Russ Roberts challenges Moshe Koppel; Noah Smith thinks that free day care costs nothing; Freddie deBoer on COVID fears; Eric Kaufmann on culture-war polling; Robert Wright hearts international law
I don't know what world De Boer was living in 2001-2003, but none of what he wrote is actually true. There wasn't panic after 9/11- no one I knew feared for their lives, nor were any of them goaded into doing so by anyone. The only emotion I witnessed was white hot anger and a desire for retribution. It was that emotion that Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the neocons used to pass laws creating TSA, Homeland Security, the powers of the Patriot Act, and ridiculous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Free daycare stopped being free when all the the government daycare providers masked toddlers all day.
Republicans are right to be pushing to end subsidized childcare in favor of big and universal child tax credits/allowances. They should push to do this as much as possible with education funding and ESAs as well.
Money for parents, not bureaucrats has to be the rallying cry.
If we are going to spend ourselves into oblivion, it might as well go to the people that produced the taxpayers that will have to pay for it all.
Many progressive advocates of "free" day care may prefer to posit a magical future program centrally controlled by the state in part because they don't want people to look too closely at the absurd grift that goes on with federally subsidized and regulated day care programs that already exist. If Smith wanted to be more persuasive to moderates, he should have explained why the current program was insufficient and go into some of its weaknesses. His post acts like the current programs do not exist, focusing instead on invalid international comparisons, comparisons to programs that are not anything like universal pre-K like Head Start, and other similar weak indicators that cannot possibly prove what he is trying to argue.
Additionally, if he wanted to be more successful, he would recommend breaking off the daycare program from the dead whale that is "BBB." Just doing this breezy meta-meta-analysis of papers is not going to convince anyone without terminal PhD brain disorder. Besides, the left are already jihadis for universal pre-K without needing any empirical backing for it whatsoever beyond "make heap big jobs for me friends." The persuasive problem is not to fire up the jihadis (who are already down for jihad for any reason), but to persuade the moderate rebels to defect on this specific issue (which Romney Republicans would be open to with a bit of prodding and massaging).
At what point does Arnold cut Noah from the team? The guy is fucking clownshoes. I’m all for representing the entire spectrum of thought but Noah isn’t a serious person, and his ideas are third rate. Cut bait and draft someone new for the team.
Day care/PreK: Why not just a child tax credit about the size of day care and let parents decide if they want to hire the service or home care? [Whichever, lets increase revenues enough hat the inititiave does not increase the structural deficit.]
I can't tell what kind of non-intervention Wright is leaning toward since I'm not a paid subscriber to him, but while I'd start from a presumption against non-intervention, "a higher moral order" does require intervention sometimes.
More specifically, it would require a lot more intervention to establish some kind of better equilibrium.
Think about it in terms of domestic counterpart situations.
In the "olden days" the equilibrium was something like personal feuds. If you thought (rightly or wrongly) your neighbor or maybe your son-in-law was beating your daughter, you'd go beat the hell out of him. Or not, and people would live in violent, abusive situations.
Nowadays, the basic first world equilibrium in that situation is to call the police on the would-be abuser and passively intervene by maybe giving the abusee shelter and relocating her.
Without the reality of "police intervention" this kind of equilibrium can't hold though. And in the international context, there's no "police intervention".
> Kaufmann argues that the movement’s cancel-culture tactics are dividing Democrats, particularly along the age dimension, with younger Democrats in support of cancel culture and older Democrats opposed. But it is uniting Republicans in opposition. Hence, Kauffman concludes that this particular culture war is hurting Democrats.
If you force me to guess the progress of the Awokening, I'd preditct a work slowing or even retreat over the next ten years, as the opposition solidifies, followed by a resurgence as the demographic effects build.
> For the social justice movement, I don’t think that’s much of a problem. Their impact on the culture, including the government bureaucracy, is sufficient that they can afford to lose an election or two.
This is contingent. Government is a big part of the environment that the culture grows in. For example the DEI comissars get paid ultimately because companies must ward themselves from descrimination lawsuits made possible by particular forms of law.
If right wing governments had both a long spell of dominance and their eye on the ball, they can shape these laws, as well as the personel of both the judiciary and administrative state, and they can tweak the standing rules (Trump's ban on neoracist training being a good example).
Collectively that can be a powerful influence on the culture. And might keep civilization together long enough to give the kids being born today a chance to ride out the insanity that their elders are inflicting.
One problem of your take on child care is that it fails to consider the compounding effects of work experience, training opportunities and overall better mental health for the parents; which helps both society and the child in question both now and in the future.
“ Tradition is good because its rules and norms have shown an ability survive.” Anti-enlightenment thinking. Can consumers pop into a store and grab a five pack of beer and 10 eggs? Tradition does not need any help from us and is more to be feared than a ton of misguided ideas from pundits.
I don't know what world De Boer was living in 2001-2003, but none of what he wrote is actually true. There wasn't panic after 9/11- no one I knew feared for their lives, nor were any of them goaded into doing so by anyone. The only emotion I witnessed was white hot anger and a desire for retribution. It was that emotion that Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the neocons used to pass laws creating TSA, Homeland Security, the powers of the Patriot Act, and ridiculous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Free daycare stopped being free when all the the government daycare providers masked toddlers all day.
Republicans are right to be pushing to end subsidized childcare in favor of big and universal child tax credits/allowances. They should push to do this as much as possible with education funding and ESAs as well.
Money for parents, not bureaucrats has to be the rallying cry.
If we are going to spend ourselves into oblivion, it might as well go to the people that produced the taxpayers that will have to pay for it all.
Many progressive advocates of "free" day care may prefer to posit a magical future program centrally controlled by the state in part because they don't want people to look too closely at the absurd grift that goes on with federally subsidized and regulated day care programs that already exist. If Smith wanted to be more persuasive to moderates, he should have explained why the current program was insufficient and go into some of its weaknesses. His post acts like the current programs do not exist, focusing instead on invalid international comparisons, comparisons to programs that are not anything like universal pre-K like Head Start, and other similar weak indicators that cannot possibly prove what he is trying to argue.
Additionally, if he wanted to be more successful, he would recommend breaking off the daycare program from the dead whale that is "BBB." Just doing this breezy meta-meta-analysis of papers is not going to convince anyone without terminal PhD brain disorder. Besides, the left are already jihadis for universal pre-K without needing any empirical backing for it whatsoever beyond "make heap big jobs for me friends." The persuasive problem is not to fire up the jihadis (who are already down for jihad for any reason), but to persuade the moderate rebels to defect on this specific issue (which Romney Republicans would be open to with a bit of prodding and massaging).
At what point does Arnold cut Noah from the team? The guy is fucking clownshoes. I’m all for representing the entire spectrum of thought but Noah isn’t a serious person, and his ideas are third rate. Cut bait and draft someone new for the team.
Day care/PreK: Why not just a child tax credit about the size of day care and let parents decide if they want to hire the service or home care? [Whichever, lets increase revenues enough hat the inititiave does not increase the structural deficit.]
I can't tell what kind of non-intervention Wright is leaning toward since I'm not a paid subscriber to him, but while I'd start from a presumption against non-intervention, "a higher moral order" does require intervention sometimes.
More specifically, it would require a lot more intervention to establish some kind of better equilibrium.
Think about it in terms of domestic counterpart situations.
In the "olden days" the equilibrium was something like personal feuds. If you thought (rightly or wrongly) your neighbor or maybe your son-in-law was beating your daughter, you'd go beat the hell out of him. Or not, and people would live in violent, abusive situations.
Nowadays, the basic first world equilibrium in that situation is to call the police on the would-be abuser and passively intervene by maybe giving the abusee shelter and relocating her.
Without the reality of "police intervention" this kind of equilibrium can't hold though. And in the international context, there's no "police intervention".
> Kaufmann argues that the movement’s cancel-culture tactics are dividing Democrats, particularly along the age dimension, with younger Democrats in support of cancel culture and older Democrats opposed. But it is uniting Republicans in opposition. Hence, Kauffman concludes that this particular culture war is hurting Democrats.
If you force me to guess the progress of the Awokening, I'd preditct a work slowing or even retreat over the next ten years, as the opposition solidifies, followed by a resurgence as the demographic effects build.
> For the social justice movement, I don’t think that’s much of a problem. Their impact on the culture, including the government bureaucracy, is sufficient that they can afford to lose an election or two.
This is contingent. Government is a big part of the environment that the culture grows in. For example the DEI comissars get paid ultimately because companies must ward themselves from descrimination lawsuits made possible by particular forms of law.
If right wing governments had both a long spell of dominance and their eye on the ball, they can shape these laws, as well as the personel of both the judiciary and administrative state, and they can tweak the standing rules (Trump's ban on neoracist training being a good example).
Collectively that can be a powerful influence on the culture. And might keep civilization together long enough to give the kids being born today a chance to ride out the insanity that their elders are inflicting.
Noah Smith is just a fool. Free government run day care will end costing $50,000/child, and likely far more.
One problem of your take on child care is that it fails to consider the compounding effects of work experience, training opportunities and overall better mental health for the parents; which helps both society and the child in question both now and in the future.
“ Tradition is good because its rules and norms have shown an ability survive.” Anti-enlightenment thinking. Can consumers pop into a store and grab a five pack of beer and 10 eggs? Tradition does not need any help from us and is more to be feared than a ton of misguided ideas from pundits.