LT #18 - Top Links - November 2023
The booming American economy, China stumbles, the good of bureaucracy, weak military supply chains, techno-optimism, group minds, immigration history and the interminable Israel-Palestine conflict.
Bidenomics and Bureaucracy
America needs a bigger, better bureaucracy - government spending on staff and salaries as a % of GDP is lower than ever. NEPA isn’t an example of government regulation overreach, but the lack thereof being replaces by citizen activism.
America needs more “bureaucrats”, not fewer - Vivek wants to fire 50% of federal government workers, 70% of whom work in the military and law enforcement, and whose total salaries add up to 6.6% of government spending.
The middleman economy - why realtors just took a big loss and how homebuyers might benefit - On the ongoing Biden administration’s antitrust efforts
The Roaring 20s are back - GDP is booming, inflation is down, employment is at historic highs, and income inequality is declining - so why are people so pessimistic?
Why Bidenomics bombs - Trump is winning over swing state voters wary of Biden
Cultural Evolution
Intrinsic Perspective: The egregore passes you by - Is social media making us into a group mind?
If group minds do change the behavior of their constituents, and so are not epiphenomenal (and more, presumably, like our minds), they must do so in some mechanistically explainable way. That is, just as neurons make the decision internally to fire an action potential or not, a member of a group mind would make decisions internally too. So it wouldn’t feel particularly strange—just making decisions like you normally do, but those decisions would be of a particular type that aids in the functioning of the greater group mind.
In this most radical case, for the participating parts (here, individuals), continued greater and greater participation would eventually imply subsumption into some larger consciousness, like the two re-connected hemispheres of a split-brain patient.
Cremieux: What went into the melting pot? a brief history of American immigration between 1610 and 2013. Covering each major period in history, the parts of the world that people came from, the political responses, and how this all evolved over time.
Geopolitics: America, Europe, and China
“American leadership is what holds the world together” - Biden - the return of the east-west communist-capitalist cold war is brining back many old ideas and talking points that were quite recently deemed obsolete with pax Americana.
Why America is out of ammunition - a combination defense industry consolidation, uncompetitive defense contracting, and a total absence of Pentagon monitoring of its supply chains and manufacturing base - has left the United States incredibly dysfunctional from a production perspective, and thus extremely vulnerable.
The African corridor - how Europe is securing and investing in supply chains and trade routes throughout Africa to counter China and Asia
China’s stake in European ports is astonishing; and the US is adding a new nuclear weapon to the arsenal… to retire another one?
China’s overproduction - from chips to energy to real estate - is resulting in deflation
Global fossil fuel subsidies are on the rise - governments across the world are propping up a decaying industry
Israel-Palestine
While it is important to keep other human tragedies in mind during a conflict like this - such as the ethnic genocides occurring in Sudan or Azerbaijan - this war is shaping domestic politics throughout the world, and so it is important to understand it deeply:
Satellite images show the destruction from Israel’s assault on Gaza - entire neighborhoods leveled
Gaza, beyond de-development to disposability and destruction - how absolutely destitute the lives of Gazans have been rendered over many decades
Israel’s two wars - “one is bloody but justified; the other is lower-key and wrong”
Ah, Freedom - how free-speech principles are not be applied to pro-Palestinians
Can the liberal democratic project incorporate Israel? Will it survive if it can’t? - is an ethnic nation state in direct contradiction with liberalism and democracy?
The Middle East is getting older - why to be optimistic about lessening conflict
My brother was slaughtered on October 7th. I know he would be calling for a ceasefire.
Thomas Pueyo in his Uncharted Territories substack has a great 9-part on all the aspects of the conflict, here are 3:
Who can claim Palestine? - the ancient to modern history of the Levant
Techno-Optimism - Pro and Contra
Yglesias and Smith have neat pair of articles taking two differing views:
The techno-optimist’s fallacy - Yglesias
Thoughts on techno-optimism - Smith
That’s all! See you next month!
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