Small Isn’t Beautiful
In our textbook, Modern Principles, Tyler and I discuss India’s small scale reservation laws which for decades made it illegal for large firms to produce many manufactured goods:
…traditionally most Indian shirts were made by hand in small shops of three or four tailors who designed, measured, sewed, and sold, all on the same premises. It sounds elegant but this was not London’s Savile Row, where the finest tailors in the world create custom suits for the rich and powerful. India’s shirts would have been cheaper and of higher quality if they were mass-manufactured in factories—the way shirts for Americans are produced. Why didn’t this happen in India? Shirts in India were produced inefficiently because large-scale production was illegal.
India prohibited investment in plant and machinery in shirt factories from exceeding about $200,000 – this meant that Indian shirt manufacturers could not take advantage of economies of scale, the decrease in the average cost of production which often occurs as the total quantity of production increases.
Do India’s small scale reservation laws seem somewhat quaint and foolish? Now consider, California.
A bill moving through the Legislature would shorten California’s normal workweek to 32 hours from 40 for companies with more than 500 employees. Workers who put in more than 32 hours in a week would have to be paid time-and-a-half. And get this: Employers would be prohibited from reducing workers’ current pay rate, so they would be paid the same for working 20% less.
The work week evolves with time. As productivity and wage rates increase, workers spend some of their wages buying more clothing and some of their wages buying more leisure (workers buy leisure by offering to work fewer hours at lower wages). There are no strong reasons to legislate the work week. What strikes me, however, is the absurdity of legislating a shorter work week for larger firms. Larger firms tend to be more productive–that is one reason they are larger! Thus, California wants to legislate a shorter work week for more productive firms. As in Harrison Bergeron the handicappers ensure equality by cutting down the productive.
Regulating the work week is a poor idea but if we are going to regulate I’d prefer a “Singapore style” plan where they limited small firms to 32 hours a week, thus encouraging production and employment in larger, more productive firms!
By the way, India has mostly eliminated it’s small scale reservation laws so you can see which countries are heading up and which down.
Addendum: Such a law would be “Singapore style” I am not saying they do this.
Larry Temkin takes half a red pill
His new book is Being Good in a World of Need, and most of all I am delighted to see someone take Effective Altruism seriously enough to evaluate it at a very high intellectual level. Larry is mostly pro-EA, though he stresses that he believes in pluralist, non-additive theories of value, rather than expected utility theory, and furthermore that can make a big difference (for instance I don’t think Larry would play 51-49 “double or nothing” with the world’s population, as SBF seems to want to).
So where does the red pill come in? Well, after decades of his (self-described) intellectual complacency, Larry now wonders whether foreign aid is as good as it has been cracked up to be:
In this chapter, I have presented some new disanalogies between Singer’s original Pond Example, and real-world instances of people in need. I have noted that in some cases people in need may not be “innocent” or they may be responsible for their plight. I have also noted that often people in need are the victims of social injustice or human atrocities. Most importantly, I have shown that often efforts to aid the needy can, via various different paths, increase the wealth, status, and power of the very people who may be responsible for human suffering that the aid is intended to alleviate. This can incentivize such people to continue their heinous practices against their original victims, or against other people in the region. this can also incentivize other malevolent people in positions of power to perpetrate similar social injustices or atrocities.
The book also presents some remarkable examples of how some leading philosophers, including Derek Parfit, simply refused to believe that such arguments might possibly be true, even when Nobel Laureate Angus Deaton endorsed one version of them (not exactly Larry’s claims, to be clear).
Another striking feature of this book is how readily Larry accepts the rising (but still dissident) view that the sexual abuse of children has been a grossly underrated social problem.
What is still missing is a much greater focus on innovation and economic growth.
I am very glad I bought this book, and I look forward to seeing which pill or half-pill Larry swallows next. Here is my post on Larry’s previous book Rethinking the Good. Everyone involved in EA should be thinking about Larry and his work, and not just this latest book either.
Easter assorted links
1. Blockchain Basketball Training. No there there, just a marketing gimmick!
2. More on the Israeli laser weapon.
3. MIE: Fairfax house, but with an unleased, difficult to evict person living in the basement. There are already some offers for the home.
4. Chris Blattman advice on managing the academic job market.
5. On the new Houellbecq novel.
6. GRE and SAT scores by various majors.
7. “Bringing consent to ballet” (NYT, new service sector jobs).
What should I ask Cynthia Haven?
She is Rene Girard’s biographer, and has other interesting books as well, including on Czeslaw Milosz and Joseph Brodsky, and she is an expert in poetry and the humanities more broadly. Here is one biography (how can she not have her own Wikipedia page?). Here is her blog. Here is Cynthia on Twitter. To her credit, she has done all this without the benefit of a formal, tenured university post. She also runs her own “conversations,” and is working further on Girard. So what should I ask her?
What I’ve been reading
1. Susanne Schattenberg, Brezhnev: The Making of a Statesman. Can you have an interesting biography of a life and man that was fundamentally so…boring? Maybe. He ruled the world’s number two power for eighteen critical years, so surely he deserves more attention than what he has received. “Nevertheless, Brezhnev had dentures and only stopped smoking in the mid-1970s because his doctors told him his false teeth would fall out at some point if he didn’t.” And “Analysis of why Brezhnev’s children made themselves known largely for their drinking and scandals would fill another book.” I’ll buy that one as well.
2. Declan Kiberd, Irish Classics. One of the very best books on Ireland and Irish ideas, and more broadly I can recommend virtually anything by Kiberd. Do note, however, that much of this book requires you have read the cited Irish classics under consideration. Nonetheless there is insight on almost every page, recommended.
3. Olivier Zunz, The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville. A self-recommending biography of one of the greatest social science thinkers. Easy to read, and good for both the generalist and specialist reader. Note that it is a complement to reading Tocqueville, in no way a substitute.
4. Kevin Lane, The Inca Lost Civilizations. Short and readable and with nice photos, maybe the best introduction to this still underrated topic?
Paul Sagar, Adam Smith Reconsidered: History, Liberty, and the Foundations of Modern Politics considers the broader implications of Smith’s thought from a “freedom as non-domination” perspective.
John E. Bowit, Moscow and St. Petersburg in Russia’s Silver Age. The early twentieth century, basically. Beautiful plates, good exposition, and if nothing else a lesson in just how far aesthetic deterioration can run. A picture book!
Matthew Continetti, The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism is interior to my current knowledge set, but clear and I suspect for many readers useful.
Rainer Zitelmann’s Hitler’s National Socialism is a very thorough, detailed look at Hitler’s actual views.
James Kirchick, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington also serves as a better than average general history of the city.
Why the innocent can’t get out of prison
The main title is Barred, and the author is Daniel S. Medwed. The book has many interesting points, here is one excerpt:
Alaska eliminated plea bargaining in 1975. The rationale was grounded in fairness, with the governor at the time proclaiming that the new policy was designed to counter “weakened public confidence in the administration of justice.” The conditions seemed ideal. Small population, small(ish) amount of criminal activity, creative attorney general, open-minded governor. The results were initially promising. Although the number of trials in the state rose by 37 percent in the year following the ban, the system appeared capable of absorbing the surge. But the experiment didn’t last. A new state attorney general relaxed plea policies in 1980, and bargaining was officially back in the 1990s. By the 2010s, nearly 97 percent of Alaska’s criminal cases resulted in pleas. Those who’ve studied the history of plea bargaining Alaska attribute the demise of the ban to a change in personnel in the AG’s office and a decline in state revenues. Trials don’t come cheap.
Recommended, for those who care.
Saturday assorted links
2. Faster vaccines would have saved how many lives?
3. Yishan, on Twitter and Musk.
4. “Every chess movie, ranked.” On the list is an oddly under-publicized Kasparov-Thiel “documentary” of the two walking/driving around New York City for a day. Though it was only nine years ago, it feels like such a different world. You also get to watch Peter beat Frank Brady in speed chess, and Garry then comment on the proceedings.
5. From Hannes Malmberg (email): “Pre-1920, rapid natural population growth made high immigration consistent with a low share of foreign-born. Between 1880 and 1920, the number of foreign-born more than doubled, 6.7mn to 13.9mn, while the share of foreign-born didn’t budge, 13.3% to 13.2%.“
An Operation Warp Speed for Nasal Vaccines
I have been pushing for more funding for nasal vaccines since early last year when I wrote about trypanophobia and see also my Congressional testimony. The Washington Post reports that the idea is gaining traction among scientists but funding is limited:
As the omicron variant of the coronavirus moved lightning-fast around the world, it revealed an unsettling truth. The virus had gained a stunning ability to infect people, jumping from one person’s nose to the next. Cases soared this winter, even among vaccinated people.
That is leading scientists to rethink their strategy about the best way to fight future variants, by aiming for a higher level of protection: blocking infections altogether. If they succeed, the next vaccine could be a nasal spray.
…Scientists at the National Institutes of Health and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority — known as BARDA — are vetting an array of next-generation vaccine concepts, including those that trigger mucosal immunity and could halt transmission. The process is similar to the one used to prioritize candidates for billions of dollars of investment through the original Operation Warp Speed program. But there’s a catch.
“We could Operation Warp Speed the next-generation mucosal vaccines, but we don’t have funding to do it,” said Karin Bok, director of Pandemic Preparedness and Emergency Response at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “We’re doing everything we can to get ready … just to get ready in case we have resources available.”
In my estimation, Operation Warp Speed was the highest benefit to cost ratio of any government program since the Manhattan Project. Amazingly, despite having now seen the benefits of the program and the costs of the pandemic, a government that spends trillions every year can’t get behind millions for a nasal vaccine.
To be sure, the emergency is over. The risk to the vaccinated are now tolerable and the benefits of further investment are much less than before vaccines were available. But the costs are also lower. Much of the research on nasal vaccines has already been done–what is needed is funding for clinical trials.
A nasal COVID vaccine will also pay off in future vaccine programs. If in a future pandemic we were able to use nasal vaccines to vaccinate more quickly, that alone could save many lives.
Addendum: Here’s my post on RadVac the do it yourself nasal vaccine.
Solve for the wartime presentation equilibrium
Ukrainian officials have run more than 8,600 facial recognition searches on dead or captured Russian soldiers in the 50 days since Moscow’s invasion began, using the scans to identify bodies and contact hundreds of their families in what may be one of the most gruesome applications of the technology to date.
The country’s IT Army, a volunteer force of hackers and activists that takes its direction from the Ukrainian government, says it has used those identifications to inform the families of the deaths of 582 Russians, including by sending them photos of the abandoned corpses.
The Ukrainians champion the use of face-scanning software from the U.S. tech firm Clearview AI as a brutal but effective way to stir up dissent inside Russia, discourage other fighters and hasten an end to a devastating war.
Here is the full story. Maybe this feels gruesome, but I am not sure we should let ourselves be led by the nose of our intuitions here. Furthermore, we have zero information on its effectiveness, or lack thereof. So I am not ready to have an opinion on this practice. We all seem fine with the idea of killing, so squeamishness on the “presentation side” probably is undertheorized.
I am more interested in what the next step looks like. If this stands a chance of being effective, how might you try to “improve” the presentation? Record death screams and send them in audio files? A virtual reality version? A “director’s cut” for the more committed audience members?
How about AI that scans the battlefield for fights your preferred side seems to be winning? Then do face scans of the opposing soldiers and using internet, text, or phone calls, invite their relatives to watch the struggle. Wouldn’t a fair number of family members click on that link?
Might some people crowdsource funding for extra footage, or shoot it themselves? I read this (New Yorker) report about the recent Brooklyn terror attack:
Many [bystanders] also responded as no one should ever do in an active-shooter scenario—when presented with an escape route, they instead stopped to record videos.
A yet more advanced version of the footage could throw in deep fakes of some kind? CGI?
Do you find this all more repulsive yet? Ever watched a war movie? We seem to accept those in full stride. It would be weird — but perhaps a coherent view nonetheless — to think “killing fine, phony movie of killing fine, movie of real killing just terrible.”
What do you all think?
For the initial pointer I thank Maxwell.
U.S.A. poll fact of the day
Only one poll, yes, but here goes:
61% of Democrats say “improving border security and restricting illegal immigration” would strengthen democracy
To be clear, I don’t consider this good news. The broader point is that I genuinely do not understand Bryan Caplan’s argument that there is no backlash worry from humongous levels of immigration. I see that Angela Merkel let in one million Syrian refugees (which I favored and still favor, by the way), and that strengthened “Far Right” anti-immigrant parties throughout Europe. I see Brexit as in part motivated by a fear of loss of control of immigration. I see that Donald Trump focused on the immigration issue to win the Republican primaries and debates leading up to the 2016 election. The government in Singapore is now facing a major backlash from earlier high levels of in-migration.
How can there not be a backlash from open borders?
The actual, in practice backlash against open borders simply would be to close the borders/limit entry once again, rather than anything too dramatic. But if you continue with a “this lectern is made of ice” counterfactual where the open borders continue against what would otherwise be the political equilibrium, what exactly would be the backlash? I, for one, am afraid to find out. So we want “more open” borders, but not open borders per se.
And no, I am not persuaded by data from pre-1920 America, when borders were largely open and most parts of the world sent basically nobody, and furthermore there was not much of a welfare state. And we did in fact restrict Chinese immigration to California, because of (irrational) backlash.
Friday assorted links
Infrared Mind Control
The science of mind control is advancing at a furious rate. In 2011, the NYTimes reported that scientists had engineered neurons to be sensitive to light and then using fiber optic cables and brain implants they were able to quickly turn mice neurons on and off, instantly changing the behavior of the mice (paper here). The setup, which required genetic engineering, brain implants and cables worked incredibly well but a rather expensive method of mind control.
In 2021, scientists eliminated the fiber optic cable (see also the NYTimes coverage):
Nature: Advanced technologies for controlled delivery of light to targeted locations in biological tissues are essential to neuroscience research that applies optogenetics in animal models. Fully implantable, miniaturized devices with wireless control and power-harvesting strategies offer an appealing set of attributes in this context, particularly for studies that are incompatible with conventional fiber-optic approaches or battery-powered head stages. Limited programmable control and narrow options in illumination profiles constrain the use of existing devices. The results reported here overcome these drawbacks via two platforms…Neuroscience applications demonstrate that induction of interbrain neuronal synchrony in the medial prefrontal cortex shapes social interaction within groups of mice, highlighting the power of real-time subject-specific programmability of the wireless optogenetic platforms introduced here.
Now, if I am reading this 2022 paper and announcement correctly, scientists have eliminated the need for any implant or cable but can instead program the brain using infrared:
Now, scientists at the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford University have developed the first non-invasive technique for controlling targeted brain circuits in behaving animals from a distance. The tool has the potential to solve one of the biggest unmet needs in neuroscience: a way to flexibly test the functions of particular brain cells and circuits deep in the brain during normal behavior — such as mice freely socializing with one another.
The research was published March 21, 2022 in Nature Biomedical Engineering by Guosong Hong and colleagues at Stanford and Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. Hong is a Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute Faculty Scholar and assistant professor of materials science and engineering in the Stanford School of Engineering who uses his background in chemistry and materials science to devise biocompatible tools and materials to advance the study of the brain.
Moreover, the scientists think that the genetic modifications can be done with a simple injection:
Hong and colleagues are also developing nanoscopic beads that can convert focused beams of ultrasound into light, and which can be injected directly into the bloodstream, making it possible to optogenetically target cells anywhere in the brain and to change this targeting at will within a single experiment.
If the tools for mind control can be injected then it doesn’t seem fanciful to think that they can be ingested. Mind control in a bottle. The fear is outside mind control but the reality will be self mind-control. Humans have been altering their minds for thousands of years but neuronal level adjustment at the flick of a switch is something new.
Hat tip: Kevin Lewis.
The best fiction in recent times
Here are my picks, in no particular order:
W.G. Sebald, The Emigrants (1992, maybe not recent?).
Elena Ferrante, The Neapolitan quadrology.
Karl Knausgaard, My Struggle, volumes one and two.
Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials.
Michel Houellebecq, Submission.
Min Lee, Pachinko.
Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem.
Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives.
And addended:
Haruki Murakami, IQ84.
Vikrram Seth, A Suitable Boy.
Orhan Pamuk, Museum of Innocence.
Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon.
David Grossman, To the End of the Land.
David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas.
Jose Saramago, Blindness.
China Mieville, The City and the City.
J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace.
I do not feel that recent times lag far so behind some of the earlier, more classic literary eras. Which books am I forgetting?
Germany facts of the day
That’s why the six nuclear reactors that were operating in Germany in 2021 generated 80% as much power as all the gas power plants…
If you turned back on all the nuclear reactors, you could eliminate nearly all the need for gas electricity—and some coal too, which is quite polluting.
Conversely, if you closed the three nuclear reactors remaining and covered that through gas, you’d need to increase your gas burning for electricity by 30%, which could increase gas from Russia by an equivalent amount5.
Put in another way: turning all the German nuclear reactors back on could approximately stop gas imports from Russia. Shutting the remaining ones down could increase the dependency on Russian gas by about 30%.
Here is more from Tomas Pueyo, via Hazel Meade. There is also an interesting discussion of transition problems for “back to nuclear” at the link.
Thursday assorted links
1. Some of the most effective people to have died from Covid.
2. Yellowstone is Offering a $1,500 Annual Pass That You Won’t Be Able to Use for 150 Years.
3. A Caribbean micronation off Belize?
4. Taylor Swift fans want to crash NYU graduation markets in everything.
5. Spencer Haywood almost became a billionaire.
6. The Yuxi circle, the world’s most densely populated area.