15 Comments

I was drawn to "the racoons of Chicago" thinking it would be about quite something else.

Expand full comment

If we were in the Sixties or Seventies, when there were still ethical ideals in place, Clarence Thomas would have already resigned. However, the win at any cost mentality of modern Republican killed their commitments to Dennis.

Expand full comment

Project Tailwind sounds like something that might be useful. I remember an account of a Fortune reporter in the 1930s having to go through every issue of The Gasfitters Journal from 1901 while researching an article. Being able to automate that and pull out relevant paragraphs and articles would be useful. Of course, this was back when journalists actually cared about getting it right. Fortune even had a $10 bounty (about $220 today) for catching errors. I'd see it a more intelligent version of Spotlight.

Addison Del Mastro's comment on prices sheds some light on opposition to minimum wages and increasing wages in general. Unfortunately, in the real world, metaphysics is often involved or women wouldn't be underpaid or not paid as often happens. In theory, the value of the work shouldn't depend on who did it, but we all know that isn't how the world works.

As for the Chicago raccoons. Is that a promo for the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie?

Expand full comment

re AI (Augmented Inference at best, Avoiding Involvement for the politicians and corporations) will be over quicker than NFT. It's terminally boring.

To help along the dehyping of AI, can someone get Sam Altman a girl or boy friend?

He says he doesn't need money. True.

He says he doesn't want fame. Not convincing since he puts himself at the center of the new pantheon of AI gods creating superhumans.

Most people seek fame for money and sex.

You see my logic?

Expand full comment

Del Mastro: I'd say it differently. Relative prices are information, not necessarily truthful information, but information about which one should have no moral judgement. But price time quantity when transacted produces a flow of income from one person to another. About this it IS permissible to form a moral judgement. If Conservatives overlook the income transfer, Progressives overlook the information content. Thus, the need for the "shotgun marriage" of Hayek and Polanyi. Now they have not only been through a nasty divorce but are trying to kill each other.

Expand full comment

Current State of the Housing Market: Yep. Love it or List It? Love it.

Expand full comment

Springford. I'm sympathetic. Being a furious anti-Brrexiter, I "want" the cost to be high. I disagree however with rational of why it matters. The value of reforms depends on their value, not why they have the value they have. The size of the cost matters in that a model that gets the cost estimate wrong, will presumably get the value of and portfolio of reforms, wrong, too.

As for the doppelganger model itself, it seems to conflate shocks which are plausibly common among countries, with the monetary (or monetary AND fiscal if you are a New Keynesian) response to the shocks.

Expand full comment

The Wall Street reports that Michelle Bowman "had not seen sufficient evidence of decreasing inflation". She ought to take her blinders off.

Expand full comment