My recommendation this week is Francis Ford Coppola’s flawed masterpiece “Megalopolis,” which he’s been working on for years, financed personally, and is bombing at the box office.
I’ll be frank — this is not a conventionally entertaining movie. It’s closer in many respects to a sci-fi silent film from 100 years ago, like “Aelita: Queen of Mars,” than to his New Hollywood masterpieces like “The Conversation.” The set design and visuals do not aim for verisimilitude, the acting is largely representational rather than naturalistic, and the dialogue does not sound like real human conversation. It’s a difficult film, a film of ideas.
But I do think the ideas are very on-brand for Slow Boring. It’s about growth versus stagnation, but also about inclusion versus demagoguery. It’s about a mass media that ignores important problems in favor of negativity and self-reference. It’s about politicians who have power and agency but suffer from self-paralysis. And like a Möbius strip or an Escher drawing, it’s a case for being unafraid to be weird that is itself extremely unafraid of being extremely weird.
Other recommendations:
Joey Politano on tariffs.
Jeff Mauer on Trump’s scams.
Darrell Owens on NIMBYs and the electoral college.
Comment of the week from John from FL: Congress should have taken the power to levy tariffs away from the President a long time ago. Using the fig leaf of “national security,” Trump used a tool past Presidents used as a scalpel and wielded it like a hatchet. Biden hasn't changed anything of substance Trump did, and has actually expanded tariffs without Congressional action.
The increase in executive power, and the associated decrease in Congressional power, is bad for our country. Unfortunately, there is no real prospect for this to reverse — each side hopes to control the Presidency and, therefore, wield the most power possible for a full four years. Once in power, the President's Party won't vote to reduce executive power, and even if the opposition party controlled both houses of Congress, the President would just veto any bill taking executive power away from the Presidency. The only still-functioning restraint on executive power is the courts, which explains much of the current vitriol directed toward the court system today.
This week’s good news includes Kamala Harris embracing permitting reform, a majority of states now trying to be sensible about smartphones in schools, stem cell transplants that could cure type one diabetes, and further confirmation that crime is falling in 2024.
This week’s question comes from lwdlyndale: Are there any industries out there that you think should be nationalized? Title insurance seems like corrupt rent seeking all the way down, same with the bail bonds industry, I don't think it would be that hard to come up with a publicly owned and controlled alternative.
There’s a few things I favor that are sort of in the neighborhood of nationalization, but I’m not sure that any of them are nationalization, per se. And I think title insurance is a good example.
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