J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 85

Brad DeLong Says More...: Project Syndicate

Project Syndicate: [Brad DeLong Says More...](htt*PS*: //us10.campaign-archive.com/?u=9116789a51839e0f88fa29...): Project Syndicate: One forgotten lesson of the Great Depression, you wrote last month, is that ���persistent ultra-low interest rates mean the economy is still short of safe, liquid stores of value, and thus in need of further monetary expansion���...

...Since then, the US Federal Reserve has cut the federal funds rate ��� a move that you argued in March could either stave off a recession or drastically undermine the Fed���s capacity to respond to one. What steps should the Fed take to help encourage the former and prevent the latter? At a time of growing political pressure on the Fed, what approach is it likely to take?

Brad DeLong: Back in 1992, Larry Summers and I warned participants at the Fed���s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that low inflation and high equity-return and bond-risk premiums do not play well together. Dealing with a typical recession had, historically, required that the Fed cut the federal funds rate by five full percentage points. A large recession would require even larger cuts.

How could macroeconomic stability be maintained in a world where the real federal funds rate was 3% at the peak of the business cycle, and the inflation rate was 2% or less? It was a very good question then. It is an even better question today, when we are mired in what Summers calls ���an era of secular stagnation���; the real federal funds rate tops out at just 1.5% at the peak of the business cycle; and the Fed is struggling to keep the break-even inflation rate (that is, investors��� inflation expectations) from falling to or below 1.5%.

There are three possible answers to your question. First, the Fed could raise the inflation target significantly above 2%. But it has decided not to do that.

Second, the Fed could substantially reduce equity-return and bond-risk premiums, say, by undertaking asset transformation on a large enough scale to satisfy the market demand for safe, liquid stores of value. It could also conceivably lobby for other policies that might accomplish this. But it has decided not to do any of that, either.

Third, the Fed could abandon its post-World War II commitment to maintain near-full employment whenever doing so does not spur excessive inflation. As it stands, the Fed is choosing this option by default. It should recognize this and change course, pursuing the first or second option. But I see no signs that it will.

PS: Just two months after you argued (in June) that ���America���s attempt to ���get tough��� with China could accelerate its own relative decline,��� the US Treasury has officially designated that country a currency manipulator. America, you���ve said, ���will never reclaim the standing it had in 2000, and it probably cannot even recover the tenuous but still solid geopolitical position it enjoyed in 2016.��� With this latest move, has the US reached the point of no return?

BD: As Adam Smith once wrote, ���there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.��� There are rarely true points of no return. Moreover, in this case, China faces serious problems of its own, relating to governance, inequality, and development. It is also on the frontlines of the slow-moving but dire climate crisis, in a way that the US is not.

That said, the US will not recapture its position as the triumphant leader and guide of global progress that it was at the end of Bill Clinton���s presidency, or even as the wounded but still-preeminent global power it was at the end of Barack Obama���s presidency. This will be true, even if the forces that elected Donald Trump are as scotched as the supporters of Republican California Governor Pete Wilson were after he declared Hispanics the state���s Public Enemy #1 back in the 1990s. It will be true, even if Trump���s successor goes on a global apology and listening tour, and the US works very hard to become its best self.

Whatever happens, the US can hope only to be one power among several. The world is in desperate need of mechanisms that can underpin the provision of global public goods in such a multipolar world.

PS: China���s response to the Trump administration���s latest escalation of the bilateral trade and currency dispute suggests that its leaders��� patience may be wearing thin. What steps could they take now, and how is Chinese policy likely to shape US economic performance in the coming months and years?

BD: If China���s leaders have not already recognized that the Trump administration cannot be regarded as a rational negotiating partner, it is time that they do. In eight months, Trump will be focused entirely on his re-election campaign, taking whatever actions he believes will improve his chances of victory.

From China���s perspective, those actions will probably be extremely difficult to anticipate. In that context, its best strategy is to conciliate, defer, and delay, preventing the conflict ��� and its associated damage ��� from escalating further. Then, after the November 2020 US presidential election, it will need to reevaluate the situation.

PS: ��In 2015, you wrote that economic models should not be regarded as unassailable, given their flawed assumption, for example, that individual decision-making is always characterized by rational expectations. How should economic modeling be adapted to a world characterized by dynamics such as ���shrinkflation��� and ���monopsony,��� in which the Phillips curve no longer seems to apply and monetary stimulus has lost its effectiveness?

BD:��Well, as I see it, the Phillips curve is as reliable as it ever was. The difference is simply that the Fed has succeeded in anchoring inflation expectations, and we have been lucky to avoid major supply shocks.

In fact, I think that economic modeling is adapting very well to the changing world. We have a good grasp on market success and the modes of market failure, and we are getting better at doing properly robust empirical work. Our models are not microfounded in any real sense, and that makes doing good welfare economics very hard. But it will take at least another century to establish those microfoundations.

Our real problems are political and ideological. There are those who keep insisting that markets are perfectly competitive, when they are not. There are those who keep insisting that models need to be based on representative agents and ���rational��� expectations (in the very limited Robert Lucas sense), when they do not. And there are those who will change their positions on a dime to please their political or other masters. This is where we run into trouble.
By the Way...

PS: You recently retweeted a thread in which Dan Froomkin of White House Watch (@froomkin) asked his fellow journalists what headline would have been both realistic and appropriate for coverage of Trump���s speech earlier this month following the second of two mass shootings within 24 hours. If you were a journalist, what headline would you propose?

BD: Trump Endorses the National Rifle Association Again

PS: Which US Democratic presidential candidates would you say have the strongest economic credentials?

BD: All of them. Considering the utter lack of economic credentials of Trump and the now-Trumpian Republican Party, differences in competence and policy orientation among the Democrats are trivial. The baseline has moved, so the question is no longer worth asking. What really matters is electability.

PS: You were Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury under President Bill Clinton. What was the most important or valuable lesson you learned from government service, and would you do it again?

BD: That US politicians ��� and, even more so, the US public ��� are much better served by their dedicated, optimistic, and public-spirited bureaucrats than they know, or than they deserve. Of course I would do it again.

PS: What achievement ��� personal or professional ��� are you most proud of, and which decision would you most like to take back?

BD:��On the negative side, I would significantly subdue my confidence in late 2008 and early 2009 that then-Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and Obama understood the situation they faced. The world could have used a lot more yelling, and a lot fewer claims of, ���it���s being properly managed.���

On the positive side, my #1 achievement has to be my work on the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, which made the 1990s a much better and more prosperous decade than it would have been otherwise. At #2, I would place providing some support to Paul Krugman when he decided in 2000 that he needed to use his platform at The New York Times to speak truth to power, ideology, and wealth. This drove far more economists to do the same.
DeLong��Recommends

The following four books are, in my view, foundational. If you can think like these authors, you will be much better equipped to make sense of social science and social policy issues. In fact, someday, I plan to write a PS commentary ��� or several ��� exploring why these are the key thinkers for understanding the human societies of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Essays in Persuasion
By John Maynard Keynes

A collection of insightful essays and articles written between 1919 and 1931, intended for a general audience.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
By James Scott

Scott analyzes failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields, in order to determine why well-intentioned strategies for improving the human condition go so tragically awry.

The Great Transformation
By Karl Polanyi

In this classic work of economic history and social theory, Polanyi analyzes the economic and social changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution.

Manias, Panics, and Crashes
By Charles Kindleberger

The renowned economic historian Kindleberger shows how the mismanagement of money and credit has produced financial upheaval over the centuries.

��
From the PS Archive

From 2018
A year after Trump and his fellow Republicans rammed their massive corporate tax cut through Congress, DeLong pointed out that the policy had not fulfilled its promise ��� which the conservative economists who backed it always knew was false ��� substantially to boost productivity and investment. Read his commentary.

From 2013
Nearly three years before a political backlash by those who felt they had been ���left behind��� by globalization got Trump elected, DeLong pointed out that a reaction to sharply rising inequality in the US was overdue. Read his commentary.
Around the Web

In case you missed it, here are some other places around the web where DeLong's work or ideas have appeared recently.

In a comprehensive overview of US economic history, DeLong explains how the Hamiltonian economic principles of pragmatism and experimentation have repeatedly worked. Listen to the podcast.

DeLong joins the debate over whether US Democrats should lean away from market-friendly stances and embrace progressive presidential candidates and policies like the Green New Deal. Read the interview.

DeLong argues that, at a time when there is very little room to loosen US monetary policy, the Fed should be buying recession insurance. But it is not. Listen to the podcast....

#highlighted #macro #publicsphere #2019-12-11

Great-grandfather Roland: Roland G. Usher (1913): Pan Ger...

Great-grandfather Roland: Roland G. Usher (1913): Pan Germanism https://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/comment/PanGer/PanGerTC.htm: 'BY: ROLAND G. USHER, PH.D. Associate Professor of History, Washington University, St. Louis.... BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge.... TO THAT ENERGETIC, CAPABLE ADMINISTRATOR, THAT ENTHUSIASTIC STUDENT OF CONDITIONS, THAT BEST OF COMRADES, THAT DEAREST OF FRIENDS, MY WIFE.... I. THE CAUSES OF GERMAN AGGRESSION.... The logic of facts, proving the necessity of expansion, is, to such Germans as General Bernhardi, unanswerable. The population has increased so rapidly that it is already difficult for efficient, well-trained men to secure any employment. Not only is the superficial area of the country suitable for cultivation practically exhausted, but intensive scientific agriculture is speedily limiting the possibilities of the employment of more hands on the same acres or the further increase of the produce. Industry has grown at a stupendous rate, and the output from German factories is enormously in excess of the needs of even the growing population. Her exports per capita are 24 dollars a year, as against England's 40, and France's 25, and she has not their exclusive colonial markets. Unless some outlet can be found for the surplus population, and a new and extensive market discovered for this enormous surplus production, prosperity will be inevitably succeeded by bankruptcy. There will be more hands than there is work for, more mouths than there is food, and Germany must either get rid of the surplus mouths and hands or swell the surplus product by employing them at home, which cannot be done without entailing national ruin. Expansion is, therefore, the only alternative, for the German considers equivalent to ruin the reduction of the pressure of population by emigration,(2) and the avoidance of overproduction by the proportionate reduction of output. Merely to retain what she now has, Germany is condemned to increase her navy at any pace the English see fit to set. Something more will be absolutely essential if the dire consequences of an economic crisis are not to impoverish her and pave the way for her ultimate destruction at the hands of her hereditary enemies, France and Russia...

...To secure a share of the world's trade in some fashion which will not expose her to the attacks of the English fleet, and which will create an empire less vulnerable in every way than she believes the British Empire to be, an overland route to the East must be found. The Germans consider perfectly feasible the construction of a great confederation of states including Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Balkan States, and Turkey, which would control a great band of territory stretching southeast from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf. A railway from Constantinople to Baghdad would effectually tie the great trunk lines, leading from the Rhine and Danube valleys, to Constantinople and the Persian Gulf, and so establish a shorter route to India than that via Suez. Egypt, Syria, Arabia, Persia, India herself, the mother of nations, would fall into German hands and be held safe from conquest by this magnificent overland route to the East. Pan-Germanism is, therefore, in the first place, a defensive movement for self-preservation, for escaping the pressure of France and Russia, both bent on her destruction. It is, in the second place, an offensive movement directed against England, its object, the conquest of the English possessions in the Mediterranean and in Asia. She expects thus to obtain an outlet for her surplus population and manufactures and to create an empire as little vulnerable politically, economically, or strategically as any the world has yet seen.

In reply to the outcries from other nations, denouncing these plans as unprovoked aggression and lacking in morality, as a reversion to the forcible methods of bygone centuries whose brutalities the world long ago outgrew, the Germans derisively point to the presence of the English in India, of the French in Morocco, of the Russians in Manchuria, of the United States in Panama. They insist that their aims and methods are absolutely identical with those their detractors have so long employed. Now that the latter's work is complete and their own futures assured, they are no doubt eager to establish "moral," "ethical," and "legal" precepts whose acceptance by other nations would insure them the undisturbed possession of all they now hold. This, the Germans admit, is but natural and not blameworthy; but they ought not to expect other nations to subscribe to such principles from motives of love or admiration.(5) General Bernhardi, a man whose undoubted attainments and learning compel the respect of his enemies, and whose following in Germany is large in numbers and influential in character, declares openly that might is right, and that right is decided by war. He scoffs at such ideas of ethics and morality as his critics represent, and insinuates that, if war happened to promise other nations at this moment as many advantages as it does Germany, they would hold views similar to his upon that subject....

The Germans as a whole... deny the validity of any particular set of ethical notions of right and wrong to decide issues vital to the continued existence of the Germanic race. If such considerations are to be dragged into the discussion, the notion of the relativity of truth, the doctrine that moral and ethical standards are not fixed but merely reflect the stage of progress each particular age has reached, the Darwinian doctrine of the survival of the fittest, all seem to them infinitely more satisfactory theoretical grounds for action than what Bismarck sneeringly called "the English phrases about humanity."

The most significant question now before the Anglo-Saxon race, therefore, is the truth or falsity of those notions of strategical geography, of military and naval organization, of finance and commerce upon which these vast schemes are based. If the factors, on which the Germans rely, are what they think they are, the domination of the world by Germany and her allies can be only a question of time. If they are not valid, the world will certainly develop along different lines. So widely do the economic and political interests ramify, so completely are all sections of the globe influenced by them, that nothing can happen, from this moment until the final decision of the issue, which will not vitally affect it or be vitally affected by it...

#noted #2019-12-11

Self-Portrait of Otto von Bismarck as an Atheistic Young Hegelian

Otto von Bismarck's self-portrait of himself as���like Karl Marx���an Atheistic Young Hegelian. How much Bismarck believed what he wrote, and how much Bismarck's beliefs were accurate, are things that I must leave to the judgment of those more expert than I. From The German Classics: Masterpieces of German Literature Translated Into English: Volume X: Prince Otto Von Bismarck, Count Helmuth Von Moltke, Ferdinand Lassalle:

Otto von Bismarck: "Hotel de Prusse, Stettin. (Not dated: written about the end of December, 1846.) "TO Herr von Puttkamer:

Most Honored Sir:

I begin this communication by indicating its content in the first sentence���it is a request for the highest thing you can dispose of in this world, the hand of your daughter. I do not conceal from myself the fact that I appear presumptuous when I, whom you have come to know only recently and through a few meetings, claim the strongest proof of confidence which you can give to any man. I know, however, that even irrespective of all obstacles in space and time which can increase your difficulty in forming an opinion of me, through my own efforts I can never be in a position to give you such guaranties for the future that they would, from your point of view, justify intrusting me with an object so precious, unless you supplement by trust in God that which trust in human beings can not supply. All that I can do is to give you information about myself with absolute candor, so far as I have come to understand myself. It will be easy for you to get reports from others in regard to my public conduct; I content myself, therefore, with an account of what underlay that���my inner life, and especially my relations to Christianity. To do that I must take a start far back...

...In earliest childhood I was estranged from my parents' house, and at no time became entirely at home there again ; and my education from the beginning was conducted on the assumption that everything is subordinate to the cultivation of the intelligence and the early acquisition of positive sciences. After a course of religious teaching, irregularly attended and not comprehended, I had at the time of my confirmation by Schleiermacher, on my sixteenth birthday, no belief other than a bare deism, which was not long free from pantheistic elements. It was at about this time that I, not through indifference, but after mature consideration, ceased to pray every evening, as I had been in the habit of doing since childhood; because prayer seemed in consistent with my view of God's nature; saying to my self: either God himself, being omnipresent, is the cause of everything���even of every thought and volition of mine���and so in a sense offers prayers to himself through me, or, if my will is independent of God's will, it implies arrogance and a doubt as to the inflexibility as well as the perfection of the divine determination to believe that it can be influenced by human appeals. When not quite seventeen years old I went to Gottingen University. During the next eight years I seldom saw the home of my parents; my father indulgently refrained from interference; my mother censured me from far away when I neglected my studies and professional work, probably in the conviction that she must leave the rest to guidance from above: with this exception I was literally cut off from the counsel and instruction of others. In this period, when studies which ambition at times led me to prosecute zealously���or emptiness and satiety, the inevitable companions of my way of living���brought me nearer to the real meaning of life and eternity, it was in old-world philosophies, uncomprehended writings of Hegel, and particularly in Spinoza's seeming mathematical clearness, that I sought for peace of mind in that which the human understanding cannot comprehend. But it was loneliness that first led me to reflect on these things persistently, when I went to Kniephof, after my mother's death, five or six years ago. Though at first my views did not materially change at Kniephof, yet conscience began to be more audible in the solitude, and to represent that many a thing was wrong which I had before regarded as permissible. Yet my struggle for insight was still con fined to the circle of the understanding, and led me, while reading such writings as those of Strauss, Feuerbach, and Bruno Bauer, only deeper into the blind alley of doubt. I was firmly convinced that God has denied to man the possibility of true knowledge; that it is presumption to claim to understand the will and plans of the Lord of the World; that the individual must await in submission the judgment that his Creator will pass upon him in death, and that the will of God becomes known to us on earth solely through conscience, which He has given us as a special organ for feeling our way through the gloom of the world. That I found no peace in these views I need not say. Many an hour have I spent in disconsolate depression, thinking that my existence and that of others is purposeless and unprofitable���perchance only a casual product of creation, coming and going like dust from rolling wheels.

About four years ago I came into close companionship, for the first time since my school-days, with Moritz Blankenburg, and found in him, what I had never had till then in my life, a friend ; but the warm zeal of his love strove in vain to give me by persuasion and discussion what I lacked ��� faith. But through Moritz I made acquaintance with the Triglaf family and the social circle around it, and found in it people who made me ashamed that, with the scanty light of my understanding, I had undertaken to investigate things which such superior intellects accepted as true and holy with childlike trust. I saw that the members of this circle were, in their outward life, almost perfect models of what I wished to be. That confidence and peace dwelt in them did not surprise me, for I had never doubted that these were companions of belief; but belief cannot be had for the asking, and I thought I must wait submissively to see whether it would come to me. I soon felt at home in that circle, and was conscious of a satisfaction that I had not before experienced���a family life that included me, al most a home.

I was meanwhile brought into contact with certain events in which I was not an active participant, and which, as other people's secrets, I cannot communicate to you, but which stirred me deeply. Their practical result was that the consciousness of the shallowness and worthlessness of my aim in life became more vivid than ever. Through the advice of others, and through my own impulse, I was brought to the point of reading the Scriptures more consecutively and with resolute restraint, sometimes, of my own judgment. That which stirred within me came to life when the news of the fatal illness of our late friend in Cardemin tore the first ardent prayer from my heart, without subtle questionings as to its reasonableness. God did not grant my prayer on that occasion ; neither did He utterly reject it, for I have never again lost the capacity to bring my requests to Him, and I feel within me, if not peace, at least confidence and courage such as I never knew before...

#noted #2019-12-10

Interesting that Henry Fielding uses the phrase "King of ...

Interesting that Henry Fielding uses the phrase "King of Prussia" in 1749 in Tom Jones: the Kings in Prussia were not to claim the title King of Prussia until 1772. Indeed, the point of the Crown Treaty of 1700 was that the Prince-Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia Friedrich III Hohenzollern sought recognition that he was by the Treaty of Bromberg sovereign���i.e., not a vassal of the King of Poland���over those parts of Prussia he controlled, and definitely not freed from vassalage for his German-Imperial to the Emperor Leopold I Habsburg. "King of Prussia" introduces some ambiguity there. And in 1749 either Henry Fielding or Aunt Western is unaware of this distinction between "in" and "of", which was important enough for Leopold I Habsburg to have made it a red line in his negotiations with Friedrich III Hohenzollern to get the Margravate of Brandenburg's troops on his side in the War of the Spanish Succession:

Henry Fielding: The History of Tom Jones https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6593/6593-h/6593-h.htm#link2H_4_0003: '���Indeed, Miss Western,��� cries the lady, ���I shall not bear this usage; you have learnt of your father this manner of treating me; he hath taught you to give me the lie. He hath totally ruined you by this false system of education; and, please heaven, he shall have the comfort of its fruits; for once more I declare to you, that to-morrow morning I will carry you back. I will withdraw all my forces from the field, and remain henceforth, like the wise king of Prussia, in a state of perfect neutrality. You are both too wise to be regulated by my measures; so prepare yourself, for to-morrow morning you shall evacuate this house���...

#noted #2019-12-08

Beno��t de Courson and Nicolas Baumard: Quantifying the S...

Beno��t de Courson and Nicolas Baumard: Quantifying the Scientitic Revolution https://drive.google.com/file/d/14XXlDjyru9i05_SN3ybp-FGmbsZDhm5U/view: 'We leverage large datasets of individual biographies to build national estimates of scientific production during the early modern period.... Per capita estimates reveal striking differences across countries, with the two richest countries of the time (England and the United Provinces)... much more scientifically productive than the rest of Europe.... Scientific creativity is associated with other kinds of creative activities in philosophy, literature, music and the arts, suggesting a common underlying factor. Our results also challenge long-held hypotheses regarding the role of religion, universities, demography, and the printing press, and support the idea that economic development and rising living standards are key to explaining the rise of modern science...

#noted #2019-12-07

Brandy Clark: Big Day In A Small Town: For the Weekend

Brandy Clark: Big Day In A Small Town https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAppyuYLgkQ_:

#fortheweekend #music #2019-12-06

Very Briefly Noted 2019-12-06:Patrick Stewart: Galaxy ...

Very Briefly Noted 2019-12-06:

Patrick Stewart: Galaxy Quest https://web.archive.org/web/20140113105956/http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/st/interviews/stewart/page13.shtml: 'I had originally not wanted to see [Galaxy Quest] because I heard that it was making fun of Star Trek and then Jonathan Frakes rang me up and said "You must not miss this movie! See it on a Saturday night in a full theatre". And I did and of course I found it was brilliant. Brilliant. No one laughed louder or longer in the cinema than I did, but the idea that the ship was saved and all of our heroes in that movie were saved simply by the fact that there were fans who did understand the scientific principles on which the ship worked was absolutely wonderful. And it was both funny and also touching in that it paid tribute to the dedication of these fans...

David Romer (2018): Economics 134: Macroeconomic Policy from the Great Depression to Today https://www.econ.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/course-homepage/2018-01-14/syllabus/Economics%20134%20Syllabus.pdf...

Wikipedia: The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_Depression_Economics_and_the_Crisis_of_2008: 'Krugman suggests that policymakers "relearn the lessons our grandfathers were taught by the Great Depression" and prop up spending and enable broader access to credit...

Youtube: Disney's Zorro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0icu-DbZr28&list=PL150C101BDB5788AE...

George A. Akerlof (2019): What They Were Thinking Then: The Consequences for Macroeconomics during the Past 60 Years https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.33.4.171...

Paul Krugman (2011): Mr. Keynes and the Moderns https://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/keynes_and_the_moderns.pdf...

D. E. Moggridge and Susan Howso: Keynes on Monetary Policy, 1910-1946 https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2662224.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A388ccc8f3ac7d38d097622a88e770b85...

Moses Finley: The World of Odysseus https://delong.typepad.com/finleyodysseus.pdf...

FRED: Four Components of Aggregate Demand https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_id=524363&rn=499...

Timothy B. Lee: How Neural Networks Work���And Why They���ve Become A Big Business https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/how-neural-networks-work-and-why-theyve-become-a-big-business/: 'This is the first in a multi-part series on machine learning���in future weeks we'll take a closer look at the hardware powering machine learning, examine how neural networks have enabled the rise of deep fakes, and much more.... Making neural networks deeper didn't do much to improve performance if the training data set wasn't big. Conversely, expanding the size of the training set didn't improve performance very much for small neural networks. You needed both deep networks and large data sets���plus the vast computing power required to complete the training process in a reasonable amount of time���to see big performance gains. The AlexNet team was the first one to put all three elements together in one piece of software...

FRED: Real Gross Private Domestic Investment/Real Potential Gross Domestic Product https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_id=516169&rn=403...

Barry Naughton (2017): Is China Socialist? https://delong.typepad.com/files/naughton.pdf...

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett Dunsany: Fifty-one Tales https://archive.org/details/fiftyonetales00dunsgoog/page/n4...

King James Version: Ecclesiastes 9:11 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+9%3A11&version=KJV: 'I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all...

Diego Vel��zquez: The Surrender of Breda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Surrender_of_Breda...

Wikipedia: Spanish Road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Road...

Christopher Marlowe: The Jew of Malta https://www.gutenberg.org/files/901/901-h/901-h.htm...

Friedrich Engels (1877) Anti-Duhring https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch11.htm: 'Up to this point we have proceeded from the assumption that Herr D��hring's persistent habit of misquoting is done at least in good faith, and arises either from his total incapacity to understand things or from a habit of quoting from memory ��� a habit which seems to be peculiar to historical depiction in the grand style, but is usually described as slovenly. But we seem to have reached the point at which, even with Herr D��hring, quantity is transformed into quality...

Michael Boskin &al. (2010): An Open Letter to Ben Bernanke https://economics21.org/html/open-letter-ben-bernanke-287.html: 'The planned asset purchases risk currency debasement and inflation, and we do not think they will achieve the Fed's objective of promoting employment...

*Tsinghua University *: School of Economics and Management http://www.sem.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/qianyy: 'Qian, Yingyi: Professor, Department of Economics; Distinguished Professor of Arts,��Humanities and Social Sciences, Tsinghua University; The Fourth Dean (2006-18), School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University...

Robert Waldmann: Critique of the Golgotha Program https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/07/robert-waldmann-has-an-interpretation-of-karl-marx-that-is-new-to-me.html...

Barack Obama (January 27, 2010): Remarks by the President in State of the Union Address | whitehouse.gov https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-state-union-address: 'Remarks by the President in State of the Union Address...

#noted #verybrieflynoted #2019-12-06

John Holbo: Ersatz Better Angels? http://crookedtimber.or...

John Holbo: Ersatz Better Angels? http://crookedtimber.org/2019/12/04/ersatz-better-angels/: 'We tend to think of the relationship between ideal and non-ideal theory as aspirational and/or clarificatory. Ideal theory represents either 1) a distant point towards which you ought to move; 2) a pristine expression of your real values, unblemished by extraneous, pragmatic considerations. You could sort of roll 1) and 2) up together and say: ideal theory should be a polestar. A clear, fixed point by which you can steer somewhere better than where you are. But, in these Vavilovian/Steelwool cases... the point of dragging in ideal theory is, in effect, to footdrag, extenuate and obfuscate.... You are bad (see above), so pretending to be GOOD-good is hard. But you might be able to pull off semi-not-bad, from a middle-distance. So you invent a semi-not-bad aspirational self. Angel of my less-bad nature! But, really, this aspirational self is just there to provide plausible deniability. This ersatz angel lets you stay bad, rather than making you have to be even a little better...

#noted #2019-12-06

John Holbo: Vavilovian Philosophical Mimicry http://crook...

John Holbo: Vavilovian Philosophical Mimicry http://crookedtimber.org/2019/12/03/vavilovian-philosophical-mimicry/: 'Today I propose a new term in political theory. Vavilovian philosophical mimicry! It denotes a type of relation between ideal and non-ideal theories. It posits that the former evolves as protective concealment for the latter.... Weeds evolve, under selective pressure, to resemble crops.... Let���s take the white supremacy-libertarianism case.... You are proposing doing something that would keep African-Americans down. Why are you doing that? Because that���s what you want. But you can���t say that. But: you can plausibly pretend it���s a (merely temporarily uncomfortable) stage on the way to some sort of ideal libertarian night watchman end-state. The advantage of ideal theory is that it���s���well, not real. Yet. So it���s low commitment, in practical terms. Nominal commitment to some distant, ideally liberal end-state covers a variety of present, anti-liberal sins. So philosophical conservatism should be theorized in terms of the following four factors: 1) an element of aristocratic anti-liberalism (animus against the agency of the subordinate classes.) Cf. Robin. 2) an element of Vavilovian, pseudo-liberal mimicry. Anti-liberalisms that survive in a liberal environment will tend to look like each other because they are all, as it were, trying to look enough like liberalism to not get weeded out as too anti-liberal. But these resemblances, because they are protective mimicry, are actually misleading. At least superficial. 3) considerable liberal democratic DNA. It���s rare to run into a real, dyed-in-the-wool Joseph de Maistre-type. 4) 2 may result in 3, over time, via ���fake it until you make it���, if you see what I mean...

#noted #2019-12-06

John Holbo: The Steelwool Scrub���A Fallacy http://crooke...

John Holbo: The Steelwool Scrub���A Fallacy http://crookedtimber.org/2019/05/07/the-steelwool-scrub-a-fallacy/: 'There���s a common "religious liberty" trope... an invalid variant on a Steelman-style argument.... The Steelwool Scrub is quite bad.... Take same-sex marriage (more recently, trans issues): you can always rustle up some Ryan T. Anderson-type to spin up some Thomistic-ish natural law (Christian anthropology etc.) argument. Even if this is weak ���steel��� (I would judge), belated scholasticism, wandering the modern world, looks ornamental���harmless, innocent, unassuming. At worst, a curious mooncalf; at best, considerably more academically polished than old-school fag-bashing. Now comes the bait-and-switch (indulgence-by-proxy, steelman-to-absolve-all-sins.) If anyone now says ���opposition to LGBTQ rights is bigotry and irrational animus������the response comes quick. ���Unfair! Will no one think of poor Ryan T. Anderson! Of his elaborate, perhaps failed yet earnestly-exposited, to-all-appearances sincere arguments! Is the world so unable to tolerate a little [insert squirrel gaze GIF] DIFFERENCE? Can all this be dismissed as mere, base homophobia! Mindless bigotry! Surely not! Surely, then, it is those who call it ���bigotry��� who must be [squirrel GIF again] the REAL BIGOTS!���... Descriptively���sociologically���it���s absurd to steelman a socio-cultural order-or-group by conflating its practices and norms with unrepresentative, intellectual outliers. If you think the reason trans people struggle for respect, recognition, rights is that they are surrounded by well-meaning, rationally-convicted neo-Thomists, you���re nuts. Trans people struggle and suffer because they are members of a despised, oppressed minority group. SSM was a fight because gays face irrational animus, not a thicket of para-Aristotelian arguments. Spinning actually-existing bigotry as, ideally, the better angel of some natural law argument, is just a weird way to excuse what���s right there in front of you...

#noted #2019-12-06