Compensating Kidney Donors
LA Times: Never in the field of public legislation has so much been lost by so many to one law, as Churchill might’ve put it. The National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 created the framework for the organ transplant system in the United States, and nearly 40 years later, the law is responsible for millions of needless deaths and trillions of wasted dollars. The Transplant Act requires modification, immediately.
We’ve got skin in this game. We both donated our kidneys to strangers. Ned donated to someone who turned out to be a young mother of two children in 2015, which started a chain that helped an additional two recipients. And Matt donated at Walter Reed in 2021, after which his kidney went to a Seattleite, kicking off a chain that helped seven more recipients, the last of whom was back at Walter Reed.
…The National Organ Transplant Act prohibits compensating kidney donors, which is strange in that in American society, it’s common to pay for plasma, bone marrow, hair, sperm, eggs and even surrogate pregnancies. We already pay to create and sustain life.
…Compensation models have been proposed in the past. A National Institutes of Health study listed some of the possibilities, including direct payment, indirect payment, “in kind” payment (free health insurance, for example) or expanded reimbursements. After much review, we come down strongly in support of indirect payment, specifically, a $100,000 refundable federal tax credit. The tax credit would be uniformly applied over a period of 10 years, in the amount of $10,000 a year for those who qualify and then become donors.
This kind of compensation is certainly not a quick-cash scheme that would incentivize an act of desperation. Nor does it commoditize human body parts. Going forward, kidney donation might become partly opportunistic rather than mostly altruistic, as it is now. But would it be exploitative? Not at all.
Long-time readers will know that I have argued for the greater use of incentives in organ donation both for live donors and cadaveric donors. Pecuniary compensation is one possibility but so are no-give, no-take laws that give those who previously signed their organ donor cards priority should they one day need an organ.
Sebastian Bensusan on Argentina dollarization
Great to see an article on dollarization! Two things that were not mentioned”
Argentina is already substantially dollarized. Absolutely nobody saves in pesos, so the amount of USD needed to “dollarize” the economy is much smaller than you’d think.
The difference between convertibilidad (90s) and dollarization is less stark than what you’d expect. If it happens:
1. Peronists will win elections again and will likely try to undo it (Zimbabwe undid it).
2. If dollars are in bank accounts, the government can simply steal everybody’s dollars. This is effectively what happened during el corralito. People had USD denominated accounts and those were forcibly converted to peso, and then devalued from 1:1 to 3:1, effectively evaporating 2/3s of everybody’s savings.3. So, the mechanics of a future dollarization matter greatly in making this following sentence from your article true:
But that was a mere promise, and the promise of convertibility was broken rather spectacularly
Because bank deposits are always promises and USD-denominated Argentinian bank accounts would also be promises that would eventually be broken.
Here are some ways to dollarize that would be future-proof:
1. Allow Argentinians to own and transact locally usinn American or foreign bank accounts that are outside of the government’s jurisdiction. This is effectively what parts of Venezuela’s economy have been doing via Zelle.
2. Crypto
Are these two practical? TBD!
Emergent Ventures winners, 28th cohort
Anup Malani and Michael Sonnenschein, Chicago and Los Angeles respectively, repeat winners, now collaborating on a new project of interest.
Jesse Lee, Calgary, to lower the costs on developing safe and effective sugar substitutes.
Russel Ismael, Montreal, just finished as an undergraduate, to develop a new mucoadhesive to improve drug delivery outcomes.
Calix Huang, USC, 18 years old, general career development, AI and start-ups,
Aiden Bai, NYC, 18, “to work more on Million.js, an open source React alternative,” and general career development. Twitter here.
Shrey Jain, Toronto, AI and cryptography and privacy.
Jonathan Xu, Toronto, currently Singapore, general career support, also with an interest in AI, fMRI, and mind-reading.
Viha Kedia, Dubai/ starting at U. Penn., writing, general career development.
Krishiv Thakuria, entering sophomore in high school, Ontario, Ed tech and general career development.
Alishba Imran, UC Berkeley/Ontario, to study machine learning and robotics and materials, general career development, and for computing time and a home lab.
Jonathan Dockrell, Dublin, to finance a trip to Próspera to meet with prospective venture capitalists for an air rights project.
Nasiyah Isra-Ul, Chesterfield, VA, to write about, promote, and create a documentary about home schooling.
Sarhaan Gulati, Vancouver, to develop drones for Mars.
And the new Ukrainian cohort:
Viktoriia Shcherba, Kyiv, now entering Harris School, University of Chicago, to study economic and political reconstruction.
Dmytro Semykras, Graz, Austria, to develop his career as a pianist. Here is one recent performance.
Please do note there is some “rationing of cohorts,” so some recent winners are not listed but next time will be. And those working on talent issues will (in due time) end up in their own cohort.
Thinking about God increases acceptance of artificial intelligence in decision-making
Artificial intelligence (AI), once merely the draw and drama of science fiction, is now a feature of everyday life. AI is commonly used to generate recommendations, from the movies we watch to the medical procedures we endure. As AI recommendations become increasingly prevalent and the world grapples with its benefits and costs, it is important to understand the factors that shape whether people accept or reject AI-based recommendations. We focus on one factor that is prevalent across nearly every society: religion. Research has not yet systematically examined how religion affects decision-making in light of emerging AI technologies, which inherently raise questions on the role and value of humans. In introducing this discussion, we find that God salience heightens AI acceptance.
That is from a recent paper by Mustafa Karatas and Keisha M. Cutright. Speculative yes, but worth speculating about. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Argentina should dollarize
Here is my Bloomberg column on that topic, here is the trickiest point:
Another concern, more significant, is that dollarization would be a huge upfront cost to the government of Argentina: Someone would have to actually come up with all the dollars to serve as currency. Keep in mind, however, that the economy of Argentina would also be acquiring a valuable asset — namely, dollars. The net cost should be zero; realistically, acquiring the dollars should prove a net positive. Argentina’s government needs to invest in the future of its citizens, and introducing a stable currency is one of the best ways to do so.
Dollarization might involve major fiscal adjustments, if only to accumulate the dollars to make it work, and that could bring chaos to Argentina politics. That is a real risk, but it has to be weighed against the political risks of continuing hyperinflation. At least dollarization offers some chance of eventual success.
I would add that the government of Argentina cannot and should not forsake all public sector investment. Think of dollarization as a relatively high return form of such investment. As for whether using the euro would be better, I think the ties of the Argentina elites to Miami banking are sufficiently strong that the dollar is clearly more focal, even though the EU trades with Argentina more than the U.S. does.
Friday assorted links
2. Sweden is near the top for wealth inequality (ho hum).
3. School vouchers in Arizona and elsewhere (NYT).
4. State opens commercial fishing on the Kuskokwim River to one person.
5. Prenda and the evolution of home schooling.
6. What do the vexillologists have to say? (NYT) Most of all, about Utah.
7. Una galleta pequeña de Argentina (with subtitles).
8. More on India and female labor force participation (WSJ).
Speeding up Science
Writing in the Washington Post, Heidi Williams has good suggestions for making the NIH and NSF move faster. Namely:
- Give the NIH the option to bypass peer review, as can the NSF.
- Give the NSF the option to “desk-reject”, as can the NIH.
- Give the NIH and the NSF more authority to fund scientists and not just projects.
Straightforward, actionable reforms that have a good chance of being implemented.
Read the whole thing for justification, details and background.
When does the quality premium disappear?
I have been pondering the world of classical music once again, mostly because of two new releases. One is the late Beethoven string quartets by the Calidore Quartet, and the other is a six-CD Chopin box by Jean-Marc Luisada.
The most striking feature of these recordings is that they are as good as any in the case of the Beethoven, and top tier for the Chopin (yes I have heard Rubinstein, Horowitz playing Chopin live, Cortot, Dinu Lipatti, Bolet playing Chopin live, I know how to spell Krystian Zimerman, as for the Beethoven the Busch Quartet, Quartett Italiano, Alban Berg, Gewandhaus, Danish Quartet, and much more!)
A second striking feature of the status quo is that hardly anyone seems to have heard of these performers. Luisada has a Wikipedia article, but there don’t seem to be full-length profiles of him. The Calidore Quartet has a slightly longer Wikipedia article, but again there is no serious coverage of him on line. Hardly anyone has heard of them, and their releases will at best sell a few hundred copies.
I don’t think any people deny the quality of these offerings, though they may disagree on the exact nature of the superlatives to offer. The point is that few people care. Furthermore, few people care that few people care.
Still, I wonder…can there be other markets where there is so much quality available that the quality premium goes away? Note that in these equilibria, most customers are not listening to the very highest quality products, rather they may choose the products associated with greater celebrity (which typically are still very good though not the very best).
If all goes well in the world (ha), is this where ideas markets end up?
How about markets for Sichuan food? How many people really care about the very very best ma la?
Clearly the 18th century was very different. Adam Smith and David Hume were much, much better than virtually all of their contemporaries, and they reaped a high quality premium, at least in terms of fame, influence, and longevity.
What exactly makes the quality premium go away or dwindle?
Do we prefer a world with a lower quality premium, yet is such a world also bound to disappoint us morally?
Diogo Costa on Brazil
From my email, via Gonzalo Schwartz:
The country ranks third globally in consuming information via digital platforms, a landscape that cultivates distrust in public institutions and ignites social unrest. This has fostered a rise in right-wing populism, including the election of former president Jair Bolsonaro, intensifying what Martin Gurri describes as a ‘crisis of authority.’ Efforts to counter this crisis, however, further destabilize Brazil’s democracy.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes exemplifies this turmoil with his controversial measures, including arbitrary digital content removal, ousting elected officials, and implementing unprecedented surveillance. Moraes and his peers have been criticized for investigating entrepreneurs and freezing assets over alleged anti-democratic private messages, probing executives from Google and Telegram for supposed disinformation campaigns, revoking passports of foreign-based journalists, and censoring a film about then-president Jair Bolsonaro.
The government’s endorsement of these measures amplifies the crisis. It has established a “National Attorney’s Office for the Defense of Democracy” to combat disinformation, while introducing a contested “fact-checking” platform. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office recently requested user data from followers of former President Jair Bolsonaro across major social media platforms to aid their investigation into anti-democratic activities.
Two key anti-corruption figures, Senator Sergio Moro, an ex-judge, and Representative Deltan Dallagnol, a former prosecutor, are under increased political assault. Accused of colluding in past investigations, they now face political retribution. Dallagnol has already been ousted from Congress by Brazil’s electoral court, and many speculate that Moro will follow suit. Their plight was summed up by President Lula’s statement, “I will only feel well when I f*ck with Moro”.
These high-profile cases are emblematic of a broader collapse of Brazil’s anti-corruption efforts. Initiatives like Operation Car Wash, which reclaimed R$3.28 billion out of R$6.2 billion in misappropriated funds, are now being undermined by political backlash. This underscores the urgent need for robust institutions that can effectively combat corruption without succumbing to political pressure.
Brazil’s circumstances resonate regionally due to its leadership role. As Ian Bremmer recently stated, commenting on the Supreme Court making former president Jair Bolsonaro ineligible for the next eight years, “Brazil [is] setting the standard for U.S. democracy”. This political meddling could influence other countries, potentially eroding the rule of law in other democracies.
Strengthening Brazil’s commitment to the rule of law transcends national borders — it’s a regional imperative. The advantages span from curbing corruption to advancing large infrastructure projects unimpeded by interference, as well as bolstering economic relationships given Brazil’s significant role in regional trade.
Thursday assorted links
1. McCartney and Starr will re-record “Let It Be,” along with Peter Frampton, Mick Fleetwood, and Dolly Parton. Can we have Carnival of Light now, please?
2. Ecuador is deteriorating (NYT).
4. Massive influx of Chinese into ride-hailing jobs.
5. The story of Ozempic (NYT).
6. A directory of Date Me docs. What are the meta-lessons from these?
Don’t Doubt: Saint Thomas in India
Christianity in India has roots at least as old as in Italy. Millions of Christians in Kerala today believe that their tradition traces back directly to Thomas, one of the 12 apostles of Jesus, who traveled to India in the first century AD. According to the Acts of Thomas, the apostles divided the world and drew lots to decide their respective regions for spreading the gospel. Thomas, drew India but, ever the doubter, he demurred. “It’s too hot and the food isn’t kosher”, he said, more or less. Jesus appeared to Thomas, however, and bade him “go to India!” Amazingly, he still demurred–what a doubter!–but by a minor miracle just as this was happening an Indian merchant arrived in Jerusalem calling for a master architect and builder to return with him to India. Finally, with this sign, Thomas’s doubts were allayed and his India adventures began.
For a long time, The Acts of Thomas were considered to be more of an unreliable fantasy novel than a historical account and of course the Acts does contain fantastical stories. Nevertheless, the Acts of Thomas have gained credence over time as certain names and places mentioned in the Acts and once thought to be purely imaginary, turned out to be accurate historical references. As William Dalrymple writes in an excellent piece:
…a series of remarkable discoveries have gone a long way to prove that the story contained in the Acts seems to be built on surprisingly solid historical foundations. First, British archaeologists working in late 19th-century India began to find hoards of coins belonging to a previously unknown Indian king: the Rajah Gondophares, who ruled from AD19 to AD45. If St Thomas had ever been summoned to India, it would have been Rajah Gondophares who would have done it, just as the Acts had always maintained.
The fact that the Acts had accurately preserved the name of an obscure Indian rajah, whose name and lineage had disappeared, implied that it must contain at least a nucleus of genuine historical information. Archaeological discoveries have since confirmed many other details of the story, revealing that maritime contacts between the Roman world and India were much more extensive than anyone had realised.
Aside from the Acts, a considerable amount of oral history and circumstantial evidence suggests that by AD 50-52, Thomas arrived on the Malabar coast of what is today Kerala and he began converting an older Jewish population as well as Hindus to Christianity. Indeed, the evidence is strong that the followers of Thomas in India have preserved one of the oldest versions of Christianity. Dalrymple again:
If St Thomas had carried Christianity to India, it is likely that he would have taken a distinctly more Jewish form than the Gentile-friendly version developed for the Greeks of Antioch by St Paul and later exported to Europe. Hence the importance of the fact that some of the St Thomas Christian churches to this day retain Judeo-Christian practices long dropped in the west – such as the celebration of the solemn Passover feast.
Hence also the significance of the St Thomas Christians still using the two earliest Christian liturgies in existence: the Mass of Addai and Mari, and the Liturgy of St James, once used by the early Church of Jerusalem. More remarkable still, these ancient services are still partly sung in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus and St Thomas.
The more you investigate the evidence, the more irresistible is the conclusion that whether or not St Thomas himself came to India, he certainly could have. And if he didn’t make the journey, it seems certain that some other very early Christian missionary did, for there is certainly evidence for a substantial Christian population in India by at least the third century.
Not only is there is a substantial presence of Christians in India from at least the third century, many early Western and Eastern Christian sources attest that it was Thomas who was sent to India. Kurikilamkatt writes:
From the third century onwards it had become an undeniable and incontrovertible tradition and belief in the Christian world that Thomas preached in India. And these Fathers and early writers had no doubt that the Thomas they speak about was the apostle who declared for the first time in history that his master was the Lord and God.
Historians tend not to trust oral history but to me it’s the oral histories, the genealogies of Indians who trace their lineage back to someone who was personally converted by Saint Thomas, and the songs that are most convincing. Indians have orally preserved the vedas for some four thousand years so I trust them on Saint Thomas. In the 4th or early 5th century, Saint Jerome wrote that “Christ lives everywhere. With Thomas in India and Peter in Rome.” And of the two, I’d put more money on Thomas.
After founding seven churches in Kerala, Thomas journeyed to the eastern region of the Indian peninsula, near present-day Chennai. Here Thomas’s mission was ended when he refused to bow down to Kali and was killed. Even so he was held in such reverence that his place of death was marked and his body kept and entombed. Fifteen hundred years later the Portuguese built a cathedral over his tomb, both of which you can still visit today as I did recently. Even for those not of Christian faith or any religious affiliation, connecting with 2,000 years of history and considering the distances Thomas traveled is quite moving, especially when it happens in a place which stills seems far from the Christian world.
That was then, this is now — the culture that is Swiss edition
Tocqueville’s notes on the Swiss constitution confirm the poor impression he had quickly formed. There were cantons, he remarked, but no Switzerland. In most of these, he continued, the majority of people lacked any sense of “self-government”; the Swiss habitually abused freedom of the press; they saw associations much as the French did, as a revolutionary means rather than as “a slow and quiet way to arrive at the rectification of wrongs”; they had no sense of the benefits derived from “the peaceful and legal introduction of the judge into the domain of politics”; and, finally, “at the bottom of their souls the Swiss show no deep respect for law, no love of legality, no abhorrence of the use of force, without which there cannot be a free country.”
That is from Jeremy Jennings, Travels with Tocqueville: Beyond America, a new and excellent book that I will be covering again soon.
The economic impact of AI
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is part of my argument:
I am a believer in the power of current AI trends. But a look at the way economies work argues for more moderate (but still substantial) estimates of AI’s impact. The most likely scenario is that economic growth will rise by a noticeable but not shocking amount.
Economic historians typically cite Britain’s England’s Industrial Revolution as the single most significant development ever in boosting living standards. Through the late 18th and 19th centuries, it took people from a near-subsistence existence to modern industrial society.
Yet economic growth rates during the Industrial Revolution were hardly astonishing. From 1760 to 1780, often considered a “take-off” period, annual British growth was about 0.6%. The strongest period was 1831 to 1873, when annual growth averaged about 2.4% — a very good performance, but “revolutionary” only if sustained over longer periods of time.
The important feature of the Industrial Revolution, of course, is that growth did continue for decades, and thus living standards did not regress. But it was not possible to move quickly to an advanced industrial economy. For each step along the way, a lot of surrounding infrastructure and social practices had to be put into place. A profitable steel factory may require a nearby railroad, for instance, and an effective railroad in turn requires agreement on compatible gauges and equipment, and all these numerous decisions take a long time to sort out. There are always bottlenecks, and there is no simple way to fast forward through the entire process.
One way to estimate the impact of AI on economic growth is to look at all the human intelligence brought into the global economy by the social and economic development of Korea, China, India and other regions. There are many more potential innovators and researchers in the world, and the market for innovation is correspondingly larger. Yet all that new human intelligence does not seem to have materially boosted growth rates in the US, which on average were higher in the 1960s than in more recent times. All that additional talent is valuable — but getting stuff done is just very difficult.
I owe that latter point to The Wisdom of Garett Jones, though I could not find the Twitter link. And then:
My best guess, and I do stress that word guess, is that advanced artificial intelligence will boost the annual US growth rate by one-quarter to one-half of a percentage point. That is nothing to sneeze at: Consider that US per capita income is currently approaching $80,000. If it grows at 2% a year, in 50 years that figure will be almost $215,000. Alternatively, if the economy grows at 2.5% a year, it will be almost $275,000 — a substantial difference, and with compound returns that gap widens with time.
In the shorter run, that difference in growth rates could mean the difference between an easy path forward vs. a looming fiscal crisis and big tax increases. It could mean a world where most cancers are cured in 30 years, rather than 70 or 80. It’s possible to recognize the importance of those developments for human well-being, while still understanding that most of GDP is a huge lump of goods and services, most of whose production cannot be revolutionized quickly, no matter how much intelligence (artificial or otherwise) is available.
Finally:
None of those estimates should be taken to suggest that AI development will be anything less than hugely impressive over the next few decades. But as one set of constraints is relaxed — in this case access to intelligence — the remaining constraints will matter all the more. Regulatory delays will be more frustrating, for instance, as they will be holding back a greater amount of cognitive horsepower than in times past. Or as AI improves at finding new and better medical hypotheses to test, the lags and delays in systems for clinical trials will become all the more painful. In fact they may worsen as the system is flooded with conjectures.
I should note also that there is nothing else on the horizon likely to boost growth more than AI will.
Albania (Italy) fact of the day
Attracted by its Mediterranean beaches at competitive prices, airline passengers to Albania more than doubled in June compared with the same period a year earlier, according to ACI Europe, an association of airport operators. The opening of low-cost routes to Albanian airports contributed to that jump, ACI said.
Overnight stays also increased, with Eurostat’s latest figures showing 261,000 nights spent by foreign tourists in Albania in the first quarter, up 152 per cent from the same period in 2019.
Travel to Italy has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels. Here is the full FT story.