Travel bleg for Avila, Salamanca, Segovia, and other smaller places nearby
Your suggestions are most welcome, thank you!
My days collecting Mexican art, part I
In an earlier post I detailed my history of how I got started collecting Haitian art. There is more to that story, but for now the point is that buying Haitian art led me into buying Mexican art as well.
I was visiting the New Jersey home of famed author and art dealer Selden Rodman, who had lived part-time in Jacmel, Haiti for decades and by then was approaching his 90s. This was in the late 1990s. On his wall I saw some Mexican paintings, from a small Mexican village called San Agustin Oapan (good short video), in the state of Guerrero.
The style of the art was naive, broadly similar to the major trends in Haitian art at the time. Perspective was vertically stacked, as you might find in medieval art. Sun and stars were prominent in the pictures, often portrayed together. You might see angels, a tableau of the village, a procession, or village animals or a local fiesta. Colors would be bright, or black and white.
I tried to buy the paintings, but Selden refused to sell them. I kept on trying, but to no avail. Finally he cackled and spit out “Well, I guess you’ll just have to go there and get some!” As if to get rid of me, which he did.
Not one to decline such a challenge, I began to investigate the matter. I could not find the name of the small village on any maps, including the detailed Mexico maps held in the GMU library. Finally, I called up Selden and he gave me some vague sense where it was. I flew to Mexico City and hired a taxi. We drove several hours to the general area, and then started asking people on the side of the road where the village was. We kept on being redirected, and for a while it seemed fruitless. But eventually someone told us to take an unmarked turn from the road, not too far from Iguala. And so we climbed the hill on an unpaved road, with the 25 km distance taking almost four hours.
The eventual taxi fare was $600, a fair amount in the Mexico of the late 1990s.
Along the way were fantastic cactuses and canyons, another small village, and the occasional person with a burro. It was hot. I was on my way.
When I reached the village, I was surprised by the number of pigs, by the number of drunken men lying in the street, and by the living standards, even though I had been going to Haiti. I later learned that a family of seven might earn about $1500-2000 a year, and if seven children were born perhaps only four or five would survive to adulthood. I thought the place at least would have a shop or a restaurant, but no.
Due to its remoteness, Oapan was still Nahuatl-speaking (the older people did not speak Spanish at all) and had preserved an especially large number of pre-Columbian customs and religious practices. Oapan, by the way, is a Nahuatl word for “where the green maize stalk abounds.” To this day, I consider Nahuatl to be the most beautiful and expressive language I have heard.
I started asking around for Juan Camilo Ayala, the name of the painter whose work I so admired. It turns out there were two people with that name in the village, but eventually I found his home and knocked on the door. I was not expecting to find a corn farmer and a bunch of domestic animals behind the door, but indeed I did. He later related he was shocked that I came to visit, but he responded calmly in a non-plussed manner. “Not many people come here,” he noted in his own broken Spanish.
I showed him a photo of the painting I liked in Rodman’s house, but he did not remember it. Nonetheless he pledged to paint, if not a copy, something in the same general style and inspiration. I asked for a large painting, and was surprised when he cited a price of only $100.
Like an idiot, I handed over an AmEx traveler’s check, and Juan Camilo thought it was dollars. (Later on we straightened that mess out, and I started using Western Union.)
I gave them my address, which they wrote in the rafters of the home, above the screeching roosters, and I headed back down to Mexico City with the cab. Several months later a beautiful picture arrived at the house, in perfectly good condition. It hangs on the stairwell to this very day.
I was hooked, and soon this story was to continue…
Mexico has been electing its federal judges
As a result, Mexicans face the paradox that giving more power to the public may undercut their democracy.
Predictions for Morena’s success on Sunday are driven by the unusual nature of the vote.
Just roughly 20 percent of voters are expected to cast ballots, the electoral authorities say, in part because voters hardly know the candidates. Polling shows Morena is overwhelmingly popular and the opposition is frail. The government controlled the selection process for federal candidates, who are elected by voters nationally, and 19 of 32 states will also elect local candidates.
Candidates are largely barred from traditional campaigning, a policy to try to level the playing field among candidates with different campaign funds. And political operatives have been accused of handing out cheat sheets, most of which recommend candidates with known ties to Morena.
Here is more from the NYT. Garett Jones, telephone!
Sunday assorted links
1. The confluence of Britain’s problems, written by a sitting MP. In response, o3 tries to summarize market trends for real estate.
2. Speculative but very interesting thread on Russian opinions on various drone developments.
3. “By revenue, UPenn is bigger than BNY Mellon; Columbia is as big as Coinbase.”
5. Progress in deciphering Vesuvius scrolls (The Economist).
6. June is Bustin’ Out All Over (song).
Stanley Fischer, RIP
Here is Olivier Blanchard on Fischer. And from Haaretz. Here is the FT. And from the NYT.
*The Party’s Interests Come First*
By Joseph Torigian, this could easily end up as one of the twenty or thirty best biographies of all time. It is about Chinese history, and is a biography’s of Xi’s father. The subtitle is The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping. The dense (and fascinating) exposition is difficult to excerpt, but here is one bit of overview:
An inescapable irony sits at the heart of The Party’s Interests Come First. It is a book about party history, and the life of its subject, Xi Zhongxun, is itself a story about the politically explosive nature of competing versions of the past. The men and women who gave their lives to the party were enormously sensitive to how this all-encompassing political organization would characterize their contributions. Such a sentiment was powerful not only because revolutionary legacies were reflected through hierarchy and authority within the party but also because their lives as chronicled in party lore had a fundamental significance for their own sense of self-worth.
If there is an overriding lesson to this book, it is that China has not yet left its own brutal past behind.
Hat tip and nudge here goes to Jordan Schneider.
Emergent Ventures winners, 43rd cohort
Jason Cameron, North York, Ontario, high school and incoming RBC, AI privacy.
Opemipo Odunta, Winnipeg, hydroponics.
Benjamin Arya, Harvard, California, Australia, longevity.
Aida Baradari, Harvard, audio privacy.
John Denny, Galway, to visit SF and NYC.
Zelda Poem, SF/France, artistic and cultural patronage programs for San Francisco.
Lauren Pearson, Toronto, genomic origins of focal epilepsy.
Charles Yang, WDC, digitize the Hyman Rickover archives.
Bethlehem Hadgu, NYC/Eritrea, “to make classical music beautiful again,” violist, her institution is Exalt, DC chamber music concert June 4.
Noah Rowlands, Cheltenham, general career support in AI and travel support.
Lily Ottinger, Taipei, to study the game theory of South Pacific international relations.
Jonathan Nankivell, London, to improve clinical trials in the UK.
Lucas Cremers and the David Network, NYC, to support the study, discussion, and use of AI in the conservative student community.
Robert Scowen, London, AI and general career support.
Dylan Paoletti, Bel Air, Maryland, high school, cancer cell suicide.
Lydia Laurenson, San Francisco, writing, Substack.
Lucas Kuziv, London, educate Ukrainian youth in AI and programming.
Redux of my advice to DOGE
From a November Bloomberg column:
Many Republicans are very excited about DOGE. But its governance structure is undefined and untested. It does not have a natural home or an enduring constituency. It cannot engage in much favor-trading. Its ability to keep Trump’s attention and loyalty may prove limited. And it’s not clear that deregulation is a priority for many voters.
Worth a ponder, at the time I advised DOGE to prioritize on a few key areas for maximum impact.
Saturday assorted links
1. Swiss landslide before and after.
3. Danny Chau on the Indiana Pacers. And on Inside the NBA (NYT).
4. Mormon tanktop undergarment geographically segregated somewhat thwarted markets in everything (NYT).
5. Caldwell on Guilluy on France.
6. Will a tax on AI help labor? And should the tax code treat investments in human labor more fairly?
Scott Alexander replies
Here is more Scott Alexander on aid and overhead.
First, on overhead Scott is still promulgating various confusions, for instance making the simple mistake of mixing up “Mercatus” and “Emergent Ventures.”
When it comes to overhead (rather than aid), the substantive point in question is whether the affiliated NGOs, and also the various government aid bureaucracies, have significant excess overhead, and there is a hefty body of theory and evidence from public choice economics suggesting that is the case. Scott seems unwilling to just flat out acknowledge this, instead insisting there is no magic path to much lower overhead. Cutting overhead expenditures is that magic path, and plenty of institutions both private and public have done it, especially when forced to.
Scott also holds the unusual view that overhead as measured on a 990 is a relevant metric. Typically not. A lot of the actual noxious overhead shows up as program expenditures. A large number of wasteful, poorly run non-profits can get their 990 numbers down to normal levels without engaging in outright lying.
On aid more generally, Scott would avoid a lot of trouble and misunderstandings (much of which still persist) and unproductive anger if he simply would use the MR search function to read my previous posts (and other writings) on a topic. He does not cite or link to those works. (Especially after 22 years of posts, I do not feel the need to each time repeat all views and clarifications when it is all so accessible.) The result is that he has created a Jerry Mahoney-style “dialog,” pretended I am in it, and then expressed a mix of anger and bewilderment at my supposed views and supposed lack of clarifications.
It is not that I expect anybody, much less someone as busy as Scott, to read everything I have written on a topic. But if you have not, it is better to write on “aid and overhead,” rather than “Tyler Cowen on aid and overhead.” (Imagine if instead you were writing on “Ricardo and rent.”) That is typically the more constructive and more relevant approach anyway. Instead, Scott has thrown the biggest fit I have ever seen him throw over a single sentence from me that was not clear enough (and I readily admit it was not clear enough in stand alone form), but made clear elsewhere.
On rhetoric, call me old-fashioned, but if you publicly refer to a class of people as scum, and express a hope that they burn in hell, you should retract those words and also think through why you might have been led to that point. I am not persuaded by Scott’s sundry observations to the contrary, such as noting that the president is (sort of) protected by the Secret Service. Scott cites my use of the term “supervillains,” but in fact (as Cremiaux repeatedly retweets) that was part of a desire not to cancel people with differing views, not a desire that they burn in hell. It was expressly stated as a plea for tolerance.
Scott also writes:
This has been a general pattern in debates with Tyler. I will criticize some very specific point he made, and he’ll challenge whether I am important enough to have standing to debate him. “Oh, have you been to 570 different countries? Have you eaten a burrito prepared by an Ethiopian camel farmer with under-recognized talent? Have you read 800 million books, then made a post about each one consisting of a randomly selected paragraph followed by the words ‘this really makes you think, for those of you paying attention’?”
Scott does not link to my post here, which was extremely polite and respectful. Nor does he quote that post (or any other), as it would not support his assertions. Instead he makes up words for me and puts them in quotation marks. I have never criticized Scott for not reading enough books, to cite another misrepresentation. (I do not pretend to know, but I am under the impression he reads a lot of books!?). I have linked to him and praised his analysis repeatedly. Nor have I challenged whether he is “important enough” to “debate.” I am well known for having a large number of interchanges with people who are extremely uncredentialed. Furthermore, earlier I invited Scott to do a CWT with me, for me a mark of real interest and respect. He declined.
At least in this last passage it is evident that the real problem is, at least for the moment, in Scott’s head.
Progress, Classical Liberalism, and the New Right
That is my podcast with Marian Tupy of the Cato Instiute. Here is the podcast version, below is the YouTube link:
*Crisis Cycle*
That is the new book by John H. Cochrane, Luis Garicano, and Klaus Masuch, and the subtitle is Challenges, Evolution, and Future of the Euro. Excerpt:
Our main theme is not actions taken in crises, but that member states and EU institutions did not clean up between crises. They did not reestablish a sustainable framework for future monetary-fiscal coordination that would unburden the ECB. They did not mitigate unwelcome incentives to ameliorate the next crisis and make further interventions less likely. These too are understandable failings, as political momentum for difficult reforms is always lacking. But the consequent problems have now built up, such that the ad hoc system that emerged from crisis internventions is in danger of a serious and chaotic failure. Now is the time to get over inertia. The EU and its member states should start a serious process of institutional reform. We aim to contribute to such a discussion.
Overall this book made me more pessimistic about the future of the euro. The authors propose a joint fiscal authority, but that to me makes the problems worse rather than better? After all, these countries still all have separate electorates, and want to have a real say over their own budgets. We will see. You will recall both Milton Friedman and Paul Krugman, at the time, doubted the stability of the euro.
Friday assorted links
1. Steve Davis is leaving DOGE (NYT).
2. 18 minute podcast with 3takeaways.
3. TV show about SBF and Caroline?
4. Where the tariff case stands.
5. Finding talent in Ghana in the age of AI.
7. Jordan Peterson vs. 20 Atheists, long video, not saying you should watch it.
How America Built the World’s Most Successful Market for Generic Drugs
The United States has some of the lowest prices in the world for most drugs. The U.S. generic drug market is competitive and robust—but its success is not accidental. It is the result of a series of deliberate, well-designed policy interventions.
The 1984 Hatch-Waxman Act allowed generic drug manufacturers to bypass costly safety and efficacy trials for previously approved drugs by demonstrating bioequivalence through Abbreviated New Drug Applications (ANDAs). To spur competition, the Act also granted 180 days of market exclusivity to the first generic filer who challenges a brand-name patent—a mini-monopoly as a reward for initiative. Balancing static efficiency (P=MC) with dynamic efficiency (incentives for innovation) is hard, but Hatch-Waxman mostly got it right.
The Generic Drug User Fee Amendments (GDUFA), modeled after the very successful Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), require generic manufacturers to pay user fees to the FDA. These funds allow the Office of Generic Drugs to hire more staff and meet stricter approval timelines. GDUFA dramatically reduced ANDA backlogs and accelerated market entry, especially under GDUFA II.
Generic Substitution Laws allow—or in some states even require—pharmacists to substitute a generic for a more expensive brand-name drug unless the prescriber writes “dispense as written.” This gives generics immediate access to the full market without the need for marketing to doctors or patients. The generic drug market has thus become focused on price as the means of competition. Pharmacists also often earn a bit more on generics due to reimbursement spreads, giving them a financial incentive to substitute. And while pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) are often criticized, they have also been effective promoters of generics by steering patients toward lower-cost options via formulary design.
The FDA’s Division of Policy Development in the Office of Generic Drug Policy also played an underappreciated but vital role in producing recipes for generics, which has opened up the market to smaller firms. Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb writes:
The division’s core responsibility was drafting, reviewing, and approving the policy guidance documents that defined precisely how generic versions of branded medications could be developed and brought to market. For many generic drugmakers, these documents were indispensable — step-by-step recipes detailing how to replicate complex drugs. Without these clear instructions, numerous generic firms could find themselves locked out of the market entirely…the dramatic increase in the quantity and sophistication of guidance documents issued by the FDA during Trump’s first term was instrumental to his administration’s record-setting approvals of generic drugs and the substantial cost savings enjoyed by patients.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration DOGEd this division—an unforced error that should be reversed. The generic drug market is one of the great policy successes in American healthcare. It works. And it should be strengthened, not undermined.
Noah on health care costs
…in 2024, Americans didn’t spend a greater percent of their income on health care than they did in 2009. And in fact, the increase since 1990 has been pretty modest — if you look only at the service portion of health care (the blue line), it’s gone up by about 1.5% of GDP over 34 years.
OK, so, this is total spending, not the price of health care. Is America spending less because we’re getting less care? No. In cost-adjusted terms, Americans have been getting more and more health care services over the years…
So overall, health care is probably now more affordable for the average American than it was in 2000 — in fact, it’s now about as affordable as it was in the early 1980s. That doesn’t mean that every type of care is more affordable, of course. But the narrative that U.S. health costs just go up and up relentlessly hasn’t reflected reality for a while now.
Here is the full post, which covers education as well.