Tyler Cowen

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Great 2013 Nonfiction Pieces Online For Free

December 13, 2013 in Misc. | Permalink

Here, in no particular order, are this year’s 20 selections. These pieces, which made me think or reconsider my opinions or just delighted me, are limited to ungated material that’s only a click away. (I included work from publications such as the New York Times which allow a certain amount of free articles per month.)

  • “The Reality Show” (Mike Jay, Aeon) Brilliant essay that points out that the manifestations of mental illness are heavily influenced by the prevailing culture. In our case: ubiquitous technology.
  • “Invisible Child–Girl in the Shadows: Dasani’s Homeless Life“ (Andrea Elliott, New York Times) A tale of two cities in present-day New York told through the story of a talented grade-school girl trying to make it through the hard knocks of class divisions. What’s expressed tacitly is that if the best and brightest homeless children only have a so-so shot at success, those less gifted have almost none. 
  • “The Robots Are Here” (Tyler Cowen, Politico Magazine): The best distillation yet of the economist’s ideas about where the technological disruption will lead us as a society. I’m not completely on board with his forecasting, but this article is smart and provocative.
  • “In Conversation: Antonin Scalia” (Jennifer Senior, New York) Amazing interview with the Supreme Court Justice which reveals him to a stunning, and frightening, extent.
  • “Return of the Oppressed“ (Peter Turchin, Aeon) The father of Cliodynanics forecasts a dark future for humanity thanks to spiraling wealth inequality.
  • “Omens“ (Ross Andersen, Aeon) With a focus on philosopher Nick Bostrom, the writer wonders whether humans will survive into the deep future.
  • “Thanksgiving in Mongolia” (Ariel Levy, The New Yorker) Heartrending story of a reporter’s loss in a far-flung place is personal journalism at its finest.
  • “Blockbuster Video: 1985-2013” (Alex Pappademas, Grantland): A master of the postmortem lays to rest not a person but a way of life which is disappearing brick by brick and mortar by mortar. 
  • “The Corporate Mystique” (Judith Shulevitz, The New Republic) A reminder that a female CEO is not a replacement for a women’s movement.
  • “The Global Swarm” (P.W. Singer, Foreign Policy) The author considers privacy as drones get smaller, smarter and seemingly unstoppable.
  • “The Master” (Marc Fisher, The New Yorker) A profile of a predatory teacher is most interesting as an extreme psychological portrait of the cult mentality.
  • “Why the World Faces Climate Chaos” (Martin Wolf, Financial Times) An attempt to understand why we cling to systems that doom us, that could make us the new dinosaurs.
  • “The Hollywood Fast Life of Stalker Sarah” (Molly Knight, New York Times Magazine) Thoughtful article about celebrity in our age of decentralized media, in which fame has entered its long-tail phase, seemingly available to everyone and worth less than ever. 
  • “Academy Fight Song” (Thomas Frank, The Baffler) The author plays the role of designated mourner for common sense in U.S. higher education, which costs more now and returns less.
  • “The Wastefulness of Automation” (Frances Coppola, Pieria) A smart consideration of the disconnect of free-market societies that are also highly automated ones.

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“It’s The Rapid Increase In Machines’ Ability To Substitute For Intelligent Human Labor That Presages The Greater Disruption”

November 14, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

“The Robots Are Here” is an excellent, thought-provoking article by Tyler Cowen at Politico Magazine which considers what our progress with data and automation has wrought. If you’re not familiar with the George Mason economist’s work, this piece is a wonderful entry point. He begins by looking at the prescience of an Isaac Asimov story which predicted the intersection of deep data and the democratic process. An excerpt:

“Nearly 60 years after Asimov anticipated a decidedly dramatic intrusion of machines into our politics, we may not (yet) be offloading our democratic responsibilities to computers, but we are empowering them to reshape our economy and society in ways that could be just as profound. The rise of smart machines—technologies that encompass everything from artificial intelligence to industrial robots to the smartphones in our pockets—is changing how we live, work and play. Less acknowledged, perhaps, is what all this technological change portends: nothing short of a new political order. The productivity gains, the medical advances, the workplace reorganizations and the myriad other upheavals that will define the coming automation age will create new economic winners and losers; it will reorient our demographics; and undoubtedly, it will transform what we demand from our government.

The rise of the machines builds on deeper economic trends that are already roiling American society, including stagnant growth since 2001 and a greater openness to trade and foreign outsourcing. But it’s the rapid increase in machines’ ability to substitute for intelligent human labor that presages the greater disruption. We’re on the verge of having computer systems that understand the entirety of human ‘natural language,’ a problem that was considered a very tough one only a few years ago. We’re close to the point when we can fit the (articulable) knowledge of the entire world into the palm of our hands. Self-driving cars are making their way onto streets in California and Nevada. Whether you are a factory worker or an accountant, a waitress or a doctor, this is the wave that will lift you or dump you.”

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“There’s A Big Digital Divide In This Country”

November 7, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I’ve written before that I don’t think it’s clear how we reconcile an automated society and a capitalist one. We managed to reinvent work in America during the Industrial Revolution by throwing ourselves into new information businesses (marketing, public relations, advertising, etc.). Perhaps such alternatives will emerge again. If not, we need to reconfigure our economic model, maintaining free markets but sharing the wealth somehow. Otherwise inequality will reach traumatic levels. At the New Yorker blog, Joshua Rothman interviews Tyler Cowen about these issues and others. I have questions about Cowen’s vision of America’s future, but he always makes intelligent points. The interview’s opening:

“Question:

In Average Is Over, you argue that inequality will grow in the U.S. for the next several decades. Why?

 Tyler Cowen:

There are three main reasons inequality is here to stay, and will likely grow. The first is just measurement of worker value. We’re doing a lot to measure what workers are contributing to businesses, and, when you do that, very often you end up paying some people less and other people more. The second is automation—especially in terms of smart software. Today’s workplaces are often more complicated than, say, a factory for General Motors was in 1962. They require higher skills. People who have those skills are very often doing extremely well, but a lot of people don’t have them, and that increases inequality. And the third point is globalization. There’s a lot more unskilled labor in the world, and that creates downward pressure on unskilled labor in the United States. On the global level, inequality is down dramatically—we shouldn’t forget that. But within each country, or almost every country, inequality is up.

 Question:

You think that intelligent software, especially, will make the labor market more unequal. Why is that the case?

 Tyler Cowen:

Because of the cognitive requirements of working with smart software. And it’s also about training. There’s a big digital divide in this country.”

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“So Will The Rest Of The Country Follow Texas’ Lead?”

October 24, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I really enjoyed “Why Texas Is Our Future,” economist Tyler Cowen’s Time cover story about the Lone Star State becoming the template for America, but I have to wonder if Texas is even the future of Texas, let alone the rest of the country. I’m not saying demographic shifts will completely change its nature–some things are deeply ingrained–but I wonder if the state will always be so red. It may have been better for Time to do a split-cover issue asking if Texas or California will be America’s future. (Though Massachusetts may actually have them both beat.) A few more quick questions and comments about the piece:

  • Growing Mexican-American voting power goes unmentioned. It likely won’t help Republicans in that state or nationally in the near future.
  • The politicians who favor the type of policies Cowen thinks are the future (low taxes, little or no social safety net) are also usually the same ones with extreme views on social policies. You can’t uncouple the two and far-right stances on reproductive rights and immigration and race and education and child health care may cost them at the ballot box.
  • You can’t assume that the influx of new citizens from disparate places to Texas won’t alter its political landscape. New arrivals may initially be attracted by no state income taxes, but they may grow weary of some of its less-appealing side effects.
  • It’s hard to see how Texas’ seemingly endless cheap land could apply to most smaller American states. The supply just isn’t there. Zoning-law changes can help somewhat, but you can do just so much with so little.
  • Citizens moving to Texas in large numbers is impressive, but many more people just voted against the Texas model in the last Presidential election. And, no, it was not just about the candidates’ personalities.
  • On this passage: “The individuals moving up the economic ladder are the ones who’ve responded to this competition by upgrading their skills and efforts. The ones moving down are largely those who have failed or been unable to respond at all.” I know people like Cowen who have been successful for a long time believe stuff like this, but it just isn’t true. There’s a lot more randomness and luck than a statement like this acknowledges.
  • It’s certainly not Cowen’s responsibility in predicting the future to skew his opinions to the more humanistic path, but I think he’s way too fatalistic about Americans accepting greater and greater income inequality. His view of the future is pretty chilling and only some of it has to be true. Sure, automation will become more prominent, but we do not have to politically allow our country to become an even more extreme version of haves and have-nots. I don’t think people will forever be satisfied by bread and Kardashians.

From Cowen on the Texas model:

How did Texas do it?

Texas Monthly senior editor Erica Grieder credits the ‘Texas model’ in her recent book, Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right: What America Can Learn From the Strange Genius of Texas. “The Texas model basically calls for low taxes and low services,’ she says. “In a sense, it’s just a limited-government approach.” Chief Executive magazine has named Texas the most growth-friendly state in the nation for nine years in a row. The ranking is based on survey results from its CEO readership, who grade the states on the basis of factors such as taxes and regulation, the quality of the workforce and the living environment. Cheap land, cheap labor and low taxes have all clearly contributed to this business-friendly climate. But that’s not the whole story.

“Certainly since 2008, the beginning of the Great Recession, it’s been the energy boom,” SMU’s [Bernard] Weinstein says, pointing to the resource boom’s ripple effect throughout the Texas economy. However, he says, the job growth predates the energy boom by a significant margin. “A decade ago, before the shale boom, economic growth in Texas was based on IT development,” Weinstein says. “Today most of the job creation, in total numbers, is in business and personal services, from people working in hospitals to lawyers.”

Of course, not everyone’s a fan of the Texas model. “We are not strong economically because we have low taxes and lax regulation. We are strong economically because of geography and geology,” says Scott McCown, a former executive director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities who is now a law professor at the University of Texas. “We’ve built an economy favoring the wealthy … If that’s the ultimate end result of the Texas model in a democratic society, it will be rejected.”

So will the rest of the country follow Texas’ lead? People are already voting with their feet. The places in the U.S. seeing significant in-migration are largely in relatively inexpensive parts of the Sun Belt. These are, by and large, affordable states with decent records of job creation–often with subpar public services and low taxes. Texas is just the most striking example. But Oklahoma, Colorado, the Carolinas and other parts of the South are benefiting from the same trends–namely that California, New York and the other high-tax, high-cost states are no longer such good deals for much of the U.S.’s middle and lower-middle classes.

The Americans heading to Texas and other cheap-living states are a bit like the mythical cowboys of our past–self-reliant, for better or worse.•

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“Students In The Nation’s Second-Largest School District Cracked The Tablets’ Security Settings”

October 9, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In his appearance on EconTalk, Tyler Cowen said something that I really agree with: We already have our next great teaching tool, and it’s games. There’s no reason why students in a classroom setting can’t learn physics or mathematics or language through video games, if we can just get past our belief that learning most be painful. Of course, as Cowen pointed out, we also have to commit to games en masse since the production of popular ones is remarkably expensive. From a Yahoo! article about students repurposing their free iPads:

“You have to give school officials in Los Angeles credit for a good idea: put iPads in the hands of over 650,000 students to give them the most advanced learning tools available in an effort to boost their interest in academics.

But the $1 billion plan is taking some heat after students in the nation’s second-largest school district cracked the tablets’ security settings to forgo reading, writing and ‘rithmetic and instead post on Facebook and play games during class time.

‘They kind of should have known this would happen,’ said Maria Aguilera, a student at one of the schools where games briefly replaced academia. ‘We’re high school students after all. I mean, come on.’

The top game choices? Temple Run, Subway Surfing and an unnamed car racing game.”

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“The Very Long-Term Future Is Quite Utopian”

October 8, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Just as good as Russ Roberts’ EconTalk episode with David Epstein is his recent show with economist Tyler Cowen, whose new book, Average Is Over, looks at life in a more-autonomous future. The guest sees the coming years being increasingly meritocratic, though with merit having shifted from those who are great to those who great at interfacing with machines. On that point is an exchange about freestyle chess, in which a human and computer team up to challenge another computer. Cowen points out that the best human players usually don’t fare too well in these competitions, and are often outdone by lesser players who are superior at knowing when to trust their non-human partner. Cowen guesses at future population distribution in the U.S. and how cities will change, and explains why he thinks income inequality is rising at the same time that crime rates are falling. He’s optimistic about life in 50-70 years, but believes the next few decades will be a painful mix of positives and negatives. 

I doubt we’ll ever really be a meritocracy. Even if we were, the idea that a small number of us, 15% or so, will flourish and have tremendous advantages and the rest will be second-class citizens with very nice toys and tools, just makes me sad. Even if it means that we’re wealthier in the aggregate, I still feel depressed about it. Beautiful cities where no poor people can afford to live doesn’t sound Utopian to me. Listen here.

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“Everyone Will Suffer The Fate Of Professional Chess Players, Who Always Know When They Have Lost A Game”

August 31, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In Tyler Cowen’s smart New York Times editorial “Who Will Prosper in the New World,” the economist tries to identify the victors and the victims in a highly automated society. In one passage that I don’t excerpt, he suggests that the studious who take advantage of online learning will do best, but some of the most studious people I know are struggling the most right now. And I wonder if an ageist culture like ours will respond to older folks who continue to educate themselves. We’ll see. Here’s an excerpt about some of those he believes Big Data will diminish:

“Who will be most likely to suffer from this technological revolution?

PEOPLE WITH DELICATE FEELINGS Computing and software will make it easier to measure performance and productivity.

It will be harder to gloss over our failings and maintain self-deception. In essence everyone will suffer the fate of professional chess players, who always know when they have lost a game, have an exact numerical rating for their overall performance, and find excuses for failure hard to come by.

Individuals will have many measures of their proficiency. They will have an incentive to disclose that information to get the better job or social opportunity. You’ll assume the worst about those who keep secrets, and so openness will reign. Many of us will start to hate the idea of Big Data.

PEOPLE UNLUCKY IN HEALTH CARE Quality surgery and cancer treatment cannot be automated very easily. They will be highly expensive, and unlucky health breaks will be all the more tragic because not everyone will be able to afford the best treatments.

With marvelous diagnosis available online, some people will get the right treatments early on, whereas others will know exactly what they are dying from.”

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“Price: $185,000.00 + $4.49 Shipping”

August 9, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Although I don’t think Amazon’s entry into the art market can make that scene any more ridiculous than it already is, economist Tyler Cowen writes disapprovingly of the early returns in a Marginal Revolution post. An excerpt:

“I expect the real business here to come in posters, lower quality lithographs, and screen prints, not fine art per se.  And sold on a commodity basis.  There is nothing wrong with that, but I don’t think it will amount to much more aesthetic importance than say Amazon selling tennis balls or lawnmowers.

Should you buy this mediocre Mary Cassatt lithograph for ‘Price: $185,000.00 + $4.49 shipping’?  (Jeff, is WaPo charging you $250 million plus $4.49 shipping?  I don’t think so. )

One enduring feature of the art world is that a given piece will sell for much more in one context rather than another.  The same painting that might sell for 5k from a lower tier dealer won’t command more than 2k on eBay, if that.  Yet it could sell for 10k, as a bargain item, relatively speaking, if it ended up in the right NYC gallery (which it probably wouldn’t).  Where does Amazon stand in this hierarchy?  It doesn’t look promising.

Their Warhols are weak and overpriced, even if you like Warhol.  Are they so sure that this rather grisly Monet is actually the real thing?  I say the reviews of that item gets it right.  At least the shipping is free and you can leave feedback.

I’ve browsed the ‘above 10k’ category and virtually all of it seems a) aesthetically abysmal and b) drastically overpriced.  It looks like dealers trying to unload unwanted, hard to sell inventory at sucker prices.  I’m guessing that many of these are being sold at multiples of three or four over auction price histories.”

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“What If We All Died At Forty?”

April 14, 2013 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

At the excellent Marginal Revolution blog, economist Tyler Cowen takes on a thought experiment: What if we all died at forty? An excerpt from his answer:

“One question is how child-bearing norms will evolve.  There will be considerable pressure to have kids at age eighteen or so.  (It might be considered unethical to have a child at age thirty-five, although if the fertility rate falls enough the economy might shift heavily into orphanages and this could be considered virtuous nonetheless.) I predict many people would become much stricter in their morals and more religious, and they will have children quite early.

Other people would attempt to maintain a collegiate lifestyle through their death at age forty.  There would be a polarization of outcomes and approaches to life.  Old age as an equalizer, and as an enforcer of responsible savings behavior, would be gone.

The likelihood of warfare would rise, if only because the sage elderly won’t be around and male hormones will run rampant.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“China Has Become An Olympic Powerhouse While India Has Underperformed”

August 6, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Economists Tyler Cowen (who has read more more books than all of us combined) and Kevin Grier have a smart article at Grantland that reveals how countries can improve their odds of earning medals at the Olympics. An excerpt about the divergent performances of China and India, two countries with similarly huge talent pools:

“Will China and India, the two countries with populations over 1 billion, dominate the Olympics of the future, especially as they become wealthier?

To date, their Olympic performances are almost polar opposites. China has become an Olympic powerhouse while India has underperformed. From 1960 to 2000, China won 80 gold medals, while India won only two. Over those 11 Olympiads, India only won eight total medals while China won over 200. While China has grown faster and is richer than India, the difference in wealth can’t begin to account for the chasm between their Olympic results.

In their book Poor Economics, MIT economists Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo attribute India’s dismal Olympic performance at least partly to very poor child nutrition. They document that rates of severe child malnutrition are much higher in India than in sub-Saharan Africa, even though most of sub-Saharan Africa is significantly poorer than India.

Even the significant segment of the Indian population that grows up healthy is at a disadvantage relative to China. The Chinese economic development model has focused on investment in infrastructure; things like massive airports, high-speed rail, hundreds of dams, and, yes, stadiums, world-class swimming pools, and high-tech athletic equipment. And while India is a boisterous democracy, China continues to be ruled by a Communist party, which still remembers the old Cold War days when athletic performance was a strong symbol of a country’s geopolitical clout.”

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“Unlike In Silicon Valley, There Are No NBA ‘Start-Ups'”

November 1, 2011 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

A concise explanation of why labor disputes in sports are so tortuous and odd, via Tyler Cowen and Kevin Grier, on Grantland:

“Why are labor disputes in sports so weird?

The bosses control the whole sector and face little competition when it comes to hiring labor. Since the merger with the ABA in 1976, the NBA is a monopoly and operates in a manner (it monopolizes!) that would be illegal outside the sports world. Unlike in Silicon Valley, there are no NBA “start-ups.” You cannot create a new NBA team without permission of the incumbent owners. The league also has to approve changes in teams’ location and ownership.

What does this mean? The owners can get together and agree to jointly cut expenses, that is, the player salaries. Players have limited opportunities to play professional basketball in other countries, but realistically, if you are a world-class professional basketball player, you probably want to be in the NBA.

The star players are the only counterweight to management’s power. To a large extent, they ARE the NBA’s product. Because of this, the owners aren’t talking about using replacement players, and some stars are getting decent offers to play overseas during the lockout. These factors are a cause for concern for the owners and put limits on how much they can extract from the players.”

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Final ABA Slam Dunk Contest, 1976:

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“Taking Account Of Medical Advances, New York Is Probably Not Twice As Violent As A Century Ago, But Several Times More Violent”

October 5, 2011 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Interesting idea from William J. Stuntz’s The Collapse of American Criminal Justice (via Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution), which argues that NYC is far more violent than it was a century ago, but we don’t notice because emergency medical care and surgical procedures have improved so markedly that there are fewer fatalities. The only caveat is that I’d be curious as to how exhaustive statistics were 100 years ago. The passage:

“New York is America’s safest large city, the city that saw crime fall the most and the fastest during the 1990s and the early part of this decade.  Yet New York’s murder rate is 80 percent higher now than it was at the beginning of the twentieth century — notwithstanding an imprisonment rate four times higher now than then.  That crime gap is misleadingly small; thanks to advances in emergency medicine, a large fraction of those early twentieth-century homicide victims would survive their wounds today.  Taking account of medical advances, New York is probably not twice as violent as a century ago, but several times more violent.  At best, the crime drop must be counted a pyrrhic victory.”

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Bill the Butcher, old-school:

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“If A Piece Of Lead Broke Off…It Could Float Into Someone’s Eye Or Nose”

September 15, 2011 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

That close and obsessive reader, Tyler Cowen of the Marginal Revolution, posted this great passage from Kitty Burns Florey’s book, Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting:

“There’s a popular myth that NASA spent ‘millions’ of dollars developing a pen for astronauts to use in the weightless environment of a space ship — while their sensible Russian counterparts were happy to use the low-tech pencil.  Alas, for all its appeal and plausibility, this is not true.  Initially, astronauts and cosmonauts were both equipped with pencils, but there were problems: if a piece of lead broke off, for example, it could float into someone’s eye or nose.  A pen was needed, one that would defy gravity, write in extreme heat or cold, and be leak proof: blobs of ink floating around the cabin would be more perilous than a stray pencil lead.  A long-time pen maker named Paul C. Fisher patented the ‘space pen’ in 1965 (which he had developed at the cost of a million dollars, at the request of but not under the auspices of NASA.)  NASA bought four hundred of them at $6 each, and, after a couple of years of testing, the pens were put into space.”

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Manufacture of the Fisher Space Pen:

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“Q: What Did You Do At Age 3? A: Read A Lot Of Books.”

May 27, 2011 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"He rereads what you probably haven't heard of, like Anton Chekhov's Sakhalin Island."

A couple of passages about the voracious reading habits of economist, excellent blogger and The Great Stagnation author Tyler Cowen, from a new Businessweek profile of him:

“When Tyler Cowen was 15, he became the New Jersey Open Chess Champion, at the time the youngest ever. At around the same age, he began reading seriously in the social sciences; he preferred philosophy. By 16 he had reached a chess rating of 2350, which today would put him close to the top 100 in the U.S. Shortly thereafter he gave up chess and philosophy for the same reason: little stability and poor benefits.

He’d been reading economics, though. He figured that economists were supposed to publish, and by age 19 he had placed two papers in respected journals. As a PhD candidate at Harvard, he published in the Journal of Political Economy and the American Economic Review. ‘They were weird, strange pieces,’ he says, ‘but still in good journals, top journals. That cemented my view that I could, you know, somehow fit in somewhere.’ I ask him what he was like, what made him doubt he could fit in.

‘I was like I am now.’

‘You’ve always been like that?’

‘Always. Age 3. Whatever.’

‘What did you do at age 3?’

‘Read a lot of books.'”

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“Tyler Cowen has read what’s listed in Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon, though not, he concedes, every single last one of the Icelandic sagas. He rereads what you probably haven’t heard of, like Anton Chekhov’s Sakhalin Island. For the Brazil trip, in case he runs out of new books, he has also brought Neal Stephenson’s 1,100-page Cryptonomicon, which he has already read. Fiction slows him down, he says, which makes packing easier. He carries a Kindle but reads paper when he can; he says he’s invested too much time on the rhythm of how the eye tracks the page. Several people have told me the same story about Cowen: They have watched him read, and he scans a page as others might scan a headline.”

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Cowen visits Big Think to discuss the free market and morality:

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“Maybe There Remains One Last Shiny, Fat Apple Hanging Right In Front Of Our Faces”

May 13, 2011 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Immigrants arrive at Ellis Island in NYC in 1902.

Annie Lowrey’s Slate piece, “Let in the Super-Immigrants!,” argues that America’s quickest path to economic turnaround is to fast-track educated alien workers to citizenship status, favoring the highly skilled over the poor, huddles masses. The opening:

“This winter, George Mason economist Tyler Cowen published The Great Stagnation, an ebook arguing that the United States has exhausted all its easy sources of growth. We have, Cowen says, no more low-hanging fruit: no more cheap frontier land to farm, no more places to build new interstates, no rural homes to electrify, no more girls to send to school and then add to the workforce. From now on, Cowen says, growth will be slower, and transformative innovations like toilets and telephones will be rarer.

Cowen is alarmingly convincing, and The Great Stagnation received a round of queasy applause from the chattering classes—including from this publication. But maybe there remains one last shiny, fat apple hanging right in front of our faces, one last endeavor that would bring us fast, costless, and easy growth. It is immigration reform. The United States can grow faster by stealing the rest of the world’s smart people.

Today, the Obama White House is reaffirming its pledge to do just that.”

 

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“The Republicans Won’t Try To Beat [Obama] From The Center And Will Thus Nominate A More Extreme Candidate”

May 3, 2011 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Damn, those Kenyans are good. (Image by Pete Souza.)

Economist Tyler Cowen’s instant reaction to the political ramifications of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, posted at 11:30pm on May 1:

“My quick take is that that Obama will be re-elected (getting Osama is way more important than Iraq, or Saddam in the American mind, attacks on American soil, etc.), at this point the Republicans won’t try to beat him from the center and will thus nominate a more extreme candidate and lose badly, and the most important effects will be on Pakistan, not this country.”

 

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“Through Computers, And The Internet, The Notion Of Amateurs Working Together Is Becoming More Important”

March 25, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Tyler Cowen: "Maybe it is stretching the concept, but you can interpret Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as amateurs too."

An excerpt from a post by economist Tyler Cowen on Marginal Revolution about the merits of amateur efforts:

“Amateurism is splendid when amateurs actually can make contributions. A lot of the Industrial Revolution was driven by the inventions of so-called amateurs. One of the most revolutionary economic sectors today — social networking — has been led by amateurs. Maybe it is stretching the concept, but you can interpret Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as amateurs too.

Amateurs are associated with free entry and a lot of experimentation. Barbecue quality is very often driven by amateurs, and in general amateurs still make contributions to food and cooking.  The difficulty of maintaining productive amateurs is one of the reasons why scientific progress periodically slows down. Specialization, however necessary it may be, can make big breakthroughs harder at some margin. This is one aspect of the division of labor which Adam Smith did not fully grasp, though he hinted at it.

Through computers, and the internet, the notion of amateurs working together is becoming more important. This includes astronomical searches and theorem-proving, plus collection and collation of data, and Wikipedia; this is Shirky’s ‘cognitive surplus.’”

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Still Famous In 10,000 Years?

February 28, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Jesus Christ: Q rating off the charts.

Which people who are currently famous will still be famous 10,000 years from now? It won’t be Gwyneth Paltrow, that’s for sure. Her singing at the Oscars last night nearly made Quadaffi surrender. But that very difficult question is taken on by the fertile mind of economist Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution. An excerpt:

“I’ll go with the major religious leaders (Jesus, Buddha, etc.), Einstein, Turing, Watson and Crick, Hitler, the major classical music composers, Adam Smith, and Neil Armstrong.  (Addendum: Oops!  I forgot Darwin and Euclid.)

My thinking is this. The major religions last for a long time and leave a real mark on history. Path-dependence is critical in that area.

Otherwise, an individual, to stay famous, will have to securely symbolize an entire area, and an area ‘with legs’ at that. The theory of relativity still will be true and it may well become more important. The computer and DNA will not be irrelevant. Hitler will remain a stand-in symbol for pure evil; if he is topped we may not have a future at all. Beethoven and Mozart still will be splendid, but Shakespeare and other wordsmiths will require translation and thus will fade somewhat. The propensity to truck and barter will remain and Smith will keep his role as the symbol of economics. Keynesian economics may someday be less true, as superior biofeedback, combined with markets in self-improvement, ushers in an era of flexible wages, while market-based expected nominal gdp targetingprevents a downward deflationary spiral.”

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“Sarah Palin As Nominee Is Up A Few Points…Although I Do Not See Why”

November 4, 2010 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour: Desperate to be President. (Image by George Armstrong.)

Economist Tyler Cowen analyzes Tuesday’s election results pretty well on his blog. An excerpt:

“Just 32% of the Tea Party candidates won; admittedly that figure should be adjusted by the rate of incumbency (a lot of Tea Party candidates were challengers).  In any case, there was not a Tea Party tidal wave.  Sarah Palin as nominee is up a few points on InTrade.com, although I do not see why.  Haley Barbour is also up and Chris Christie is down considerably (why?).  Given that the Democrats did better than expected in the Senate, Obama’s reelection chances look better now than they did a week ago.  The Republican strategy is not dominating in broad constituency, MSM-reported, ‘lots of scrutiny’ races, even with an abysmal economy and a not so popular health care bill.  My mental model of Obama is that he will cut deals with the Republicans, even on (mostly) their terms, if indeed any deal is on the table.  I would be pleased if critics of the Obama presidency would indicate their managerial background and expertise, yet few do.  How many of them could manage a team of ten people with any success?”

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“Liberal Arts Education Forces Us To Decode Systems Of Symbols”

September 21, 2010 in Excerpts | Permalink

Someone told Tyler Cowen to fold his arms like this for the photo. (Image courtesy of Tyler Cowen.)

The economist Tyler Cowen offers as good a defense of liberal arts education as any on his blog, The Marginal Revolution. An excerpt:

“Liberal arts education forces us to decode systems of symbols.  We learn how complex systems of symbols can be and what is required to decode them and why that can be a pleasurable process.  That skill will come in handy for a large number of future career paths.  It will even help you enjoy TV shows more.

For related reasons, I believe that people who learn a second language as adults are especially good at understanding how other people might see things differently.

I am interested in food (among other topics), not only because of the food itself.  I also view it as an investment in understanding symbolic meaning, cultural codes of excellence, the transmission of ideas, and also how the details of an area fit together to form a coherent whole.  I believe this knowledge makes me smarter and wiser, although I am not sure which mass-produced formal test would pick up any effects.  I view this interest as continuing my liberal arts education, albeit through self-education.”

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Reconsidering The Presidency Of Jimmy Carter

August 10, 2010 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

I don't display "flashes of ego," you Afflictor jackass.

Many years ago there was a toothy peanut man from Georgia named Jimmy Carter who became President of the United States. I’m not old enough to analyze the Carter Presidency from memory, but I’ve always believed him to be an honest if feckless leader who was plagued by the Iranian hostage crisis and gas shortages. He’s done wonderful charitable work since leaving office, though he occasionally displays flashes of ego. Overall: a decent man who wasn’t a very distinguished POTUS.

The quasi-Libertarian economist and gourmand Tyler Cowen has a different take on Carter’s legacy on his wonderful site, Marginal Revolution. See Cowen’s whole post. (The reader comments below the post are also worth reading.) Here’s an excerpt:

“At the time I thought Carter was a reasonably good President and it was far from obvious to me that the election of Reagan would in net terms boost liberty or prosperity.

I do understand that he was a public relations disaster and he shouldn’t have fired his entire Cabinet and that he botched the Iran invasion.

Still, I think of Carter as a President with some major pluses and overall I view his term as a step in the right direction.  He also seems to have been non-corrupt — important so soon after Watergate — and since leaving office he has behaved honorably and intelligently, for the most part.”

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