:56] rather than political, but was aware of and interested in broader ideas like libertarianism and the works of Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, and John Rawls [00:52:27].
During the early Reagan years (late 1970s and early 1980s), Loury shifted to the right, embracing aspects of neoconservatism [01:47:41]. This was characterized by three main dimensions:
- Economic Liberty (Hayekian): He was influenced by Friedrich von Hayek, a Nobel laureate economist and philosopher, and Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom [01:31:40]. Loury favored “market mediated decentralized allocation of resources” over “planned socially controlled politically mandated allocation of resources” [01:32:54]. He was amenable to the “supply side revolution” that accompanied Ronald Reagan’s rise [01:33:21].
- Cultural Conservatism: Loury held respect for the “cultural conservatism of the black Christian Protestant religious tradition” [01:33:55]. He was resistant to some of the cultural shifts of the late 20th century [01:34:29].
- Race and Self-Help: Loury grew “done with the mournful recitation of the wrongs of America’s past” [01:34:46]. He argued that in the post-Civil Rights Movement era, Black communities should take responsibility for their own development, addressing issues like “fatherless homes,” “violent crime,” “social irresponsibility,” “school failure,” and “welfare dependency” [01:35:15]. His guiding light became “self-help” rather than “anti-discrimination and anti-racism” [01:36:36].
Shift Left in the 1990s
In the mid-to-late 1990s, Loury shifted left politically [01:48:55]. This was influenced by several books, including The Bell Curve (on intelligence), America in Black and White (a conservative appraisal of race), and Dinesh D’Souza’s The End of Racism [01:49:07]. He found D’Souza’s work to be “glib,” “snide,” “satiric,” “insulting,” and “irrational” [01:49:51].
Another key issue that drove his shift left was mass incarceration [01:50:51]. He became alarmed at the “outsized number of African-Americans incarcerated” and the “negative impact of Prisons on black communities” [01:50:55]. His work on this topic culminated in his 2007 book, Race, Incarceration, and American Values, where he decried the “inhumanity of America’s criminal justice system from the left” [01:51:50]. During this period, he was “against blindness and in favor of affirmative action and against anti-welfare stuff,” positioning himself as a “Social Democrat” [01:51:22].
Shift Right in the 2000s and Beyond
Loury describes moving right again in more recent years, particularly in reaction to events like police killings of Black men (Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, George Floyd) and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement [01:52:00]. He expresses “deep concerns” about these developments, believing they are “bad for the country and bad for black communities” [01:52:32].
He explicitly states his view on figures like Ibram X. Kendi, calling him an “empty suit” [01:53:43]. This continued evolution of his views demonstrates a complex and often “heterodox” approach to political ideologies and social issues, as noted by Jim Rut [01:31:02].