Month: January 2022

1. Chinese interest in the Western classics.

2. FedEx wants to install antimissile lasers on its jets.

3. Aaron Carroll on thinking like a doctor during a pandemic (NYT, very good).

4. You will need an NFT to enter this NYC restaurant.

5. Thwarted flight attendant markets in everything.

A nice, well-reasoned piece from Harold Lee pushing back on the idea that we should buy experiences not goods:

While I appreciate the Stoic-style appraisal of what really brings happiness, economically, this analysis seems precisely backward. It amounts to saying that in an age of industrialization and globalism, when material goods are cheaper than ever, we should avoid partaking of this abundance. Instead, we should consume services afflicted by Baumol’s cost disease, taking long vacations and getting expensive haircuts which are just as hard to produce as ever.

Put that way, the focus on minimalism sounds like a new form of conspicuous consumption. Now that even the poor can afford material goods, let’s denigrate goods while highlighting the remaining luxuries that only the affluent can enjoy and show off to their friends.

[The distinction is too tightly drawn]…tools and possessions enable new experiences. A well-appointed kitchen allows you to cook healthy meals for yourself rather than ordering delivery night after night. A toolbox lets you fix things around the house and in the process learn to appreciate how our modern world was made. A spacious living room makes it easy for your friends to come over and catch up on one another’s lives. A hunting rifle can produce not only meat, but also camaraderie and a sense of connection with the natural world of our forefathers. In truth, there is no real boundary between things and experiences. There are experience-like things; like a basement carpentry workshop or a fine collection of loose-leaf tea. And there are thing-like experiences, like an Instagrammable vacation that collects a bunch of likes but soon fades from memory.

Indeed, much of what is wrong with our modern lifestyles is, in a sense, a matter of overconsuming experiences. The sectors of the economy that are becoming more expensive every year – which are preventing people from building durable wealth – include real estate and education, both items that are sold by the promise of irreplaceable “experiences.” Healthcare, too, is a modern experience that is best avoided. As a percent of GDP, these are the growing expenditures that are eating up people’s wallets, not durable goods. If we really want to live a minimalist life, then forget about throwing away boxes of stuff, and focus on downsizing education, real estate, and healthcare.

Hat tip: The Browser.

Photo Credit: MaxPixel.

1. David Brooks on America falling apart (NYT).

2. Jonah Goldberg is right.  And Megan McArdle is right.

3. Shawn Bradley’s life is tough.

4. “Likewise, authors from the same PhD program or who previously worked with the reviewer are significantly more likely to receive a positive evaluation. We also find that sharing “signals” of ability, such as publishing in “top five”, attending a high ranked PhD program, or being employed by a similarly ranked economics department significantly influences editor decisions and/or reviewer recommendations.”  Link here.

5. So a virus triggers multiple sclerosis? And more here (NYT).  And, not unrelated, the nature of Long Covid.

6. Links from Chris Blattman, who is blogging again.

7. Good Bridgewater/Dalio piece (FT).

1. In Austin, Caplan and Razib Khan will comment on Hanania.  I am telling them to put it on YouTube.

2. Pushing Zambia to become a start-up hub?

3. Can software identify your chess-playing style?

4. Support for the child tax credit is waning (NYT).

5. Western Arkansas is offering 10k in Bitcoin and bike to relocate there.

6. Why are so many defectors from North Korea to South Korea women?

7. Bruno M. on Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Excellent piece by Derek Thompson:

America has too much venting and not enough inventing. We say that we want to save the planet from climate change—but in practice, many Americans are basically dead set against the clean-energy revolution, with even liberal states shutting down zero-carbon nuclear plants and protesting solar-power projects. We say that housing is a human right—but our richest cities have made it excruciatingly difficult to build new houses, infrastructure, or megaprojects. Politicians say that they want better health care—but they tolerate a catastrophically slow-footed FDA‪ that withholds promising tools, and a federal policy that deliberately limits the supply of physicians.

The way I put it in Launching the Innovation Renaissance is that we can be an Innovation Nation or what we are now which is a Welfare-Warfare State.

To give one example, the debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was long and vociferous. One of the reasons the debate was vociferous is that the PPACA is part of the vision of the welfare state, a redistributive vision.

How would the innovative state approach the issue of health care? From an innovation perspective two facts about health care are of great importance. First, a huge amount of health care spending is wasted. A strong consensus exists on this point from health care researchers all along the political spectrum. More money will get you a much bigger house, but once you have basic health insurance more money won’t get you much better health care. Should Bill Gates get prostate cancer, his billions will get him a private room and a personal physician, but they won’t do much to extend his lifespan beyond that of a middle-class man with the same disease.

…The second fact is that although spending more on health care now doesn’t get you much, spending more on health care research gets you a lot. It has been estimated, for example, that increases in life expectancy from reductions in mortality due to cardiovascular disease over the 1970-1990 period were worth over $30 trillion–yes, 30 trillion dollars. In other words, the gains from better health over the period 1970-1990 were comparable to all the gains in material wealth over the same period.

Looking at the future, if medical research could reduce cancer mortality by just 10 percent, it would be worth $5 trillion to U.S. citizens (and even more taking into account the rest of the world). The net gain would be especially large if we could reduce cancer mortality with new drugs, which are typically cheap to make once discovered. A reduction in cancer mortality of this size does not seem beyond reach, and the value of such a reduction in mortality far exceeds that of spending more on medical care today. Yet because the innovation vision is not central to our thinking, we overlook potentially huge improvements in human welfare.

The numbers would be higher now due to inflation, population and income growth but you get the idea.