Why Hollywood loves Democrats

Briefly, Nozick explained that intellectuals go through school being told that they are the most valued members of society and being rewarded by a central authority (the teacher) for their superiority. But their expectations of maintaining such status after graduation rarely come to fruition.

“By and large, a capitalist society does not honor its intellectuals.” By contrast, many of their peers who might have been academically inferior to them end up doing much better than them financially. When intellectuals see the market heaping lavish rewards on people below them in intellectual stature they form the idea that the world is unfair. Betrayed and humiliated, they become suspicious of capitalism and favor a more just, centrally-planned redistribution.

In Hollywood, personal merit and societal reward are correlated in the reverse way.

There is no reason to believe that Hollywood actors and actresses were anything beyond average members of society growing up. Most actors and actresses were probably drama geeks, neither exceptionally popular nor academically honored. Owen Wilson, for example, was expelled from high school in 10th grade after he stole his math teacher’s textbook in an attempt to cheat on his homework.

However, at the blink of an eye, these mere mortals are catapulted into stardom. Their economic standing is elevated to absurd levels and the world watches their every step as if they are God’s greatest gift to humanity. While they do not change, society’s perception of them goes from indifference to deification.

They wonder why they are so fascinating that the paparazzi need to document their morning trip to the supermarket. As Jim Carrey (a Robin Hood leftist) once said, “If my career in show business hadn’t panned out I would probably be working today in Hamilton, Ontario, at the Dofasco steel mill.”

Hollywood stars hence feel that there is something arbitrary about their success — that their personal merit does not warrant their revered status. While they may be pleased at this outcome, they can’t help but feel that the system is unjust because their status is undeserved. They watch people in the lower rungs of society struggle and become overcome by a deep sense of guilt for holding the winning ticket in the lottery of life. They distrust capitalism for the seemingly unfair inequality it produces and thus favor redistribution.

However, what Hollywood fails to realize is that markets allocate rewards not based on individual merit but on the value individuals produce for others. As Nozick said, “a capitalist society rewards people only insofar as they serve the market-expressed desires of others; it rewards in accordance with economic contribution, not in accordance with personal value.” This might seem counter-intuitive but, if you think about it, a system that rewards individuals for improving the lot of others is far fairer than one that rewards them for some arbitrary intrinsic quality.

Until Hollywood grasps this point, its guilt over its own success will continue to fuel its romance with Democrats.

Prateik Dalmia is an International Studies Major at the Johns Hopkins University.