if it requires careful social science to suss out the truth of the matter, then the truth of the matter is entirely irrelevant to the politics of the matter.
has anyone ever examined whether Occam had a quality shave?
@inertiate I don’t at all doubt that we need pro shipbuilding industrial policy. But we are building a handful of sizable ships per year. Our industry is entirely unable to compete with Korea, let alone China, not just as a matter of cost but capability and quality. The Jones Act is a very indirect, very costly kind of industrial policy that’s not delivering the goods. Our shipbuilding incapacity is a national security vulnerability. We need a more direct, effective approach.
@MonaApp why is my iphone asking “Allow Mona to find devices on local networks?”
maybe Day 2 of 2025 will be better.
@inertiate i guess i think on that rationale it’s been an abject failure. the Jones Act is imposing a lot of costs without meaningfully securing that benefit. but that’s left domestic shipbuilding so marginal and weak as an industry it hardly seems a sufficient force on its own to preserve the act.
all the happiness in the world can't buy money.
I'd like to get a better sense of urbanism in China. They obviously have some amazing trains. How are they doing on lively, walkable, transit-accessible mixed-use neighborhoods? I know they have some car-centric, towers-in-the-park-on-arterials style development. What direction are they going?
so, who defends the Jones Act?
the thing about art is that it was never about the artifact, but about how people choose to relate and organize themselves around the artifact. provenance, or at least perceived provenance, will not be irrelevant to those choices.
the behavior of the most prominent and financially successful businessman in America is maybe putting some pressure on the moderate sensible pro-business liberal niche.
Moses brings the Ten Commandments,
@akkartik i lend you money: nonbank credit
a bank lends you money: bank credit
increasingly nonbank investment funds are lending money, rather than buying equity or things that might convert to equity. “private credit” rather than “private equity”. 1/
@akkartik but what are the implications of that? less regulated “shadow banking” arrangements got a bad rep during GFC. what if private lenders lend badly? are their stakeholders prepared and capable of bearing the risk? might the “run” in some destabilizing way? /fin
explosives to delight us rather than to exterminate us. i suppose that it is a good start. happy new year.
@yrabbit i guess i didn’t read it as blame, but i’d have to reread it. my view is China’s done what it’s done, it’s been an incredibly effective development policy for China. if the US or Europe didn’t like its knock-on effects we had every capability of imposing restrictions in goods or capital markets. blaming China for policy success seems dumb to me, tho i do blame my own government for how it responded (or failed to respond) to changing conditions. https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/540.html
@ZaneSelvans yes! regulation is not a scalar. it can be well arranged or poorly done, not “more” or “less”. “deregulation” is just a move to regulate according to some default the deregulator tendentiously defines, or thinks that courts will embrace.
turning “the right” and “the left” into tribes into which you sort people, rather than just a really simplified, pretty weak, way of classifying ideas and positions, is just another way minoritarian interests divide and conquer.
the system under which firms like Boeing were built is very different from the system under which firms like Boeing have been dismantled, even though both systems get called “capitalism”.
i don’t agree with this piece’s predictions and prescriptions, but its account of the profound change in systems under notional capitalism is excellent. https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2024/11/america-china-and-the-death-of-the-international-monetary-non-system/ ht #TimSahay
[new draft post] Segmentation fault https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/12/31/segmentation-fault/index.html