Month: June 2023

Rereading *Jane Eyre* (the experiment kiss)

by  Tyler Cowen in

Jane narrates:

She pushed me towards him. I thought Diana very provoking, and felt uncomfortably confused; and while I was thus thinking and feeling, St. John bent his head; his Greek face was brought to a level with mine, his eyes questioned my eyes piercingly–he kissed me. There are no such things as marble kisses or ice kisses, or I should say my ecclesiastical cousin’s salute belonged to one of these classes; but there may be experiment kisses, and his was an experiment kiss. When given, he viewed me to learn the result; it was not striking: I am sure I did not blush; perhaps I might have turned a little pale, for I felt as if this kiss were a seal affixed to my fetters. He never omitted the ceremony afterwards, and the gravity and quiescence with which I underwent it, seemed to invest it for him with a certain charm.

Recommended, in case you have never read or reread it.  And here is a recent Henry Oliver Substack on Jane Eyre.

When should you debate in oral public forums?

by  Tyler Cowen

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one bit:

As a general rule, one should not debate publicly with conspiracy theorists. Some conspiracies may be true and should not be dismissed out of hand. But any discussion needs to start by demanding the best available documented evidence, and then subjecting it to rigorous scrutiny. This is very often impossible to do in a public debate, where the unverified anecdote is elevated and methodological issues are obscured or unexamined. Furthermore, it takes more time to rebut a charge than to level it, and in the meantime the rebutter has no choice but to repeat some of the other side’s talking points.

Written exchange, with lags and third-party verification and evaluation, is often best for technical issues.  Don’t let the other side claim the mantle of “those who are willing to debate.”  In fact they are very often not willing to engage in the most appropriate kinds of debate.

In general, I am a big fan of YouTube, including for its educational value.  But — the debate issue aside — it is very often misleading on exactly these same technical issues.  Someone drones on and on with some kind of mesmerizing long story…except a lot of it isn’t true, and there is no real rebuttal.  Print culture is these days extremely underrated.  LLMs are often better yet, you can just ask them for more, or for an alternative point of view.

What game theory predicts

by  Tyler Cowen in

In most of the equilibria I can conceive, either Prighozin or Putin has to die in the next week or less? Putin has to die if he can’t take out Prighozin promptly?

Game theory is often wrong, but it is worth putting this prediction out there.  And here is Kamil Galeev on the most likely equilibrium, I tend to agree with him:

Kenya development of the day

by  Tyler Cowen

The European Union signed a trade agreement with Kenya, giving the nation duty- and quota-free access to the bloc, a long-negotiated deal it said is open for other East African countries join.

The economic partnership agreement has been under discussion for at least a decade. While Kenya agreed to a joint pact in 2016, four East African Community members — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda — didn’t approve a regional deal. Except for Kenya, all EAC partner states are considered least developed countries and still enjoy duty-free and quota-free access to the EU market.

“This deal is open for other members of East African Community to join,” European Commission Executive Vice-President and Commissioner for Trade Valdis Dombrovskis said at a ceremony in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. “The agreement between EU and Kenya is in fact a bilateral implementation of a regional agreement with Eastern African Community.”

…The pact will promote Kenyan agricultural exports and also encourage European companies to set up operations in the country to process raw materials. Kenya exports more than 70% of its flowers to the EU. The EU is Kenya’s second-largest trading partner with €3.3 billion ($3.61 billion) trade volumes in 2022, an increase of 27% compared to 2018, according to the bloc.

Here is more from Eric Ombok at Bloomberg.

Vaccination sentences to ponder

by  Tyler Cowen in

None of the incidences of myopericarditis pooled in the current study were higher than those after smallpox vaccinations and non-COVID-19 vaccinations, and all of them were significantly lower than those in adolescents aged 12–17 years after COVID-19 infection.

I would gladly see a refereed symposium on attempts to overturn this result.  Individuals with rejected papers could publish those rejected works on a separate website, with the accompanying referee reports of course.  One side will try to tell you that “the elites” are against debate.  It is sooner the case that the level of rigor in a useful debate should correspond to the level of rigor a subject matter requires.

Via Megan McArdle.

Is American Culture Becoming More Pro-Business?

by  Alex Tabarrok in

In Capitalism: Hollywood’s Miscast Villain, a piece I wrote in 2010 for the Wall Street Journal, I described the slew of movies and television shows featuring mass-murdering corporate villains including “The Fugitive,” “Syriana,” “Mission Impossible II,” “Erin Brockovich,” “The China Syndrome” and “Avatar,” and Hollywood’s not so subtle attacks on capitalism with characters like Jabba the Hut in the Star Wars universe and the Ferengi in Star Trek. I explained some reasons for Hollywood’s antipathy to capitalism:

Directors and screenwriters see the capitalist as a constraint, a force that prevents them from fulfilling their vision. In turn, the capitalist sees the artist as self-indulgent. Capitalists work hard to produce what consumers want. Artists who work too hard to produce what consumers want are often accused of selling out. Thus even the languages of capitalism and art conflict: a firm that has “sold out” has succeeded, but an artist that has “sold out” has failed.

…Hollywood share[s] Marx’s concept of alienation, the idea that under capitalism workers are separated from the product of their work and made to feel like cogs in a machine rather than independent creators. The lowly screenwriter is a perfect illustration of what Marx had in mind—a screenwriter can pour heart and soul into a screenplay only to see it rewritten, optioned, revised, reworked, rewritten again and hacked, hacked and hacked by a succession of directors, producers and worst of all studio executives. A screenwriter can have a nominally successful career in Hollywood without ever seeing one of his works brought to the screen. Thus, the antipathy of filmmakers to capitalism is less ideological than it is experiential. Screenwriters and directors find themselves in a daily battle between art and commerce, and they come to see their battle against “the suits” as emblematic of a larger war between creative labor and capital.

However, I also noted that some good stories could be told if Hollywood would only put aside their biases and open their eyes to the world:

…how many [movies] feature people who find their true selves in productive work? Not many, which is a shame, since the business world is where most of us live our lives. Like many works of literature, Hollywood chooses for its villains people who strive for social dominance through the pursuit of wealth, prestige, and power. But the ordinary business of capitalism is much more egalitarian: It’s about finding meaning and enjoyment in work and production.

Well, perhaps things are changing. Three recent movies do a good job highlighting a different perspective on capitalism: Flaming Hot, Air and Tetris.

Flaming Hot (Disney) tells the story of a janitor and his improbable rise to the top of the corporate world via leveraging his insights into his Mexican-American heritage and culture. The details of the story are probably false but no one ever said a good story had to be true. A standout aspect of the film is Richard Montanez’s palpable excitement witnessing the Frito Lay factory’s operations — his awe of the technology, the massive machines churning out potato chips, and his joy at being part of a vibrant, productive enterprise, quirks and all. Montanez does find meaning and enjoyment in work and production. Flaming Hot also skillfully emphasizes the often-underestimated significance of marketing, which is frequently brushed off as superfluous or even evil. Incidentally, does “Flaming Hot” contain a subtle nod to the great Walter “E.” Williams?

Air (Amazon Prime) is about a shoe contract. Boring? Not at all. The shoe was the Air Jordan and Air is about Nike’s efforts to court Jordan and his family with a record-breaking and precedent shattering revenue percentage deal. Nike was not united on going all in on Jordan and at the time it was a much smaller firm than it is today so a lot was at stake. Jordan wanted to go with Adidas. His mother convinced him to hear Nike out. Jordan’s mother comes across as very astute, as she almost certainly was, although it seems more probable that it was Jordan’s agent, David Falk who engineered the percentage contract. Regardless, this is a good movie about entrepreneurship. Directed by Ben Affleck, who also portrays Phil Knight, “Air” showcases Affleck’s directorial prowess, previously demonstrated in “Argo,” a personal favorite for personal reasons. 

Tetris (Apple) is also a story about legal contracts. In the dying days of the Soviet Union, multiple teams race to license the Tetris video game from Elektronorgtechnica the Soviet state owned enterprise that presumptively held the rights as the employer of the inventor, Alexey Pajitnov. Gorbachev and Robert Maxwell both make unlikely appearances in this remarkable story. One aspect which was surprising even to me, all the players take the rule of law very seriously. A useful reminder of the importance of property rights and a sound judiciary to the capitalist process.

While these films may not secure a spot among cinema’s timeless classics, each is engaging, skillfully made, and entertaining. Moreover, each movie offer insightful commentary on different facets of the capitalist system. Bravo to Hollywood!

Addendum: See also my review of Guru one of the most important free market movies ever made.

Friday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Visiting Outback Steakhouse in Brazil.

2. Sam Enright books list.

3. Good example of how AI experts often do not have even a basic understanding of social mechanisms.  In general, I am  pretty reluctant to put much “negative talk” on MR, but this seems to me an important point that needs to be internalized more.  I would note that, for a few years now, the FTC is another topic where simple, flat out “negative talk” is undersupplied and also quite justified.

4. One proposal for how to limit nuclear war.

5. Paul Krugman on the economics of Taylor Swift (NYT).

6. Chapters coming on-line for the Oxford Handbook of Historical Political Economy.

7. How deterrence policies create border chaos.

8. Shruti podcast with Rohini Nilekani about society/samaaj-first, civil society’s role in governance, physical versus digital public infrastructure, philanthropy in India and much more.

Food in Kenya, and yes you should go

by  Tyler Cowen

In Nairobi the best meals are to be had at the upscale Indian restaurants, and it seems all or most of them are quite good — choose what fits your location and traffic constraints.  The basic style usually is derived from Punjabi dishes.

The “British colonial” food is not bad, but I don’t think I would consume it repeatedly if I lived in Kenya.

Chapati and hummus are regularly interspersed amongst regular “Kenyan” food.

Ugali, a kind of corn meal that comes in many different forms, is the Kenyan national dish.  It is good, albeit predictable, and often you have to ask for it to get it.  I also like the dish with the sliced tomatoes and the chiles.

Blueberries are the fruit to try, and they are both sweeter and more tart than the U.S. product.

The food at the safari camp was very good, though it paid off to be asking all the time for more Kenyan dishes.

By the way, I can recommend the Naboisho Camp highly.  Very friendly staff, excellent guides, and the supposed “tents” are more like high-quality hotel rooms.  As comfortable as any place you could hope to stay at, the general weather usually is perfect, and you can sit and eat breakfast and watch the birds fly and the animals stroll by (at some distance).  At night the hyenas start chattering and sometimes there are lions too.  They do not allow you to walk to your room at night unless you are accompanied by a Masai man with a spear, but that only adds to the fun.  The guides typically consider the ill-tempered buffalo to, in practical terms, be the most dangerous animal around for the humans.  You won’t see rhinos there (Nairobi National Park suffices for that), but even cheetahs and leopards you are likely to come across, not to mention the certainty of numerous elephants, lions, hippos, giraffes, hyenas, wildebeest, warthogs, and much more.  Recommended!

Kenya Airways is about to start daily direct flights from New York to Nairobi, and I found flying with them (from London) to be perfectly fine, albeit not close to an Emirates standard.

Neanderthal bone markets in everything?

by  Tyler Cowen

Did Neanderthal produce a bone industry? The recent discovery of a large bone tool assemblage at the Neanderthal site of Chagyrskaya (Altai, Siberia, Russia) and the increasing discoveries of isolated finds of bone tools in various Mousterian sites across Eurasia stimulate the debate. Assuming that the isolate finds may be the tip of the iceberg and that the Siberian occurrence did not result from a local adaptation of easternmost Neanderthals, we looked for evidence of a similar industry in the Western side of their spread area. We assessed the bone tool potential of the Quina bone-bed level currently under excavation at chez Pinaud site (Jonzac, Charente-Maritime, France) and found as many bone tools as flint ones: not only the well-known retouchers but also beveled tools, retouched artifacts and a smooth-ended rib. Their diversity opens a window on a range of activities not expected in a butchering site and not documented by the flint tools, all involved in the carcass processing. The re-use of 20% of the bone blanks, which are mainly from large ungulates among faunal remains largely dominated by reindeer, raises the question of blank procurement and management. From the Altai to the Atlantic shore, through a multitude of sites where only a few objects have been reported so far, evidence of a Neanderthal bone industry is emerging which provides new insights on Middle Paleolithic subsistence strategies.

That is from a new paper by Malvina Baumann, et.al.  Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.

Thursday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Zurich and Winterthur move to a $26.70 minimum wage (in German).  Is that higher than the average wage in Germany?

2. Much more transmission capacity is needed.

3. China claim of the day: “Wow ByteDance buying $1Bn of NVIDIA AI chips in first half of this year is a lot … that’s 100K chips. ChatGPT was trained on 10K chips”

4. New Behavioral Economics Guide 2023.

5. So, so often people are writing about themselves.

6. Ezra Klein on building and California and the energy transition (NYT).  And Ezra talking to Leslie Kean (NYT, with transcript), she really cannot hold up a plausible defense for her UFO claims.

7. Brazil now systematically runs a trade surplus.

8. Impossibility theorem for open-mindedness.

Why do wages grow faster for educated workers?

by  Tyler Cowen in

The U.S. college wage premium doubles over the life cycle, from 27 percent at age 25 to 60 percent at age 55. Using a panel survey of workers followed through age 60, I show that growth in the college wage premium is primarily explained by occupational sorting. Shortly after graduating, workers with college degrees shift into professional, nonroutine occupations with much greater returns to tenure. Nearly 90 percent of life cycle wage growth occurs within rather than between jobs. To understand these patterns, I develop a model of human capital investment where workers differ in learning ability and jobs vary in complexity. Faster learners complete more education and sort into complex jobs with greater returns to investment. College acts as a gateway to professional occupations, which offer more opportunity for wage growth through on-the-job learning.

That is from a new paper by David J. Deming.  You will note how this relates to the signaling vs. human capital debates over education.  Signaling your quality may put you in a position to learn more over time, as your initial offer likely will be better if you come out of Harvard.  But over the longer haul, the wages you earn are the result of what you have learned, not just your initial level of quality.  So most of the return to education is that you learn more over time, and thus most of the return is learning-related rather than initial quality-related.  Overall, signaling models behave rather awkwardly in dynamic rather than purely static settings.

Will Kenya take the lead in carbon removal?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Because the earth’s crust is thinner than usual along the rift, it has vast geothermal potential. The American government reckons Kenya alone could generate 10,000mw of geothermal power, more than ten times the amount it currently produces. A by-product of such power stations is plenty of waste steam, which can then be used to heat dac machines. Moreover, since close to 90% of Kenya’s power is renewable, the electricity these machines consume does not contribute to more global warming.

Capturing carbon dioxide is just part of the process. Next it has to be safely locked away. The rift’s geology is particularly good for this, too. It has bands of porous basalt (a volcanic rock) that stretch across thousands of square kilometres. This makes the region “ideal” for carbon capture and storage, according to a paper published in 2021 by George Otieno Okoko and Lydia Olaka, both of the University of Nairobi. After carbon dioxide has been sucked from the air it is dissolved in water (in the same way one would make sparkling water). This slightly acidic and bubbly liquid is then injected into the rock. There it reacts with the basalt to form carbon-rich minerals—in essence, rocks—which means the gas will not leak back into the atmosphere…

Martin Freimüller, the founder of Octavia Carbon, a Kenyan startup, is working to build the world’s second-biggest dac plant in the Rift Valley. He hopes it will be able to sequester carbon dioxide far more cheaply than Climeworks can, in part thanks to cheap renewable electricity and geothermal steam, and in part because hiring skilled engineers and chemists costs less in Kenya than in the rich world.

Octavia’s pilot plant, scheduled for completion next year, is forecast to have costs of well below $500 a tonne. Mr Freimüller aims to cut this to below $100 within five years. That is far cheaper than industry-wide forecasts of $300-400 by bcg, a consulting firm.

Here is more from The Economist.  Kenya is insufficiently known as a green energy pioneer.