you play innocent, like you don’t know public libraries groom readers.
Some national-greatness, protectionist, left-YIMBY-ism by #RobertHockett https://roberthockett.substack.com/p/centralize-national-redevelopment
plutocracy and democracy cannot coexist. we don't need a guillotine. we just need a tax code. https://elk.zone/mas.to/@sltrib/110180784027294881
Will small businesses be squeezed between a tight labor market and a community bank credit crunch, delivering us even further into the hands of corporate overlords? Do we overestimate meaningful small biz formation by mistaking DoorDashers for Main Street moxie?
Interesting (troubling) questions at the end of this note by #MichaelGreen
In 2001 I was bitten by a street dog in Constanta, Romania. I was a foreigner, but with no fuss I was scheduled for a series of rabies shots for free.
I guess the treatment did not include the new immunoglobulin this article describes as “buying time”, but my understanding in 2001 was I had nothing to worry about since I started the shots promptly. The article does not quantify how much extra benefit the immunoglobulin is alleged to provide.
Get sick outside the US.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/7/16851134/rabies-treament-expensive-emergency-room
just one bit of the excellent economics writing in this piece from @jwmason, on arguments about the futility of industrial policy due to overcapacity narrowly, and how politically we make progress in economics policy more broadly. https://jwmason.org/slackwire/at-jacobin-yes-we-should-support-industrial-policy-and-the-green-new-deal/ ht @ryanlcooper
“There's an important truth to the idea that, in a world of long-lived specialized capital goods and constant or falling marginal costs, there is no tendency for market prices to reflect costs of produc-tion. Too much competition, and firms will sell at prices that don't recoup their fixed costs, and drive each other to bankruptcy. Too little competi-tion, and firms will recover their full costs and then some, while limiting socially useful output. No market process ensures that competition ends up at the goldilocks level in the middle.”
@Jonathanglick Yeah. That's no good. Hopelessness is always savvier than wise.
"Institutions" very broadly construed (not necessarily formal institutions) have to stand as a bridge between individual and collective (potentially systemic) agency. Mass protests are an institution, and I think they had effect during that period. (I am less sanguine about that institution going forward, though, for a variety of reasons.)
@Jonathanglick I think it's a potato chip kind of effect. We know they are wrong or at least we are liable to abuse them but they are satisfying somehow so often we succumb. Especially when people are so actively trying to sell them to us. When we watch Netflix, we are interested in characters and drama. Thinking structurally feels like work, it doesn't draw us like entertainment. If we let ourselves be persuaded eating potato chips is virtuous work, that's very convenient!
@Jonathanglick (I hope that calling explicit attention to its incoherence and counterproductiveness can help de-fuse them. But that's more a matter of hope than evidence!)
[new draft post] Systemic means it's not your fault https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/04/10/systemic-means-its-not-your-fault/index.html
if you didn't know about condensation, wouldn't the natural question be "how did the water get through the glass?"
you'd conclude that glass was porous.
on the QSite, “Substack” is trending, but if you click it you get search results for “newsletter”.
they call them badges because they badger.
“many people apparently thought Musk was part of a “Western-values/free-speech coalition” (according to Weinstein). Sure, if those Western values are of seventeenth-century ‘l’État, c’est moi’ vintage.” #CathyYoung https://www.thebulwark.com/so-much-for-elon-musk-free-speech-warrior/
gun rights are for everyone!
for the governor’s allies, they are a proud manly right to bear arms. for those the governor does not favor, carrying a firearm is a license to be killed.
everyone let’s exercise our 2nd Amendment rights!
does anybody have good dreams?
Just imagine if you could spell any word.
to describe the direction of American politics and economics as “neofeudal” used to be provocative. cf @mikethemadbiologist https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2023/04/07/tennessee-and-patriarchy/
“Yes, I Know Where the Comma Goes” #JakeRusso https://notes.jakerusso.com/2023/04/08/yes-i-know.html
“the real reason I pony up is for a quality beyond straightforward ‘utility,’ a quality I usually refer to as ‘Doesn’t Make Me Wish I Was Dead.’” #MaxRead https://maxread.substack.com/p/why-would-anyone-subscribe-to-a-social