*Dune*, the movie (no real spoilers)
Score and soundtrack: A+, Hans Zimmer
Visual intelligence and sophistication: A+
Beauty: A+
Drama: I thought the first half was weak here, though the movie became progressively more gripping. But too many of the proceedings felt stagey rather than organic or evoking of real interest.
Memorable characters: I give this award to the sandworms and the blue-eyed Fremen warrior chick. The others were “good enough” but didn’t click for me in a huge way.
Fidelity to the original novel: Good enough, without being too slavish in its homage.
Unusual element: Huge dose of French imperialist “Orientalism.”
Straussian reading: It is trying to make both jihad and Islam intelligible and sympathetic to non-Muslim viewers.
Bottom line: I am looking forward to the sequel, and very much hope Villaneuve is on tap to direct. It was wonderful seeing this one surrounded by the sands of Arizona.
Janos Kornai and the soft budget constraint
The most developed thesis of that book was that capitalist economies were in a state of constant excess supply (overproduction) whereas centrally planned economies were in a state of constant excess demand (shortage), and he drew out with minute detail all the implications of this analysis. I remember raising arguments from his book in my general equilibrium class in university, surely annoying the professor. Olivier Blanchard once told me he had a similar experience. Kornai’s book was extremely popular among young rebellious economists who wanted to change the world.
In 1980, his magnum opus, Economics of Shortage, came out. Whereas his earlier work on the economics of planning was mostly theoretical (all that literature was very remote from how planning was done in reality), this was the first book to propose a systematic and powerful analysis of how the socialist economy really worked in practice. Starting with the concept of the soft budget constraint (state-owned enterprises in socialist economies that were making losses would never shut down), he explained how this led to increasing demand by enterprises, making them barely responsive to price variations. These increased demands led to generalised shortages that deeply influenced the behaviour of enterprise managers, consumers and planners.
That is from a broader appreciation by Gérard Roland. Here is one original Kornai piece on the topic. Here is a later ungated piece. Here is Eric Maskin on different theories of the soft budget constraint.
NASA chief Bill Nelson on UFOs
An unprecedented statement by current NASA Director and former Senator Bill Nelson. It is the most honest and forthright commentary to date on the UAP issue from a NASA Director, and perhaps the most thoughtful UAP-related statement ever made by a serving senior U.S. official: https://t.co/2RL4gBuCUD
— Christopher K. Mellon (@ChrisKMellon) October 23, 2021
And more on YouTube, for instance at 55:30.
Saturday assorted links
1. “More than 100,000 people have had their eyes scanned for free cryptocurrency.” (FT, how long ago would this headline have been inconceivable?)
3. New results on time-weighted happiness, caveat lector.
4. New results on cognitive long Covid.
5. Sadly, the great Anthony Downs has passed away. Here is an obituary. He was one of the true greats, why isn’t this bigger news?
6. Taxes and regulation are too strong for the California weed industry to flourish (might this be an OK outcome?).
The greatest book(s) on Africa ever written?
Yes, I am talking about the new seven-volume set Architectural Guide to Sub-Saharan Africa. I am now about halfway through volume II, and will read the rest, albeit slowly. The books have plenty of text and also a lot of quality photographs. While they are easy to read, they are not actually fast going.
These books have dozens of authors, so a systematic review misses the point. But just think: do you need to read yet another largely political history of Africa, detailing the conflict in Biafra, the fall of apartheid in South Africa, and the Mugabe dictatorship in Zimbabwe? At what I hope are your current margins, what exactly are you going to learn?
Should you instead read seven volumes about how Africans (and sometimes non-Africans) have built Africa? Its homes. Its businesses. Its government buildings and non-profit centers. Its churches and mosques. What Africa looks like and why. Every significant discussion is accompanied by a relevant photograph.
Is that not a more important learning?
Where else can you find a sub-chapter “Beyond Design: Finnish Architects in Senegal”? Which are in fact the most notable vistas in the Nouakchott fish market? Why does it seem that no building in Mauretania is next to any other building in Mauretania? (I am reading the West Africa volume, obviously.)
Definitely recommended, a notable achievement.
The whip-banning polity that is Reno
The Reno City Council voted to ban the possession and use of whips without a permit in downtown Reno on Wednesday.
Councilwoman Jenny Brekhus, who said she was not present when the ordinance was introduced, was the only no vote.
Brekhus said that she wants the ordinance applied city-wide and expressed concern that as is, the ban targets certain demographics.
City attorney Karl Hall explained that the ordinance is restricted to the downtown area because complaints to the police were concentrated in that area. He added that there may be areas outside of downtown where whips may be useful.
…Hall also said that those who have a legitimate use for a whip downtown can receive a permit.
This second article I find stranger yet:
The change approved Wednesday comes after police reported a steep increase over the past two years of 911 calls from residents who mistake the sound of a cracking whip for gunfire.
He said they’re also being used in public areas for fights and intimidation.
Lily Baran spoke against the ordinance earlier on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union. She said that the homeless community is known for using the whips and that the ordinance will “perpetuate the criminalization of the unhoused.”
Model that! Here is the full main story, via the estimable Chug.
Friday assorted links
1. The culture that is Cook Islands quarantine. They just got back from the Tokyo Olympics.
2. Pierce Brosnan and Colm Toibin are on board with Jack Yeats.
3. 18,000 people in a single building (St. Petersburg, Russia).
4. Otters are moving into Singapore.
5. Haitink dead. And Yundi Li is in trouble.
6. My University of Kentucky talk on why big tech is underrated.
7. Claims about ports and supply chains.
8. Erik Hoel has predictions for 2050 (oddly he criticizes one of my predictions and then goes on to make a version of the same himself).
The Price of COVID-19 Risk In A Public University
Wow. Duha Altindag, Samuel Cole and R. Alan Seals Jr, three professors in the economics department at Auburn University, study their own university’s COVID policies. The administration defied the Alabama Governor’s public health order on social distancing and created their own policy which caused enrollment in about half of the face-to-face classes to exceed legal limits. Professors assigned to teach these riskier classes were less powerful, albeit they were paid more to take on the risk. I am told that the administration is not happy. I hope the authors have tenure.
We study a “market” for occupational COVID-19 risk at Auburn University, a large public school in the US. The university’s practices in Spring 2021 caused approximately half of the face-to-face classes to have enrollments above the legal capacity allowed by state law, which followed CDC’s social distancing guidelines. Our results suggest that the politically less powerful instructors, such as graduate student teaching assistants and adjunct instructors, as well as women, were systematically recruited to deliver their courses in riskier classrooms. Using the dispersibility of each class as an instrument for classroom risk, our IV estimates obtained from hedonic wage regressions show that instructors who taught at least one risky class were paid more than those who exclusively taught safe courses. We estimate a COVID-19 risk premium of $8,400 per class.
What I’ve been reading
1. Paul A. Offit, You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation. The stories and anecdotes are fun, most of all about the early history of the polio vaccine and how poorly some of the process went. By the end of the book, however, it doesn’t add up to very much. The underlying theme is that early innovation is fraught with risk, but Offit is unwilling to draw straightforward conclusions that we should be more tolerant of such risks. He instead inveighs against the “disturbing show of hubris” from the recent vaccine manufacturers. Is that really the problem right now? (How many ways are there for the biomedical establishment to show that its “anti-expected value, anti-corporate” side can morph into subtle forms of anti-vaxx sentiment?) He also has the annoying tendency, like many of his peers, to dismiss massive ethical issues with a single paragraph that would not withstand scrutiny in an undergraduate philosophy course. Yes, we will always treat sins of commission as more important than sins of omission, as Offit argues. But does he endorse this approach? (He won’t say.) Does he think we should vary our practices here at the margin? (He won’t say. Too inconvenient!) Still, the book is informative and enjoyable enough, so I don’t regret buying it or finishing it. But if you are looking for a “biomedical establishment punching bag,” well it is that too.
Straussian Beatles, Paul McCartney solo edition
One thing I’ve always enjoyed about Paul is his willingness to be a plain, flat outright snot about other people. Did you see lately when he called the Rolling Stones “a blues cover band”? Not wrong! Ever listen to the lyrics of “Another Girl“?
Anyway, if you paw through the Ram album you will find some real daggers. “Dear Boy,” for instance, is Paul mocking Linda’s ex-husband, here are some lyrics:
I guess you never knew, dear boy, what you have found,
I guess you never knew, dear boy,
That she was just the cutest thing around,
I guess you never knew what you have found,
Dear boy.I guess you never knew, dear boy,
That love was there.
And maybe when you look to hard, dear boy,
You never do become aware,
I guess you never did become aware,
Dear boy.When i stepped in, my heart was down and out,
But her love came through and brought me ’round,
Got me up and about…I hope you never know, dear boy,
How much you missed.
And even when you fall in love, dear boy,
It won’t be half as good as this.
I hope you never know how much you missed,
Dear boy, how much you missed
Maybe it’s OK to take public stabs at your new wife’s ex-husband (is it?), but keep in mind Paul was raising the guy’s daughter at the time. What did she think? Or maybe up in that Scottish farm she just never listened to Ram, or this song. Paul himself has admitted the underlying meaning in radio interviews. The guy, by the way, committed suicide — woe unto him who is attacked by Paul McCartney!
Brian Wilson, by the way, was a big admirer of the voices and harmonies on that one, here is the cut.
Gentler but still cutting is “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey“. It’s Paul’s account of why he has not been calling “the rellies” back home, namely because they are too boring and too removed from the reality of his life. Paul is reporting (sarcastically) that his life is too boring to have anything to say to the guy:
We’re so sorry, uncle Albert
We’re so sorry if we caused you any pain
We’re so sorry, uncle Albert
But there’s no one left at home
And I believe I’m gonna rainWe’re so sorry, but we haven’t heard a thing all day
We’re so sorry, uncle Albert
But if anything should happen
We’ll be sure to give a ringWe’re so sorry, uncle Albert
But we haven’t done a bloody thing all day
We’re so sorry, uncle Albert
But the kettle’s on the boil
And we’re so easily called away
Of course he really did have an Uncle Albert, and I bet he didn’t call much. Can you blame him? This interpretation, by the way, comes from Paul himself, many years later on satellite radio.
“Too Many People” — the paradigmatic Macca Straussian song deserves a post of its own. It has more passive-aggressive references to John Lennon than are usually reported.
And that is all just on one album! Here are previous installments of Straussian Beatles. By the way, “Yesterday” may in part be about the early death of Paul’s mother.
Covid facts to ponder
- The overall death rate for men is 1.6 times higher than the death rate for women.
Here is the underlying Brookings study by Richard V. Reeves and Beyond Deng, based on U.S. data. That is a pretty big gap. We have done plenty to vaccinate older people first, but men are never given priority place in these lines. Why not?
Thursday assorted links
1. Why so little eSports in Japan?
2. Are emergency sirens dangerous? (NYT, though it seems they help recruit volunteers in rural areas).
3. Which vehicle prices are up the most and the least? Can you model this?
4. NYT on the postliberal Right and Orban. A more serious piece than you might have been expecting.
5. Department of counterproductive responses, philosophers’ edition.
6. A (bad, mood-affiliated) critique of long-termism.
7. No more flow for the flow guy, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
Understanding the Rise in Life Expectancy Inequality
We provide a novel decomposition of changing gaps in life expectancy between rich and poor into differential changes in age-specific mortality rates and differences in “survivability”. Declining age-specific mortality rates increases life expectancy, but the gain is small if the likelihood of living to this age is small (ex ante survivability) or if the expected remaining lifetime is short (ex post survivability). Lower survivability of the poor explains between one-third and one-half of the recent rise in life expectancy inequality in the US and the entire change in Denmark. Our analysis shows that the recent widening of mortality rates between rich and poor due to lifestyle-related diseases does not explain much of the rise in life expectancy inequality. Rather, the dramatic 50% reduction in cardiovascular deaths, which benefited both rich and poor, made initial differences in lifestyle-related mortality more consequential via survivability.
Via the excellent Kevin Lewis. And RAD from the comments: “Greater survivability of cardio vascular events allows lifestyle choices to catch-up with people.”
Optimism about Mexico a story of compounding returns
Current per capital income measures at about 19k PPP. Apply 2.2% growth for 30-35 years and Mexico then approaches the living standard of today’s UK or South Korea! Since 1994, Mexico’s average growth rate has been 2.09%, including Covid times, so that is hardly outlandish as an assumption.
Here is my latest Bloomberg column on that topic. Here is one excerpt:
In the meantime, there are reasons to be bullish on Mexico right now. One is that economic globalization has been somewhat halted, and in some areas even reversed. To the extent Americans do not trust Chinese supply chains, the Mexican economy will pick up some of the slack. Mexico is also the natural lower-wage supplier to North American industry. (Its main problem in this regard is that its wages are no longer so low, but that too reflects its progress.)
And if tourism in Asia and Europe remains difficult or inconvenient, Americans will visit Mexico more and grow accustomed to holidaying in locales other than Cancun. Some of those habits are likely to stick.
I do also cover the ifs, and, or buts. And:
Mexico, like much of Latin America, also has a burgeoning startup scene, especially in ecommerce and fintech. Mexico City might end up as the technology capital of [Spanish-speaking] Latin America. That would help with one of Mexico’s chronic economic problems, namely that small firms decide to stay small to escape regulations and taxes. Successful tech startups, in contrast, can scale more easily and face fewer regulations on average than manufacturing firms.
Recommended.
My Conversation with Stanley McChrystal
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is part of the CWT summary:
He joined Tyler to discuss whether we’ve gotten better or worse at analyzing risk, the dangerous urge among policymakers to oversimplify the past, why being a good military commander is about more than winning battlefield victories, why we’re underestimating the risk that China will invade Taiwan, how to maintain a long view of history, what set Henry Kissinger apart, the usefulness of war games, how well we understand China and Russia, why there haven’t been any major attacks on US soil since 9/11, the danger of a “soldier class” in America, his take on wokeness and the military, what’s needed to have women as truly senior commanders in the armed forces, why officers with bad experiences should still be considered for promotion, how to address extremists in the military, why he supports a draft, the most interesting class he took at West Point, how to care for disabled veterans, his advice to enlisted soldiers on writing a will, the most emotionally difficult part and greatest joys of his military career, the prospect of drone assassinations, what he eats for his only meal of the day, why he’s done writing books, and more.
And:
COWEN: If we had to shrink one capacity of the military, say, by 50 percent, and double the capacity of another, what would you pick to shrink and what to expand?
MCCHRYSTAL: This is always the tough one. I tend to think that the maneuver warfare part that we have created for ground warfare in Europe or in the Mideast is probably somewhere where we have to accept some risk. We have to have fewer capabilities there. You could even argue maybe the number of aircraft carriers — big capital things.
I think where we can’t afford — and therefore, I would invest — is in really good people. Now, that seems like a simplistic answer, but we are going to need very crafty people at things like cyber warfare. We’re going to need very innovative people. We’re going to need people with cultural acuity, which means language skills, and that’s going to be more important. So if I was advocating, I’d be leaning toward resourcing harder in those areas.
COWEN: Now, of course, your father was a general. You come from a military family. Why is it that military recruitment, right now, is so well predicted by having had a parent in the armed forces? What’s driving that? And how can we take advantage of that to recruit additional people?
MCCHRYSTAL: Well, we’ve taken advantage of it to the point where it may be counterproductive now. When I would travel the battlefields and go to small bases, invariably, the sergeant or lieutenant in charge was the son or daughter of a friend of mine. In one way, it’s comforting because you know people have entered the service with open eyes and clear expectations, and they make good soldiers, but you don’t want a soldier class in America.
Definitely recommended, there is also a segment about disabled veterans and their rights. And again here is Stan’s new book Risk: A User’s Guide, co-authored with Anna Butrico.