it’s weird to be both blasé about inequality and concerned about the deficit.
the more concentrated are flows of aggregate income, the more the state has to supplement flows to those left out of the concentration.
to the degree aggregate income is bounded (arguably not the case!), after-tax inequality *causes* deficit spending under a plausible political economy.
it's so much easier to express resentments than resolutions.
and so much more lucrative.
@admitsWrongIfProven oh, i was just channeling Nietzsche, not making an independent observation of my own. I take the (Nietzschean) sense in which God is dead to mean rationalism disenchanted the world, we can't take that stuff seriously. is the idea of evil then also washed away by a kind of technocracy? if despite disenchantment we can still recognize evil, how should we understand the nature of the good (that cannot be Godly)?
@admitsWrongIfProven was virtue then outsourced to the state as well?
when god died, did the devil die too?
[tech notebook] APIs against dependent types in Scala https://tech.interfluidity.com/2023/12/06/apis-against-dependent-types-in-scala/index.html
// are projection types icky or cool?
the verdict of history will be wrong.
i tore off the band-aid, and a million corpses floated from the site like so many flakes of dead skin.
Make a case for antitrust, but say it is a case for "deregulation" instead, because your master thesis is that the problem is "the left" is gumming up the works.
(To be fair, measured productivity can rise in a sclerotic monopolized economy as rents are scored in GDP and the weight of them on purses can lead to underemployment and a smaller denominator. But I don't think that's what Matt's after.)
from #MattYglesias https://www.slowboring.com/p/its-not-just-biden
Text: The basic picture is that we would like Americans to be able to buy more goods and services, and we want that in a world where we no longer have a huge pool of unemployed people who could be re-employed by providing those services. So we need policies that are geared toward increasing efficiency and productivity. That could mean taking on Dem-aligned interest groups by reforming Davis-Bacon or Jones Act rules. It could mean taking on GOP-aligned interest groups like car dealerships. Or, it could mean ideologically ambiguous options, like reducing land use regulations or freer trade or making it easier to site renewable energy projects and transmission lines. But it does, more or less, mean deregulation of some kind. Which means actually focusing on things that — unlike the junk fee crackdown — aren’t on the laundry list of progressive agenda items that you’d expect a Democratic administration to pursue in any macroeconomic circumstances.
so often moral clarity
results in clear immorality.
are houses empty because they are haunted, or are they haunted because they are empty?
A history of the Monroe Doctrine, by #JaySexton https://warontherocks.com/2023/12/the-many-faces-of-the-monroe-doctrine/
@Alon @BenRossTransit @phillmv It's a very hopeful view! I hope it's right. (Even to get the chance ever to test it seems hopeful now.)
@Alon @BenRossTransit @phillmv (sorry to have had to disappear!)
before Oct 7, i agree Israelis (i think i only really talk to center left Israelis) were not thinking much about Palestians at all. it was out of site, out of mind.
we diasporites would afflict the question on them, though, when it was more comfortable to agree on the many awfulnesses of Netanyahu or dislike the subsidies and privileges of the ultra-orthodox together. 1/
@Alon @BenRossTransit @phillmv when the subject was uncomfortably broached, so also was a real chasm. that's when, from my perspective, i'd hear you just won't understand, but this is necessary and therefore ultimately it is right, 40% of them actively support the terrorists, etc. not the settlements, of course! but the walls and checkpoints, indefinitely, without any foreseeable resolution. 2/
@Alon @BenRossTransit @phillmv i never, in those conversations, heard the view that you are suggesting, that Israel can just withdraw and it would end, that would be the resolution of the conflict.
that's a view i associate more with Americans much more than my (very small!) sample of Israeli locutors, from whom I've heard justification combined with a kind of fatalistic regret more than any hope of resolution. /fin
@SteveRoth Good comment! I share your attitude, narrow things worth appreciating but as a "movement" many scoffs are merited.
@Alon @BenRossTransit i’m describing the situation before Oct 7.
@Alon @BenRossTransit That's clear. I wish Israelis thought a bit more about whether what is existential about the threat might be autoimmune more than pathogenicity. 1/
@Alon @BenRossTransit But this is a longer standing question. Whether you like the word, what liberal diaspora Jews see when they visit Israel has been an apartheid which has rendered it increasingly difficult to reconcile the liberal diaspora's ethical allegiances with its also strong allegiance to Israel. 2/
@Alon @BenRossTransit In conversations with Israelis, that tension seemed to me to have largely disappeared over time, replaced by a (deeply understandable) sense of grievance, by a kind of resignation that that what is necessary is necessary, and recourse to collective blame of Palestinians for what they say in their polls and allow to be taught in their schools. /fin
@Alon @BenRossTransit Hanania is interesting for his candid articulation of usually weak ideas that many people nevertheless hold but won't articulate. I appreciate him for that, his takes are terrible but like a live virus vaccine helpful to understand the terrible ideas that demand refutation. 1/
@Alon @BenRossTransit Re 2023 to 2011, I'm not sure the reference? From my remove, i've perceived a steady retreat into a kind of resignation that what is terrible is also necessary, and an increasing willingness to attribute of collective responsibility ("they nearly all support the terrorists") as justification for what they deem necessary. /fin
@BenRossTransit i guess i disagree. we all interact with people, but i’ve been struck by how prominent an ethos of “we may be vulnerable but we will never again be victims, and to never again be victims we will do anything and everything” has been in my interactions. israel’s weird 1000 for 1 prisoner exchange you can argue was accepting a perception of weakness to save one life, and in that sense would be anomalous, but i don’t think it expresses a virtue or overwhelms the broader trend.
