Destabilized Saturday Edition #4
American DNA, neighborhood microgrids, and "drumming up" business
In researching Wednesday’s post, Why is America so divided?, I found this Ancestry.com study of DNA groupings in the territorial U.S. The researchers analyzed several hundred thousand sequenced DNA samples1 and identified distinct DNA clusters, i.e. people whose genetic code was especially similar to one another. The result is this map:
The Ancestry.com DNA clusters map is notable for how well it maps on to the American Nations map of the arrivals and migrations of the early European settlers of the New World:
American Nations author Colin Woodard wrote this reaction to the DNA findings and their alignment with his map:
This is remarkable because the American Nations paradigm is resolutely not about genetics or genealogy. Rather, it’s built on the late cultural geographer Wilbur Zelinsky’s Doctrine of First Effective Settlement, which argues that when a “new” society is settled, the cultural characteristics of the initial settlement group will have a lasting and outsized effect on the future trajectory of that society — even if their numbers were very small and those of later immigrants of different origins were very large. These lasting characteristics, which inform the dominant culture of entire regions of North America, are passed down culturally, not genetically, which explains why the Dutch-settled area around New York City still has obvious and distinct characteristics inherited from Golden Age Amsterdam, even though the portion of people there reporting Dutch ancestry to census takers is a vanishingly small 0.2 percent. Culture is learned, not inherited.
In-group affinity and geographic proximity can obviously translate shared culture into similar genetics in a straightforward way (ahem). As Ancestry.com chief scientific officer Catherine Ball explained to Woodard:
Who we are today — the genetics of Americans all over the place — is the result of all kinds of cycles of reproductive isolation… Who your mates would be was linked to geography, politics, religion, war, and all of that…
The DNA analysis is quite interesting, but on the question of why the U.S. is so divided, it’s this idea from the Woodard article excerpt that grabs my attention:
…Doctrine of First Effective Settlement, which argues that when a “new” society is settled, the cultural characteristics of the initial settlement group will have a lasting and outsized effect on the future trajectory of that society — even if their numbers were very small and those of later immigrants of different origins were very large.
I think a plausible critique of American Nations could be that while the primary groups of European settlers of the New World 400 years ago had different and incompatible cultures, their descendants have now been joined together as countrymen for 246 years, and surely the latter is more relevant to 21st century American life than the former. But the Doctrine of First Effective Settlement (DFES)2 refutes this view. If we extrapolate from the DFES, we can see how “cultures of places reflect, even many years later, the culture of the people who first settled there,” means factors like later in-migration, broader national assimilation, and time tend to have a modest impact on a place’s cultural values. And if new arrivals, assimilation dynamics, and the passage of decades don’t meaningfully erode longstanding cultural incompatibilities between American sub-groups and regions, what happens when those incompatibilities become the focus of national politics? The DFES suggests the deep-seated cultural values will likely drive the course of events, not more recent political arrangements.
There are some leaps in there, I grant you. However, the “joined together as countrymen for 246 years” piece of my hypothetical critique is also a big leap. After all, that period of time included decades of slavery, a bloody regional civil war over slavery, decades of de jure segregation in the losing region, and many other examples of deep conflict.
We’ll come back to this question of whether or not the American nations’ deep-seated and incompatible cultural values are now the focus of national politics.
My Work
Climate change and housing bubbles – “This number, $3,994 per month, represents what Homes A and B are worth; it’s the $750,000 sale price translated into a monthly amount. The market value for both Home A and Home B is $3,994 per month, and given tax and insurance payments of $1,300 per month, that leaves $2,694 for the mortgage payment.
“Now let’s say the provider of insurance for Home A does a new risk assessment and determines the home insurance premiums don’t reflect the actual risk to the home. To bring the premiums in line with the risk, the insurance company raises Person A’s rates from $300 per month to $1,000 per month.
“…We established Home A is worth $3,994 per month. When Person A bought Home A, only $1,300 of the total amount was taxes and insurance, but now taxes and insurance have increased to $2,000. That means the mortgage can now only be $1,994, rather than $2,694, in order to stay at the established fair market value of $3,994 per month. If we assume the next buyer of Home A will also put down 20% and take a 30-year mortgage for the rest at 3.5%, how large a mortgage can the next buyer take out and still end up with an all-in cost of $3,994 per month?
“The answer, via this spreadsheet model, is $444,054. Borrowing $444,054 at a rate of 3.5% fixed over 30 years comes to a monthly payment of $1,994. Adding the 20% down payment to the mortgage amount gives us the new fair market value sale price of Home A: $555,067.
“Thus, when Home A’s home insurance premium increased from $300 per month to $1,000 per month, the value of Home A fell by $195,000, from $750,000 to $555,067. If the insurance repricing occurred in the first few years of ownership, Person A would see all of their equity wiped out and be left underwater, owing more on the home than it was worth – this despite their large $150,000 down payment.”
Interesting Reads
American Democracy is Doomed – This was written during the Obama presidency so it may be different than you expect.
Just one Interesting Reads article this week. I will only share things I think are really worth your time.
Tweets of the Week
Extreme Weather Watch
Creeping Authoritarianism Watch
Notes
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14238?proof=true
https://medium.com/s/balkanized-america/the-11-nations-of-america-as-told-by-dna-f283d4c58483
The DNA samples came from the Ancestry.com customers who paid $99 to have the company sequence their DNA and agreed it could be used for research purposes.
It’s worth noting that the Doctrine of First Effective Settlement is fully consistent with the behavioral science literature on social proof and social contagion. People look to other people to determine how to behave, especially in ambiguous social situations.