Thursday assorted links
1. “Our contention is that the reason that the West “rules” can be traced back to two events both taking place in China: the invention of the cannon, which made possible the survival of the weakest in Europe; and the arrival of Genghis Khan, which led to the survival of the strongest in China.” Link here.
3. Chotiner and Plokhy on Ukraine (New Yorker).
Which are good sources on Ukraine/Russia?
Here is one Twitter aggregating source recommended to me. Here are the responses to @pmarca’s query. What else can you all recommend?
Trudeau has turned off the invocation of the Emergencies Act
After two days it is no more. I was and remain completely opposed to this invocation of the emergency powers. I think they simply should have arrested the protestors early on, before the whole thing became such a big deal.
Here is a good short essay on the “digital jail” created by having your funds frozen in a nearly cashless society. How is it you are supposed to pay for a lawyer? What about joint bank accounts with other family members? The more you think about this option, the worse it gets.
That all said, I have never been sold on the more dramatic claims of the critics. No, this is not the transition moment for crypto. Canada has not become a fascist state. The government made a mistake, and the mistake has been corrected. They should not have had this power to begin with.
I would stress that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and vigilance was needed to push this one back. But if this was your freakout for the week, most of your attention is directed to the wrong places.
My Conversation with Chuck Klosterman
Excellent stuff, we had so much fun we kept on going for an extra half hour, as he decided to ask me a bunch of questions about economics and personal finance. Here is the audio and transcript. Here is the CWT summary:
Chuck joined Tyler to discuss the challenges of writing about recent history, the “slow cancellation of the future” that began in the aughts, how the internet widened cultural knowledge but removed its depth, why the context of Seinfeld was in some ways more important than its content, what Jurassic Park illustrates about public feelings around scientific progress in the ’90s, why the ’90s was the last era of physical mass subcultures, why it’s uncommon to be shocked by modern music, how his limited access to art when growing up made him a better critic, why Spin Magazine became irrelevant with the advent of online streaming, what made Grantland so special, what he learned from teaching in East Germany, the impact of politics on the legacies of Eric Clapton and Van Morrison, how sports often rewards obnoxious personalities, why Wilt Chamberlain is still underrated, how the self-awareness of the Portland Trail Blazers undermined them, how the design of the NFL makes sports rivalries nearly impossible, how pro-level compensation prevents sports gambling from corrupting players, why so many people are interested in e-sports, the unteachable element of writing, why he didn’t make a great editor on his school paper, what he’d say to a room filled with ex-lovers, the question he’d most like to ask his parents, his impressions of cryptocurrency, why he’s trying to focus on what he has in the current moment rather than think too much about future plans, the power of charisma, and more.
Whew! Here is one excerpt:
COWEN: I see the world as follows. Every decade, to me, is super weird, but the 1980s and ’90s pretended they weren’t weird. The ’80s pretended to be good versus evil. The ’90s pretended that good won. But when crypto comes and persists, you have to drop all pretense that the age you’re living in isn’t totally weird.
You have internet crypto, and everyone admits, right now, everything’s weird. And that, to me, is the fundamental break with the 1990s because everyone pretended most things were normal and that Seinfeld was your dose of weird, right? Jason Alexander — that’s a very manageable weird.
KLOSTERMAN: Oh, absolutely.
COWEN: Some guy in an apartment in New York City cracking sarcastic jokes — like, whoop-de-do.
And:
KLOSTERMAN: …this guy, Mark Fisher, who’s dead now, had this idea about the slow cancellation of the future. I feel like that’s one of the most profound ideas that I’ve come across in the last 10 years of my life, and it seems so palpable that this is occurring.
An example I will often use is, if you take, say, 10 minutes from an obscure film in 1965 with no major actors, and then you take 10 minutes from an obscure film from 1980 where nobody became famous, and you show anyone these 10-minute clips, they will have no problem whatsoever figuring out which one came first. Even a little kid can look at a movie from 1965 and a movie from 1980 and instantly understand that one predates the other.
But if you do that with a film from 2005 and a film from 2020 — again, an obscure film where you don’t recognize the actors — you’re just looking at it aesthetically and trying to deduce which one came first and which one came second. It’s almost impossible.
This phenomenon just seems to almost be infiltrating every aspect of the culture…
And:
KLOSTERMAN: Before I did this podcast, I listened to your podcast with Žižek.
COWEN: Oh yeah, that was hilarious.
KLOSTERMAN: Are you friends with him? It sure seemed like it. And if you are, what is it like to be with him when he is not in a performative scenario?
Recommended. And again, here is Chuck’s new book The Nineties.
Ukraine developments
If you wish to make any comments, you may make them here.
Wednesday assorted links
1. Jason Furman on gas tax incidence, policy economics, and other matters. And more. And more.
2. The redistribution result seems to be false.
3. The mainstreaming of “sexual wellness” products (NYT).
4. Rafael Guthmann on the Roman empire and Walter Scheidel and political fragmentation.
5. Magpies outwit research scientists by helping each other remove their tracking devices.
Ronald Reagan is underrated
That is the theme of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:
As I interpret the career of Reagan, he understood another point very well — and that concerns the scarcity of moral capital. Reagan knew there were real “bad guys,” and that it was up to leaders and elites to identify them and stand up to them, both rhetorically and diplomatically. Most of all, it was important to encourage the American public to internalize these same moral judgments. This may all sound corny and dated, but the pending conflict in Ukraine shows it to be an enduring truth.
The complementary Reagan vision was positive, optimistic and focused on what Americans can accomplish when working together. Americans are going to disagree on a lot of issues, he acknowledged, but they should maintain a relatively united front and save their real opprobrium for the truly destructive forces on the global scene.
Fast forward 40 years, and it seems that America has almost completely ignored these strictures. Many on the right seem most upset about the worst aspects of the left, and vice versa. Even when bad forces emerge in the international arena, Americans seem far more preoccupied by their fights with each other.
On Russia specifically, as recently as several months ago the current military escalation was hardly a topic of discussion among U.S. elites. When Mitt Romney tried to raise the danger of Russia in his 2012 presidential campaign, the point largely fell flat. Former President Barack Obama actually mocked him.
One of my biggest beefs about the status quo is that both the Trumpist Right and the Progressive Left are so willing to run down America’s moral capital in service of their pet partisan projects.
A big thank you to Jane Street
To the company that is, not the street:
We trade a wide range of financial products, including ETFs, Equities, Bonds, Options, Commodities, Digital Assets, Futures, and Currencies. We have global offices which allow us to make markets continually on more than 200 electronic exchanges and other trading venues in more than 40 countries around the world.
A number of people at Jane Street have donated a total of over $20 million to Emergent Ventures and Emergent Ventures India, as well as a significant sum to Fast Grants. This support has existed for a while now, but they’ve always been anonymous donations. I am happy and honored to now be able to recognize them publicly, even if they prefer not to be individually named!
Jane Street is renowned for its brainy, challenging environment, and also for its ability to spot and recruit talent, so that makes their support for Emergent Ventures and Fast Grants all the more meaningful to me. One further implication is that, if this is an appropriate option for you, please do consider working there. I’ve always had a blast during my visits, and I recall one time where I gave a talk, we all went out to dinner, and then quite late everyone went back to the Jane Street office to play chess, bughouse, and other games. They are better at these games than you might think, update your other expectations accordingly!
What has been driving America’s opioid problem?
Matt Yglesias had an excellent (gated) Substack on this question lately, now Jeremy Greenwood, Nezih Guner and Karen A. Kopecky have a new and quite valuable paper. I found this to be the most interesting segment:
Through the eyes of the model, there were two key forces. The first force is the decline in prices for bot prescription and black market opioids. This had a big effect. The second force is the increase in the dosages per prescription meted out by doctors. This also had a significant impact. The fact that doctors kept pain sufferers on prescription opioids for a longer period of time had little effect. Last, an analysis is conducted on medical interventions that reduce either the probability of becoming addicted or the odds of an addict dying from an overdose. Reducing the odds of addiction can result in even more deaths due to the rise in users.
The opioid problem is a very difficult one to solve! I should stress that the paper has other results of interest.
What should I ask Daniel Gross?
I will be doing a Conversation with him, noting that he is my co-author on Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creators, and Winners Around the World.
Daniel is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist and here is his Wikipedia page. Here is Daniel on Twitter. Here is Daniel’s ideas page. Here is Daniel on his work, including Pioneer.
Since we are co-authors, this won’t just be the standard interview format, how do you think we should do it? And what should we ask each other?
What is so great about *Pet Sounds*?
That question is the subject of this short Holden Karnofsky essay. Many people told Holden it is the best album ever, some citing its use of the recording studio, and he tried to work his way through that claim, basically remaining skeptical. Here are various responses to him. Here is a piece explaining the wonders of Pet Sounds, it is OK enough but not so insightful. I would stress the following points:
1. It is an album of sadness, loss, and infinite longing. Melancholy. Do I know of a sadder album? Listen to the lyrics. And yet it is all set amongst the sunshine and girls and southern California. As for the harmonies, they are continually building up expectation and never satisfying it. It is necessary for the album to end on the down note of “Caroline, No,” a song which itself just fades away and ends, merging into the “pet sounds” that give the album its name. I think of the combination of the sadness and the rising and swelling but never satisfied expectations as the key feature of Pet Sounds.
2. It is worth a listen-through following only the bass lines. You also will hear the huge influence on Paul McCartney.
2b. It is worth a listen-through following only the harmonies. The bells. The percussion. The woodwinds.
3. I don’t even think it is the best Beach Boys album. Or sort of it is. Overall I find the Smile period to be more profound, noting that this material ended up spread out over a number of separate albums. That said, every single composition on Pet Sounds is excellent.
4. “You Still Believe in Me” and “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” I both prefer to “God Only Knows,” which perhaps I have heard too many times.
5. Overall I find the secret to the Beach Boys (and some Beatles) listening to be their sound world. Interpret the Beach Boys through John Cage! Listen to a simple song such as “Vegetables,” but on a very good sound system or with head phones. Surrounded by silence. Or pick some of the other works from the Smile period, or even Wild Honey or the top cuts on Sunflower, such as tracks 7-10. Try to discern the sound of the air behind the music, the silences, and the tautness of the sounds that are sent your way. Internalize that understanding (if you are trying this for the Beatles, pick the noises at the end of “You Never Give Me Your Money.”) Carry that understanding of the sound world with you every time you hear a Beach Boys song. At first you will hear that sound world in the “pet sounds” at the end of the album, most of all the train, and then will you will hear it throughout the entire album.
Musical life will never be the same again.
Tuesday assorted links
1. Democrats talking about their political problems, circa 1989. (That was then, this is now!)
3. Kinds of people, in universities. Or is there only one?
4. Will inter-state war take place in cities? And some reasons why India supports Russia. And one Ukraine book list.
5. Correlations. Cowen’s Second Law. And regulatory diffusion.
Redistribution sentences to ponder
After accounting for indirect taxes and in-kind transfers, the US redistributes a greater share of national income to low-income groups than any European country.
Here is the full paper by Thomas Blanchet, Lucas Chancel, and Amory Gethin. Please also note that “context is that which is scarce,” and the authors probably attach a different interpretation to this sentence than I do.
Via Ilya Novak.
Bryan Caplan is starting his own blog
I began blogging for EconLog in 2005. I hadn’t even published my first book, but Liberty Fund took a chance on me and made me a regular blogger. After seventeen years and thousands of blog posts, I’m supremely grateful to Liberty Fund, my fellow bloggers, and of course you, dear EconLog readers.
Starting on March 1, however, I have accepted a position running an all-new blog, Bet On It, hosted by the Salem Center for Policy at the University of Texas. I will be the chief blogger as well as the editor. As you may know, I’ve spent about four months of Covid as a visiting scholar at the University of Texas. It’s been a great home away from home, thanks to Executive Director Carlos Carvalho. And since the Salem Center is energetically expanding, this was a natural move. Part of the deal is that I’ll continue to spend several weeks in Austin every year – and work with Salem to recruit other visiting scholars, hold public events, and much more.
The upshot is that this will be my last week as an EconLog blogger. I sincerely hope you all keep following EconLog, but I’m also hoping that you’ll add Bet on It to your regular reading.
Here is the full post. The discussion is interesting more generally, mostly about how Bryan has become more pessimistic about many aspects of the world, including economics research.
Labor supply still really matters
We also document a sharp decline in desired work hours during the pandemic that persists through the end of 2021 and is roughly double the drop in the labor force participation rate. Ignoring the decline in desired hours overstates the degree of underutilization by 2.5 percentage points (12.5%). Our findings suggest that, as of 2021Q4, the labor market is tighter than suggested by the unemployment rate and the adverse labor supply effect of the pandemic is more pronounced than implied by the labor force participation rate.
That is from a new NBER working paper by R. Jason Faberman, Andreas I. Mueller, and Ayşegül Şahin.