J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 6
March 10, 2021
How Should We Teach Political Economy?; & BRIEFLY NOTED: for 2021-03-10 We
First:
Brad DeLong: Network for a New Political Economy Teaching Panel: 2021-30-05:
Selections: What are we doing when we do political economy?���
Political economy is social theory in��� this [Modern Economic Growth Age of the] extraordinary transformation of technology, understood as human powers to transform nature���not always in a good way���and to organize humans���not always in a good way at all. It is not that economists or political scientists have any special expertise in figuring out what the social theory for this age of extraordinary transformation of technology is. I was having a discussion with two other economist [in which]���. I��� Noah��� Arin��� found that��� [we had all] been profoundly influenced��� by the course[s we]��� took from Mark Granovetter���.
[image error]
Should we follow the Barrington Moore model? Should we, as Allen strongly advocates, make our students read big, difficult books?���. We do have to, in some sense, pick some theorists, and then show how we apply their theories���or rather theories and conceptual approaches that are named after them���to the elements of the real world that we want to study���. I for one, continue to be very, very impressed with the continued relevance of Karl Polanyi���. I also am continually impressed by the continued relevance of John Maynard Keynes���. But for��� other[s]��� let me leave them as question marks. I am looking for candidates���
Under the auspices of N2PE: Network for a New Political Economy: < https://twitter.com/N2PE_Network/status/1367943000639242241><https://newpoliticaleconomy.berkeley.edu>. Whole thing at: <https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/nnpe-teaching-panel-2021-03-05.txt>
Very Briefly Noted:
Gavin Wright, Shari Eli, Jonathan Levy, Trevon Logan, Suresh Naidu, & Caitlin Rosenthal: Historians and Economic Historians in Conversation<https://econfip.org/historians-and-economic-historians-in-conversation/>
George Pearkes: ���Core CPI a staggering 1.2% annualized in February, 0.7% annualized over the last three months, 1.2%% annualized over the last six months, and a terrifying 1.3% YoY_ <https://twitter.com/pearkes/status/1369642463569281029>
Patrick Wyman: Uruk and the Emergence of Civilization: ������Female slave of foreign origin.��� ���Captive male������ LINK: <https://patrickwyman.substack.com/p/uruk-and-the-emergence-of-civilization>
Scott Lemieux: Let Us Now Praise Famous Yuppies: ���Bari Weiss: ���The dissidents use pseudonyms and turn off their videos���. They say that they could face profound repercussions if anyone knew they were talking���. These are the rebels: well-off Los Angeles parents who send their children to Harvard-Westlake, the most prestigious private school in the city������ Katharine Trendacosta: ���I���m dying I went to this school. Once in a discussion about affirmative action, a kid said he would always prefer to hire other white people. Once in a debate about flag burning, a white kid said he���d like to set on fire flag burners��� LINK: <https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/03/let-us-now-praise-famous-yuppies>
Amit Gandhi: ���I have a vivid memory of sitting in Gary Chamberlain���s econometrics course when he said ���omitted variable bias is the most important formula in econometrics���. ���Simpson���s paradox��� (which I finally looked up) is omitted variable bias with a discrete RHS variable. wow��� LINK: <https://twitter.com/AmitEcon/status/1368990015536119813>
Six Paragraphs:
Frances Coppola: The Dismal Decade: ���It has become taboo to say, or even imply, that the Brexit vote of 2016 was in any way negative for the UK economy. If the Bank of England governor had dared to say openly that the primary reason for four years of stagnation prior to the Covid���19 shock was investment collapse due to Brexit, he would have been accused of making political statements. But it is the truth. Here���s the evidence from Bailey���s speech:
[image error]
LINK: <https://www.coppolacomment.com/2021/03/the-dismal-decade.html>
Martin Arnold: UK-EU Trade Falls Sharply as Brexit Disruption Starts to Bite: ���Latest British export-import data from French customs office mirror declines recorded in Germany and Italy: French exports to the UK were down 13 per cent in January compared with the average of the previous six months, while French imports from the UK fell 20 per cent, according to the French customs office. ���Trade with Britain is disrupted due to Brexit,��� it said���. The frictional barriers and uncertainty created by Brexit have dealt a heavy blow to commercial activity between the UK and the EU, its biggest trading partner��� higher shipping costs, transportation delays, health certificate requirements and more complex customs requirements at the border���. German exports to Britain in January were down about 30 per cent year on year���. Italy last month reported a 38 per cent year-on-year drop in exports to the UK and a 70 per cent drop in British imports in January���. Gabriel Felbermayr, president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, said research it did for the German government found the country���s exports to the UK were likely to remain 12���15 per cent below pre-Brexit levels��� LINK: <https://www.ft.com/content/5b8028a7-edaf-4488-8e96-3761ba8b015f>
Tracy Lightcap: On Lincoln���s Cooper Union Address: ���The Cooper Union speech is the best example we have of Lincoln in full campaign attack mode. It starts with a lawyer���s direction of arguments for and against forbidding slavery in the territories and seems rather dry. But you have to remember that Lincoln���s audience wanted that; he was playing to their foregone conclusions and showing that there was support for them and that, if he was president, he would act accordingly. Then he starts in on the political arguments. Here Lincoln is swinging right and left hooks from his waist and he lands every single time. We don���t see that in his presidential speeches; he���s all reconciliation and reunification and let���s make freedom ring in those. At Cooper Union he was out for blood and he drew it every time. I always assigned this speech in my classes in our junior multi-disciplinary course, just so the students could get a flavor of just how good Lincoln was on the stump. And that was really, really good���
Austin Clemens: New Great Recession Data Suggest Congress Should Go Big: ���Joe Biden���s proposed $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, critics now argue that it will ���overshoot������. Undershooting the policy response would be a far more dangerous prospect and could lead to a repeat of the slow and inequitable economic growth that followed the previous U.S. recession���. A new data series from the U.S. Department of Commerce���s Bureau of Economic Analysis���its Distribution of Personal Income series���shows just how devastating this pattern was for most U.S. workers and their families���. In the bottom 50 percent��� because disposable personal income incorporates transfers from the federal government to households, so losses in this group were partially compensated for by rising Unemployment Insurance payments, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, and other government benefits. But this group then became mired in years of stagnant, or even declining, income as these benefits ended amid a still-tepid economic recovery, and did not experience substantial income gains until 2015. By comparison, households in the top 10 percent of income recovered almost immediately after the end of the Great Recession and ended 2018 up 22 percent compared to 2007���
Kathryn Gehren: About Hum. Servt: ���Women in the 18th and early 19th century wrote about all sorts of things. They discussed health, family news, gossip, courtship, and much more. However, while most historians love to find a letter that describes George Washington���s granddaughter teaching her pet parrot to sing along with her harpsichord, they might not be able to find a place to quote it in their research article. This podcast is an attempt to showcase these letters in a fun and informative way���. Each episode features one letter to or from a woman from the 18th or early 19th century. Host Kathryn Gehred uses her training in history and documentary editing to dig up the story behind each letter. She spends a little time setting up the context before reading the letter in full. She and a guest then dig into the details, discussing what makes this document interesting, and what it can tell us about its time���
LINK: <https://humservt.com/about-your-host/>
Ryan Mac & Craig Silverman: Joel Kaplan���s Policy Team Sways Big Facebook Decisions Like Alex Jones Ban: ������Mark Changed The Rules���: How Facebook Went Easy On Alex Jones And Other Right-Wing Figures: Facebook���s rules to combat misinformation and hate speech are subject to the whims and political considerations of its CEO and his policy team leader: In April 2019, Facebook was preparing to ban one of the internet���s most notorious spreaders of misinformation and hate, Infowars founder Alex Jones. Then CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally intervened. Jones had gained infamy for claiming that the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre was a ���giant hoax,��� and that the teenage survivors of the 2018 Parkland shooting were ���crisis actors.��� But Facebook had found that he was also relentlessly spreading hate against various groups, including Muslims and trans people. That behavior qualified him for expulsion from the social network under the company���s policies for ���dangerous individuals and organizations,��� which required Facebook to also remove any content that expressed ���praise or support��� for them. But Zuckerberg didn���t consider the Infowars founder to be a hate figure, according to a person familiar with the decision, so he overruled his own internal experts and opened a gaping loophole: Facebook would permanently ban Jones and his company ��� but would not touch posts of praise and support for them from other Facebook users. This meant that Jones��� legions of followers could continue to share his lies across the world���s largest social network���
LINK: <https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/mark-zuckerberg-joel-kaplan-facebook-alex-jones>
PODCAST: Hexapodia V: Freeing Us from the Market; Wi�� Mike Konczal, Noah Smith & Brad DeLong
Mike Konczal: Freedom From the Market: America���s FIght to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand <https://books.google.com/books?id=0aDLDwAAQBAJ>
[image error]
Konczal says that it is only today that ���glib libertarians��� purveying ���fantasies��� are trying to make us forget ���that free programs and keeping things free from the market are as American as apple pie������ One of the best passages in the book is where he notes the connection between the Fight for $15 minimum wage campaign and human freedom: ���Service sector workers demanding a $15 minimum wage and a union��� have already won huge victories [with] ideas about how low-wage, precarious work is a form of unfreedom���. The Rev. William Barber noted that ���it took 400 years from slavery to now to get from zero to $7.25 [an hour]. We can���t wait another 400 years��� to get to $15��� Ultimately, if all you can say in response to the ills of society is ���the market giveth, the market taketh away, blessed be the name of the market������ you have very little to say indeed. Konczal quotes Oliver Wendell Holmes���s fear and alarm that his fellow justices on the Lochner Supreme Court were, in their ���willingness to use a very specific understanding of economics to override law, writ[ing] a preferential understanding of economics into the constitution itself������ in a fundamentally illegitimate and societally-disruptive way. But a better maxim is: ���The market was made for man, not man for the market���.
[image error]
Enthusiastically Reading: Mike Konczal: Freedom From the Market
<https://www.icloud.com/pages/0qngUKWzJT3-FHnxHh2HH_M8w> <https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/delongtoday-konczal-freedom-from-the-market-2021-02-18.pdf>
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ih_qxIByRCpwlu76BTjTOF_jP9XI5haw/view?usp=sharing>
DeLongTODAY 4182 words 35:11 2021-02-19:
Recovering (Economically) from COVID: Scenarios for After May; Plus BRIEFLY NOTED: 2021-03-09 Tu
First:
Recovering (Economically) from COVID: Scenarios for After May
I see three scenarios with substantial probability mass associated with them for what happens after after May:
1) People conclude that we are living in a much more uncertain world than they thought before March 2020, so they sharply raise their long-term wealth-to-income ratios, and bank rather than spend���and then without 10 Republican senators for infrastructure, which we do not have, we repeat 2010-2015 in the absence of the $1.9T...
2) A giant Mardi Gras commences in June 2021, as people react to the final scotching of the virus as a large systemic worry in a way that they reacted to the ending of rationing after WWII. (Cf.: Gillian Brunet:
","full_text":"This past year I've thought a lot about WWII in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here is net private saving by HH and institutions (% of GDP) annually 1929-2020. 2020 looks a lot like WWII... ","username":"gillian_brunet","name":"Gillian Brunet","date":"Tue Mar 02 04:02:34 +0000 2021","photos":[{"img_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/media/EvciK2...{}}" style="background-color: #ffffff; display: block; max-width: 520px; margin: 1em auto; border: 1px solid #e1e8ed; border-top-left-radius: 5px; border-top-right-radius: 5px; border-bottom-right-radius: 5px; border-bottom-left-radius: 5px; padding: 20px 20px 11.6px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.4; font-family: Helvetica, Roboto, 'Segoe UI', Calibri, sans-serif;">
Gillian Brunet @gillian_brunetThis past year I've thought a lot about WWII in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here is net private saving by HH and institutions (% of GDP) annually 1929-2020. 2020 looks a lot like WWII...
March 2nd 2021
32 Retweets74 Likes
<https://www.vox.com/2020/4/10/21214980/coronavirus-economy-jobs-ppe>.) We get one-time sharp rises in wages in previously shutdown sectors, but it is a healthy and warranted jump in relative prices that does not feed through to inflation expectations���again, as after WWII. And we are very glad we did the $1.9T...
3) The multiplier from the $1.9% turns out to be significantly greater than Edelberg & Sheiner project, and the Fed needs to raise 10-year rates by 2-3%-points in order to keep the U.S. economy from overheating significantly. And that's fine, because that normalizes interest rates, and then monetary policy has traction, and normal stabilization-policy governance can resume.
There is also a fourth scenario that some people give a considerable probability to:
4) Either Jay Powell turns out to be Arthur Burns, and we get into a hell of a mess, or the increases in interest rates required to keep the economy from overheating trigger a major financial crisis, and we get into a hell of a mess. That seems to be underpinned by a belief that the Fed cannot push the unemployment rate up by 0.5% ever���that whenever it tries, unemployment rises by 3%���but I see that pattern as driven by the Federal Reserve's unwillingness since 1980 to tolerate anything that at all smells of a high-pressure economy.
I don't think (4) is very likely at all���it seems to me to be a significant outlier scenario. I see the issue as: who do you trust to run policy if things go south? Jay Powell or 10 Republican senators. And the answer to that question seems obvious to me...
Very Briefly Noted:
Olden: Producing Archaic English Letters with Unicode: ���Convert modern English letters into archaic forms��� LINK: <https://www.unifoundry.com/olden/index.html>
Spotify: Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant Podcast <https://open.spotify.com/show/3lYQ6R3EqBpBXQkX5ArOf1>
Authentic: Chengdu Style Restaurant ������������ <https://www.chengdustyle-restaurant.com/>
The Home Depot: How to Reset a Motion Sensor Light <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXhs2MdZjFM>
Ian Cutress: Power Consumption: Hot Hot HOT: Intel Core i7���11700K Review: Blasting Off with Rocket Lake<https://www.anandtech.com/show/16535/intel-core-i7-11700k-review-blasting-off-with-rocket-lake/2>
Andrew Gelman(2009) Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State Why Americans Vote the Way They Do <http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/presentations/redbluetalkubc.pdf>
Ian Cuttress: Intel���s Manufacturing Roadmap from 2019 to 2029: Back Porting, 7nm, 5nm, 3nm, 2nm, and 1.4 nm: ���Intel���s slide with ASML���s animations overlayed���. 10nm in 2019 and moving to 7nm EUV in 2021, then a fundamental new node in each of 2023, 2025, 2027, 2029. This final node is what ASML has dubbed ���1.4nm������. If that 1.4nm is indicative of any actual feature, would be the equivalent of 12 silicon atoms across��� LINK: <https://www.anandtech.com/show/15217/intels-manufacturing-roadmap-from-2019-to-2029>
Six Paragraphs:
From an economist���s point of view, this is very strange: a huge mismatch between the value of a steady chip supply from TSMC for the automobile industry, and the automobile industry���s willingness to pay for it. There are going to be supply- and value-chain management business school cases coming out of this for some time to come:
Ryan Anderson: Chips, Automotive, & the Future: ���The industry hardest hit by the shortage right now is automobile manufacturing. Volkswagen, Nissan, GM, and Ford have all announced significant production cuts. Ford has projected as much as a 20% drop in production this quarter due to the shortage���. Nearly 70% of microcontroller units that end up in cars rely, at least in part, on semiconductors from a single Taiwanese company��� Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)���. TSMC now manufactures chips for major tech companies like Nvidia, AMD, and even Apple���s new custom A14 (mobile) and M1 (laptop) chips. Chips from those 3 companies are incredibly valuable. A top-of-the-line Nvidia graphics card costs almost $2,000 and AMD CPUs can run over $600���. The automobile industry operates differently. The initial buyers of the semiconductors are companies like Renesas and NXP who design the microcontrollers a car relies on. Automobile manufacturers then buy the microcontrollers���. TSMC may end up charging $1 for a semiconductor that a $40,000 car relies on. As a manufacturer who has more demand than they can fill, TSMC is going to prioritize the high-value chips. Meaning these car parts, which only account for 3% of TSMC���s revenue, go to the back of the line. (RJA)���
LINK: <https://whyisthisinteresting.substack.com/p/the-semiconductor-edition>
What is best in life? Clearly, necessities. But conveniences and luxuries are, well, merely convenient and luxurious. I think the first key is noting that wealth has a purpose: to get things done. And I think the second key is to be mindful of what is going on around you, both in the human and in the physical world, with your conveniences and luxuries:
Wikipedia: Hedonic Treadmill: ���Hedonic adaptation may be a more common phenomenon when dealing with positive events as opposed to negative ones���. Negative emotions often require more attention and are generally remembered better���. Adopting ���non-zero sum��� goals, those which enrich one���s relationships with others and with society as a whole (i.e. family-oriented and altruistic goals), increase the level of subjective well-being. Conversely, attaching importance to zero-sum life goals (career success, wealth, and social status) will have a small but nevertheless statistically significant negative impact on people���s overall subjective well-being���. Contradicting set point theory, Headey found no return to homeostasis after sustaining a disability or developing a chronic illness���
LINK: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill#Critical_views>
The smart money on Wall Street has stopped doing its job of betting on fundamental values, and is instead for the most part off doing more complicated things. And, as a result, our financial markets is really weird. But then, when have they not been?:
Jamie Powell: This Is The Electric Vehicle Bubble. And This Is The Crash: ���Don���t say we didn���t warn you���. The entire thing was bonkers. Companies with no revenues, and no working products, were sporting multi-billion dollar valuations. While old-school automakers with viable electric vehicles like Ford and General Motors were struggling to command a valuation at a single digit multiple of earnings. Well, don���t say we didn���t warn you. Crack: At pixel, the entire EV space is collapsing���. The only question left is, when���s the bottom? Well given the old school automakers trade at 0.6 times revenues, versus 14.4 for the cool electric vehicle kids, we might only be getting started���
LINK: <https://www.ft.com/content/403c4cd5-8ecc-4d5f-abef-87851db08839>
These are very large, very persistent, very surprising effects. I need to think more about how what appears to be a very small difference back before 1948 still casts such a large shadow today:
Aradhya Sood, William Speagle, & Kevin Ehrman-Solberg: Long Shadow of Racial Discrimination: Evidence from Housing Covenants of Minneapolis: ���Over 120,000 historical property deeds with information on racial covenant use from Hennepin County, Minnesota, we exploit the unanticipated 1948 Supreme Court ruling that made racially-restrictive covenants unenforceable��� regression discontinuity��� causal and time-persistent effects of racial covenants on present-day socioeconomic geography of Minneapolis���. Houses that were covenanted have on average 15% higher present-day house values compared to properties which were not covenanted���
How dumb will actually-implemented artificially-intelligent neural-network systems turn out to be?:
Charlie Stross: Lying to the Ghost in the Machine: ���Ready-trained NNs like GPT���3 or CLIP are often tailored as the basis of specific recognizer applications and then may end up deployed in public situations, much as shitty internet-of-things gizmos usually run on an elderly, unpatched ARM linux kernel with an old version of OpenSSH and busybox installed, and hard-wired root login credentials. This is the future of security holes in our internet-connected appliances: metaphorically, cameras that you can fool by slapping a sticker labelled ���THIS IS NOT THE DROID YOU ARE LOOKING FOR��� on the front of the droid the camera is in fact looking for. And in five years��� time they���re going to be everywhere. I���ve been saying for years that most people relate to computers and information technology as if they���re magic, and to get the machine to accomplish a task they have to perform the specific ritual they���ve memorized with no understanding. It���s an act of invocation, in other words. UI designers have helpfully added to the magic by, for example, adding stuff like bluetooth proximity pairing, so that two magical amulets may become mystically entangled and thereafter work together via the magical law of contagion. It���s all distressingly bronze age, but we haven���t come anywhere close to scraping the bottom of the barrel yet. With speech interfaces and internet of things gadgets, we���re moving closer to building ourselves a demon-haunted world���. We can lie to the machines���and so can thieves and sorcerers���. It becomes possible to convince a ghost that the washing machine is not a washing machine but a hippopotamus���
LINK: <http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2021/03/lying-to-the-ghost-in-the-mach.html>
Again: remember and recognize just how far we have come:
Yuval Noah Harari: Lessons from a Year of Covid: ���For thousands of years food production relied on human labour, and about 90 per cent of people worked in farming. Today in developed countries this is no longer the case. In the US, only about 1.5 per cent of people work on farms���
LINK: <https://www.ft.com/content/f1b30f2c-84aa-4595-84f2-7816796d6841>
Hoisted from the Archives:
Brad DeLong: Don���t Like My Neoliberal Party Card? I Have Others! <https://www.bradford-delong.com/2018/07/dont-like-my-neoliberal-party-card-i-have-others.html>
[image error]
[image error]
[image error]
BRIEFLY NOTED: for 2021-03-06 Sa
First:
The global container fleet today has a capacity of 32.9 million TEU (Twenty foot-Equivalent Units). The container ship OOCL Hong Kong has 21,000 TEUs of capacity. Back in 1582 we had perhaps 1/12 of our current population on the globe. Back in 1582, back in the days when the English merchant fleet was 1/20 of the worldwide total, the entire English merchant fleet could carry only 1/3 as much cargo as the OOCL Hong Kong can.
Thus, for the globe as a whole, today 30 million TEUs; 1582 140 thousand TEUs���1/200 as much. That is one dimension of economic growth and globalization since the start of the Imperial-Commercial Revolution Age back in the 1500s:
Yuval Noah Harari: Lessons from a Year of Covid: ���A largely automated present-day container ship can carry more tons than the merchant fleet of an entire early modern kingdom. In 1582, the English merchant fleet had a total carrying capacity of 68,000 tons and required about 16,000 sailors. The container ship OOCL Hong Kong, christened in 2017, can carry some 200,000 tons while requiring a crew of only 22��� LINK: <https://www.ft.com/content/f1b30f2c-84aa-4595-84f2-7816796d6841>
Very Briefly Noted:
Wikipedia: King���s Men (Playing Company) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Men_(playing_company)>
William Shakespeare: Macbeth <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7skhaOegpLA>
Four Paragraphs:
Robert J. Shiller: The Godley���Tobin Memorial Lecture: ���John Maynard Keynes���s (1936) concept of ���animal spirits��� or ���spontaneous optimism��� as a major driving force in business fluctuations was motivated in part by his and his contemporaries��� observations of human reactions to ambiguous situations where probabilities couldn���t be quantified. We can add that in such ambiguous situations there is evidence that people let contagious popular narratives and the emotions they generate influence their economic decisions. These popular narratives are typically remote from factual bases, just contagious. Macroeconomic dynamic models must have a theory that is related to models of the transmission of disease in epidemiology. We need to take the contagion of narratives seriously in economic modeling if we are to improve our understanding of animal spirits and their impact on the economy���
LINK: <https://www.elgaronline.com/view/journals/roke/9-1/roke.2021.01.01.xml>
Brian Morrissey: Why Is This Interesting?: ���Quartz was right about one big thing: Most articles are too long. Quartz co-founder Kevin Delaney put it this way to me over five years ago: ���A lot of the 800-word stories have been padded out with the B matter. It���s called B matter because it���s B grade, not A matter, which is the focal point of the story.��� Brevity is more important than ever. There is simply too much content let loose on the world these days���
LINK: <https://whyisthisinteresting.substack.com/p/why-is-this-interesting-the-brevity>
Noah Brier: On Schumpeter, Creating New Things, & Modern Approaches: ���Schumpeter��� says invention��� and innovation��� are fundamentally different��� pure discovery��� actually sell[ing] the thing���. Inventors handled the making, and entrepreneurs handled the marketing. (Capitalists, the third corner of the triangle, dealt with the investment.)��� Bell Labs, IBM, and GE���. Thousands of scientists were in their labs doing science and waiting for opportunities to show off their work to executives and customers who may find opportunities to commercialize���. Things have changed a lot, and most companies have become much more focused on user-centered innovation���. You start with the job to be done (in Clayton Christiensen���s words) and work your way backward���. I was fascinated to hear how mRNA allows pharmaceutical companies to work in this way for the first time���. The CEO of Moderna��� L
INK: <https://whyisthisinteresting.substack.com/p/the-invention-vs-innovation-edition>
Wikipedia: Hedonic Treadmill: ���Hedonic adaptation may be a more common phenomenon when dealing with positive events as opposed to negative ones���. Negative emotions often require more attention and are generally remembered better���. Adopting ���non-zero sum��� goals, those which enrich one���s relationships with others and with society as a whole (i.e. family-oriented and altruistic goals), increase the level of subjective well-being. Conversely, attaching importance to zero-sum life goals (career success, wealth, and social status) will have a small but nevertheless statistically significant negative impact on people���s overall subjective well-being���. Contradicting set point theory, Headey found no return to homeostasis after sustaining a disability or developing a chronic illness��� LINK: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill#Critical_views>
BRIEFLY NOTED: for 2021-03-04 Th
First:
Yonatan Zunger: Tolerance Is Not a Moral Precept. The Title of This Essay Should Disturb You: ���As with any peace treaty, we must consider toleration in the broader context of the war which is its alternative, and we must recognize that peace is not always a possibility���. Among the worst wars of tolerance were the religious wars which tore through Europe between 1524 and 1648���. Protestants and Catholics each seeing the other as existential threats���. These wars came to an end��� each ruler had the right to choose the religion of their state, and that Christians living in principalities where their faith was not the established faith still had the right to practice their religion. A decision was made, in essence, to accept the risk of the monster rather than the reality of the war���. Tolerance, viewed as a moral absolute, amounts to renouncing the right to self-protection; but viewed as a peace treaty, it can be the basis of a stable society. Its protections extend only to those who would uphold it in turn. To withdraw those protections from those who would destroy it does not violate its moral principles; it is fundamental to them, because without this enforcement, the treaty would collapse. It is appropriate, even ethical, to answer force with proportional force, when that force is required to restore a just peace. We seek peace because on the whole it is far better than war; but as history has taught us, not every peace is better than the war it prevents��� LINK: <https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1af7007d6376>
Briefly Noted:
My Great^12 Grandfather: Wikipedia: Thomas Wyatt the Younger <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wyatt_the_Younger>
Wikimedia Commons: Hawksbees Electrical Machine, by Jean-Antoine Nollet<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hawksbees_Electrical_Machine_by_Jean-Antoine_Nollet.jpg>
Georgette Heyer Un-Conference Thursday 25 Feb <https://tanaudel.wordpress.com/2021/02/23/georgette-heyer-un-conference-thursday-25-feb/>
Martin Wolf: What Central Banks Ought to Target: ���today���s broad approach to central banking is clearly the least bad. That does not mean it is easy to operate. It is quite likely that the monetary policy needed to generate maximum employment and stable inflation is consistent with all sorts of crazy activity in the financial system. We are surely seeing plenty of that now. But no sane central bank would deliberately create recessions in order to save finance from itself. Rather, it must save the economy from finance by tough regulation, especially of leverage��� LINK: <https://www.ft.com/content/160db526-5e8d-4152-b711-21501a7fbd01>
American Purpose: About: ���A magazine, media project, and intellectual community���. We aim to defend and promote liberal democracy���. We seek to better understand and address the challenges���. We intend to offer criticism and commentary on history and biography, high art and pop culture, science and technology. Editorial Board: Francis Fukuyama, chair��� LINK: <https://www.americanpurpose.com/about/>
Wikipedia: Stendhal : ���Marie-Henri Beyle��� 23 January 1783���23 March 1842��� pen name Stendhal��� a 19th-century French writer. Best known for the novels Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma, 1839), he is highly regarded for the acute analysis of his characters��� psychology and considered one of the early and foremost practitioners of realism��� LINK: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal>
Wikipedia: Wolf Club: ���An English electropop band from Derby. Formed in 2014, the band consists of Steven Wilcoxson (producer, guitarist and songwriter) and Chris Paul-Martin (producer, vocalist, and songwriter).[1] They are often joined on stage by DJ Tim Hartwell��� LINK: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Club>
Modern Economic Growth Zoom Session Slides <https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/econ-135-4.1.3.4-zoom-modern-economic-growth.pptx> 09:30 PST 2021���03���02 LINK: <https://www.bradford-delong.com/2021/03/modern-economic-growth-zoom-session-slides-econ-135-s-2021.html>
���Huddled Masses��� Background Slides: On the Era of Globalization, Divergence, & Industrialization :: Econ 210a S 2021 <https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/econ-210a-2021-03-10-huddled-masses.pptx> <https://www.bradford-delong.com/2021/03/huddled-masses-on-the-era-of-globalization-divergence-industrialization-background-slides-econ-210a-.html> <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/huddled-masses-background-slides> 2021���03���03
Seven Paragraphs:
Yuval Noah Harari: Lessons from a Year of Covid: ���Automation and digitalisation have had an even more profound impact on services. In 1918, it was unthinkable that offices, schools, courts or churches could continue functioning in lockdown���. The switch online has many drawbacks, not least the immense mental toll���. In 1918, humanity inhabited only the physical world, and when the deadly flu virus swept through this world, humanity had no place to run. Today many of us inhabit two worlds ��� the physical and the virtual. When the coronavirus circulated through the physical world, many people shifted much of their lives to the virtual world, where the virus couldn���t follow���
LINK: <https://www.ft.com/content/f1b30f2c-84aa-4595-84f2-7816796d6841>
Warren Buffett: Letter to Shareholders: ���Most of Berkshire���s value, however, resides in four businesses���. The largest in value is our property/casualty insurance operation���. [Our] financial strength, coupled with the huge flow of cash Berkshire annually receives from its non-insurance businesses, allows our insurance companies to safely follow an equity-heavy investment strategy not feasible for the overwhelming majority of insurers. Those competitors, for both regulatory and credit-rating reasons, must focus on bonds. And bonds are not the place to be these days���. Risky loans, however, are not the answer to inadequate interest rates���. Berkshire now enjoys $138 billion of insurance ���float������funds that do not belong to us, but are nevertheless ours to deploy���. Our second and third most valuable assets��� are Berkshire���s 100% ownership of BNSF, America���s largest railroad measured by freight volume, and our 5.4% ownership of Apple. And in the fourth spot is our 91% ownership of Berkshire Hathaway Energy (���BHE���)��� a very unusual utility business, whose annual earnings have grown from $122 million to $3.4 billion during our 21 years of ownership���
LINK: <https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2020ltr.pdf>
Cat Rambo: Opinion: More Fuel for the Recent Baenfire: ���The GoHs are the literal faces of the convention, smiling out from the convention advertising and program books��� DisCon had to ask��� Is supporting a place where a bunch of people spend their time expressing their hatred of other members of the F&SF community something that makes a field more awesome? as well as What do we do, knowing that a choice to keep Weisskopf will be read as an endorsement of those words? Words that support an armed coup. Words saying people with differing political beliefs should be killed. Words urging violence towards other people���. Baen cannot disavow responsibility for those words, regardless of whether or not they happened because someone was asleep at the wheel. One of the reasons a business cannot ignore the importance of moderating any boards that they run is that they are responsible for the words posted on there. They can���t just turn over the keys to the car and say ���drive this where you like.��� They���re still enabling that car to bounce along the highway, swerving to hit any pedestrian it suspects of being from a particular group���. When you are a leader, whether you like it or not, you are responsible for what is happening under your leadership, whether you���re aware of it or not, because that���s part of the role���. Baen can continue as it has��� [with] ���hate���s a good marketing strategy,��� which may be savvy capitalism but I personally think equates with ethical bankruptcy���. My hope is, that with time and the rise of generations that have seen this approach and how hollow it is, hate will stop being so popular. I, for one, hail our new Tiktok and Hive overlords exercising the most punk attitude of all: kindness. Or Baen can��� work to appeal to a wide range of readers, some of whom are being driven off by the current rhetoric being encouraged there on the forums the company sponsors and runs. That���s not a novel approach. Most publishers actually choose this one���
Enrique Dans: Twelve Things I���ve Learned After A Year Of Video Conferencing: ���Zoom is by far the best���. Virtualize your camera: regardless of the software you use, virtualize your camera. Always. It���s probably what makes the biggest difference. My absolute recommendation is mmhmm���. Good lighting is key���. Don���t share your screen: when making a presentation, screen sharing is almost always the worst option, except in some specific cases (use of spreadsheets, etc.) Instead, share your presentations using the virtual camera, or use the virtual backgrounds to locate your presentation. This will give you more presentation options, you will be seen at all times at a reasonable size, and you will communicate better, more strongly���. Ration your calls : Video conferencing is tiring���. You��� need to feel comfortable in an environment that is already the norm���. It costs very little to project a professional image, and that the effect is very noticeable���
Daniel Seligson: Family Ties: ���[Joseph] Henrich���s study of kinship is interesting for its attempt to connect the world of norms��� to the world of economic institutions���. [But] we must look elsewhere for answers to the central challenge of economic history���that is, the question of why the haves have, and the have-nots have not��� LINK: <https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/family-ties/>
John Maynard Keynes: The Choice of Units: ���Our quantitative analysis must be expressed without using any quantitatively vague expressions. And, indeed, as soon as one makes the attempt, it becomes clear, as I hope to show, that one can get on much better without them���. That��� incommensurable collections of miscellaneous objects cannot in themselves provide the material for a quantitative analysis need not��� prevent us from making approximate statistical comparisons, depending on some broad element of judgment��� which may possess significance and validity within certain limits. But the proper place for such things as net real output and the general level of prices lies within the field of historical and statistical description, and their purpose should be to satisfy historical or social curiosity���. To say that net output to-day is greater, but the price-level lower, than ten years ago or one year ago, is a proposition of a similar character to the statement that Queen Victoria was a better queen but not a happier woman than Queen Elizabeth���a proposition not without meaning and not without interest, but unsuitable as material for the differential calculus. Our precision will be a mock precision if we try to use such partly vague and non-quantitative concepts as the basis of a quantitative analysis��� LINK: <https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch04.htm>
Katie Mack: Tearing Apart the Universe: ���Dark energy is pushing galaxies away from one another. Could this accelerating force lead to the universe-ending Big Rip? For a cosmic phenomenon that is arguably the most important thing in the universe, dark energy is surprisingly difficult to study. As far as we can tell, it exists everywhere in the universe, completely uniformly, woven into the fabric of space itself, and its only effect is to stretch space out so gradually that it has no detectable impact on any scale smaller than the vast expanses between distant galaxies��� LINK: <https://www.americanscientist.org/article/tearing-apart-the-universe>
DeLongTODAY: In the Year 2525���
The real thing will live at: <http://delongtoday.com> :: <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/for-paying-subscribers-in-the-year>
Today is an anti-economic history briefing.
Back 90 years ago, in another depressing time���one of depression, if not of depression and plague���John Maynard Keynes tried to cheer people up by talking about the bright ���economic possibilities for our grandchildren���. And we are they. Or, rather, we are their great-grandchildren and great^2-grandchildren.
So let me attempt a similar exercise.
How should we understand, from the most Olympian perspective, from a super-Olympian perspective, not the past but the future of the process of economic growth that the human race has undergone over the past half-millennium?
So let us look at our great- and great^2-grandchildren and what are their economic possibilities in 2100, then our great^5-grandchildren in 2200, and then all the way out to the year 2525: our great^15-grandchildren.
That is not that far out. Yesterday Amazon drop-shipped me a book about one of my ancestors back in the 1500s: Thomas Wyatt the Younger, executed on Tower Hill on orders of Bloody Mary for being an unwise catspaw for nobles who wondered if they could persuade Parliament to take control over the Queen���s marriage, to prevent the accession of a Spanish King who would bring the Inquisition to England. The answer was no: they could not persuade Parliament to mobilize the military force to threaten convincingly. We are connected to him, and there are those in 2525 who stand in a similar connection to us���
Let us start with the world economy today. 7.6 billion people. Average annual income per capita a hair under 12,000 international dollars a year. A $90 trillion a year world economy.
[image error]
We have consensus estimates for how the world economy has evolved over the past 150 years. They tell us that 150 years ago, back in 1870, the world had a total global income of $1.7 trillion dollars, with 1/9 of our average income per capita: $1300 rather than a hair beneath $12000. Thus since 1870 human numbers have grown at 1.2%/year and human real incomes at 1.5%/year. Our higher population means that we have fewer resources available per worker as the world���s endowment has to be split more ways. This has put an approximately 0.6%/year drag on our rate of income growth. That means that the underlying driver of humanity���s economic growth���the discovery, development, and deployment of ideas about how to manipulate nature and organize humans���the value of the stock of humanity���s economically useful ideas has grown at 2.1%/year over the past century and a half.
[image error]
Now there are deep conceptual problems with this statement. Economists call them ���the index number problem���, but that implies that they are (a) boring and technical, and (b) solvable, at least for practical purposes. They are not. Let me try to make them real. Consider Nathan Mayer Rothschild, who died in 1836.
[image error]
He was, then, the richest man in the world.
He died in his 50s, younger than I am now.
He died of an infected abscess in his butt. How much of his wealth would he have paid for the single dose of amoxicillin, with which our nurses��� aides would cure an infected abscess in each of our butts had we occasion? At his death Nathan Meyer Rothschild was worth $600 million 2020-dollars. (The richest man in the world and only $600 million, you say? Yes, the world of the past was much poorer than the world of the present. Nsthan Mayer Rothschild would have been willing to pay $600 million. There is a profound sense in which each and every one of us, by virtue of public health alone, is vastly richer than Nathan Meyer Rothschild was. On the Nathan Mayer Rothschild���s preferences scale, we are all centimillionaires, by virtue of our state of public health alone.
That is just one dimension. Let us consider another. If it happened to be 1610, and if you wanted to see a gory horror video entertainment about witches in your home, you had better be named James Stuart, you had better be King of England and Scotland, and your acting company���the King���s Men, led by William Shakespeare���had better have Macbeth currently in repertory.
[image error]
Figure, with acting time, rehearsals and scenery construction, et cetera, that it would have required 400 person-hours of work to put on the play. I���and at least half the population of the United States���can do that and much, much more for $0.60 cents��� worth of broadband connectivity, plus perhaps another $0.90 of computer and TV amortization. Charging that cost at today���s typical $50/hour labor rate, we see that the real labor-time cost is not 400 hours but 1 minute: 24000 times cheaper. And I don���t have to watch MacBeth. I can watch something else���any of thousands of other things. And I can watch dozens of different performances of MacBeth, depending on my fancy of the moment.
No: to say that average income per capita was $900/year in 1600, $1300/year in 1870, and almost $12000/year today does not capture it, for we produce and use not just more of what they produced and used, but things close to the edge of if not beyond their imagination, powers and capabilities and experiences that they saw as reserved to godlike beings.
But let us run with the consensus estimates we have: the world in 1870 had a total global income of $1.7 trillion dollars, and 1/9 of our average income per capita. Since 1870 human numbers have grown at 1.2%/year and human real incomes at 1.5%/year, for a rate of ideas growth of 2.1%/year. That has brought us to our current world of 7.6 billion people and $90 trillion of world annual income, for an income per capita average level a hair under $12,000/year.
So what will the world be like in 2100?
The first thing to note is that humanity appears to be headed for zero population growth. The population explosion���from 1.3 to 7.6 billion people over the past 150 years���has been driven by inherited patterns of thought from the more distant past. Before the Industrial Revolution and Modern Economic Growth, you see, human populations grew glacially on average. Between the year 1 and 1500 the average population growth rate was 0.073%/year���2% per generation. Thus the average couple had 2.04 descendents who survive to themselves reproduce. The Poisson distribution then tells us that the typical reproducing couple had a 13% chance of themselves having no descendants who reproduce. And that is an important number. For to be in that 13% was, potentially, disastrous.
Have no surviving descendants in the pre-Social Security age, you see, means that you have no social power when���if���you reach old age. Yes, you have property, but you cannot work it, and who will care enough to protest if somebody takes it away from you? Thus people back in the old days sought to have enough children that they could be confident that at least one would survive to provide them with at least some social power, should they be lucky enough to have a long old age. And 13% of couples failed.
Thus when humanity became richer and public health improved, it took several generations for human habits to catch up, and for people to realize that they were not under strong pressure from necessity to try to have large families. And it seems that, in a world of low infant mortality and Social Security, the typical couple worldwide really does not wish to have more than two children. Therefore figure that the world population will stabilize around 9 billion sometime over the next century. It certainly will not grow from 7.6 to 30 billion, which it would if we were to continue the past 150 years��� trend. It may shrink.
Up until 2100, continued growth of the value of the deployed stock of useful economic ideas at the 2.1%/year of the past 150 years is highly likely. Indeed, it is all but baked into the cake. The overwhelming bulk will simply be from the spread to the global south of productive ideas already deployed and in use in the global north.
With a population of 9 billion, and a deployed-ideas stock in 2100 that is, a 2.1%/year growth rate tells us, 5 times its current worldwide value, we can thus look forward to a world in 2100 where 9 billion people have a typical income of $55,000/year for a global world income level in 2100 of $500 trillion. The human then with an income that is the world average will live like an inhabitant of the global north with an income that is the global north average lives today. That would be, from our perspective, not yet a truly human world���but one in which such a truly human world might be within sight, if not yet at hand.
Share Grasping Reality Newsletter, by Brad DeLong
And suppose we manage to maintain the 2.1%/year rate of ideas growth that modern science, modern engineering, and the capitalist market world economy has delivered for us since 1870 for a further century, to 2200? What might the world be like then?
Well, assume continued population stability, and confront the terrifying power of compound interest: a quantity growing at 2.1%/year multiplies itself eightfold over a century. Eight times the ideas stock in 2200 than 2100 would give us a world with global annual income of $3600 trillion, with the average share then being $400,000/year. The person with an average share would then live as well���but in different ways, to be sure, that we cannot well imagine���as one of America���s top 1% lives today.
The story of modern human economic society, of economic growth and the escape from Malthusian stagnation and its poverty, want, and famine, really starts in 1500, 500 years ago, with the Commercial-Imperial Revolution. If we invoke the principle of mediocrity���that we are not special, being neither at the beginning nor at the end���we then find it appropriate to suppose that we are only halfway through this process of modern economic growth.
[image error]
If it continues at its 2.1%/year rate to a point 500 years from now, we then imagine a world in 2525���if man is still alive, if woman can survive, we may find���
What we then find is a world in which global annual income is $1,446,052,279,000,000,000���that is, $1.5 sextillion. The person receiving the average share of that income in 2500 would then have $160 million to spend. We are now talking large jetliners and private islands as the personal possessions of a typical human, come 2500, if the principal of mediocrity applies, if we are only halfway through the process, if modern economic growth continues to that day.
[image error]
And if we are only a third of the way through the process? Something that multiplies eightfold in a century multiplies 30,000 fold in a half-millennium. That would give the typical human in 3000 $5 trillion���5% of this year���s total world income���to spend on his or her personal projects each and every year.
The world of 2100 with a $50,000/year average income is easy to imagine. That future for the world is, largely, here today in the global north. It is a future built by large-scale deployment elsewhere of technologies already tested and in use, with further developments, plus advances many of which we can see: clean technologies, mRNA and other biotechnologies, further advances in semiconductor hardware production and in algorithms to deploy computer power, perhaps quantum computing, perhaps room-temperature semiconductors. The world of 2200 is much harder to imagine, but it can be done: it merely needs robots and other new technologies to take a further 7/8 of the work we now do off of our and into their hands, so that we spend one hour directing and then they accomplish what would today take a typical worker in the global north an entire day.
But the world of 2500? We today have, by our consensus estimates, 15 times the income of 1500. The global north has 60 times the income of 1500. The top 1% in the U.S. has 120 times the average income of 1500. But the simple-extrapolation world of 2500 has an average income level 400 times that of the U.S. top 1% today. The technologies that would provide that level of power over nature for everyone really are beyond our imagining. They require that nature have deep secrets, either at the fundamental or at the matter-organization level, of which we are now completely ignorant.
You might reply: People back in 1500 were equally ignorant of the deep secrets of nature that we have uncovered and that drive our technologies. And that is true. Moving outward from my eyes we have (a) air heated by a natural gas furnace (instead of a wood fireplace with a chimney), a cotton shirt spun and woven by machine, the arm of a wooden couch varnished with sophisticated petrochemical products, (d) a machine-made ceramic mug with a ���Batman��� logo, (e) tea rewarmed by a microwave oven, (f) a ceramic coaster, (g) a printed book, (h) a leather couch cushion stuffed with machine-made petrochemical-derived artificial fibers (not wool), (i) an Apple watch, (j) a gold wedding ring, (k) an Apple MacBookPro, (l) an LED ring light. We see technologies people in 1500 knew���or at least had heard of���plus textile and ceramics machinery, carbon energy, organic petrochemistry, plus making electrons get up and dance as a power source���for lighting and heating���plus making electrons in semiconductors get up and dance in patterns for information and communications technology. But the alchemists of 1500 knew that they did not understand chemistry at all, and had no idea of electrons���and nobody had any idea they could be induced to dance at all until Jean-Antoine Nollet in 1740.
[image error]
But the difficulty today is that we do not see any empty, unknown spaces on our maps of science out of which new technologies useful at human scale might emerge. Some things unknown appear to happen at too high energies at too small length scales. Other things unknown appear to happen at cosmic distances ever eons. Both seem forever remote from human experience.
No. I have to conclude that the odds are overwhelming that the 2.1%/year ideas growth rate of modern economic growth will come to an end, and well before 2500. I have to conclude that we are not in the middle but, rather, closer to the end of the adventure that began in 1500. Exponential growth is rarely the rule, after all. Exponential growth in early stages followed by some sort of near-exponential convergence to a steady-state of some sort seems much more the rule.
Is this all not grossly overoptimistic? Won���t global warming come to kill us all?
[image error]
I now think the answer to that is: no. Our clean-energy technologies are improving at a mighty pace. Yes, we should have provided mighty incentives to develop clean energy, to deploy clean energy, and to penalize carbon pollution at least 30 years ago. Yes, scorn and shame and���I think���prison time would be a just reward to all those who have worked so hard to block the world���s proper response. Yes, global warming is going to be catastrophic and deadly for tens of millions and millions. Yes, we will wind up with a very different world 5F or���though I really hope not���10F warmer. But I expect carbon-powered power-plant construction to stop now, carbon-powered vehicle production to stop in 10 years, and for the retirement of carbon-emitting capacity to take place over no more than one more generation. And I expect this to happen, overwhelmingly, for technological and cost reasons rather than for regulatory and penalty ones���although a powerful driver of the technological shift is that governments will allow people to profit from inventing green energy and conservation technologies, but not to profit from inventing carbon-emitting ones.
There are, however, two big reasons to be relatively pessimistic about the future of human civilization���to not see the human future as one in which our descendants several centuries hence are comprised of a stable world population of 9 billion, each with the standard of living of the U.S. 1%-ers today.
The first is that, while we are more peaceful than most of our close relatives, we are not that peaceful.
[image error]
Males, especially, are irrational creatures who fall into fits of emotional rage and do not properly calculate the costs of blowback from choosing violence. And technology has given us weapons which may someday kill us all. We could even destroy our civilization without using nuclear weapons: drones are cheap and hard to spot, and are getting cheaper and harder to spot. And nitrogen bonds have enough energy in them to do all the blowing-up and killing anyone could ever wish, and more.
The second is Enrico Fermi���s question: Where are all the aliens?
[image error]
If we were outside the solar system, looking in, by now we would see a strange bump in the solar system���s electromagnetic signature in the radio frequencies. If aliens outside looked closer, they could see us. But when we look out at the universe, we do not see them. Where are the aliens? As best as we can tellm the number N, the number of visible civilizations made up of intelligent, communicating beings in our galaxy is equal to one: us.
Now the number of civilizations we should see���. Each year roughly one star is formed in our galaxy. We now know that pretty much every star has planets, and that pretty much every star with planets has a planet where water is liquid and so our kind of organic chemistry works. Suppose that every such potentially-habitable planet developed life, and every biosphere developed one species of intelligent life, and every form of intelligent life developed a civilization visible across intersteller distances, and every intelligent species���s civilization lasted for 10 million years���only an eyeblink in the life of a planet. Then we should look out at the stars of our galaxy, and we should see the 10 million civilizations of all of our cousins in the sky.
The argument generalizes: if f(l), the fraction of potentially-habitable planets that develop life, f(i), the fraction that then develop intelligence, and f(c), the fraction that then develop a civilization visible across interstellar distances are all roughly one, then in order for us to see only one civilization the typical civilization has to be visible for only one year before it bombs or plagues or biosphere-upsets itself back to the stone age. If f(i) = 1% and f(c) = 1%���if intelligent life and industrial civilization are both longshots���then the galaxy should see a new visible civilization emerge every 10000 years, and that we see zero besides ourselves tells us that they do not last long in terms of planetary or even species lifetimes. Unless we have already passed through a ���Great Filter������unless the chances are astronomically against life developing or structures like our brains, mouths, and ears developing or industrial civilization developing���the odds are then that our civilization does not have long before a fatal accident befalls, at least if ���long��� is taken in the perspective of a time scale like that of the time since our divergence from the chimpanzees.
Now it might be a good thing that we do not see other civilizations: if we did, we might have seen them in the form of the Borg or of the Fascist Aprahant Butterfly Terror come to assimilate us. But that we did not see them should give us pause, should spur us to thought about what we can and should do to guard against civilization-scale threats.
This is the DeLongTODAY Bradcast Briefing. I���m Brad DeLong. Thank you very much for watching.
3471 words
March 9, 2021
4.2.1. Intro Video: Hegemony & Plutocracy :: Econ 135 :: History of Economic Growth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J7cjCimlRY
4.2.1.2. Intro Video: Plutocracy & Inequality
March 3, 2021
PODCAST: Hexapodia IV: Checks for (Almost) Everyone! Wi�� Noah Smith & Brad DeLong
The classical British social insurance state took large chunks of human activity out of the marketplace and attempted to distribute them to each according to his or her need. The classical American social insurance state was targeted and grouchy, attempting to elicit proper behavior. Now we have a turn that we regard as very hopeful: recognizing that the problem of the poor is primarily the problem of too-little social power, that money brings social power, hence the solution is to get the money to the people...
[image error]
RSS URL: <https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/47874.rss>
[image error]
[image error]
[image error]
[image error]
References:
Twirlip of the Mists: Hexapodia as the Key Insight<http://web.hexapodia.org/>
Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Upon-Deep-Zones-Thought-ebook/dp/B000FBJAGO>
Beth Ann Bovino, Satyam Panday, & Shuyang Wu: Within Reach: How Stimulus Proposals Lift U.S. GDP to Pre-Pandemic Levels<https://www.spglobal.com/ratings/en/research/articles/210201-economic-research-within-reach-how-stimulus-proposals-lift-u-s-gdp-to-pre-pandemic-levels-11818252>
Laura Davison: Here Are the Major Parts of $1.9 Trillion Biden Relief Plan <https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/here-are-the-major-pieces-of-bidens-1-9-trillion-stimulus-plan>
Wendy Edelberg & Louise Sheiner: The Macroeconomic Implications of Biden���s $1.9 Trillion Fiscal Package
Robert A. Heinlein: Beyond This Horizon <https://books.google.com/books?id=pnd0CwAAQBAJ>
Erica York, Garrett Watson, & Huaqun Li: American Rescue Plan: $1.9T Biden Stimulus Package <https://taxfoundation.org/biden-stimulus-american-rescue-plan/>
READING: Abraham Lincoln (1860-02-27): Cooper Union Address
[image error]
But:
Harold Holzer: ���Abraham Lincoln did triumph in New York. He delivered a learned, witty, and exquisitely reasoned address that electrified his elite audience and, more important, reverberated in newspapers and pamphlets alike until it reached tens of thousands of Republican voters across the North. He had arrived at Cooper Union a politician with more defeats than victories, but he departed politically reborn������
<https://www.americanheritage.com/speech-made-man>
Abraham Lincoln: Cooper Union Address: ���Mr. President and fellow citizens of New York: -
The facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, and the inferences and observations following that presentation.
In his speech last autumn, at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in ���The New-York Times,��� Senator Douglas said: ���Our fathers, when they framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now.���
I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse. I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed starting point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry: ���What was the understanding those fathers had of the question mentioned?���
What is the frame of government under which we live?
The answer must be: ���The Constitution of the United States.��� That Constitution consists of the original, framed in 1787, (and under which the present government first went into operation,) and twelve subsequently framed amendments, the first ten of which were framed in 1789.
Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution? I suppose the ���thirty-nine��� who signed the original instrument may be fairly called our fathers who framed that part of the present Government. It is almost exactly true to say they framed it, and it is altogether true to say they fairly represented the opinion and sentiment of the whole nation at that time. Their names, being familiar to nearly all, and accessible to quite all, need not now be repeated.
I take these ���thirty-nine,��� for the present, as being ���our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.���
What is the question which, according to the text, those fathers understood ���just as well, and even better than we do now?���
It is this: Does the proper division of local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal Government to control as to slavery in our Federal Territories?
Upon this, Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, and Republicans the negative. This affirmation and denial form an issue; and this issue���this question���is precisely what the text declares our fathers understood ���better than we.���
Let us now inquire whether the ���thirty-nine,��� or any of them, ever acted upon this question; and if they did, how they acted upon it���how they expressed that better understanding?
In 1784, three years before the Constitution���the United States then owning the Northwestern Territory, and no other, the Congress of the Confederation had before them the question of prohibiting slavery in that Territory; and four of the ���thirty-nine��� who afterward framed the Constitution, were in that Congress, and voted on that question. Of these, Roger Sherman, Thomas Mifflin, and Hugh Williamson voted for the prohibition, thus showing that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything else, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in federal territory. The other of the four���James M���Henry���voted against the prohibition, showing that, for some cause, he thought it improper to vote for it.
In 1787, still before the Constitution, but while the Convention was in session framing it, and while the Northwestern Territory still was the only territory owned by the United States, the same question of prohibiting slavery in the territory again came before the Congress of the Confederation; and two more of the ���thirty-nine��� who afterward signed the Constitution, were in that Congress, and voted on the question. They were William Blount and William Few; and they both voted for the prohibition���thus showing that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything else, properly forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory. This time the prohibition became a law, being part of what is now well known as the Ordinance of ���87.
The question of federal control of slavery in the territories, seems not to have been directly before the Convention which framed the original Constitution; and hence it is not recorded that the ���thirty-nine,��� or any of them, while engaged on that instrument, expressed any opinion on that precise question.
In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the Constitution, an act was passed to enforce the Ordinance of ���87, including the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. The bill for this act was reported by one of the ���thirty-nine,��� Thomas Fitzsimmons, then a member of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. It went through all its stages without a word of opposition, and finally passed both branches without yeas and nays, which is equivalent to a unanimous passage. In this Congress there were sixteen of the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution. They were John Langdon, Nicholas Gilman, Wm. S. Johnson, Roger Sherman, Robert Morris, Thos. Fitzsimmons, William Few, Abraham Baldwin, Rufus King, William Paterson, George Clymer, Richard Bassett, George Read, Pierce Butler, Daniel Carroll, James Madison.
This shows that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, properly forbade Congress to prohibit slavery in the federal territory; else both their fidelity to correct principle, and their oath to support the Constitution, would have constrained them to oppose the prohibition.
Again, George Washington, another of the ���thirty-nine,��� was then President of the United States, and, as such approved and signed the bill; thus completing its validity as a law, and thus showing that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government, to control as to slavery in federal territory.
No great while after the adoption of the original Constitution, North Carolina ceded to the Federal Government the country now constituting the State of Tennessee; and a few years later Georgia ceded that which now constitutes the States of Mississippi and Alabama. In both deeds of cession it was made a condition by the ceding States that the Federal Government should not prohibit slavery in the ceded territory. Besides this, slavery was then actually in the ceded country. Under these circumstances, Congress, on taking charge of these countries, did not absolutely prohibit slavery within them. But they did interfere with it���take control of it���even there, to a certain extent. In 1798, Congress organized the Territory of Mississippi. In the act of organization, they prohibited the bringing of slaves into the Territory, from any place without the United States, by fine, and giving freedom to slaves so bought. This act passed both branches of Congress without yeas and nays. In that Congress were three of the ���thirty-nine��� who framed the original Constitution. They were John Langdon, George Read and Abraham Baldwin. They all, probably, voted for it. Certainly they would have placed their opposition to it upon record, if, in their understanding, any line dividing local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in federal territory.
In 1803, the Federal Government purchased the Louisiana country. Our former territorial acquisitions came from certain of our own States; but this Louisiana country was acquired from a foreign nation. In 1804, Congress gave a territorial organization to that part of it which now constitutes the State of Louisiana. New Orleans, lying within that part, was an old and comparatively large city. There were other considerable towns and settlements, and slavery was extensively and thoroughly intermingled with the people. Congress did not, in the Territorial Act, prohibit slavery; but they did interfere with it���take control of it���in a more marked and extensive way than they did in the case of Mississippi. The substance of the provision therein made, in relation to slaves, was:
First. That no slave should be imported into the territory from foreign parts.
Second. That no slave should be carried into it who had been imported into the United States since the first day of May, 1798.
Third. That no slave should be carried into it, except by the owner, and for his own use as a settler; the penalty in all the cases being a fine upon the violator of the law, and freedom to the slave.
This act also was passed without yeas and nays. In the Congress which passed it, there were two of the ���thirty-nine.��� They were Abraham Baldwin and Jonathan Dayton. As stated in the case of Mississippi, it is probable they both voted for it. They would not have allowed it to pass without recording their opposition to it, if, in their understanding, it violated either the line properly dividing local from federal authority, or any provision of the Constitution.
In 1819���20, came and passed the Missouri question. Many votes were taken, by yeas and nays, in both branches of Congress, upon the various phases of the general question. Two of the ���thirty-nine������Rufus King and Charles Pinckney���were members of that Congress. Mr. King steadily voted for slavery prohibition and against all compromises, while Mr. Pinckney as steadily voted against slavery prohibition and against all compromises. By this, Mr. King showed that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, was violated by Congress prohibiting slavery in federal territory; while Mr. Pinckney, by his votes, showed that, in his understanding, there was some sufficient reason for opposing such prohibition in that case.
The cases I have mentioned are the only acts of the ���thirty-nine,��� or of any of them, upon the direct issue, which I have been able to discover.
To enumerate the persons who thus acted, as being four in 1784, two in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in 1798, two in 1804, and two in 1819���20���there would be thirty of them. But this would be counting John Langdon, Roger Sherman, William Few, Rufus King, and George Read each twice, and Abraham Baldwin, three times. The true number of those of the ���thirty-nine��� whom I have shown to have acted upon the question, which, by the text, they understood better than we, is twenty-three, leaving sixteen not shown to have acted upon it in any way.
Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our thirty-nine fathers ���who framed the government under which we live,��� who have, upon their official responsibility and their corporal oaths, acted upon the very question which the text affirms they ���understood just as well, and even better than we do now;��� and twenty-one of them���a clear majority of the whole ���thirty-nine������so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross political impropriety and willful perjury, if, in their understanding, any proper division between local and federal authority, or anything in the Constitution they had made themselves, and sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. Thus the twenty-one acted; and, as actions speak louder than words, so actions, under such responsibility, speak still louder.
Two of the twenty-three voted against Congressional prohibition of slavery in the federal territories, in the instances in which they acted upon the question. But for what reasons they so voted is not known. They may have done so because they thought a proper division of local from federal authority, or some provision or principle of the Constitution, stood in the way; or they may, without any such question, have voted against the prohibition, on what appeared to them to be sufficient grounds of expediency. No one who has sworn to support the Constitution can conscientiously vote for what he understands to be an unconstitutional measure, however expedient he may think it; but one may and ought to vote against a measure which he deems constitutional, if, at the same time, he deems it inexpedient. It, therefore, would be unsafe to set down even the two who voted against the prohibition, as having done so because, in their understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in federal territory.
The remaining sixteen of the ���thirty-nine,��� so far as I have discovered, have left no record of their understanding upon the direct question of federal control of slavery in the federal territories. But there is much reason to believe that their understanding upon that question would not have appeared different from that of their twenty-three compeers, had it been manifested at all.
For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the text, I have purposely omitted whatever understanding may have been manifested by any person, however distinguished, other than the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution; and, for the same reason, I have also omitted whatever understanding may have been manifested by any of the ���thirty-nine��� even, on any other phase of the general question of slavery. If we should look into their acts and declarations on those other phases, as the foreign slave trade, and the morality and policy of slavery generally, it would appear to us that on the direct question of federal control of slavery in federal territories, the sixteen, if they had acted at all, would probably have acted just as the twenty-three did. Among that sixteen were several of the most noted anti-slavery men of those times���as Dr. Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris���while there was not one now known to have been otherwise, unless it may be John Rutledge, of South Carolina.
The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty-one���a clear majority of the whole���certainly understood that no proper division of local from federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories; while all the rest probably had the same understanding. Such, unquestionably, was the understanding of our fathers who framed the original Constitution; and the text affirms that they understood the question ���better than we.���
But, so far, I have been considering the understanding of the question manifested by the framers of the original Constitution. In and by the original instrument, a mode was provided for amending it; and, as I have already stated, the present frame of ���the Government under which we live��� consists of that original, and twelve amendatory articles framed and adopted since. Those who now insist that federal control of slavery in federal territories violates the Constitution, point us to the provisions which they suppose it thus violates; and, as I understand, that all fix upon provisions in these amendatory articles, and not in the original instrument. The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case, plant themselves upon the fifth amendment, which provides that no person shall be deprived of ���life, liberty or property without due process of law;��� while Senator Douglas and his peculiar adherents plant themselves upon the tenth amendment, providing that ���the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution��� ���are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.���
Now, it so happens that these amendments were framed by the first Congress which sat under the Constitution���the identical Congress which passed the act already mentioned, enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. Not only was it the same Congress, but they were the identical, same individual men who, at the same session, and at the same time within the session, had under consideration, and in progress toward maturity, these Constitutional amendments, and this act prohibiting slavery in all the territory the nation then owned. The Constitutional amendments were introduced before, and passed after the act enforcing the Ordinance of ���87; so that, during the whole pendency of the act to enforce the Ordinance, the Constitutional amendments were also pending.
The seventy-six members of that Congress, including sixteen of the framers of the original Constitution, as before stated, were pre- eminently our fathers who framed that part of ���the Government under which we live,��� which is now claimed as forbidding the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories.
Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this day to affirm that the two things which that Congress deliberately framed, and carried to maturity at the same time, are absolutely inconsistent with each other? And does not such affirmation become impudently absurd when coupled with the other affirmation from the same mouth, that those who did the two things, alleged to be inconsistent, understood whether they really were inconsistent better than we���better than he who affirms that they are inconsistent?
It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the original Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Congress which framed the amendments thereto, taken together, do certainly include those who may be fairly called ���our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.��� And so assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever, in his whole life, declared that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. I go a step further. I defy any one to show that any living man in the whole world ever did, prior to the beginning of the present century, (and I might almost say prior to the beginning of the last half of the present century,) declare that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. To those who now so declare, I give, not only ���our fathers who framed the Government under which we live,��� but with them all other living men within the century in which it was framed, among whom to search, and they shall not be able to find the evidence of a single man agreeing with them.
Now, and here, let me guard a little against being misunderstood. I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so, would be to discard all the lights of current experience���to reject all progress���all improvement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we.
If any man at this day sincerely believes that a proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his position by all truthful evidence and fair argument which he can. But he has no right to mislead others, who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that ���our fathers who framed the Government under which we live��� were of the same opinion���thus substituting falsehood and deception for truthful evidence and fair argument. If any man at this day sincerely believes ���our fathers who framed the Government under which we live,��� used and applied principles, in other cases, which ought to have led them to understand that a proper division of local from federal authority or some part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories, he is right to say so. But he should, at the same time, brave the responsibility of declaring that, in his opinion, he understands their principles better than they did themselves; and especially should he not shirk that responsibility by asserting that they ���understood the question just as well, and even better, than we do now.���
But enough! Let all who believe that ���our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now,��� speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask���all Republicans desire���in relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity. Let all the guarantees those fathers gave it, be, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly, maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as I know or believe, they will be content.
And now, if they would listen���as I suppose they will not���I would address a few words to the Southern people.
I would say to them:���You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us a reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to ���Black Republicans.��� In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of ���Black Republicanism��� as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite���license, so to speak���among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify.
You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue; and the burden of proof is upon you. You produce your proof; and what is it? Why, that our party has no existence in your section���gets no votes in your section. The fact is substantially true; but does it prove the issue? If it does, then in case we should, without change of principle, begin to get votes in your section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. You cannot escape this conclusion; and yet, are you willing to abide by it? If you are, you will probably soon find that we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section this very year. You will then begin to discover, as the truth plainly is, that your proof does not touch the issue. The fact that we get no votes in your section, is a fact of your making, and not of ours. And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily yours, and remains until you show that we repel you by some wrong principle or practice. If we do repel you by any wrong principle or practice, the fault is ours; but this brings you to where you ought to have started���to a discussion of the right or wrong of our principle. If our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any other object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the question of whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section; and so meet it as if it were possible that something may be said on our side. Do you accept the challenge? No! Then you really believe that the principle which ���our fathers who framed the Government under which we live��� thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again, upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as to demand your condemnation without a moment���s consideration.
Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address. Less than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he had, as President of the United States, approved and signed an act of Congress, enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory, which act embodied the policy of the Government upon that subject up to and at the very moment he penned that warning; and about one year after he penned it, he wrote LaFayette that he considered that prohibition a wise measure, expressing in the same connection his hope that we should at some time have a confederacy of free States.
Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands against you? Could Washington himself speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you who repudiate it? We respect that warning of Washington, and we commend it to you, together with his example pointing to the right application of it.
But you say you are conservative���eminently conservative���while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by ���our fathers who framed the Government under which we live;��� while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave trade; some for a Congressional Slave-Code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories to prohibit Slavery within their limits; some for maintaining Slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some for the ���gur-reat pur-rinciple��� that ���if one man would enslave another, no third man should object,��� fantastically called ���Popular Sovereignty;��� but never a man among you is in favor of federal prohibition of slavery in federal territories, according to the practice of ���our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.��� Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an advocate in the century within which our Government originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge or destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations.
Again, you say we have made the slavery question more prominent than it formerly was. We deny it. We admit that it is more prominent, but we deny that we made it so. It was not we, but you, who discarded the old policy of the fathers. We resisted, and still resist, your innovation; and thence comes the greater prominence of the question. Would you have that question reduced to its former proportions? Go back to that old policy. What has been will be again, under the same conditions. If you would have the peace of the old times, readopt the precepts and policy of the old times.
You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper���s Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper���s Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need to be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious slander.
Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper���s Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held to and made by ���our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.��� You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines and declarations are accompanied with a continual protest against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common with ���our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live,��� declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do, the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us, in their hearing. In your political contests among yourselves, each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism; and then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood and thunder among the slaves.
Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the Republican party was organized. What induced the Southampton insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which, at least three times as many lives were lost as at Harper���s Ferry? You can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton was ���got up by Black Republicanism.��� In the present state of things in the United States, I do not think a general, or even a very extensive slave insurrection is possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot be attained. The slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it. The explosive materials are everywhere in parcels; but there neither are, nor can be supplied, the indispensable connecting trains.
Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves for their masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is true. A plot for an uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated to twenty individuals before some one of them, to save the life of a favorite master or mistress, would divulge it. This is the rule; and the slave revolution in Hayti was not an exception to it, but a case occurring under peculiar circumstances. The gunpowder plot of British history, though not connected with slaves, was more in point. In that case, only about twenty were admitted to the secret; and yet one of them, in his anxiety to save a friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, and, by consequence, averted the calamity. Occasional poisonings from the kitchen, and open or stealthy assassinations in the field, and local revolts extending to a score or so, will continue to occur as the natural results of slavery; but no general insurrection of slaves, as I think, can happen in this country for a long time. Whoever much fears, or much hopes for such an event, will be alike disappointed.
In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, ���It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up.���
Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the power of emancipation is in the Federal Government. He spoke of Virginia; and, as to the power of emancipation, I speak of the slaveholding States only. The Federal Government, however, as we insist, has the power of restraining the extension of the institution���the power to insure that a slave insurrection shall never occur on any American soil which is now free from slavery.
John Brown���s effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution. Orsini���s attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John Brown���s attempt at Harper���s Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, and on New England in the other, does not disprove the sameness of the two things.
And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of John Brown, Helper���s Book, and the like, break up the Republican organization? Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling���that sentiment���by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box, into some other channel? What would that other channel probably be? Would the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation?
But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of your Constitutional rights.
That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palliated, if not fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force of numbers, to deprive you of some right, plainly written down in the Constitution. But we are proposing no such thing.
When you make these declarations, you have a specific and well-understood allusion to an assumed Constitutional right of yours, to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them there as property. But no such right is specifically written in the Constitution. That instrument is literally silent about any such right. We, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implication.
Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.
This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you will say the Supreme Court has decided the disputed Constitutional question in your favor. Not quite so. But waiving the lawyer���s distinction between dictum and decision, the Court have decided the question for you in a sort of way. The Court have substantially said, it is your Constitutional right to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them there as property. When I say the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean it was made in a divided Court, by a bare majority of the Judges, and they not quite agreeing with one another in the reasons for making it; that it is so made as that its avowed supporters disagree with one another about its meaning, and that it was mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact���the statement in the opinion that ���the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution.���
An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave is not ���distinctly and expressly affirmed��� in it. Bear in mind, the Judges do not pledge their judicial opinion that such right is impliedly affirmed in the Constitution; but they pledge their veracity that it is ���distinctly and expressly��� affirmed there������distinctly,��� that is, not mingled with anything else������expressly,��� that is, in words meaning just that, without the aid of any inference, and susceptible of no other meaning.
If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such right is affirmed in the instrument by implication, it would be open to others to show that neither the word ���slave��� nor ���slavery��� is to be found in the Constitution, nor the word ���property��� even, in any connection with language alluding to the things slave, or slavery; and that wherever in that instrument the slave is alluded to, he is called a ���person;������and wherever his master���s legal right in relation to him is alluded to, it is spoken of as ���service or labor which may be due,������as a debt payable in service or labor. Also, it would be open to show, by contemporaneous history, that this mode of alluding to slaves and slavery, instead of speaking of them, was employed on purpose to exclude from the Constitution the idea that there could be property in man.
To show all this, is easy and certain.
When this obvious mistake of the Judges shall be brought to their notice, is it not reasonable to expect that they will withdraw the mistaken statement, and reconsider the conclusion based upon it?
And then it is to be remembered that ���our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live������the men who made the Constitution���decided this same Constitutional question in our favor, long ago���decided it without division among themselves, when making the decision; without division among themselves about the meaning of it after it was made, and, so far as any evidence is left, without basing it upon any mistaken statement of facts.
Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is, shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, ���Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!���
To be sure, what the robber demanded of me���my money���was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle.
A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, one with another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. Even though the southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.
Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them, if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation.
The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.
These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly���done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated���we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas��� new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.
I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most of them would probably say to us, ���Let us alone, do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery.��� But we do let them alone���have never disturbed them���so that, after all, it is what we say, which dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying.
I am also aware they have not, as yet, in terms, demanded the overthrow of our Free-State Constitutions. Yet those Constitutions declare the wrong of slavery, with more solemn emphasis, than do all other sayings against it; and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow of these Constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the demand. It is nothing to the contrary, that they do not demand the whole of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right, and a social blessing.
Nor can we justifiably withhold this, on any ground save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality���its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension���its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?
Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored���contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man���such as a policy of ���don���t care��� on a question about which all true men do care���such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance���such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.
LINK: <http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/cooper.htm>
J. Bradford DeLong's Blog
- J. Bradford DeLong's profile
- 90 followers
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/7dfd984c-5046-4024-a25f-d7df6d06727d_1300x694.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e8a85783-bd85-4422-ba67-d75182de0a1b_1094x710.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F040f7718-543e-41c9-abb1-c787e2200a64_1192x394.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb8716811-39dc-48fe-bd6c-f97304df1f3c_1338x1700.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4650f458-b4b9-4617-81b8-b22e8b46feda_600x352.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F12ab9b6e-0bf9-4e44-a86b-41bc92dea758_600x355.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5d0e9624-0b70-423c-abf8-d14c2d22890b_600x352.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6a9ab58-f41d-46ff-8f36-f0dcd5a6deca_1248x846.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F800e2a0d-b9a2-4812-9525-77814f9cfdc4_1234x846.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F928c011a-fc89-422e-9544-ed83c2dfffa0_382x454.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1405c8f4-faaa-4b95-a733-70a498041e37_880x787.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fda0bb824-ea06-4354-bc62-3ba40a11e260_1136x678.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F99714f45-b6f1-4d5b-8cc8-7e615e5c91e6_1240x1004.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb1b5f9db-27f3-4227-bb98-af39214781a0_783x520.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F953bd2a8-1306-4679-8395-4277ef3a9f13_764x686.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1b771fd2-7e07-430b-a4e2-d35a5c37d5c3_569x675.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F72c9b220-60bd-4d89-96b1-8f4e12e050ee_1214x572.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3519fced-1daa-463a-9eda-671160eb8c9c_1972x1368.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbe3c9955-152a-4a66-8c27-b817576c8b8d_2424x1690.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa0c53d81-95b2-424c-8ca8-2a63f296168f_1342x936.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fccab8dd1-5d45-4665-9e8c-e18bf3f9a782_1688x1640.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F475565ba-2d67-4da7-92c5-253e414a3206_2828x1568.png){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5e1d3f33-316e-4473-a31d-543db202b0ab_2040x1040.png){kind=link}