Category: Current Affairs
My excellent Conversation with Chris Dixon
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is the episode summary:
Chris Dixon believes we’re at a pivotal inflection point in the internet’s evolution. As a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and author of Read Write Own, Chris believes the current internet, dominated by large platforms like YouTube and Spotify, has strayed far from its decentralized roots. He argues that the next era—powered by blockchain technology—can restore autonomy to creators, lower barriers for innovation, and shift economic power back to the network’s edges.
Tyler and Chris discuss the economics of platform dominance, how blockchains merge protocol-based social benefits with corporate-style competitive advantages, the rise of stablecoins as a viable blockchain-based application, whether Bitcoin or AI-created currencies will dominate machine-to-machine payments, why Stack Overflow could be the first of many casualties in an AI-driven web, venture capital’s vulnerability to AI disruption, whether open-source AI could preserve national sovereignty, NFTs as digital property rights system for AIs, how Kant’s synthetic a priori, Kripke’s modal logic, and Heidegger’s Dasein sneak into Dixon’s term‑sheet thinking, and much more.
Most of the talk was about tech of course, but let’s cut right to the philosophy section:
COWEN: What’s your favorite book in philosophy?
DIXON: I’ve actually been getting back into philosophy lately. I did philosophy years ago in grad school. Favorite book, man. Are you into philosophy?
COWEN: Of course, yes. Plato’s Dialogues; Quine, Word and Object; Parfit, Reasons and Persons; Nozick. Those are what come to my mind right away.
DIXON: Yes. I did analytic philosophy. I actually was in a graduate school program and dropped out. I did analytic philosophy. Actually, Quine was one of my favorites — Word and Object and Two Dogmas of Empiricism, all those kinds of things. I like Donald Davidson. Nozick — I loved Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Reading that with Rawls is a great pairing. I used to love Wittgenstein, both early and later. I was into logic, so Frege and Russell. This was a grad school.
Now I’m trying to finally understand continental philosophy. I never understood it. I’ve actually spent the last three months in a philosophy phase. I’ve been watching a lot of videos. Highly recommend this. Do you know Bryan Magee?
COWEN: Sure, yes.
DIXON: Amazing. I watched all of his videos. This guy, Michael Sugrue, was a Princeton professor — great videos on continental philosophy. I’ve been reading — it sounds pretentious; I’m not saying I understand this or I’m an expert on it, but I’m struggling in reading it. I’m trying to read Being and Time right now — Heidegger. I really like Kripke. I follow Kripke. I liked his books a lot. Nelson Goodman was one of my favorites. Funny enough, I just bought it again — Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. Kripke — Naming and Necessity is his legendary book on reference and language.
COWEN: I’ve never been persuaded by that one. It always felt like sleight of hand to me. He’s very, very smart. He might be the sharpest philosopher, but I like the book on Wittgenstein better.
DIXON: He basically invented modal logic. I don’t know if you know that story. He was in high school, something.
COWEN: He was 15 years old, I heard. Yes.
DIXON: [laughs] He’s like a true prodigy. Like a lot of philosophy, you have to take it in the context, like Naming and Necessity I think of as a response — gosh, I’m forgetting the whole history of it, but as I recall, it was a response to the descriptive theory of reference, like Russell. Anyways, I think you have to take these things in a pairing.
Actually, last night I was with a group of people. I got a lecture on philosophy, and it was great because he went through Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche. I don’t want to go too much into that, but I’ve always struggled with Kant. Then he went into Hegel and explained that Hegel struggled with Kant in the same way that I did, and then improved on it. I’m not trying to go into details of this; it’s too much. The point is, for me, a lot of it has to be taken in as a dialogue between thinkers over multiple periods.
COWEN: Are you getting anything out of Heidegger? Because I sometimes say I’ve looked at every page of that book, but I’m not sure I’ve read it.
DIXON: It’s a good question. I have a friend who’s really into it, and we’ve been spending time together, and he’s trying to teach me. If you want, I’ll send you some videos that I think are really good.
COWEN: That’d be great.
DIXON: They’ve helped me a lot. I’ve always got it from an intellectual history point of view. If you want to follow the history of postmodernism, there’s Heidegger and then Derrida, and just what’s going on in the academy today with relativism and discourse and hermeneutics. I think it’s modern political implications that were really probably kicked off by Nietzsche and then Heidegger. I’ve always understood in that sense.
What I struggle with, and I understand him as a theory of psychology, I think of describing the experience of the Dasein and being-in-the-world. To me, it’s an interesting theory of psychology. You’re thrown into the world. This whole idea is very appealing to me. Just that whole story he tells — you’re thrown into the world, ready at hand versus present at hand. I think this idea of knowing how versus knowing that, different kinds of knowledge is a very interesting idea. Do you watch John Vervaeke?
COWEN: No.
You will find the (very interesting) tech segments all over the rest of the dialogue. And I am happy to refer you all to the new paperback edition of Chris’s new book Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet.
Rachel Glennerster calls for reforming foreign aid
Aid agencies already try to cover too many countries and sectors, incurring high costs to set up small programs. Aid projects are far too complicated, resembling a Christmas tree weighed down with everyone’s pet cause. With less money (and in the US, very few staff), now is the time to radically simplify. By choosing a few highly cost-effective interventions and doing them at large scale in multiple countries, we would ensure
- aid funds are spent on highly effective projects;
- we benefit from the substantial economies of scale seen in development;
- a much higher proportion of aid money goes to recipient countries, with less spent on consultants; and
- politicians and the public can more easily understand what aid is being spent on, helping build support for aid.
The entire piece is excellent.
We need more elitism
Even though the elites themselves are highly imperfect. That is the theme of my latest FP column. Excerpt:
Very often when people complain about “the elites,” they are not looking in a sufficiently elitist direction.
A prime example: It is true during the pandemic that the CDC and other parts of the government gave us the impression that the vaccines would stop or significantly halt transmission of the coronavirus. The vaccines may have limited transmission to some partial degree by decreasing viral load, but mostly this was a misrepresentation, perhaps motivated by a desire to get everyone to take the vaccines. Yet the vaccine scientists—the real elites here—were far more qualified in their research papers and they expressed a more agnostic opinion. The real elites were not far from the truth.
You might worry, as I do, that so many scientists in the United States have affiliations with the Democratic Party. As an independent, this does induce me to take many of their policy prescriptions with a grain of salt. They might be too influenced by NPR and The New York Times, and more likely to favor government action than more decentralized or market-based solutions. Still, that does not give me reason to dismiss their more scientific conclusions. If I am going to differ from those, I need better science on my side, and I need to be able to show it.
A lot of people do not want to admit it, but when it comes to the Covid-19 pandemic the elites, by and large, actually got a lot right. Most importantly, the people who got vaccinated fared much better than the people who did not. We also got a vaccine in record time, against most expectations. Operation Warp Speed was a success. Long Covid did turn out to be a real thing. Low personal mobility levels meant that often “lockdowns” were not the real issue. Most of that economic activity was going away in any case. Most states should have ended the lockdowns sooner, but they mattered less than many critics have suggested. Furthermore, in contrast to what many were predicting, those restrictions on our liberty proved entirely temporary.
Recommended.
Who needs a UBI?
CDPAP’s enrollment, workforce and total costs ballooned after the state relaxed eligibility rules in 2015. The number of people receiving care through the program surged from just under 20,000 in 2016 to almost 248,000 last year. New York state Medicaid spending on CDPAP in the last five years has more than tripled to about $9.1 billion.
New York needs to make changes to the program, which Hochul called “wildly expensive.”
…Jobs in home health make up an increasingly large share of the city and state’s overall economy. Between 2014 and 2024, home health aide jobs went from comprising 6% of New York City’s total private-sector jobs to 12%, according to Bill Hammond, the senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative think tank.
I am not sure all of these numbers fit together, and am not sure that the actual percentage of private sector jobs is 12 percent. Nonetheless, the growth here seems quite rapid. Here is more from Laura Nahmias at Bloomberg.
It’s happening, UAE edition
The United Arab Emirates aims to use AI to help write new legislation and review and amend existing laws, in the Gulf state’s most radical attempt to harness a technology into which it has poured billions.
The plan for what state media called “AI-driven regulation” goes further than anything seen elsewhere, AI researchers said, while noting that details were scant. Other governments are trying to use AI to become more efficient, from summarising bills to improving public service delivery, but not to actively suggest changes to current laws by crunching government and legal data.
“This new legislative system, powered by artificial intelligence, will change how we create laws, making the process faster and more precise,” said Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Dubai ruler and UAE vice-president, quoted by state media. Ministers last week approved the creation of a new cabinet unit, the Regulatory Intelligence Office, to oversee the legislative AI push.
Here is more from the FT.
England and Wales fact of the day
A recent survey, commissioned by the Bible Society and conducted by YouGov, showed 16 per cent of those aged 18 to 24 in England and Wales said they attended church at least monthly, significantly up from 4 per cent in 2018.
Here is more from the FT. Addendum: The above quotation from the FT is slightly misleading. Both numbers are the percentages for those who self-report as Christians.
Intertemporal substitution (from my email)
From a Czech newspaper:
Recruitment of new recruits in Russia is skyrocketing. With the prospect of a ceasefire, they want to ‘jump on the last train’
The number of Russians who have decided to join the army has multiplied in recent weeks. Regardless of their health, recruitment centres are taking anyone who expresses an interest. And it is growing even as an increasing number of Russian soldiers return from the front line in coffins. This is mainly due to the high rewards, and with the prospect of a ceasefire, the motivation of new recruits is even higher. Many of them hope to collect money and peace of arms will come before they end up on the front line.
Nábor nových rekrutů v Rusku prudce stoupá | iROZHLAS – spolehlivé zprávy
That is all from MR commentator uair01.
Is China the ultimate free-rider?
With a Trump-induced decline of American alliances n the works, is Chinese global ascendancy going to result? It would seem so. Matt Yglesias tweeted that “America may be cooked and it’s gonna be the Chinese century.” Thomas Friedman recently wrote a column suggesting that the future is to be found in China, not America.
In the realm of technology, China’s advances are impressive. BYD has the best and cheapest electric vehicles, the CCP is pulling out all stops to attain high-quality chips and lithography capabilities. Chinese AI, in the form of DeepSeek and Manus, has shocked many Westerners with its inventiveness.
Yet Western and most of all American hegemony is not over yet. These advances by China are real, but they rest on a foundation of Western values and institutions more than it might appear at first.
Consider global economic growth over the last few decades. China has risen in import, relative to most of the poorer nations it was once bunched with. America too has risen in economic influence, widening the gdp gap with Western Europe. The lesson is that economies with scale have prospered more than average, which is hardly surprising in a world where tech and also big business are ascendant. America and China are thus likely to prosper jointly under broadly common conditions.
The inconvenient truth, for China, is that its scale relies upon American power and influence. The Chinese export machine, for instance, requires a relatively free world trading order. The recipe to date has been “mercantilism for us, free trade for everybody else.” Yet Trump threatens to smash that framework. If the world breaks down into bitterly selfish protectionist trading blocs, China will be one of the biggest losers. After all, where will the Chinese sell the rising output from their factories?
The Chinese growth and stability model also requires relatively secure energy supplies. For that it relies on the United States and its allies, as the Chinese programs for nuclear and solar power remain far from their final goals. If the Western alliance system collapses, who is to keep the Middle East relatively stable, at least stable from the point of view of procuring fossil fuels? China hardly seems up to that task, as the country has neither the means, the inclination, the experience, nor the allies to do the job.
Furthermore, China relies more on American hard and soft power more than it likes to let on. The leading role of America makes both Western Europe and also Latin America a bit “soft” when it comes to self-defense and martial spirit and also nationalistic pluck. After all, many countries are outsourcing their defense and also parts of their intelligence-gathering to the United States. That makes them relatively easy pickings for Chinese infiltration, whether it be economic infiltration, pulling up alongside as an easy “extra friend” to boost bargaining power with America, or spying and surveillance. If Trump scuttles our current multilateral commitments and trust, China will find most other countries harder to penetrate, not easier.
Another risk on the horizon is nuclear proliferation, which could result from any number of events, ranging from an Israeli attack on Iran, the partial fall of Ukraine, or a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The more nuclear powers inhabit the world, the more China is hemmed in with its foreign policy ambitions. That outcome may not be good for the United States either, but again we are back to the scenario where the US and China have some fundamental common interests, rather than the narrative where China displaces America as world leader.
There is much to rue in the first few months of Trump’s foreign and economic policy, but China is far from being able to take the baton. They are running second, and doing a great job of that, precisely because we Americans – in spite of all our mistakes — still have the lead.
My interview with Times Radio
Times of London that is:
What should I ask John Arnold?
Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him. John might be the smartest person I know about the energy sector and also about philanthropy. Here is the opening of his Wikipedia entry:
John Douglas Arnold (born 1974) is an American philanthropist, former Enron executive, and founder of Arnold Ventures LLC, formerly the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. In 2007, Arnold became the youngest billionaire in the U.S. His firm, Centaurus Advisors, LLC, was a Houston-based hedge fund specializing in trading energy products that closed in 2012. He now focuses on philanthropy through Arnold Ventures LLC. Arnold is a board member of Breakthrough Energy Ventures and since February 2024, is a member of the board of directors of Meta.
So what should I ask him?
How to do regulatory reform (from my email)
“Philip Howard here. I enjoyed your discussion with Jen Pahlka. Here are a few notes:
1. This current system needs disrupting, but I fear DOGEs indiscriminate cuts are making the status quo look good. Here’s Peter Drucker, criticizing Gore’s reinventing got: “patching. It always fails. The next step is to rush into downsizing. Management picks up a meat-ax and lays about indiscriminately. …amputation before diagnosis.” (from Management, revised ed).
2. Most of the newcomers to the realization that govt is paralyzed (Ezra Klein, Dunkelman etc) think that the red tape jungle can be pruned, or organized with better feedback loops (Pahlka). This is falling into Gore’s pit. There’s a fatal defect: the operating system is designed around legal compliance–instead of human authority to make tradeoff judgments. Law should be a framework setting the boundaries of authority, not a checklist. That’s why some reforms I championed (page limits, time limits) haven’t worked; there’s always another legal tripwire. I describe what a new framework should look like in this recent essay. https://manhattan.institute/article/escape-from-quicksand-a-new-framework-for-modernizing-america
3. Public unions: Democracy loses its link to voters–quite literally–if elected executives lack managerial authority. The main tools of management– accountability, resource allocation, and daily direction–have been either removed by union controls or are subject to union veto. Government is more like a scrum than a purposeful organization. There’s a core constitutional principle –private nondelegation–that prevents elected officials from ceding their governing responsibility to private groups. Stone v Mississippi: “The power of governing is a trust…, no part of which can be granted away.” That’s the basis of the constitutional challenge we’re organizing. The Trump admin could transform state and local govt by invoking this principle.
Fwiw, I see these points– authority to make tradeoff judgments, authority to manage— as microeconomic necessities, not policy positions. Nothing can work sensibly until people are free to make things work. We’re organizing a forum at Columbia Law School, The Day After Doge, on the morning of April 23. Here’s the lineup. https://www.commongood.org/the-day-after-doge. Let me know if you’d like to weigh in.”
Problems in Treasury markets (from my email)
Max writes to me:
“Hope you’re doing well. And the craziness in the world hasn’t been affecting you too much. I know I’ve written to you about cash-treasury basis a couple of times over the years. The situation has unfortunately become somewhat more acute and has started to get wider media attention.
There are some good accounts of the issue in the media, by Matt Levine for example But, there are a few things being missed even in high quality media accounts:
- The issue is now a global one, which has not been the case historically. German bunds now trade at a negative swap spread (the yield on cash bonds is higher than on similar tenor swaps). This is a fairly recent development. It suggests the problem has shifted from being primarily a shortage of USD cash (though that is still true to a significant degree), to a global oversupply of longer dated bonds.
- A crunch in repo funding does not seem to be primarily responsible here. Balance sheet efficient methods of intermediating repo (sponsored repo) are more available now than they have been in the past. And they haven’t solved the problem.
- Permitting bond basis to fluctuate is quite pernicious. It meaningfully reduces the negative correlation between long bonds and risk assets. Meaningully reducing the attractiveness of holding them in a portfolio and increasing funding costs.
- At this point, global government debt outstanding is so large basis is so high that failing to correct this issue has a meaningful budget impact. Not only in the US, but across the Western world.
I think there is a straightforward solution: The Fed has clear cut authority to trade Treasury forwards during open market operations. Which would alleviate the pressure on dealer balance sheets, relieve market dysfunction, and help restore basis to more natural levels. And do so without relying on emergency authorities.”
Parallels between our current time and 17th century England
That is the topic of my recent essay for The Free Press. Excerpt:
Ideologically, the English 17th century was weird above all else.
Millenarianism blossomed, and the occult and witchcraft became stronger obsessions. This was an age of religious and economic upheaval; King James I even wrote a book partly about witches called Daemonologie. The greater spread of pamphlets and books meant that witch accusations circulated more widely and more rapidly, and so the 1604 Witchcraft Act applied harsher punishments to supposed witches.
People were more likely to fear imminent transformation, and new groups sprouted up with names such as “Fifth Monarchy Men,” devoted to the idea that a new reign of Christ would usher in the end of the world. Protestantism splintered, giving rise to Puritanism and numerous sects, many of them extreme.
Meanwhile, Roger Williams brought ideas of free speech and freedom of conscience to America, founding what later became the state of Rhode Island. The development of economics as a science with an understanding of markets (credit Nicholas Barbon and Dudley North) dates from that time, as do the first libertarians, namely the Levellers, a liberty-oriented group from the time of the English Civil War.
All of these developments were supported by the falling price of printing, giving rise to an extensive use of pamphlets and broadsheets to communicate and debate ideas, often in London coffeehouses. Johannes Gutenberg had built the printing press for Europe much earlier, in the middle of the 15th century—but 17th-century England was the time and place when a commercial middle class could start to afford buying printed works.
I explore the parallels with today at the link, recommended.
It seems DOGE is dwindling?
The National Institutes of Health told employees Thursday it was rolling back directives from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to probe worker productivity and limit purchases and travel on company cards, according to messages obtained by POLITICO.
It’s a possible sign that the agency’s recently confirmed director, Jay Bhattacharya, is willing to break with Musk and DOGE.
“Please disregard any future reminders or instructions on this directive from OPM or the Department of Health and Human Services,” said one message, referencing the White House’s personnel office. “NIH manages its own performance review processes and will notify employees directly if any information related to work duties or performance is needed.”
Purchasing cards will “be restored to full capacity and use” later today, according to another message from NIH management. Staff will again be able to travel for business and won’t have to seek permission from HHS or the NIH director’s office, the message said.
Here is the full story by Danny Nguyen. I believe Jay is not the most left-wing NIH head we have had, so the imperatives of bureaucracy are reasserting themselves perhaps? More data will be on the way. But the general point I have been making — that DOGE needs to prioritize and needs more Congressional and also public support — is looking more true each day.
America’s Tourism Deficit: How the French Are Winning the Currency War One Croissant at a Time
Every year, American tourists pour billions of dollars into France, wandering the Louvre, sipping overpriced espresso in Montmartre, and snapping selfies along the Seine—while far fewer French tourists bother making the reverse pilgrimage to admire, say, Disney World. The result? A massive tourism deficit.
On paper, this reflects wealth differentials and revealed preferences – Americans, being richer and more numerous than the French, express a high demand for old world Parisian experiences. But behind this innocent wanderlust is something more sinister. When Americans vacation in France, that’s counted as a US import of tourism. When French people vacation here—fewer, more begrudgingly—that’s a US export. So voilà, the tourism deficit creates a trade deficit, an excess of imports over exports!
The tourism deficit means there is a steady leak of the world’s reserve currency into the hands of a nation famous for its cheese, wine, and suspicion of American capitalism. France, using little more than museums and moodiness, is accumulating dollars from innocent American travelers. And they’re not just hoarding them for kicks. Those dollars are claims on real assets. First it’s a Napa vineyard. Then a Brooklyn fintech startup. Eventually, who knows? The Port of Long Beach? The Federal Reserve’s snack bar?
Make no mistake: France’s true comparative advantage isn’t wine or luxury goods—it’s the ruthless extraction of tourism dollars, performed with flawless precision, a disdainful shrug, and a little help from Emily in Paris. We’re being out-traded, one overpriced pastry at a time, by a nation whose strategic horizon spans centuries—and whose Netflix marketing is impeccable.
The political implications are, shall we say, obvious.
From now on, we demand a tourism balance. No more visa waivers, no more jet-setting to Provence until they send an equal number of French tourists to Branson, Missouri. It’s high time the French get over their Napoleon complex and start to appreciate American corn dogs and Dolly Parton. France needs to treat us with the same respect as the friendly countries that enthusiastically dispatch high-spending tourists to our shores.
It’s one-for-one, or the deal is off. Tourism parity or rien! Point final.