Month: December 2023

How to make you stupider

by  Tyler Cowen in

The Maine official who moved to disqualify former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot on Thursday visited the White House this year to meet with President Biden and previously referred to the Electoral College as a “relic of white supremacy.”

Here is the full story.  This is exactly what I am not going to cover in 2024, so right now you get your miniature, one-time dose.  I am not saying this is not important.  I am saying that reading a lot about it, and commenting on it, will make you stupider.  In fact, the non-elastic Parmenides universe is arranged such that anyone who leaves a comment on this post, no matter what that comments says, will lose two IQ points.

Good luck, and see you next year!

Sunday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. What Kent Hendricks learned this year, always good.

2. NYT calls for the total destruction of all extant major LLMs.  Of course this should be a scandal, and considered an example of unacceptable predatory behavior, but it isn’t.  How is this different from what a super-villain would say?  Brian Chau, telephone!

3. “A sweeping purge of Chinese generals has weakened the People’s Liberation Army, exposing deep-rooted corruption that could take more time to fix and slow Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s military modernization drive amid geopolitical tensions, analysts say.”  And is the CCP moving on Alipay?

4. Where to eat in Madrid.

5. The sources of cost inflation at Auburn University (WSJ).

6. The kinds of questions people are asking GOAT.  Galbraith gets his chance!

7. Milei kissing his girlfriend.  And Milei responding to a critic on socialism.

8. Maxim Lott monitors political bias in chatbots.

9. Hannah Ritchie sanity on climate change (NYT).

10. What Shruti has been reading.

Uber and Traffic Fatalities

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Abstract: Previous studies of the effect of ridesharing on traffic fatalities have yielded inconsistent, often contradictory conclusions. In this paper we revisit this question using proprietary data from Uber measuring monthly rideshare activity at the Census tract level. Using these more detailed data, we find a consistent negative effect of ridesharing on traffic fatalities. Impacts concentrate during nights and weekends and are robust across a range of alternative specifications. Overall, our results imply that ridesharing has decreased U.S. traffic fatalities by 5.4% in areas where it operates. Based on conventional estimates of the value of statistical life the annual life-saving benefits are $6.8 billion. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that these benefits are of similar magnitude to producer surplus captured by Uber shareholders or consumer surplus captured by Uber riders.

The authors, Michael Anderson and Lucas Davis, note that alcohol involvement is reported in approximately 30% of fatal crashes, which is an amazingly high number unless you think a lot of people are driving drunk. I am reminded of a clever paper by Levitt and Porter who use the proportion of crashes involving two drunk drivers to estimate that it is not that lots of people are driving drunk but rather that “drivers with alcohol in their blood are seven times more likely to cause a fatal crash” and “legally drunk drivers pose a risk 13 times greater than sober drivers.” Thus, substituting a sober driver for a drunk driver is a very good thing and so it’s plausible to me that Uber significantly reduces traffic fatalities.

Consider this a public service announcement.

Nicholas Kristof on good things in 2023

by  Tyler Cowen in

Just about the worst calamity that can befall a human is to lose a child, and historically, almost half of children worldwide died before they reached the age of 15. That share has declined steadily since the 19th century, and the United Nations Population Division projects that in 2023 a record low was reached in global child mortality, with just 3.6 percent of newborns dying by the age of 5.

That’s the lowest such figure in human history. It still means that about 4.9 million children died this year — but that’s a million fewer than died as recently as 2016…

Or consider extreme poverty. It too has reached a record low, affecting a bit more than 8 percent of humans worldwide, according to United Nations projections.

All these figures are rough, but it seems that about 100,000 people are now emerging from extreme poverty each day — so they are better able to access clean water, to feed and educate their children, to buy medicines.

Here is the full NYT column, and no he doesn’t deny the bad things that are going on, please don’t engage in the usual mood affiliation people…

Happy New Year to come!

The cities meme

by  Tyler Cowen in

This is making the rounds on Twitter, so I thought I would serve up my somewhat unusual, not quite playing the game by its rules answers:

City I hate: Do I hate any cities?  I don’t think so.  I do recall being disappointed in Invercargill, New Zealand.  I expected a cool, end of the earth vibe, but it was mainly a boring dump.  Probably it has improved.  Can I even call it a city?

City I think is overrated: Isn’t almost everything good underrated?  But perhaps I am disillusioned with Milan.

City I think is underrated: By outsiders?  Los Angeles.  Residents however pay a lot to live there.

City I like: Busan

City I love: Berlin, Singapore, London

City I feel most myself in: Fairfax County

City I still need to visit: Capetown, Bordeaux, Vilnius, Caracas, Santiago, Cuba, and Tblisi.  Muscat too.

City I dream of living in: Fairfax County

Toothpick producers violate NYT copyright

by  Tyler Cowen in

If you stare at just the exact right part of the toothpick, and measure the length from the tip, expressed in terms of the appropriate unit and converted into binary, and then translated into English, you can find any message you want.  You just have to pinpoint your gaze very very exactly (I call this “a prompt”).

In fact, on your toothpick you can find the lead article from today’s New York Times.  With enough squinting, measuring, and translating.

By producing the toothpick, they put the message there and thus they gave you NYT access, even though you are not a paid subscriber.  You simply need to how to stare (and translate), or in other words how to prompt.

So let’s sue the toothpick company!

By the way, I hear they are sending Barbara Eden to jail…

Chile’s pension system out of whack

by  Tyler Cowen in

Together, I estimate these policies have effectively pushed returns down by more than 2 percentage points in most cases as suboptimal asset allocation choices with significant practical implications. Note that a mere 1.5 per cent difference in annual returns over a 35-year period can lead to a 30 to 40 per cent reduction in pension payouts. Additionally, there are three more critical issues to consider.

First, the initial design mandated an insufficient 10 per cent contribution from a worker’s salary. Studies suggest that a 15 per cent to 17 per cent contribution is necessary to obtain an acceptable pension. But there has been political reluctance to increase this figure, which would require workers to sacrifice their current take-home pay for future benefits.

Second, about 30 per cent of Chile’s labour market operates informally, and many workers frequently shift between formal and informal employment. Unfortunately, during informal periods, they seldom contribute to their pension accounts.

Here is more from Arturo Cifuentes in the FT.

Summary trends of 2023

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is my biggest worry:

Another takeaway from 2023 is more depressing: Deterrence is less powerful than I thought. Persistence, combined with a belief in one’s cause, is worth more.

The Israeli military is much stronger than Hamas, for example, and is currently proving that on the ground. Yet that did not stop Hamas from proceeding with a violent incursion into Israel. In Ukraine, substantial support from the US and other NATO nations has not stopped Russia from pursuing a war, even with very heavy losses in terms of its military power and international reputation. Russian President Vladimir Putin simply wants Ukraine, and believes some parts of it rightfully belong to Russia.

None of this is good news for the US, which relies on deterrence to support its numerous alliances. It is also bad news for the world at large, because deterrence tends to support peaceful outcomes and the status quo.

Which leads me to another piece of academic research: I am increasingly inclined to reject psychologist Steven Pinker’s view that the world is becoming more peaceful. Unfortunately, the available evidence suggests that international conflict is on the rise again, after a long period of decline. Cyclical theories of world peace and conflict — in particular the idea that peace eventually breeds the conditions for war — are thus due for an upgrade.

You could add the Houthis to that list as well.  I consider AI and governance issues as well.

Friday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. How the president of Columbia University avoided much of the current mess (NYT).  She also is an economist.  And part of how Harvard screwed up the tactics on the PR side.

2. Profile of Stevenson and Wolfers.

3. A typology of who is easiest and hardest to troll on-line.  For instance: “People who are focused on economic issues are harder to troll. People who care primarily about social issues are easier to troll.”

4. Scott Sumner on my macro podcast with David Beckworth.

5. A claim that NYT will lose their copyright case.  And Rohit.  And Kevin Fischer.  So far Open AI is favored in the betting markets.

6. “UAE emerges as Africa’s largest FDI provider, funneling $59.4 billion into key sectors like infrastructure and energy.”

7. Electoral reforms proposed by Milei.

My pick for the best movie of the year, in which I share a bill with Kevin Spacey

by  Tyler Cowen in

Tyler Cowen, economist and author of Marginal Revolutions

May December

I found May December to be the most interesting movie of the year. It examines deep questions about who envies whom, what a meaningful life consists of, what about possession is satisfying, art versus artifice, the nature of celebrity, and how hard it is to live without worrying about what other people think. The stars are Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, and the director is Todd Haynes. The plotline (these are not spoilers) is that a grown woman had sex with a male seventh-grader, was sent to prison, and later ends up marrying him and having his children. Natalie Portman plays the role of a well-known actress who comes by to learn their story, so that she may better play the woman in a movie. The biggest cinematic influence is perhaps Bergman’s Persona, as we increasingly see different ways in which the two women are parallel or “twinned” in their stories. The movie poster reflects this. The highlight is when Natalie Portman explains to a group of teenagers what it is like to do a sex scene in a movie. In an era where Hollywood is supposed to be stale, this one resets the clock.

From The Spectator, there are many other (lesser) picks as well.