Month: February 2022

The Fanfare meta-Want List

Every year I read through the Fanfare Want Lists for new classical music releases, and collate the new recordings that are recommended by more than one person as one of the five most noteworthy releases of the year.  This time around I noticed the following as multiple nominees:

1. Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony, Beethoven Symphony number nine.

2. Daniil Trifonov, Silver Age, two CDs of Russian music.

3. Pavel Kolesnikov, Bach, Goldberg Variations.

I am happy to give another thumbs up to each.

If you google the word “self-recommending,” the first three items are all connected to me.  Yet I learned the term by reading Fanfare, where it is used repeatedly.  Of these three items, the Trifonov is the one that comes closest to being self-recommending.  The performers on items #1 and #3 are highly regarded, but to invoke the name Daniil Trifonov is a kind of magic, and as far as I know without fail.  It is hard to give any praise to #2 that goes much higher than simply stating that Trifonov has produced a recording of that music.

For those who need it, here is a (only slightly out of date) 2009 MR vocabulary guide.

Saturday assorted links

1. Mathematics: “Many papers have errors, yes—but our major results generally hold up, even when the intermediate steps are wrong!”

2. New Gena Gorlin Substack on building and builders.

3. When Leo Strauss asked out Hannah Arendt she sort of cancelled him.

4. Vitalik on Wordcels, liberalism, and more.  Some important germs of thought in there.

5. Will Berlin ban cars in the city center?

Samuel Brenner reads *Stubborn Attachments*

An excellent review and interpretation, here is one summary part:

…the fundamental idea of the book is not “economic growth is good” but rather “here’s how to reason under extreme uncertainty”, and that once you adopt Tyler’s view about how to reason under extreme uncertainty, both principles (growth and rights) fall out as the only two important considerations…

My preferred view of the book’s overall argumentative structure is more like the following:

G. Good things are better than bad things
H. We need to act in order to achieve good things
I. But there’s a huge froth of uncertainty, and our actions might be counterproductive
J. So we should have faith
K. And also we should only pursue the actions with really high expected value and which are likeliest to rise above the froth of uncertainty
L. The actions that pass this test best are growth and rights, so we have to pursue both

I would stress this is a complement to other interpretations rather than a substitute for them, in any case an excellent short essay.  And here is “About Samuel Brenner.

Are semesters or quarters better?

There exists a long-standing debate in higher education on which academic calendar is optimal. Using panel data on the near universe of four-year nonprofit institutions and leveraging quasi-experimental variation in calendars across institutions and years, we show that switching from quarters to semesters negatively impacts on-time graduation rates. Event study analyses show that the negative effects persist beyond the transition. Using transcript data, we replicate this analysis at the student level and investigate possible mechanisms. Shifting to a semester: (i) lowers first-year grades, (ii) decreases the
probability of enrolling in a full course load, and (iii) delays the timing of major choice.

That is from a newly published paper by Valerie Bostwick, Stefanie Fischer, and Matthew Lang.

Having been a longtime proponent of a quarter system, which I did teach under at UC Irvine, I am happy to see these results.  My hypothesis, which to be clear is not confirmed per se by this data, is that classes are too long.  Much of a class is the “option value” on “this professor is the one that inspires me.”  The returns to such inspiration are enormous, but of course it usually does not happen.  But when it does happen, usually the “click” occurs before week ten.  So we should arrange academic schedules to give students access to a greater number of professors.  Holding workload constant, that means individual courses should be shorter.

Of course, if you click with a particular professor, you can take more classes with them or otherwise work with them.  So “ten weeks isn’t enough” to me is not such a biting criticism.  The real problem is when you are stuck at zero with your possibly appropriate mentor.

In fact I think the quarter system doesn’t go far enough.  I think we should have many more one- and two-week classes, or five-week classes, as well.  Understandably that is more difficult to manage operationally, but I don’t see any reason why it should be impossible.  Companies solve more complex scheduling problems than that all the time.

If I think of GMU, either the undergraduate majors, or the graduate students, should in my opinion have had some classroom time with almost every single instructor.  So much of life and productivity is about matching!

Yellow Vests, Pessimistic Beliefs, and Carbon Tax Aversion

I have become increasingly skeptical of the prospects for a meaningful carbon tax, here is a new study:

Using a representative survey, we find that after the Yellow Vests movement, French people would largely reject a tax and dividend policy, i.e., a carbon tax whose revenues are redistributed uniformly to each adult. They overestimate their net monetary losses, wrongly think that the policy is regressive, and do not perceive it as environmentally effective. We show that changing people’s beliefs can substantially increase support. Although significant, the effects of our informational treatments on beliefs are small. Indeed, the respondents that oppose the tax tend to discard positive information about it, which is consistent with distrust, uncertainty, or motivated reasoning.

That is from new work by Thomas Douenne and Adrien Fabre.

Friday assorted links

1. Using AI paraphrasing tools to avoid plagiarism checks.

2. MIE: “Shake Shack hooks up with DoorDash for chicken sandwich-themed dating site.”

3. Interesting analysis of which bureaucratic interest groups support Putin.

4. “The first successful pizza restaurant in the world located outside of Naples was founded in Buenos Aires in 1882, when a Neapolitan immigrant baker named Nicolas Vaccarezza started selling the pies out of his shop in Boca.”  Link here.  Mostly it is about how American pizza is.

5. “Taliban fighters will no longer be allowed to carry their weapons in amusement parks in Afghanistan…in what appeared to be another effort by the country’s new rulers to soften their image.

6. Jonathan Cahill.

7. Blackwell’s bookshop is up for sale.  Family-owned since 1879.

What I’ve been reading

David Dickson, Dublin: The Making of a Capital City.  Yes this is Dublin only, but still one of the best books on Irish history I know.

Jing Tsu, Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern.  A little slow to start, but a good book on how China used technological innovation to adapt Chinese characters to the advent of the typewriter and the telegraph.  The danger to the Chinese language seems entirely to be past.

Useful is Philip Keefer and Carlos Scartascini, Trust: The Key to Social Cohesion and Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean.  You can download it for free.

Tom G. Palmer and Matt Warner, Development with Dignity: Self-Determination, Localization, and the End to Poverty is a good classical liberal short book on economic development.

My colleague lives his words, here is Todd B. Kashdan The Art of Insubordination: How to Dissent & Defy Effectively.

I agree very much with Tim Kane’s new pro-immigration book The Immigrant Superpower: How Brains, Brawn, and Bravery Make America Stronger.

I have not had a chance to read Bruce Clark, Athens: City of Wisdom, a history of the city through the ages, but it looks good.

Most of all, I have been reading about the history of Ireland to prep for my forthcoming Conversation with Roy Foster.

Jeff Bezos, Coasean

A massive steel bridge in Rotterdam is to be partly demolished so that the pleasure yacht being built for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos can sail through it to the sea, local broadcaster Rijnmond said on Wednesday. The Koningshavenbrug, known to Rotterdammers as De Hef, was renovated in 2017 and the council pledged at the time it would never be dismantled again. But that promise is now set to be broken, Rijnmond said, to let Bezos’ yacht through.

Bezos’ three-masted yacht is being built by the Oceano shipyard in Alblasserdam but is too big to pass under the bridge when the central section is raised to its full height. Now Oceano and Bezos have approached the council about temporarily dismantling the bridge at their cost.

Here is the full story, via Fred S.

Thursday assorted links

1. “Overwhelmed by Solar Projects, the Nation’s Largest Grid Operator Seeks a Two-Year Pause on Approvals.

2. Are people less likely to give you help when you ask over Zoom?

3. One Ukrainian vision of Putin’s strategy.  And a longer piece on a missile and air strategy for Putin?

4. Who favors censorship?

5. SFBART kept its underground restrooms closed for 20 years because of 9/11.

Good News on Crypto Taxation

I argued:

Suppose you buy an apple tree and it grows apples. You don’t sell any apples. (Maybe you use the apples to plant more trees). The IRS demands that you pay income on market value of the apples even though you haven’t sold any. Crazy! Yet that is how the US taxes staking.

Well it turns out that the IRS agrees with me (!) or at least believes that the courts were likely to side with the argument I sketched. The Proof of Stake Alliance writes:

[I]n 2020, Abe Sutherland’s 2020 Tax Notes brief argued that these tokens should be taxed when they are sold, not when they are created – like all property– and that treating this property created by staking as the taxpayer’s immediate income would be contrary to over 100 years of tax law.

The IRS has signaled that it agrees in a new case: After Joshua Jarrett paid income tax on staking rewards he created in 2019, he sued the IRS for a refund. On Thursday, he will announce that the IRS granted this refund. Nevertheless, Josh and the legal team at Fenwick will reject the refund and  continue to sue the IRS in order to force the agency to offer explicit guidance that states that staking rewards will be taxed as property, not income. Only through this definitive statement will taxpayers in the growing proof of stake industry be able to plan for their futures.

This case has significant implications for the tax industry, as it will determine how staking rewards are taxed in the future. POSA is supporting and elevating Josh and this case to demand the IRS offer explicit guidance that staking rewards, as property, should be taxed when they are SOLD, not when they are created. 

Assuming this falls into place, as looks likely, this offers significant clarity to current tax law on crypto. Note that this does not mean that crypto is taxed less–it is still taxed when sold–it’s more about creating simplicity and consistency in the code. See also Tyler’s post, We need a better tax system for crypto.

Special congratulations to Abe Sutherland.

Gulf of Guinea fact of the day

Worryingly, the security threats in west Africa now include piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. In 2020, all but one of the world’s 28 kidnappings recorded at sea occurred in these waters. Similarly, in 2018, all six hijackings at sea, and 13 of the 18 incidents of ships fired upon occurred in the Gulf of Guinea. Of the 141 hostages held at sea that year, 130 were captured by pirates here.

Here is the full FT story.

The incidence of India’s crypto tax

The crypto tax is the first item listed in a section of the budget memo headed “Revenue Mobilization”. The document [PDF] explains that India wants to tax income from crypto-assets at a 30 per cent flat rate.

By comparison, India currently taxes short-term capital gains made by selling shares at 15 per cent. The budget memo also calls for a one per cent tax on sales of cryptographic assets, payable by parties to the transaction, to widen India’s tax base.

Here is the first article link.  As I understand it, the 30% is on net income from crypto, and there is no tax deductions for losses (see this explainer).  (Does the tax define gains “year by year,” or “for each bitcoin sold”?)

I am wondering what is the incidence of this tax.  Presumably India is a price-taker in the crypto market as a whole, so this initiative should not much affect the global price of crypto, unless you take the policy as a signal about other, future crypto taxes to come around the world.

Under one (unlikely) scenario, all Indians were marginal crypto buyers, and so with a 30% tax they just stop holding crypto.  The Coase theorem suggests that others are always willing to bid more, because in many other countries the crypto taxes are lower.

More realistically, many Indians are infra-marginal buyers, with sufficiently high expectations of price appreciation that some of them will stay in the market.  The “saner” marginal buyers will drop out, and sell their crypto to non-Indians, and the most optimistic Indian buyers will stay in.  Looking forward, crypto in India will be shaped by the giddiest and most bullish asset holders, compared to the status quo.  More crypto will be held by fewer, more enthusiastic hands.

The Indian government is also signaling that it will not ban crypto outright.  That ought to increase the demand of the “giddy” buyers all the more.  If you are going to stay in with the higher tax burden, at least you know that bitcoin and other markets will continue in India.

How does the tax affect the value of the rupee?  In the short run, some Indian taxpayers may sell their crypto for rupees, raising the value of the rupee, but probably very slightly.  Longer term, the rupee may be worth less because it is a less effective vehicle for investing in crypto, again with the effect here likely being small.

Otherwise, the demand for non-crypto risky assets in India will increase.  If those assets can be used for loss offsets, they will be relatively more valuable because crypto cannot be so used.

Insofar as India has a local, “India-only” crypto market, new issues there will have to be lower in price to attract buying interest.  That will serve as a tax on those Indians who supply inputs into crypto production.

Indians who have made a great deal from crypto may attempt to give up their Indian citizenship and Indian taxpaying liabilities (how easy is that?).

What else?

Wednesday assorted links

1. English-language music is losing relative ground in global markets (The Economist).

2. Would you take free land in rural Kansas?

3. One woman (Anna Gát) who is giving up drinking.

4. Redux of November post on how the Covid pandemic is evolving.

5. “Today, Leo Strauss is more popular in the Chinese-speaking world than he has ever been in the English-speaking world.

6. South Korea’s new nose-only mask.  And Human Challenge Trial going OK so far.

7. Texas philanthropist who supported the work to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem (NYT).