Category: Uncategorized
Should we ban bicycles in major urban areas?
“New Yorkers on bikes are being killed at an alarming rate,” said Marco Conner, the interim co-executive director of Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group.
Across the city, 14 cyclists have been killed in crashes this year, four more than all of last year, according to city officials. New York’s streets have seen an increase in bicycling while also becoming more perilous, in part because of surging truck traffic fueled by the booming e-commerce industry.
The mayor himself acknowledged on Monday that the city was facing an “emergency.”
That is from the New York Times, you will find more detail, and some further points of interest, at the link.
Would urban bicycling pass an FDA test of “safe and effective”? Furthermore, as a driver and pedestrian I observe cyclists breaking the law — most of all running red lights — at an alarming rate. And surely we all believe in the rule of law, so why should we allow technologies that seem so closely tethered to massive law-breaking?
I do get that bicycles are driven by cool people who are fighting climate change. Nonetheless, what if self-driving vehicles were connected to fourteen deaths in NYC alone? How would we treat them? Alternatively, what if Facebook owned all of those bicycles?
A long harangue about how the car and truck drivers really were at fault will fail to pass the Coasean symmetric externalities test.
Friday assorted links
1. The Toy Tamer: those new service sectors jobs markets in everything.
2. Would you give up your airplane seat for Wole Soyinka?
3. Why doesn’t “tock-tick” sound right to your ears?
The new and improved Magnus Carlsen
After a few years of only so-so (but still world #1) results, Magnus has I believe won five tournaments in a row this year and he is leading in the sixth, currently running in Croatia.
He recently stated that he has learned some new chess ideas from AlphaZero, but more importantly he has shown up better prepared in the openings than his opponents, probably for the first time in his career. Yet his preparation has taken an extraordinary spin. Other grandmasters prepare the opening in the hope of achieving an early advantage over their opponents. Magnus’s preparation, in contrast, is directed at achieving an early disadvantage in the game, perhaps willing to tolerate as much as -0.5 or -0.6 by the standards of the computer (a significant but not decisive disadvantage, with -2 signifying a lost position). Nonetheless these are positions “out of book” where Magnus nonetheless feels he can outplay his opponent, and this is mostly opponents from the world top ten or fifteen.
So far it is working. One commentator wrote: “Magnus is turning into a crushing monster just like Garry. He isn’t the strangler anymore”
And it is hard to counter someone looking for a disadvantage!
*Fentanyl, Inc.*, by Ben Westhoff
The slightly misleading subtitle is How Rogue Chemists are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic. Why misleading? So many substance abuse books are a mix of hysterical in tone and a disappointing “paint by numbers” in their execution, but this one really stands out for its research, journalism, and overall analysis. To give just one example, it is also a great book on China, and how China and the Chinese chemicals industry works, backed up by extensive original investigation.
Start with this:
Americans take more opioids per capita — legitimate and illegitimate uses combined — than any other country in the world. Canada is second, and both far outstrip Europe. Americans take four times as many opioids as people do in the United Kingdom.
And this:
For many years, Chinese organized-crime groups known as triads have been involved in the international meth trade. But experts familiar with triads say their influence appears to be waning in the fentanyl era. “They’re a shadow of their former selves,” said Justin Hastings, an associate professor in international relations and comparative politics at the University of Sydney…Though ad hoc criminal organizations continue to move drugs in China, major trafficking organizations are rare there, and cartels basically nonexistent. This leaves the market wide open for Chinese chemical companies, who benefit from an air of legitimacy.
As for marijuana and cocaine, they are used by only about one in every forty thousand individuals in China. But the book covers the entire U.S. history as well.
Definitely recommended, this will be making my year-end “best of” list for non-fiction. And yes I did go and buy his earlier book on West Coast rap music.
Thursday assorted links
A simple model of Kawhi Leonard’s indecision
As a free agent, he is being courted by his current team, the Toronto Raptors, as well as the Los Angeles Clippers and the Los Angeles Lakers (now the team of LeBron James). And the internet is making jokes about him taking so much time for the decision. In Toronto, helicopters are following him around.
Due to the salary cap and related regulations, there is no uncertainty about how much money each team can offer. The offer that can vary the most in overall quality, however, is the one from the Los Angeles Lakers. For instance, if Kawhi is playing in Los Angeles with LeBron James, he might receive more endorsements and movie contracts (or not). If he is waiting on the decision at all, that is a sign he is at least sampling the Laker option, and seeing how much extra off-court value it can bring him. So the existence of some waiting favors the chance he goes to the Lakers. That said, if he is waiting a long time to see how good the Laker option is, that is a sign the Laker option is not obviously crossing a threshold and thus he might stay with Toronto.
Wednesday assorted links
My Conversation with Eric Kaufmann
Interesting and excellent throughout, here is the audio and transcript. Eric is political scientist at Birkbeck College in London and the author of the recent Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities. Here is part of the opening summary:
Kauffman’s latest book Whiteshift, which examines how declining white ethnic majorities will respond to these changes, is on Tyler’s list as one of the best books of the year. The two discuss the book and more, including Orangeism in Northern Ireland, Switzerland’s secret for stability, what Tocqueville got most wrong about America, predictions on Brexit’s final form, why Portugal seems immune from populism, how Notre Dame should be rebuilt, whether the Amish — or Mormons — will take over the world, and much more.
Here is one excerpt:
COWEN: Do conservative Muslims also have a much higher fertility rate?
KAUFMANN: The gradient between very conservative and sort of secular and liberal is not as strong in Islam as it is in Judaism or Christianity, but it’s about a twice higher fertility for women who are most in favor of Sharia compared to those who are most opposed to Sharia, in the cities. So I do think there is also this dynamic within Islam, yes.
COWEN: If we look at a country such as Iran, which now has a very low total fertility rate, is that a sign they’re not actually very religious? Or there’s something unusual about religion in Iran? What accounts for that?
And:
COWEN: Which group of French Muslims has assimilated most successfully and why?
KAUFMANN: Well, the outmarriage rate is almost 50 percent for French Algerian men, but even across the Franco-Algerian community, I think it’s in the 40 to 50 percent outmarriage —
COWEN: And they’re marrying ethnically white French women?
KAUFMANN: Right, or men. I think part of this stems from Algeria in its history. You have a large Berber population in Algeria, many of whom are anti the regime. They’re anti the Arab-Islamist regime. So they’re actually quite secular in many ways.
That’s part of it, but even amongst the Moroccans in France, there’s quite a high outmarriage rate of like 40 percent. So yeah, the French Muslims do seem to be melting in better than Muslims even of the same ethnicity. Compared to Moroccans in the Netherlands, for example, there’s a much higher outmarriage in France.
COWEN: And that’s the Berber factor, in your view?
KAUFMANN: I think it is the Berber factor. I don’t think there’s anything magical that the French are doing that the Dutch are not in terms of integration policy. I think too much is made of that.
And:
COWEN: What’s the most plausible scenario for Irish reunification?
KAUFMANN: I think the most plausible scenario is that Northern Ireland Protestants don’t have the same hostility to the Republic that they have traditionally had, so maybe a kind of charm offensive.
In a way, the unionist population is the one they have to win over. They are kind of foursquare against reunification. Somehow, the Irish Republic has to find a way to reassure them. That’s going to be the ticket to reunification, but it’ll never really happen just through economic integration. I think there’s got to be something symbolic that will win over the unionists.
Finally:
COWEN: So there’ll be more of a turn against immigration?
KAUFMANN: Yeah.
COWEN: In Canada.
KAUFMANN: Yes, and immigration attitudes are now very different, depending if you’re a Conservative or a Liberal voter. That didn’t use to be the case even five years ago, so there is more of a politicization of that issue now.
Recommended, and I found all of Eric’s books very interesting as well.
https://medium.com/@mercatus/tyler-cowen-eric-kaufmann-population-religion-culture-6e85bf9c8c07
*The Impeachers*
This fun book, by Brenda Wineapple, has the subtitle The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation. Excerpt:
“The long haired men and cadaverous females of New England think you are horrid,” Johnson’s secretary reported to him. “I had a conversation with an antique female last night, in the course of which she declared that she hoped you would be impeached. Said I ‘Why should he be impeached — what has he done that he should be impeached?’ ‘ Well,’ replied she, ‘he hasn’t done anything yet, but I hope to God he will.'”
You can order the book here.
*Amazing Decisions: The Illustrated Guide to Improving Business Deals and Family Meals*
That is the new and forthcoming graphic novel by Dan Ariely, illustrated by Matt R. Trower.
I am never quite sure how to evaluate graphic novels with non-fiction content, but the creators of this one do indeed deliver what you might be expecting from it. You can pre-order here.
How to pro-actively address our internet problems
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:
It is striking and sad that there is so much over-the-top criticism of social media yet so little faith in education as a possible remedy.
Public school is supposed to be good and effective, right? The internet is supposed to be destroying our world, or at least democracy and sanity, right? So why not teach people — in school — how to use the internet better?
As it stands, plenty of teachers give informal advice about how to use the internet, but there isn’t much in the way of formal institutions or curriculums. I am not saying this needs to be a full, semester-long class. But surely internet usage and understanding is worthy of a formal dedication of at least a few weeks of attention, maybe more.
Somehow America has moved very, very far away from a problem-solving mindset.
Addendum: As a side note:
Twitter search is one of the most underrated parts of the internet. If I am looking to learn more about a current event, I typically go to Twitter before Google and type in the relevant search term. The results seem more up-to-date, and I will probably be exposed to a wider range of opinions.
Tuesday assorted links
Dining out as cultural trade
By Joel Waldfogel, here is the abstract:
Perceptions of Anglo-American dominance in movie and music trade motivate restrictions on cultural trade. Yet, the market for another cultural good, food at restaurants, is roughly ten times larger than the markets for music and film. Using TripAdvisor data on restaurant cuisines, along with Euromonitor data on overall and fast food expenditure, this paper calculates implicit trade patterns in global cuisines for 52 destination countries. We obtain three major results. First, the pattern of cuisine trade resembles the “gravity” patterns in physically traded products. Second, after accounting gravity factors, the most popular cuisines are Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and American. Third, excluding fast food, the largest net exporters of their cuisines are the Italians and the Japanese, while the largest net importers are the US – with a 2017 deficit of over $130 billion – followed by Brazil, China, and the UK. With fast food included, the US deficit shrinks to $55 billion but remains the largest net importer along with China and, to a lesser extent, the UK and Brazil. Cuisine trade patterns appear to run starkly counter to the audiovisual patterns that have motivated concern about Anglo-American cultural dominance.
For the pointer I thank John Alcorn.
Monday assorted links
1. Five years of legal pot in Colorado (NYT).
3. Sperm donor kid with 32 half-siblings (NYT).
4. On the Russian economy. And Bruno on Russia.
My contrarian, eccentric take on the Democratic debates
Do read the whole thing, that is my Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt of relevance:
My biggest impression is simply how much the dominant candidates agree in terms of basic values…
I don’t regard that as entirely healthy by any means, and I suspect most Democrats, especially of the relatively intellectual stripe, just don’t notice how much this stands out. Now to move to a specific or two:
Finally, there is Marianne Williamson. When she first began to speak, I googled her, as I suspect did many other Americans. Her eccentric manner can be distracting, but I recommend instead focusing on her values. Her performance suggests that Democrats need to take a broader, deeper set of values into account: sometimes love and New Agey spiritual values, other times historical values. Her answer about making America the finest country for a child to grow up in was perhaps the best single moment of either debate, and that too stemmed from her understanding of values.
I don’t think she has much of a chance to win. But she is the external voice that the rest of the Democrats need to shake them out of their conformity. At first I thought it was crazy that she was included in the debates. In retrospect, I now see it as brilliant.
Kamala Harris and Marianne Williamson were the most memorable candidates on the stage, and they were also the two most in tune with the importance of values. The other candidates would do well to heed this lesson.
There is much more at the link, including some observations on some of the other candidates.