Month: February 2022
Wednesday assorted links
1. Caetano Veloso profile (New Yorker).
4. How it started, and now how it is going.
*The Jesuits: A History*
That is the forthcoming book by Markus Friedrich, a kind of definitive history at 671 pp. of text but also interesting throughout. It is the book this year I am so far most excited about, and it is highly likely I read the entire thing. The Jesuits started off as ten men, they had major impact on many parts of the world, and centuries later they still exist and with broadly the same mission. How’s that for success?
Here is one passage that for obvious reasons caught my eye:
The Jesuits invested the lion’s share of their bureaucratic efforts in personnel planning. We have already encountered the Society’s obsession with the quality, education, and development of its members several times — this passion was translated into bureaucratic procedures to an astounding degree. Every Jesuit’s mental, spiritual, intellectual, and physical capacity was routinely evaluated. The Society devised elaborate procedures for conducting such examinations. Even the wording of these assessments was prescribed. A kind of grading system with standard content was devised that was then used to answer about a dozen questions from each member. Every three years, local and provincial superiors were required to prepare interviews of the staff under their authority, whom they were required to assess in table form. These catalogues have justly been celebrated as an outstanding example of the bureaucratization of the modern period.
Definitely recommended, I am keen to read more.
Writers and status
The problem isn’t that writing generates status, but rather that this status is grossly out of proportion to the wages they are earning in the market. Amongst other problems, this selects for people who value status over wages (often because they are independently financially secure). In this light it’s not surprising the community has become so geographically concentrated – there are enormous rewards to living with the people the most recognize and grant this status. This is not unto itself a problem until that concentration is part of greater demand for what is already some of the most expensive real estate in the world. I’d wager there are more than a few writers with non-trivial followings out there whose Brooklyn lifestyle is a net monetary loss every month. Thats bad, but honestly I think its even worse than it sounds.
And:
Status rewards incentivize geographic concentration, which will in turn intensify herding behavior. If the bulk of your compensation is in-group status, you’re going to want to spend as much time with that group as possible. Your social life will become more important than ever. That also means, however, that anything that might risk disdain or ostracism within the group is to be avoided whenever possible. This means opinions, particularly on subjects that don’t directly impact your life, will tend to become more and more homogeneous over time. It also means hypotheses born of motivated reasoning i.e. the next mayor will be super progressive or want to “defund the police” can acquire a life of their own and quickly evolve from idea spoken aloud in a Brooklyn cocktail bar to universally accepted truth within an insular community. This classic herding phenomenon is relative to the broader world in this case because this particular community spends its working hours delivering the news to us.
Comparing dogs and wolves, with reference to human self-domestication
Based on claims that dogs are less aggressive and show more sophisticated socio-cognitive skills compared with wolves, dog domestication has been invoked to support the idea that humans underwent a similar ‘self-domestication’ process. Here, we review studies on wolf–dog differences and conclude that results do not support such claims: dogs do not show increased socio-cognitive skills and they are not less aggressive than wolves. Rather, compared with wolves, dogs seek to avoid conflicts, specifically with higher ranking conspecifics and humans, and might have an increased inclination to follow rules, making them amenable social partners. These conclusions challenge the suitability of dog domestication as a model for human social evolution and suggest that dogs need to be acknowledged as animals adapted to a specific socio-ecological niche as well as being shaped by human selection for specific traits.
That is from a new article by Friederike Range and Sarah Marshall-Pescini, via Michelle Dawson.
Tuesday assorted links
Bootleggers and Baptists in India
Netflix economics and the future of Netflix
Ted Gioia writes:
Netflix’s market share has been declining steadily, and has now fallen below 50%. One estimate claims that the company’s share of consumers fell more than 30% in a single year. Netflix’s recent quarterly report was a disaster, spurring a share sell-off. You could easily conclude that “Netflix’s long awaited funeral is finally here”—as Bloomberg hinted in its blunt assessment of the results.
Of course the company is still worth quite a bit, so my own view is no more or no less optimistic than what the market indicates. Still, it is worth asking what the equilibrium here looks like. There is also AppleTV, Disney, Showtime, HBOMax, Hulu, AmazonPrime, and more. I don’t think it quite works to argue that we all end up subscribing to all of them, so where are matters headed? I see a few options:
1. Netflix and its competitors keep on producing new shows until all the rents are exhausted and those companies simply earn the going rate of return on capital, with possible ongoing rents on longstanding properties of real value (e.g., older Disney content). These scenarios could involve either additional entry, or more (and better?) shows from the incumbent producers.
2. Due to economies of scale, one or two of those companies will produce the best shows and buy up the best content. We end up with a monopoly or duopoly in the TV streaming market, noting there still would be vigorous competition from other media sources.
3. The companies are allowed to collude in some manner. One option is they form a consortium where you get “all access” for a common fee, divvied out in proper proportion. Would the antitrust authorities allow this? Or might the mere potential for antitrust intervention makes this a collusive solution but one without a strict monopolizing, profit-maximizing price?
4. The companies are allowed to collude in a more partial and less obvious manner. Rather than a complete consortium, some of the smaller companies will evolve into “feeder” services for one or two of the larger companies. Those smaller companies will rely increasingly more on the feeder contracts and increasingly less on subscription revenue. This perhaps resembles the duopoly solution analytically, though a head count would show more than two firms in the market.
It seems to me that only the first scenario is very bad for Netflix. That said, it seems that along all of these paths short-run rent exhaustion is going on, and that short-run rent exhaustion is costly for Netflix. They keep on having to pump out “stuff” to keep viewer attention. It doesn’t matter that new shows are cheap, because as long as the market profits are there the “bar” for retaining customers will continue to grow. Very few of their shows are geared to produce long-term customer loyalty toward that show – in contrast, people are still talking about Columbo!
Putting the law aside, which economic factors determine which solution will hold? My intuition is that there are marketing economies of scale, but production diseconomies of scale, as the media companies grow too large and sclerotic. So maybe that militates in favor of scenario #4? That to me also suggests an “at least OK” future for Netflix. The company would continue its investments and marketing and an easy to use website, while increasingly going elsewhere for superior content.
The Canadian “Freedom Convoy”
So much of Canadian identity is wrapped up in being “nice” that it may be hard for Canadians and their leaders to fathom that they could lose control of their capital city. As Gurney says, it is simply assumed that Canada is “rich, stable and peaceful,” a more polite counterpart to its southern neighbor. But Canadians may be in for a rude awakening about how easy it is for the government to temporarily lose control: “I think the danger of a large violent incident in Ottawa is growing fast.”
That is from my latest Bloomberg column. And here is the closing bit:
So far at least, the Freedom Convoy has yet to attract sustained and widespread coverage in the U.S. mainstream media. Maybe Americans just aren’t used to Ottawa being the epicenter of political conflict. But now that it is, we should probably be prepared for other surprises as well.
Worth a ponder, and there are further points at the link.
Monday assorted links
1. Interesting thread on Russian army considerations.
2. “We accept gender double standards, and tolerate more aggression towards men than we do towards women. We also tolerate more hyper-emotionalism from women than men.” And “The strength of any anti-wokeness movement depends in large part on the strengths of its antibodies to a certain kind of female emotionalism.” Link here.
4. Multicultural London English (The New Yorker).
5. Dickens decoded, by a team of amateurs.
7. Zeihan on Canada.
Tabarrok Talks
U.S. Pandemic Policy: Failures, Successes, Lessons. at Bowling Green State University on Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022, 5 p.m.Olscamp Hall 111.
Crypto, Blockchain, and their Practical Applications: An Introduction to DeFi, on Wed., Feb. 23, 2022, online 1pm est. Register here.
Ireland fact of the day
…one statistic stands out from a census comparison from the first decade of the twenty-first century. Just 2.1 percent of the population in Northern Ireland were born in the South, and just 1.3 percent living in the South were born in the North.
And that is with rights of free migration. That is from Brendan O’Leary, A Treatise on Northern Ireland, volume 3, Consociation and Confederation, a very good series of books I might add.
What is the central political question of our day?
No, it is not about The Woke. From my latest Bloomberg column, here is the core argument:
How to respond to climate change is often postulated as the central question of our time, and while that’s undeniably important, I have another nomination: How will we stop our new and often splendid technologies from being weaponized against us?
I use the term weaponization quite literally — drone attacks, cyberattacks, hostile uses of artificial intelligence, and attacks from space, bioweapons and more. It’s good that the world is emerging from a period of technological stagnation, but therein lies a danger: It is a general principle of world history that new technologies, even the most beneficial ones, are eventually used either as weapons themselves or as instruments of warfare. That was true of the horse, the railroad, the airplane and, of course, nuclear power. It likely will be true for these new developments, too…
Most current ideologies are unprepared for this coming new world. These problems do not have obvious solutions, nor do they offer any obvious way to confer political advantage. The U.S. hasn’t even made much progress on preparing for the next pandemic, and that is with more than 2,500 Americans dying a day from Covid-19.
Here is another point:
There are ideologies that address parts of the weaponization problem. Effective Altruist circles, especially those that focus on the dangers of artificial general intelligence (AGI), are afraid that super-smart AI will develop a mind of its own and impose its will on us, or otherwise engage in evil activities.
That may be a valid concern, but my fears are more general. If AGI is so powerful, then it stands to reason that intermediate products could, in conjunction with human efforts, cause a lot of military conflict. The problem isn’t necessarily Skynet going live. It’s that 40% of Skynet will be plenty dangerous.
The Luddites also have an ideology, namely that the development of new technologies should be stopped altogether. One could debate the benefit-cost ratio of that decision, but suffice to say that China, Russia, and many other rival nations have no such plans, and the U.S. has no real choice other than to try to stay ahead of them.
China is discussed as well, recommended.
The culture that is Portland
She understands how privileged she is; she describes her anxiety as a “luxury problem.” But still: The plastic toys in the bathtub made her anxious. The disposable diapers made her anxious. She began to ask herself, what is the relationship between the diapers and the wildfires?
“I feel like I have developed a phobia to my way of life,” she said.
And more generally:
…people could be affected by environmental decay even if they were not physically caught in a disaster.
Recent research has left little doubt that this is happening. A 10-country survey of 10,000 people aged 16 to 25 published last month in The Lancet found startling rates of pessimism. Forty-five percent of respondents said worry about climate negatively affected their daily life. Three-quarters said they believed “the future is frightening,” and 56 percent said “humanity is doomed.”
The blow to young people’s confidence appears to be more profound than with previous threats, such as nuclear war, Dr. Clayton said. “We’ve definitely faced big problems before, but climate change is described as an existential threat,” she said. “It undermines people’s sense of security in a basic way.”
Caitlin Ecklund, 37, a Portland therapist who finished graduate school in 2016, said that nothing in her training — in subjects like buried trauma, family systems, cultural competence and attachment theory — had prepared her to help the young women who began coming to her describing hopelessness and grief over climate.
Dare I suggest this is counterproductive? Here is the full NYT article, via Matt Yglesias. Context is that which is scarce!
Sunday assorted links
1. MIE: “For $995, Love Cloud will fly you and a partner in a private airplane for 45 minutes so that you can have sex.” (NYT)
3. Is the hotel minibar disappearing?
4. Nasal vaccines (NYT).
5. Tim Harford’s ten best books for thinking about numbers and statistics.
6. The debate at the time as to whether Ukraine should have given up nuclear weapons (NYT).
7. MIE: First Norwegian salmon vending machine.
8. Claims about Ottawa, also reflecting “context is that which is scarce.”
Do interviews matter?
Yes, interviews very much do matter.
You may have read articles like the one that Sarah Laskow wrote a few years ago in The Boston Globe, “Want the Best Person for the Job? Don’t Interview,” or the one Jason Dana published in The New York Times, “The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews.” These and other stories make the all too familiar claim that interviews do not boost your ability to spot the better job candidates. You might then wonder whether interviews, or trying to improve your interview skills, are worth your while.
This common myth of interview impotence misses the point. At the very least, interviews can help you rule out some candidates quickly. But the main reason why virtually all top companies stick with doing interviews is that interviews yield useful information.
Most importantly, many of the research studies pessimistic about interviewing focus on unstructured interviews performed by relatively unskilled interviewers for relatively uninteresting, entry-level jobs. You can do better. Even if it were true that interviews do not on average improve candidate selection, that is a statement about averages, not about what is possible. You still would have the power, if properly talented and intellectually equipped, to beat the market averages. In fact, the worse a job the world as a whole is at doing interviews, the more reason to believe there are highly talented candidates just waiting to be found by you.
In most of the studies on this subject, interviews were more effective for higher-level jobs. So if you wish to hire an economist, Tyler believes that asking a person substantive economics questions during an interview is a good way to start assessing their competence, though to our knowledge this never has been proven or disproven in study form. Daniel believes that if you wish to fund an applicant for venture capital, it is worth asking about the business plan to see how well the basic idea is presented and defended. If they can’t make a case for it to you, they’ll probably have trouble attracting talent to help them. The anti-interview crowd, many of whom are centered in academia, overlooks these obvious truths.
Interviews also play a crucial role in recruiting candidates and helping spread a positive impression of you and your company, even in cases where you don’t end up hiring the person. So put aside any inclination to skip or devalue this part of the process. Interviews are essential, and, because so many organizations rely on mindless bureaucratic approaches, the bar is low and the payoff high.
Footnote: For one typical anti-interview piece, see Sarah Laskow, “Want the Best Person for the Job? Don’t Interview,” The Boston Globe, November 24, 2013. Or see Jason Dana, “The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews,” The New York Times, April 8, 2017, a poorly titled piece that refers primarily to a single specific study. On a meta-analysis regarding the value of structured interviews, see Allen I. Huffcutt and Winfred Arthur Jr., “Hunter and Hunter (1984) Revisited: Interview Validity for Entry-Level Jobs,” Journal of Applied Psychology 79, no. 2 (1994): 184–190. See also Therese Macan, “The Employment Interview: A Review of Current Studies and Directions for Future Research,” Human Resource Management Review 19 (2009): 201–218, for a more recent examination of the same questions.
That is all from my forthcoming book with Daniel Gross Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World. Most of the chapter of course is devoted to how to get the most out of an interview. Due out May 17, you can pre-order here for Amazon, here for Barnes & Noble.