"Hexapodia" Is the Key Insight: by Noah Smith & Brad DeLong
101 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 month ago - ★★★★★ - 47 ratingsKey insights—economics, finance, political economy, and wrestling with how to teach the world good economics through every means possible, & some means impossible...
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Episodes
PODCAST: Hexapodia LVIII: Acemoglu & Johnson Should Have Written About Technologies as Labor-Complementing or Labor-Substituting
March 19, 2024 18:38 - 1 hour - 46.9 MBIn which Noah Smith & Brad DeLong wish Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson had written a very different book than their "Power & Progress" is... Key Insights: * Acemoglu & Johnson should have written a very different book—one about how some technologies complement and others substitute for labor, and it is very important to maximize the first. * Neither Noah Smith nor Brad DeLong is at all comfortable with “power” as a category in economics other than as the ability to credibly threaten to com...
PODCAST: Hexapodia LVII: The "Vibecession" Is Losing Its Vibe
February 08, 2024 03:21 - 47 minutes - 32.7 MBProducer Confidence & Consumer Confidence (in the Economy), & Our Confidence (in Our Analyses): Noah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast We, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour... Key Insights: * The disjunction between all the economic data having been very good and very strong for the past year and tons of reports and commentary about how people “weren’t feeling it” is mostly the result of the fact that things...
PODCAST: Hexapodia LVI: Economic Development: Oks & Williams, Rodrik & Stiglitz
January 20, 2024 15:28 - 1 hour - 46.5 MB& a start-of-the-semester academic-email-addresses-only paid-subscription sale: Key Insights: * Young whippersnappers Oks and Williams are to be commended for being young, and whippersnapperish—but we disagree with them. * Contrary to what Brad thought, the fertility transition in Africa really has resumed. * The problem of how you provide mass employment for people is different than the problem of how you increase your economy’s productivity by building knowledge capital, infrastructure...
PODCAST: Hexapodia LV: The Forthcoming Successful Development of the Asia Circle, & Dehyperglobalization
December 04, 2023 16:55 - 59 minutes - 40.6 MBKey Insights: * Finally, at long last, over the next two generations the tide is likely to be flowing strongly toward near-universal global development... * The fear was that dehyperglobalization would rob poorer countries of their ability to develop the export comparative advantages to support the manufacturing engineering clusters they need for learning by doing, establishing a good educational system, and converging to global North standards of living... * This fear appears to have bee...
PODCAST: Hexapodia LIV: We Go Off Message with Special Guest Brian Beutler
October 11, 2023 23:04 - 54 minutes - 37.1 MBThe SubStackLand community gains another valuable member. We welcome him to the NFL SubStackLand: Key Insights: * Bing-AI says “Brian Beutler” is pronounced “Bryan Bootler”—that is, rhymes with “lion shooter”, which shows how far political incorrectness has penetrated Silicon Valley… * Noah has figured out a solution to his problem of losing the screws to his microphone stand: duct tape… * This started with Brad poking Brian on his belief there was a golden age of comity, common purpose,...
PODCAST: Hexapodia LIII: Rule #1: No Schmittposting!
September 15, 2023 20:59 - 1 hour - 48.7 MBLiberals vs. leftists once again, with the principal conclusion being that trying to find and join your tribe by shouting online—Schmittian picking-an-enemy as the core of your identity—is no way to go through life, son. Nor is artfully screenshotting in order to make sure your readers do not see the sentence just below the ones you quote. In which we discuss the positions of “Brianna”, Matt”, and “Ezra”—who are SubTuring concepts in our minds with whom we have parasocial relationships, and...
PODCAST: Hexapodia LII: Growth, Development, China, the Solow Model, & the Future of South & Southeast Asia
September 05, 2023 02:23 - 49 minutes - 34.3 MBKey Insights: * The Chinese Communist Party is very like an aristocracy—or maybe it isn’t… * If it is, it will in the long run have the same strong growth-retarding effects on the economy that aristocracies traditionally have… * Or maybe it won’t: China today is not Europe in the 1600s… * We probably will not be able to get Noah to read Franklin Ford: Robe & Sword: The Regrouping of the French Nobility After Louis XIV <https://archive.org/details/robesword0000unse_g7d2> to dive more dee...
PODCAST: Hexapodia LI: Begun, Þe Attack on Biden Industrial Policy Has!
August 15, 2023 22:39 - 52 minutes - 35.8 MBKey Insights: * Critics: Cato-style libertarians, including AEI’s Michael Strain. The last die-hard classic Milton Friedman-style economic libertarians—and starting in 1975, Milton Friedman would say, every three years, that the Swedish social democratic model was going to collapse in the next three years. * Critics: Progressives—Biden is a tool of the neoliberals, and secretly Robert Rubin in disguise. People like David Dayen. They seem to be going through the motions—half-heartedly makin...
Hexapodia L: Why Is Such a Good Economy Seen as Bad?
August 11, 2023 00:24 - 48 minutes - 33.2 MBKey Insights: * Brad has a new microphone! * Noah has jet lag: he is just back from Japan. * Brad has jet lag: he is just back from Australia. * Perhaps inflation’s ebbing has not yet made its way into the minds of people when they answer pollsters. * We reject the hypothesis that it is because of lagging real incomes. * More difficult mortgage borrowing and positive interest payments on car loans are a thing, but really unlikely to be a big thing. * It seems likely that 2024 will be,...
Hexapodia XLIX: We Cannot Tell in Advance Which Technologies Are Labor-Augmenting & Which Are Labor-Replacing
July 07, 2023 13:14 - 45 minutes - 31.2 MBKey Insights: * Brad’s microphone is dying, and a new one is on order. * However, 75% of the talking on this episode is Noah: he came loaded for bear. * Although Noah has not yet read Acemoglu & Johnson’s Power & Progress, he nevertheless has OPINIONS! * Friedrich von Hayek was right when he pointed out that we could not know the shape of future technologies * Particularly, we cannot know where, as new technologies develop, they will settle in the balance between tacit-local and formal-...
PODCAST: “Hexapodia” is þe Key Insight! XLVIII: The "Late-Antiquity Pause"
June 22, 2023 15:00 - 1 hour - 50.9 MBKey Insights: * Rome did fall. It did not merely “transform”. * Across Eurasia, from 150 to 800 or so there was a pronounced “Late-Antiquity Pause” in terms of technological progress and even the maintenance of large-scale social organization. * There was a proper “Dark Age” only in Britain, Germany, the Low Countries, and France—with Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia being edge cases. * There was no Dark Age at all in what had been the Roman East—what became what we call...
PODCAST: “Hexapodia” is þe Key Insight! XLVII: “Polycrisis” Was Just the New Cold War All the Time!
February 06, 2023 14:12 - 56 minutes - 25.9 MBKey Insights: * The global trade network is immensely valuable… * Friendshoring is not deglobalization, but raher shift-globlization… * Brad was stupid in 2005 in thinking “passing the baton of hegemony” constructively and progressively was a possibility… * Countries have no gratitude, and only remember what is convenient… * William James sought for “the moral equivalent of war” to mobilize civilizational energies for good and progress; and a Cold War certainly counts… * As Zhou Enlai ...
PODCAST: “Hexapodia” is þe Key Insight! XLVI: Þe One Where We Talk About Everything, wiþ Special Guest Miles Kimball
January 10, 2023 19:26 - 1 hour - 29.4 MBKey Insights: * Yes, it is possible to talk about everything in an hour… * We are not very far apart on what the Fed is doing and should be doing—there is only a 100 basis-point disagreement… * Miles would be 100% right about the proper stance of monetary policy if he were in control of the Fed… * Miles is not in control of the Fed… * Thus Brad thinks that asymmetric risks strongly militate for pausing for six months, and then moving rapidly… * Smart people need to think much more abo...
PODCAST: “Hexapodia” is þe Key Insight! XLV: Information Goods & þe Measurement of Economic Growth, wiþ Special Guest John Quiggin
December 20, 2022 15:35 - 49 minutes - 22.5 MBKey Insights: * Information really wants to be free—if it is not free, if it is “charged for” by advertising, or otherwise, you will get into a world of hurt. * In the information age the capitalist mode of production has become a fetter on economic development and human flourishing: Friedrich Engels was right. * We need free public-funded Mastodon < servers for everyone. * No! We don’t! * We need John back in the future, to talk about: (a) the euthanasia of the rentier, what is misname...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XLIV: R&D & Industrial Resarch Labs
December 09, 2022 13:37 - 1 hour - 47.2 MBPre-Note: Here in the U.S., at the leading edge of the world economy, measured producivity growth fell off a cliff in the late 1960s, recovreed somewhat in the 1980s, resumed what had been its “normal” pre-1970 pace in the 1990s with the dot-com boom—and then fell off a cliff again in the mid-2000s. Did the neoliberal swing toward “short-termism”, viewing corporations as cash-flow engines and nothing else—plus the great reduction in public R&D and infrastructure spending—play a role in thi...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XLIII: Crypto Fraud! Edition
November 17, 2022 15:59 - 53 minutes - 73.9 MBPre-Note: One thing we did not get into was the relationship between the claps of FTX and the associated fraud and “Effective Altruism”—Effective Altruism not so much as a philosophy, but rather as a doctrine preached by a life-coach. If you want to have the highest chance of becoming rich, you make your bets as if you had a logarithmic utility function: if the downside to a bet cuts your wealth in half, you will not accept the bet unless the upside more than doubles your wealth. Accepting...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XLII: "Slouching Towards Utopia"—Brad's New Book Edition
September 20, 2022 02:44 - 1 hour - 117 MBKey Insights: * Since 1870, we humans have done amazingly astonishingly uniquely and unprecedentedly well at baking a sufficiently large economic pie. * But the problems of slicing and tasting the pie—of equitably distributing it, and then using our technological powers to live lives wisely and well—continue to flummox us. * The big reason we have been unable to build social institutions for equitably slicing and then properly tasting our now more-than-sufficiently-large economic pie is ...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XLI: Inflation & Its Vicissitudes
August 29, 2022 17:42 - 1 hourKey Insights: The only way to buy insurance against the fiscal theory of the price level’s becoming relevant for the inflation outlook is to keep Trump and Trumpists out of office We have one political party that could well, someday, turn us inflation-wise into “Argentina”: the Republicans. But thankfully we have only one such political party. Democrats need to develop a policy framework for a time of inflation: capacity-building progressivism. We do not yet know whether what the Fed has...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XLI: Inflation & Its Vicissitudes
August 29, 2022 17:42 - 1 hour - 83.2 MBKey Insights: * The only way to buy insurance against the fiscal theory of the price level’s becoming relevant for the inflation outlook is to keep Trump and Trumpists out of office * We have one political party that could well, someday, turn us inflation-wise into “Argentina”: the Republicans. * But thankfully we have only one such political party. * Democrats need to develop a policy framework for a time of inflation: capacity-building progressivism. * We do not yet know whether what ...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XL: Coming to America Immigration Edition
August 08, 2022 20:07 - 1 hour - 100 MBKey Insights: * We should avoid the tendency to paint the past, nostalgically, as a golden age. * If we take the long view there is an overwhelming continuity in the immigrant experience. * The immigrant experience is a very positive story—both then and now. * There is great hope for positive change in our immigration system: comprehensive immigration reform is not a third rail in American politics. * Remember George Washington’s take on immigration: “The bosom of America is open to rec...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XL: Coming to America Immigration Edition
August 08, 2022 20:07 - 1 hourKey Insights: We should avoid the tendency to paint the past, nostalgically, as a golden age. If we take the long view there is an overwhelming continuity in the immigrant experience. The immigrant experience is a very positive story—both then and now. There is great hope for positive change in our immigration system: comprehensive immigration reform is not a third rail in American politics. Remember George Washington’s take on immigration: “The bosom of America is open to receive not on...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XXXIX: Bidenomics Industrial Policy Edition: CHIPS & IRA
July 29, 2022 13:59 - 48 minutes - 66.8 MBKey Insights: * Be pragmatic! Do what works! Reinforce success! Abandon failure! * CHIPS & IRA are only, at most, 1/4 of what we should be doing. * These are both very good things to do, as far as running a successful industrial policy is concerned. * Maybe there was something to Biden’s claims that he could lead congress after all. * Hexapodia! References: * Matt Alt: Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World <https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YJZYFTS> * Stephen S. Cohen & J. Bradf...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XXXIX: Bidenomics Industrial Policy Edition: CHIPS & IRA
July 29, 2022 13:59 - 48 minutesKey Insights: Be pragmatic! Do what works! Reinforce success! Abandon failure! CHIPS & IRA are only, at most, 1/4 of what we should be doing. These are both very good things to do, as far as running a successful industrial policy is concerned. Maybe there was something to Biden’s claims that he could lead congress after all. Hexapodia! References: Matt Alt: Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World <https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YJZYFTS> Stephen S. Cohen & J. Bradford DeLong (201...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XXXVIII: Crypto & "Web3"
May 25, 2022 18:15 - 41 minutesKey Insights: The most recent round of Tech elephants, rhinoceroses, unicorns, and spiny lizards—Netflix, Shopify, etc.—are very unlikely to payoff for those investors who stay on the ride to the very end. That said, they were very much worth doing even if they never make their shareholders any money. The growth of communities of engineering, entrepreneurial, and organizational practice is a huge benefit for innovation and growth—and the overwhelming bulk of that becomes non-rival public kn...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XXXVIII: Crypto & "Web3"
May 25, 2022 18:15 - 41 minutesKey Insights: * The most recent round of Tech elephants, rhinoceroses, unicorns, and spiny lizards—Netflix, Shopify, etc.—are very unlikely to payoff for those investors who stay on the ride to the very end. * That said, they were very much worth doing even if they never make their shareholders any money. The growth of communities of engineering, entrepreneurial, and organizational practice is a huge benefit for innovation and growth—and the overwhelming bulk of that becomes non-rival publ...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XXXVII: A Meta-Podcast on the Ezra Klein Show, Larry Summers Edition; or, The Inflation Outlook Again
March 30, 2022 04:25 - 51 minutesKey Insights: * Not so much key insights, as key questions: (a) What are the teams? (b) 1920, 1948, 1951, 1974, or 1980? (c) Are there any true members of Team Transitory left? (d) Who is on Team The-Fed-Has-Got-This? (e) Who is on Team Hit-the-Economy-on-the-Head-with-a-Brick? (f) What inflation rate do we want to support economic reopening? (g) What inflation rate do we want to support the sectoral rebalancing—towards goods production, & towards the deliverator economy? (h) How would exp...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XXXVII: A Meta-Podcast on the Ezra Klein Show, Larry Summers Edition; or, The Inflation Outlook Again
March 30, 2022 04:25 - 51 minutesKey Insights: Not so much key insights, as key questions: (a) What are the teams? (b) 1920, 1948, 1951, 1974, or 1980? (c) Are there any true members of Team Transitory left? (d) Who is on Team The-Fed-Has-Got-This? (e) Who is on Team Hit-the-Economy-on-the-Head-with-a-Brick? (f) What inflation rate do we want to support economic reopening? (g) What inflation rate do we want to support the sectoral rebalancing—towards goods production, & towards the deliverator economy? (h) How would expecte...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XXXVI: Four Lost Cities, by Annalee Newitz
March 15, 2022 23:24 - 1 hourKey Insights: * There is a perspective from which “today” means “post-Ordovician” * Catul-Huyuk as 900 families living cheek-by-jowl, and after 1500 years… people leave… * Angkor’s uniquely vulnerable water reservoirs… and eventually… people leave… * Cahokia’s sophisticated organization of labor… but eventually… people leave… * Pompeii… well, we know why people flee all-of-a-sudden… * Cities are magical places, but not always, and not forever… * Cities suffer from abandonment when an ...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XXXVI: Four Lost Cities, by Annalee Newitz
March 15, 2022 23:24 - 1 hourKey Insights: There is a perspective from which “today” means “post-Ordovician” Catul-Huyuk as 900 families living cheek-by-jowl, and after 1500 years… people leave… Angkor’s uniquely vulnerable water reservoirs… and eventually… people leave… Cahokia’s sophisticated organization of labor… but eventually… people leave… Pompeii… well, we know why people flee all-of-a-sudden… Cities are magical places, but not always, and not forever… Cities suffer from abandonment when an overdetermined ...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XXXV: Putin's Surprise Attack on Ukraine, wiþ Special Guest Kamil Galeev
March 09, 2022 18:53 - 1 hourWe Truly Did Not Have History Rhyming to the Spanish Civil War on Our 2022 Bingo Card!… Subscribe to get this in your email inbox. Become a paid subscriber if… I will not say that this ‘Stack will cease to exist without paying subscribers. I will say that the frequency of this ‘Stack depends on enough people being paying subscribers for me to feel under a sense of obligation to prioritize this, rather than something else. And I will say that the survival of our civilization may well depend o...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XXXV: Putin's Surprise Attack on Ukraine, wiþ Special Guest Kamil Galeev
March 09, 2022 18:53 - 1 hourWe Truly Did Not Have History Rhyming to the Spanish Civil War on Our 2022 Bingo Card!… Subscribe to get this in your email inbox. Become a paid subscriber if… I will not say that this ‘Stack will cease to exist without paying subscribers. I will say that the frequency of this ‘Stack depends on enough people being paying subscribers for me to feel under a sense of obligation to prioritize this, rather than something else. And I will say that the survival of our civilization may well depend ...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight XXXIV!: Federal Reserve Nominee Lisa Cook, without Special Guest Lisa Cook
February 06, 2022 03:57 - 50 minutesBecome a free subscriber to receive this ‘Stack in your email. Do note that this Grasping Reality newsletter is a reader-supported publication—I really would like to collect enough from it to hire an RA. So consider becoming a paid subscriber, please, if you find this project worthwhile and think it worth continuing: Thanks for reading this. And please share it far and wide, if you think it worth reading… Key Insights: The Federal Reserve Act directly speaks of the importance of representa...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight XXXIV!: Federal Reserve Nominee Lisa Cook, without Special Guest Lisa Cook
February 06, 2022 03:57 - 50 minutesBecome a free subscriber to receive this ‘Stack in your email. Do note that this Grasping Reality newsletter is a reader-supported publication—I really would like to collect enough from it to hire an RA. So consider becoming a paid subscriber, please, if you find this project worthwhile and think it worth continuing: Thanks for reading this. And please share it far and wide, if you think it worth reading… Key Insights: * The Federal Reserve Act directly speaks of the importance of repres...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight XXXIII: Inflation!
January 14, 2022 15:03 - 47 minutesBecome a free subscriber to receive this ‘Stack in your email. Do note that this Grasping Reality newsletter is a reader-supported publication—I really would like to collect enough from it to hire an RA. So consider becoming a paid subscriber, please, if you find this project worthwhile and think it worth continuing: Thanks for reading this. And please share it far and wide, if you think it worth reading! Key Insights: Macro Policy Guiding Principle: prioritize full employment—make Say’s L...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight XXXIII: Inflation!
January 14, 2022 15:03 - 47 minutesBecome a free subscriber to receive this ‘Stack in your email. Do note that this Grasping Reality newsletter is a reader-supported publication—I really would like to collect enough from it to hire an RA. So consider becoming a paid subscriber, please, if you find this project worthwhile and think it worth continuing: Thanks for reading this. And please share it far and wide, if you think it worth reading! Key Insights: * Macro Policy Guiding Principle: prioritize full employment—make Say...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight XXXII: Þe “Rule & Ruin” of America’s Republican Party, & Other Topics
December 14, 2021 20:25 - 59 minutesKey Insights: We may well face a generation of right-wing culture war-fueled minority rule in this country. American Progressives have proven bad at making alliances with moderate conservatives—and at giving conservative voters reasons to vote for moderates. Worry most about American national decline—which is happening anyway. American exceptionalism and America as a “city upon a hill” for the world—that is gone. We are no longer a model to emulate, but a horrible warning of a society gon...
PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight XXXII: Þe “Rule & Ruin” of America’s Republican Party, & Other Topics
December 14, 2021 20:25 - 59 minutesKey Insights: * We may well face a generation of right-wing culture war-fueled minority rule in this country. * American Progressives have proven bad at making alliances with moderate conservatives—and at giving conservative voters reasons to vote for moderates. * Worry most about American national decline—which is happening anyway. * American exceptionalism and America as a “city upon a hill” for the world—that is gone. We are no longer a model to emulate, but a horrible warning of a so...
PODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXXI: History, Slavery, & National Narratives
November 29, 2021 22:28 - 1 hourKey Insights: Nearly all successful political movements over the past 150 years have been strongly nationalistic A successful cosmopolitanism must therefore be a nationalistic cosmopolitanism—one that says your country is great because it learns from and has important things to teach other nations. We—somewhat surprisingly—find ourselves endorsing and agreeing with Matthew Desmond’s claim that an important root of some facets of American capitalism is found on the plantation. We endorse S...
PODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXXI: History, Slavery, & National Narratives
November 29, 2021 22:28 - 1 hourKey Insights: * Nearly all successful political movements over the past 150 years have been strongly nationalistic * A successful cosmopolitanism must therefore be a nationalistic cosmopolitanism—one that says your country is great because it learns from and has important things to teach other nations. * We—somewhat surprisingly—find ourselves endorsing and agreeing with Matthew Desmond’s claim that an important root of some facets of American capitalism is found on the plantation. * We ...
PODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXX: Faulty Torpedoes, WWII Submarines, Promotions, & Our Hideous Waste of Human Potential
November 17, 2021 15:27 - 49 minutesKey Insights: Matt Suandi—forced off of his India RCT development-economics project by the COVID plague—has taken the plague year to write a brilliant paper: Matthew Suandi: Promoting to Opportunity: Evidence and Implications from the U.S. Submarine Service <https://static1.squarespace.com/static/615a18f283700f2629a58019/t/618ace007764e35a1b3f0176/1636486691263/MatthewSuandi_JMP_Nov_21_Berkeley.pdf> In the early stages of the Pacific War, whether a US submarine-launched torpedo exploded was...
PODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXX: Faulty Torpedoes, WWII Submarines, Promotions, & Our Hideous Waste of Human Potential
November 17, 2021 15:27 - 49 minutesKey Insights: * Matt Suandi—forced off of his India RCT development-economics project by the COVID plague—has taken the plague year to write a brilliant paper: Matthew Suandi: Promoting to Opportunity: Evidence and Implications from the U.S. Submarine Service <https://static1.squarespace.com/static/615a18f283700f2629a58019/t/618ace007764e35a1b3f0176/1636486691263/MatthewSuandi_JMP_Nov_21_Berkeley.pdf> * In the early stages of the Pacific War, whether a US submarine-launched torpedo explode...
PODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXIX: Þe Swedish Central Bank Prize in Honor of Alfred Nobel Podcast
October 20, 2021 01:09 - 44 minutesKey Insights: * Paul Feyerabend was right—science is whatever scientists do: anything goes. But what healthy sciences that survive and flourish and good scientists do is put first and foremost discovering what actually is and making theories to understand reality. So Kuhn and Popper are also right. * Economics has not been much of a science. But this Card, Angrist, Imbens—and Krueger—Nobel Prize marks a very big possible improvement in this respect. * Keep at it! Keep doing your work no m...
PODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXIX: Þe Swedish Central Bank Prize in Honor of Alfred Nobel Podcast
October 20, 2021 01:09 - 44 minutesKey Insights: Paul Feyerabend was right—science is whatever scientists do: anything goes. But what healthy sciences that survive and flourish and good scientists do is put first and foremost discovering what actually is and making theories to understand reality. So Kuhn and Popper are also right. Economics has not been much of a science. But this Card, Angrist, Imbens—and Krueger—Nobel Prize marks a very big possible improvement in this respect. Keep at it! Keep doing your work no matter t...
PODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXVIII: Build Back Better!
October 07, 2021 02:46 - 53 minutesKey Insights: * Yes, Americans are now in a selfish defensive crouch, but just wait 8 years—if we get a high-pressure economy for those years… * We are finally getting back to normal politics, in which we slag each other because some claim we can afford to spend $3.5 and others that we can only afford to spend $1.5 trillion. And that is a very good sign… * Hexapodia! References: * Zach Carter: Why Are Moderates Trying to Blow Up Biden’s Centrist Economic Plan? <https://www.nytimes.com/2...
PODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXVIII: Build Back Better!
October 07, 2021 02:46 - 53 minutesKey Insights: Yes, Americans are now in a selfish defensive crouch, but just wait 8 years—if we get a high-pressure economy for those years… We are finally getting back to normal politics, in which we slag each other because some claim we can afford to spend $3.5 and others that we can only afford to spend $1.5 trillion. And that is a very good sign… Hexapodia! References: Zach Carter: Why Are Moderates Trying to Blow Up Biden’s Centrist Economic Plan? <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/22...
PODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXVII: Evergrande
September 22, 2021 17:56 - 39 minutesKey Insights: * I do not understand how the Chinese economy works. * The Chinese economy is an odd combination of market and party in which the party has enormous reach and control, but somehow that has not triggered the “soft budget constraint” problems of the Soviet model. * Financial constraints are not real—a government that wants to can evade them in its management of the economy. * Real resource constraints are, however real: finance does not bind because it is true that what we ca...
PODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXVII: Evergrande
September 22, 2021 17:56 - 39 minutesKey Insights: I do not understand how the Chinese economy works. The Chinese economy is an odd combination of market and party in which the party has enormous reach and control, but somehow that has not triggered the “soft budget constraint” problems of the Soviet model. Financial constraints are not real—a government that wants to can evade them in its management of the economy. Real resource constraints are, however real: finance does not bind because it is true that what we can do, we ...
PODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXVI: True, Neo-, and Illiberalism
September 18, 2021 19:03 - 54 minutesKey Insights: Today’s meaning of “neoliberalism” is the result of the collision of two different applications of the term—to Margaret Thatcher, and to the Washington Monthly… Intermediary institutions are very suspicious to liberalism, at least in its pure form… Liberalism has a bias toward atomizing solutions to social problems… YIMBY vs. NIMBY is the fundamental political debate in America today… Sometimes the answer will be command-and-control, sometimes the answer will be deregulatio...
PODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXVI: True, Neo-, and Illiberalism
September 18, 2021 19:03 - 54 minutesKey Insights: * Today’s meaning of “neoliberalism” is the result of the collision of two different applications of the term—to Margaret Thatcher, and to the Washington Monthly… * Intermediary institutions are very suspicious to liberalism, at least in its pure form… * Liberalism has a bias toward atomizing solutions to social problems… * YIMBY vs. NIMBY is the fundamental political debate in America today… * Sometimes the answer will be command-and-control, sometimes the answer will be ...
PODCAST: “Hexapodia” Is þe Key Insight XXV: Afghanistan
August 25, 2021 23:16 - 38 minutesKey Insights: * The Taliban should go to the World Bank and say: “For 42 years now, mechanized, airborne, and infantry armies and air and drone forces have been driving, walking, and flying over our country, killing us. that has done enormous amounts of damage. We are absolutely dirt poor. We will try as hard as we can: please give us money so that we can start call centers, start simple labor-intensive textile factories, and also beef up our handmade rug businesses so that we can export to...