Only Yesterday

Yesterday my book club discussed Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s by Frederick Lewis Allen. A best seller when it was first published 80 years ago, it is still in print and remains a good read. The book describes the trends of the 1920s that were most evident to a thoughtful contemporary observer. I found it useful to look up some data on the demographic and economic differences between that time and our own to put the book in context. We are a much bigger, richer, more urban and better educated society today than in the 1920s.

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

I was impressed at how many of the problems of the 1920s we have repeated. There was the stock market bubble and crash, somewhat worse one hopes that that of today, the real estate bubble and crash in the sun state, social dysfunction in the wake of legislation against intoxicating substances (prohibition of alcohol then and drugs today), and the red scares of the 1920s and the McCarthy era.

I was struck on the other hand between the demilitarization following World War I versus the creation of the self sustaining military industrial complex after World War II, or the better job done in the 40s of creating an intergovernmental institutional framework to prevent future world wars as compared with the failure of the League of Nations.

During the discussion we noted the difference between formal and informal institutions. The governmental regulation of financial markets seems prototypically formal, implemented by formal organizations established by legislative charter after formal Congressional debate (with the influence of lobbyists). The sexual revolutions of the 20s and 60s seem prototypically informal, occurring both within and external to the institution of marriage, but largely a cultural evolution.

Of course neither is a pure example.

• The reaction to the Madoff and Pearlman Ponzi schemes shows how much informal friendship relations intruded into financial systems, there regulation, and the response to fraud.
• There has certainly been a lot of debate about sexual mores in religious and other institutions.

In our rapidly changing world, it behooves us to improve the process of deliberation on and evolution of institutional behavior. I would guess that specific issues could be located on the continuum from mostly formal to mostly informal. In all cases we should probably be worried about improving both the evolution of informal institutional elements and the deliberate modification of formal institutional elements.

Anyway, our group agreed that Only Yesterday was a good read -- thought provoking about not only the time of our parents or grandparents but also about the parallels and differences with today.