LT #20 - Top Links - March 2024
Politics as chaos, politics as trauma, China's climate control, wars upon wars, history and civilizational collapse, booming economy or polycrisis or all of the above?
The Most Interesting Ideas of 2023 - Erik Torenberg shares his top links of the past year.
Reason for Climate Optimism?
China is now in control of the future of global temperatures as both the greatest carbon emitter and the biggest green energy economy.
A bunch of handy charts about climate - Noahpinon
Ancient Upheavals Show how to Geoengineer a Stable Climate - Patrick Moller
China is building more coal plants but might burn less coal - Sustainability by the Numbers
China is the clean energy driver - Adam Tooze
American Economy - Good or Bad?
BIG by Matt Stoeller: The Fed is Behind the Capital One / Discover merger
“The holy grail is to be an issuer with our own network.”
- Capital One co-founder and CEO Richard Fairbank
Why small developers are getting squeezed out of the housing market - Coby Lefkowitz
Potential Criminal Activity Revealed in the Kroger-Albertsons Merger - a banal example of criminal white collar activity in the grocer sector. How much does activity like this reflect decay in the core of the American economy?
And yet… The US Keeps Beating Growth Expectations - Apricitas Economics
Noah Smith on why Americans are better off than 2019 - in part thanks to abundant energy - and yet, don't seem to think so. Is it vibes or interest rates?
Maybe it is something else?
Trump - chaos, trauma, and thus, 2024 favorite?
With the 2024 election in full swing, it’s worth understanding why Trump is performing so well, and increasingly looks likely to be the next US president. Why?
First, a reminder: A Vote For Trump is a Vote for Chaos, however…
Podcast: Plain English with Derek Thompson - Why “The Need for Chaos” is Eating American Politics: Chaos is not Trump’s core weakness, but his crucial appeal. How might we understand voter’s desire for chaos as rational? Maybe through anti-elitism stemming from resentment at losing prosperity/status and hopelessness for change.
Adam Tooze discusses how immigration as a particularly salient crisis for some people - more so than covid-19, climate, war, or the economy for others - and how this drives these people to vote right-wing.
Scott Alexander on Astral Codex Ten provides an excellent breakdown of how we might understand the chaotic emotions and communications in politics as the psychopolitics of trauma.
I think a lot of people feel persecuted and threatened by politics, a lot of people feel emotionally abused by politics, and a lot of people feel like they’ve had vicarious experiences of people they identify with being harmed by politics. This isn’t enough for a formal PTSD diagnosis… But it might be enough to start doing some really unhealthy things to their brains.
On Civilization and Societal Collapse
Samo Burja, in Palladium, published two excellent pieces that grapple with the epistemic challenges of how we even go about trying to understand the status and health of the current civilization we live in.
Our Knowledge of History Decays Over Time
Unfortunately, on average our understanding of any given period will slowly get worse over time. Our direct evidence will gradually decay, with some temporary reversals as lost material is rediscovered. But over the long term, it is impossible for rediscoveries to outpace losses. Meanwhile, the quality of historians’ arguments and interpretations will vary somewhat, sometimes getting better and sometimes getting worse.
The key dynamic here is the loss of the subtle social technologies that allow us to solve the succession problem. Running a large and complex institution requires skills which are often difficult to fully pass on. How can a successful founder ensure a successor who leads as competently as they did? The succession problem is the central obstacle to transferring the ownership and knowledge of institutions from generation to generation.
Also, Fall of Civilizations published another excellent 4 hour piece on Egypt and the fall of Pharaohs.
War
Chartbook: Adam Tooze provides visuals, data, and commentary elaborating on the extent of Gaza’s destruction and the tremendous loss of territory of Myanmar’s junta, as well as, disaster brewing in the Congo and how Congress is holding up the defense-industrial boom
Yglesias on misunderstanding antisemitism in America - provides a bunch of data showing that, in fact, American liberals opposed to Israel are amongst the least anti-Semitic populations in the world.
Heather Cox Richardson on pivotal events exactly 10 years ago that foreshadowed the Ukraine-Russia war and personally embroiled both current presidential candidates.
To understand Russia’s motivations, it’s worth more deeply understanding The Ghost of Poland's Past - Uncharted Territories:
That’s it for now. See you next month! - Yoshi
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