Wednesday assorted links
1. “The most terrifying words in the English language are Balaji was right.” Transcript of his now-famed podcast with Tim Ferriss.
2. Physical formidability and acceptance of police violence.
3. The Martians of Budapest. And Girard, McLuhan, and Robbins on Interintellect.
4. A contrarian view on voting in Georgia.
5. Don Boudreaux upset at me. I think on some issues he misrepresents my views (e.g., I don’t claim the age of the Covid deaths is irrelevant), and he pins a whole host of interventions on me that I do not favor. But to respond to the main point on social cohesion, I’ll make a simple prediction: in terms of social cohesion the American southeast will come out of this whole mess looking relatively good, on both a national and global scale. Countries such as Brazil and Mexico, which have downplayed Covid risks to an extreme degree, and imposed very few regulations on behavior, will come out looking quite bad in terms of both deaths and social cohesion. I prefer the response of the U.S. southeast to that of Brazil and Mexico, and the response of the U.S. southeast is (broadly) the one I endorse in the podcast with Russ Roberts (assuming you can’t halt the whole thing early, and no we never should have banned any outdoor activities, etc.). Don is otherwise a big proponent of comparative institutional analysis, but he isn’t doing nearly enough of that in his critique — social cohesion compared to what? Which is the alternative that was going to give us greater social cohesion than what say Florida will end up with?
6. “Lego enthusiast explains why the black market for the toy bricks is so lucrative.” Interesting throughout.