2025-02-18
money
Noah Smith on Europe. I’m fairly confident they can get their act together, given that the US appears to be actually serious about pulling out. I’m actually rather worried about Canada, which has many of the same problems as Europe, with stagnant GDP, rising debt, and declining fertility, but no danger of Russian invasion to compel any changes. If anything, a counter-reaction to Trump’s annexation rhetoric will probably result in a doubling down on identity politics and governmental regulation. In the long term, it’s highly likely that both of it’s primary industries will collapse. Canada will be unable to transition to solar due to it’s climate, but when the US does regulation against fossil fuels will intensify and the price of gas will collapse. And as the population declines (or if rich Chinese decide there’s better placing to start parking their money), the housing bubble will eventually burst and the construction industry will also go bust. For most countries, the elite would certainly start demanding reform, but for Canada this could instead result in even more brain drain to the United States.
Sam Matey interviews Kim Stanley Robinson. It’s nice to see there’s a mutual appreciation between KSR and Casey Handmer, despite their differing politics and opposing views on Elon Musk.
Elle Griffin has an interview with a professor from Mondragon cooperative. There’s a very interesting part about overseas subsidiaries not being cooperatives. I’ve been sort of convinced that the best form of foreign aid should be setting up profit-making enterprises in the city which result in knowledge transfer and creation of native industry. At the same time it seems to me that making such factories worker-led should be appealing to the sort of people interested in global development. So in some ways it’s surprising to me that this doesn’t exist as a standard type of aid. On the other hand, it also makes sense because in our de-industrialized society the skills required for this probably aren’t widespread, and are therefore too valuable to intentionally transfer away. In addition to the stigma against business in social circles.
Snowden Todd has a great interview with a high-schooler in Gangnam, about demographic decline and structural issues in related to Seoul and Korea.
Walrus Mag on AI matchmakers (via Caitlin Dewey). I’ve been wondering why this isn’t something that really exists yet, turns out there are people exploring this. I wonder whether it’s easier to match make in India due disqualifying factors like religion and caste, or harder. At the very least, I feel like a similar app for China could be very successful, given a similar history of arranged marriage and official government desire to raise the birth rate.
Kryptogal on the EB-5 visa. I knew that a lot of countries, from Malaysia to Portugal, offered golden visas, but I had no idea that the US offered one as well.
Default Friend has an interesting podcast which is sort of a bait and switch, where the blurb indicates it will talk about the generation that grows up with AI, but it’s more about discussing the generation that grew up with the internet with that analogy. There’s a sudden interest in understanding the origins of the new right given their current ascendancy, and it seems like Kate is planning on discussing that soon. It’s funny because the two opposing alliances of Gamergate at the time didn’t fit properly into the mainstream political axes, but today map almost exactly to the progressive left and new right. It truly was the initiation of hostilities in the culture war.
