J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 4
April 1, 2021
The Growth Rate of the Stock of Deployed Ideas Then & Now
What Is the Rate of Ideas Growth? & Why Is It What It Is? :: Background Lecture :: Econ 210a :: Introduction to Economic History :: 2021-04-07
<https://www.icloud.com/keynote/08vSAzKv95qbedf-j_DFYvzAA>
<https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/econ-210a-2021-04-01-background-slow-ideas-growth.pptx>
2021-04-01
March 24, 2021
BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2021-03-24 We
Very Briefly Noted:
Berkeley Economics: Statement from the Faculty and Staff of the Economics Department in Support of our Asian-American Community Members <https://www.econ.berkeley.edu/content/statement-faculty-and-staff-economics-department-support-our-asian-american-community>
Tyler Cowen: Twitter Macro & Twitter Economics<https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/03/twitter-macro.html>
Jarrett Walker: Human Transit <https://humantransit.org/about>
Alon Levy: Pedestrian Observations<https://pedestrianobservations.com/support-me/>
Noah Smith: Your Local Price Changes Aren���t Inflation: ���Why do some people in the Bay Area think inflation is high when it���s not?��� LINK: <https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/your-local-price-changes-arent-inflation>
Kevin Drum: Jabberwocking <https://jabberwocking.com/>
Henry George: The Science of Political Economy<http://savingcommunities.org/docs/george.henry/specontents.html>
Henry George: Protection or Free Trade<https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/george-protection-or-free-trade#preview>
Christopher Condon: Yellen, Powell to Face Deficit, Inflation Fears at Congress: ���Republicans blasted $1.9 trillion pandemic relief as excessive Biden team now mulling next package of as much as $3 trillion��� LINK: <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-22/yellen-powell-to-face-down-deficit-inflation-fears-at-congress?sref=wFA4tJCq>
Five Paragraphs:
1) Cutting yourself loose from your relationship with your largest trading partner is not usually a source of strength or freedom. And with an ���evasive��� fabulist like Boris Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson in charge of setting the course, Britain���s future looks like one of near-stagnation. Think of what has happened in the past fifteen years to Italy, but with much worse weather:
Chris Patten: The UK���s Hard Brexit Choices Have Arrived: ���Almost all serious economists and business leaders expect��� slower economic growth for the foreseeable future (as a result of Britain having left its main export market)���. The government has not released an official projection of Brexit���s economic impact; if the figures were good, they would be published in bold���. While ministers hunt for excuses, businesses face higher costs, more red tape, and delayed supplies. ���Global Britain��� will apparently get around such problems by finding new markets in Asia���. [But] there is no tunnel between Folkestone and New Delhi, and there are not 10,000 goods trucks a day shuttling between Dover and Shanghai���. Stronger UK-China trade ties would present Johnson with another hard choice. Will Britain continue to stand with other liberal democracies like the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japan in trying to contain the threat that China poses to its region and the international rule of law? Or will it kowtow whenever President Xi Jinping���s regime stamps its feet?��� The UK���s tough choices accumulate���. The problems lurking around the corner look menacing. Britain will have to make the best of Brexit. But it will be a long, hard struggle, all the more so with an evasive fabulist in charge���
2) The bullshit flows fast, thick, and plentifully from Facebook these days:
Alyse Stanley: Zuck Slowly Shrinks & Transforms Into a Corncob Ahead of Apple���s Looming Privacy Updates: ���Facebook has pushed back against Apple���s planned rollout of anti-tracking tools at every possible opportunity, but now the social media giant seems to be changing its tune in a last-ditch effort to save face���. Zuckerberg said Facebook may actually be in a ���stronger position��� after the privacy updates���. (As you might already suspect, Facebook���s claims have been found to be misleading at best, and self-serving propaganda at the worst)���
3) I do not know whether Teslas this-is-definitely-not-an-autopilot here is simply being in human, or is also very badly programmed. But since it is going to deal with humans, acting in a way that communicates verbally and nonverbally with humans in a way that reassures and informs them is a vital importance. And that seems to have been badly neglected here:
Elizabeth Blackstock: Terrifying Drone Footage Of Tesla Making Unprotected Left Turn: ���Full video on Chuck Cook���s YouTube channel���. His car waits and waits for an opportunity to turn left between bursts of traffic. The left turn isn���t a difficult one for most drivers���. The car just kind of waits in limbo until it deems the moment is right, which it will only do if it decides crossing is safe. So that means it just kind of��� takes off. It doesn���t give Cook a warning. It just goes. And as you can see in the clip above, Cook doesn���t always deem it safe to do so, which means he needs to be on high alert to grab the wheel or hit the brakes. It kind of negates the whole purpose of it being a driver assistance program when the driver has to be more alert than normal. This comes just after last week���s video showing the absolute chaos that���s going on with Tesla���s Full Self Driving Beta program���
LINK: <https://jalopnik.com/drone-footage-of-tesla-making-unprotected-left-turns-is-1846522768>
4) I confess that I do not know how to figure out whether or not the decline of the open web and the rise of the wannabe walled gardens���wannabe gardens like Facebook and Twitter and, yes, you too Google that treat their users like cattle to be tripped, drifted, misinformed, and scared out of their wits���was a mirror on the thing or not. Would it have survived had Google not decided that RSS feeds were its enemy as a mode of disintermediation? But it is easy to insert ads in the RSS feeds! Whatever. Google killed its Google RSS Reader, and so here we are. I would really like to know why, and how to make it better:
Kevin Drum: Why Have Blog Audiences Declined Over the Past Decade?: ���RSS was a threat to practically every platform that aggregates news since it allowed users to decide for themselves what news they wanted to see���and to see it without passing through a gatekeeper. The best way to eliminate this threat was to eliminate or reduce support for RSS, as Google, Facebook, and Twitter have all done. Blogs were just collateral damage here. An RSS reader is the only decent way to read a collection of blogs, and with the demise of RSS and Google Reader it became more difficult to follow blogs. Sure, lots of people switched to a different reader, but lots more didn���t know how or just never got around to it. And with that, the decline in blog readership accelerated. This was the start of a vicious cycle that opened up opportunities for Twitter, Medium, YouTube, podcasts, Substack, and other platforms that increasingly replaced blogs as the place for web-centric conversation���
LINK: <https://jabberwocking.com/why-have-blog-audiences-declined-over-the-past-decade/>[image error]
5) This strikes me as very, very good news indeed. Now all we have to do is teach people how to do this, and also construct truth sandwiches:
Anna Funk: Scientists Can Implant False Memories���& Reverse Them: ���Two key methods [that] helped participants differentiate their own real recollections from the false ones: Asking them to recall the source of the memory. Explaining to them that being pressured to recall something multiple times can induce false memories. WHY THIS MATTERS���Ultimately, the team found rich, false memories can mostly be undone. And they can be undone relatively easily. ���If you can bring people to this point where they are aware of that, you can empower them to stay closer to their own memories and recollections, and rule out the suggestion from other sources,��� Oeberst says. ���You don���t need to know what the truth of the matter is, which is why they���re nice strategies,��� false memory expert Elizabeth Loftus, who was not involved in the study, tells Inverse���
LINK: <https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/how-to-reverse-false-memories-study>
PODCAST: Hexapodia VII: Forecasting ��e Economy, Now ��t Biden-Rescue Has Been Enacted
In the last resort, the the way the government budget constraint balances itself is through the fiscal theory of the price level: levying this inflation tax on holders of money balances, redistributing wealth away from those who have nominal assets to nominal debts, and imposing a large cognitive-load tax on doing your economic calculation arithmetic. That makes this a lousy tax to impose. Larry and Olivier think we are heading down the road toward a world in which, because Republicans will not allow taxes to be raised, this lousy inflation tax will be levied unless Democrats gird their loins and prepare for an eventuality in which they sober-eyed recognize the costs to real people of letting the government budget constraint balance itself via the inflation tax���
[image error]
with the erudite, witty, & highly influential Claudia Sahm
Background:
References
Olivier Blanchard: In Defense of Concerns Over the $1.9 Trillion Relief Plan <https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economic-issues-watch/defense-concerns-over-19-trillion-relief-plan>
Wendy Edelberg & Louise Sheiner: The Macroeconomic Implications of Biden���s $1.9 Trillion Fiscal Package <https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/01/28/the-macroeconomic-implications-of-bidens-1-9-trillion-fiscal-package/>
Neil Irwin: Move Over, Nerds. It���s the Politicians��� Economy Now<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/09/upshot/politicians-not-central-bankers-economy-policy.html>
Lawrence H. Summers & Paul Krugman: A Conversation with Lawrence H. Summers & Paul Krugman <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbZ3_LZxs54>
Claudia Sahm: A Big Fiscal Push Is Urgent, The Risk of Overheating Is Small<https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/a-big-fiscal-push-is-urgent-the-risk-of-overheating-is-small>
Larry Summers: The Biden Stimulus Is Admirably Ambitious. But It Brings Some Big Risks, too <https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/04/larry-summers-biden-covid-stimulus/>
&:
Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://books.google.com/books?id=fCCWWgZ7d6UC>
March 23, 2021
March 22, 2021
BRIEFLY NOTED: 2021-03-22 Mo
Very Briefly Noted:
Brad DeLong (2019): Carville-Hunt ���Two Old White Guys��� Podcast: I said ���pass the baton���, not ���bend the knee������ LINK: <https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/03/carville-hunt-two-old-white-guys-podcast.html>
Paragraphs
1) Ben Thompsen's idea that writers have "value" seems to me to be simply wrong. What has value is "easiest way to tap into this element of the zeitgeist". That usually gets attached to a single writer because we are social network animals hotel and listen to stories. But that is a matter of time, chance, opportunity, and market structure���as well as insight, fluency with prose, and ability to produce regularly and to meet deadlines. Ben Thompsen has the last four and happened to hit the sweet spot with respect to the first floor, plus adding a lot of sweat equity and taking a big gamble. More power to him. But he should not think that he has unique or large ���value���. To see the business of the sovereign writer as being to sift gold nuggets out of the sand fundamentally mistakes what is going on:
Ben Thompson: Sovereign Writers & Substack: ���Media has reason to fear Substack��� not that Substack will compete with existing publications for their best writers, but rather that Substack makes it easy for the best writers to discover their actual market value���. The media���s revenue problems are a function of the Internet unbundling editorial and advertising���. Media���s impending cost problem���as in they will no longer be able to afford writers that can command a paying audience���is a function of the Internet making it possible to go direct��� Substack is [just] one of many tools competing to make this easier���.
This explains three other Substack realities���.Substack is going to have a serious problem retaining its most profitable writers unless it substantially reduces its 10%���. Substack is��� [not] threatened by Twitter and Facebook���. Social networks��� want to own the reader, but the entire point of the sovereign writer is that they own their audience. Substack���s real threat will be lower-priced competitors���. It would be suicidal for Substack to kick any successful writers off of its platform for anything other than gross violations of the law or its terms of service���.
Substack Pro is a good idea���. What would be truly valuable is helping the next great writer build a business���. Ideally these writers would be the sort of folks who would have never gotten a shot in traditional media���. I am by no means an impartial observer here; obviously I believe in the viability of the sovereign writer. I would also like to believe that Stratechery is an example of how this model can make for a better world: I went the independent publishing route because I had no other choice (believe me, I tried). At the same time, I suspect we have only begun to appreciate how destructive this new reality will be for many media organizations���.
Substack is not in control of this process. The sovereign writer is another product of the Internet, and Substack will succeed to the extent it serves their interests, and be discarded if it does not.
LINK: <https://stratechery.com/2021/sovereign-writers-and-substack/>
2) a very large number of journalists who want to know better, and their bosses, very much want Biden to say good things about Trump which are (a) false, (b) ludicrous, and (c) never anything they would ask Trump to do if positions were reversed. I wonder why:
Kate Riga & Josh Kovensky: No, Trump Doesn���t Deserve Credit For Planning Vaccine Distribution: ���With the COVID���19 vaccines starting to bring the pandemic to an end, former President Trump has stepped in to take credit for the feat. What���s surprising is that he���s been aided in this by the Washington Post and New York Times, both of which have run articles this week arguing that the speed-up in the vaccine rollout under President Biden only builds off of a plan put into place by Trump���. That���s flat wrong���. Trump��� lacked a plan for the ���last mile��� of distribution, leaving that to the states while lobbying Congress not to pass much-needed funding that would spur state and local governments to get the vaccine into arms���.
The Trump��� plan to distribute the vaccine��� [was] ���let the states figure it out.������ Trump��� left the country with��� a partnership with pharmacies to vaccinate nursing homes���the only real footprint of a federal plan to deliver vaccine into people���s arms. And even that foundered���. What���s more is that that one plan only covered the first phase of distribution: nursing home residents and hospital workers, who received inoculations from the medical facilities at which they worked���
LINK: <https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-covid-vaccination-distribution-biden>
3) For ���high quality voters��� read ���white voters���:
Jonathan Chait: ���Everybody Shouldn���t Be Voting,��� Republican Blurts Out: ���Representative John Kavanagh, a Republican legislator who chairs Arizona���s Government and Elections Committee and is shepherding through a bill to make voting more cumbersome and therefore rare, described his party���s motives with blundering candor; ���There���s a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans,��� he told CNN. ���Democrats value as many people as possible voting, and they���re willing to risk fraud. Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don���t mind putting security measures in that won���t let everybody vote ��� but everybody shouldn���t be voting ��� Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they���re totally uninformed on the issues. Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well������
4) Those who always thought J.D. Vance was a con artist, come down and collect your chips!:
Steve M.: The Worst Senate Race: ���J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy��� Ohio Senate seat���. Peter Thiel has given $10 million to a Vance super PAC��� Newsweek op-ed��� ���Nno one seems to care that many migrants test positive for COVID every day and will directly compete with our struggling service sector workers���. Why are we promising amnesty��� when��� vicious transnational drug cartels use that promise to sell desperate people on the promise of crossing the border?��� Scott Lemieux writes���.
If you���re wondering why J.D. Vance was throwing out some preemptive racisms, well here you go: ���Josh Mandel, a candidate in the 2022 Republican primary in the U.S. Senate, had a post removed by Twitter on Thursday���
Of the various types of illegals flooding across the border, will more crimes be committed by��� Muslim Terrorists or Mexican Gangbangers���.
However, there���ll be a third major candidate in the primary��� Jane Timken��� describes herself as the ���one candidate in this race who was hand-picked by President Trump to run the Ohio Republican Party."��� The first words in her first campaign ad are: ���President Trump won Ohio twice because he stood up and fought for hard-working Americans. I���m Jane Timken, and I���m running for the U.S. Senate to defend the Trump agenda���.���
It���ll be a three-person race��� all be trying to out-MAGA, out-meme, and out-xenophobe one another. It wll be a race to the bottom, the worst Senate primary in America���
LINK: <https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-worst-senate-race.html>
5) Scott Lemieux: Rich Lowry upholds National Review���s Longstanding Policy on Voting Rights: ���Verbatim Rich Lowry: ���That many Democrats say that the filibuster should fall for this bill is a symptom of the fevered state of the party, which despite holding or winning every elected branch of the federal government has conjured out of nothing a vast conspiracy to stop people from voting that allegedly justifies one of the most blatant federal power grabs in memory.��� Arizona Rep. John Kavanaugh, defending propose Republican vote suppression measures: ���There���s a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans���Democrats value as many people as possible voting, and they���re willing to risk fraud. Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don���t mind putting security measures in that won���t let everybody vote ��� but everybody shouldn���t be voting������
6) John Ganz: Some Thoughts on Free Speech & Cancel Culture: ���One of the many ironies of the interminable debates over cancel culture and free speech is that cancel culture is not a phenomenon of censorship so much as one of unrestricted free speech. The fear is not that one will be censored, so much as one will be denounced���. Social media allows anybody a platform for accusation and calumny and allows anyone to join with them to form associations. I think most people agree open criticism of others and freedom of association is just part of having a free society. But who, then, decides when criticism is unfair or even calumnious? Or when associations are mobs and seditious conspiracies rather than public-spirited groups?���
We have a long tradition in this country of free, even raucous, criticism and attacks on public figures���. We���ve now seen very ordinary attacks on politicians branded as ���cancel culture,��� which is an attempt to make alien and new a very old tradition in our democratic society. It���s attempting to ���cancel��� criticism in advance, if you will���. We have entered a kind of state of universal hypocrisy on these subjects. Everyone is glad to see their enemies skewered: no one really comes to the defense of principle. Or maybe they feel that principle is best defended through a faction, to which allowances must be made for the sake of political expediency���
LINK: <https://johnganz.substack.com/p/some-thoughts-on-free-speech-and>
7) Charles I. Jones: Time Series Tests of Endogenous Growth Models: ���According to endogenous growth theory, permanent changes in certain policy variables have permanent effects on the rate of economic growth. Empirically, however, U. S. growth rates exhibit no large persistent changes. Therefore, the determinants of long-run growth highlighted by a specific growth model must similarly exhibit no large persistent changes, or the persistent movement in these variables must be offsetting. Otherwise, the growth model is inconsistent with time series evidence. This paper argues that many AK-style models and R&D-based models of endogenous growth are rejected by this criterion. The rejection of the R&D-based models is particularly strong��� LINK: <https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6016/78f3aecbbeac6be9d2154b593376e12b12c7.pdf?_ga=2.165174207.1051621454.1616040529-2146537243.1615524750>
Briefly Noted: 2021-03-21 Su
Very Briefly Noted:
Closer to time travel than I thought I would ever get: Ancient Athens 3D<https://www.youtube.com/c/AncientAthens3D/videos>
University libraries recommend not getting thrown into this briar patch using this website: Sci-Hub: Removing Barriers in the Way of Science <https://sci-hub.se/>
Still the beat Start Tek movie: SciFi scripts: Galaxy Quest<http://www.scifiscripts.com/scripts/galaxyquest_trans.htm>
Remarkably good: HBO Max: Superintelligence<https://www.hbomax.com/grw-si?utm_source=twitter>
Trying to figure out how to have a chance when I teach this fall: Educational Technology Services: Classroom Database<https://www.ets.berkeley.edu/classroom-database>
Still trying to figure out how to have a chance when I teach this fall: Educational Technology Services: Instructors Getting Started: ���A select number of classrooms��� seamlessly��� Zoom��� Schedulers: Search for ���15: AV-Video Conference Capable������. Classrooms with newly installed cameras��� preset��� Course Capture��� or Zoom���. Search for ���14: AV-Camera without Operator������. Nearly doubled our Course Capture capable room��� to around 110���. Schedulers: Search for ���06: Course Capture������ LINK: <https://www.ets.berkeley.edu/services-facilities/classroom-tech-support/instructors-getting-started>
Six Paragraphs:
Of all the things I understand least well, it is that we dare not aim to have production hit potential output and thus hit the inflation target because we cannot handle even a small overshoot because��� of what, exactly? This kind of thinking perhaps avoids some risk of a bumpy future by creating an eternal very bumpy present:
Benjamin Wallace-Wells: Larry Summers Versus the Biden Administration���s Coronavirus-Stimulus Plan: ���The Biden rescue package will pour out enough sand to fill a hole, and then keep pouring. In Summers���s view, this is economically risky, because it means that the Federal Reserve will probably eventually need to manage inflation, a recipe for a bumpy future. ���My reading is that there are roughly zero historical examples where we got inflation to the point where the Fed got nervous and had to tighten and the whole thing happened smoothly,��� Summers told me last week. He also sees the stimulus as politically risky, in that there are only so many times the Biden Administration can ask Congress to spend huge amounts of money without raising taxes to offset it, and fewer still if they spend this round inefficiently���
LINK: <https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-populism/larry-summers-versus-the-stimulus>
The Malthusian picture, the 1870-1914 escape, and fears that World War I had permanently deranged the economic growth process in such a way as to raise the specter of the return of the Devil of Malthus:
John Maynard Keynes (1919): The Economic Consequences of the Peace: ���[Their] view of the world��� filled with deep-seated melancholy the founders of our Political Economy. Before the eighteenth century mankind entertained no false hopes. To lay the illusions which grew popular at that age���s latter end, Malthus disclosed a Devil. For half a century all serious economical writings held that Devil in clear prospect. For the next half century he was chained up and out of sight. Now perhaps [with World War I] we have loosed him again���
LINK: <https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/keynes-the-economic-consequences-of-the-peace#preview>
Ummm��� You target asset bubbles by reducing leverage, not by raising interest rates. I have a bad feeling about this:
Ruchir Sharma: By Targeting House Prices, New Zealand Shows the Way: ���While consumer prices have been held in check by globalisation and automation, easy money pouring out of central banks has been driving up the price of assets from stocks to bonds and housing���. A global political celebrity, the liberal Ardern was elected on a promise of affordable housing. Fed up, her government has ordered the central bank to add stabilising home prices to its remit, starting March 1. It is novel and healthy for a politician to recognise the unintended consequences of easy money. If this idea catches on, it could lead to greater financial and social stability worldwide���. Ardern���s move may not slow the housing boom soon, because supply-and-demand dynamics are too strong. But ordering the central bank to make housing price stability a higher priority is a start, and could inspire others to rethink the role easy money has played in driving financial instability���
LINK: <https://www.ft.com/content/c8959502-7dae-43b1-b993-3bf85fb4325a>
I confess hope that Facebook dies rapidly. Silicon Valley needs a very obvious and pointed lesson that treating your users like cattle to be exploited and misled leads to your bankruptcy and to your permanent exclusion from all polite society. Feeding your users to the likes of Alex Jones for the Luz & the advertising dollars is despicable.
This applies to you to, Google, for the current state of Youtube:
Justin Bariso: Tim Cook May Have Just Ended Facebook: ���Cook aptly points out, ���advertising existed and thrived for decades��� without using data that was collected in less than transparent ways. And as customers are offered more choice when it comes to how apps and websites track their data, experts predict that more and more people will opt out of said tracking. If you���re an advertiser, you���ll need to adapt. Or die.But there���s also a bigger lesson at stake. Now is the time to ask yourself: Which philosophy do I want to pursue? Do I want a business that serves my customers? Or one that takes advantage of customers to serve my business? Because in the end, only one of these philosophies is sustainable for the long-term. The other will lead you to crash and burn. And while the long-term solution may initially prove more challenging, remember: ���The path of least resistance is rarely the path of wisdom������
LINK: <https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/tim-cook-may-have-just-ended-facebook.html>
But, Scott, the ARP is not ���a bloated, stealth, and wholly partisan vehicle���. If it were, Republicans would be running against it rather than trumpeting its accomplishments and hoping to make voters think they voted for rather than against it, capisce?:
Scott Lincicome: While You Were Seussing: ���While Republicans fight the culture war on TV, Democrats enact progressive priorities into law���. Republicans are only now scrambling to define the ARP and are left to hope that it doesn���t work, while Democrats are on the attack. A big reason for that is that instead of mounting an effective messaging campaign to highlight these provisions���ones almost entirely unrelated to the pandemic���and others (such as that ridiculous union pension bailout or the $60 billion in tax hikes), and to define the ARP as a bloated, stealth, and wholly partisan vehicle to achieve progressive social change under the cover of Covid, Republicans were on TV yelling about children���s books and cancel culture���
LINK: <https://capitolism.thedispatch.com/p/while-you-were-seussing>
The huge gap between the performance of the biomedical establishment and the performance of the Trump administration is truly remarkable:
Jason Kottke: How Were the Covid���19 Vaccines Developed So Quickly?: ���1. The need was urgent���. 2. Funding & focus. Companies and governments threw billions and billions of dollars at this��� 3. Availability of volunteers & high incidence of disease���. 4. International & corporate collaboration. Countries and companies shared research, data, and resources���. 5. We knew a lot about coronaviruses from previous work���. 6. Scientific and technological capability���. Humanity���s general scientific and technological abilities have never been stronger or more powerful���. Bloomberg: ���Remember also that technology has evolved rapidly���for example, we���re now about able to sequence the genomes of every mutant version of the virus in less than a day. That helps in speeding up vaccine development.��� Dr. Mark Toshner sums up the effort: ���However we have collectively now shown that with money no object, some clever and highly motivated people, an unlimited pool of altruistic volunteers, and sensible regulators that we can do amazing things������
LINK: <https://kottke.org/21/03/how-were-the-covid-19-vaccines-developed-so-quickly>
Why is it, anyhow, that a ���measurement��� is a self-adjoint operator? A measurement is entangling the quantum wave function of the experiment with that of a measuring device that has a macro-visible pointer. What does that have to do with a self-adjoint operator?
Sydney Coleman: Quantum Mechanics in Your Face: ���The state of a physical system at a fixed time is a vector in Hilbert space��� �����. It evolves in time according to the Schr��dinger equation i�����/dt = H��, where the Hamiltonian H is some self-adjoint linear operator���. Some, maybe all, self-adjoint operators are ���observables���. If the state is an eigenstate of an observable A, with eigenvalue a, then we say the value of A is a, is certain to be observed to be a.... There���s an implicit promise in here that, when you put the whole theory together and start calculating things, that the words ���observes��� and ���observable��� will correspond to entities that act in the same way as those entities do in the language of everyday speech under the circumstances in which the language of everyday speech is applicable. Now to show that is a long story. It���s not something I���m going to focus on here, involving things like the WKB approximation and von Neumann���s analysis of an ideal measuring device8, but I just wanted to point out that that���s there���
LINK: <https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.12671.pdf>
HOISTED FROM ��E ARCHIVES (2019): "Passing ��e Baton": ��e Interview
Here's Zack Beauchamp: Zack Beauchamp: A Clinton-era Centrist Democrat Explains Why It���s Time to Give Democratic Socialists a Chance: ���The Baton Rightly Passes To Our Colleagues On Our Left���: "DeLong believes that the time of people like him running the Democratic Party has passed.... It���s not often that someone in this policy debate ��� or, frankly, any policy debate ��� suggests that their side should lose. So I reached out to DeLong to dig into the reasons for his position: Why does he believe that neoliberals��� time in the sun has come to an end?...
...The core reason, DeLong argues, is political. The policies he supports depend on a responsible center-right partner to succeed. They���re premised on the understanding that at least a faction of the Republican Party would be willing to support market-friendly ideas like Obamacare or a cap-and-trade system for climate change. This is no longer the case, if it ever were.... The result, he argues, is the nature of the Democratic Party needs to shift. Rather than being a center-left coalition dominated by market-friendly ideas designed to attract conservative support, the energy of the coalition should come from the left and its broad, sweeping ideas. Market-friendly neoliberals, rather than pushing their own ideology, should work to improve ideas on the left. This, he believes, is the most effective and sustainable basis for Democratic politics and policy for the foreseeable future....
Here's me: We are still here, but it is not our time to lead.... Barack Obama rolls into office with Mitt Romney���s health care policy, with John McCain���s climate policy, with Bill Clinton���s tax policy, and George H.W. Bush���s foreign policy. And did George H.W. Bush, did Mitt Romney, did John McCain say a single good word about anything Barack Obama ever did over the course of eight solid years? No, they f---ing did not.... While I would like to be part of a political coalition in the cat seat, able to call for bids from the left and the right about who wants to be part of the governing coalition to actually get things done, that���s simply not possible...
And: Our current bunch of leftists are wonderful people.... They���re social democrats, they���re very strong believers in democracy. They���re very strong believers in fair distribution of wealth. They could use a little more education about what is likely to work and what is not. But they���re people who we���re very, very lucky to have on our side. That���s especially opposed to the people on the other side, who are very, very strange indeed. You listen to [Never Trump conservatives]... about all the people they had been with in meetings, biting their tongues over the past 25 years, and your reaction can only be, ���Why didn���t you run away screaming into the night long ago?���...
And: We learned more about the world. I could be confident in 2005 that [recession] stabilization should be the responsibility of the Federal Reserve. That you look at something like laser-eye surgery or rapid technological progress in hearing aids, you can kind of think that keeping a market in the most innovative parts of health care would be a good thing. So something like an insurance-plus-exchange system would be a good thing to have in America as a whole. It���s much harder to believe in those things now. That���s one part of it. The world appears to be more like what lefties thought it was than what I thought it was for the last 10 or 15 years���
LINK: <https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/03/passing-the-baton-the-interview.html>
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A Clinton-era centrist Democrat explains why it���s time to give democratic socialists a chance
���The baton rightly passes to our colleagues on our left.��� By Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vox.com Mar 4, 2019, 8:30am EST
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Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images
The rise of the Democratic left, personified by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), has raised a serious question: Should Democrats lean away from market-friendly stances and get comfortable with big government again? Should they embrace an ambitious 2020 candidate like Sanders and policies like the Green New Deal, or stick with incrementalists like former Vice President Joe Biden and more market-oriented ideas like Obamacare?
One of the most interesting takes I���ve seen on this debate came from Brad DeLong, an economist at the University of California-Berkeley. DeLong, who served as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy in the Clinton administration, who is one of the market-friendly, ���neoliberal��� Democrats who have dominated the party for the last 20 years. The term he uses for himself is ���Rubin Democrat��� ��� referring to followers of finance industry-friendly Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.
Yet DeLong believes that the time of people like him running the Democratic Party has passed. ���The baton rightly passes to our colleagues on our left,��� DeLong wrote. ���We are still here, but it is not our time to lead.���
It���s not often that someone in this policy debate ��� or, frankly, any policy debate ��� suggests that their side should lose. So I reached out to DeLong to dig into the reasons for his position: Why does he believe that neoliberals��� time in the sun has come to an end?
The core reason, DeLong argues, is political. The policies he supports depend on a responsible center-right partner to succeed. They���re premised on the understanding that at least a faction of the Republican Party would be willing to support market-friendly ideas like Obamacare or a cap-and-trade system for climate change. This is no longer the case, if it ever were.
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���Barack Obama rolls into office with Mitt Romney���s health care policy, with John McCain���s climate policy, with Bill Clinton���s tax policy, and George H.W. Bush���s foreign policy,��� DeLong notes. ���And did George H.W. Bush, did Mitt Romney, did John McCain say a single good word about anything Barack Obama ever did over the course of eight solid years? No, they fucking did not.���
The result, he argues, is the nature of the Democratic Party needs to shift. Rather than being a center-left coalition dominated by market-friendly ideas designed to attract conservative support, the energy of the coalition should come from the left and its broad, sweeping ideas. Market-friendly neoliberals, rather than pushing their own ideology, should work to improve ideas on the left. This, he believes, is the most effective and sustainable basis for Democratic politics and policy for the foreseeable future.
What follows is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Zack Beauchamp
I want to start with your notion of ���Rubin Democrats.��� What does that mean, exactly? What was the movement you identify with?
Brad DeLong
I would say it���s largely neoliberal, market-oriented, and market-regulation and tuning aimed at social democratic ends. It also involves taking a step in the direction of appeasing conservative priorities. The belief is that if you have a broad coalition behind such policy, it will be much more strongly entrenched in America and much better implemented than if it were implemented by a narrow, largely partisan majority.
And Rubin Democrats believe that you should prioritize economic growth. Once you have economic growth, electorates want to become a lot less Grinch-y and less likely to feel that redistribution to the poor is coming out of its hide, making them positively worse-off. Economic growth first, redistribution and beefing up the safety net second.
Zack Beauchamp
What you���re describing is a broad theory of political economy, in which a vision for what economic policies are best is intertwined with a particular view of what makes policies popular and sustainable. You say something about this is wrong ��� do you think it���s the political part, the economic part, or both?
Brad DeLong
We were certainly wrong, 100 percent, on the politics.
Barack Obama rolls into office with Mitt Romney���s health care policy, with John McCain���s climate policy, with Bill Clinton���s tax policy, and George H.W. Bush���s foreign policy. He���s all these things not because the technocrats in his administration think they���re the best possible policies, but because [White House adviser] David Axelrod and company say they poll well.
And [Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel and company say we���ve got to build bridges to the Republicans. We���ve got to let Republicans amend cap and trade up the wazoo, we���ve got to let Republicans amend the [Affordable Care Act] up the wazoo before it comes up to a final vote, we���ve got to tread very lightly with finance on Dodd-Frank, we have to do a very premature pivot away from recession recovery to ���entitlement reform.���
All of these with the idea that you would then collect a broad political coalition behind what is, indeed, Mitt Romney���s health care policy and John McCain���s climate policy and George H.W. Bush���s foreign policy.
And did George H.W. Bush, did Mitt Romney, did John McCain say a single good word about anything Barack Obama ever did over the course of eight solid years?
No, they f���-ing did not. No allegiance to truth on anything other than the belief that John Boehner, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell are the leaders of the Republican Party, and since they���ve decided on scorched earth, we���re to back them to the hilt. So the politics were completely wrong, and we saw this starting back in the Clinton administration.
Today, there���s literally nobody on the right between those frantically accommodating Donald Trump, on the one hand, and us on the other. Except for our brave friends in exile from the Cato Institute now trying to build something in the ruins at the [centrist] Niskanen Center. There���s simply no political place for neoliberals to lead with good policies that make a concession to right-wing concerns.
Zack Beauchamp
Let���s talk a little bit about the intra-Democratic fight. When you say ���pass the baton to the left,��� does that mean give up on substantive policies where you ��� meaning Rubin Democrats ��� disagree with the left?
Brad De Long
No. It means argue with them, to the extent that their policies are going to be wrong and destructive, but also accept that there is no political path to a coalition built from the Rubin-center out. Instead, we accommodate ourselves to those on our left. To the extent that they will not respond to our concerns, what they���re proposing is a helluva better than the poke-in-the-eye with a sharp stick. That���s either Trumpist proposals or the current status.
Zack Beauchamp
So the position is not that neoliberals should abandon their policy beliefs. It���s that you need to reorient your understanding of who your coalition is.
Brad DeLong
Yes, but that���s also relevant to policy beliefs, right?
A belief in cap and trade ��� rather than the carbon tax plus huge, honking public research ��� was both a belief that the market really ought to rule here, plus a belief that stakeholders who are producing carbon energy can be bought off with cap-and-trade: that the Koch brothers would rather be selling their carbon allowances than having to actually burn coal to produce things. Plus, a belief there were Republicans who would actually think that global warming is a menace, and be willing to argue strenuously within the Republican coalition that something needs to be done about this.
A bunch of policies that depended on there being a political-economic consensus to support them, as part of a broad agreement about America���s direction, are a lot worse as policies if that political-economic underpinning is not there. There also are a bunch of lessons about how policies that we thought are going to be very effective are rather less effective.
Zack Beauchamp
The response you hear from conservative and Democratic centrists, those Blue Dogs that remain, is that they are the partners that you need to appease, not the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez left. The Democratic coalition depends on winning in red states.
Brad DeLong
The first lesson is the Gingrich lesson: If you���re in a swing state, you lose your seat if the president of your party is perceived to be a failure. The highest priority for Blue Dogs in red and purple states ��� in 1994 and in 2010 ��� ought to have been making it clear the president of their party was a great success.
If there is a good state of the world in 2021 ��� the Lord willing and the creek don���t rise ��� everyone and all Blue Dogs in office needs to recognize that and act on that.
That���s the political level and on the policy level. We tried to do health reform the Republicans��� way ,and what���s now clear with a Republican Supreme Court and with a lot of Republican governors, any attempt to do it the Republicans��� way is going to get shredded. We tried to do climate policy the Republicans��� way, and got nowhere.
Until something non-rubble-ish is built in the Republican center, what might be good incremental policies just cannot be successfully implemented in an America as we know it today. We need Medicare-for-all, funded by a carbon tax, with a whole bunch of UBI rebates for the poor and public investment in green technologies.
That���s the best policy given the political-economic context. If the political-economic context were different ��� well, I���m fundamentally a neoliberal shill. It is very nice to use market means to social democratic ends when they are more effective, and they often are.
If you can properly tweak market prices, you then don���t just have one smart guy trying to design a policy that advances an objective ��� you have 30 million people all over the country, all incentivized to design a policy. That���s a wonderful thing to have.
Zack Beauchamp
But despite that substantive view, you think that instead of freaking out about the leftists at the gates, it���s smarter to side with them ��� to treat them as political coalition partners.
Brad De Long
Our current bunch of leftists are wonderful people, as far as leftists in the past are concerned. They���re social democrats, they���re very strong believers in democracy. They���re very strong believers in fair distribution of wealth. They could use a little more education about what is likely to work and what is not. But they���re people who we���re very, very lucky to have on our side.
That���s especially opposed to the people on the other side, who are very, very strange indeed. You listen to [Never Trump conservatives] like Tom Nichols or Bruce Bartlett or Bill Kristol or David Frum talk about all the people they had been within meetings, biting their tongues over the past 25 years, and your reaction can only be, ���Why didn���t you run away screaming into the night long ago?���
Zack Beauchamp
I don���t know if what you���re describing is a long-running reconfiguration of American politics, an emergency alliance with the left to stop an out-of-control right, or both. How would you describe the conditions that have pushed you toward a more-left oriented position than you had before?
Brad DeLong
I���d say we learned more about the world.
I could be confident in 2005 that [recession] stabilization should be the responsibility of the Federal Reserve. That you look at something like laser-eye surgery or rapid technological progress in hearing aids, you can kind of think that keeping a market in the most innovative parts of health care would be a good thing. So something like an insurance-plus-exchange system would be a good thing to have in America as a whole.
It���s much harder to believe in those things now. That���s one part of it. The world appears to be more like what lefties thought it was than what I thought it was for the last 10 or 15 years.
The other part is that while I would like to be part of a political coalition in the cat seat, able to call for bids from the left and the right about who wants to be part of the governing coalition to actually get things done, that���s simply not possible as of now.
We shouldn���t pretend that it is, or that it���s going to be. We need to find ways to improve left-wing initiatives, rather than demand that they start from our basic position and do minor tweaks to make them more acceptable to their underlying position.
LINK: <https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/4/18246381/democrats-clinton-sanders-left-brad-delong>
"It Seems Plausible ��t ��e Neoliberal Era Is Over..."
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Benjamin Wallace-Wells: Larry Summers Versus the Biden Administration���s Coronavirus-Stimulus Plan: ������It seems plausible,��� Brad DeLong, an economic historian at Berkeley and a Clinton Treasury official, said, that ���the neoliberal era is over������. [He] guessed that about half of the leftward turn within this universe [of economists] was��� [because] ���there is not nearly so much trust in the ability of the market to heal itself������. The other half, he said, was the part that tended to isolate Summers. DeLong ascribed it to politics, and to the general feeling (���in my view, twenty-seven years too late���) that Republicans would never be willing partners for expansive economic intervention.
There was little disagreement among liberal economists, he emphasized, over how the Biden Administration ought to spend the money in an ideal world: ���Most of us would say infrastructure rather than checks���if we had that option. Only Larry believes we have that option.��� DeLong���s own view is that if the Biden Administration had pared back the stimulus in the hopes of building a bipartisan consensus for infrastructure, it would find that no such consensus existed. ���In the absence of Republican negotiating partners, center-left Democrats have got to look to the left,��� DeLong said. ���This is an example of that actually happening������
LINK: <https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-populism/larry-summers-versus-the-stimulus>
HOISTED FROM ��E ARCHIVES (2019): Passing ��e Baton...
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Brad DeLong (2019���02���25): Passing the Baton: David Walsh went to the Niskanen Center conference. He got hives: <https://bradford-delong.com/2019/02/david-walsh-went-to-the-niskanen-center-conference-he-got-hives.html>. I think it is fair to say that the already-broken American political public sphere has become significantly more broken since November 8, 2016. On the center and to the left, those like me in what used to proudly call itself the Rubin Wing of the Democratic Party���so-called after former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin, and consisting of those of us hoping to use market means to social democratic ends in bipartisan coalition with Republicans seeking technocratic win-wins���have passed the baton to our left. Over the past 25 years, we failed to attract Republican coalition partners, we failed to energize our own base, and we failed to produce enough large-scale obvious policy wins to cement the center into a durable governing coalition.
We blame cynical Republican politicians. We blame corrupt and craven media bosses and princelings. We are right to blame them. But shared responsibility is not diminished responsibility: We ourselves cannot escape all blame. And so the baton rightly passes to our colleagues on our left.
We are still here, but it is not our time to lead.
On the right, however, things are much worse. Looking to the right of the Rubin Wing of the Democratic Party, we see rubble. Then we see more rubble. And more rubble. Beyond that, rubble. And then, at the far end of the political spectrum, what former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright can only call [the American version of a twenty-first century neo-fascism <https://books.google.com/books?isbn=006293127X>, devoted to entrenching plutocracy and stoking ethnic and religious hatreds, with which a great many people who ought to know better are making accommodation.
Two recent straws in the wind in this space: former Republican CEA Chair Martin Feldstein egging the Trump administration on to an intellectual-property trade war with China <https://project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-china-trade-deal-capitulation-by-martin-feldstein-2019-02> without even a whisper of acknowledgement that the Trump administration cannot competently conduct this negotiation; former Republican CEA Chair Michael Boskin claiming that Trump is reaching [���for bipartisan compromise on important issues��� <https://project-syndicate.org/commentary/2020-democratic-presidential-candidates-policies-by-michael-boskin-2019-02>.
Pitching their flags in the rubble and hoping to rebuild���in a stunning triumph of optimism of the will over rational pessimism of the intellect that I cannot view with anything other than awe���are The Bulwark <https://thebulwark.com> and the [Niskanen Center <https://niskanencenter.org> (on whose Advisory Board I sit).
What can those of us who sit to the left of the Niskanen Center and who do wish for a healthy public sphere���i.e., those of us who are not interested in concern trolling for the moment, as much fun as concern trolling is���do to be genuinely helpful?
I could use some help here, people of twitter!
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I think that the first piece of advice to give is: restrict yourself to #nevertrump. Trumpists are either morons, grifters, or deluded. Those who have made accomodation with neo-fascism to any substantial degree are not people you want around���they will, for one reason or another, stab you in the back the first moment that it seems opportune. Failing to require a #nevertrump litmus test seems wise. Admittedly, it is unlikely to lead to power and Fox News. But it is the right thing to do. And I urge you to Do the Right Thing.
Second, I at least regard your cultural-historical task as being to wean Republicans away from Trumpist neo-fascism as an orienting frame. Trumpist neo-fascism is, I think, a version of Kentucky-style American nationalism. Kentucky-style American nationalism is a species of standard blood-and-soil nationalism. People have moved to Kentucky because they want elbow room and do not like being forced by government and society to conform, and once people are in Kentucky they become the kinds of people who can build a log cabin with their bare hands in 48 hours, and bring down a squirrel for squirrel stew at 300 yards. Thus heredity and environment���blood and soil���produce a special kind of person. And those who come to the U.S. hoping to live in, say, a little Mogadishu or a little Kishinev or a little Cuzco cannot fit.
This blood-and-soil Kentucky neo-fascist Trumpist nationalism is, I believe, highly destructive, pernicious, and positively un-American. It needs to be fought against. In the center and on the left we fight it with the opposed ���Massachusetts��� picture of American nationalism���a community engaged in an Errand Unto the Wilderness to build a Utopia that will be a City Upon a Hill, and we are all in this together with no special authorities or leaders because of the Priesthood of All Believers. Never mind that John Winthrop would run screaming from us: we are his children. The Massachusetts-style American nationalism of election���that America really consists of those of us who have come here to build a common Utopia���is very powerful, much more correct, sociologically healthy, and something we all can be proud of in a sense that is simply not possible for the Kentucky-style neo-fascist Trumpist blood-and-soil nationalism.
The question is whether the Niskanen Center and the Bulwark can take this Errand-Unto-the-Wildnerness narrative and make it sing for the center-right in anything like the way it sings for the center-left. So your task is to build up your own version of the Errand-Unto-the-Wilderness narrative of American nationalism.
Third, the Niskanen Center and The Bulwark need to build up distinctive center-right policy positions on important issues���to stake out positions in the rubble that center-right #nevertrumpers can rally around. I see five issue areas as key. (a) the public sphere. (b) global warming. (c) income and wealth distribution at the top. (d) the social safety net. (e) the economic growth agenda. Far be it from me to say what those should be���I have enough on my plate figuring out what my position on these issue areas should be, let alone what the position of others should be. I will confine myself to saying that simple opposition to whatever actual policies wind up under the umbrella of GND is not sufficient���not if you want me and people like me to think you belong in the public sphere. And no, Elaine Kamarck, ���shut up and adapt to global warming��� is not sufficient either, and���if that is your position because you are too scared to endorse George Shultz���s carbon-tax-plus-UBI proposal���you should be ashamed of yourself. Go for the crash space program to build a giant sun umbrella and park it at Lagrange Point 1 if you wish. (And eat the costs as reduced insolation devastates agriculture.) At the very least, it will make us a figure of fun to aliens everywhere:
You know the earthlings? They couldn���t get their act together to stop burning coal before it started to cook their planet! So do you know what they did? You won���t believe it! Rather than cheaply transitioning to green energy THEY TRIED TO BUILD A GIANT SUN UMBRELLA AND PARK IT AT L1!! HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!! Spent a fortune!���
But be for something.
And be brave. I know you find it hard. But you are camped there in the rubble, and if you won���t Do the Right Thing, then you have decided to go and become a Kentucky-nationalist blood-and-soil neo-fascist Trumpist. If you have, then go to your master the Devil, and stop wasting our time.
LINK: <https://twitter.com/delong/status/1100166150845939712>
READING: David Abernethy (2000): ��e Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires 1415���1980
David Abernethy (2000): The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires 1415���1980: ���Beijing��� was the capital city of a powerful state lacking both an expansionist foreign policy and an expansionist religion. Mecca was the central city of an expansionist religion but not of a state. Lisbon was the capital city of a state with an expansionist foreign policy and a strong commitment to spread an expansionist religion.
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As Muslim merchants predicted, the Portuguese launched a triple assault on Malacca. The city was captured in 1511 by an armada of ships carrying fifteen hundred soldiers whose commander, Vicery Afonso d���Albuquerque, saw himself as an extension agent of the Portuguese state. That the invaders intended to assert permanent political control soon became clear. Albuquereue allegedly cried out to his men in the heat of battle that:
We [should] build fortress iin this city��� and sustain it, and��� this land [should] be brought under the dominion of the Portuguese, and the King D[om] Manuel be styled true king thereof.
Construction of a stone fortress was begun as soon as the battle was won, and it was kept well supplied with soldiers and cannon. The city was a Portuguese possession until the Dutch took it in the seventeenth century. Once secured, Malacca became a vital outpost used to establish other Portuguese enclaves in the Moluccas and on the China coast.
The conquest of Malacca, in turn, was an integral part of a grand scheme to capture gains from Indian Ocean trade. Political control of enclaves throughout the ocean basin was considered a necessary as well as desirable mans to an economic end. Albuquerque appealed to the profit motive as explicitly as one could: ���If we take this trade of Malacca out of [the Moors���] hands, Cairo and Mecca are entirely ruined, and to Venice will no spiceries go except that which her merchants go and buy in Portugal.���
Portuguese actions also reveal the religious dimension of their drive for dominance. Albuquerque waited to launch his attack until the day of Saint James, the patron saint of the Iberian crusaders. That the crusading mentality was alive and well can be seen in his reference to ���the great service which we shall perform to our Lord in casting the Moors out of the country, and quenching the fire of this sect of Mohamed so that it may never burst out again hereafter.��� Non-Muslims were spared following the battle. But ���of the Moors, [including] women and children, there died by the sword an infinite number, for no quarter was given to any of them.��� A church was constructed, and in 1557 it became the Cathedral of the Bishop of Malacca. Priests working among non-Muslims in the local fishing community made many converts. The famous Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier visited the city in 1545 on his way from India to Japan.
By one estimate between half a million and a million people, from Mozambique to Japan, converted to Roman Catholicism by the end of the sixteenth century. Malacca���s history and its role as missionary way station to other parts of Asia illustrate the strong expansionist impulses of Euro-Christianity.
By examining actions, motivations, and institutions at a critical juncture of world history when representatives of the three leading candidates for global dominance were present at the same place and time, the case study of Malacca in 1511 tests���and supports���the book���s central proposition. The Portuguese were unlike the Chinese and Arabs in the number and variety of sectoral institutions at their dsposal, in the stretch of these institutions far from their home base, and in the way agents of different sectors worked together for mutually beneficial ends. The Malaccan case highlights not only the contrast between Europeans and others who might have formed equivalent empires, but also the empowering effects when cross-sectoral coalitions were assembled���.
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The case study also helps answer a secondary question���. why Europeans concentrated phase 1 settlement and conquest activities on the New World���. Portugal���s grand strategy in the Indian Ocean was to capture gains from a lucrative seaborne trade that had functioned for a long time. Malacca was valued as an enclave��� profits literally floated past in the form of ships carrying spices, precious stones, textiles, chinaware, carvings, and so on through a narrow strait. There was no economic or strategic reason for Albuquerque to invade the Malayan interior���.
In contrast, the Spaniards in the New World encountered no preexisting maritime trade. The wealth they sought would have to be captured at its source, deep in central and south American hinterlands. Vera Cruz��� was seen not as an enclave facing the sea but as the staging area for an arduous march inland���. Spain could attain wealth in the New World only by conquering and settling��� revolutionize the New World economies���.
Portugal, having an essentially conservative economic agenda, felt no need to send settlers to Malacca or to set up plantations or prospect for minerals���. Spain, facing both the necessity and the opportunity in the Americas to design radically new patterns of extraction, production, and trade, exported its people��� fostered large-scale, labor-intensive agricultural and mining operations���. Portuguese in Malacca��� could prosper without altering indigenous political structures in the city���s immediate environs. Not so Cortes��� who could not prosper unless state structures run by Europeans were in place to coerce indigenous peoples to labor long and hard for minimal reward���. A minimalist colonial strategy that worked well in phase 1 Malaya was not sufficient for New Spain.
Not until the nineteenth century did Europeans consider the Malayan interior worthy of their attention. Under British direction, exports from rich tin mines were increased and rubber plantations laid out��� a plant Europeans had found in the New [World]��� a mode of production perfected earlier in the Americas���. Europe���s concentration on transforming the New World in [European imperalism] phase 1 facilitated conquest and transformation of much of the Old World in [European imperalism] phase 3��� LINK: <https://www.bradford-delong.com/2008/03/the-european--1.html>
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