Roger Farmer on Leijonhuvfud's Macro; Rob Henderson on elite revolutionaries; Peter Diamandis on artificial wombs; Patrick Collison and Ezra Klein on impediments to progress
I'm amazed at how many people seem to think having to carry a fetus for nine months then give birth to it is a negligible factor in the cost-benefit analysis of deciding whether to have kids.
"If true, it should alter the demographic outlook."
I don't think it changes anything. We've had In vitro fertilisation for decades and it doesn't seem to have changed demography in a major way. Realized fertility is still much lower than desired fertility in most of the developed world even tough the technology for women to reach their desired fertility exists. I think realized fertility is mostly the result of culture, and this new technology will not change the demographic outlook much.
In vitro fertilization doesn't make having kids any less burdensome, mostly is just makes it so the small fraction of people with medical fertility issues can have kids; one wouldn't expect it to affect fertility much. The fact that you still have to actually be pregnant for 9 months is however a major concern for 100% of women who get pregnant. Being able to avoid that burden seems like a significant lowering of the cost.
- "Being able to avoid that burden" => Would you agree that a painful birth is a burden? If that were the case, would you expect countries with high rates of use of caesarean sections to have higher fertility rates? Would you expect that countries which have increased that rate sharply in the last years to have also increased their fertility rate in the last years?
"What about the large fraction of women of reproductive age who are single?"
What about them? Very few people are interested in having kids by themselves even if it's biologically possible.
And I'm doubtful a c-section is a major fraction of the total inconvenience caused by pregnancy; nor can you tell whether c-sections deter child-rearing just by looking at a barchart.
In the case of both NIMBYism and research funding, it seems there is an important point which went unstated. There is a tradeoff between finding the best opportunity and just doing something. China has high speed rail because one person could make the decision for all. They also have immense infrastructure sitting idle because it was unneeded. Is that better? Maybe, maybe not. I'm sure we'd all like to think there is a sweet spot somewhere between that and the slow process here in the US. Again, maybe there is, maybe not. I would like to hear Kling's thoughts on this.
I don't have an economics degree but I'm not without some econ education (4 college classes, one grad level, read Sowell's textbook and other econ books, long time Econtalk listener, etc.) That said, I never previously heard of disequilibrium economics, I'm rather baffled by Kling's post about the topic, and have no clue how babies tie in.
To be more specific on one point that baffles me, I would agree that markets are ALMOST always in equilibrium and I'd think that disequilibrium refers to moments when the equilibrium point moves so fast the market has great difficulty determining the new equilibrium point. Kling's post about bank and creditworthiness channels seems a good if not the best example. Am I missing something?
In academic science, one of the big ironies is: the lower echelon people who actually do nearly all the science - grad students, postdocs, staff scientists - have basically no say in what they reasearch; their job is to find evidence to support their PI's position, while the people who have some say in what they research - the PI - doesn't really do any science anymore but rather spends most of his time applying for grants.
I read a blog post recently about a new machine learning algorithm - AlphaFold2 - for predicting protein structure that was created by Google's DeepMind division. The blog was purely about science, not at all interested in politics, but the blogger couldn't help but muse at the end of the post that maybe the best and brightest will increasingly go to industry, as more and more it seems like the best place to do cutting edge research is places like DeepMind rather than in academia.
While what you say may be mostly true, I don't get why you think this is ironic. Yes, our system for selecting "the best" may be flawed but it seems perfectly reasonable to funnel more funding to those researchers. And that doesn't exclusively mean PIs with big staffs. There are many opportunities for junior academics and even grad students. As a PhD candidate, my daughter-in-law not only had her choice of willing advisors but the school's dept (public univ) funded he tuition and salary for 5 year's, including some funds for expenses. Then on top of this she got a dept of ag grant based on her proposal for research (with minimal guidance from her advisor). Other top students get NSF grants and similar Grant's from other sources. (And see my asst prof example that follows.)
As to Kling's concern about time wasted on writing grants, I'd be curious what alternative he proposes. Grant writing doesn't neccessarily take immense time, it can be a great motivator of focus, and I've worked on grants that significantly shifted objectives based on both what was REALLY the desire and what the work morphed into. Sometimes this happened with sponsor approval, sometimes without. In my experience, the difficulty is getting something funded requiring a big budget that others don't see the benefit. That seems reasonable to me.
I had a friend who was superb at getting grants funded. As an asst prof in his first 4 years, he had multiple successes in the $5 to 10mil range which as a lower status academic he had to hand off to others to lead. In his short career (started late, died young) he got funding and started centers in three different academic depts. He expanded research opportunities for others for years to come. I fail to see this as less important than pure research.
But doesn't the standard downwardly sticky wages or unevenly sticky prices of everything imply "involuntary unemployment of labor or other resources? Disequilibrium seems true but not consequential.
With an artificial womb in hand, to increase fertility, they will have to then perfect the artificial mother.
I'm amazed at how many people seem to think having to carry a fetus for nine months then give birth to it is a negligible factor in the cost-benefit analysis of deciding whether to have kids.
"If true, it should alter the demographic outlook."
I don't think it changes anything. We've had In vitro fertilisation for decades and it doesn't seem to have changed demography in a major way. Realized fertility is still much lower than desired fertility in most of the developed world even tough the technology for women to reach their desired fertility exists. I think realized fertility is mostly the result of culture, and this new technology will not change the demographic outlook much.
In vitro fertilization doesn't make having kids any less burdensome, mostly is just makes it so the small fraction of people with medical fertility issues can have kids; one wouldn't expect it to affect fertility much. The fact that you still have to actually be pregnant for 9 months is however a major concern for 100% of women who get pregnant. Being able to avoid that burden seems like a significant lowering of the cost.
- "The small fraction of people with medical fertility issues" => What about the large fraction of women of reproductive age who are single? https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/08/20/a-profile-of-single-americans/
- "Being able to avoid that burden" => Would you agree that a painful birth is a burden? If that were the case, would you expect countries with high rates of use of caesarean sections to have higher fertility rates? Would you expect that countries which have increased that rate sharply in the last years to have also increased their fertility rate in the last years?
Looking at a list of countries with high c-section rates, that doesn't seem to be the case: https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/10/15/which-countries-conduct-the-most-caesarean-sections-infographic/?sh=4fac954218ea
"What about the large fraction of women of reproductive age who are single?"
What about them? Very few people are interested in having kids by themselves even if it's biologically possible.
And I'm doubtful a c-section is a major fraction of the total inconvenience caused by pregnancy; nor can you tell whether c-sections deter child-rearing just by looking at a barchart.
In the case of both NIMBYism and research funding, it seems there is an important point which went unstated. There is a tradeoff between finding the best opportunity and just doing something. China has high speed rail because one person could make the decision for all. They also have immense infrastructure sitting idle because it was unneeded. Is that better? Maybe, maybe not. I'm sure we'd all like to think there is a sweet spot somewhere between that and the slow process here in the US. Again, maybe there is, maybe not. I would like to hear Kling's thoughts on this.
I don't have an economics degree but I'm not without some econ education (4 college classes, one grad level, read Sowell's textbook and other econ books, long time Econtalk listener, etc.) That said, I never previously heard of disequilibrium economics, I'm rather baffled by Kling's post about the topic, and have no clue how babies tie in.
To be more specific on one point that baffles me, I would agree that markets are ALMOST always in equilibrium and I'd think that disequilibrium refers to moments when the equilibrium point moves so fast the market has great difficulty determining the new equilibrium point. Kling's post about bank and creditworthiness channels seems a good if not the best example. Am I missing something?
And where do babies fit into this?
In academic science, one of the big ironies is: the lower echelon people who actually do nearly all the science - grad students, postdocs, staff scientists - have basically no say in what they reasearch; their job is to find evidence to support their PI's position, while the people who have some say in what they research - the PI - doesn't really do any science anymore but rather spends most of his time applying for grants.
I read a blog post recently about a new machine learning algorithm - AlphaFold2 - for predicting protein structure that was created by Google's DeepMind division. The blog was purely about science, not at all interested in politics, but the blogger couldn't help but muse at the end of the post that maybe the best and brightest will increasingly go to industry, as more and more it seems like the best place to do cutting edge research is places like DeepMind rather than in academia.
While what you say may be mostly true, I don't get why you think this is ironic. Yes, our system for selecting "the best" may be flawed but it seems perfectly reasonable to funnel more funding to those researchers. And that doesn't exclusively mean PIs with big staffs. There are many opportunities for junior academics and even grad students. As a PhD candidate, my daughter-in-law not only had her choice of willing advisors but the school's dept (public univ) funded he tuition and salary for 5 year's, including some funds for expenses. Then on top of this she got a dept of ag grant based on her proposal for research (with minimal guidance from her advisor). Other top students get NSF grants and similar Grant's from other sources. (And see my asst prof example that follows.)
As to Kling's concern about time wasted on writing grants, I'd be curious what alternative he proposes. Grant writing doesn't neccessarily take immense time, it can be a great motivator of focus, and I've worked on grants that significantly shifted objectives based on both what was REALLY the desire and what the work morphed into. Sometimes this happened with sponsor approval, sometimes without. In my experience, the difficulty is getting something funded requiring a big budget that others don't see the benefit. That seems reasonable to me.
I had a friend who was superb at getting grants funded. As an asst prof in his first 4 years, he had multiple successes in the $5 to 10mil range which as a lower status academic he had to hand off to others to lead. In his short career (started late, died young) he got funding and started centers in three different academic depts. He expanded research opportunities for others for years to come. I fail to see this as less important than pure research.
"Someone with the know-how and ambition to build high-speed rail wants to build a rail line, not spend years fighting NIMBYs."
You know why I don't want high speed rail?
Same reason I don't like flying: I don't like having to rent a car/depend on ride-sharing once I get there.
Low speed rail I can drive my car onto, sure. As long as the passenger car isn't the first world equivalent of a chicken bus, that is.
But doesn't the standard downwardly sticky wages or unevenly sticky prices of everything imply "involuntary unemployment of labor or other resources? Disequilibrium seems true but not consequential.