Category: Uncategorized
Our regulatory state is failing us, installment #1437
Officials at the Internal Revenue Service have warned that $1,200 relief checks may not reach many Americans until August or September if they haven’t already given their direct-deposit information to the government. Taxpayers in need of answers from the IRS amid a rapidly changing job market are encountering dysfunctional government websites and unresponsive call centers that have become understaffed as federal workers stay home.
Here is the full piece by Jeff Stein. And here is me in WaPo:
Cowen said it’s inexplicable why the federal government, given all the warnings and evidence from China of a spreading pandemic, did not move more rapidly.
“You know, Trump was terrible, but you can’t just pin it on him. It’s far more systemic than that. The NBA [which suspended its season on March 11] really gets so much credit. I would put the NBA in charge of fighting climate change at this point.”
The piece there is by Dan Balz.
Why I do not favor variolation for Covid-19
Robin Hanson makes the strongest case for variolation, here is one excerpt:
So the scenario is this: Hero Hotels welcome sufficiently young and healthy volunteers. Friends and family can enter together, and remain together. A cohort enters together, and is briefly isolated individually for as long as it takes to verify that they’ve been infected with a very small dose of the virus. They can then interact freely with each other, those those that show symptoms are isolated more. They can’t leave until tests show they have recovered.
In a Hero Hotel, volunteers have a room, food, internet connection, and full medical care. Depending on available funding from government or philanthropic sources, volunteers might either pay to enter, get everything for free, or be paid a bonus to enter. Health plans of volunteers may even contribute to the expense.
Do read the whole thing. By the way, here is “Hotel Corona” in Tel Aviv. Alex, by the way, seems to endorse Robin’s view. Here are my worries:
1. Qualified medical personnel are remarkably scarce right now. I do not see how it is possible to oversee the variolation of more than a small number of individuals. Furthermore, it is possible that many medical personnel would refuse to oversee the practice. The net result would be only a small impact on herd immunity. If you doubt this, just consider how bad a job we Americans have done scaling up testing and making masks.
The real question right now is what can you do that is scalable? This isn’t it.
I recall Robin writing on Twitter that variolation would economize on the number of medical personnel. I think it would take many months for that effect to kick in, or possibly many years.
2. Where will we put all of the Covid-positive, contagious individuals we create? What network will we use to monitor their behavior? We have nothing close to the test and trace systems of Singapore and South Korea.
In essence, we would have to send them home to infect their families (the Lombardy solution) or lock them up in provisional camps. Who feeds and takes care of them in those camps, and what prevents those individuals from becoming infected? What is the penalty for trying to leave such a camp? Is our current penal system, or for that matter our current military — both longstanding institutions with plenty of experienced personnel — doing an even OK job of overseeing Covid-positive individuals in their midst? I think not.
Under the coercive approach, what is the exact legal basis for this detention? That a 19-year-old signed a detention contract? Is that supposed to be binding on the will in the Rousseauian sense? Where are the governmental structures to oversee and coordinate all of this? Should we be trusting the CDC to do it? Will any private institutions do it without complete governmental cover? I don’t think so.
If all this is all voluntary, the version that Robin himself seems to favor, what percentage of individuals will simply leave in the middle of their treatment? Robin talks of “Hero Hotels,” but which actual hotels will accept the implied liability? There is no magic valve out there to relieve the pressure on actual health care systems. Note that the purely voluntary version of Robin’s plan can be done right now, but does it seem so popular? Is anyone demanding it, any company wishing it could do it for its workforce?
3. The NBA has an amazing amount of money, on-staff doctors, the ability to afford tests, and so on. And with hundreds of millions or billions of dollars at stake they still won’t restart a crowdless, TV-only season. They could indeed run a “Heroes Hotel” for players who got infected from training and play, and yet they won’t. “Stadium and locker room as Heroes Hotel” is failing the market test. Similarly, colleges and universities have a lot at stake, but they are not rushing to volunteer their dorms for this purpose, even if it might boost their tuition revenue if it went as planned (which is not my prediction, to be clear).
The proposal requires institutions to implement it, yet it doesn’t seem suited for any actual institution we have today.
4. Does small/marginal amounts of variolation do much good compared to simply a weaker lockdown enforcement for activities that involve the young disproportionately? Just tell the local police not to crack down on those soccer games out in the park (NB: I am not recommending this, rather it is the more practical version of what Robin is recommending; both in my view are bad ideas.) Robin’s idea has the “Heroes Hotel” attached, but that is a deus ex machina that simply assumes a “free space” (both a literal free space and a legally free space) is available for experimentation, which it is not.
5. Society can only absorb a small number of very blunt messages from its leaders. You can’t have the President saying “this is terrible and you all must hide” and “we’re going to expose our young” and expect any kind of coherent response. People are already confused enough from mixed messages from leaders such as presidents and governors.
6. There is still a chance that Covid-19 causes or induces permanent damage, perhaps to the heart and perhaps in the young as well. That does not militate in favor of increasing the number of exposures now, especially since partial protective measures (e.g., antivirals, antibodies) might arise before a vaccine does. This residual risk, even if fairly small, also makes the liability issues harder to solve.
7. The actual future of the idea is that as lockdown drags on, many individuals deliberately will become less careful, hoping to get their infections over with. A few may even infect themselves on purpose, one hopes with a proper understanding of dosage. One can expect this practice will be more popular with the (non-obese) young. The question is then how to take care of those people and how to treat them. That debate will devolve rather rapidly into current discussions of testing, test and trace, self-isolation, antivirals, triage, and so on. And then it will be seen that variolation is not so much of a distinct alternative as right now it seems to be.
8. The main benefit of variolation proposals is to raise issues about the rates at which people get infected, and the sequencing of who is and indeed should be more likely to get infected first. Those questions deserve much more consideration than they are receiving, and in that sense I am very happy to see variolation being brought (not much risk of it happening as an explicit proposal). That said, I don’t think Heroes Hotel, and accelerating the rate of deliberate, publicly-intended infection, is the way to a better solution.
Soon I’ll write more on what I think we should be doing, but I would not put explicit variolation above the path of the status quo.
Pickles are underrated
You are going to be running to the refrigerator for snacks anyway, so why not make the most of it? Pickles are cool, fresh, delicious, and just the right size for snacking. At the same time, they are not too delicious, and they are pretty good for you, more so than say chips or candy. They store well too. I have been ordering from Number One Sons (kimchee too, and they deliver in my area), while one very smart reader (Alex R.) recommends Oregon Brineworks, especially the spicy ones.
Soon I’ll be turning to books and movies for your lockdown.
Sunday assorted links
1. “As of Wednesday, women and men in Panama are under different quarantine schedules.”
2. Banerjee and Duflo give their take.
3. On the decline of “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” (I myself prefer “Cloudy,” among many other S&G songs.)
4. Does financial stress spur entrepreneurship?
5. “We find that firms that had more connections on the eve of the 1929 financial market crash have higher 10-year survival rates during the Great Depression. Consistent with a financing channel, we find that the results are particularly strong for small firms, private firms, cash-poor firms, and firms located in counties with high bank suspension rates during the crisis. Moreover, connections to cash-rich firms are stronger predictors of survival, overall and among financially constrained firms.” Link here.
6. Is classical music becoming culturally more central under the lockdown?
7. 1957 flu memories, that was then this is now.
8. Roger Congleton model of the pandemic, the link downloads it rather than opening it up.
9. Maybe shaky as evidence, but this paper argues that thinking about coronavirus makes people more right-wing.
10. New site/model on estimating the number of infections.
Stopping time plus hazard pay?
You’ve previously publicized the clever solution to the Corona-crisis of “stopping time.” As others have pointed out, a drawback is that we can’t stop time for everyone. In particular, we need essential services to continue.
Separately, there is a significant case for hazard pay. In principle we could let the market sort this out. But in practice, we don’t want to spend the next month getting to the equilibrium with health care workers.
The current round of government interventions entail mounting distortions.
So perhaps a more efficient solution to all of this would be:
–stop time, but
–government sends everyone checks that can be used for food and gas and directly pays for essential services (public safety, medical, utilities)The net effect is hazard pay for essential workers—they continue to draw income, but their rent/mortgage/loan/utility obligations are frozen just like everyone else’s.
As a ballpark cost: if 25% of the economy is essential, this is about $400B/month.
Expensive, but much cheaper than alternatives.
That is from an email from Philip Bond, University of Washington.
Nils Karlson on the Swedish strategy (from an email forwarded to me)
Dear [redacted],
The strategy chosen by Sweden is of course discussed, but I would still say that there is a broad consensus across the political spectrum viewing the strategy, at least so far, as being wise.
I think this can be explained by at least the following five factors:
1. The high horizontal trust and the high vertical trust in Swedish society. In Swedish culture we usually trust that our peers will behave a responsible way and respect the integrity of others. Moreover, we usually trust our authorities, not only politicians but also the public administration. As a consequence “recommendations” for how to behave in regards to Covid-19 has so far been enough.
2. The long tradition of administrative independence. Since the 17th century we have an administrative system where the central governmental agencies such as the National Health Agency is independent. It is a quiet unique system of division of power, where the implementation of laws and regulations is entrusted to the bureaucracies rather than the politicians. As a result the experts rather the politicians have the say, make recommendations and the like, even in a situation like this. And their recommendation has been to not close down the whole society, but to avoid social contacts and to totally refrain from interact with people older than 70 years.
3. An attempt to reach group or mass immunity. As I interpret these experts the attempt is to reach group or mass immunity, 60 – 70 percent, of the population without reaching the limits of intensive care and by protecting the elderly. Also the ambition is to have the staff at hospitals on the job. Hence, child care and schools for children up to high school s still open as usual, shops, restaurants are still open, even if I many of them have very few customers.
4. As strong belief across the political parties to keep the economy going. There is wide consensus in Sweden about the value of work and to have jobs available, and in particular to keep the important export sector intact. I think especially the experience of the deep crisis we had in the early 1990s is important here. But perhaps also that the current prime minister has a back ground as the chairman of the metal workers union.
5. A long tradition of peace. A last factor I believe is that Sweden has stayed out of wars for over 200 years, Hence, we really do not think that disaster can happen to us. This in contrast to for example Denmark, Norway and Finland, who in fact have chosen very different strategies.
More generally, here is Dan Klein on Sweden. Rolander and Daly (Bloomberg) wonder if Sweden will reverse its experiment.
That was then, this is now — Pushkin under lockdown
In autumn 1830, Pushkin was confined by a cholera outbreak to the village of Boldino, his father’s remote country estate in southeastern Russia. Desperate to return to Moscow to marry, he wrote to his fiancée: “There are five quarantine zones between here and Moscow, and I would have to spend fourteen days in each. Do the maths and imagine what a foul mood I am in.”
Pushkin went on complaining bitterly but, with nothing else to do, he produced an astonishing number of masterpieces — short stories, short plays, lyric and narrative poems, and the last two chapters of his verse novel Eugene Onegin — in a mere three months.
Here is the full FT piece by Robert Chandler.
Saturday assorted links
2. Free app to report how you feel and thus generate data.
3. “I, basketball hoop” — It took Steph Curry five hours to assemble the hoop he bought (WSJ). By the way, when they reboot the playoffs, can they arbitrarily insert the now healthier, re-formed Warriors and also Zion Williamson? You know it would be good for the ratings. (Putin picked Alekseenko to play in the Candidates tourney, so there is precedent.)
4. The (forthcoming) economics of academic webinars.
5. Why the new stimulus bill won’t help restaurants much.
6. Aggregated Smartphone Location Data to Assist in Response to Pandemic.
7. Keeping Covid-19 off the space station. And trying to replicate Stone Age life (weird, interesting).
8. Robert Wiblin’s “good news take.” Relatively speaking, that is.
9. That Navy boat they sent to NYC is a joke because its use is so overregulated (NYT).
10. A data-based estimate of how much hospitals are saving lives vs. Covid-19.
11. Potential problems with the new antibodies test.
12. Saku is now blogging, on tech and the future of the world (and more).
13. Why so little fantasy literature from Israel?
14. Human challenge studies to accelerate vaccine licensure.
15. The evolving drug trade in Berlin.
16. Italy also may be choosing viral status segregation (NYT). And more on “the German exception” (NYT).
Trump Stops Masks from Going to Canada
In The Defense Production Act I argued that the DPA was neither especially useful or necessary and would probably be misused. In Sicken Thy Neighbor Trade Policy I argued that exports bans were a bad idea. So, of course, Donald Trump has used the DPA to ban 3M from exporting masks to Canada. “We hit 3M hard today” tweeted Trump, as if 3M were a foreign terrorist camp.
Since January (well before the government began to act), 3M has been ramping up mask production. Their response to the DPA order is on point:
Over the last several weeks and months, 3M and its employees have gone above and beyond to manufacture as many N95 respirators as possible for the U.S. market. Yesterday, the Administration formally invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) to require 3M to prioritize orders from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for our N95 respirators.
…There are, however, significant humanitarian implications of ceasing respirator supplies to healthcare workers in Canada and Latin America, where we are a critical supplier of respirators. In addition, ceasing all export of respirators produced in the United States would likely cause other countries to retaliate and do the same, as some have already done. If that were to occur, the net number of respirators being made available to the United States would actually decrease. That is the opposite of what we and the Administration, on behalf of the American people, both seek.
I am against export bans in general but placing an ethically charged export ban on one of our largest trading partners and allies is especially shortsighted. For example, guess where one of the world’s largest producers of a key input for making surgical masks (FYI, these are different than N95s) is located? Canada.
…the Harmac mill [on Vancouver Island] is the world’s only producer of the particular grade of paper pulp used in the manufacture of surgical masks and gowns…
“K10S is the pulp that we’re producing for these medical supplies. We’re the only one that produces it,” he said. “Different pulp mills run different grades of pulp – almost kind of like recipes.”
K10S pulp is made from western red cedar that produces a soft fibre that makes it suitable for the final products made from it.
“It’s been tweaked over the years to come up with the right formula that allows it to go into the medical supplies,” Sampson said.
…the U.S. customer that produces [the surgical masks[ has doubled its order for the K10S pulp.
More generally, in the aftermath of the crisis, supply lines will tighten. I don’t favor this for the reasons given in my TED talk but it will probably happen. It’s not going to happen universally, however. China is going to be hit especially hard as they rely on the world trade system much more than does the United States. Canada and especially Mexico will gain, however, as supply lines move closer to home. In the post-Covid world, manufacturing will rationalize on North American grounds so we may as well start planning for that future by treating Canada and Mexico like a part of the US family.
World 2.0 — “There are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen”
This is from a very able and perceptive correspondent:
| World 1.0 | World 2.0 |
| 110 successive months of job growth | 10 million jobless claims in 2 weeks |
| 10 year bull market across sectors | Winners and losers with extreme outcome inequality |
| Full employment | 30% unemployment |
| Base rate thinking | First principles thinking |
| Physical | Digital |
| Office by default | Remote by default |
| Office for work | Office for connection, community, ecosystem, makerspaces |
| Suit, tie, wristwatch, business card | Good lighting, microphone, webcam, home office background |
| Commute + traffic jams | Home + family |
| Last mile | Only mile |
| Restaurants | Groceries + delivery |
| $4 toast | Sourdough starter |
| Walkscore | Speedtest |
| Cities | Internet |
| $100k for college | Not paying $100k for a webinar |
| City | Countryside |
| YIMBY | NIMBY |
| Internal issues | Exogenous shock |
| Lots of little problems | One big problem |
| Stupid bullshit | Actual issues |
| Too much technology | Too little technology |
| Complacency | Action |
| Years | Days |
| Policy | Capacity |
| Ideology | Competence |
| Assume some government competence | Assume zero government competence |
| Institutions | Ghost ships |
| WHO | Who? |
| Trusted institutions | Trusted people |
| Globalization | Decoupling |
| Just-in-time | Stockpile |
| Tail risk is kooky | Tail risk is mainstream |
| NATO | Asia |
| Boomers most powerful | Boomers most vulnerable |
| Productivity growth collapse | Economic collapse |
| Social services Democrat | UBI Communist |
| Propaganda | Propaganda |
| Deficit hawks | MMT |
| Corporate debt | Government debt |
| Techlash | Tech a pillar of civilization and lifeline to billions |
| Break up Amazon | Don’t break up Amazon!!! |
| Avoiding social issues | Avoiding layoffs |
| Sports | Esports |
| Phone is a cigarette | Phone is oxygen |
| Resource depletion | $20 oil, $0.75 watt solar, <$100/kwh batteries |
| Stasis | Change |
| Low volatility | High volatility |
| Design | Logistics |
| Extrovert | Introvert |
| Open | Closed |
| 20th century | 21st century |
Friday assorted links
1. Scott Alexander reviews Toby Ord’s The Precipice, about existential risk.
3. A critique of the Paycheck Protection Program — it might help already stable restaurants the most. See also this tweet storm.
4. Should we pivot to a service trade agenda?
5. Full paper assessing health care capacity in India.
6. Claims about Covid and the future economics of cultural institutions.
7. I could link to Matt Levine every day, but do read this one on liquidity transformation.
8. How is the cloud holding up? A good post.
9. Immunity segregation comes to Great Britain.
10. Robin Hanson on the variance in R0 and how hard it is to halt the spread of the virus.
11. New program for on-line “Night Owls” philosophy by Agnes Callard.
12. The true story of the toilet paper shortage: it’s not about hoarding, rather a shift of demand away from the commercial sector into the household sector (you are doing more “business” at home these days).
13. “U.S. ALCOHOL SALES INCREASE 55 PERCENT IN ONE WEEK AMID CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC.”
14. Fan, Jamison, and Larry Summers 2016 paper on the economics of a pandemic. I wrote at the end of the blog post: “In other words, in expected value terms an influenza pandemic is a big problem indeed. But since, unlike global warming, it does not fit conveniently into the usual social status battles which define our politics, it receives far less attention.”
15. Buying masks from China just got tougher.
16. How to produce greater capacity flexibility for hospitals.
Thursday assorted links
1. Haircuts for airlines. And time to prepare for voting by mail.
2. David Piling (FT) wonders whether India and Africa should do full lockdown.
3. Redundancy, not reshoring, is the key to supply chain security.
4. “Our classification implies that 34 percent of U.S. jobs can plausibly be performed at home.”
5. Why was it so hard to raise the coronavirus alarm? (the yappers are one reason, btw — are you one of them?)
6. Under these calculations, an average coronavirus death in China means 11 years lost, 16 years lost in the United States.
8. Are the new testing kits going to be sent to the American South, which has fewer measured cases? Where should they be sent? A good piece.
9. Economist Eric Budish on viewing R less than 1 as a fundamental economic constraint.
10. Overnight, Magnus Carlsen just revolutionized the future organization of chess play. This will become the new normal.
11. Social distancing tips from a hermit. “Keep track of something” is a good one.
12. How are the Amish adapting to shuttered schools?
13. Marginal Revolution University landing page for economic resources on coronavirus.
New issue of Econ Journal Watch
Lots of economics, remember what that is? Here is the link, check out the contents. Topics include bracero labor, lone shooters, film incentive programs, FDA liberalization, should Ed Leamer get a Nobel Prize, reviewing money and banking textbooks, and much more.
Wednesday assorted links
2. Timeline of the federal government response to coronavirus.
3. Anti-price gouging laws mean masks leave America, I wonder if Alex is preparing a whole post on this link?
4. Holman Jenkins of the WSJ goes Straussian on the Straussian bloggers.
5. The culture that is Bengali priorities: sweet shops will stay open. And a short history of coronavirus in Japan. And Ezra Klein interviews Evan Osnos on coronavirus and U.S.-China relations.
6. Self-isolation proves a boon to rainfall project.
7. Why there are lags in scaling up California testing. A very good (and depressing) piece.
8. Mossad officer describes their battle for ventilators. And is the U.S. taking ventilators from Paraguay? (speculative)
9. The singing stops in southern Italy as tensions rise.
10. “Our infectiousness model suggests that the total contribution to R0 from pre-symptomatics is 0.9 (0.2 – 1.1), almost enough to sustain an epidemic on its own. For SARS, the corresponding estimate was almost zero (9), immediately telling us that different containment strategies will be needed for COVID-19.” Link here.
11. Hospitals that won’t let their doctors wear masks (NYT).
12. Economist Peter Sinclair has died from Covid-19.
13. Should very young countries such as Nigeria opt for suppression?
15. Our system of scientific funding is broken for rapid science (recommended).
What should you read during the crisis?
Agnes Callard writes (NYT):
Like many others, I have been finding my taste in books and movies turning in an apocalyptic direction. I also find myself much less able than usual to hold these made-up stories at a safe distance from myself…
If I have something to feel guilty about, I want to feel guilty. If something frightening is happening, I want to be afraid of it. Which is to say: When things are bad, I want to suffer and would choose to suffer and even seek out suffering.
Having just rewatched Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, and then The Virgin Spring, I agree at the margin, but not altogether. I would raise the following points:
1. In times of turmoil, we may have a stronger craving for art that “feels real.” But such art is in fact often especially phony. The “special effects” have to be all the better, so to speak. None of what we are consuming is a realistic experience in the first place, so perhaps we are seeking out greater artifice and fooling ourselves about its realism even more than usual.
2. Should we be watching videos of bad events in hospitals? (originally Chinese hospitals, now NYC). Some people are indeed doing this, but as a substitute for Jane Austen? How about videos of people dying from Covid-19? Videos of other respiratory diseases as the next best fill-in?
3. What about the art vs. non-art margin as a larger choice? Don’t many people with terminal diseases (more terminal than usual that is) want to go for long walks in nature? Doesn’t fiction exercise much less of a hold on elderly minds and matter most for teenagers and people in their early 20s and perhaps also women in their 40s-50s? Perhaps the implication is, during a pandemic, to move away from art and literary fiction altogether.
4. The Guardian reports that sales of long, classic novels have gone up. What do those novels have in common? Are they a kind of comfort food? Do we value their length? That they are high status? That we read them already in earlier and perhaps happier periods of life? Are they long projects we can absorb ourselves in? Those seem like illusion-laden motives for reading them, “not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
5. Perhaps we like to read especially pessimistic dystopian novels as a kind of talisman. “Tell me the worst, let’s get dealing with the fear over with, then I will feel protected that reality will not disappoint my expectations because things won’t in fact be that bad.” That is again another kind of illusion. The aforementioned Guardian link suggests that sales of dystopian novels are up in general, even if they are not about plagues and pandemics.
6. Yiyun Li said: ““I have found that the more uncertain life is, the more solidity and structure Tolstoy’s novels provide. In these times, one does want to read an author who is so deeply moved by the world that he could appear unmoved in his writing,” she wrote.”
7. If people are bored, should they then wish to experience further boredom through their choice of fiction? Or would a diversion from boredom be acceptable and indeed preferred?
Somehow I think in terms of a portfolio approach to aesthetics. In harder times you need more tugs, pulls, distractions, and offsets than usual, but they should not all run in the same direction, or they will become predictable and cease to move you.
So when it comes to fiction, take some chances in your reading and toss in some of the older classics and horror and dystopia as well, and lots of fun and warmth and those walks in nature too.
So yes make a (marginal) turn in the apocalyptic direction, but in part it is to shore up your own sappiness.