This is thanks to Paul Krugman, who keeps an eye on things—like Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers—that I just can’t bring myself to look at.
How To Make a Shithole Country
Dismal Science
The Dreams Of Electric Sheep
It seems you feel our work is not of benefit to the public…
Chatbots are like any other machine. They’re either a benefit or a hazard. If they’re a benefit, it’s not my problem.
The March of Technology
I’ve been reading that ChatGPT can create plausible essays on any subject that are both utterly self-confident and utterly wrong.
I take that bit of news to mean that ChatGPT could already be a perfect replacement for Donald Trump, at least on paper. All of the ignorance, none of the sneering—as technological miracles go, that ain’t half bad.
If This Be Treason….
A meditation on Brad DeLong’s Slouching Towards Utopia
Is the logic of capitalism the logic of the germ cell or the cancer cell? If it actually turns out to be both, what does that augur for our future?
Social democracy demands consensus. Fascism demands obedience. Neither has much respect for the richness of human intention.
We are a mercurial species. Cats are actually easier to herd than we are. Sooner or later, this drives the zealots, ideologues, and bureaucrats of every religion and ism around the bend. If they weren’t so vicious in their disappointments, they’d deserve our sympathy.
There are echoes of an eloquent despair in DeLong’s perceptions, something prophetic, something like an eternally acerbic Brechtian irony:
Wäre es da
—Bertolt Brecht, die Lösung
Nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung
Löste das Volk auf und
Wählte ein anderes?
Would it not in that case
Be simpler for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
If in the end democracy isn’t robust enough to save us from the metastatic influence of 21st century technologies on our nastier impulses, what then? Even if human evolution were proceeding according to our fondest hopes, could it ever be quick enough to make Brecht’s tongue-in-cheek option a viable one? Clearly not.
I don’t care. I’ve just finished reading Slouching Towards Utopia, and I’m putting away my lantern. I’ve found an honest man. To return to Brecht again:
In den finsteren Zeiten
Wird da auch gesungen werden?
Da wird auch gesungen werden.
Von den finsteren Zeiten.In the dark times
—Bertolt Brecht, Schlechte Zeit für Lyrik
Will there also be singing?
There will also be singing.
About the dark times.
Fáfnir Wasn’t German, Was He? (Don’t Know About Smaug)
From an article in Mining.com, linked from Naked Capitalism:
Germany’s central bank completed Wednesday its plan to bring back home 54,000 gold bars it had in vaults located in New York and Paris to beneath its Frankfurt headquarters, three years ahead of schedule…
…The lender said it ‘thoroughly and exhaustively’ tested all of the bars after they arrived back in Frankfurt and ‘no irregularities came to light with regard to the authenticity, fineness or weight of the bars.’
The Layman’s Guide to Economics, Appendix 1
When I first published the Layman’s Guide, I omitted any reference to economists as such, mostly because it seemed to me at the time that not even God himself, let alone an untutored blogger, could make anything either succinct or coherent out of their work. Since then, I’ve read more widely, if not more deeply, and, by George, I think I’ve finally got it.
Economists in General: The health of the economy does not depend on your having any.
Some Economists in Particular: And a damned good thing it is, too, which you would realize if only you could grasp the concepts involved.
The Layman’s Guide to Economics
The Brothers Koch: You can’t have any.
Ted Cruz: You don’t deserve any.
Goldman Sachs: You can’t have any until we’ve got ours, and most of yours as well.
Larry Summers: Once I’ve got mine, I’ll try really, really hard to get you some.
President Obama: Everybody should have some. Somebody should see to it.
A Cold Day in Hell
Today Paul Krugman has discovered that, gasp, technological unemployment is really real! And it’s really, finally here! And it really, really will result in a permanent transfer of wealth from labor to capital, no matter how many college degrees laborers go into debt to acquire! (and, coincidentally, of course, this also seems to imply that Marx might actually have been a bit smarter than we thought.)
I’m being unfair, or at least uncharitable, to the penitent Dr. Krugman, who’s a nice guy, and would be a nice guy even if he weren’t an economist. Still, this is an amazingly belated observation on his part. I thought that these economist guys all knew this stuff, but were afraid to mention it for fear of devaluing their Keynesian cheerleading. Horrifying to think that they didn’t actually know it at all.
And Now, For Something Completely Different:
Brad DeLong at his finest. Proof positive that the talent’s out there:
The Democratic Deficit in Europe — Another View
From Dani Rodrik’s Europe’s Next Nightmare in Project Syndicate:
The challenge is to develop a new political narrative emphasizing national interests and values without overtones of nativism and xenophobia. If centrist elites do not prove themselves up to the task, those of the far right will gladly fill the vacuum, minus the moderation.
That is why outgoing Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou had the right idea with his aborted call for a referendum. That move was a belated attempt to recognize the primacy of domestic politics, even if investors viewed it, in the words of a Financial Times editor, as “playing with fire.” Scrapping the referendum simply postpones the day of reckoning and raises the ultimate costs to be paid by Greece’s new leadership.
A more moderately-worded view of Europe’s delusions. Then again, Rodrik doesn’t need to shriek — he isn’t looking directly down into the abyss. He’s over here on this side of the Atlantic, where we have our own problems with democracy. There are many pathways to the legitimacy conferred on a government by the consent of the governed. Europe can’t seem to find any of them, while we seem to have given up looking. Given that modern history hasn’t tolerated either form of benign neglect for very long, there doesn’t seem much point in preferring one over the other.