Results for “yemen”
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Predictions about Yemen

Most experts predict Sana'a, the fastest-growing capital in the world at 7% a year, will run out of economically viable water supplies by 2017. That is the same year the World Bank says Yemen will cease earning income from its oil, which currently accounts for three-quarters of the state's revenues.

Here is the full article.  The Yemeni government, by the way, is still subsidizing water usage.

My visit to Yemen

With Yemen in the news I thought I would recount my trip to the country in 1996 or so.  I spent five or six days in Sana'a, the capital, and I remember the following:

1. At the biggest and best hotel in town, no one spoke English or any other European language.

2. Most of the women wore full veils.  This allows them to stare at foreign men, and make lots of direct eye contact, without repercussion.  The younger girls looked like this.  I've never been stared at more in my life, by women.

3. Virtually all of the men carried daggers in their sashes.

4. Most of the people seemed to get stoned — every day, all day long — by chewing qat.  I recall reading that qat supply amounts to about 20 percent of the economy.  This estimate suggests that three-quarters of the adult population partakes in the habit, every afternoon.

5. The country has the most amazing architecture I have seen, anywhere.

6. The best restaurant served fish doused in red chilies, with a vaguely Ethiopian spice palate for the other dishes.  You eat with your fingers.

7. Most of the people lived what was still a fundamentally medieval existence in a medieval setting.  The center of town felt like how I had imagined the year 1200 in Baghdad.

8. Yemen has perhaps the biggest problems with water supply, and vanishing aquifers, of any country.  Qat cultivation makes these problems worse and for many years Yemeni government policy subsidized water extraction.

9. At the time the capital city was quite safe, though German tourists would get kidnapped in the countryside on a regular basis.  The Yemenis had a reputation as very hospitable kidnappers.  Usually the kidnappers would hold the tourists in return for promises about infrastructure.

10. I was accompanying a World Bank mission and had access to "the government driver" (singular), and a Mercedes-Benz.  He did not speak any English or any other language besides Yemeni Arabic.

11. With the possible exception of the Bolivian altiplano, Yemen is the weirdest country or region I have visited.

12. The last decade has not, overall, been a good one for Yemen.

13. In the fall the climate was very nice.

Yemen fact of the day

…the market price of water has quadrupled in the past four years,
pushing more and more people to drill illegally into rapidly receding
aquifers.

Here is the longer (and fascinating) story.  Basically the country is running out of water.  The article focuses on the fact that half of the Yemeni water supply goes to grow an addictive drug called qat.  Here is more:

…in the late 1960s, motorized drills began to proliferate, allowing
farmers and villagers to pump water from underground aquifers much
faster than it could be replaced through natural processes. The number
of drills has only grown since they were outlawed in 2002.

Despite the destructive effects of qat, the Yemeni government supports
it, through diesel subsidies, loans and customs exemptions, Mr. Eryani
said. It is illegal to import qat, and powerful growers known here as
the “qat mafia” have threatened to shoot down any planes bringing in
cheaper qat from abroad.

If you have never visited Yemen, and would consider such a trip, I urge you to do so.  The option value component of waiting for better times is dwindling rapidly.  I should add that:

1. The country cannot afford much desalination, and

2. The real problem with desalination is often pumping the “clean” water uphill and that is a major issue in mountainous Yemen.

Airlifting Yemeni Jews

Here is a new paper:

This paper estimates the effect of the childhood environment on a large
array of social and economic outcomes lasting almost 60 years, for both
the affected cohorts and for their children. To do this, we exploit a
natural experiment provided by the 1949 Magic Carpet operation, where
over 50,000 Yemenite immigrants were airlifted to Israel. The
Yemenites, who lacked any formal schooling or knowledge of a
western-style culture or bureaucracy, believed that they were being
"redeemed," and put their trust in the Israeli authorities to make
decisions about where they should go and what they should do. As a
result, they were scattered across the country in essentially a random
fashion, and as we show, the environmental conditions faced by
immigrant children were not correlated with other factors that affected
the long-term outcomes of individuals. We construct three summary
measures of the childhood environment: 1) whether the home had running
water, sanitation and electricity; 2) whether the locality of residence
was in an urban environment with a good economic infrastructure; and 3)
whether the locality of residence was a Yemenite enclave. We find that
children who were placed in a good environment (a home with good
sanitary conditions, in a city, and outside of an ethnic enclave) were
more likely to achieve positive long-term outcomes. They were more
likely to obtain higher education, marry at an older age, have fewer
children, work at age 55, be more assimilated into Israeli society, be
less religious, and have more worldly tastes in music and food. These
effects are much more pronounced for women than for men. We find weaker
and somewhat mixed effects on health outcomes, and no effect on
political views. We do find an effect on the next generation – children
who lived in a better environment grew up to have children who achieved
higher educational attainment.

Here is an ungated version.

What I’ve been reading

Christopher Phillips, Battle Ground: Ten Conflicts that Explain the New Middle East.  A good, “simple enough” introduction to the wars going on in Syria, Yemen, and other parts of the Middle East.  If you are worried you will hate, you can just skip the Palestine chapter.

Catherine Pakaluk, Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth.  About five percent of American women end up having five children or more — what do you learn by talking to them?  (“Which one should I give back?”)  The author herself has eight children.

Beth Linker, Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America.  For a long time I’ve been thinking there should be a good book on this topic, and now there is one.  Both fun and interesting.

Maxwell Stearns, Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing our Broken Democracy argues for proportional representation and accompanying reforms.  Putting aside whether this ever can happen, I am never quite sure how this is supposed to work when nuclear weapons use is such a live issue.

Ethan Mollick is the best and most thorough Twitter commentator on LLMs, he now has a forthcoming book Co-Intelligence.

Andrew Leigh, an Australian MP and also economist, has published The Shortest History of Economics, recommended by Claudia Goldin.

Is some deterrence being restored?

Iran, eager to disrupt U.S. and Israeli interests in the Middle East but wary of provoking a direct confrontation, is privately urging Hezbollah and other armed groups to exercise restraint against U.S. forces, according to officials in the region.

Israel’s brutal war on Hamas in Gaza has stoked conflict between the United States and Iran’s proxy forces on multiple fronts. With no cease-fire in sight, Iran could face the most significant test yet of its ability to exert influence over these allied militias.

When U.S. forces launched strikes this month on Iranian-backed groups in Yemen, Syria and Iraq, Tehran publicly warned that its military was ready to respond to any threat. But in private, senior leaders are urging caution, according to Lebanese and Iraqi officials who were briefed on the talks. They spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive conversations.

U.S. officials say the message might be having some effect. As of Saturday, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria hadn’t attacked U.S. forces in more than 13 days, an unusual lull since the war in Gaza began in October. The militants held their fire even after a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad killed a senior Kataib Hezbollah official.

“Iran may have realized their interests are not served by allowing their proxies unrestricted ability to attack U.S. and coalition forces,” one U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Here is the full WaPo story, via Christian.

Non-random splat

It is heresy to say this, but I don’t think many people will be listening to the music of Jelly Roll Morton in the future.  It feels “too archived” and less vital than say Haydn, much less Mozart or Beethoven.

So many people are defending Luka on Twitter, but he doesn’t do much to make his teammates better.  And why didn’t Jalen Brunson stick around on the Mavericks?  “Who wants to play with you?” is an underrated metric for assessing player quality, not to mention hire quality more generally.  Luka is on track to be one of the five (three?) greatest scorers of all time, but not one of the fifteen greatest players.  (Are Kevin Durant and Kobe the other two?  Is Dominique Wilkins another great scorer who also was less of a complete player?)

There are various rumors about Taylor Swift and her beau.  But no one says “If those rumors were true, they would just admit it!  It wouldn’t cost them anything in terms of income or endorsements.”  That indicates there is still a significant shortage of tolerance and equal treatment in American society.

Fabio Caruana as an articulate thinker is very underrated.

In the late 1990s I went to visit the Houthis in Yemen, and I don’t think deterrence is going to work against them.

Have any economists or pundits stepped forward and admitted that they underestimated Milei?

My current reason for not buying the Apple Vision Pro is that I am afraid I won’t know how to turn it on and get it working.

Quite possibly Senegal is not a democracy any more.

The Chess Olympiad already (de facto) allows performance enhancers, though not computers.

Steakhouses are now underrated, most of all if you don’t order steak.

There is a (suddenly well-known) person on social media who so embodies modes of argumentation I find objectionable that at first I thought his was a parody account.

Tuesday assorted links

1. My Feb.21 Arsht Center live event with Peter Thiel, “Political Theology,” register here.

2. One account of Russia’s game-theoretic strategy to come (speculative).

3. “Yemen now has more births per year than Russia, far more than Germany or Japan. In a few decades it must end up with a larger population than Russia. The future is Yemeni.”  Tweet here.

4. Taiwanese short stories.

5. Patrick Luciani reviews GOAT.

6. “The Indianapolis airport actually installed a full-length basketball court in the terminal in honor of NBA All-Star.

7. Short interview with Paul McCartney’s school teacher (1965 video).  Of course he sees Paul as a regional thinker.

Which are the most underperforming parts of the world? (from my email)

You’ve written about undervalued economies in the past, but after visiting the Bay Area, I wonder what you think are the most underperforming places in the world? Define “place” as you wish, but I mean underperforming relative to easily achievable/median policy mixes. So less “what if Albanians acted like Singaporeans” and more “what if LA improved land use.”

I ask because the Bay Area, despite its achievements, seems like a candidate (Paul Graham seems to think so), as does Southern California which cedes the world’s most livable climate to cars. Various parts of Mexico come to mind. Eritrea sits on a key trade route with little to show for it. My Bosnia is a disappointment relative to neighbors. West Virginia?

Always eager to hear your thoughts.

That is from Haris Hadzimuratovic.  I have a few nominations:

1. Albania I think will end up much richer, more or less on a par with parts of the former Yugoslavia.  The country has enjoyed a growth spurt lately.  So Albania is a good pick, but it is converging and soon won’t be a pick anymore.

2. Egypt and Lebanon should be much richer.  You cannot cite their neighbors in support of that claim, but they are both extremely cultured places.  Lebanese migrants in particular have done very well elsewhere.

3. Armenia should be much richer.  Armen Alchian would agree.

4. Belarus should be richer than Russia, not poorer than Russia.

5. Nicaragua should be modestly richer than it is.

6. Venezuela was once the richest country in Latin America, now it is among the poorest.  Cuba too.

(You will notice that communism is implicated in 3-6, and arguably #1 too.

7. Yemen should be richer, though I would not expect it to be rich.

What else?

What are markets telling us about the Middle Eastern war?

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:

Despite the continuing war in the Middle East, most markets have been relatively calm. Stock exchanges have not plunged, while volatility appears manageable, indeed ordinary. If you were looking at just the markets (except for Israel’s), you might not even know there is a war on.

The question is what to make of such data. Allow me to make a daring inference: At least for the time being, the assumption is that the current conflict will not widen into a much larger war. It may pull in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and other parties, but so far markets are indicating that the Israel-Hamas war will not much disrupt most of the world’s large economies.

There is one very important caveat: This is an ex-ante analysis. Markets are wrong all the time, but they are also often the best predictive tool available. Consider the Super Bowl. Before the game, the betting odds are usually the best indication of who is favored and by how much. Every single time, those odds end up being wrong: By the end of the game, one team is 100% likely to win, and the other team 100% likely to lose. Still, the odds were the best available predictor before the game started.

And:

It is not true that markets ignore war. For instance, the value of the Israeli shekel is down sharply since Oct. 7, reflecting that many parts of the Israeli economy have come to a standstill, and that the country will experience more serious fiscal problems in the future. Just after the Hamas attack, there was an immediate 4% spike in oil prices, which is significant but not a game-changer.

There is a lot of evidence suggesting that markets incorporate other consequences of war. For instance, the Iraq war had sizeable impacts on US travel stocks, as well as shares in the Turkish and Israeli markets. So don’t think markets are asleep at the moment. The marginal investor is watching — and deciding not to overreact.

Worth a ponder, but do note the overall news is still absolutely terrible in humanitarian and moral terms.

The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and existential AGI risk

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, activated in 1970, has been relatively successful in limiting nuclear proliferation.  When it comes to nuclear weapons, it is hard to find good news, but the treaty has acted as one deterrent of many to nation-states acquiring nuclear arms.  Of course the treaty works, in large part, because the United States (working with allies) has lots of nuclear weapons, a powerful non-nuclear military, de facto control of SWIFT, and so on.  We strongly encourage nations not to go acquiring nuclear weapons — just look at the current sanctions on Iran, noting the policy does not always succeed.

One approach to AI risk is to treat it like nuclear weapons and also their delivery systems.  Let the United States get a lead, and then hope the U.S. can (in conjunction with others) enforce “OK enough” norms on the rest of the world.

Another approach to AI risk is to try to enforce a collusive agreement amongst all nations not to proceed with AI development, at least along certain dimensions, or perhaps altogether.

The first of these two options seems obviously better to me.  But I am not here to argue that point, at least not today.  Conditional on accepting the superiority of the first approach, all the arguments for AI safety are arguments for AI continuationism.  (And no, this doesn’t mean building a nuclear submarine without securing the hatch doors.)  At least for the United States.  In fact I do support a six-month AI pause — for China.  Yemen too.

It is a common mode of presentation in AGI circles to present wordy, swirling tomes of multiple concerns about AI risk.  If some outside party cannot sufficiently assuage all of those concerns, the writer is left with the intuition that so much is at stake, indeed the very survival of the world, and so we need to “play it safe,” and thus they are lead to measures such as AI pauses and moratoriums.

But that is a non sequitur.  The stronger the safety concerns, the stronger the arguments for the “America First” approach.  Because that is the better way of managing the risk.  Or if somehow you think it is not, that is the main argument you must make and persuade us of.

(Scott Alexander has a new post “Most technologies aren’t races,” but he doesn’t either choose one of the two approaches listed above, nor does he outline a third alternative.  Fine if you don’t want to call them “races,” you still have to choose.  As a side point, once you consider delivery systems, nuclear weapons are less of a yes/no thing than he suggests.  And this postulated take is a view that nobody holds, nor did we practice it with nuclear weapons: “But also, we can’t worry about alignment, because that would be an unacceptable delay when we need to “win” the AI “race”.”  On the terminology, Rohit is on target.  Furthermore, good points from Erusian.  And this claim of Scott’s shows how far apart we are in how we consider institutional and also physical and experimental constraints: “In a fast takeoff, it could be that you go to sleep with China six months ahead of the US, and wake up the next morning with China having fusion, nanotech, and starships.”)

Addendum:

As a side note, if the real issue in the safety debate is “America First” vs. “collusive international agreement to halt development,” who are the actual experts?  It is not in general “the AI experts,” rather it is people with experience in and study of:

1. Game theory and collective action

2. International agreements and international relations

3. National security issues and understanding of how government works

4. History, and so on.

There is a striking tendency, amongst AI experts, EA types, AGI writers, and “rationalists” to think they are the experts in this debate.  But they are only on some issues, and many of those issues (“new technologies can be quite risky”) are not so contested. And because these individuals do not frame the problem properly, they are doing relatively little to consult what the actual “all things considered” experts think.

Picture books are very good

Not just good, they are very good.  I picked up two new ones yesterday at the Arlington Library, and I am excited to spend time with both.  The first is Doris Behrens-Abouseif Metalwork from the Arab World and the Mediterranean, and the second is Salma Samar Damluji The Architecture of Yemen and its Reconstruction, only $17.97 for that one!  Here are some summary reasons why picture books are so underrated:

1. No one reads them.  Or at least no paying customer reads them (see #2).  So the writers do not have to seek to please the reader so much.  Rather the text has to look “serious enough” to a library buyer, or to a “coffee table buyer.  The writers, on their side, tend to be of high knowledge, intelligence, and conscientiousness.  How is this for a stunning review of the Yemen book?: “In what can be described as a written expedition through Yemen, Salma Samar Damluji’s meticulous cataloguing of typologies and individual structures is a work of clarity and dedication…Damluji does due justice to their memory and ensures the intent and purpose behind their construction is not lost in translation.”

2. Picture books are de facto free.  I get almost all of my picture books from the local public libraries, which buy quite a few of them.

2b. When sitting on a public library shelf, you can spot a picture book from the other side of the room.  Thus picture books are not difficult to find.

3. The basic style is Wikipedia-like in the sense of aiming at relative objectivity.  Yet the style is better than most on-line writing, Wikipedia included.  Few picture books are highly partisan or pushing some wacko thesis.

4. They don’t go viral and they are not read by groups of people at the same time.  That in turn feeds back into how they are written.  Your friends are never reading the same picture book as you are.  Thus your picture book is never The Current Thing.  Bravo.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve had someone ask me about a particular picture book.  Ever.  Could you name even three authors of picture books?  One?  Bravo all the more.

5. Pictures, photographs, and maps are excellent in their own right.

6. What makes for good pictures in a picture book?  Historical sites, the arts and design, topography, animals, birds, and dinosaurs (almost the same thing).  Most of those topics involve a minimum of b.s.

Q.E.D.

How do Effective Altruist recommendations change in time of war?

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:

During wartime, basic human needs become more pressing, most of all food. For instance, Ukraine supplies much of the world’s grain, including to many of the world’s poorer countries. The largest importers of Ukrainian grain are Egypt, Turkey, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Pakistan, and in percentage terms Yemen, Libya and Lebanon are especially dependent. To the extent the conflict and sanctions disrupt Russia as well, Russia is not only a major grain exporter but also the largest exporter of fertilizer.

With so much of Ukraine under siege, these supplies are a mix of blockaded or endangered, thereby creating hunger and malnutrition risk for grain importers.

Increasing the productivity of agriculture, especially in poorer countries, now should be a higher priority. When food supply from one source such as Ukraine is shut off, poorer nations should have other supply options. The Green Revolution has been wonderful for India and Pakistan by increasing crop yields — but it turns much more agricultural innovation is necessary…

In a world at peace, public health interventions yield high returns, and they probably still will in wartime. But their relative benefits, compared to other interventions, may diminish. Saving lives with medicine is worthwhile, but many medicines are expensive. If lives can be saved by the mere shipment and trade of food, and at a profit at that, that will be preferred over saving lives with medicine.

Migration, or the discovery and reallocation of talent, also becomes a higher priority in wartime.  Do read the whole thing.