Inflection Point

Become a free subscriber to receive this ‘Stack in your email. Do note that this Grasping Reality newsletter is a reader-supported publication—I really would like to collect enough from it to hire an RA. So consider becoming a paid subscriber, please, if you find this project worthwhile and think it worth continuing:Thanks for reading this. And please share it far and wide, if you think it worth reading!Key Insights:* Macro Policy Guiding Principle: prioritize full employment—make Say’s Law true in practice even though it is false in theory…* Macro Policy Guiding Principle: move the economy as fast as possible to what its long-term optimal structural configuration should be* Macro Policy Guiding Principle: Guiding principles (1) and (2) overrides desirability of immediate price stability…* We still have lots of room to run before we can say that the post-Volcker Fed has failed to meet its inflation target in an average-outcomes sense…* Time to panic about inflation will be when the bond market gets worried about it—but right now the bond market is very much “Fed has got this”…* Yet the political economy of the thing is overwhelmingly relevant: inflation that gets Biden booted from office would be very bad…* Even prolonged inflation may help—in that there is a lot of structural reform we need to do, and this may help us get it done…* Hexapodia!John Maynard Keynes (1919): The Economic Consequences of the Peace <https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.14117/page/n228/mode/1up?view=theater&q=lenin>:Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become "profiteers,", who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.In the latter stages of the war all the belligerent governments practised, from necessity or incompetence, what a Bolshevist might have done from design. Even now, when the war is over, most of them continue out of weakness the same malpractices. But further, the Governments of Europe, being many of them at this moment reckless in their methods as well as weak, seek to direct on to a class known as "profiteers" the popular indignation against the more obvious consequences of their vicious methods. These "profiteers" are, broadly speaking, the entrepreneur class of capitalists, that is to say, the active and constructive element in the whole capitalist society, who in a period of rapidly rising prices cannot help but get rich quick whether they wish it or desire it or not. If prices are continually rising, every trader who has purchased for stock or owns property and plant inevitably makes profits.By directing hatred against this class, therefore, the European Governments are carrying a step further the fatal process which the subtle mind of Lenin had consciously conceived. The profiteers are a consequence and not a cause of rising prices. By combining a popular hatred of the class of entrepreneurs with the blow already given to social security by the violent and arbitrary disturbance of contract and of the established equilibrium of wealth which is the inevitable result of inflation, these Governments are fast rendering impossible a continuance of the social and economic order of the nineteenth century. But they have no plan for replacing it…References:* William J. Baumol (1999): Retrospectives: Say’s Law <https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.13.1.195>* John Maynard Keynes (1919): The Economic Consequences of the Peace <https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.14117/page/n228/mode/1up?view=theater&q=lenin>* Paul Krugman (1998): It’s Baaack!: Japan's Slump & the Return of the LiquidityTrap <https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1998/06/1998b_bpea_krugman_dominquez_rogoff.pdf>* Paul Krugman (2018): It’s Baaack, Twenty Years Later <https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/LISCenter/pkrugman/Its-baaack.pdf>+, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://books.google.com/books?id=fCCWWgZ7d6UC>Become a free subscriber to receive this ‘Stack in your email. Do note that this Grasping Reality newsletter is a reader-supported publication—I really would like to collect enough from it to hire an RA. So consider becoming a paid subscriber, please, if you find this project worthwhile and think it worth continuing: Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Key Insights:* We may well face a generation of right-wing culture war-fueled minority rule in this country.* American Progressives have proven bad at making alliances with moderate conservatives—and at giving conservative voters reasons to vote for moderates.* Worry most about American national decline—which is happening anyway.* American exceptionalism and America as a “city upon a hill” for the world—that is gone. We are no longer a model to emulate, but a horrible warning of a society gone wrong.* The things that are real to progressives are fake: democracy is not going to be destroyed by the failure to pass the John Lewis voting rights act, but by state legislature-level nullification* The thngs that are real to Republicans are fake: what is being taught to students is not “critical race theory” but simply “history”, vaccines are not a plot to control us, and the 2020 election was not stolen.* The Republican b******t is more egregious, but progressive b******t is still b******t. The saying both sides have b******t does not mean they are equivalent.* The best we can hope for is simple exhaustion on both sides.* But every time we try to get out, they pull us back in.* Hexapodia!References:* Geoffrey Kabaservice: Rule & Ruin: the Downfall of Moderation & the destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party <https://archive.org/details/ruleruindownfall0000kaba>* Geoffrey Kabaservice: The Forever Grievance <https://www.niskanencenter.org/op-ed-the-forever-grievance/>* Geoffrey Kabaservice: Vital Center Podcast <https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-vital-center-podcast/>* Steve Levitzky & Dan Ziblatt: How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future <https://archive.org/details/HowDemocraciesDieStevenLevitsky>* William F. Buckley: God & Man at Yale: The Superstitions of Academic Freedom <https://archive.org/details/godmanatyale0000unse>* William F. Buckley & L. Brent Bozell: McCarthy & His Enemies: The Record & Its Meaning <https://archive.org/details/mccarthyhisenemi00buck>* Rick Perlstein: Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater & the Unmaking of the American Consensus <https://archive.org/details/beforestormbarry0000perl_k0s0>* Dwight D. Eisenhower: 1954 Letter to Edgar N. Eisenhower <https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/07/dwight-d-eisenhower-1954-letter-to-edgar-newton-eisenhower-weekend-reading.html>+, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://books.google.com/books?id=fCCWWgZ7d6UC> Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Key Insights:* Nearly all successful political movements over the past 150 years have been strongly nationalistic* A successful cosmopolitanism must therefore be a nationalistic cosmopolitanism—one that says your country is great because it learns from and has important things to teach other nations.* We—somewhat surprisingly—find ourselves endorsing and agreeing with Matthew Desmond’s claim that an important root of some facets of American capitalism is found on the plantation.* We endorse Sandy Darity and Darrick Hamilton’s calls for reparations,* We enthusiastically and positively give a shout-out to the highly patriotic Nikole Hannah Jones and her contention that the 1619 founding makes African-Americans the most quintessential representatives of the good side of American nationalism* You cannot be a real patriot if you do not care about dealing with your country’s flaws—Carl Shurz: “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right!”* Wokeness is 21st century Puritan Protestantism—to build a City Upon a Hill and become a Light Unto the Nations, with a key part of that building composed of our confession that we are the unworthy who must place our hearts on the altar of and tremble before the Almighty .* It is important to mean it: to repent, to take responsibility, to not just say that America owes reparations, but to work to make America pay what it owes.* This podcast appears to be our version of: Three strongly patriotic white guys stand up for ‘Murka!* Hexapodia!References:* Ed Baptist: The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery & the Making of American Capitalism <https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Half_Has_Never_Been_Told/dSrXCwAAQBAJ>* Trevor Burnard: Edward Baptist, Slavery and Capitalism <http://trevorburnard.com/wordpress/?p=30>Matthew Desmond: In Order to Understand the Brutality of American Capitalism, You Have to Start on the Plantation <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html>* John J. Clegg: Capitalism and Slavery <https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/683036>* Nikole Hannah Jones: Our Democracy’s Founding Ideals Were False When They Were Written. Black Americans Have Fought to Make Them True <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/black-history-american-democracy.html>* P.R. Lockhart & Ed Baptist: How Slavery Became America’s First Big Business <https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/8/16/20806069/slavery-economy-capitalism-violence-cotton-edward-baptist>* Alan L. Olmstead & Paul W. Rhode: Cotton, Slavery, & the New History of Capitalism <https://web.law.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/microsites/law-economics-studies/olmstead_-_cotton_slavery_and_history_of_new_capitalism_131_nhc_28_sept_2016.pdf>* Ernst Renan: What Is a Nation? <https://web.archive.org/web/20110827065548/http://www.cooper.edu/humanities/core/hss3/e_renan.html>+, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://books.google.com/books?id=fCCWWgZ7d6UC> Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Key Insights:* Matt Suandi—forced off of his India RCT development-economics project by the COVID plague—has taken the plague year to write a brilliant paper: Matthew Suandi: Promoting to Opportunity: Evidence and Implications from the U.S. Submarine Service <https://static1.squarespace.com/static/615a18f283700f2629a58019/t/618ace007764e35a1b3f0176/1636486691263/MatthewSuandi_JMP_Nov_21_Berkeley.pdf>* In the early stages of the Pacific War, whether a US submarine-launched torpedo exploded was a matter of luck.* If a submarine captain had an enlisted man marked out for promotion, those promotions happened much more often if the submarine returned from its cruise having succeeded in sinking ships.* Those promoted because they happened to be on lucky submarines with torpedoes that exploded lived 2.4 years longer than their counterparts who happened to be on unlucky submarines and were not promoted.* Those promoted because they happened to be on lucky submarines with torpedoes that exploded are recorded as having a last known address in a zip code with housing prices higher by 7 percentiles than their counterparts who happened to be on unlucky submarines and were not promoted.* Early promotion to a job with more responsibility and scope—at least in the WWII-era USN—shapes your life to a remarkable degree by giving you scope to develop and exercise your talents.* If the WWII-era USN is typical, we waste huge amounts of human potential by not giving people workplace opportunities to show what they can learn to do.* Equality isn’t just about money: it is about scope for action, about developing and exercising talents, and about receiving external validation.* A good society would give people much more opportunity to discover how big a deal they are and can become, and remind them of this at every opportunity.* It is very, very important to conduct realistic live-fire tests under realistic conditions* Hexapodia!References:* Matthew Suandi: Promoting to Opportunity: Evidence and Implications from the U.S. Submarine Service <https://static1.squarespace.com/static/615a18f283700f2629a58019/t/618ace007764e35a1b3f0176/1636486691263/MatthewSuandi_JMP_Nov_21_Berkeley.pdf>* Dud Torpedoes of World War II <http://www.ww2pacific.com/torpedo.html>* Ian Toll: Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942, The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945* Herman Wouk: The Winds of War <https://www.amazon.com/Winds-War-Herman-Wouk/dp/0316952664/>, War & Remembrance <https://archive.org/details/warremembrancewwouk00wouk>* Anthony Newpower: Iron Men and Tin Fish: The Race to Build a Better Torpedo during World War II <https://www.amazon.com/Iron-Men-Tin-Fish-Technology/dp/027599032X/>+, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://books.google.com/books?id=fCCWWgZ7d6UC> Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Key Insights:* Paul Feyerabend was right—science is whatever scientists do: anything goes. But what healthy sciences that survive and flourish and good scientists do is put first and foremost discovering what actually is and making theories to understand reality. So Kuhn and Popper are also right.* Economics has not been much of a science. But this Card, Angrist, Imbens—and Krueger—Nobel Prize marks a very big possible improvement in this respect.* Keep at it! Keep doing your work no matter the brickbats, and you may, someday, look back and recognize that you have changed the world.* Pets are good: they drive you to “become the person your dog thinks you already are”.* Hexapodia!References:* The London Economist has an excellent interview with two of our three Nobel Prize winners this year—David Card and Josh Angrist. If you want to know why we economists respect them so much and are cheering their Nobel Prizes so loudly, follow the link: Joshua Angrist, Ryan Avent, David Card, & Rachana Shanbhogue : A Real-World Revolution in Economics: ‘THIS YEAR’s Nobel prize celebrates the “credibility revolution” that has transformed economics since the 1990s. Today most notable new work is not theoretical but based on analysis of real-world data.... How their work has brought economics closer to real life…<https://www.economist.com/nobelpod2021?utmcampaign=editorial-social&utmmedium=social-organic&utm_source=twitter>* This is, I think, the best single thing to read about the Card, Angrist, Imbens Economics Nobel Prize: Noah Smith: The Econ Nobel We Were All Waiting for: ‘To predict who will win the Econ Nobel... list the most influential people in the field who haven’t won it yet.... Assume... micro theorists won’t win... two years in a row.... The ones whose influence is the oldest are the most likely to win.... For years, this method led lots of people—including me—to predict a Nobel for David Card. His 1994 paper with Alan Krueger on the minimum wage was a thunderbolt.... Since then, Card has been at the forefront of empirical labor.... Angrist and Imbens’ impact... though also high... came later.... I wouldn’t have been surprised had they won the prize in later years. But Card was clearly overdue. Perhaps the reason it took this long was that Card’s conclusions in his famous minimum wage paper were so hard for many in the field to swallow.… At the time, Card and Krueger’s finding seemed revolutionary and heretical. In fact, other researchers had probably been finding the same thing, but were afraid to publish their results, simply because of their terror of offending the orthodoxy... * Tim Noah: Tragedy Kept Alan Krueger From Claiming a Nobel Prize, but He’s Not Forgotten: ‘Paying tribute to the late economist who, with David Card, changed America’s mind about the minimum wage… <https://newrepublic.com/article/163994/david-card-alan-krueger-nobel-prize> Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Key Insights:* Yes, Americans are now in a selfish defensive crouch, but just wait 8 years—if we get a high-pressure economy for those years…* We are finally getting back to normal politics, in which we slag each other because some claim we can afford to spend $3.5 and others that we can only afford to spend $1.5 trillion. And that is a very good sign…* Hexapodia!References:* Zach Carter: Why Are Moderates Trying to Blow Up Biden’s Centrist Economic Plan? <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/22/opinion/biden-moderate-democrats.html>* Jonathan Cohn: Why Manchin & Democratic Leaders Might Not Be Quite So Far Apart: <https://www.huffpost.com/entry/manchin-build-back-better-tax-credits-prescription-drugs_n_6158c67ae4b099230d240578>* Todd Gitlin: Look What’s Inside The Bill, Please: the Details of the $3.5 Trillion Package <https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-big-bills-huge-consequences-20211005>* Robert Greenstein: Budget Rconciliation: Calling It a ‘$3.5 Trillion Spending Bill’ Isn’t Quite Right <https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/570487-budget-reconciliation-calling-it-a-35-trillion-spending-bill-isnt-quite>* Steven M. Teles, Samuel Hammond, & Daniel Takash: Cost-Disease Socialism <https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Cost-Disease-Socialism.pdf>* David Cay Johnston: How $3 a Day Can Buy America a Rich Future <https://www.dcreport.org/2021/09/21/how-3-a-day-can-buy-america-a-rich-future/>* Robert Kuttner: How the Budget Deal Could Make the Child Tax Credit Permanent <https://prospect.org/blogs/tap/how-the-budget-deal-could-make-the-child-tax-credit-permanent/>* Adam Jentleson: ‘Sinema’s approval rating has tanked, going from net +13 to 0 since the beginning of the year. But surely someone will be along soon to explain how actually this is brilliant politics…* Jeet Heer: Dune Bugs +, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://books.google.com/books?id=fCCWWgZ7d6UC> Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Key Insights:* I do not understand how the Chinese economy works.* The Chinese economy is an odd combination of market and party in which the party has enormous reach and control, but somehow that has not triggered the “soft budget constraint” problems of the Soviet model.* Financial constraints are not real—a government that wants to can evade them in its management of the economy.* Real resource constraints are, however real: finance does not bind because it is true that what we can do, we can afford; but it is also true that what we cannot do, we cannot afford.* You can hide for a while from real resource constraints by bubble-overvaluing the low-value infrastructure and real-estate investments that you are making, but you cannot run.* There is lots to read that is good; consult these show notes.* HEXAPODIA!!References:* Robert Armstrong: The Real Risks from Evergrande: <https://www.ft.com/content/f858fe4a-716e-49ee-bebe-45c810b0d7a6>* Òscar Jordà, Moritz Schularick & Alan M. Taylor: The Great Mortgaging: Housing Finance, Crises, & Business Cycles <https://www.nber.org/papers/w20501>* Michael Pettis: What Does Evergrande Meltdown Mean for China? <https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/article-pettis-evergrande.pdf>* Margaret Sutherlin: ‘Cash-strapped Chinese developer Evergrande missed payments… on Monday… <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-09-21/bloomberg-s-evening-briefing-biden-s-un-debut-focused-on-climate-covid-crises>* Girolamo Pandolfi da Casio ditto Carlo Dossi Erba: Evergrande * Ming Zhao: Evergrande’s Backstory +, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://books.google.com/books?id=fCCWWgZ7d6UC> Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Key Insights:* Today’s meaning of “neoliberalism” is the result of the collision of two different applications of the term—to Margaret Thatcher, and to the Washington Monthly…* Intermediary institutions are very suspicious to liberalism, at least in its pure form…* Liberalism has a bias toward atomizing solutions to social problems…* YIMBY vs. NIMBY is the fundamental political debate in America today…* Sometimes the answer will be command-and-control, sometimes the answer will be deregulation…* Yuval Levin is good…* Detach liberalism from centrism or moderation…* Liberals are thinking about things that are important and visionary about productivity, and Biden is listening…* Hexapodia!References:* Sam Hammond: The Free-Market Welfare State: Preserving Dynamism in a Volatile World <https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/old_uploads/2018/04/Final_Free-Market-Welfare-State.pdf>* Brink Lindsey: The Center Can Hold: Public Policy for an Age of Extremes <https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-center-can-hold-public-policy-for-an-age-of-extremes/>* Brink Lindsey & Steve Teles: The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, & Increase Inequality <https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-captured-economy-9780190627768>* Niskanen Center: Faster Growth, Fairer Growth: Policies for a High Road, High Performance Economy <https://www.niskanencenter.org/faster_fairer/agenda.html>* Steve Teles, Samuel Hammond, & Daniel Takash: Cost Disease Socialism: How Subsidizing Costs While Restricting Supply Drives America’s Fiscal Imbalance <https://www.niskanencenter.org/cost-disease-socialism-how-subsidizing-costs-while-restricting-supply-drives-americas-fiscal-imbalance/>+, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://books.google.com/books?id=fCCWWgZ7d6UC> Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

Key Insights:* The Taliban should go to the World Bank and say: “For 42 years now, mechanized, airborne, and infantry armies and air and drone forces have been driving, walking, and flying over our country, killing us. that has done enormous amounts of damage. We are absolutely dirt poor. We will try as hard as we can: please give us money so that we can start call centers, start simple labor-intensive textile factories, and also beef up our handmade rug businesses so that we can export to pay for what we so desperately need. This is our only chance to make the lives of Afghans in the villages and even in Kabul better. This government would rather rule on the basis of honest, good government and prosperity. But if we cannot do that, others in our coalition will grow in power and rule on the basis of jihad.”* Economics is important for governments, because it allows them to change the kind of government they are—change the relationship of the government to the people, change crazy bad governments into governments that are still bad, but much more oriented towards prosperity and stability.* Things are not yet at their worst. It’s like when Bart says to Homer, “this is the worst day of my life!” and Homer says, “no, this is the worst day of your life so far.”* Hexapodia!References:* Daron Acemoglu: Why Nation-Building Failed in Afghanistan: ‘The tragedy playing out this month has been 20 years in the making… a top-down state-building strategy that was always destined to fail… <https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/afghanistan-top-down-state-building-failed-again-by-daron-acemoglu-2021-08>* Costs of War in Afghanistan <https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/human-and-budgetary-costs-date-us-war-afghanistan-2001-2022>* Ryan Crocker (2016): Lessons Learned Interview <https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/?document=crocker_ryan_ll_first_interview_01112016> * Graham Greene (1955): The Quiet American <https://archive.org/details/quietamerican00gree_2/page/n7/mode/2up> (New York: Penguin Books)* Josh Marshall: The Fall of Kabul, Washington and the Guys at the Fancy Magazines: ‘What we see in so many reactions, claims of disgrace and betrayal are no more than people who have been deeply bought into these endeavors suddenly forced to confront how much of it was simply an illusion… <https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-fall-of-kabul-washington-and-the-guys-at-the-fancy-magazines>* Josh Marshall: You Wouldn’t Know It From the US News Coverage, But…: ’Something that seems to be getting very, very little above-the-fold coverage in the American press coverage: the key leaders of the US backed government over the last two decades are relaxedly meeting with the political leadership of the Taliban in Kabul about the formation of the new government… <https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/you-wouldnt-know-it-from-the-us-news-coverage-but>* Martin Sandbu: The West Has Paid the Price For Neglecting The Afghan Economy: ‘Per capita incomes flatlined over the past decade and corruption is endemic… * Jordan Michael Smith: Twenty Years After 9/11, Are We Any Smarter?: ‘Our foreign policy wise people responded to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by embracing belligerence. What, if anything, have they learned?… <https://newrepublic.com/article/163119/twenty-year-anniversary-911-attacks>* Juggalos For Responsible Flushing: ‘Explains a lot about our current situation that Leon Panetta knows so little about Afghanistan that he thinks the Taliban and ISIS are allies… * Atif Mian: ‘The big injection of foreign money did not translate into sustainable growth. Why?…+, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://books.google.com/books?id=fCCWWgZ7d6UC>(Remember: You can subscribe to this… weblog-like newsletter… here: There’s a free email list. There’s a paid-subscription list with (at the moment, only a few) extras too.) Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

“I have seen the future, and it works”. That was what Lincoln Steffens wrote in a letter to Maria Howe in 1919 with respect to Vladimir Lenin’s Soviet Union. Which societies are thought to “work”, and how does that influence the power and authority such societies have, and the global leadership they can exercise? Key Insights:* We need to have another podcast on emerging great-power competition in a time of increasing global authoritarianism* Great powers remain great powers not just through economic and military strength, but by projecting an image that they are the wave of the future that others find attractive, or at least irresistible* If Europe is a great power over the next two generations, it will be because of the great power status of fear—because fear of what unstable and inconsistent America, China, India, and perhaps Russia might try to bully it to do if it does not present a united front.* The rise and fall of great powers is much more bizarre and contingent and subtle than historians see it in retrospect* Hexapodia!References:* David Abernethy: The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires, 1415-1980 <https://books.google.com/?id=ennqNS1EOuMC>* Peter Falk & al.(1971): Columbo <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsDERFDo0k4>* Justin Kaplan: Lincoln Steffens: A Biography <https://archive.org/details/lincolnsteffensb0000kapl_d7v2>* Jacob T. Levy: Who’s Afraid of Judith Shklar? <https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/16/whos-afraid-of-judith-shklar-liberalism/>* William Powell, Myrna Loy, W.S. Van Dyke, Hunt Stromberg, & al. (1934): The Thin Man <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSThEEeFYeU>* Judith Shklar: The Liberalism of Fear <https://philpapers.org/archive/SHKTLO.pdf>* Noah Smith: What Kind of Economy Leads to National Power? <https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/what-kind-of-economy-leads-to-national>* C.V. Wedgewood: William the Silent <https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.220594>+, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://books.google.com/books?id=fCCWWgZ7d6UC>(Remember: You can subscribe to this… weblog-like newsletter… here: There’s a free email list. There’s a paid-subscription list with (at the moment, only a few) extras too.) Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe