Links to Consider, 5/23

Matt Yglesias on where the right is right; Tove K on work vs. idleness; Jonathan Haidt on media violence then and now; John Cochrane summarizes a monetary conference

Matt Yglesias writes,

The related thing that conservatives get right is a sense that good things are vulnerable and it’s worth worrying about wrecking everything.

It’s part of the civilization vs barbarism mindset. Progressives do not worry that civilization could move backwards if their latest ideas do not work out. Conservatives always think that society is moving backwards. In fact, I think that conservatives overdo it.

If catastrophizing is a sin of conservatives, then I must plead guilty. I do think that society is moving backwards politically. This is true on both the left and the right. On the left, I hope they hit bottom with “Queers for Palestine.” But I worry that the degeneracy could have further to go. On the right, they gave us Trump, who on COVID gave us Fauci and “stimulus,” and who gave us throw-libertarians-under-the-bus politics, especially on fiscal responsibility.

Tove K writes,

As long as the material world asks something from people, they need to humbly bend their necks and try to achieve that thing. When the material world asks nothing from people, they can use all their resources for intriguing. And the one who intrigues the best, wins.

Sounds like she believes that, as the saying goes, “idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” Very Northern European and Calvinist.

And where are there idle hands?

Academia is one example. Academia is supposed to produce good research. Academia itself decides what is good research. It actually does produce some of what society at large would call good research. It also produces an abundance of well-paid and comfortable jobs with rather loose job descriptions. So it is attracting many people who want a comfortable job. The applicant who is the best at colluding with those already on the inside over what is “good research” will get the job. For that reason, academia is known as a hotbed for social intrigues. Especially parts of academia that do not work with materially tangible results, like the social sciences.

She has an idea for what social scientists should be doing instead.

I'm a bit surprised that the warrior/worker distinction is not an established concept in sociology. If humans evolved to be capable of both making war and working peacefully, a very important part of social engineering should be about how to make them choose the latter

I regret her phrase “social engineering.” I would have written this as “a very important part of the study of the behavior of organizations and societies would be about what promotes cooperative work and reduces conflict.”

Jonathan Haidt writes,

when I was a child, the violence was almost all fictional. There was cartoon violence, of course, which was not at all disturbing, although later on, graphic video game violence (such as in Grand Theft Auto) was far bloodier. There were scenes of murder in police dramas and in mafia movies that sometimes were disturbing (such as Moe Greene’s death in The Godfather).

But our kids today are witnessing the suffering and death of real people and animals. This is shocking, haunting, and degrading in a way that no fictional violence can be.

He reposts Freya India’s essay to which I reacted, also.

John Cochrane writes,

If you listen to nothing else, Larry’s talk is fantastic.

1. Return to humility. There is a huge shock once a decade. That’s the central problem, and you can’t write rules for it. The economics profession has little consensus, we don’t know how the black box works. Avoid making specific forecasts, tying yourself to the forecast, or tying yourself to rules. State

   general values. “Whatever it takes.” “A strong dollar is in the national interest.”

2. No forward guidance in normal contexts. Markets don’t believe it, but it constrains the Fed later.

3. No QE except when necessary to maintain market functioning and liquidity (as Duffie describes). QE shortened maturity structure and cost the US half a trillion dollars. One integrated debt management policy

4. No cacophony. Stop publishing minutes of deliberations, giving competing speeches about what to do. “No observable benefit” in terms of volatility, predictability.

5. No specific numerical targets. Larry prefers sometimes to have 1%, sometimes 3%. Credibility came from the social consensus that low inflation is good, and the credibility of Volker, Greenspan.

“Larry” is Larry Summers. Did John Taylor offer a rebuttal? If Scott Sumner watches the video, his cardiologist should be at his side.

Cochrane also refers to a talk on a paper by Robert Hall and Marianna Kudlyiak on the steadiness of unemployment rate declines. I view this as strongly supporting the PSST story. That is, jobs are not created by “demand,” but by entrepreneurs discovering new patterns of sustainable specialization and trade.

substacks referenced above:

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Hoover Monetary Policy Conference, with Videos

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Social engineering: Why a technical mindset is a prosocial mindset

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What the right gets right