BRIEFLY NOTED: FOR 2023-09-10 Su
Janeway on þe political economy of technology; costs of electricity from solar; electrifying long-haul trucking; very briefly noted; Krugman on debt, Yastreblyansky on David Brooks's inability to...
Janeway on þe political economy of technology; costs of electricity from solar; electrifying long-haul trucking; very briefly noted; & Krugman on debt, Yastreblyansky on David Brooks's inability to hold on to a train of thought for two paragraphs, Dan Drezner is tired of having to notice þe existence of Trumpist neofascist Matt Taibbi, & Noah Smith on solar energy as game-changer…
MUST-READ: Technology & Wealth Distribution:
When shifts in technology and markets create the possibility of generating a more equal distribution of income and wealth, those with wealth may well then try to use their political power to upend the rules of the game. When shifts in technology and markets create the possibility of generating a more unequal distribution of income and wealth, those at the bottom may seek to develop forms of countervailing power to rebalance prices and incomes. Bill Janeway—and let me say it has never been clear to me whether he is an ancestor or a descendant (though some time-travel literary paradox) of Captain Janeway of the Voyager—reviews Acemoglu and Johnson’s “Power and Progress: Our 1000-year Struggle over Technology & Prosperity”. I confess that I have not figured out what I think about the book, or the issue. But it is something I am trying very hard to have productive thoughts about right now:
Bill Janeway: The Political Economy of Technology: ‘Successive technologies… have driven economic growth… “displace[d]” labor from existing tasks and… “reinstate[d]” labor in new tasks…. Sharing… surplus is determined by the balance of power in markets and in the political process…. Acemoglu and Johnson reach back to the thirteenth century for… innovative technologies—windmills and water mills—that were entirely appropriated by elites…. [In] the Industrial Revolution… the immiseration of the English working class for a long generation… the handloom weaver… the “Bloody Code,” which made machine breaking and more than 100 other acts felonies punishable by death or transportation…. The second quarter of the nineteenth century… the Reform Act of 1832… the Repeal of the Corn Laws…. The twentieth century… “countervailing power”… trade unions and social legislation to constrain capital and empower labor… a radical, though only transient, reduction of inequality across the developed world…. The top priority is to develop ways for computers to augment, not replace, human beings. The first, and most immediate, opportunity is to extend the long line of successful computing applications to increase workers’ productivity in completing existing tasks. Second, digital technologies have already created a host of new tasks…. Third… AI can deliver relevant information to human decision-makers far more efficiently…. Finally… new platforms and markets…. “Three prongs” of effective action: changing the narrative and, with it, cultural norms; building countervailing power; and generating relevant policy solutions…
ONE IMAGE:
ONE VIDEO: Electric Long-Haul Trucks?
Very Briefly Noted:
Economics: Steve Salop: Burdens of Proof and Presumptions in the Merger Guidelines…
Anton Shilov: TSMC: Shortage of Nvidia's AI GPUs to Persist for 1.5 Years: ‘Insufficient packaging capacity is to blame…
Economic History: Richard Easterlin (1998): Growth Triumphant: The Twenty-First Century In Historical Perspective…
Human Capital: John Thornhill: ‘Edtech’ offers no escape from reality: ‘Experiments in virtual teaching could turn a digital divide into an educational one…
Global Warming: Noah Smith: ‘Please explain to me how allowing rich people to block solar plants is "environmental justice". I do not understand…
Political Economy: Eric Hobsbawm & al.: The Forward March of Labour Halted?…
Treason: Robert B. Hubbell: Coup plotters in Congress?: ‘Grassley…denies that he ever had any discussions about stepping in for a “missing” Mike Pence on January 6th. But as Grassley’s hometown newspaper reported on January 5th, Grassley said the following: “Well, first of all, I will be—if the Vice President isn’t there and we don’t expect him to be there, I will be presiding over the Senate…
Neofascism: Seth Cotlar: ‘The Trumpian GOP, which is basically the only version of the GOP these days that rank and file GOP voters like, has been focused on repealing birthright citizenship and turning the US into a blood and soil nation for quite a while now. We should take them at their word…
Seth Cotlar: : The Trilateral Shitpost Fire that was the 1980 GOP convention, part 1: ‘On the long history of thinly veiled antisemitic conspiracy theories on the GOP's right edge…
CogSci: Dave Guarino: Odd bits of tacit knowledge, vol.1: ‘How do you communicate… the patterns and models you find yourself acting on practically?… One way of describing this is as tacit knowledge…. A useful instance of this is Tom Kalil’s paper, Policy Entrepreneurship at the White House: Getting Things Done in Large Organizations. Another is Marina Nitze and Nick Sinai’s recent book, Hack Your Bureaucracy…
NOTES & SubStack Posts:
Economics Watch: The American national debt is not a problem unless r > g. Last I looked, r = 1.95%/year, and g = 2.5%/year. And should it become the case that r > g—should the government budget constraint actually bind—then whether the deficit should be cut depends on whether the cutting will do more good for the public welfare than harm. Looking back on the two great episodes of deficit-cutting we have seen since Reagan first exploded the deficit—Clinton’s and Obama’s—cut back on programs with no long-run benefit as all, as they merely enabled Bush’s and Trump’s tax cuts for the rich:
Journamalism Watch: It is fascinating that neither David F. Brooks nor his editors at the New York Times”notice that if you spend the body of a column praising Biden’s policies, you cannot then at the end denounce all politicians and American politics unless you actually value looking like a real idiot. Yastreblyansky is on the case:
Neofascism Watch: The arguments for Trump back in 2016 boiled down to “he fights for us” and “he wins”! It is fascinating that the way that Trump enablers and supporters like Matt Taibbi today are still trying to claim that his presidency was not an absolute disaster from every policy perspective, and that he had any concern for anybody else other than some members of his immediate family:
Global Warming: I confess I am still amazed at how much progress in cost reduction has been made so very quickly. Was this potential always there, as low hanging fruit? Or have we just been very lucky as a bunch of other factors making these process-improvement discoveries possible have arrived in the nick of time?:
Regarding the new technology, this paragraph strikes me the most:
“We should pause, here, to recognize just how far Acemoglu and Johnson have departed from a central proposition of neoclassical economics.”
It’s a different day today in which many in the public domain were able to capitalize on the computer and then the dot com revolution from their own basement. Not so much anymore in the real world of today’s AI, rocketry revolution or neurological cognitive processing (as in Neuralink). Even if you were granted the technical package, the capital entry is extraordinarily steep. Last I checked for LLM work, to have a training database (minus the compute power) was at least $5000/mo. Not exactly a hobby with a promise.
I am queasy that governments can choose which and how new technologies are implemented. But many specific policy recommendations seem on target (better antitrust, re-balance taxes on cap-ex and labor, tax on internet ads) and should be amplified.
I fear that expectations of AI (LLM) are inflated this decade, and they will mostly be felt in the labor market by replacing customer service reps with stochastic parrots who infuriate customers. Many of those service reps will be in developing nations. And the CEO's won't care, because they jumped on the AI bandwagon just like they jumped on virtual reality, crypto, China, and dot-com. Their objective is to always tell equity analysts they are on the latest bandwagon, not to implement it wisely or profitably. I don't see the government's role in this malinvestment however.