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Sunday assorted links

1. Ursula Le Guin profile.  And Bob Dylan as Richard Wagner.

2. Tom Sietsema on the Michelin picks for D.C.

3. Maria Konnikova reviews Tim Harford at NYT.

4. Inaction markets in everything, age of television college football edition.

5. David Warsh on the Laureates.

6. If you could get everyone to read one book, what would it be?  I find most of the listed answers strange, and overly specific, and dependent on the readers already knowing plenty of other books.  Surely your selection needs to be a bestseller if indeed by “everyone” you mean everyone.  I find The Bible, Krishnamurti’s Think on These Things, or even Jonathan Livingston Seagull, or perhaps a book about the enjoyment of sex, to be more plausible picks.  Which book would you recommend?

My Conversation with Ezra Klein

The very beginning is a little slow, but I thought Ezra was one of the very best guests.  The topics include the nature and future of media, including virtual reality, the nature of leadership (including Ezra’s own), how running a project shapes your political views, a wee bit on health care, what he thinks are the Obama and Clinton models of the world, Robert Putnam’s research on the costs of diversity, the proper role of shame in society, animal welfare, and of course Ezra’s underrated and overrated, with takes on Bob Dylan, The Matrix, William F. Buckley, Joe Biden, and more.  There is no video but here is the podcast and transcript.  Here is one excerpt:

COWEN: …Now Putman, let me ask you about Putnam, and how Putnam relates to Donald Trump. As you know, Robert Putnam at Harvard, he has some work showing that when ethnic diversity goes up that there’s less trust, less cooperation, less social capital.

If you think of yourself in the role of an editor, so you have an American society, diversity has gone up, and a lot of people have reacted to this I would say rather badly — and I think you would agree with me they’ve reacted rather badly — but there’s still a way in which the issue could be framed that while diversity is actually a problem, we can’t handle diversity.

Putnam almost says as such, and do you think there’s currently a language in the media where you have readers who are themselves diverse, where it’s possible not to just be blaming the bigots, but to actually present the positive view, “Look, people are imperfect. A society can only handle so much diversity, and we need to learn this.” What’s your take on that?

KLEIN: I strongly agree. We do not have a language for demographic anxiety that is not a language that is about racism. And we need one. I really believe this, and I believe it’s been a problem, particularly this year. It is clear, the evidence is clear. Donald Trump is not about “economic anxiety.”

COWEN: A bit, but not mainly, I agree.

KLEIN: That said, I think that the way it’s presented is a choice between economic anxiety and racism. And one I don’t think that’s quite right, and two I don’t think that’s a productive way of having that conversation.

COWEN: Why don’t we have that language? Where did it go, or did we ever have it?

And:

COWEN: You see this with Medicaid. A lot of people don’t sign up. They don’t have addresses. You can’t even get them, whatever.

KLEIN: They don’t like doctors. They’re afraid of doctors.

COWEN: This is me.

KLEIN: You’re afraid of doctors?

COWEN: “Afraid” isn’t the word.

KLEIN: Averse. [laughs]

COWEN: Maybe dislike. Averse. [laughs] They should be afraid of me, perhaps.

Definitely recommended.  The same dialogue, with a different introduction, is included in The Ezra Klein Show podcast.

My Conversation with Cass Sunstein

There is audio, video, and transcript at the link.  I introduced Cass like this:

The Force is strong with this one. Cass is by far the most widely cited legal scholar of his generation. His older book, Nudge, and his new book on Star Wars are both best sellers, and he was head of OIRA [Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs] under President Obama from 2009 to 2013. Powerful, you have become.

So tonight I’d like to start with a survey of Cass’s thought. We’re going to look at legal theory and then go to Nudge and then consider Star Wars, how it all ties together, and then we’re going to talk about everything.

On every point Cass responded clearly and without evasion.  We talked about judicial minimalism, Bob Dylan’s best album, the metaphysics of nudging, Possession, the ideal size of the Supreme Court, the wisdom of Yoda, Hayek, why people should choose their own path, the merits of a banned products store, James Joyce, why the prequels are underrated, and which of the first six movies is the worst of the lot.  Here is one bit:

COWEN: Let’s take a concrete example from real life: Jedi mind tricks. Obi-Wan comes along and says, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.” And what does the stormtroooper do? He goes away. Now, is that a nudge?

SUNSTEIN: No, it’s a form of manipulation. So — .

[laughter]

COWEN: OK, but how do you draw the metaphysical categories? It seems like a nudge that just happens to work all the time.

SUNSTEIN: OK. I’ll give you a quick and dirty way of getting at that…

Here is another:

COWEN: If you were to pick one character from Star Wars who would nudge you — you get to elect them; you’re the only vote. Even Samantha doesn’t get a vote, just Cass — not your children — which character would you pick? Whom would you trust with that nudge? It’s a universe full of Jedi here, right?

SUNSTEIN: Yoda.

COWEN: Yoda?

SUNSTEIN: I trust that guy.

COWEN: But I worry about Yoda.

SUNSTEIN: I trust him.

Finally:

SUNSTEIN: Thank God for libertarian paternalism, that Luke has a choice. The Sith, by the way, like the Jedi, respect freedom of choice. In the crucial scene in Episode III where the question is whether Anakin is going to save the person who would be emperor, he says, “You must choose.” And so there’s full respect for freedom of choice. Nudgers have that. Good for them.

COWEN: Bad guys always tell you the deal, and then they say, “Choose evil.” It seems the good guys always mislead you.

There’s this funny tension. Star Wars makes me more nervous about nudge. I’m not like this huge anti-nudge guy, but when I look at Obi-Wan and Yoda lying to Luke — “Ben, Ben, Ben, why didn’t you tell me?” How many times have I heard that in these movies?

SUNSTEIN: It’s fair to ask whether Obi-Wan and Yoda had it right.

There is much, more more…self-recommending!

https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/cass-sunstein-star-wars-nudge-a7c874f3ce8c#.am5grz4nh

Robert Whaley speaks

On my iPhone are 55 albums by Bob Dylan, 16 albums by Leonard Cohen and 34 albums by Steve Earle. That’s all I listen to. It’s the storytelling in their lyrics. Dylan’s album “Tempest” is one of his best. The title song is a haunting 14-minute song about the sinking of the Titanic. I have every one of his albums except the last one where he interprets Frank Sinatra. That was out of line. He must have needed money. And I actually bumped into Steve Earle at the airport and introduced myself. My wife was just disgusted that I’d go and bother him, but he was very receptive. No, I did not tell him I developed the volatility indices.

Here is the rest of the interview.

Why is there no Milton Friedman today?

You will find this question discussed in a symposium at Econ Journal Watch, co-sponsored by the Mercatus Center.  Contributors include Richard Epstein, David R. Henderson, Richard Posner, Daniel Houser, James K. Galbraith, Sam Peltzman, and Robert Solow, among other notables.  My own contribution you will find here, I start with these points:

If I approach this question from a more general angle of cultural history, I find the diminution of superstars in particular areas not very surprising. As early as the 18th century, David Hume (1742, 135-137) and other writers in the Scottish tradition suggested that, in a given field, the presence of superstars eventually would diminish (Cowen 1998, 75-76). New creators would do tweaks at the margin, but once the fundamental contributions have been made superstars decline in their relative luster.

In the world of popular music I find that no creators in the last twenty-five years have attained the iconic status of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, or Michael Jackson. At the same time, it is quite plausible to believe there are as many or more good songs on the radio today as back then. American artists seem to have peaked in enduring iconic value with Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein, mostly dating from the 1960s. In technical economics, I see a peak with Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow and some of the core developments in game theory. Since then there are fewer iconic figures being generated in this area of research, even though there are plenty of accomplished papers being published.

The claim is not that progress stops, but rather its most visible and most iconic manifestations in particular individuals seem to have peak periods followed by declines in any such manifestation.

The new Nobel Prize in literature odds

The Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami has emerged as the early favourite to win this year’s Nobel prize for literature.

The acclaimed author of titles including Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and, most recently, IQ84, Murakami has been given odds of 10/1 to win the Nobel by Ladbrokes.

Last year the eventual winner of the award, the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, was the betting firm’s second favourite to take the prize, given initial odds of 9/2 behind the Syrian poet Adonis, at 4/1. This year Adonis has slipped down the list, given odds of 14/1 alongside the Korean poet Ko Un and the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare.

New names in Ladbrokes list this year include the Chinese author Mo Yan and the Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom, both coming in with strong odds of 12/1 to win the Nobel prize.

And:

Britain’s strongest contender for the Nobel this year, which goes to “the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”, is – according to Ladbrokes – Ian McEwan, who comes in at 50/1, behind the singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, at 33/1. American novelist Philip Roth is at 16/1, alongside his compatriot Cormac McCarthy, the Israeli author Amos Oz and the highest-placed female writer, the Italian Dacia Maraini.

The article is here.

“Getting a good meal in D.C. requires some ruthless economics”

This piece is by me, in The Washington Post.  Here is one bit:

The key is to hit these restaurants in the “sweet spot” of their cycle of rise and fall. At any point in time Washington probably has five to 10 excellent restaurants; they just don’t last very long at their highest levels of quality.

Here’s how it works. A new chef opens a place or a well-known chef comes to town and starts up a branch. Good reviews are essential to get the place off the ground, and so they pull out all stops to make the opening three months, or six months, special. And it works. In today’s world of food blogs, Twitter and texting, the word gets out quickly.

…Through information technology, we have speeded up the cycle of the rise and fall of a restaurant. Once these places become popular, their obsession with quality slacks off. They become socializing scenes, the bars fill up with beautiful women (which attracts male diners uncritically), and they become established as business and power broker spots. Their audiences become automatic. The transients of Washington hear about where their friends are going, but they are less likely to know about the hidden gem patronized by the guy who has been hanging around for 23 years, and that in turn means those gems are less likely to exist in the first place.

In economic terms, think of this as a quest for the thick market externalities.  Search and monitoring are most intense in the early stages of a restaurant’s life, and so that is the best time to go.  There is an analogy in music: Bob Dylan and Chuck Berry do not always give the very best concerts, because they do not have to.  You may or may not like up-and-coming bands, but at least they will be trying very hard.

The full article is here.

*Listen to This*

She [Mitsuko Uchida] tells of how she once tried to get [Radu] Lupu to visit Marlboro.  "I got every excited, describing how people do nothing but play music all day long.  But he said no.  His explanation was very funny. "Mitsuko," he said, "I don't like music as much as you."

That's from the new book on music by Alex Ross.  It's not a comprehensive tour de force like The Rest is Noise was, but it is smart and well-written on every page and if you liked the first book you should buy and read the second.  The portraits cover, among others, Radiohead, Bjork, John Luther Adams, Marian Anderson, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and Uchida.  The chapter on Bob Dylan is especially good and it eclipses Sean Wilentz's entire recent book on Dylan.

Serial hyperspecializers, and how they think

The highly-regarded-but-still undervalued Elijah Millgram has a paper on this topic, and he seems to be preparing a book.  Here is one good short bit:

So one reasonable strategy for a hyperspecializer will be to divide its energies between activities that don't share standards and methods of assessment, and let's abbreviate that to the fuzzier, problematic, but more familiar word, "values." It will be a normal side effect of pursuing the parallel hyperspecialization strategy that its values are incommensurable. The hedonic signals that guide reallocation of resources between niches do not require that niche-bound desires or goals or standards be comparable across niches. If you are a serial (and so, often a parallel) hyperspecializer, incommensurability in your values turns out not to be a mark of practical irrationality, or even an obstacle to full practical rationality, but rather, the way your evaluative world will look to you, when you are doing your practical deliberation normally and successfully. Evaluative incommensurability is a threat to the sort of rationality suitable for Piltdown Man. Serial hyperspecializers gravitate towards and come equipped for incommensurability.

Here is a good review of Millgram's latest book, which argues, among other things, that truth is messy in nature.

Adam Phillips serves up a Bob Dylan quotation: "I have always admired people who have left behind them an incomprehensible mess."

Assorted links

1. Update on gaming the Massachusetts mandate, and more here.

2. When professors get their politics: early.

3. Steve Landsburg's influential books list; he mentions that Parfit is the book most frequently cited by others.

4. Labor hoarding is in decline.

5. China blocks Bob Dylan tour.

6. Literature on analytical anarchism.

7. The obesity epidemic began earlier than we used to think.

8. Bloggingheads TV: Glenn Loury and Ross Levine.

My favorite guitarists

"Ar" wants to know who they are.  When I was young I studied guitar for seven years (multiple styles), so it's an area I've long had an interest in.  I was never very good but I learned a lot about it.  Here goes:

Classical: Segovia, Eduardo Fernandez.  I enjoy the transcriptions of Yamashita and Larry Coryell's covers of Stravinsky, though he isn't usually considered a classical guitarist.

Jazz: Django Reinhardt, Joe Pass's Virtuoso album, Wes Montgomery live (no strings), and George van Eps.  Charlie Christian deserves a mention.  Today, Kurt Rosenwinkel, and the guy who plays for Trio Saudade.  There are plenty of others, including Jim Hall and John McLaughlin.

John Fahey-Leo Kottke: They deserve their own category and indeed they dominate it.  For Kottke try 6 and 12-String Guitar Music, and then his 1981 Guitar Music.  For Fahey try the 1959-1977 Greatest Hits collection.  This is some of my favorite music.

Electric blues: Muddy Waters, Robert Cray (live), Johnny Winter (live only).  Amadou of Amadou and Miriam.  The player from Orchestra Baobab.  Does Lonnie Mack count here?

Acoustic blues: Reverand Gary Davis, Son House and many others.  Jorma Kaukonen also.  Bob Dylan is much underrated in this area.  Can Richard Thompson go here?  d'Gary, from Madagascar, is one of the greatest and most original guitarists that few people have heard of.  Bola Sete too, from Brazil.

Bluegrass: Clarence White and also Doc Watson.

Rock: Jimmy Page, Brian May, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, of course Jimi Hendrix as #1.  van Halen and his ilk never much impressed me.

Les Paul deserves mention but he straddles a few of these categories, as does Chet Atkins.  Hawaiian guitar deserves its own post.  Dick Dale.  The Carnatic slide guitar players, including Bhattacharya.  Roger McGuinn.  The Zairean tradition, including Franco.  Neil Young has his moments, as does Thurston Moore.

Eric Clapton was impressive for a while but overall I wish to be contrarian and leave him off.  Who am I forgetting?  Duane Allman?

In general guitar is an instrument which works relatively well on YouTube.  Most of the names above can be found there.

Who Killed Davey Moore?

Matt Yglesias points us to the following:

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Monday [February 2004] that Americans’ preference for long-term, fixed-rate mortgages means many are paying more than necessary for their homes and suggested consumers would benefit if lenders offered more alternatives.

By the way, Greenspan’s recent Op-Ed claims he is not to blame, plus he disavows blame in his NPR segment the other morning

The other day I wrote of widespread fraud; I was referring to the fact that many lower income borrowers lied on their mortgage applications or failed to provide documentation of income.  Do any of you have figures here?

The New York Times today blames many factors, including lax and fragmented regulators, but most of all the irresponsible practices of mortgage-lending affiliates of nationally chartered banks.  Here are the now well-known warnings of Ed Gramlich.

If you are curious to evaluate my record as a prognosticator, my earlier posts on whether we are in a housing bubble are here [TC: it turns out I didn’t buy close to the peak] and here.  Am I to blame?  Here is Alex’s insightful post.  Most to the point, here is my post "If I Believed in Austrian Business Cycle Theory."

Some of the Austrians blame Greenspan for lowering short-run interest rates to one percent.  From another direction, here are tales of a real estate bubble on the moon.

I browsed through a New York Fed conference summary the other day; it was about "systematic risk" and it was held about a year ago.  I did not see a word about housing bubbles.  The surprise was not the bubble, but rather than its collapse could be such a source of systemic risk and that it could freeze broader credit markets so much. 

Paul Krugman claimed that the fundamental problem is lack of solvency, but he doesn’t make a clear enough distinction between insolvent homeowners (for sure) and insolvent banks (has he bought puts?).  I haven’t seen an estimate of the losses that is large enough to imply anything close to widespread bank insolvency.

Matters would be easier to understand if they were either much better or much worse than they are; it is the current state of hovering which is so puzzling.

Here is Bob Dylan on what went wrong.  It’s the best account I’ve heard so far.

Random rants on music and books

1. Bob Dylan’s latest has received rave reviews just about everywhere.  Who can doubt an honest effort from the elder statesman?  In reality it is little more than a repackaged version of his last two (superb) albums and thus mostly predictable and mostly boring.  By the way, it is becoming clearer — against all former odds — that he was often a horrible lyricist but he remains, even in his dotage, a remarkable vocalist.

2. I loved the first half of Samuel Beckett’s Watt, but then lost the thread of the book.  Beckett’s fiction remains underread, if only because we’ve yet to figure out just how good it is (or isn’t).  The best parts are astonishing, but at times I feel I am listening to one of those unfunny British radio comedy shows.

3. Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children is a novel about thirty-somethings, in a pre- and post 9-11 NYC, transitioning (or not) into adulthood.  That is a recipe for literary trouble.  But I bought it anyway, trusting Meghan O’Rourke, and yes it deserves the sterling reviews.  I kept expecting Megan McArdle to show up as a character and give them all a good talking-to about microeconomics, which is exactly what the characters need.

4. The best world music release of the last year or so remains Amadou and Mariam, Dimanche a Bamako.  It is also the best pop album of the last year.  The two Mali musicmakers are blind and also married to each other.  I don’t see how anyone could help but love this music.  After a year from its purchase, I’m still listening to it.

5. Steven Slivinki’s Buck Wild: How Republicans Broke the Bank and Became the Party of Big Government is exactly what the subtitle suggests.  How did that happen?  One factor is that the Republicans found Democratic rule too horrible a prospect to bear and they became more populist.  Let’s hope the Democrats don’t make a comparable mistake.

6. Stephen Miller’s Conversation: The History of a Declining Art.  I loved the title, hated the subtitle.  Much of the book, which considers the preconditions of good conversation, is fascinating and, despite its popular level, goes beyond the muddled arguments of Habermas.  It collapses when it argues that the quality of conversation is declining in the modern world.  The evidence consists solely of examples of bad modern conversations.