Month: March 2017
Are the madrigals the best music of Monteverdi?
But if Book IV fires a warning shot across the bow, Books V and VIII launch an all-out musical assault on convention. For the first time an instrumental basso continuo part appears, providing continuity that allows voices to falter, stop altogether or even sing alone. Suddenly, musical emotion is less a matter of symbolism than of imitation; sighs, moans and shouts of joy can all be rendered truthfully, with each voice unshackled from its fellows. Harmonically, too, things are very different. The knife-twisting dissonances that famously angered the theorist Artusi in ‘Cruda Amarilli’ (‘A tumult of sounds, a confusion of absurdities, an assemblage of imperfections’) turn the poem’s cardboard lover into something of flesh and blood, someone whose thoughts alternately gallop and linger, whose emotions ebb and flow naturally, if unpredictably.
Book VIII is the greatest and widest-ranging volume of secular music of its age — perhaps of any. Composed over a 30-year span, the madrigals tackle not only the erotic charge of love and sexuality, but also for the first time its warring conflicts — the restlessness, agitation and rage that go hand in hand with its pleasures. No single work can represent such a collection, but perhaps the ‘Lamento della Ninfa’ comes closest; if you listen to just one work, make it this one.
That is from Alexandra Coghlan, via Ted Gioia.
The bureaucratization of protest
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:
Take the famed Selma civil-rights marchers of 1965, when the protesters had obtained the legal right, through petition, to conduct a 52-mile, five-day march down an interstate highway. Of course, that blocked the highway and inconvenienced many motorists and truckers. America’s NIMBY mentality would most likely prevent a comparable event today.
Starting in the 1970s, the federal courts began to assert that public spaces are not automatically fair game for marches and demonstrations, and so local governments have sought to please the users of such facilities rather than marchers and protesters. For instance, during the 2004 Democratic National Convention, numerous would-be demonstrators ended up being confined to a “demonstration zone,” which one federal judge described as analogous to Piranesi’s etchings of a prison. The zone was ringed by barricades, fences and coiled razor wire.
Here is the closer:
Could we not have kept public demonstrations and protests more alive as a vital and nonbureaucratized tradition?
For a long time, most people ignored this issue, but I wonder if it won’t start to seem urgent once again.
Do read the whole thing.
*Brown Face, Big Master*, by Joyce Gladwell
One of the most rewarding parts of preparing for my chat with Malcolm Gladwell earlier this week was discovering the autobiographical memoir of his mother, Joyce Gladwell, published in 1969. It covers growing up in Jamaica, women’s rights and recognition, a mixed-race marriage in the England of the 1960s, and a Christian journey through this world. The most striking passages are the account of a sexual assault on a ship and a stranger in the street hurling a racial epithet at her and her sons, in addition to Malcolm’s brief cameo as a very very young man on p.178. Most of all, this is a tale of a contemplative humility, and an account of how struggle and “the medicine of acceptance” can blend together into a successful and fulfilling life. It is especially valuable as a reflection of how a particular kind of quiet grace is closely tied to Jamaican heritage. Here is a short summary of the book.
What was striking on a second reading is how much this is also a memoir of how she lost her faith in adolescence, and wandered through part of her life without it, only later returning to the fold.
Here is some background information on Malcolm and his mother. Here is a 2007 radio chat with Malcolm and his mother, definitely recommended, despite her humble demeanor she has an amazing media presence and is not afraid to overrule her son. Malcolm also profiles her in Outliers, but that section makes more sense when you have read her directly.
Thursday assorted links
1. NPR Morning Edition covers Complacent Class.
2. Video of (non-complacent) hitchhikers; long, rambling, recommended. It’s called “The Greater Good: A Hitchhike Perspective.”
3. American man claims to be King of England.
4. All 17 species of penguins.
Ji Haan, Minister
One of the unfortunate legacies of British colonial rule in India is a permanent civil service that tends to subvert any change that it deems against its interests, even when such change is promoted by elected officials. This is one reason why change in India is often two steps forward, 1.9 steps back. A case in point is India’s newly passed Goods and Service Tax (GST).
The GST was supposed to solve a long-standing problem of Indian intra-national trade. Unlike say the US common market, Indian states erect tariff and non-tariff barriers against the products of other states. As a result, production is allocated inefficiently–Indian firms with high costs hide behind barriers and produce too much while Indian firms with low costs can’t expand sales to other states and so produce too little.
(Canada, by the way, also has this problem. It’s often cheaper for a Canadian firm to ship to the US than to another province in Canada. You can find similar problems in Southern Africa where it is cheaper for South Africa to import produce from South America than from Zambia, as this excellent video discusses.)
In addition to the inefficient allocation of production, barriers to internal trade have also raised India’s transportation and logistics costs.
At the Walayar checkpoint in southern India, lines of idle trucks stretch as far as the eye can see in both directions along the tree-lined interstate highway, waiting for clearance from tax inspectors that can take days to complete.
Delays are so bad that textile entrepreneur D. Bala Sundaram has stopped sending his trucks to the international container terminal at nearby Cochin, instead diverting them hundreds of kilometres to a smaller regional port and onwards via Sri Lanka…
Two-thirds of India’s freight travels by road. But only 40% of the travel time is consumed by driving, according to the World Bank. The rest is spent on waiting at state border checkpoints, paying state government levies and dealing with regulatory bureaucracies that vary from state to state.
The sad irony is that India spends billions improving its roads only to force its trucks to stop at state border checkpoints, sometimes for days, undermining the gains from the investment in roads.
The GST was going to simplify all this with a single umbrella tax creating one-tax, one-nation. Alas, the dream is being subverted. The law created a GST council of federal and state ministers and through this council the GST is rapidly becoming more complex and convoluted. First, one-tax was changed into four and with numerous exemptions the final number may end up being more like seven or eight.
Second, as I witnessed traveling between Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan recently, the trucks are still lining up and may continue to do so:
The revolution the proposed goods and services tax (GST) promised might not be all that rosy because it would be hobbled by the need for an e-permit to be flashed at inter-state borders as the states insisted the old analogue practises continue.
The states seem to have gotten their way and will continue with the old ‘permit raj’ system, undermining one the biggest gains of GST.
The E-permit, by the way, sounds modern but don’t be fooled. Like India’s e-visa there is really nothing e about it–it’s just modern labeling for an old system.
Eventually the GST will be beneficial to India but it’s two steps forward, 1.9 steps back.
America coefficient of the day
We find that as the county unemployment rate increases by 1 percentage point, the opioid death rate (per 100,000) rises by 0.19 (3.6%) and the ED visit rate for opioid overdoses (per 100,000) increases by 0.95 (7.0%).
That is from a new NBER working paper by Alex Hollingsworth, Christopher J. Ruhm, and Kosali Simon.
What I’ve been reading
1. Ian McEwan. The Children Act. The main story line pretends to revolve around a Jehovah’s Witness who won’t take a blood transfusion, but I think it was meant as a book about Islam and he was afraid to say so. The resulting mix doesn’t quite work.
2. Arundhati Roy and John Cusack, Things That Can and Cannot Be Said, Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden are part of the book too. The two main authors conversing with Snowden is in fact the strongest argument against Snowden I’ve seen. Maybe he is just being polite, but it’s the only time I’ve heard him sound like an idiot.
3. Helen Hardacre, Shinto: A History. I’ve read only about a fifth of this 720 pp. book, but it seems to be a highly useful history on a topic hardly anyone knows anything about.
4. Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. Compelling throughout, and worthwhile reading for anyone interested in media and media policy. Ellsberg, of course, was closely connected to Thomas Schelling and made significant contributions to the theory of choice under uncertainty.
There is also:
After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality, edited by Heather Boushey, J. Bradford DeLong, and Marshall Steinbaum, is a very useful collection of writings on Piketty-related themes, including Solow and Krugman.
Nathan B. Oman, The Dignity of Commerce: Markets and the Foundations of Contract Law. An interesting blend of “moral foundations of capitalism” and analysis of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.
Shahab Ahmed, Before Orthodoxy: The Satanic Verses in Early Islam, “…the early Muslim community believed almost universally that the Satanic verses incident was a true historical fact.”
Me in Teen Vogue, on TPP
Here is the link, a very nice spread, here is an excerpt:
Cowen’s concerns about withdrawing from the TPP are far graver than that. “I think it’s saying [to the other countries], ‘We won’t be there for you,’” he says. “It’s signaling there is no pivot to Asia, America will go back into its shell. And I think 50 years from now, through largely intangible factors, that will mean a much worse world…. It’s [about] the whole vision of America engaging with the world.”
For example, Cowen points to both Japan and South Korea and the domino effect this could have on them. “If you’re South Korea and your best and biggest ally just told you, ‘We’re not even going to run this trade agreement,’ [but] they’re still telling you, ‘We’re gonna defend you against North Korea,’ I think at some point you start doubting that,” he says. “And [with] Japan, [if] the U.S. says, ‘No, you don’t need to build nuclear weapons — we’ve got your back,’ I think, as Japan, you need to start doubting that. I’m not sure either of those are things that will change overnight, but if we don’t reverse the unraveling perceptions, you’ll find those countries looking for their own solutions. South Korea would probably cut a deal with China. Japan might rearm more.”
…Cowen, for his part, hopes that Trump and his advisors come to their senses and figure out a way to continue some sort of free trade. “The best-case scenario is that Trump’s advisors go to him and say, ‘Look, you promised to renegotiate NAFTA. TPP does that. You’re very willing to tell people lies. Why not just tell people this is a new and better TPP? If need be, change some cosmetic things in it so it’s not a strict lie and then call it your own, rename it, and pass it,’” Cowen says. Though he doesn’t expect that to actually happen, he believes it would be a big win not only for America but also for Trump, the Republicans in Congress, and the businesses that would benefit from it. “I think it’s a pure political win.”
Self-recommending….
Wednesday assorted avian links
1. Do Trump’s speechwriters follow MRU? It seems part of Trump’s speech last night borrowed an idea/reference from our recent MRU “complacent class” video.
2. Those new puffin fan service sector jobs.
4. A new fossil shows ancient penguins were as tall as people for 30 million years.
5. Complacency and the future of work, an adaptation of part of the book. And Quartz adaptation from Complacent Class on America’s productivity slowdown. And my bit on Charlie Rose.
Further dissent on the China trade shock
What is the impact of Chinese imports on employment of US manufacturing firms? Previous papers have found a negative effect of Chinese imports on employment in US manufacturing establishments, industries, and regions. However, I show theoretically and empirically that the impact of offshoring on firms, which can be thought of as collections of establishments – differs from the impact on individual establishments – because offshoring reduces costs at the firm level. These cost reductions can result in firms expanding their total manufacturing employment in industries in which the US has a comparative advantage relative to China, even as specific establishments within the firm shrink. Using novel data on firms from the US Census Bureau, I show that the data support this view: US firms expanded manufacturing employment as reorganization toward less exposed industries in response to increased Chinese imports in US output and input markets allowed them to reduce the cost of production. More exposed firms expanded employment by 2 percent more per year as they hired more (i) production workers in manufacturing, whom they paid higher wages, and (ii) in services complementary to high-skilled and high-tech manufacturing, such as R&D, design, engineering, and headquarters services. In other words, although Chinese imports may have reduced employment within some establishments, these losses were more than offset by gains in employment within the same firms. Contrary to conventional wisdom, firms exposed to greater Chinese imports created more manufacturing and nonmanufacturing jobs than non-exposed firms.
That is from Ildikó Magyari, a Columbia University job market paper (pdf). Here again is the Jonathan T. Rothwell China trade dissent paper from yesterday, so you have all of your China trade dissent in one link, again sorry I have not had the chance to look at any of this.
Demonetization and Growth in India’s GDP
India’s GDP figures were just released and lo and behold they are great! Quarterly growth for Oct-Dec (demonetization, the banning of 86% of India’s cash, hit on Nov. 8) was 7% on an annual year over year basis. Many analysts and critics had predicted a significant slowdown. Prime Minister Modi took the opportunity to take a dig at economists like Amartya Sen who had sharply criticized demonetization saying “Hard work is more important than what Harvard thinks.” (Sen teaches at Harvard). Modi’s BJP party also seems to be doing well in the important elections in Uttar Pradesh suggesting a second term for him.
The GDP statistics may be off, David Keohane runs down some numbers, but I think the basic story is that the people who were hurt most by demonetization simply didn’t generate much GDP to begin with.
Further studies will fine point the cost but I think it safe to say that we now know that the cost to GDP was low. The only question that remains is what was the benefit?
Wesley So, talent extraordinaire
This 23-year-old Filipino-American should be starring in a Malcolm Gladwell column. A few years ago, he was an up-and-coming aggressive, tactical chess prodigy, presumably lacking in the strategic niceties of the game at its highest levels. I recall John Nye, my Filipino-American colleague (and chess player) coming into my office to discuss the astonishing fact that So had risen to number 9 in the world rankings. I suggested that a bit of regression to the mean was in order, and So would not be returning to the top ten anytime soon.
Since that time, So has won four top tournaments in a row, besting Magnus Carlsen, and has had a 56-game non-losing streak, against very high caliber players, and recently he was selected best chess player of the last year. Arguably he is the second best player in the world, and the one most likely to dethrone Carlsen from the world championship.
A turning point for So came in 2014 when he left university and moved to Minnetonka, Minnnesota to live with his adoptive parents, Lotis Key and Renato Kabigting, Key being a former Filipino movie star and now Vice President of the Minnesota Christian Writers Guild. She serves as So’s manager and insisted he not check on-line NBA scores when doing his chess training. Later, So turned away from the internet more fundamentally to focus on chess.
One Filipino international master remarked: “He cannot afford decent training given by well known GM-coaches and has to rely on his pure talent.” Last month he brought on Vladimir Tukmakov as a coach, but he’s had less formal training than any top player in recent memory.
So hopes to learn how to drive a car, and he enjoys playing in Las Vegas: “I like Las Vegas,” So said, laughing. “People are usually drunk. Makes them easier to beat. Just keep drinking.”
So’s style now has evolved to the point where…he doesn’t seem to have a style. He is renowned for his calm and he simply limits the number of mistakes. At the top, top levels, a player without a real style is a player who is hard to train for and hard to beat.
So is religious, and he is considered mild-mannered and humble. The story of Wesley So is not over. Yet Wesley So is an American, and an American hero, and he has received virtually no mainstream media attention.