Results for “from the comments” 2057 found
On immigration warrants (from the comments)
As a matter of law ( 8 U.S.C. § 1357) warrants are not strictly required for immigration enforcement.
That may be a bad law – then run folks for the legislature to change it.
That may be unconsitutional law – then sue in court and let the lawyers hash it out.
That may be immoral law and we should support jury nulification.
But I see very little to be gained by demanding the duly designated law enforcement officers be held to some code of conduct defined by the PR concerns.
I think the most unconscionable thing is that we have given officers legal remit to “interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien”, “to arrest any alien in the United States, if he has reason to believe that the alien so arrested is in the United States in violation of any such law or regulation and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest”, “within a reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States, to board and search for aliens any vessel …, railway car, aircraft, conveyance, or vehicle” explicitly without a warrant and then have neither had the populace buy in nor curtailed the law.
Either rein in the legal remit or instruct the populace what is on the books. As is, we get the worst of both worlds.
The actual laws on the books for immigration are simply not what folks expect. And if the locals are unwilling to help enforce stuff (as is their right as I understand federalism), this only gets more troublesome.
I wish we could have some sort of compromise where the locals will make enforcing immigration law viable and we could remove some of the extraordinairy powers currently on the books. And more than anything I wish somebody, anybody would go after the employers. Jail the folks violating labor laws knowing that they create all manner of horrible situations.
And again, you want full Libertarian open borders? Then make changes to the laws via democracy. But for right now we are unwilling to touch the folks who most benefit from illegal immigrant labor, expect the feds to wisely use massive powers, and are unwilling to face these realities in popular opinion.
That is from Sure. I would very much favor extending civil liberties in these directions, though that does not include going after the employers.
Comparing health outcomes across countries (from the comments)
I think it has come up repeatedly on MR that comparing international statistics in health outcomes is nearly impossible — definitions of live-birth, infant mortality, maternal mortality, cancer survival, cause of death, etc etc are simply too different between countries. Patterns of driving behavior, military service and violence affect life expectancy independently of health care, as do patterns of immigration.
The US tends to compare quite well on life-expectancy in later life, which is the point at which quality of health care (rather than e.g. traffic accidents) is a key factor in survival.
That is from Marie. I take this understanding, and most of all its absence, as one of the key markers of whether a person is actually trying to think things through.
From the comments
I am a high school teacher. As this study finds, banning phones hurts our best students. Unlike Tyler, I do have a problem with these policies. Studies like this dont even measure the ways that phones help our best students the most: they allow students to access real teachers, better teachers, sources of knowledge and learning that are beyond what they are stuck with in our public schools. There are many actions we could take that would boost grades. We could adopt singapore’s culture or the Japanese juku system. We could become as draconian as you like to boost grades for low-performing students. But to what end? Maybe there is one Peter Scholze who could boost his early learning by 5 pct, even 100 or more pct depending on what schhol he is in, with a phone. Is banning it from him worth boosting the algebra 1 scores of 20,000 future real estate salesman by 3 percent? Phones are new. Teachers have no idea how to use them. They are devices that contain the entire world’s knowledge and kids want to use them – and we are banning them? Any teacher who wants to ban phones is taking the easy way out.
That is from Frank. A broader but related point is that a school without smartphones probably cannot teach its students AI — one of the most useful things for a person to learn nowadays. As Frank indicates, you should be very suspicious that the smart phone banners take absolutely no interest in measuring their possible benefits. We economists call it cost-benefit analysis. If you wish to argue the costs are higher than the benefits, fine, that can be debated. If you are not trying to measure the benefits, I say you are not trying to do science or to approach the problem objectively.
And from a later post, again Frank:
From the comments, on language preferences
Those wanting good, efficient government are not doing so well this century.
That is from Paco. The rest of the comment is a bit more specific:
In Spain, language politics are a key way to get your friends government jobs: When you manage to make regional language proficiency mandatory on any of said jobs, from schoolteacher up, and make the regional language the only language schools will teach on, you basically get a political cleansing of the institutions. Catalonia also pays those people quite a bit better than other regions: Not good for the budget (although now they get to hand the debt to Spain while they keep the taxes!), but it’s great for clientelism. Love your region, speak your regional language over all, get rewarded economically.
This is why you have similar schemes in every region that can get away with it: It’s just jobs for your friends. But that also translates to worse English for everyone, a language that might actually help do better in the long run. They call it maintaining the culture, I call it grift.
Then we’ll hear them all complain about Madrid’s corruption, when the 3% “friend tax” on basically any catalonian government contract, or anything large that needed a permit was documented for decades. It’s a key disease all across Spain. Blaiming Madrid made great sense circa 1920s or 30s, where it was just a bureaucratic capital with no industry of any sort. But now it’s the largest economic engine of the nation, largely because they are the closest to an economically liberal area.
As for the economists, it’s easy: They are inclined to any pro-independent movement that claims oppression, for any reason. At that point that cause is on their team, and careful analysis disappears. I bet you can all find an example or two of people justifying the waste and corruption elsewhere, just due to association.
The case for democracy (from the comments)
I was democracy-pilled by reading biographies of Franco and Salazar. The Iberian countries in the 1930’s were what every right-wing authoritarian fantasizes about: vigorous young conservative dictators firmly in charge of a country, liberals totally defeated and out of power. Both were able to stay in power for decades.
The result? For a while they owned the libs but eventually their countries just stagnated. Badly. To stay in power, Franco and Salazar had to systematically defang any organization that could in theory threaten their rule. Yes this meant left-wing universities and pro-democracy groups, but it also meant the church, the military, etc. Salazar in particular tried to trip these of power and resources so they could never threaten his rule. A damning incident in the Franco biography was that near the end of Franco’s rule his Prime Minister was assassinated by Basques and Franco couldn’t find a replacement for him. A country of tens of millions of people and nobody qualified to be PM. That’s what decades of suppressing the production of new elites does. To a dictator, any young ambitious person is a potential threat and must not be allowed to blossom too much.
Democracy has many flaws but having rival teams of elites is something you don’t appreciate until you lose it.
That is from Hadur.
Thinking about Greenland critically (from the comments)
Well one thing that comes up is the Diego Garcia problem. It appears that Downing Street opted to relinquish sovereignty of an isolated territory remote from major population centers for reasons of domestic politics and perhaps international popularity.
As long as we might (continue to) see a major gulf between American and European norms regarding “international law” and politics, American policy makers can rest far more assured that their strategic interests in say Thule are not going to be sold out for concerns in Copenhagen.
And then, of course, there is the bidding war problem. Currently Greenland is run by a PM who formally wants independence. If Greenland votes that through (and they have been voting for more distance from Copenhagen by supermajority), US bases in Greenland are now subject to bidding on the open market. After all, a lot of US bases have had to be abandoned with changes in leadership and we are already seeing China dumping lots of cash to buy influence.
Best outcome, from a US perspective, is Trump waives around money, Greenland votes to accept, and everyone goes home with resolution of the fact that Greenland is likely more salient to US defense interests than Danish defense interests. A more likely scenario is that Greenland accelerates its independence, particularly if Trump can get together a package of mining setups, the US signs some bilateral treaties and perhaps leases directly with the folks who have the ultimate votes, and Denmark maintains some sort of affiliated roll.
But moral posturing over sovereignty and territory is costly. And from a hard nosed American perspective, the assurances that Greenland will not end up embroiled in some moral posturing like Diego Garcia are simply stronger with American or Independent Greenland than with Danish sovereignty.
That is from Sure. From yesterday’s WSJ:
The Danish government in recent days has privately sent a message to Donald Trump’s team that Copenhagen is happy to negotiate military and economic deals related to Greenland, but it wants the conversations to take place behind closed doors.
And from the WaPo:
But might Greenland be for rent? Or amenable to a Compact of Free Association? Just as the United States has in the Pacific with the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau?
The odds are still against any deal, but this is not impossible either.
What are some remaining obstacles for Milei? (from the comments)
You are right Tyler. Now [Milei’s chance of succeeding] it’s 51%. It’s a long way to October 2025 when the mid-term election will be the first test and much longer to October 2027 for the big test.
I think there are three critical issues for the first test. The first one refers to the unification of the foreign exchange market at a “free” exchange rate. As long as Milei continues his total commitment to a zero-deficit policy, the only threat to reduce inflation to “close” to zero later in 2025 is to avoid a big devaluation at a higher fixed exchange rate. There is a very important difference between Argentina today and any other past experiences in Argentina and elsewhere. That difference is the huge holding of dollar assets by Argentina’s residents (in this summer season they are buying cheaper goods and services in Brazil, Uruguay and Chile) . As many others I thought that initially Milei would buy those dollar assets by issuing bonds but he decided not to do that because he was afraid that there would be too much political pressure to spend the newly acquired international reserves (or sovereign funds). I expect he will shift to a unified market at a flexible rate in the next six months and the market rate to remain under 1,500 pesos per dollar at least until the mid-term election.
The second issue is the response of provincial governors and local authorities to their own deficits. So far Milei´s federal policies have implied larger deficits at those levels. Milei has been trying to negotiate with some governors and local authorities but it will not be easy to lower expenditures at those levels and they will try hard to get revenue directly from production in their jurisdictions. So Milei has to negotiate with the national Congress where he has few loyal members as well as with a lot of other politicians. And remember, contrary to many stupid and malicious statements, Milei has been negotiating within the law.
The third critical issue is the attraction of a large foreign investment in the first half of 2025. Milei has already set a framework for that to happen but he needs commitments soon because they will change expectations about the country´s ability to increase sharply export revenues (btw, despite all the blah, blah about Chile’s success, by far the main reason was the legal changes that in the early 1980s allowed a huge investment in copper between 1986 and 1995, more than duplicating production –yes, other reforms were good to increase the multiplier effects of that investment).
That is from EB-CH, a cranky guy but sometimes he has good points. There are (at least) two additional problems<:
1. First, a global recession could scuttle the whole thing on the revenue side.
2. Second, Argentina (not blaming Milei here, I think he understands this) has a tendency to give up on its adjustment programs too early. A temporarily balanced budget does not reflect how a tanking of commodity prices (combined perhaps with other problems) could lead to a future financial crisis once again. The fiscal configuration has to be not only “good enough for now” but truly stress tested. Is the political system down there strong enough to see that through? I suppose we will find out.
Scott Alexander on chips (from the comments)
From this post on chip export bans:
Didn’t we have a conversation where you said Chinese AI was so terrifying that we couldn’t consider any AI slowing or pause, because all of our efforts had to be put into preventing China from beating us in AI? And when I discussed reasons that this might not be the right way to look at things, you said that no, beating China in AI was such a desperately important cause that we couldn’t worry about little things like that?
And now the Biden administration is actually doing something decisive to beat China in AI, and you’re splitting hairs about whether this is the exact most politically appropriate time?
That seems to be the real Scott from the IP address and his knowledge of our conversation. Plus it sounds like Scott (apologies if it is not!).
I would say this: since I chatted with Scott I took a very instructive and positive trip to United Arab Emirates. I am very impressed by their plans to put serious energy power behind AI projects. If you think about it, they have a major presence in three significant energy sources: fossil fuels, solar (more to come), and nuclear (much more to come). They also are not so encumbered by NIMBY constraints, whereas some of the American nuclear efforts have in the meantime met with local and regional stumbling blocks. There really is plenty of empty desert there.
So I think America has a great chance to work with UAE on these issues. I do understand there are geopolitical and other risks to such a collaboration, but I think the risks from no collaboration are greater.
This short tale is a good example of the benefits of travel.
And if you can get to Abu Dhabi, I urge you to go. In addition to what I learned about AI, I very much enjoyed their branch of the Louvre, with its wonderful Greek statue and Kandinsky, among other works, not to mention the building itself. The Abrahamic Family House, on a plaza, has a lovely mix of mosque, church, and synagogue, the latter of course being politically brave and much needed in the Middle East. Here is Rasheed Griffith on Abu Dhabi.
From the comments, on moving to the suburbs
As Ed Banfield observed, the flight to the suburbs pre-dated the car because people prefer cheaper housing and more space: “The first elevated steam railroads were in New York in the 1870s, and twenty years later every sizable city had an electric trolley system. Railroads and trolleys enabled more people to commute and to commute larger distances; the farther out they went, the cheaper the land was and the larger the lot sizes they could afford. One- and two-family houses became common. …The ‘flight to the suburbs’ is certainly nothing new.”
Urbanists are the minority who prefer to live in dense cities and need to stop making car infrastructure the main villain in their narrative.
Here is the link.
Claims about Ireland (from the comments)
The proximate cause of this problem is the housing crisis, but the underlying reason is that Ireland’s political spectrum is still broken due to being defined by its reactions to colonialism and Catholicism. Beneath the surface-level tides of imperialism, rebellion, theocracy, and liberalisation is a deep nationwide conformism and lack of agency. There is a ‘learned helplessness’ from this illiberal past that conditions the population into modes of subservience and rebellion, with nothing in between.
Because the reactions against colonialism were both left-wing in character (republican and social liberalism) the entire population thinks of themselves as superficially left wing. The result is that each generation grows up with the same abstract ideas that problems are caused by “greed” and “corporations” but no conception of how oligarchy and government actually work to maintain an oppressive class system that is truly brutal compared even to much of western Europe.
The wealthy and influential networks in society use moral-sounding concepts such as environmental protection and invoking famine-era evictions to establish legal frameworks that protect existing capital by preventing growth. They also use the civil service as a massive programme of sinecures for the less ambitious within the upper middle classes. To take a random example: Ireland still claims to have ‘free’ university (though there is a significant registration fee). But the cost of renting is so high that effectively only the wealthy can send their kids away to college. Superficially left wing, but de facto oligarchy. This is everywhere: health service (half the population have private), public transport (unusable if you actually need to be somewhere), and there are shakedowns at every financial touchpoint — bank duopoly, huge insurance fees, dysfunctional legal system.
You’ll read a story in the news about how evil foreign investors are bulk buying homes and letting them out. What that actually means is that large capital-efficient reliable finance is outcompeting inefficient amateur Irish landlords, to the benefit of renters. The media will never report the story that way, because the ‘left wing’ story is best at protecting Ordinary Decent Irish Millionaires. None of the major parties will fight the civil service unions because the strongest voices in society get a lot of easy money through civil service jobs and contracts, and they will frame the debate as an attack on teachers and nurses.
The worst thing is that the people who are most oppressed by this (young people and poorer people) are most inclined to favour policies that have a superficially “left wing” appearance but just boil down to things like “greedy corporations are bad”, and have the effect of preventing growth and protecting existing asset ownership. James Joyce really captured this brilliantly — other writers describe the specific ailments, but Joyce saw the spiritual sickness of Irish society as it exists independent of particular forms of oppression. Fly by those nets.
That is from luzh.
From the comments (on regulation)
I think that I am one of the few federal bureaucrats who openly engage in the comment section here. I have worked in two different federal agencies.
At one agency, I was a rule writer. That is I worked with a team to develop regulations and then I wrote the proposed and final rules to promulgate or remove regulatory text in the code of federal regulations. Depending on how much public input the agency sought in the development phase, regulation changes could take a decade or more to do. Once the proposed regulatory language was developed, writing the proposed rule, getting the rule through the many layers of clearance at the department and then at OMB at the White House could take 2-5 years. And then comments have to be analyzed (nothing like reading thousands of comments including ones where they wished death on me and my children), a final reg text developed, the final rule written and then going through the clearance process again. A final rule could move faster if it was a political priority, but I have seen these taken up to 2 years as well.
Removing regulations requires just as much time and clearance. In order to massively deregulate, the agencies would require an increase in the state capacity for rule writing and the clearance process.
That is from Mike in VA.
Claims about Anchorage (from the comments)
You all are not noticing the location. Why do you think anchorage is the busiest cargo airport in the world? Because it is the only large western city on the main air route between China and Europe. Shipping from China through the artic is 30% faster and more efficient than current routes.
Anchorage will one day be the port of exchange between Asia, North America, and Europe.
It will become for ship based cargo what it already is for air based cargo. And due to that, it will be the most important American military base in the world.
I don’t think you all are considering how much an ice free Arctic Ocean will change international trade routes.
It will become the very northwest passage explorers had been looking for since like 1500.
When you think about it… anchorage is the obvious location. 50%+ of the worlds trade is going to be using anchorage as the stopping point between Asia and Europe.
That is from Student.
On South African electricity (from the comments)
An important point near-universally missed by white locals, nevermind visitors.
Well into the 90s, the black majority cooked with paraffin (kerosene). Electricity was almost completely unavailable in the townships. Underlying the current “energy crisis” (rotational powercuts) in South Africa is a story of massive — albeit inadequately planned and financed — electrification.
The infrastructure of the 90s was near-exclusively reserved for the small minority. It’s hard to imagine how you would *not* get a decline in quality, or a reversion to the mean, given the population now entitled to use it does not (yet) have the means to pay for it.
That is from Marcel. Two other points are neglected when it comes to South Africa and electricity. First, as of March 2024 partial deregulation is in the offing (Bloomberg):
The Electricity Regulation Act Amendment Bill, which will facilitate the opening of the national power grid to private generators, was approved by the National Assembly on Thursday. The bill provides for the creation of an independent transmission system operator, a precursor to the establishment of an electricity-trading platform…Besides opening up the grid, the government has exempted private power project developers from requiring licenses and stepped up efforts to procure clean energy to reduce its reliance on coal-fired power.
More here. Second, solar power is likely to save South Africa in a big way. And decentralized rooftop solar has doubled since 2022.
Power generation is often cited as a major reason for thinking South Africa is on the verge of collapse. But the entire story — its most recent installments included — is actually a reason to be (somewhat) optimistic about the place. It is not just that electricity is important per se, but also this example shows South Africa can move toward solving a problem through a mix of policy and technology.
On deficient British growth (from the comments)
UK is a finance economy and EU/world ex-US has had terrible stock market performance since then.
Germany survived (not thrived) on manufacturing (also better positioned vis-a-vis Eastern Europe), France on luxuries and maybe a bit on tourism, Nordics on oil, Benelux on ??? (not sure, but they’re smart cookies – probably mini-Germanies).
UK ceded manufacturing to others decades ago. IIRC, North Sea oil is fading. Finance has been a ~bust. The former colonies/dominions/etc. have probably spun harder away from the UK of late, for fairly natural reasons (i.e. UK doesn’t have much of a special relationship anymore with Canada, Oz, Hong Kong, etc.)
And maybe some brain drain to the US? Not sure about that.
UK used to punch above its weight culturally (Beatles/music, books, film, etc), but has probably faded relatively on those, AND the forefront of that stuff has shifted to digital/internet, where the UK is weak.
UK’s most famous entrepreneur is maybe Richard Branson? An old guy who does airlines and a bit of music and whatnot – hardly growth areas of the 2020s. And Dyson, but again, vacuum cleaners are a bit limited. Where is the UK tech standout?
(And *why* can’t such bright minds as surely exist in the UK come up with a few tech winners? What’s the national handicap there? I’m not sure…)
That is from Phil S. As a macroeconomist, Fischer Black remains underrated.
Brexit and trade with the EU (from the comments)
These annecdotes do not reflect the data . From (remain leaning) UK in A Changing Europe
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/UKICE-Trade-Tracker-Q1-24.pdf
UK trade with the EU, as a per cent of total trade in volume terms in Q3 2023, was at its highest levels since Q2 2008. In Q4 2023, it increased further from 53.4% to 53.6%. This does appear to imply that trade with the EU is increasing. Trade with non-EU countries is actually going down, leading to the more stable trade with the EU making up a higher share of UK trade overall.
This led to the annual total for 2023 being the highest since 2008, with 53.1% of total UK trade being made up by trade with the EU. As discussed in the previous trade tracker, this has surprised many trade economists. Following Brexit, it was largely anticipated that trade with the EU would suffer. While trade did initially dip in 2021 it recovered quite quickly and has returned to prepandemic and pre-TCA levels. What has puzzled economists is why trade with non-EU countries is going down. It will likely take more granular trade data, such as at firm-level, in future to come to an answer.
That is from Mark Kingsley-Williams.
asdf wrote: