Category: Uncategorized
What is the America-China trade war all about?
That is the subject of my latest Bloomberg column, and here are the closing bits:
So that means the trade war is really all about Huawei and Taiwan. If the U.S. persists in trying to eliminate Huawei as a major company, by cutting off its American-supplied inputs and intimidating foreign customers and suppliers for Huawei equipment, it will be difficult for the Chinese to accept. In this case, the reluctance to make a deal will be on the Chinese side, and the structure and relative power of the various American interest groups are not essential to understanding the outcome.
The question, then, is whether the U.S. national security establishment, and in turn Congress (which has been heavily influenced on this question), will accept a compromise on Huawei. Maybe that means no Huawei communications technologies for the U.S. and its closest intelligence-sharing allies, but otherwise no war against the company. That is the first critical question to watch in the unfolding of this trade war. The answer is not yet known, though it seems Trump is willing to deal.
The second major question, equally important but less commented upon, is Taiwan. China has long professed a desire to reunite Taiwan with the mainland, using force if necessary. If you belong to the U.S. national security establishment, and you think a confrontation with China is necessary sooner or later, if only because of Taiwan, you would prefer sooner, before China gains in relative strength. And that militates in favor of the trade war continuing and possibly even escalating, as the U.S. continues to push against China and there is simply no bargain to be had.
It is far from clear what a U.S.-China deal over the status of Taiwan could look like. How much Americans actually care about Taiwan is debatable, but the U.S. is unlikely to abandon a commitment that would weaken its value as an ally around the world. And unlike with Huawei, it is difficult to see what a de-escalation of this issue might look like.
So: If the Huawei and Taiwan questions can be resolved, then the trade war should be eminently manageable. Now, does that make you optimistic or pessimistic?
There is much more at the link.
Tuesday assorted links
William Darity Jr. and Darrick Hamilton advising the Democratic Party
Here is the opening of a Jacob M. Schlesinger Wall Street Journal piece:
For decades, William Darity Jr. and Darrick Hamilton toiled in obscurity. They criticized mainstream economists and politicians for failing to address racial inequality, and touted more radical remedies of their own.
Now, with the 2020 presidential campaign under way and liberal Democrats ascendant, the two economists are in the spotlight, thrust into the middle of an intraparty debate over how much to embrace big government and a race-oriented message.
Their signature ideas—guaranteed jobs for all adult Americans seeking them, government-backed trust funds for American babies and reparations for slave descendants—are being talked about on the campaign trail and, in the case of reparations, during a raucous congressional hearing in June.
The two African-American economists’ theories on “stratification economics,” which focuses on economic gaps between whites and blacks, have helped shape the rhetoric and platforms of several candidates.
At a conference earlier this year for liberal activists, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker told Mr. Hamilton he had “laid the foundation for a lot of things that we’re doing,” including “baby bonds.” Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke name-checks Mr. Hamilton in television interviews, calling him an “extraordinary economist” who “talks about a more conscious capitalism.”
Mr. Hamilton, an Ohio State University professor, has advised the campaigns of California Sen. Kamala Harris on middle-class tax cuts, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on job guarantees and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren on student-debt relief.
And this section:
They have teamed up to write more than 50 articles for academic and popular journals and books, and pioneered what they consider a new field of scholarship they branded stratification economics. They contend that mainstream economists tend to regard racial discrimination as a short-term market glitch that market forces will correct eventually. That logic, they say, leads to the conclusion that persistent African-American woes result mainly from their own failings, such as inadequate education or poor financial choices.
Policy makers, they contend, focus too much on employment, income and education and not enough on family wealth across generations. They say wealth is a better measure of household economic security—the ability to weather emergencies, pay for education, afford homes in good neighborhoods and take risks.
I hope you subscribe or can get through the gate, as there are many meaty sections. One interesting angle, of course, is whether their claims and theories are true. But most of all this piece, and their role as advisers, marks the end of an era, namely that of mainstream consensus technocracy. The range of ideas being considered in politics today is remarkably wider than just a few years ago, for better or worse. And, whether we like to admit it or not, the academic world also will follow rather than just lead this process. If a plausible candidate pops up and starts making claims, especially on the Democratic side, the academic research supporting those claims will rise in status.
Fasten your seatbelts.
Addendum: Here are links for Darity, here are links for Hamilton.
Monday assorted links
1. Examples of late life ideological pivots?
2. Becoming a hermit at twenty.
3. Djokovic.
4. Chinese in love with pre-stagnation America.
6. Hundreds of new laws to take effect in Virginia. This is what America is up to.
Sunday assorted links
1. “This means the watching of pornographic videos generates as much CO2 per year as is emitted by countries such as Belgium, Bangladesh and Nigeria.” Link here.
2. Should we add any countries as states to the U.S.? How about Greenland?
How to prevent brain drain?
Moldova has a reasonable education system, but per capita income far below that of Mexico. I don’t see any reason why that ought to change, moving forward. Insofar as Moldova generates serious entrepreneurial talent, you would expect those individuals to leave for greener pastures, say London or even Vienna or Moscow.
(By the way, I wonder what the “new class of very poor white people” are going to be like in a generation or so, in terms of their political views, as liberalism becomes less internationally dominant.)
Sometimes I wonder which features of a country encourage the very smart people to stay there.
One possible candidate would be “very large and messy countries but with a unique ethos,” such as India or Nigeria. If you are born in Latvia, having to migrate to and live in say Frankfurt or London just isn’t that much of a life disruption from the point of view of culture, and you can be at peace with what your breakfast likely will be. It is perhaps harder to leave fufu or chapati behind.
Alternatively, Mexico would seem to be an example of a country where the most talented usually do not leave, and indeed we observe that Mexican migration to the United States is only of “average” human capital quality. Many of the most talented Mexicans are keen to stay in Mexico, where they can earn relatively high incomes, have lots of servants, pursue a variety of life styles with impunity, and enjoy higher social status than they would receive in the States. Yet perhaps those overall features — which induce the talented to stay — are also correlated with the economic, political, and social environment being somewhat dysfunctional?
Footnote: There are numerous very talented Mexican migrants from poor or possibly indigenous backgrounds. But often they do not have the core educational conditions in their upbringing to be able to mobilize their ambitions to achieve maximum productivity potential.
Saturday assorted links
How I practice at what I do
Following up on my post a few days ago, about the value of deliberate practice for knowledge workers, a number of you asked me what form my practice takes. A few of you were skeptical, but it is long since established that practice improves both your writing and your memory, so surely it can do much more than that for your thinking. Here is a partial list of some of my intellectual practice strategies:
1. I write every day. I also write to relax.
2. Much of my writing time is devoted to laying out points of view which are not my own. I recommend this for most of you.
3. I do serious reading every day.
4. After a talk, Q&A session, podcast — whatever — I review what I thought were my weaker answers or interventions and think about how I could improve them. I rehearse in my mind what I should have said. Larry Summers does something similar.
5. I spent an enormous amount of time and energy trying to crack cultural codes. I view this as a comparative advantage, and one which few other people in my fields are trying to replicate. For one thing, it makes me useful in a wide variety of situations where I have little background knowledge. This also helps me invest in skills which will age relatively well, as I age. For me, this is perhaps the most importantly novel item on this list.
6. I listen often to highly complex music, partly because I enjoy it but also in the (silly?) hope that it will forestall mental laziness.
7. I have regular interactions with very smart people who will challenge me and be very willing to disagree, including “GMU lunch.”
8. Every day I ask myself “what did I learn today?”, a question I picked up from Amihai Glazer. I feel bad if I don’t have a clear answer, while recognizing the days without a clear answer are often the days where I am learning the most (at least in the equilibrium where I am asking myself this question).
9. One factor behind my choice of friends is what kind of approbational sway they will exercise over me. You should want to hang around people who are good influences, including on your mental abilities. Peer effects really are quite strong.
10. I watch very little television. And no drugs and no alcohol should go without saying.
11. In addition to being a “product” in its own right, I also consider doing Conversations with Tyler — with many of the very smartest people out there — to be a form of practice. It is a practice for speed, accuracy in understanding written writings, and the ability to crack the cultural codes of my guests.
12. I teach — a big one.
Physical exercise is a realm all of its own, and that is good for your mind too. For me it is basketball, tennis, exercise bike, sometimes light weights, swimming if I am at a decent hotel with a pool. My plan is to do more of this.
Here are a few things I don’t do:
Taking notes is a favorite with some people I know, though my penmanship and coordination and also typing are too problematic for that.
I also don’t review video or recordings of myself, for fear that will make me too self-conscious. For many people that is probably a good idea, however.
I don’t spend time trying to improve my memory, which is either very bad or very good, depending on the kind of problem facing me. (If I need to remember to do something, I require a visual cue, sometimes a pile on the floor, and that creates a bit of a mess. But it works — spatial organization is information!)
I’ve never practiced trying to type on a small screen, though probably I should.
I’ll close by repeating the end of my previous post:
Recently, one of my favorite questions to bug people with has been “What is it you do to train that is comparable to a pianist practicing scales?” If you don’t know the answer to that one, maybe you are doing something wrong or not doing enough. Or maybe you are (optimally?) not very ambitious?
Better training has brought big improvements to the quality of athletics and also chess, and many of those advances are quite recent — when is the intellectual world going to follow suit? When are you going to follow suit?
Friday assorted links
Thursday assorted links
1. Whose advice should you take?
2. Buddhists go to war (NYT): “But Buddhism, whose adherents make up only 7 percent of the global faithful, is the only major religion whose population is not expected to grow in absolute numbers over the next few decades…”
3. Taiwan’s status is a geopolitical absurdity.
4. Minimum wage effects and monopsony?
The cow circuit: the tourism culture that is India
The Union government is exploring a new tourism opportunity — a cow circuit. To promote cow-based tourism economy, the newly formed Rashtriya Kamdhenu Aayog has decided to carve out a route that will wind through places in the country which breed indigenous cows.
The board has identified states like Haryana, UP, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala and Goa for this circuit.
Tourists, especially from foreign countries, students and researchers, will be told about Indian cows, which will also help them in research…
“We have so far focussed on religious, recreational, and adventurous tourism, but if we can link our cow tourism with tourist hotspots, we will be able to promote our indigenous breeds like Gir from Gujurat, Gangatiri from UP, or Ongole from Andrha Pradesh…this will also help in promoting cow-based economy as products made from cow ghee, cow urine and cow dung will be sold at tourist places…”
Here is the full story from Times of India, via Rayman Mohamed.
There is no great stagnation in policing nature through the use of AI-regulated cat flaps
A cat flap that automatically bars entry to a pet if it tries to enter with prey in its jaws has been built as a DIY project by an Amazon employee.
Ben Hamm used machine-learning software to train a system to recognise when his cat Metric was approaching with a rodent or bird in its mouth.
When it detected such an attack, he said, a computer attached to the flap’s lock triggered a 15-minute shut-out.
Mr Hamm unveiled his invention at an event in Seattle last month.
Here is the full story, via Michelle Dawson.
Wednesday assorted links
2. Fentanyl is putting Mexican poppy growers out of work (NYT).
4. Did austerity induce Brexit?
5. “Our results indicated that 99.6% of the variability in adolescent girls’ satisfaction with life had nothing to do with how much they used social media.” (NB: not the only perspective on this).
6. “Immigrants who move from a country with a higher GDP per capita have higher mortality rates.“
How to run an Unconference
What are your best tips for running an Unconference? Google and Facebook have put on versions of these, do you know of anywhere on-line that offers their templates?
Tuesday assorted links
1. Psychologist Robert Levine has passed away (NYT).
2. Xi, the great deglobalizer.
4. Claims about Andalusian donkeys.
5. The tech culture that is China: “Bedding equipped with QR codes will allow hotel guests to verify that they are not sleeping in unclean sheets, says the technology’s developer.”