China's economic growth and its relationship with the Solow model. The views on stimulus and fiscal stimulus by Hayek and von Mises. Exploring Vivik Ravis Swami's ideas and the limitations of 'hexapodia is the key insight'. The potential future of globalization and the growth potential of India. Differences between the party and the aristocracy. The importance of institutions and property rights in economic development.

Key Insights:* Critics: Cato-style libertarians, including AEI’s Michael Strain. The last die-hard classic Milton Friedman-style economic libertarians—and starting in 1975, Milton Friedman would say, every three years, that the Swedish social democratic model was going to collapse in the next three years.* Critics: Progressives—Biden is a tool of the neoliberals, and secretly Robert Rubin in disguise. People like David Dayen. They seem to be going through the motions—half-heartedly making their arguments to try to shift the Overton Window, but knowing deep down that Biden is about as good as they are going to get* Critics: Ezra Klein and the other supply-side progressives, worried that Bidenomics in danger of supporting too much procedural obstacles through “community engagement” and “consensus building”, and will wind up pissing its money away without boosting America’s productive capacity.* Critics: The Economist magazine and some of the people at the Financial Times, writing about how the Biden administration’s policies are “mismanaging the China relationship” and raising “troubling questions”—that decoupling will never work, that Chinese manufactured products are too good and too cheap to pass up; that you can’t correct for for externalities; & c.* Critics: Macro policy was unwise, inflationary, and pissed away on income support resources that ought to have been used to boost industrial development. But Biden may skate through because he was undeservedly lucky.* The real critique: Implementation—the U.S. government does not have the state capacity to pick or subsidize “winners” in the sense of companies whose activities have large positive externalities.* To deal with (6), supporters of Bidenomics need to (a) figure out what the limits of U.S. state capacity are, and (b) shape CHIPS and IRA spending to stay within them; meanwhile, critics need to (c) come up with evidence of overreach on attempts to use state capacity to do things.* What is valid in the criticisms of Bidenomics is part of a more general critique—that we have a society in which there are limited sources of social power, namely, primarily money, secondarily a somewhat threadbare rule of law, tertiarily a somewhat shredded state administrative staff. We need other sources of social power—like unions, civic organizations, and so forth that aren’t just politicians and NGOs that use direct-to-donor advertising to terrorize and guilt-trip their funders, and that take government money and use it to do nothing constructive at all.* Friendshoring rather than onshoring.* Japan is potentially an enormous productive asset for the U.S. to draw on.* And, of course: Hexapodia!References:* Libby Cantrill & al.: CHIPS & Science Act ‘The Closest We’ve Had to Industrial Policy’ in Decades…* Economist: The lessons from America’s astonishing economic record: ‘The more that Americans think their economy is a problem in need of fixing, the more likely their politicians are to mess up…. Subsidies… risk dulling market incentives to innovate… [and] will also entrench wasteful and distorting lobbying <https://www.economist.com/business/2023/04/10/americas-800bn-climate-splurge-is-feeding-a-new-lobbying-ecosystem>…* Economist: The world is in the grip of a manufacturing delusion: ‘How to waste trillions of dollars…. Governments… view… factories as a cure for the ills of the age—including climate change, the loss of middle-class jobs, geopolitical strife and weak economic growth—with an enthusiasm and munificence surpassing anything seen in decades…* Henry Farrell: Industrial policy and the new knowledge problem: ‘Modern industrial policy… [requires] investment and innovation decisions [that] involve tradeoffs that market actors are poorly equipped to resolve…. [Yet] we lack the kinds of expertise that we need…. This lack of knowledge is in large part a perverse by-product of the success of Chicago economists’ rhetoric…. Elite US policy schools… have by and large converged on a framework derived from a watered down version of neoclassical economics…. New skills, including but not limited to network science, material science and engineering, and use of machine learning would be one useful contribution towards solving the new knowledge problem…* Rana Foroohar: New rules for business in a post-neoliberal world: ‘“Reimagining the Economy”… by economists Dani Rodrik and Gordon Hanson…. The Roosevelt Institute… progressive politicos (many from within the administration) gathered to discuss the details of America’s industrial policy… the opposite of trickle-down…* Andy Haldane: The global industrial arms race is just what we need: ‘Manufacturing is undergoing a revival around the world…. An arms race to invest in decarbonising technologies is in fact exactly what the world needs to tackle two global externalities—the climate crisis and the investment drought…* Greg Ip: This Part of Bidenomics Needs More Economics: Massive sums are being spent on industrial policy with little guidance from economic theory or research…* Réka Juhász & al.: The Who, What, When, and How of Industrial Policy: A Text-Based Approach: ‘We create an automated classification algorithm and categorize policies from a global database…* Ezra Klein & Robinson Meyer: Biden’s Anti-Global Warming Industrial Policy After One Year…* Anne O. Krueger: Why Is America Undercutting Japan?: ‘United States… wasteful, inefficient industrial policies…. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the CHIPS and Science Act… directly threaten the Japanese economy (and many other US “friends”)…* Paul Krugman: ‘I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there's pushback against the observation of a Biden manufacturing boom…. The usual suspects claimed that a green energy transition would require huge economic sacrifice. Seeing this much investment in response to subsidies that are still only a fraction of 1% of GDP suggests otherwise…* Nathaniel Lane & Rék Juhász: Economics Must Catch Up on Industrial Policy: ‘Industrial policy… is back in a big way…. Governments are trying to improve the performance of key business sectors. Can they manage to do so without subverting competition and subsidizing special interests?…* Dani Rodrik: An Industrial Policy for Good Jobs: ‘A modern approach to industrial policy must… target “good-jobs externalities,” in addition to the traditional learning, technological, and national security considerations…* Noah Smith: ‘David Dayen and Marshall Steinbaum completely misrepresented Ezra Klein's "supply-side liberal" position. This is not good faith debate at all…* Noah Smith: ‘Oh, and notice that this framing [from David Dayen]—“The claim made here is that the dumb U.S. workforce fell behind, and now TSMC has to make up for it with Taiwanese workers…”—treats job skills as a test of inborn IQ, rather than something that has to be learned and taught. Wild…* Noah Smith: ‘Neoliberalism: a thread…. Markets as the fundamental generators of prosperity, and government as the way to distribute that prosperity more equitably…. Government can't shoulder the entire burden…. We need additional, quasi-independent institutions, like unions…. Industrial policy is underrated, both at the national and the local level. Neoliberalism under-emphasizes science policy, for example. I want a Big Push for science-driven growth…. Can the government "pick winners"? Yes. The government *must* pick winners. Green energy and other zero-carbon technologies being chief among the things we must pick…* Michael Spence: In Defense of Industrial Policy: ‘The real question is not whether industrial policy is worth pursuing, but how to do it well…+, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0/mode/1up> Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Key Insights:* Brad has a new microphone!* Noah has jet lag: he is just back from Japan.* Brad has jet lag: he is just back from Australia.* Perhaps inflation’s ebbing has not yet made its way into the minds of people when they answer pollsters.* We reject the hypothesis that it is because of lagging real incomes.* More difficult mortgage borrowing and positive interest payments on car loans are a thing, but really unlikely to be a big thing.* It seems likely that 2024 will be, if not “morning in America” from a consumer confidence in America, a crepuscular pre-dawn lightening in America.* Noah's theory springing out of Rick Perlstein's take on the 1970s—that we are replaying it:* Even in the 1970s, it was not inflation but “social upheaval”* Half “Blacks and women are forgetting their place”* Half “things are very insecure and unsafe”. * The 1970s saw right-wing revolts* The 1970s saw left-wing disillusionment* And then along came inflation!* Is this cycle repeating itself?* Our guess is that “vibecession” has peaked—but we worry that Kyla Scanlon may be right in thinking it has deeper roots. This is a much more unequal society for white guys than we had in the 1970s.* Brad DeLong trusts center-left economists, and they say: (4), (5), (6), and (7).* Noah Smith summarizes: Normie Libs keep winning…* Noah Smith summarizes: Normie Libs keep winning because they mark their beliefs to market and trust empirical data…* Hexapodia!References:* Barry Eichengreen: The US Economy Is Up, so Why Is Biden Down? <https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/biden-popularity-lagging-strong-us-economy-by-barry-eichengreen-2023-08>: ‘The outcome of the US presidential election next year, like most before it, will almost certainly turn on domestic economic conditions, or, more precisely, on perceptions of economic conditions. And recent polling suggests that the disconnect between perception and reality may be President Joe Biden’s biggest problem…. Now that personal consumption expenditure inflation is back at roughly 3%, down by nearly two-thirds from its peak, will Biden get more credit for his economic achievements? The answer will turn, first, on whether there is widespread public recognition that inflation has receded. Any such realization will not be immediate…. This slowness of beliefs to adapt to actual economic conditions is likely to be even more pronounced in an era of fake news…* Darren Grant: When it comes to the economy, everything’s great and no one’s happy <https://www.vox.com/money/2023/8/10/23824742/real-wages-economy-inflation-no-money>: ‘Why a supposedly good economy is making so many people miserable…. Pollsters regularly ask Americans how they think the economy is doing, and whether it is getting better or worse. Both measures have drifted downward since late 2020 and cratered this past year. Everything’s amazing, almost—and nobody’s happy. This is new. Public opinion had historically followed the business cycle, declining in recessions and improving in expansions like the one we’re experiencing now. For observers of the economy, this divergence was akin to being lost in the woods. They trotted out all sorts of explanations for our unexpected pessimism…. What’s going on isn’t vibes…. People’s pay hasn’t been keeping pace with inflation…* Mike Konczal: ‘It’s tough to judge noise <https://twitter.com/mtkonczal/status/1689625642046771200> from signal in monthly analysis…. A way to get around monthly myopia: look at longer periods and past used cars and shelter prices. How does 3/6-month ‘supercore’ measure look? That’s what the Fed is doing, and it looks fantastic. We’ve seen dips since 2021, but not like this. 3-month lower than prepandemic!…* Paul Krugman: ‘Lots of number-crunching out there <https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1689638373403803648>, but this was another very good inflation report. The debate over whether disinflation requires a large bulge in unemployment is essentially over. No, it doesn’t. But there’s still a debate about how we did this, which matters. One story is that disinflation reflects economic normalization—recombobulation after the disruptions of the pandemic. The other is that we’ve been sliding down a highly nonlinear Phillips curve, which is nearly vertical in a tight labor market. Why this matters: the economy is looking very strong. Atlanta GDPnow at 4.1%! If the Phillips curve is very steep, this could mean reaccelerating inflation. If we’re mostly seeing an end to pandemic disruptions, that risk is lower. Not the risks we thought we’d be facing!…* Project Syndicate: The Long Life of Inflation <https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/the-long-life-of-inflation>: ‘Michael R. Strain… [says] “underlying inflation is still double the Fed’s target” and “financial conditions aren’t tightening as much as people assume.”… [The Fed] should continue to raise rates until “there is clear evidence that core inflation is on a path to its 2% target,” even if that makes recession more likely. Mario I. Blejer… and Piroska Nagy Mohácsi… also see serious risks… “distorted incentives and massive inherited imbalances”—fueled partly by populist governance and central-bank interventionism—“any celebration of progress in combating inflation must be cautious indeed.”… Jeffrey Frankel… [says] “inflation need not reach 2% immediately.” By “stabilizing inflation at 3–4%, with 2% as a longer-term goal,” the Fed can avoid “the social costs of a serious contraction.”… “There is no way, under any theory or precedent, that rate hikes beginning in January 2022 could have knocked back inflation by July of the same year,” argues James K. Galbraith…. Current macroeconomic conditions warrant the opposite response: not just “cutting interest rates,” but also “strengthening fiscal support for household incomes and well-paying jobs”…* Kyla Scanlon: Why Do People Think the Economy is Bad?: ‘ 'Genuine answer to a genuine question.... It's all convoluted and loud... and therefore, overwhelming, which creates a sort of mental-checking-out.... I don't want to be all frothy mouth "mainstream media bad" but... there is some stuff to say about coverage.... Lack of safety... stems from general fears over the future that haunt pretty much every generation. The plans are eroding.... Uncertainty around mortgage rates. It's the building blocks of inequality, lack of ownership either of land or a home, lack of community, etc etc.... Soft and hard data has diverged wildly...+, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0/mode/1up> Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Key Insights:* Brad’s microphone is dying, and a new one is on order.* However, 75% of the talking on this episode is Noah: he came loaded for bear.* Although Noah has not yet read Acemoglu & Johnson’s Power & Progress, he nevertheless has OPINIONS!* Friedrich von Hayek was right when he pointed out that we could not know the shape of future technologies* Particularly, we cannot know where, as new technologies develop, they will settle in the balance between tacit-local and formal-generalizable-centralizable knowledge with respect to what is needed to make them actually work.* Thus the ex ante error rate in figuring out in advance whether a branch of knowledge is labor-augmenting or labor-replacing is high.* Better not to try to channel R&D in labor-augmenting directions: we have powerful, well-known, useful, and reliable tools for improving equity: use them rather than trying to guide future technologies in a labor-augmenting equality-promoting direction.* Noah will read Power & Progress before mid-August.* Brad will try to come up with examples of technologies other than the power loom that we wish had been adopted more slowly.* Hexapodia!References:* Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson: Power & Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology & Prosperity <https://www.amazon.com//dp/B0BD4DV59F>* Daron Acemoglu & Pascual Restrepo: “The Race Between Machine & Man: Implications of Technology for Growth, Factor Shares & Employment” <https://www.nber.org/papers/w22252>* Daisuke Adachi, Daiji Kawaguchi, & Yukiko Saito: Robots and Employment: Evidence from Japan, 1978-2017 <https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/etidpaper/20051.htm>* Jay Dixon, Bryan Hong, & Lynn Wu: The Robot Revolution: Managerial and Employment Consequences for Firms * Karen Eggleston, Yong Suk Lee, & Toshiaki Iizuka: Robots and Labor in the Service Sector: Evidence from Nursing Homes* Katja Mann & Lukas Püttmann: Benign Effects of Automation: New Evidence from Patent Texts <https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2959584>* Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens: The zombie robot argument lurches on: There is no evidence that automation leads to joblessness or inequality<https://www.epi.org/publication/the-zombie-robot-argument-lurches-on-there-is-no-evidence-that-automation-leads-to-joblessness-or-inequality/> * Arjun Ramani & Zhengdong Wang: “Why transformative artificial intelligence is really, really hard to achieve” <https://thegradient.pub/why-transformative-artificial-intelligence-is-really-really-hard-to-achieve/>* Noah Smith: American workers need lots and lots of robots: With the power of automation, our workers can win. Without it, they're in trouble* Melline Somers, Angelos Theodorakopoulos, & Kerstin Hötte: The fear of technology-driven unemployment and its empirical base <https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/fear-technology-driven-unemployment-and-its-empirical-base>* Melline Somers, Angelos Theodorakopoulos, & Kerstin Hötte: Technology and jobs: A systematic literature review <https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/publications/technology-and-jobs-a-systematic-literature-review/> +, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0/mode/1up> Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Key Insights:* Rome did fall. It did not merely “transform”.* Across Eurasia, from 150 to 800 or so there was a pronounced “Late-Antiquity Pause” in terms of technological progress and even the maintenance of large-scale social organization.* There was a proper “Dark Age” only in Britain, Germany, the Low Countries, and France—with Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia being edge cases.* There was no Dark Age at all in what had been the Roman East—what became what we call the Byzantine Empire and what called itself the βασιλεία Ῥωμαίων—Basileia Rhōmaiōn—but the Byzantine Empire was definitely caught up in the “Late-Antiquity Pause”.* The Roman Empire starts to decline in the 165-180 reign of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Population, levels of production, trade, construction, the sophistication of the division of labor, political order, the ability of the army to protect the people from barbarian and Persian raids and armies—all of these begin a pronounced downward trend.* After 450 there was no real thing called the Roman Empire in what had been its western provinces—no Roman tax-collecting bureaucracy, no administrative bureaucracy to try to make decrees of Roman governors facts on the ground at other than sword’s point, no army large enough to keep any barbarian tribe from going wherever it wanted whenever it wanted.* After 476, there was nobody even claiming to be Roman Emperor in Italy—not even in the swamp-protected Adriatic coastal fortress of Ravenna, to which Emperor Honorius had fled from the Visigoths in 402.* The city of Rome itself was never a capital after 476, and was only garrisoned by Byzantine soldiers from 536 to 774.* After the Fall of Rome, in what had been the western provinces of the Roman Empire trade, the division of labor, urbanization, production of conveniences and luxuries, population, and total production were at a much lower level indeed—it truly was a “Dark Age”.* But thighbones tell us that the adults who lived in the Dark Age were taller and better-fed than their predecessors under the Roman Empire.* Perhaps this was because the end of the Roman Empire had seen the end of a cruel and oppressive aristocracy, and was a liberation of the people—there were many fewer slaves, and many many fewer plantation slaves worked to near-death.* But it is more likely that life became nastier and brutish and more dangerous, but that depopulation did increase farm and pasture size and so produce better nutrition even though the collapse of the Roman Empire’s economic network meant lower overall average living standards—the average farmholder was distressed enough by the collapse of the Pax Romana that he was willing to give up his and his family’s free status and become a bound serf of the local landlord,* Brad believes that Gregory of Tours was much worse as a prose stylist than Cicero or Tacitus—or great-great uncle Ernest, for that matter. Noah is neutral.* King Roger the Scylding at his hall of Heorot in the early 500s had no books, and was really happy whenever a bard would come around.* “After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain” is perhaps the best sentence of English prose ever written.* People should not overclaim with respect to the depth and spread of the post-Western Roman “Dark Age”.* People should not pretend that the Roman Empire in the west did not fall, and that there was no “Dark Age”.* Non-economic historians need to do the reading—to consider what we know and can learn about population levels, and about the productivity levels, trade patterns, and commodity types that were the fabric of the lives of the people who actually lived. People count, so you need to count people.* Economic progress is real progress.* Literacy is a good thing, not a neutral thing.* People who claim that valuing literacy is “frankly, kind of racist” should delete their accounts and go away.* Hexapodia!!References:* Erich Auerbach: Mimesis* Cicero: In Catalinam I* Brad DeLong: Þe Late-Antiquity Pause, & þe “Bright Ages!”* Brad DeLong: Yes. Rome Did Fall* Matthew Gabriele & David M. Perry: You Gotta Do the Reading, Man* Gregory of Tours: History of the Franks* Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms* Willem Jongman: Gibbon Was Right* Willem Jongman: The new economic history of the Roman Empire* Willem Jongman & al..: Health and wealth in the Roman Empire* Noah Smith: Was there such a thing as a “Dark Age” in Europe?* Noah Smith: Why didn’t they write anything down?* Ronald Syme: Tacitus* Tacitus: Annals of Imperial Rome+, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0/mode/1up> Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Key Insights:* The global trade network is immensely valuable…* Friendshoring is not deglobalization, but raher shift-globlization…* Brad was stupid in 2005 in thinking “passing the baton of hegemony” constructively and progressively was a possibility…* Countries have no gratitude, and only remember what is convenient…* William James sought for “the moral equivalent of war” to mobilize civilizational energies for good and progress; and a Cold War certainly counts…* As Zhou Enlai said on similar issues: “it is too soon to tell”…* We both hope that America and China will soon be friends again—but the balloon freakout makes us pessimistic…* Hexapodia!!References:* Sophia Ankel: China flew spy balloons over the US while Trump was president, but nobody realized until after he left office, reports say…* Steve Clemons: 🟡 The red balloon…* Damon Linker: America the Unserious…* Noah Smith: China's industrial policy has mostly been a flop…* Noah Smith: Three books about the technology wars…* Noah Smith: Friend-shoring vs. "Buy American"…* Noah Smith: You are now living through Cold War 2…+, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0/mode/1up> Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Key Insights:* Yes, it is possible to talk about everything in an hour…* We are not very far apart on what the Fed is doing and should be doing—there is only a 100 basis-point disagreement…* Miles would be 100% right about the proper stance of monetary policy if he were in control of the Fed…* Miles is not in control of the Fed…* Thus Brad thinks that asymmetric risks strongly militate for pausing for six months, and then moving rapidly…* Smart people need to think much more about how to increase love…* Remember Robot Tarktil!* Noah Smith’s mother is a good friend of “Murderbot” author Martha Wells…* Hexapodia!!References:* Robert Barsky, Christopher House, & Miles Kimball: Sticky-Price Models and Durable Goods <https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.97.3.984>* Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson: The Narrow Corridor <https://archive.org/details/TheNarrowCorridor/mode/1up>* Mancur Olson: The Rise & Decline of Nations <https://archive.org/details/risedeclineofnat00olso/page/209/mode/2up>* Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan <https://archive.org/details/leviathan00hobb_1>* John Locke: Second Treatise of Government <https://archive.org/details/criticaleditionw0000unse>* Edward Bellamy: Looking Backward <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Backward>* Robin Hanson: The Age of Em <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Em>* Ruchir Agarwal & Miles Kimball: The Future of Inflation”: in Finance & Development <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2022/4/7/the-future-of-inflationruchir-agarwal-and-miles-kimball>; IMF Podcasts <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2022/4/14/imf-podcast-ruchir-agarwal-and-miles-kimball-on-negative-interest-rates-and-inflation>* Miles Kimball: Bibliographic Post on Negative Interest Rate Policy: "How and Why to Eliminate the Zero Lower Bound: A Reader’s Guide” <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/emoney>* Miles Kimball: How a Toolkit Lacking a Full Strength Negative Interest Rate Option Led to the Current Inflationary Surge <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2022/9/5/how-a-toolkit-lacking-a-full-strength-negative-interest-rate-option-led-to-the-current-inflationary-surge>; * Miles Kimball: How Having Negative Interest Rate Policy in Its Toolkit Would Make the Fed Braver in Confronting Inflation with Needed Rate Hikes—A Tweetstorm” <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2022/12/28/how-having-negative-interest-rate-policy-in-its-toolkit-would-make-the-fed-braver-in-confronting-inflation-with-needed-rate-hikesa-tweetstorm>* Miles Kimball: Brad DeLong Confirms that Not Having Negative Interest Rate Policy in the Monetary Policy Toolkit Makes People Afraid of Vigorous Rate Hikes to Control Inflation” <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2022/10/1/brad-delong-confirms-that-not-having-negative-interest-rate-policy-in-the-monetary-policy-toolkit-makes-people-afraid-of-vigorous-rate-hikes-to-control-inflation>; * Miles Kimball: Serious silliness: * Miles Kimball: On the Fed’s 3/4% hikes:* Miles Kimball: ”Next Generation Monetary Policy” <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2017/2/1/next-generation-monetary-policy>* Miles Kimball: Tweetstorm of Favorite Passages from Noah Smith's Review of Brad DeLong's book Slouching Towards Utopia <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2022/12/12/miless-tweetstorm-of-favorite-passages-from-noah-smiths-review-of-brad-delongs-book-slouching-towards-utopia>* Miles Kimball: On the Age of Em <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2019/8/18/on-being-a-copy-of-someones-mind> <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2019/9/29/will-your-uploaded-mind-still-be-youmichael-graziano> <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2020/7/5/space-travel-and-uploaded-humans> <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2020/8/2/consensual-non-solipsistic-experience-machines> <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2020/9/13/embodiment>* Miles Kimball: On Consciousness <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/94309255267/the-mystery-of-consciousness> <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2019/8/4/on-the-effability-of-the-ineffable> <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2019/12/22/christof-koch-will-machines-ever-become-conscious> <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/39212472423/cyborgian-immortality> <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2020/2/2/frank-wilczek-are-we-living-in-a-simulated-world> <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2019/10/27/the-virtuality-reality-theory-of-dualism>* Miles Kimball: The Decline of Drudgery and the Paradox of Hard Work <https://www.nber.org/papers/w29041>* Miles Kimball: The Potential of a National Well-Being Index <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2021/12/16/podcast-miles-kimball-on-the-potential-of-a-national-well-being-index> <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/47017089094/quartz-8-judging-the-nations-wealth-and> <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2017/7/10/why-gdp-can-grow-forever>* Miles Kimball: My Experiences with Gary Becker <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/84824118992/my-experiences-with-gary-becker> <https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/the-unhappy-quest-for-a-happiness-index/>* Miles Kimball: Benjamin Franklin's Strategy to Make the US a Superpower Worked Once, Why Not Try It Again? <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/60999482427/quartz-28-benjamin-franklins-strategy-to-make>* Miles Kimball: Life Coaching <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2020/9/10/how-economists-can-enhance-their-scientific-creativity-impact-and-engagement> <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2020/10/19/testimonials-for-positive-intelligence-1>* Miles Kimball: Odious Wealth <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/93469513195/quartz-50-odious-wealth-the-outrage-is-not-so>* Miles Kimball: Oren Cass on the Value of Work <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2018/12/6/oren-cass-on-the-value-of-work-2>* Miles Kimball: Janet Yellen is Hardly a Dove—She Knows the US Economy Needs Some Unemployment <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/63725670856/janet-yellen-is-hardly-a-dove-she-knows-the-us>* Miles Kimball: How and Why to Expand the Nonprofit Sector: A Reader’s Guide <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/133246182760/how-and-why-to-expand-the-nonprofit-sector-as-a>* Miles Kimball: On John Locke's Second Treatise <https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2019/10/20/miles-kimball-on-john-lockes-second-treatise>+, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0/mode/1up>Start writing today. 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Key Insights:* Information really wants to be free—if it is not free, if it is “charged for” by advertising, or otherwise, you will get into a world of hurt.* In the information age the capitalist mode of production has become a fetter on economic development and human flourishing: Friedrich Engels was right.* We need free public-funded Mastodon < servers for everyone.* No! We don’t!* We need John back in the future, to talk about: (a) the euthanasia of the rentier, what is misnamed “secular stagnation” and the coming of a capital-slack economy.* BitCoin, meme stocks, and so forth are a reflection of this capital-slack economy.* We need John back in the future, to talk about how Elon Musk is a walking, talking, ranting, tweeting meme stock in human form.* We need multiple measures of economic activity: never draw strong conclusions from only one.* Xi Jinping’s plan to shut down social media and have more people building semiconductors to put inside missiles and killer robots does not appear, so far, a great success.* The ratio of Google’s user value to its real factor cost is on the order of 20-to-1.* Google’s huge market power and profit rate powers the greatest AI-innovation engine in teh world today.* Hexapodia!References:* Ralph Bakshi: Wizards…* Sean Carroll & John Quiggin: Interest Rates and the Information Economy…* Friedrich Engels: Socialism: Utopian & Scientific…* Google: Sankey Diagram for Google…* John Quiggin: Capitalism without capital doesn't work: The future of the information (non) economy…* John Quiggin: The Not‐So‐Strange Death of Multifactor Productivity Growth…* Chad Syverson: Challenges to Mismeasurement Explanations for the US Productivity Slowdown…* Wall Street Journal: GOOG | Alphabet Inc. Financial Statements…* Wikipedia: Mastodon…* Wikipedia: Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn…+, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0/mode/1up> Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Pre-Note:Here in the U.S., at the leading edge of the world economy, measured producivity growth fell off a cliff in the late 1960s, recovreed somewhat in the 1980s, resumed what had been its “normal” pre-1970 pace in the 1990s with the dot-com boom—and then fell off a cliff again in the mid-2000s.Did the neoliberal swing toward “short-termism”, viewing corporations as cash-flow engines and nothing else—plus the great reduction in public R&D and infrastructure spending—play a role in this? Perhaps. Maybe even probably.Could and should we rebuild the corporate industrial research labs that atrophied, at least somewhat, during the neoliberal era? Perhaps. Maybe even probably.Key Insights:* Sometimes the best things in history come from accidents and stupidity.* Collective stupidity enabling individual intelligence enables us to do unexpected things—sometimes very good things (and sometimes very bad things).* Because every institution has its own particular biases and limitations (as well as strengths), you need a diversity of institutions if you are going to achieve big goals.* The market ain't going to provide enough and the right kind of R&D—no single institution or set of institutions will.* The best we can do is to very amply fund as many kinds of R&D institutions as possible.* Hexapodia!References:* Ashish Arora & al.: The Changing Structure of American Innovation: Some Cautionary Remarks for Economic Growth…* John Gertner: The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation…* Iulia Georgescu: Bringing back the golden days of Bell Labs…* Ilan Gur: ‘Interested in bringing back Bell Labs? Some thoughts on why it's not possible, and what we should do instead…* Lawrence Lessig: Code 2.0…* Noah Smith: The dream of bringing back Bell Labs: Was America's most famous corporate lab a product of its time, or something that can be reproduced?…+, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0/mode/1up> Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Pre-Note:One thing we did not get into was the relationship between the claps of FTX and the associated fraud and “Effective Altruism”—Effective Altruism not so much as a philosophy, but rather as a doctrine preached by a life-coach.If you want to have the highest chance of becoming rich, you make your bets as if you had a logarithmic utility function: if the downside to a bet cuts your wealth in half, you will not accept the bet unless the upside more than doubles your wealth. Accepting bets more risky than those that satisfy this Kelly Criterion, even though the gain exceeds the loss, will ultimately make you bankrupt and out of the game with very high probability and absolutely, filthy rich with very low probability.Effective Altruism tells you not only that you can but that you are under the strongest moral obligation to make such riskier-than-Kelly positive expected-value bets. The question, then, is what you do when the overwhelmingly likely bankruptcy takes place. And then the answer is often: the customers money was just sitting there, so we can borrow it to successfully gamble for resurrection, and then pay it back soon.Noah, however, is more cynical than I. He thinks there is a moderate chance that SBF, CE, and company are still very rich dudes indeed…Key Insights:* Future hypothetical Web3 good, perhaps, if there ever is a use case…* Web3 as currently existing not good—a fraud opportunity and a strongly negative-sum arena for grifters and loosely-wrapped gamblers…* Being a greater fool and buying crypto—not good…* SBF & CE & company may well still be very rich dudes…* Trust Vitalik Buterin, probably—but perhaps Noah is himself subject to affinity fraud…* Hexapodia!References:(Best to read these in order!)* Tracy Alloway & al.: Transcript: Sam Bankman-Fried and Matt Levine on How to Make Money in Crypto…* Sam Trabucco (from April 2021): ‘Two years ago, Alameda maintained pretty strict delta neutrality…* Adam Fisher: Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex—And Maybe You Should Too* Adam Cochrane: This was a crime plain and simple…* Tyler Cowen: A simple point about existential risk* Matt Levine: FTX's Balance Sheet Was Bad...* Byrne Hobart: Money, Credit, Trust, and FTX…* @0xfbifemboy: What Happened at Alameda Research…* Patrick Wyman: The Verge: Renaissance, Reformation, & 40 Years That Shook the World…+, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0/mode/1up> Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe