LT #19 - Top Links - January 2024
Good news, progressivism vs liberalism vs leftism, inflation theories, energy transition, British stagnation, Hispanic and African migration, Chinese capital crunch, American economic growth, and more
Good news to start 2024!
66 good news stories you didn’t hear about in 2023 - some incredible news across:
healthcare (cancer, malaria, AIDS, sanitation, obesity)
energy (solar installations, geothermal, electric cars)
environment (conservation, animal rights, pollution, endangered species)
social issues (female education, human rights, lgbtq)
the economy (soft landing, global poverty)
The 2024 economic outlook: growing confidence - The US economy is defying expectations: declining inflation without growing joblessness or a recession.
The new geography of American Growth: led by Florida, Texas, Idaho, Nevada, and Utah - and also major cities everywhere.
Chartbook 259: Germany’s CO2 emissions plunge - but it is not all that it seems - Much of this is due to a dramatic draw down of coal usage that spiked after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Are global harvest’s keeping pace in a warming world? - amazingly, yes!!
Economy
ACX: Does capitalism beat charity? - No, no it does not.
Apricitas Economics: The economic fallout of student forbearance ending - a variety of factors come together to help reduce inflation, decrease the total student debt burden, and also, increase defaults and bankruptcies
At least five interesting things to start your week from Noah Smith
San Francisco’s street market debacle helped destroy its downtown
The fight over real wages
Why recessions aren’t common anymore
American homelessness is a California problem
TikTok is a silent engine of Chinese propaganda
The world
We can already stop climate change if we want to - Tomas Pueyo. 1) Stop adding CO2 2) sequester existing CO2 and 3) cool off the earth. The technology is now there.
Where the war in Ukraine is headed - deadlock.
Modern-day weapons — drones, portable long-range anti-tank missiles, precision artillery, etc. — are able to destroy armored vehicles very easily. When combined with dense minefields laid by artillery launchers, these anti-armor weapons have made it extremely difficult for armored vehicles to advance rapidly. The kind of rapid, tank-led blitzkriegs that defined World War 2 are mostly a thing of the past, at least without overwhelming airpower. Land war has sort of gone back to what it was in WW1 — a slow grinding fight for small bits of territory where firepower and resources matter more than brilliant maneuvers.
Chartbook Top Links 339 Weapons of the weak, China’s problems, and war’s strange effects in Turkey - shipping avoids the Suez Canal, foreign investors are selling off their Chinese stocks, and Russians are buying up (and inflating) Turkish real estate.
How broken Britain might reconverge - Tooze discusses the report “Ending Stagnation: a new economic strategy for Britain” that he was a commissioner on and highlights a variety of obstacles facing the British economy.
Assuming that owners are in general interested in maximizing returns, a long tail points to weak structures of corporate governance. What is particularly striking in the UK case is the extent of foreign ownership - foreign ownership of UK public firms rose from just over 10 per cent in 1990 to over 55 per cent in 2020 - and the extent to which firms lack a single controlling share owners, who would be in a position to oversee management strategy and reap the full rewards of success.
Migration
Hispanics are the new Irish - Noah Smith on how Hispanic economic outcomes in the US are converging on those of the rest of the country.
All futurism is Afrofuturism - Noah Smith
There will come a time, not too long from now, when countries around the world are clamoring for African migrants instead of trying to keep them out.
LeftTimes Curation Philosophy Update
I’m always tinkering with the publications I’m aggregating from, but as I’ve reflected on the organic changes I’ve made in 2023, I’m realizing there’s a couple more fundamental and philosophical changes that I should name and explain explicitly.
More independent writers, less publications.
Newsletters are making a comeback, becoming a primary medium of curated, high-quality news and opinion editorials. The best journalists are finding they can parlay reputation and skills into greater editorial freedom and personal income on independent platforms like Substack rather than through traditional publications like the New York Times.
This trend has made it easier for consumers to separate the wheat from the chaff. Curating the highest quality content has always been my goal with LeftTimes, and thus, I’m finding I can consistently get higher-quality by hand-picking specific people rather than publications.
More liberals, less leftists.
Since the creation of LeftTimes in 2018, much of the world has changed (covid-19, Floyd, Russia-Ukraine, China, high-interest rates, solar technology, AI, monopoly power, and more).
Progressivism from the Sanders-Corbyn era has also evolved. In the 2020s, this ideological coalition has increasingly divided over questions of free speech, technology, and geopolitics.
More broadly, many great writers have been ostracized by their traditional blue-progressive and red-conservative platforms for breeching the tribal orthodoxy.
Nate Silver has a great piece (on Substack) describing this trend:
In response to these trends, a new ideological coalition is emerging, particularly on Substack, variously called liberalism, the gray tribe, enlightened centrism, and effective altruism.
What these individuals from diverse ideological backgrounds have in common is a deep belief in the value of rationally engage with diverse thinkers in pursuit of truth - not enforced ideological, tribal orthodoxy in the name of defeating political and cultural enemies.
My curation decisions of LeftTimes is reflecting this trend - with fewer ‘leftists’ and more ‘liberals’ - which I’m also now describing as ‘liberal’ rather than ‘progressive.’
I hope you eppreciate the changes!
- Yoshi
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