I believe prime working age women are working about 10 hours/week more today than in 1970, and I believe women's participation has driven the Employment:population ratio to record levels. Isn't this an *increase* in overall paid employment?
One thing I think is that while free bus/pulbic transit is a bad use of transit funds, transit probably does suffer from a Laffer curve situation where raising fares can decrease revenue and cutting fares could increase revenue. A lot of systems seem to be in a P.E. mode of thinking where they have a captive audience they want to extract value from rather than trying to grow and provide more value.
My understanding is that people’s health tends to start deteriorating much more quickly after they retire. It’s bad for humans to not have a purpose. That doesn’t have to be remunerative work, like the trust fund kid philanthropy example. This really seems like leftist cope because if work is good for people, that undermines their worldview that capitalism is the source of all their problems.
> It’s often much more convenient to have one person doing one job full-time than to split it between two people. When Keynes was thinking about this, I’m not sure he was thinking in an adequately granular way about the logistics.
well the nature of work has also changed, there is a lot more highly contextual knowledge work and less Taylorist interchangeable work
I don’t know that I’m necessarily more hawkish than Obama, I’m probably less hawkish overall, but I’m differently hawkish.
I’m not faulting Obama here, because it was the politics of the time. But I’d rather bomb Iran because of nuclear proliferation concerns than slowly degrade a terrorist network running around the desert with drone strikes. We MASSIVLEY overcompensated for 9/11, and that’s my main critique. I would have been happier with a first term Obama admin that totally withdrew from and gave up Iraq and Afghanistan immediately but bombed North Korea. Nukes and icbms require state capacity, and in my opinion are the only real threat that can come at America from a nation besides Canada or Mexico.
For stuff like Venezuela, hypothetical Cuba, Libya, I’m not super wild about it but I don’t get too worked up either. If you don’t put troops on the ground, which you shouldn’t without a direct concrete interest at stake, you are inherently rolling the dice. That means sometimes you get a Libya situation. Easy with hindsight to say Libya was a bad idea, I don’t particularly fault Obama for it though, the outcome did not materially harm American citizens lives and there was a real chance there to provide a big opportunity to Libyans.
My biggest opinion is it’s just so hard to predict which interventions will work out well. Arguably Vietnam worked way better than Korea on balance even though we lost Vietnam and fought to a draw in Korea. Iraq ended up a better use of resources than Afghanistan even though it was much less justified. You just don’t know. The consequentialist outcome throughout history seems almost totally uncorrelated with the justification or merits of the war. So the principle in my opinion is you should be first you always keep distance and avoid ongoing entanglements, and the only really “strategic interest” we should focus heavily on is nuclear and icbm aspirations or progress toward them.
It’s like parenting. You have a few very clear rules that you enforce no matter what. Most other stuff you let go and admit you have no control. If you see a spot you can intervene without the kid becoming reliant on you, you maybe do, but you accept that you will not bat 1000, probably not even 500, but sometimes it’s fine to try.
Setting aside nukes, North Korea has the single most effective conventional-war deterrent in existence anywhere in the world in that they can, at will, pound one of the world's top 10 economic powerhouse cities into flaming rubble.
For what it's worth the sea distance from LA to Hong Kong is shorter than the sea distance from LA to Sao Paolo, and the sea distance from NY to Rotterdam is shorter than to SP.
"Something I noticed while going over these questions, though, is that while I think Slow Boring readers mostly agree with me about most stuff (that’s not so surprising), one of the exceptions is that the commenters seem to be significantly more hawkish than I am."
Seriously, I'd ask someone you know in the polling industry to design a poll question to actually interrogate this assertion. I have read the comments from your commentators, and I would say they are majority if not fully against this Iran war at the very least very skeptical of the manner it's being undertaken. Which I actually think is where your thoughts fall.
I actually think it's likely what you're seeing is some weird version of the gun control debate; the majority of your readers are likely at least very skeptical of this war, but the readers who are more hawkish regarding this conflict are more motivated to write to you directly to try to explain their reasons for being more hawkish.
It really does make me wonder how many of your fellow substackers or journalists get a very skewed view their readers political positions based on who's motivated to write to you directly.
Genuinely Matt, I think this is a good idea in general; it would probably help your writing if you could get some real data behind the specific policy positions of your readers. Maybe you're right about Iran! Maybe I'm the one who's more mistaken in thinking your readership is a bit more dovish than I think.
AOC's brand does not depend on knowing about foreign policy at all so it should not hurt her unless she runs in a presidential race against someone with deep foreign policy experience. If the bench is mostly governors this is not going to happen.
Also the Democratic base could decide that managing the rise of China is as important as restoring democracy here at home and then all bets would be off.
I just read this article: https://www.eastisread.com/p/chinese-countrysides-quieter-strains. It shows how working class small town men in China seem to be dealing with a lot of the same issues as ones in America like lack of dating and job prospects (of course it’s worse in China because China is overall poorer, but these guys still have it relatively good compared to even poorer countries like Vietnam). I think AOC’s idea of class-based internationalism could potentially build a lot of bridges between countries as working people realize they are struggling with similar issues and tamp down on a lot of international conflicts.
> there is tremendous diversion of cognitive resources away from our backyard and toward countries that are on the other side of the world ... Latin America is a content desert by comparison.
In order that Central and South America may have the same lasting peace and tranquility that the Middle East enjoys? ;)
"If you’re affluent and in your 60s and want to stop working and just golf or whatever else all day, nobody thinks there’s a problem with that. And you can see that around 15 percent of men seem to retire early."
Do note that a whole lot of people get nudged or shoved out of jobs by 55 or soon thereafter -- teachers, law enforcement, military, etc. And there are a fair number of disability retirements, too. So I would not look at that bar chart and picture a broad acceptance of people choosing to golf rather than work. Like the over-65s, many of these have the "social cover" of having completed the terms of their careers.
What a treat to drink my coffee perusing the mail bag and see a question from my son about an 18th century Dutch essay I have never heard of be answered. Thanks Slow Boring — it’s hard when your kids grow up and move away but you are connecting us in unexpected ways.
Matt Y, you write as if sharing your SB workload with another writer were unthinkable, but I actually think it could work very well, if you chose the right person!
/troll hat on
Introducing the Matt Y/Freddie deBoer shared Substack! Come for Matt Y’s YIMBY and group-punching takes. Stay for Freddie complaining, in stylish prose, about pop culture and mainstream lib positions on education and mental illness while studiously ignoring the war in Iran! A fun (for certain definitions of fun) time shall be had by all!
I think modern Republicans like Sen. Bill Cassidy oppose the concept of health insurance itself (public or private, regulated or unregulated) and want people — other than themselves — to pay for healthcare out of pocket the same way they would for computer repair, automobile repair, or out-of-pocket dental work expenses. And they think everything will be solved by the magic of competition disciplining healthcare providers and cost consciousness disciplining patients in the absence of health insurance. So the prospect of Republicans supporting mandates to buy health insurance sounds unlikely.
Doesn't DC also have high ridership by global standards?
And while NYC may perform poorly by global standards, I do think it is weird that other American cities dont acknowledge that it is better run than most other American cities - lower crime, better traffic with less accidents, and a place that has been America's most populous city since the first census and continues to attract talent and reinvent itself. And this is by far America's largest city and metro - and it uses the people other American cities see as a problem to be managed and makes it an advantage.
Their are certainly better run cities globally - Tokyo and Seoul for sure, London is similarly sized and even better onto traffic and crime, Im sure many of China's cities and smaller European cities too - but I axtually think the casual dismissal of NYC by politicians in the rest of America is really weird. It is, in fact, run pretty well.
> David Rademeyer: Do you think it’s better to believe things that are true, or to believe things that cause you to make better decisions?
Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit has one interesting way of looking at this!
I believe prime working age women are working about 10 hours/week more today than in 1970, and I believe women's participation has driven the Employment:population ratio to record levels. Isn't this an *increase* in overall paid employment?
One thing I think is that while free bus/pulbic transit is a bad use of transit funds, transit probably does suffer from a Laffer curve situation where raising fares can decrease revenue and cutting fares could increase revenue. A lot of systems seem to be in a P.E. mode of thinking where they have a captive audience they want to extract value from rather than trying to grow and provide more value.
My understanding is that people’s health tends to start deteriorating much more quickly after they retire. It’s bad for humans to not have a purpose. That doesn’t have to be remunerative work, like the trust fund kid philanthropy example. This really seems like leftist cope because if work is good for people, that undermines their worldview that capitalism is the source of all their problems.
> It’s often much more convenient to have one person doing one job full-time than to split it between two people. When Keynes was thinking about this, I’m not sure he was thinking in an adequately granular way about the logistics.
well the nature of work has also changed, there is a lot more highly contextual knowledge work and less Taylorist interchangeable work
I don’t know that I’m necessarily more hawkish than Obama, I’m probably less hawkish overall, but I’m differently hawkish.
I’m not faulting Obama here, because it was the politics of the time. But I’d rather bomb Iran because of nuclear proliferation concerns than slowly degrade a terrorist network running around the desert with drone strikes. We MASSIVLEY overcompensated for 9/11, and that’s my main critique. I would have been happier with a first term Obama admin that totally withdrew from and gave up Iraq and Afghanistan immediately but bombed North Korea. Nukes and icbms require state capacity, and in my opinion are the only real threat that can come at America from a nation besides Canada or Mexico.
For stuff like Venezuela, hypothetical Cuba, Libya, I’m not super wild about it but I don’t get too worked up either. If you don’t put troops on the ground, which you shouldn’t without a direct concrete interest at stake, you are inherently rolling the dice. That means sometimes you get a Libya situation. Easy with hindsight to say Libya was a bad idea, I don’t particularly fault Obama for it though, the outcome did not materially harm American citizens lives and there was a real chance there to provide a big opportunity to Libyans.
My biggest opinion is it’s just so hard to predict which interventions will work out well. Arguably Vietnam worked way better than Korea on balance even though we lost Vietnam and fought to a draw in Korea. Iraq ended up a better use of resources than Afghanistan even though it was much less justified. You just don’t know. The consequentialist outcome throughout history seems almost totally uncorrelated with the justification or merits of the war. So the principle in my opinion is you should be first you always keep distance and avoid ongoing entanglements, and the only really “strategic interest” we should focus heavily on is nuclear and icbm aspirations or progress toward them.
It’s like parenting. You have a few very clear rules that you enforce no matter what. Most other stuff you let go and admit you have no control. If you see a spot you can intervene without the kid becoming reliant on you, you maybe do, but you accept that you will not bat 1000, probably not even 500, but sometimes it’s fine to try.
Setting aside nukes, North Korea has the single most effective conventional-war deterrent in existence anywhere in the world in that they can, at will, pound one of the world's top 10 economic powerhouse cities into flaming rubble.
Agree! I think that’s what let them ultimately jog to a nuke
For what it's worth the sea distance from LA to Hong Kong is shorter than the sea distance from LA to Sao Paolo, and the sea distance from NY to Rotterdam is shorter than to SP.
I think maps trick people into thinking the world is oblong
"Something I noticed while going over these questions, though, is that while I think Slow Boring readers mostly agree with me about most stuff (that’s not so surprising), one of the exceptions is that the commenters seem to be significantly more hawkish than I am."
Seriously, I'd ask someone you know in the polling industry to design a poll question to actually interrogate this assertion. I have read the comments from your commentators, and I would say they are majority if not fully against this Iran war at the very least very skeptical of the manner it's being undertaken. Which I actually think is where your thoughts fall.
I actually think it's likely what you're seeing is some weird version of the gun control debate; the majority of your readers are likely at least very skeptical of this war, but the readers who are more hawkish regarding this conflict are more motivated to write to you directly to try to explain their reasons for being more hawkish.
It really does make me wonder how many of your fellow substackers or journalists get a very skewed view their readers political positions based on who's motivated to write to you directly.
Genuinely Matt, I think this is a good idea in general; it would probably help your writing if you could get some real data behind the specific policy positions of your readers. Maybe you're right about Iran! Maybe I'm the one who's more mistaken in thinking your readership is a bit more dovish than I think.
AOC's brand does not depend on knowing about foreign policy at all so it should not hurt her unless she runs in a presidential race against someone with deep foreign policy experience. If the bench is mostly governors this is not going to happen.
Also the Democratic base could decide that managing the rise of China is as important as restoring democracy here at home and then all bets would be off.
I just read this article: https://www.eastisread.com/p/chinese-countrysides-quieter-strains. It shows how working class small town men in China seem to be dealing with a lot of the same issues as ones in America like lack of dating and job prospects (of course it’s worse in China because China is overall poorer, but these guys still have it relatively good compared to even poorer countries like Vietnam). I think AOC’s idea of class-based internationalism could potentially build a lot of bridges between countries as working people realize they are struggling with similar issues and tamp down on a lot of international conflicts.
> there is tremendous diversion of cognitive resources away from our backyard and toward countries that are on the other side of the world ... Latin America is a content desert by comparison.
In order that Central and South America may have the same lasting peace and tranquility that the Middle East enjoys? ;)
"If you’re affluent and in your 60s and want to stop working and just golf or whatever else all day, nobody thinks there’s a problem with that. And you can see that around 15 percent of men seem to retire early."
Do note that a whole lot of people get nudged or shoved out of jobs by 55 or soon thereafter -- teachers, law enforcement, military, etc. And there are a fair number of disability retirements, too. So I would not look at that bar chart and picture a broad acceptance of people choosing to golf rather than work. Like the over-65s, many of these have the "social cover" of having completed the terms of their careers.
What a treat to drink my coffee perusing the mail bag and see a question from my son about an 18th century Dutch essay I have never heard of be answered. Thanks Slow Boring — it’s hard when your kids grow up and move away but you are connecting us in unexpected ways.
I think sabbatical is good model for work and leisure. Work full time with interstitial breaks for other pursuits.
Matt Y, you write as if sharing your SB workload with another writer were unthinkable, but I actually think it could work very well, if you chose the right person!
/troll hat on
Introducing the Matt Y/Freddie deBoer shared Substack! Come for Matt Y’s YIMBY and group-punching takes. Stay for Freddie complaining, in stylish prose, about pop culture and mainstream lib positions on education and mental illness while studiously ignoring the war in Iran! A fun (for certain definitions of fun) time shall be had by all!
/troll hat off
I'm not paying even half a subscription price for that.
I think modern Republicans like Sen. Bill Cassidy oppose the concept of health insurance itself (public or private, regulated or unregulated) and want people — other than themselves — to pay for healthcare out of pocket the same way they would for computer repair, automobile repair, or out-of-pocket dental work expenses. And they think everything will be solved by the magic of competition disciplining healthcare providers and cost consciousness disciplining patients in the absence of health insurance. So the prospect of Republicans supporting mandates to buy health insurance sounds unlikely.
Doesn't DC also have high ridership by global standards?
And while NYC may perform poorly by global standards, I do think it is weird that other American cities dont acknowledge that it is better run than most other American cities - lower crime, better traffic with less accidents, and a place that has been America's most populous city since the first census and continues to attract talent and reinvent itself. And this is by far America's largest city and metro - and it uses the people other American cities see as a problem to be managed and makes it an advantage.
Their are certainly better run cities globally - Tokyo and Seoul for sure, London is similarly sized and even better onto traffic and crime, Im sure many of China's cities and smaller European cities too - but I axtually think the casual dismissal of NYC by politicians in the rest of America is really weird. It is, in fact, run pretty well.