We aren’t growing more hands quickly; the Hamiltonian tradition in America; Nicholas Meyer’s saving of “Star Trek”; sources of recent US productivity growth; respect for instability in control...
Filipowski: Although they could have been rolled out faster, the Trump administration deserves credit for vaccine development and Biden should recognize it. Blame SHOULD go to Trump's CDC which did not give individuals and local decisionmakers the tools and information they needed to avoid unnecessarily costly retractions on activity compared to the benefits of the activity. Likewise, the Trump FDA dragged its feet on promoting cheap rapid screening tests that could have contributed to a more cost-effective response to the pandemic.
Re: Why Japanese cities are such nice places to live
Has Noah actually lived in cities, or just fallen in love with Tokyo for a short visit? European cities - London, Paris, are layed out just as they are in Tokyo. You can walk down from an apartment to the shop below and be on the main street with shops. If you want. The downsides of this closeness is noise, dirt, smells. It creates a craving (in me at least) for some space, and peace and quiet. After WWII, tract construction of suburbs changed this for many. We traded access for green spaces and quiet. It was the middle class concession to the life of the wealthy - country mansions separated from the hoi polloi and the unpleasantness of the city. People continue to flock to teh cities, but as mary Beard pointed out, in Ancient Rome, the life span of city dwellers was short - disease, murder... Such were the trade offs.
Each has its attractions, but cities have underinvested in ameliorating some of the externalities (especially crime) and allowed NINBYish regulation to raise costs unnecessarily.
The "nobility" of course had a house in London, too. :)
Yes, the "nobs" did have places in town, in expensive places out of reach of most people. They also managed to have parks nearby, like regent's park, St. James park. Nothing like that in the rest of the city of London until you get to the Green Belt.
Re Captain Kirk. I never thought of him that way but I take the point. For me, it was General Patton, at least as portrayed in the film. When I started working, it dawned on me that the guy was a jerk who possibly was suffering from PTSD.
US productivity growth is not a crisis for Europe. It's not even clear that the reasons for that growth -- good monetary policy and energy independence and notwithstanding a large fiscal deficit -- are directly relevant to Europe.
Soll: As the Nazi said about “culture,” whenever I hear “industrial policy” I reach for my cost benefit analyzer.
There are good “neo-liberal reasons” to promote investment in activities in which the investor will not receive all of the benefits of the investment such as zero CO2 emitting energy production, storage, and transportation. Likewise, investment in research and development. Likewise, when optimizing the risk of supply disruption by a hostile power is too big a task for any single firm. If we failed to make those investment because someone (“neoliberals?”) insisted on stricter limits on public expenditure than is implicit in making NPV > 0, our bad. If we are now using the NPV > 0 criterion, great.
Why call this return to neoliberal principles “Industrial policy?” And DO all the investment promoted by CHIPS and IRA pass the NPV > 0 test? [Subsidizing INVESTMENT IN zero net CO2 emitting activities instead of the NET CO2 AVOIDED would not appear so.]
And much as we may applaud Alexander Hamilton for advocating for tariffs as a way of taxing slave agriculture exports so that the resources can be used for “internal improvements,” that really is not relevant for today’s debate.
Ethnonationalism. Now that I live in an area of California that is becoming majority Spanish-speaking, (I don't speak Spanish, nor will I learn at my age), I can get a little irritated when stores use Spanish first for labeling items, or making announcements. But this is very minor. I happily use Google translate if I need to communicate (crudely) with someone who only speaks Spanish, and they with me. [I look forward to cellphones that can detect language and translate speech on the fly in any direction needed. I think we are very close to these ST "Universal Translators".] I have always liked cusines from different countries and cook recipes accordingly. I am happy the better grocery stores have become more diverse in the produce they stock. The internet ensures that my interests are accessible.
If anything, my concerns stem from neighbors with strong right-wing tendencies.
I agree. I just do not see ethnonationalism/anti-immigration sentiment as the result of naive nostalgia for a simpler more homogeneous time. I think rather that politicians saw that as a potential seedbed for planting noxious beliefs.
There is evidence that people like to live near others of the same ethnicity or culture. America is a decent, but imperfect melting pot. Age and when you were young is significant about attitudes. John Cleese is well known for saying England has lost its Englishness, as if demographics and life in early post-WWII England should have never changed. I recall newsmagazines questioning interracial marriages as late as the early 1970s. I certainly grew up in an all-white area on London in the 1950s-1960s, where an Black person was very rarely seen. Despite the antipathies, I think the influx of of Indians, mainly displaced from Africa was the real start of changing attitudes for the better, but it was slow. One can hardly go a day reading The Guardian without someone writing about their difficult experiences as a minority person in Britain that continues to this day, despite being the C21st.
Having said that, there is definitely anti-immigrant hate aggravated by opportunists and politicians. The excuses as legion. What I find interesting is that the current exemplars in England include non-whites, people who one would have been expected to be more empathic, but either are not, or just see this as a way to get ahead in a country that is drifting rightwards as conditions decline.
Meanwhile Charlie Jane Anders is trying to save the next generation (of people), very likely with some real success here and there. While entertaining the rest of us. So I guess that would be "pay it forward."
While kwetching that Dune is a tragedy, I would point out that the 3 succeeding novels (Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, and Godemperor of Dune), while acknowledging the horror of the billions killed in the Jihad, Leto II sees the only future that preserves humanity from total destruction - the Golden Path. As a result, humanity will scatter across the universe.
Take what message and analysis you want from this, but we have worried about the existential risk of human extinction since 1945. The sources of this risk continue to increase as our knowledge and technology increase.
Filipowski: Although they could have been rolled out faster, the Trump administration deserves credit for vaccine development and Biden should recognize it. Blame SHOULD go to Trump's CDC which did not give individuals and local decisionmakers the tools and information they needed to avoid unnecessarily costly retractions on activity compared to the benefits of the activity. Likewise, the Trump FDA dragged its feet on promoting cheap rapid screening tests that could have contributed to a more cost-effective response to the pandemic.
Re: Why Japanese cities are such nice places to live
Has Noah actually lived in cities, or just fallen in love with Tokyo for a short visit? European cities - London, Paris, are layed out just as they are in Tokyo. You can walk down from an apartment to the shop below and be on the main street with shops. If you want. The downsides of this closeness is noise, dirt, smells. It creates a craving (in me at least) for some space, and peace and quiet. After WWII, tract construction of suburbs changed this for many. We traded access for green spaces and quiet. It was the middle class concession to the life of the wealthy - country mansions separated from the hoi polloi and the unpleasantness of the city. People continue to flock to teh cities, but as mary Beard pointed out, in Ancient Rome, the life span of city dwellers was short - disease, murder... Such were the trade offs.
Each has its attractions, but cities have underinvested in ameliorating some of the externalities (especially crime) and allowed NINBYish regulation to raise costs unnecessarily.
The "nobility" of course had a house in London, too. :)
Yes, the "nobs" did have places in town, in expensive places out of reach of most people. They also managed to have parks nearby, like regent's park, St. James park. Nothing like that in the rest of the city of London until you get to the Green Belt.
Re Captain Kirk. I never thought of him that way but I take the point. For me, it was General Patton, at least as portrayed in the film. When I started working, it dawned on me that the guy was a jerk who possibly was suffering from PTSD.
Delphine Strauss, Sam Fleming, & Valentina Romei:
US productivity growth is not a crisis for Europe. It's not even clear that the reasons for that growth -- good monetary policy and energy independence and notwithstanding a large fiscal deficit -- are directly relevant to Europe.
Soll: As the Nazi said about “culture,” whenever I hear “industrial policy” I reach for my cost benefit analyzer.
There are good “neo-liberal reasons” to promote investment in activities in which the investor will not receive all of the benefits of the investment such as zero CO2 emitting energy production, storage, and transportation. Likewise, investment in research and development. Likewise, when optimizing the risk of supply disruption by a hostile power is too big a task for any single firm. If we failed to make those investment because someone (“neoliberals?”) insisted on stricter limits on public expenditure than is implicit in making NPV > 0, our bad. If we are now using the NPV > 0 criterion, great.
Why call this return to neoliberal principles “Industrial policy?” And DO all the investment promoted by CHIPS and IRA pass the NPV > 0 test? [Subsidizing INVESTMENT IN zero net CO2 emitting activities instead of the NET CO2 AVOIDED would not appear so.]
And much as we may applaud Alexander Hamilton for advocating for tariffs as a way of taxing slave agriculture exports so that the resources can be used for “internal improvements,” that really is not relevant for today’s debate.
Ethnonationalism. Now that I live in an area of California that is becoming majority Spanish-speaking, (I don't speak Spanish, nor will I learn at my age), I can get a little irritated when stores use Spanish first for labeling items, or making announcements. But this is very minor. I happily use Google translate if I need to communicate (crudely) with someone who only speaks Spanish, and they with me. [I look forward to cellphones that can detect language and translate speech on the fly in any direction needed. I think we are very close to these ST "Universal Translators".] I have always liked cusines from different countries and cook recipes accordingly. I am happy the better grocery stores have become more diverse in the produce they stock. The internet ensures that my interests are accessible.
If anything, my concerns stem from neighbors with strong right-wing tendencies.
I agree. I just do not see ethnonationalism/anti-immigration sentiment as the result of naive nostalgia for a simpler more homogeneous time. I think rather that politicians saw that as a potential seedbed for planting noxious beliefs.
There is evidence that people like to live near others of the same ethnicity or culture. America is a decent, but imperfect melting pot. Age and when you were young is significant about attitudes. John Cleese is well known for saying England has lost its Englishness, as if demographics and life in early post-WWII England should have never changed. I recall newsmagazines questioning interracial marriages as late as the early 1970s. I certainly grew up in an all-white area on London in the 1950s-1960s, where an Black person was very rarely seen. Despite the antipathies, I think the influx of of Indians, mainly displaced from Africa was the real start of changing attitudes for the better, but it was slow. One can hardly go a day reading The Guardian without someone writing about their difficult experiences as a minority person in Britain that continues to this day, despite being the C21st.
Having said that, there is definitely anti-immigrant hate aggravated by opportunists and politicians. The excuses as legion. What I find interesting is that the current exemplars in England include non-whites, people who one would have been expected to be more empathic, but either are not, or just see this as a way to get ahead in a country that is drifting rightwards as conditions decline.
Possible a bit of the convert being or wanting to be or appear more orthodox that the "cradle Catholic."
Meanwhile Charlie Jane Anders is trying to save the next generation (of people), very likely with some real success here and there. While entertaining the rest of us. So I guess that would be "pay it forward."
“The fact that we only have two hands is not changing rapidly…”
I don't understand the significance. Do we need more hands for some reason?
I think it is related to the mysterious graph of sectors and knowledge use.
While kwetching that Dune is a tragedy, I would point out that the 3 succeeding novels (Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, and Godemperor of Dune), while acknowledging the horror of the billions killed in the Jihad, Leto II sees the only future that preserves humanity from total destruction - the Golden Path. As a result, humanity will scatter across the universe.
Take what message and analysis you want from this, but we have worried about the existential risk of human extinction since 1945. The sources of this risk continue to increase as our knowledge and technology increase.