2024-11-27
kaya
Andy McKenzie linkthread.
Nicholas Decker defends cost-plus contracting (when appropriate). Not sure I agree, I feel like there are more appropriate contracts even in the high-uncertainty environments that he describes.
Ron Ghosh covers the most common objections to pronatalism. I have this theory that our fertility crisis isn’t a new problem, it’s actually a perpetual problem that has become relevant due to changing circumstances. Historically speaking, we also had high rates of childlessness, but those who had kids had lots of them, which more than made up for that. I’m guessing the current high fertility subgroups like the Amish or Haredim also follow this pattern. But this is untenable in liberal society. Now that even three kids is considered a lot, we have to spread the load around; we need to achieve the historically unprecedented task of getting everyone to have kids, which means sweeping away the blockers for them everywhere, in matchmaking, relationship stability, housing, money, fertility treatments, childcare, education, etc. That’s why there isn’t a single solution, otherwise everyone would have been married in the past. What would probably be required is creating a clear and replicable series of steps we can baby everyone through, similar to how we’ve developed a pipeline in the 20th century which gets 90% of Americans through high school.
Interview by Snowden Todd with a homeless guy. Potentially more evidence that my lack of relationships is more due to a lack of caring than anything else. This guy is homeless and his primary activity seems to be trying to pull girls.
Scott Sumner on things “mattering” in economics. It’s interesting, because it’s really several different phenomena he’s describing. One is how something which causes apparently large effects on metrics doesn’t change the situation on the ground, usually because it’s filtered through several layers which translate it for minimal disruption to endusers. Another is how large changes at the bottom level are erased by the time they get to the abstract metrics. And another is how you think your policy is doing one thing, but it’s primarily affecting some entirely different area instead. It makes me wonder by “meso-economics” isn’t really a thing. Perhaps they haven’t been able to get any interesting results, which is really another indictment of macroeconomics in my mind.
Eneasz Brodski on euthanasia, using a D&D metaphor.
