When are you going to start podcasting again? Your lack of podcasting has severely impacted my quality of life. I have a highly inelastic demand function for your podcasting. There are no close substitutes. Take my consumer surplus man, take it all. Just please start podcasting again. I don’t have anything good to listen to now while doing weekend projects to finish my DIY home renovation. That reduces my excitement to work on the house, which reduces my output. If I don’t finish this house soon, my spouse is going to start getting frustrated with the lack of progress. Over time, that kind of strife can weigh on a marriage. If it continues unabated, it may be the proximal cause of a divorce.
Matt, please start podcasting again, it is literally tearing families apart.
Having lived in SF while the YIMBY movement was gathering stream and then moved to NYC about 7 years back, and casually knowing a few of the people involved, my take on the relative success of CA’s YIMBYS is:
A. A political space existed in SF that I don’t think did in NYC: popular political organizing around housing issues in NYC is a direct descendent of the freeway revolts and attempts to (unironically) defend neighborhoods against Robert Moses’ depredations. It was always a small-c conservative movement in that sense. SF just didn’t seem to have that kind of historic through-line: you’ll find the occasional person who’s still angry about changes in the Western Addition but not in the way that New Yorkers will wax apocalyptic about the cross Bronx expressway at the drop of a hat.
B. The issue was just more urgent in the Bay Area than anywhere else. NYC is still coasting on a huge (but rapidly shrinking) overhang of housing produced during the booms of the previous century and the subway makes many more neighborhoods accessible than otherwise would be: you can make a go of living in the north Bronx while working in lower Manhattan in a way that is completely unlike trying to live in Vallejo while working in Menlo Park. (But look out: NYC actually produces less housing per capita than the Bay Area and has for decades now: once we've chewed through that overhang it’s going to be SF-style vapor lock at megacity scale.)
C. At the risk of somewhat endorsing the “great woman theory of history” I don’t think you should under-count that Sonja Trauss and Victoria Fierce were in their respective ways just really really good at what they do. Trauss was a genius at getting press for a movement she had basically willed into existence, and Fierce managed to synthesize a lot of disparate strands of YIMBY thinking (a lot of which had a deep right-libertarian or at least neoliberal angle) into a form that SF’s progressive community could identify with and stomach. (They of course loathe each other for such is history.). You also have to credit Kim-Mai Cutler for doing some incredibly good journalism that led a lot of people to reconsider their opinions on what they might have previously thought were settled topics.
Matt, I see you’re in the comments today more than usual. Would be cool to get your participation in more of our daily chats/arguments; we are much better conversationalists than Twitter and therefore a better use of some of your throwaway time :)
"A quick note for next time: some of you emailed me instead of commenting in the thread — I always love to read emails, but I’m only choosing questions for the Mailbag from the thread! As you will see below, swift and certain sanctions are key to the good life."
"But in America, having community colleges or high schools working hand-in-glove with big companies to provide them with tailored, subsidized job training would be very controversial. "
It is common and quite popular with the folks that actually know about it. The problem is that like with all state funded retraining programs it has lots of hoops and doesn't get a lot of action.
This one is quite successful. Boeing works closely with the State and St Louis community College:
Lots of this in Georgia, which really has the best workforce development program(by reputation). The outcomes aren't a smashing success but my sense from working in the area is that is largely about small funding and program complexity. Too many different agencies with hands in the pot, too many administrative rules, stuff like that..
I’ve always wondered the extent to which Hooker deserves some slack for suffering a concussion at Chancellorsville. It seems clear that his reorganization of the Army of the Potomac was generally successful. So in addition to wondering if a better general would’ve pressed the offensive, I have to wonder if an uninjured Joe Hooker could’ve better coordinated the last day of the battle, first, and if an uninjured Hooker would’ve behaved differently in the immediate aftermath.
What you wrote about factors of production made me think that I'd probably want to split out intellectual property or knowledge capital or something as a separate factor from regular capital goods.
It just doesn't work the same (infinitely replicable, requires much more enforcement than regular property, where you just need to stop people stealing it, needs to be time-limited by law because otherwise it just won't depreciate at all, etc).
Lawyers normally divide property into those three categories - real, intellectual and personal - and it would make a lot of sense if economists followed them.
The community college I work for has a Microsoft-sponsored program that teaches people to work in data centers, but we certainly don’t go out and find high schoolers and strongly suggest they take that track.
I wish I had asked Matt for his explanation for the lack of interest (more than hostility) of Progressive intellectuals in taxation of net CO2 emissions. Yes, they are not popular with voters, what tax is? And Medicare for all isn't popular either. But superficially it ought to be appealing it taxes fossil fuels firms. Its revenue can to redistributed as stimulus type payment/Child Tax Credit/EITC. And shouldn't the economic argument that its the measure with the lowest deadweight loss count for something?
My Civil War question is why both sided were so sure that if not legally prevented, slavery would proliferate West. Ultimately the South succeeded at the prospect of slavery being halted (and probably the loss of the Fugitive Slave Act), not that it would be attacked in situ.
Not sure where this fits, but given the discussion on the vaccine and just Doing Something to speed it up, maybe this fits. Every day, we get a post or a headline about the CDC's poor real-time data to be making decisions. And yeah, the CDC hasn't been good this pandemic.
But I do wonder about where the CDC could have improved on things like vax status of hospitalized patients? Because I think of a problem like that and immediately think of data source. How do the various players in the medical field collect that. Do they? In what format? What's the quality of that data? And given that, what mandate does the CDC or the feds have to tell a hospital group to change that to better align with the CDC's role? I'd ask the same question on the state level.
A common answer to this is to just throw people at it, but I've been doing IT for 25 years and have never met a project that couldn't be made worse by simply throwing bodies at it. And I've done both gov't and private industry data work, fwiw.
Not sure if this is something that could be a longer post, but I'd if any of the Slow Boring community knows the answers to any of this, maybe it would be useful. Or at least interesting.
Funny that 'land reform' was a common radical demand or even policy in history when (inherited, unequal) access to land mattered for agricultural production. Today, when (inherited, unequal) access to land matters for knowledge creation, networking, amenities and intergenerational mobility, nobody would talk of 'land reform.'
Really enjoyed this, but I do have a suggestion- you might want to include just a one or two sentence background explanation of some of the topics. Because you're going back and forth between subjects, and because the questioner obviously knows a lot about the subject they're asking about, it was a little tough to know what you were actually talking about with some of the topics here. Just a thought. Still a very enjoyable read despite that, and I'm looking forward to more mailbags in the future.
Thanks for the mailbag. All interesting stuff and covered well in the comments below, but I wanted to touch on the Aphantasia +having kids. I am also cannot visualize things/have no visual imagination. I just learned the term last year, but when I around 7 or 8 was diagnosed with dispraxia and aspergers (now called ASD), one primary reason being that I didn't engage in imaginative play like the other kids.
Jump ahead 30 years and I have 2 kids around the same age as Jose (I believe). They have wild imaginations, which really blow me away, but I have a really hard time keeping up. Play is hard bc my brain just doesn't work that way. Anyways, never met someone who also has this, so thought ide see if you have that issue with Jose and how you might get around it.
When are you going to start podcasting again? Your lack of podcasting has severely impacted my quality of life. I have a highly inelastic demand function for your podcasting. There are no close substitutes. Take my consumer surplus man, take it all. Just please start podcasting again. I don’t have anything good to listen to now while doing weekend projects to finish my DIY home renovation. That reduces my excitement to work on the house, which reduces my output. If I don’t finish this house soon, my spouse is going to start getting frustrated with the lack of progress. Over time, that kind of strife can weigh on a marriage. If it continues unabated, it may be the proximal cause of a divorce.
Matt, please start podcasting again, it is literally tearing families apart.
Having lived in SF while the YIMBY movement was gathering stream and then moved to NYC about 7 years back, and casually knowing a few of the people involved, my take on the relative success of CA’s YIMBYS is:
A. A political space existed in SF that I don’t think did in NYC: popular political organizing around housing issues in NYC is a direct descendent of the freeway revolts and attempts to (unironically) defend neighborhoods against Robert Moses’ depredations. It was always a small-c conservative movement in that sense. SF just didn’t seem to have that kind of historic through-line: you’ll find the occasional person who’s still angry about changes in the Western Addition but not in the way that New Yorkers will wax apocalyptic about the cross Bronx expressway at the drop of a hat.
B. The issue was just more urgent in the Bay Area than anywhere else. NYC is still coasting on a huge (but rapidly shrinking) overhang of housing produced during the booms of the previous century and the subway makes many more neighborhoods accessible than otherwise would be: you can make a go of living in the north Bronx while working in lower Manhattan in a way that is completely unlike trying to live in Vallejo while working in Menlo Park. (But look out: NYC actually produces less housing per capita than the Bay Area and has for decades now: once we've chewed through that overhang it’s going to be SF-style vapor lock at megacity scale.)
C. At the risk of somewhat endorsing the “great woman theory of history” I don’t think you should under-count that Sonja Trauss and Victoria Fierce were in their respective ways just really really good at what they do. Trauss was a genius at getting press for a movement she had basically willed into existence, and Fierce managed to synthesize a lot of disparate strands of YIMBY thinking (a lot of which had a deep right-libertarian or at least neoliberal angle) into a form that SF’s progressive community could identify with and stomach. (They of course loathe each other for such is history.). You also have to credit Kim-Mai Cutler for doing some incredibly good journalism that led a lot of people to reconsider their opinions on what they might have previously thought were settled topics.
Matt, I see you’re in the comments today more than usual. Would be cool to get your participation in more of our daily chats/arguments; we are much better conversationalists than Twitter and therefore a better use of some of your throwaway time :)
“I’m not going to rip off Bill Simmons’ “these are my readers” schtick (in part because nobody wrote in anything too bizarre — maybe next time!)”
It’s up to each and every one of us to rise to this challenge/bait. I recommend Matt’s practice of using the Notes app.
"The main difference between Josh and me is that as a heterosexual male American, I have a lot of Opinions About The Civil War, [...]"
We are now expecting the one and only Jane Coaston to make a guest appearance on the next mailbag!
"A quick note for next time: some of you emailed me instead of commenting in the thread — I always love to read emails, but I’m only choosing questions for the Mailbag from the thread! As you will see below, swift and certain sanctions are key to the good life."
https://youtu.be/7VV52m_wpgQ?t=102
Hey Matt, I think you are a bit off on this one:
"But in America, having community colleges or high schools working hand-in-glove with big companies to provide them with tailored, subsidized job training would be very controversial. "
It is common and quite popular with the folks that actually know about it. The problem is that like with all state funded retraining programs it has lots of hoops and doesn't get a lot of action.
This one is quite successful. Boeing works closely with the State and St Louis community College:
https://stlcc.edu/programs-academics/accelerated-job-training/boeing-pre-employment-training.aspx
Lots of this in Georgia, which really has the best workforce development program(by reputation). The outcomes aren't a smashing success but my sense from working in the area is that is largely about small funding and program complexity. Too many different agencies with hands in the pot, too many administrative rules, stuff like that..
I’ve always wondered the extent to which Hooker deserves some slack for suffering a concussion at Chancellorsville. It seems clear that his reorganization of the Army of the Potomac was generally successful. So in addition to wondering if a better general would’ve pressed the offensive, I have to wonder if an uninjured Joe Hooker could’ve better coordinated the last day of the battle, first, and if an uninjured Hooker would’ve behaved differently in the immediate aftermath.
What you wrote about factors of production made me think that I'd probably want to split out intellectual property or knowledge capital or something as a separate factor from regular capital goods.
It just doesn't work the same (infinitely replicable, requires much more enforcement than regular property, where you just need to stop people stealing it, needs to be time-limited by law because otherwise it just won't depreciate at all, etc).
Lawyers normally divide property into those three categories - real, intellectual and personal - and it would make a lot of sense if economists followed them.
sad to see Meatloaf join me. RIP
The community college I work for has a Microsoft-sponsored program that teaches people to work in data centers, but we certainly don’t go out and find high schoolers and strongly suggest they take that track.
I wish I had asked Matt for his explanation for the lack of interest (more than hostility) of Progressive intellectuals in taxation of net CO2 emissions. Yes, they are not popular with voters, what tax is? And Medicare for all isn't popular either. But superficially it ought to be appealing it taxes fossil fuels firms. Its revenue can to redistributed as stimulus type payment/Child Tax Credit/EITC. And shouldn't the economic argument that its the measure with the lowest deadweight loss count for something?
My Civil War question is why both sided were so sure that if not legally prevented, slavery would proliferate West. Ultimately the South succeeded at the prospect of slavery being halted (and probably the loss of the Fugitive Slave Act), not that it would be attacked in situ.
Not sure where this fits, but given the discussion on the vaccine and just Doing Something to speed it up, maybe this fits. Every day, we get a post or a headline about the CDC's poor real-time data to be making decisions. And yeah, the CDC hasn't been good this pandemic.
But I do wonder about where the CDC could have improved on things like vax status of hospitalized patients? Because I think of a problem like that and immediately think of data source. How do the various players in the medical field collect that. Do they? In what format? What's the quality of that data? And given that, what mandate does the CDC or the feds have to tell a hospital group to change that to better align with the CDC's role? I'd ask the same question on the state level.
A common answer to this is to just throw people at it, but I've been doing IT for 25 years and have never met a project that couldn't be made worse by simply throwing bodies at it. And I've done both gov't and private industry data work, fwiw.
Not sure if this is something that could be a longer post, but I'd if any of the Slow Boring community knows the answers to any of this, maybe it would be useful. Or at least interesting.
Funny that 'land reform' was a common radical demand or even policy in history when (inherited, unequal) access to land mattered for agricultural production. Today, when (inherited, unequal) access to land matters for knowledge creation, networking, amenities and intergenerational mobility, nobody would talk of 'land reform.'
Really enjoyed this, but I do have a suggestion- you might want to include just a one or two sentence background explanation of some of the topics. Because you're going back and forth between subjects, and because the questioner obviously knows a lot about the subject they're asking about, it was a little tough to know what you were actually talking about with some of the topics here. Just a thought. Still a very enjoyable read despite that, and I'm looking forward to more mailbags in the future.
Hey Matt,
Thanks for the mailbag. All interesting stuff and covered well in the comments below, but I wanted to touch on the Aphantasia +having kids. I am also cannot visualize things/have no visual imagination. I just learned the term last year, but when I around 7 or 8 was diagnosed with dispraxia and aspergers (now called ASD), one primary reason being that I didn't engage in imaginative play like the other kids.
Jump ahead 30 years and I have 2 kids around the same age as Jose (I believe). They have wild imaginations, which really blow me away, but I have a really hard time keeping up. Play is hard bc my brain just doesn't work that way. Anyways, never met someone who also has this, so thought ide see if you have that issue with Jose and how you might get around it.
All the best!