The Past Is A Foreign Country
I was walking in the forest recently when I came across a manuscript of political economy that (from the yellowing of the pages) I estimated with some precision had been published on or around Anno Domini 1962. While the front and back coverspieces had been torn away, leaving me no manner to discern the author or title of the work, the inner pages were in miraculously fine fettle, such that I found myself with a remarkable opportunity to compare and contrast the politics of that time period – now, how I marvel!, 60 years in our past – with the political economy of our own magnificent age.
The book begins by arguing that economic and political freedom are seen as different but often intertwined. "The citizen of Great Britain ... after World War II was not permitted to spend his vacation in the United States because of exchange control" – apparently British people weren't able to buy foreign currencies freely until 1979? This is so outside the overton window now that I thought I was misreading it, but apparently it's true. In 1966, Brits couldn't take more than 50gbp1966 (roughly $1500 today) out the country for holidays. And this was before MasterCard.
The author then talks about American cases: the Amish having their livestock confiscated because they didn't want to participate in social security (which they only got exemption from in 1965), and an American who would like to get a Swiss watch "but is prevented from doing so because of quotas." This was unintelligible to my modern mind, but apparently Swiss watches were too cheap, and also there was a Tariff Commission that could limit imports.
The book goes on to mention (in a context not important) a few wealthy patrons of radical movements: Frederick Vanderbilt Field, Anita McCormick Blaine, and Corliss Lamont, "to mention a few names recently prominent." It struck me to my surprise that I have no idea who any of those people are, and only just recognize a couple of the family names. And yet the prominent wealthy patrons of today seem so prominent, it is hard to believe they might be forgotten 60 years from now.
The book mentions in passing that Winston Churchill – already an MP and former cabinet minister – had not been allowed to talk on British radio from 1933 until the outbreak of WWII because the only available radio was the BBC, the BBC was a government monopoly, and Churchill was considered too controversial.[^1] Maybe I should have known about this, but I didn't.
From the other side of the ideological spectrum, the book talks about how 150 writers were blacklisted from Hollywood for their Communist sympathies, until Dalton Trumbo won as Oscar under a pseudonym while the producer pretended he'd bought the screenplay off a random "guy in Spain with a beard".[^2]
The book talks about how only the post office is legally allowed to carry mail. Apparently this is still kinda true today? Since 1979 there's an exemption for "extremely urgent letters", so UPS and FedEx get to do overnights, but regular domestic first-class mail is still USPS only. Also, only USPS can legally put things in your mailbox, so FedEx and UPS have to leave everything at your door. Weird.
The book mentions peacetime military conscription, in passing. I'm not confident if these numbers are right, but looking it up online I'm getting that 82,000 Americans were drafted in 1962 to serve 2 years active duty – that's 0.04% of Americans at the time, but 0.8% of men aged 18-25. And this was peacetime, before Vietnam – I'm not sure I'd internalized how many men were drafted so recently.
At this point, alas, an eagle descended and grasped the manuscript from my hands, before I could finish the book and my survey of comparison. Still, from these brief chapters, I got a strange feeling of the enormity of distance and change from the past: things that now seem outside the window of thinkable policy were not only thinkable but actually happening within one lifetime. (Of course, that means that things that are currently unthinkable may also come to pass within a lifetime from now).
[^1]: Claude says this is mostly true, but not precise: he was largely shut out but not entirely, and also it was partly because of his views and partly because the Director General personally disliked him.
[^2]: Claude says "mostly true" again, but that the 150 included directors, actors and musicians not just writers.