Below is a draft of Chapter 3 of my book on Elite Human Capital. See the Introduction, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2. This chapter is derived in part from my popular 2021 essay, “Liberals Read, Conservatives Watch TV.”

It’s been updated in a few ways. First of all, the essay was written before I started talking about the concept of Elite Human Capital. So one question I’ve been wrestling with is whether the Elite Human Capital/Low Human Capital axis is different than the Reading/TV axis, therefore necessitating a 2x2 matrix of movements and cultures, or they’re pretty much the same thing, with Reading/TV describing how different levels of human capital gather and process information and relate to those of their own tribe and adversaries. I was leaning towards the idea of two independent but related axes, and the previous drafts of chapters were written from that perspective. But, after giving the topic further thought and listening to feedback, I now think this can’t be justified and we have to treat reading and watching TV as characteristics of Elite and Low Human Capital respectively.

The chapter has also been updated to take into account developments of the last three plus years. I’d say that the perspective in the original article has held up extremely well. Trump has been choosing many top officials from Fox News to staff his administration, including his pick for Secretary of Defense. New data from the 2024 election shows that Trump voters were not only less educated, but people who cared less about politics. There’s also the rise of right-wing podcasts to consider, which includes both conservatives getting their own shows like Tucker, and popular preexisting programs, most notably the Joe Rogan Experience, tilting to the right. A theory that conservatives are attracted to audiovisual content more than the written word would have predicted that they would do well in podcasting, and that is what has happened. Again, reading/watching TV is a good way to understand politics.

There are other changes throughout the chapter, including a new figure on conservative/liberal differences in their preferred sources of media. Once again, please leave any feedback you might have, including spelling and grammatical mistakes.

Elite Human Capital usually tilts towards classical liberalism. Yet individuals with classical liberal instincts and a concern for truth are sometimes relatively evenly divided between various factions within a political culture. As late as 2012, the Republican candidate for president won a majority of college educated whites. Even then, however, the trend was for the more EHC part of the population to identify with the left, and Trump can be seen as an accelerant that pushed an already ongoing realignment forward.[1]

Things have now gone so far that there is no longer much risk in collapsing the study of human capital and political differences into the same analysis when talking about the United States. Volumes could be written on the cultural differences between communities at various levels of human capital, just as how one could spend a lifetime studying cultural differences between an isolated tribe and citizens of a modern developed nation. The main purpose of this chapter is to discuss what makes modern conservatives and liberals in the United States, and the cultures that each builds, different, with a special focus on the most policy and politically relevant aspects of the contrast. At the same time, I also emphasize that Elite Human Capital is not necessarily always liberal, noting how clearly right-leaning movements like the Taliban can sometimes share characteristics similar to those of the American left.

Reading/TV, Podcasts, and Elite Human Capital