2025-03-04
squish
Modern Relationships podcast with Agnes Callard. There is something I’ve been wondering, which is whether two people should generally yield to one another or accommodate one another. It doesn’t seem clear to me which would be better, which is why it seems strange to me that Agnes focuses so much on not “being squished”, which indicates that the overwhelming majority seem to prefer the former. The other thing I’m wondering is where her desire for grandchildren comes from. Based on her conversations with Robin Hanson, I suppose it’s something like being able to experience the most important aspects of the human experience (as opposed to utilitarian calculus). Anyway, this conversation is a good reminder of how some things, like the pickiness of modern relationships, don’t easily fit into a dichotomy of either pro or anti-natal buckets.
Wood From Eden on inequality in the future. Usually I don’t take these sorts of thought experiments very seriously, because given how connected and dynamic different social systems are, major changes will occur in combination with other unexpected changes such that you can’t just predict the effect of any single factor in isolation. But this scenario is an interesting one in that it basically describes a system which already exists, where conservative groups like Midwesterners or Orthodox Jews produce children as their primary output, with some portion of these offspring migrating to the city to focus on economic production instead (I’ve heard this described in jest as the problem of “optimal Jew harvesting”).
Matt Yglesias defends the Washington Post editorial direction change, using a justification a similar comparison about how free markets and liberalism relies on a stable society, and therefore a defense of the former will help safeguard the latter.
Ken Opalo on how African countries should react to the removal of foreign aid. It’s strange because it seems like the optimal strategy is to quietly reduce dependence on foreign aid while still trying to take any discretionary funds that are being offered for as long as possible. Instead, Ken claims that a lot of countries have been doing the opposite, making big claims about becoming independent without actually taking the steps necessary to achieve them.
Scott Sumner writes how there is no such thing as a trade deficit, describing US-China import-export as a trade of manufactured assets for financial assets. That being said, housing isn’t entirely a financial asset, and in my opinion it would be much better for both sides if Chinese purchases moved to something less supply-constrained than housing, like US stocks.
