I hope this is stupid and bad enough to change some things
Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all…As two men clung to a stricken, burning ship targeted by SEAL Team 6, the Joint Special Operations commander followed the defense secretary’s order to leave no survivors.
Here is the full article, of course that is a war crime.
*Policing on Drugs*
The author is Aileen Teague, and the subtitle is The United States, Mexico, and the Origins of the Modern Drug War, 1969-2000. I had been wanting to read a book on this topic, and this manuscript covered exactly the ground I was hoping for. Excerpt:
…in 1965, only 4.8 percent of college students in the Northeast had ever tried marijuana. By 1970, that figure jmped to 48 percent of college students from Northeast schools having used marijuana within the last year.
Jim Buchanan was right? Blame the Beatles? Remember when so much of the drug trade was a Turkish-French thing?
If you are wondering, the Mexican drug cartels emerged during the 1970s. Perhaps the author blames more of this on U.S. policy than I think is correct? If Nixon had never cracked down and militarized the issue, I suspect the evolution of the matter would not be so different from current status quo? Unless of course you wish to go the Walmart route.
In any case a good book on a topic of vital importance.
Friday assorted links
Against We
I propose a moratorium on the generalized first-person plural for all blog posts, social media comments, opinion writing, headline writers, for all of December. No “we, “us,” or “our,” unless the “we” is made explicit.
No more “we’re living in a golden age,” “we need to talk about,” “we can’t stop talking about,” “we need to wise up.” They’re endless. “We’ve never seen numbers like this.” “We are not likely to forget.” “We need not mourn for the past.” “What exactly are we trying to fix?” “How are we raising our children?” “I hate that these are our choices.”
…“We” is what linguists call a deictic word. It has no meaning without context. It is a pointer. If I say “here,” it means nothing unless you can see where I am standing. If I say “we,” it means nothing unless you know who is standing next to me.
…in a headline like “Do we need to ban phones in schools?” the “we” is slippery. The linguist Norman Fairclough called this way of speaking to a mass audience as if they were close friends synthetic personalization. The “we” creates fake intimacy and fake equality.
Nietzsche thought a lot about how language is psychology. He would look askance at the “we” in posts like “should we ban ugly buildings?” He might ask: who are you that you do not put yourself in the role of the doer or the doing? Are you a lion or a lamb?
Perhaps you are simply a coward hiding in the herd, Martin Heidegger might say, with das Man. Don’t be an LLM. Be like Carol!
Hannah Arendt would say you’re dodging the blame. “Where all are guilty, nobody is.” Did you have a hand in the policy you are now critiquing? Own up to your role.
Perhaps you are confusing your privileged perch with the broader human condition. Roland Barthes called this ex-nomination. You don’t really want to admit that you are in a distinct pundit class, so you see your views as universal laws.
Adorno would say you are selling a fake membership with your “jargon of authenticity,” offering the reader membership in your club. As E. Nelson Bridwell in the old Mad Magazine had it: What do you mean We?
…If you are speaking for a very specific we, then say so. As Mark Twain is said to have said, “only presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms ought to have the right to use we.”
I could go on. But you get the drift. The bottom line is that “we” is squishy. I is the brave pronoun. I is the hardier pronoun. I is the—dare I say it—manly pronoun.
I agree.
What I’ve been reading
1. Thomas Meyer-Wieser, Cairo: Architectural Guide. A picture book, sort of. Reading a book on the architectural history of a place, while intrinsically interesting, is also usually the best way to learn the non-architectural history of that same place. Recommended.
2. Mary Hays, Memoirs of Emma Courtney. A late 18th English fictional memoir, still underrated and fairly short to boot. Very interesting on Enlightenment culture, what it meant to grow up in a reading culture, and the power of early feminism.
3. Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. Usually journals bore me after the first fifty pages. But this lengthy volume is fascinating throughout, and arguably her greatest achievement? At the very least worth a try. She maintained an impossibly high level of writing across these years, plus you see (close up) the shifts in how her life was going, electroshock therapy and all. Recommended.
4. Somerset Maugham, Up at the Villa. Great fun at first, and very short. It ends up “overinvesting” in plot, but still for me a worthwhile read. It is best when at its most psychological.
5. Joel J. Miller, The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Out Future. A paean to reading and its importance, comprised of many historical anecdotes. I wish each part went into more detail, nonetheless this is an important book about a cultural transmission method that is in some unfortunate ways diminishing in its cultural centrality.
6. Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas. Why do so few people talk about this piece? It is Woolf writing on feminization and the prevention of war. The argument is dense, and I will give it a reread. She seems to attributing some of the worst aspects of militarized society to the approbational propensities of educated women? She also considers — well ahead of her time — how male and female philanthropy are likely to differ. In any case, there is more here than at first meets the eye.
There is also Keija Wu’s A Modern History of China’s Art Market.
What we’re grateful for
Here is the Free Press symposium, here is my contribution:
Tyler Cowen, columnist
I am grateful for how many parts of the world I can visit freely. I have been to roughly 105 countries and have not had serious problems getting to them, entering them, or leaving them. Nor have I contracted any serious illnesses abroad.
I do feel some recent growth in restrictions. For instance, I cannot go to Russia and be assured of my safety, nor would I feel comfortable visiting Ukraine at the current moment, given the ongoing Russian attacks. Nonetheless, so very much of the world is accessible to us, whenever we wish to be there.
This is an unparalleled opportunity, without precedent in the history of mankind.
Thursday assorted links
1. Good analysis of the proposed Ukraine deal, by a Ukrainian economist who is fighting for Ukraine.
2. Chinese AI as homework monitor?
5. Charlie Munger’s final years (WSJ). ““His last delivery was Korean fried chicken: A whole chicken, kimchi fried rice and waffle fries,” Jackson says.”
Thanksgiving and the Lessons of Political Economy
Time to re-up my 2004 post on thanksgiving and the lessons of political economy. Here it is with no indent:
It’s one of the ironies of American history that when the Pilgrims first arrived at Plymouth rock they promptly set about creating a communist society. Of course, they were soon starving to death.
Fortunately, “after much debate of things,” Governor William Bradford ended corn collectivism, decreeing that each family should keep the corn that it produced. In one of the most insightful statements of political economy ever penned, Bradford described the results of the new and old systems.
[Ending corn collectivism] had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.
The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labours and victuals, clothes, etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it. Upon the point all being to have alike, and all to do alike, they thought themselves in the like condition, and one as good as another; and so, if it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men, yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them. And would have been worse if they had been men of another condition. Let none object this is men’s corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them.
Among Bradford’s many insights it’s amazing that he saw so clearly how collectivism failed not only as an economic system but that even among godly men “it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them.” And it shocks me to my core when he writes that to make the collectivist system work would have required “great tyranny and oppression.” Can you imagine how much pain the twentieth century could have avoided if Bradford’s insights been more widely recognized?
Addendum: Today (2025) I would add only that the twenty-first century could avoid a lot of pain if Bradford’s insights were more widely recognized.
My excellent Conversation with Cass Sunstein
Cass was in top form, and so we went on for almost two hours. In his Substack he described it as “The most fun interview I have ever done.” Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is part of the episode summary:
Tyler and Cass discuss whether liberalism is self-undermining or simply vulnerable to illiberal forces, the tensions in how a liberal immigration regime would work, whether new generations of liberal thinkers are emerging, if Derek Parfit counts as a liberal, Mill’s liberal wokeism, the allure of Mises’ “cranky enthusiasm for freedom,” whether the central claim of The Road to Serfdom holds up, how to blend indigenous rights with liberal thought, whether AIs should have First Amendment protections, the argument for establishing a right not to be manipulated, better remedies for low-grade libel, whether we should have trials run by AI, how Bob Dylan embodies liberal freedom, Cass’ next book about animal rights, and more.
I will reproduce the section Cass pulled for his own Substack:
COWEN: Now, we started with the topic of liberalism. How is it you think about or characterize the liberalism of Bob Dylan?
SUNSTEIN: Bob Dylan is a liberal. His liberalism is captured in the line, “He not busy being born is busy dying.” I hope he’s immortal, but if anything is on his epigraph, that would be a good candidate.
The notion of self-invention, of freedom, is central to basically everything. His refusal to keep singing the same song — you can hear him talking about it in some of the interviews. He said, “I could do that. I could just do that forever. I knew how they’d react.” He said, “What’s that about?” He said, “I needed to do something else.” But of course, the line, “I needed to do something else” — that’s my line. How he would put it would be much more vivid and surprising than that.
His “Like a Rolling Stone” is an anthem of freedom. I heard it, actually, in concert a few years ago. It was a great performance. It wasn’t young, but it was a great performance. The audience went wild when he did “Like a Rolling Stone.” That was the final song. It was the encore. It wasn’t just because it was the greatest rock song ever written. It was because of how he did it. I thought, “What’s going on in this song? Why is everyone exhilarated?” The song, which he described when he wrote it as vomit, hatred directed at somewhere that was real — it wasn’t that, or it was a little bit that, but it was a song of liberty.
“How does it feel to be on your own with no direction home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?” Everyone felt like they were flying. He makes that — “Like a Rolling Stone” — be a song of freedom. If you look at his angry songs — “Positively 4th Street” — there’s a freedom in being, of course, uninhibited, able to say things, but also a freedom of disconnection.
When he’s asked why did he change his name, I have an account of why he actually did. I think he gave it exactly once, but in his more characteristic way, he said, “This is America. You can change your name.” Then he said, “I was born. I didn’t think I was born with the right name. I could make it up. I could say that sounds more like I was.”
Making rootlessness not be a curse, but instead something that is . . . the word joy is too clichéd for Dylan. If you look at his love songs, like “If You See Her, Say Hello,” which isn’t one of my favorites, but it’s good. There’s a connection with the one he loved, who got away, but you can feel the sense of freedom.
COWEN: “Visions of Johanna”?
SUNSTEIN: Yes, completely. He’s torn. That has the great opening line. “Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks When you’re trying to be so quiet?” Did Yeats write better lines than that? Probably, but he was Yeats.
COWEN: Blood on the Tracks — a liberal album?
SUNSTEIN: Oh, yes.
COWEN: How would you express that?
SUNSTEIN: Well, I’m thinking “Buckets of Rain” is the closing song. Right before that, there’s a song, “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go.” That’s it, which is, I think, one of his greatest songs. That’s a liberal song of freedom and separation, that she’s going, but he’s going to see her everywhere, and there’s smiling at impermanence. That is a big liberal theme — smiling at impermanence — because impermanence makes things not routine and also makes for freedom.
COWEN: “Idiot Wind” is the angry song of the batch, right?
SUNSTEIN: Yes, it’s pretty mad. He said about that song, “I don’t know why people like it. There’s so much sadness and distress in it.”
COWEN: Do you see your own liberalism or just yourself in the liberalism of Bob Dylan?
SUNSTEIN: I think so.
COWEN: Reinventing yourself, not quite wanting to be pinned down, doing a lot of stuff.
SUNSTEIN: He likes, I think, abandoning and going on to something that’s very different. I wish I’d gone electric or had some equivalent of that. But doing something quite different — I do share a little bit with him. I like it when I think something I thought was wrong. I now am very enthusiastic about the Austrian economists and Hayek. I’ve always admired them, of course, but I didn’t feel that they were on my team. Now I feel I’ve gone to their team. I don’t feel ashamed that I was wrong before. I feel excited that I’m less wrong now.
Definitely recommended, I could have pulled out many other parts as well. Again, I am happy to recommend Cass’s new book Liberalism: In Defense of Freedom.
Race and economic well-being in the United States
We construct a measure of consumption-equivalent welfare for Black and White Americans, which incorporates life expectancy, consumption, leisure, and inequality. Based on these factors, welfare for Black Americans was 40 percent of that for White Americans in 1984 and 59 percent by 2022. There has been remarkable progress for Black Americans: The level of their consumption-equivalent welfare increased by a factor of 3.5 over the last 38 years when aggregate consumption per person only doubled. Despite this progress, the welfare gap in 2022 remains disconcertingly large at 41 percent, much larger than the 16 percent gap in consumption per person.
That is from a new article by Jean-Félix Brouillette, Charles I. Jones, and Peter J. Klenow, just published in American Economic Journal: Insights.
Wednesday assorted links
1. On the romanticism of Rudolf Steiner.
2. Proving new math theorems with AI. And the AI for Science Executive Order. Genesis Mission!
3. The AI invasion of knitting and crochet?
4. Nouriel Roubini is optimistic about the economy (FT). And taxes have been rising too much on the wealthiest Brits (FT).
5. The speed of the NBA is increasing (thus so many injuries?).
6. Raye, Where is my husbannd?
7. GPT on economic recovery in Egypt, growth now above five percent.
“Why ‘Humane’ Immigration Policy Ends in Cruelty”
That is the title of my latest Free Press column, which is interesting throughout. Here is one bit from it:
Behind any immigration debate is an uncomfortable truth: In rich, successful democracies, every workable immigration policy, over enough time, offends liberal instincts or public opinion—often both. We oscillate between compassion and coercive control, and the more we do of one, the more we seem to need some of the other.
The dilemma: Due to the ever-rising numbers of migration to the United States, the enforcement of immigration restrictions has to become more oppressive and more unpleasant as time passes. The alternative course, which is equally unpleasant, is that immigration increases to levels that voters find unacceptable, and we fall under the rule of anti-immigrant parties—which are illiberal on many other issues as well.
The news gets worse. The more pro-immigration you are and the more you allow some foreigners to enter this country, the more others on the outside will wish to come too. Unless you are going to open the border entirely (not a good idea), you will end up having to impose increasingly harsh measures on illegal arrivals, and tougher and tougher restrictions on potentially legal applicants. The liberals in essence become the illiberals.
So I mourn our ongoing and intensifying moral dilemma. At the margin, there are so many people who want to come here (a sign of American success, of course) that there is no kind and gentle way to limit their numbers to a level the public finds acceptable.
And this:
A third alternative is to slow the intake. Keep it fast enough for America to remain “a nation of migrants,” but slow enough to avoid major backlash or to asymptotically approach open borders.
That sounds pretty good, right? But here is the illiberal catch: Given the growing attractiveness of migration to America, penalties and enforcement have to get tougher each year. There are no ways to send large numbers of people back that are not cruel and coercive. There are also few ways to keep people out that do not involve the extensive presence of coercive police, border arrests, imprisonment, and other unpleasant measures.
We might decide to let in more migrants, but still we will end up being cruel to the would-be migrants at the margin. And as demand to migrate continues to rise, we have to be increasingly coercive over time.
That does not have to mean masked ICE men grabbing people randomly off the streets (which leads to violating the constitutional rights of mistakenly identified citizens), but one way or another it is going to involve threats of violence against actual human bodies. That can mean turning away boats full of desperate people, flying people back home, putting them in interim jails, and in general treating them in ways I find deeply unpleasant and disturbing. It is no accident that the Biden administration could not completely avoid the Trumpian policy of separating illegal migrants from the children that accompany them.
Definitely recommended, one of my more interesting pieces this year.
Emergent Ventures India, 13th cohort
Khyathi Komalan, sophomore at Caltech majoring in math, received her grant for career development, and to support her research applying category theory to everything from quantum physics to social relationships.
Soumil Nema, cofounder of NeoVes, received his grant to develop stem cell therapies treating neurological disorders like stroke and neuropathy.
Anushka Punukollu, 17, a high school student in Canada, received her grant for SucroSoil, to repurpose sugarcane waste into hydrogels combating soil erosion in rural India.
Deev Mehta, 17, received his grant to develop a rover making farming autonomous.
Adithya Sakaray, Steve Aldrin, and Aadhithya D received their grant for Recruitr AI, to automate video interviews using AI.
Samarth K J, 20, civil engineering student at IIT madras, received a general career development grant.
Prakyath Gowda, 25, received his grant to develop a lightweight and efficient electric vehicle battery.
Aaron Rego received his grant for Rightful, to help Indian families recover unclaimed financial assets.
Vatsal Hariramani, 21, engineering student, received his grant to develop a smart and affordable neonatal incubator for remote terrain.
Rushab M received his grant to develop a jacket controlling body temperature for outdoor workers.
Sajal Deolikar, received his grant to develop hybrid powertrains for commercial vehicles improving mileage and reducing emissions.
Mihir Maroju, received his grant for Open Blood, to build an open-source blood donation platform connecting blood banks nationwide.
Habel Anwar, 13, middle-schooler in Kerala, for furthering his physics Olympiad preparation, and working on advancing his physics knowledge and research.
Yash Darji, 20, engineering student, received his grant to kickstart an experimental rocketry community in Ahmedabad.
Uddhav Gupta, 15, received his grant to develop a speech therapy application for children with special needs.
Krupal Virani, 19, received his grant for general career development.
Shwapno Rahman, 17, received his grant to develop low-cost computers for people living below the poverty line.
Sudhir Sarnobat and Rajendra Bagwe received their grant for HowFrameworks, to help Indian SMEs unlock sustainable growth through a learning portal.
Those unfamiliar with Emergent Ventures can learn more here and here. The EV India announcement is here. More about the winners of EV India second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth cohorts. To apply for EV India, use the EV application, click the “Apply Now” button and select India from the “My Project Will Affect” drop-down menu.
And here is Nabeel’s AI engine for other EV winners. Here are the other EV cohorts.
If you are interested in supporting the India tranche of Emergent Ventures, please write to me or to Shruti at [email protected].
Tuesday assorted links
Why are Mormons so Libertarian?
Connor Hansen has a very good essay on Why Are Latter-day Saints So Libertarian? It serves both as an introduction to LDS theology and as an explanation for why that theology resonates with classical liberal ideas. I’ll summarize, with the caveat that I may get a few theological details wrong.
LDS metaphysics posits a universe governed by eternal law. God works with and within the laws of the universe–the same laws that humans can discover with reason and science.
This puts Latter-day Saint cosmology in conversation with the Enlightenment conviction that nature operates predictably and can be studied systematically. A theology where God organizes matter according to eternal law opens space for both scientific inquiry and mystical experience—the careful observation of natural law and the direct encounter with divine love operating through that law.
LDS epistemology is strikingly pro-reason. Even Ayn Rand would approve:
Latter-day Saint theology holds that human beings possess eternal “intelligence”—a term meaning something like personhood, consciousness, or rational capacity—that exists independent of creation. This intelligence is inherent, not granted, and it survives death.
Paired with this is the doctrine of agency: humans are genuinely free moral agents, not puppets or broken remnants after a fall. We’re capable of reason, judgment, and meaningful choice.
This creates an unusually optimistic anthropology. Human reason isn’t fundamentally corrupted or unreliable. It’s a divine gift and a core feature of identity. That lines up neatly with the Enlightenment belief that people can use reason to understand the world, improve their lives, and govern themselves effectively.
In ethics, agency is arguably the most libertarian strand in LDS theology. Free to choose is literally at the center of both divine nature and moral responsibility.
According to Latter-day Saint belief, God proposed a plan for human existence in which individuals would receive genuine agency—the ability to choose, make mistakes, learn, change, and ultimately progress toward becoming like God.
One figure, identified as Satan, rejected that plan and proposed an alternative: eliminate agency, guarantee universal salvation through compulsion, and claim God’s glory in the process.
The disagreement escalated into conflict. In Latter-day Saint scripture, Satan and those who followed him were cast out. The ones who chose agency—who chose freedom with its attendant risks—became mortal humans.
This matters politically because it means that in Latter-day Saint theology, coercion is not merely misguided policy or poor governance. It is literally Satanic. The negation of agency, forced conformity, compulsory salvation—these align with the devil’s rebellion against God’s plan.
Now add to this a 19th century belief in progress and abundance amped up by theology:
Humanity isn’t hopelessly corrupt. Instead, individuals are expected to learn, improve, innovate, and help build better societies.
But here’s where it gets radical: Latter-day Saints believe in the doctrine of eternal progression—the teaching that human beings can, over infinite time and through divine grace, become as God is. Not metaphorically. Actually.
If you believe humans possess infinite potential to rise, become, and progress eternally—literally without bound—then political systems that constrain, manage, or limit human aspiration start to feel spiritually suspect.
Finally, the actually history of the LDS church–expulsions from Missouri and Illinois, Joseph Smith’s violent death, the migration to the Great Basin, the creation of a quasi-independent society–is one of resistance to centralized government power. Limited government and local autonomy come to feel like lessons learned through lived experience. Likewise, the modern LDS welfare system is a working demonstration of how voluntary, covenant-based mutual aid can deliver real social support without coercion. This real-world model strengthens the intuition that social goods need not rely on compulsory state systems, and that voluntary institutions can often be more humane and effective.
To which I say, amen brother! Read the whole essay for more.
See also the book, , with an introduction by the excellent Mark Skousen.
Hat tip: Gale.