2021-09-12

Podcasts

China talk

I originally came across this podcast as an Adam Tooze fanboy. He’s been on as a guest a number of times and his episodes are as insightful and rich as you might imagine, but I listened to a trio of non-Tooze episodes on U.S.-China relations as part of my self-education on China’s shifting role in the global economic and political order. I am woefully undereducated in this realm and this podcast is an amazing resource. The three episodes I listened to (and recommend for a few big picture takes on how the U.S. should think about and positions itself in relation to) China are:

  1. The Future of U.S.-China Economic Relaations: The Case for Change
  2. The Future of U.S.-China Economic Relaations: Is ‘Collective Pressure’ the Answer?
  3. An Alternative Vision of U.S.-China Relations with Jake Sullivan

Conversations with Tyler

Zeynep Tufecki. Made me want to better familiarize myself with Max Weber. She suggested starting with something like George Ritzer’s The McDonadization of Society. Here’s the Wikipedia page

David Cutler and Ed Glaaeser on cities and their new book. One thing Ed Glaeser said struck me as very out of touch with young folks in cities. He seems to think that young people aren’t having kids in cities is because they are afraid the the school’s aren’t good enough:

Now, it is absolutely true that suburban living has often been a complement to having kids, partially because the space is cheaper, and certainly, that’s always going to exist. But if you think about it, the part of the cities that are really detrimental to fertility — I think it’s got to be the schooling. It’s got to be the people living in cities don’t think they have access to great public schools, unlike people living in suburbs, which leads us back, yet again, to think that the most important thing going forward for this issue, as for so many others, is to improve the quality of urban schooling.

This strikes me as nowhere near first order. Some candidates for higher order reasons:

  1. Cost of living
  2. Concerns about impact on careers
  3. Not wanting to give up lives of relative ease and luxury

I’m mostly thinking about higher skill (we really need a better term than this), college educated, professional folks, but number 1 applies even more strongly for lower wage workers. Glaeser’s position feels like that of a parent of school age kids that places a high value on education, not young adults thinking about starting families. From my experience, the issue of school quality feels pretty far off when you are just starting a family. Sleep, sanity and keeping your child alive are much more top of mind in the early days of parenting.

What is Philosophy? Justin E.H. Smith’s new podcast for The Point magazine, What is X?. I love the way she thinks about everyday, seemingly mundane things. She has great articles on parenting, complaint, the emptiness of striving and many more. He wrotes newsletter that is for me the perfect blend of cynicism, humor and music appreciation.

Articles

Noah Smith article on the critiques of regrowth. Good summary, I liked it a lot.

Why no one wanted A&W’s Third-Pound Burger. Apparently people think one-third is smaller than one-fourth. This was in the 1980s though. Maybe people are more numerate now than forty years ago? Or maybe not: McDonald’s has since tried two different third-pounders (in 2007 and 2015), but neither one stuck.

Effect size is significantly more important than statistical significance. I’ve had this conversation with a number of econ friends over the years. So much time is spent discussing identification (often important) and significance (less important), but usually effect sizes are only thought about in passing and only dwelled on if large. Ben suggests that this might mean we should only care about effect size and if something doesn’t have a large effect, then it should be considered a null result. This might be true, but I believe there are other ways to evaluate the truth of a claim or intervention. One such example would be if there is a bulk of evidence that comes from different studies in different contexts, approaching the problem from different angles that tend to agree on outcomes. Of course, this sort of evidence may not be able to be evaluated statistically (which I believe is the scope of Ben’s article), but may still push knowledge forward.

Thoughts

Small differences between similar countries

It’s curious thing when you live in a country that is not your own but is similar to yours. Where the people talk the same, dress the same, mostly think the same. Use your country as a frame of reference. You almost forget to notice the differences - not only that you almost forget that you’re living in another country all together, but so much so that I almost forget that I live in Canada. When I was living in Spain or Switzerland, the difference was so obvious that I never forgot; it was always in my face. But now when I hang out with my Canadian friends I don’t talk to them about how I come from an entirely different country than they do or the differences between my country and theirs. We hang out as though we’re from the same place, share the same cultural context and understand the same things. And it’s certainly possible that by and large this is true. I mean, certainly have more in common with my Canadian friends that share a similar socioeconomic status than I do with much of the other people that are from the United States. Nonetheless Canada is a very different place than the United States - different politics, different economic arrangements. We’re still subject to the divisions of an international border. And this reflection it makes me want to talk to my Canadian friends about the differences between the US and Canada. It makes me want to ask Lora, who lived in the US for many years, if she invested in learning about the US, its culture, its customs, etc., and thinking about how they differ.