Risers and Fallers - by Arnold Kling - In My Tribe
Which 20th century intellectuals have higher or lower status today than when they were in their “prime”? I think of status in terms of two factors: name recognition and idea penetration.
Name recognition can be thought of as a guess as to what percentage of educated Americans can give a one-paragraph explanation of the person’s main thought and its significance. Then we take this guess as of now and compare it to what we guess would have been true in that intellectual’s “prime.”
Idea penetration can mean that an intellectual’s insights and conceptual frameworks are part of everyone’s repertoire. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s plea to judge people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character is an example, although it has become oddly right-coded.
An example of a Faller is John Kenneth Galbraith, who was known for claiming that the American economy had come to be dominated by large corporations. He described them as able to use advertising to ensure demand for their goods. He thought that the leaders of these giants cultivated a myth of entrepreneurship to hide their immense power and quasi-permanent status. In his prime, his books were bestsellers and many educated Americans were familiar with his line of thinking. Today, he is little read, and the business world has experienced considerable disruption. 1
