I would much prefer for the author to be wrong. But they present some evidence that seems fairly solid on first read, and I think I would have to see some counterevidence to disbelieve them.
https://aeon.co/essays/the-idea-of-primitive-communism-is-as-seductive-as-it-is-wrong
The First Amendment hasn’t kept public officials from calling upon Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other tech platforms to restrict false or misleading claims about vaccination and other COVID-related issues. The White House has urged tech companies to censor individuals engaged in protected speech. Senator Amy Klobuchar introduced legislation in hopes of pressuring social-media companies to do more “to prevent the spread of deadly vaccine misinformation.” And the government can apply pressure on private speech in other ways: The Department of Homeland Security, for example, is characterizing misinformation as a terrorism threat. All of these efforts reflect a judgment that, at least on pandemic matters, the liberal approach to dissent has greater costs than benefits.
But that judgment is mistaken. During past crises, even wars, the case for liberal speech norms remained so strong that Americans look back on departures from them with regret. Likewise, I can think of at least four reasons why neither government officials nor corporate bosses should try to protect the public by newly restricting the expression of ideas, even during a pandemic.
I keep trying to get a chance to reread this before posting it, but I don’t know when that’s going to happen. As usual Haidt is a strong and distinctive writer and thinker.
It’s been clear for quite a while now that red America and blue America are becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory, with two different versions of the Constitution, economics, and American history. But Babel is not a story about tribalism; it’s a story about the fragmentation of everything. It’s about the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community. It’s a metaphor for what is happening not only between red and blue, but within the left and within the right, as well as within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families.
Babel is a metaphor for what some forms of social media have done to nearly all of the groups and institutions most important to the country’s future—and to us as a people. How did this happen? And what does it portend for American life?
Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
An interesting conversation between two extremely smart economists with very, very different points of view.
Piketty:
We are very far, to say the least, from equality of opportunity. This is the least you can say, which is interesting because equality of opportunity is a theoretical concept that people very often say they are in favor of. But if you try to move in a concrete manner to have more equality of opportunity, for instance, by distributing inheritance, people get completely crazy and say, “Oh, how could you do that?”
I’m making a proposal about this in my recent book, saying, okay, maybe everybody at age 25 should receive a minimum inheritance. Let’s say it could be 60 percent of average wealth. In France today, that would be €120,000 if the average wealth is €200,000 euros per adult, so everybody, say, would receive €120,000 euros at age 25. People who today receive zero would receive €120,000 at age 25. People who today receive €1 million will still receive €600,000 after the progressive taxation of inheritance and wealth that’s paying for that, so we would still be very, very far from equality of opportunity.
If you want my opinion, I think we could and we should go beyond that. But just doing that would increase the share of the bottom 50 percent children in total inheritance, which today is between 2 percent in the US and 4 percent in France. It would be 20 percent to 25 percent, which is still much less than 50 percent because after all, they are the poorest 50 percent children. But I think it will make a big difference in terms of real opportunity to start a business. But also, more generally, wealth has a big impact on your bargaining power in life.
When you don’t own anything, when you just own zero or when you only have debt, you have to accept everything. You have to accept any working condition, any wage, any job because you need to pay your bills. You need to pay your rent. If you have a family, you need to do something, so you have to accept this. For people with millions or billions, maybe 100 is like zero. They don’t make the difference. But for people who are at zero, having 100, 200 puts you in a position in terms of bargaining power vis-à-vis the rest of society. It is very different.
I think it’s very complementary to control capital and human capital because €100,000, €200,000 — okay, that’s not going to make you buy an apartment in Paris. That’s not enough. But there are many other cities which, for many people, are more enjoyable, where you can actually buy an apartment or house. You can start a business. It makes a real difference for the bottom 50 percent people.
This is one of the most cogent critiques (from the left) of liberalism (in the sense of basing society on Enlightenment values like pluralist tolerance, the primacy of the individual, etc) that I’ve read. The author genuinely addresses a non-strawman version of liberalism, unlike a lot of the critique from the left which just dismisses it as (in Bright’s words) ‘a loser thing boring normies do‘).
Bright also links at the end to some response pieces, of which I found this one especially good.
When it comes to partisan fact-checking about complex issues—which describes much of the fact-checking that takes place in the context of political news—the truth as stated is often the subjective opinion of people with shared political views.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-psychology-of-fact-checking1/
This is one of several reasons to worry that the US has really overreached in the situation with Russia.
From this exercise we have learned that sanctions are a far weaker economic weapon against Russia than interventions in energy markets. It could even be argued that Russia did not need access to their foreign exchange reserves this time around thanks to the impact the invasion and the sanctions had on oil prices. If history does judge the seizure of Russian foreign exchange reserves as a largely fruitless exercise, it will be a cruel irony because, as we shall see, the act of seizing these reserves could have long-term effects on American financial hegemony.
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2022/03/the-end-of-dollar-hegemony/
Highly entertaining read. Opens with:
I used to get lost all the time. I’d ask for directions, look for landmarks, fold maps, carry a guidebook, and keep an atlas in the glove compartment. I never knew when the next train was coming. I waited around a lot.
I memorized phone numbers, jotted things down in notebooks, had conversations with taxi drivers, talked to random people at bars, wrote checks, went to the bank, and daydreamed. I was grossly inefficient and terribly bored. I rarely got what I wanted and, when I did, I had to wait at least 8-10 days for it to be delivered. I was not archived, nor was I searchable; things I said just disappeared forever.
I had no idea how many steps I’d walked or stairs I’d climbed. My desk’s height did not adjust; I just sat in a chair and took it. I tolerated unstapled stomachs, breasts which subjugated themselves to gravity, and butts that were incapable of functioning as shelves. I had no influence and never disrupted anything. Strangers did not wish me a happy birthday or “Like” me. My personal brand was invisible.
https://mattruby.substack.com/p/the-most-unbelievable-things-about
