158 Comments

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.

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Flies buzzing in my kitchen as garbage piles up and dishes sit unwashed. The bedroom is filled with piles of unfolded laundry, and every floor in the house coated in dirt. Sorry honey, Matt Yglesias has stubbornly refused to start a new podcast, so there's nothing I can do to help with the house. We'll just have to become unhoused.

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+1 - definitely tons of positive externalities to a new MY podcast.

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This isn't a real solution to getting your fix, but for a single hit - Matt was on The Bulwark podcast on Tuesday: https://podcast.thebulwark.com/matthew-yglesias-the-center-is-there-we-just-cant-hear-it

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Yeah, I'd never listened to that show until today (nor do I know much about it) but this episode was fantastic.

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January 21, 2022
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I can't wait for Matt to get big enough to poach from the NYT instead of the other way around.

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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.

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I think there's a big role for technology companies specifically as part of the secret sauce. One person that worked for a YIMBY group mentioned that a lot of momentum came from tech workers tired of being blamed for gentrification.

That seems to give you a critical mass of people inclined to the sort of systematic thinking that encourages you to be pro-housing, that punch way above their weight in terms of influencing online discourse, and have the sort of resources you need to help start a movement.

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This was definitely part of it. The rank and file of most of the big tech companies leans technocratic left, bitterly resented being blamed for a situation that was manifestly not their (er, full disclosure, our) fault, and was not culturally inclined to just sit there and take the punches.

That said, I think part of the reason that Sonja was able to get as much traction as she did in the beginning operating nearly on her own was that she herself was manifestly not a techie and was very much in the tradition of glorious weirdos coming to San Francisco to make their mark.

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Also, a lot of the tech industry has a fair amount of exposure to Asia, as a way of pointing out that things don't have to be done this way. (I.e., the "weaboo factor")

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Also the tech industry seems to have a more utopian idealism baked into the culture that is more amenable to YIMBY thought and to movement building in general. At the risk of caricaturing, the finance industry in NYC seems to have a more "sink or swim" culture that might filter down into how they approach the housing situation.

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I’ve been heavily involved with the YIMBY movement in SF since the beginning and find this all very accurate. However, I'd point out that though we never had a Robert Moses, there were indeed freeway revolts in SF. We don't hear about them so much because they were successful, sooner (the Circumferential Expressway through Glen Park and Laguna Honda was never built due to neighborhood opposition -- white mom power!) or later (what was left of the Embarcadero Freeway was torn down after the '89 earthquake).

I agree that we hear more about the redevelopment of the Fillmore/Western Addition these days, but that's also more directly relevant. A lot of YIMBY's work is convincing people that "upzoning" is not the same as "eminent-domaining Black neighborhoods to build high rises."

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There's a (tiny) sculpture on Gough at Washington commemorating the freeway revolt, specifically the plans to extend 101 from the Central Expressway down Gough and Franklin to Lombard, and eventually the Golden Gate Bridge (rich people power!).

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Yeah I definitely learned about the SF freeway revolts in one of my urban planning classes.

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I dunno if it's just your social circle, but when I first moved out here in 1999, to go to grad school at Berkeley, I _absolutely_ met people who would rant at the drop of the hat about the destruction that had been wrought by the Embarcadero Freeway, how much they hated the MacArthur Maze and all of its smaller relatives, and how important / great it was that we didn't rebuild it after the quake.

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Nothing wrong with "great person theory" in my view. It doesn't explain everything but in some situations it explains a lot.

Why do Trauss and Fierce loathe each other?

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They tried to run an organization together. To put it mildly their leadership styles did not mesh well.

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The quality of this comment is cartoonishly above replacement level for this blog and I want you to know that. This is like Mike Trout stuff

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This is probably not the average for my comments, but in this case it happened to be a topic that I had some first-hand knowledge of. :)

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January 21, 2022
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It's surprising to everyone! And specifically Manhattan vs San Francisco is even worse. People do not understand how much of Manhattan has been legally frozen in amber: genuinely evil people like the Greenwich Village Historical Preservation Society have been instrumental in abusing the landmarks laws to landmark entire neighborhoods. All of those falling-apart 4-6 story walkups on the lower east side that sit on top of literally billions of dollars in mass transit infrastructure? They'll be there until the heat death of the universe. Same with all of those cute 3-story brownstones on the upper west side and of course the upper east side gets redeveloped over everyone's dead bodies. This is the reason that the fights over things like Hudson Yards and the Inwood rezoning have been so bloody: we're literally fighting over the scraps that are left.

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Part of why this doesn't feel true is that many of these areas are already far denser than much of SF. We still need to rezone these places to allow for even denser housing, but the vast majority of these are at least 5 or more stories while SF still has so many neighborhoods that are all 2 stories or less (along with the many private backyards).

NYC needs to build more, but the starting density is so much better than SF that people don't feel as much urgency.

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Even putting aside the abuse of landmark laws, it's worth pointing out that NYC (especially Manhattan) is a good bit older than SF so there is likely more local attachment for historical or sentimental reasons to the existing built environment. Much of SF was destroyed by an earthquake in 1906, meaning there are a lot fewer buildings left from the pre-automobile era.

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So move to Flushing or Long Island City. Tons of new housing there. Nothing entitles anyone to a place in Manhattan. I'm sure there's housing you can afford in the Bronx too, or New Rochelle.

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As it happens I am already a homeowner in Manhattan, and am not personally in the market for a new unit. And even if I were, if anything I wrote gave you the impression that I gave a single goddamn about your opinion on where I should or should not live, let me assure you that you were and are deeply mistaken and I cordially invite you to go pound sand.

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I am exactly as entitled to a place in Manhattan as you are to prevent a developer from building me one.

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I don’t think anyone’s preventing builders from building. If anything the 100 story towers on 57th St would say the opposite. I would like more 100 story buildings in the outer boroughs, including on my block. Not sure why we’re arguing about this since we seem on the same page. Large developments take time and money, and the sell-out takes more time. Become a developer.

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Then you should spend some time to actually look at the process for getting anything built, before commenting on it again.

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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 :)

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Yes please!!!!

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“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.

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"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!

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"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

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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..

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It's my sense that programs like this one for welders (https://www.tcc.edu/programs/welding/) where they support local industries (in this example, to train Hampton Roads residents to work in the local shipyards are pretty common. Huntington Ingalls needs welders to build carriers so many of those types of programs have explicit industry support or a pathway to a job while taking class.

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I think the community college level is a different ballgame from the K12 level with respect to this issue.

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I'll tie this together with Matt's favorite subject of housing. I have a friend in residential /office development and have been following the discussion around high(er) performance building for a few years. Everyone in that industry complains about the lack of people in the skilled trades (electrician/plumbing/HVAC/etc), but the industry does not have a geographic center or huge players like Google/Toyota/Boeing to drive a community college program. I don't know how to quantify the overall impact to housing supply, but anecdotally there seems to be one.

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Another one is FAME, originally started by Toyota in communities where their manufacturing facilities exist, but now expanded to include other cities with any manufacturing facility that wants to train up advanced manufacturing engineers. https://www.themanufacturinginstitute.org/workers/fame/ They have dozens of programs now across many states, in partnership with 2-year colleges.

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Yes agree. The leading employer in my hometown is a packaging equipment manufacturer that has long worked closely with the local community vocational technical college on worker training.

https://www.douglas-machine.com/

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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.

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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.

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sad to see Meatloaf join me. RIP

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You took the words right out of my mouth.

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And Louie Anderson

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He provided a critical rare moment of pop culture unity between my core Boomer parents and the weird Xer/Millennial cusper cohorts that I'm a part of with each of his Bat Out Of Hell albums. Great memories, RIP indeed.

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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.

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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.

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There will be more mailbags!

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American chattel slavery was entirely compatible with non-agricultural pursuits that might have thrived in the west.

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They though slavery would keep moving because it had been doing just that throughout the 19th Century. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was just the latest in a long line of expansionist efforts by politicians to remove legal barriers.

Also, see the comments by Foner: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4i3099.html

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But wasn't slavery as an important fact of life confined to plantation agriculture and that petered out west of Central Texas? How much slavery was there (tending to be) in Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska?

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"Important fact of life" is pretty ambiguous. Even if it was not as prevalent west of TX at that time, the rhetoric and actions of the pro-slave contingent gave every reason to believe they would try to spread it if not legally barred.

The only states west of TX in 1860 were CA and OR, both free from their inception. The rest of the space was relatively lightly settled, and most of the settlers seemed to have been from free states, but there were a non-trivial number of people enslaved there. MO increased pretty substantially since the MO Compromise allowed slavery in 1820: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_census#Population_of_U.S._states_and_territories

Kansas/Nebraska became flashpoints immediately after the Kansas-Nebraska Act, so who knows how that would have turned out.

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Good enough to establish that each side could have feared/hoped that slavery would spread unless legally prohibited. Still, were the South's hope so strong that it felt it could not survive without the possibility of continued spread?

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If new states kept being admitted as Free States, eventually they would dominate the Senate and have enough votes there and in state legislatures to ban slavery via Constitutional Amendment.

Culturally, Romanticism created/supported metaphors like "life must continue to grow or die," making talk of limiting the growth of slavery feel like an existential threat to its continued viability.

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And so they fired on Ft Sumpter!

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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.

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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.'

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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.

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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!

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