Saturday assorted links
1. The zero dollar budget movie that topped the box office.
2. Fanta Traore at Fortune covers black economists. Good to see the recognition, but how about Virgil Storr (my colleague, recently promoted, thousands of citations)?
4. George Akerlof essay on the biases in economics.
5. Geoguessr, a new game, an automated version of the old Andrew Sullivan, “view out your window” where is this photo. And what the queen bees really are saying.
6. The success story of Nigerian-Americans.
7. “Median age of COVID-19 patients in Florida was 37 last week, compared to the 60s months ago.”
8. Are the ambidextrous less authoritarian? (speculative)
Big tech and universal telecommuting
It has gone great so far, but I don’t think it is socially optimal to be doing this forever. Here is my latest Bloomberg column on that topic, 2x the usual length, excerpt:
If Twitter, Facebook and other tech companies shift toward everyone working from home, it will mean less reliance on esprit de corps and morale to ensure performance, and more management using direct financial incentives and project- and output-based monitoring. Virtual tools can help organize teams, but they simply can’t replicate the intellectual frisson of “gathering the smart people” together, and this could damage performance and innovation.
And:
There is some evidence that when employees work at a distance, they don’t put in extra hours or extend themselves for the benefit of co-workers. That probably means a better work-life balance for many people, but perhaps also inferior performance from a lot of companies over the longer haul.
This move away from workplace morale as a motivator will help self-starter employees, but it may not be good for tech labor overall. In essence, without a local workplace ethos, it is easier to commoditize labor, view workers as interchangeable and fire people. The distinction between protected full-time employees and outsourced, freelance and contract workers weakens. A company can make the offer of, “If you hand in your project, we pay you,” to virtually any worker around the world, many of whom might accept lower wages for remote roles.
Bringing new workers on board is an especially difficult problem for this model. In the short run, of course, that is a minor concern but over time it grows.
I’m so American, I can’t even tell if this British speech is parody
Here is the story, the speech appears in a box in the corner:
A Brexiteer Tory MP has urged the government to let his dogs keep their freedom of movement rights after Britain leaves the EU.
Bob Stewart, the MP for Beckenham, said his “French-speaking” hounds crossed the Channel regularly on their EU “pet passports”.
Millions of Britons are set to lose the ability to live and work freely on the continent at the end of the year as a result of the UK’s departure from the bloc.
I am an advocate of canine cosmopolitanism, rather than canine nationalism. Is everyone?
Speaking in French, Mr Gove added: “We always defend the rights of dogs.”
Is that true? Under the previous pre-Brexit regime, a pet passport was sufficient. But now:
Under the worst case-scenario of a no-deal Brexit, taking a pet to the EU will likely require a four-month advanced process that includes microchipping, a rabies vaccination, a blood test and a three-month wait to travel after the blood test.
Developing…
Our regulatory state is failing us
The Transportation Security Administration withheld N-95 masks from staff and exhibited “gross mismanagement” in its response to the Coronavirus crisis – leaving employees and travelers vulnerable during the most urgent days of the pandemic, a senior TSA official alleges in a new whistleblower complaint.
On Thursday evening the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal agency that handles whistleblower complaints, said they had found “substantial likelihood of wrongdoing” in the complaint and ordered the Department of Homeland Security to open an investigation…
TSA Federal Security Director Jay Brainard is an official in charge of transportation security in the state of Kansas, and has been with the TSA since the agency’s inception in 2003.
He told NPR that the leadership of his agency failed to protect its staff from the pandemic, and as a result, allowed TSA employees to be “a significant carrier” for the spread of the Coronavirus to airport travelers.
Here is the full NPR story.
Friday assorted links
1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge childhood home up for sale. Check out the books.
3. Economics Observatory: coronavirus and the UK economy.
4. “The real question is whether we will be able to rebuild a building culture.”
5. Podcast with John Collison. Can any other tech leader speak so authoritatively about so many non-tech businesses?
6. Alaska removes the Into the Wild bus, as trips there had led to several deaths and needed rescues. Is this a welfare improvement, or decline?
7. Saku substack.
That was then, this is now
About 55 percent of British servicemen [in World War II] were married.
Furthermore, by mid-1943, British military units were dealing with almost one hundred cases of “family anxiety” a day, with about two-thirds of those being infidelity issues, summing yearly to about 7.5 percent of the married British servicemen in North Africa and the Middle East at that time.
That is from Daniel Todman’s Britain’s War 1942-1947, a book I already have reviewed positively. Reading further, it remains excellent and interesting on every page, is still grossly under-reviewed by MSM, and would make the top five or even top three non-fiction books of the year list since I have started blogging.
The course of Covid-19 in the United States
Via Amihai Glazer. And if you wish to verify, here is another (non-smoothed) presentation of the data.
In terms of the delta this picture is not as bad as what you sometimes hear, though data on cases are far worse, with a very long and indeed continuing plateau. And since deaths lag cases by a few weeks, you still might see reason to be alarmed. Nonetheless, the trend we can see is one of improvement, at least for a little over two months.
Do note it is better for everyone if you think the death rate is still rising!
Raj Chetty talk on “The economic impacts of COVID-19: Real-time evidence from private sector data”
I have not yet viewed it, but this talk is receiving rave reviews, here is the link. Or here:
Via the excellent Samir Varma.
Thursday assorted links
1. Can this be true? “The researchers found that several of the foster fathers were high-profile academics.” It gets worse.
2. “Tannehill also stated during the mask discussion that since June 1, four different urgent care clinics in Oxford had reported a total of 162 positive COVID-19 cases from University of Mississippi students who do not live in Lafayette County.” From fraternity events it seems.
4. Is performative entrepreneurship behind the Great Stagnation? And are academics complicit in this?
5. Physical encounters now seem to matter less for virus transmission. That said, in New Jersey 12 percent of nursing home residents have died of Covid-19.
6. Rules for the NBA bubble (NYT).
7. Tenino, Washington prints its own currency.
8. New Marc Andreessen interview, excellent, lots of fresh material, contains lessons about updating as well. By Sriram Krishnan, would get its own blog post if it would let me do “Control C” on the excerpts.
Coronavirus travel markets in everything
As tourism slowly resumes around the world, many nations are still reluctant to open their borders fully – with Cambodia imposing perhaps the toughest entry requirements of any country.
The south-east Asian country is popular with backpackers, and most renowned for the Unesco-listed temple complex at Angkor Wat.
According to the latest Foreign Office bulletin on Cambodia, foreign travellers must pay a $3,000 (£2,400) deposit for “Covid-19 service charges” at the airport upon arrival.
What appears to be the first “coronavirus deposit” can be paid in cash or by credit card.
The FCO says: “Once deductions for services have been made, the remainder of the deposit will be returned.” But those deductions may be steep – especially if another passenger on the same flight happens to test positive for coronavirus.
So far, so good, perhaps you are keen to go. But here is the downside of the experience:
But if one passenger on their flight tests positive for coronavirus, everyone on the same flight is quarantined in government-approved accommodation for two weeks, at a cost of $1,176 including meals, laundry and “sanitary services”. They must also pay another $100 for a second Covid-19 test. This totals a further £1,021.
If the traveller happens to be the coronavirus-positive patient, they will have to take up to four tests at another $100 (£80) each, as well as $3,150 (£2,500) for treatment at the Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital in the capital, Phnom Penh.
And:
…Cambodia also imposes a requirement for $50,000 (£40,000) of travel insurance cover for medical treatment.
If the unfortunate arrival passes away, the Foreign Office warns: “The cremation service charge is $1,500 [£1,200].”
Here is the full article, via Shaffin Shariff.
Which figures from 1968/1969 look good in retrospect?
Andrew writes to me:
I just wanted to propose a question for your blog, which I’ve read since it launched. Given how the current atmosphere seems a bit like 1968, I was curious who you think comes out of 1968 looking good (or bad) in retrospect. I’m particularly interested in people at universities (my own case), but I’d be curious in general.
A former professor of mine (George Kateb) claimed that my generation (born 1970) was embarrassed by the sixties and I guess particularly by the more radical parts. That’s my impression as well and I assumed that the more radical parts of the sixties and the intellectuals who went along with them would come out looking the worst in retrospect. Is this right? Whose position at the time looks most “correct” today?
It is tough, if only because so many people from both parties then were bad on the Vietnam War issue. Here are a few who, in my judgment, came out of the era looking good, in no particular order:
1. Kareem-Abdul Jabbar (then Lew Alcindor), Billie Jean-King, and Curt Flood.
2. Bob Dylan: pro-civil rights and anti-war, and for all of his phases he never went in for the bad, crazy stuff.
3. Paul McCartney: universalist, anti-war, neoliberal integrationist, and the saner part of the Beatles. Some minus points on the drugs front, however.
4. Julian Bond. And a variety of other civil rights leaders, but MLK not living long enough to “fit” the question as stated.
5. Harry Edwards (who?).
6. Seán Lemass (who?) Elsewhere across the waters there is Raymond Aron.
7. Marshall McLuhan
9. Lucille Ball
9. Gene Roddenberry and the rest of Star Trek, including the script writers.
10. Thomas Pynchon: So many others look bad, at least he knew not to say too much or to hang around for too long.
11. Ayn Rand. With qualifications on a number of fronts, but yes. She was in fact good on the major issues of those years.
12. These people from the Bay Area. They are not public figures, but still they deserve mention.
Who else?
Notes: Marxists, Maoists, and advocates of violence are not going to win. There were plenty of excellent economists back then, but most had a different focus than commenting on the major events of those years, and if memory serves (please correct me if I am wrong) Milton Friedman’s very meritorious anti-draft work came slightly later. I would have to reread the major feminist book authors to pick the best one, but I do mean for at least one to be on the list, I am simply not sure at the moment which one. Ralph Nader too? The astronauts? They knew to keep their mouths shut once they were finished.
Wednesday assorted links
1. The alligator snapping turtle culture that is Lord Fairfax.
2. Die Kinder kommen auch dazu.
3. Racial bias in traffic ticket disparities?
4. David Brooks on the dehumanizing culture of the police.
5. Bergstrom on the new anti-Covid drug.
6. The Invisible College: 50k investments in youth. Run partly by philosophers, including Michael Gibson.
My Conversation with Rachel Harmon
Rachel Harmon is a Professor at University of Virginia Law School, and an expert on policing. Here is the audio and transcript, and here is part of the CWT summary:
She joined Tyler to discuss the best ideas for improving policing, including why good data on policing is so hard to come by, why body cams are not a panacea, the benefits and costs of consolidating police departments, why more female cops won’t necessarily reduce the use of force, how federal programs can sometimes misfire, where changing police selection criteria would and wouldn’t help, whether some policing could be replaced by social workers, the sobering frequency of sexual assaults by police, how a national accreditation system might improve police conduct, what reformers can learn from Camden and elsewhere, and more. They close by discussing the future of law schools, what she learned clerking under Guido Calabresi and Stephen Breyer, why she’s drawn to kickboxing and triathlons, and what two things she looks for in a young legal scholar.
And here is one bit:
COWEN: Should we impose higher educational standards on police forces?
HARMON: There’s mixed evidence on that. Slightly older police officers tend to be better in certain respects, at least, and education is often associated with age. But, again, I don’t think that we can select our way out of problems in policing.
COWEN: But why can’t we? Because different individuals — they behave so differently. They think so differently. Why is it that there’s no change in selection criteria that would get the police to be more the way we want them to be, whatever that might be?
HARMON: I think we could do some things. We could screen out people who have committed misconduct in the past, for example, by decertifying them at the state level and therefore discouraging departments that can’t or don’t care very much about quality of their officers from hiring those officers.
It’s not that we can’t select against problems in policing at all. Sometimes we know that an officer’s problematic, and still he’ll wander around from department to department. I think we should set minimum age standards that are above 18, which many states have as a minimum age standard.
But in terms of education or other more subtle factors, I think the effects can often be subtle, and when we look at what creates problems in policing, departments create officers. The officers don’t preexist a department, really, so what you’re really looking at is the culture of the department, the incentive structures, the supervision, discipline. You can make good officers with imperfect people.
Recommended, interesting throughout, and yes we discuss San Francisco and Singapore too.
*Forms of Contention: Influence and the African American Sonnet Tradition*
That is the new, excellent, and timely book by Hollis Robbins, the title is descriptive, here is one excerpt:
“If We Must Die” calls for resistance to violence in an environment of violence. The power of [Claude] McKay’s sonnet—Shakespearean and yet with modern diction—is the tension between the measured lines and rhyme, the poetic phrases and the brutal words, the combination of enjambments and exclamation points in the octave, and the more deliberate and determined pace of the sestet. “If We Must Die” is a defiant call to action. The rage of the poem is made more potent by the tension of the sonnet form straining to contain it.
The book argues for the centrality of sonnet writing to African American poetry, and that the African American tradition was not simply parasitic on European models. A “sestet,” by the way, is the last six lines of a sonnet, but not a good Scrabble word because you have to waste two “s’s” to play it.
The impact of Protestant Evangelism on economic outcomes
From Gharad Bryan, James J. Choi, and Dean Karlan:
We study the causal impact of religiosity through a randomized evaluation of an evangelical Protestant Christian values and theology education program delivered to thousands of ultra-poor Filipino households. Six months after the program ended, treated households have higher religiosity and income; no statistically significant differences in total labor supply, consumption, food security, or life satisfaction; and lower perceived relative economic status. Exploratory analysis suggests that the income treatment effect may operate through increasing grit. Thirty months after the program ended, significant differences in the intensity of religiosity disappear, but those in the treatment group are less likely to be Catholic and more likely to be Protestant, and there is some mixed evidence that their consumption and perceived relative economic status are higher. We conclude that this church-based program may represent a method of increasing noncognitive skills and reducing poverty among adults in developing countries.