Topic
politics
- Return to smoke-filled rooms
Jonah Goldberg with one of his classic broadsides against our broken primary system: People hate on āsmoke-filled roomsā because they think such venues give the rich and powerful undue influence over the nominating prā¦
- Past, Present, and Future
Here's a useful way of thinking about the domains of our three branches of government, from Yuval Levin's American Covenant: It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the Congress is expected to frame for the futurā¦
- How the Constitution Can Bring Us Together
A great interview with AEI's Yuval Levin ahead of the release of his latest book, _American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified our Nation ā And Could Again_. Yuval is one of the greatest minds we have working todaā¦
- Comfort with Contradiction
From my latest issue of Res Extensa: One of the most important things we can teach our children as they're coming of age is to cultivate a comfort with contradiction. Sometimes good things come at the expense of otherā¦
- Will Milei Succeed In Argentina Marginal Revolution
Tyler Cowen is hopeful (as am I), but skeptical: For a country to swing so wildly from state-run strangulation to an quasi-populist libertarian economist makes me worried his effect on Argentine bureaucracy will fadeā¦
- Will Milei Succeed in Argentina?
Tyler Cowen is hopeful (as am I), but skeptical: I have two major worries. First, if Milei approaches fiscal success, the opposing parties will think long and hard about whether they wish to enable further success. Orā¦
- The Case for Muddling Through
Read any news that intersects with politics, culture, technology, or economics, and you'd believe we've come to the end of the road. You find the occasional optimist pointing out how things aren't so bad, or that theyā¦
- Brittle Authoritarianism
Jonah Goldberg on the brittleness of authoritarianism: Authoritarian regimes are often very, very strong. But like marble theyāre brittle. They can withstand enormous pressures, from within and without, but thereās noā¦
- What if Government Paid Better?
In his book Political Order and Political Decay, Francis Fukuyama has a section on corruption in political systems and how it impacts economic development: There are many reasons why corruption impedes economic develoā¦
- The Prophet of the Revolt
Of this year's reads so far, Martin Gurri still holds the crown on my favorite with his 2014 book The Revolt of the Public. That book has the best diagnosis of the current state of politics, the culture war, polarizatā¦
- Weekend Reading: Notes Meta Layer, PG, and the Trump Era
š A Meta-Layer for Notes Julian Lehr raises an interesting idea on taking notes: the importance of spatial context. š¬ PR Interviews Paul Graham Antonio Garcia-Martinez's newsletter kicks off with an interview with Pā¦
- On Legibility
I think I probably read three different pieces this week alone that reference James Scott's Seeing Like a State. It presents an argument about the desire for "legibility" that overthrows and reorders bottom-up, emergeā¦
- Weekend Reading: Looking Glass Politics, Enrichment, and OSM Datasets
š Looking-Glass Politics On private emotions being thrown into the public sphere: People escape the Dunbar world for obvious reasons: life there appears prosaic and uninspiring. They find a digital interface and, likā¦
- Weekend Reading: The Hour of the State, Location AI, and Mapillary Acquired
š¬ The Hour of the State or Explosion From Below? Martin Gurri is one of the best minds we have for the current moment. Make sure to subscribe to his essays on the Mercatus Center's "The Bridge." The American people aā¦
- Weekend Reading: Dracones, Calendars, and Science 2.0
š Hic Sunt Dracones Adam Elkus with a great essay on the current moment: āIs this as bad as 1968?ā is an utterly meaningless question precisely for this underlying reason. People do not invoke 1968 because of the objā¦
- Weekend Reading: Post-Truth, Knowledge, and Game Graphics
āļø The Way Out of Post-truth Another razor sharp analysis from Gurri: The collapse of trust in our leading institutions has exiled the 21st century to the Siberia of post-truth. I want to be clear about what this meanā¦
- Martin Gurri on EconTalk
I've been following Gurri's work closely since I read The Revolt of a Public a couple months back. I think he's one of the sharpest minds we have right now thinking and writing about what's going on in politics, mediaā¦
- Weekend Reading: Two Elites, DOS in VR, and Personal Brainstorming
šļø A Tale of Two Elites Martin Gurri on the growing similarities between west and east coast elites: The effect, I suspect, will be the exact opposite of the reactionary dream. In wild and seedy digital gathering-plaā¦
- The Revolt of the Public in 10 Minutes
Author Martin Gurri posted this quick 10 minute summary of his book The Revolt of the Public. It was one of my favorite recent reads, and in this video he does an excellent job summarizing his key diagnosis of what'sā¦
- President Goop's Ultralight Beam Vaccine
Two of my favorite podcasts collide with Jonah Goldberg visiting the Fifth Column. Lively and hilarious discussion, as expected.
- The Great Reset
Martin Gurri in response to Marc Andreessen's "It's Time to Build" essay: So how do we get from here to build? To demand that our current institutions make that leap would be like asking the Great Pyramid to win the Iā¦
- The Ideological Turing Test
I recently finished Arnold Klingās excellent Three Languages of Politics, which attempts to build a model to describe why different political viewpoints are so often not disagreeing as much as they are talking about dā¦
- Weekend Reading: The State and the Virus, Future of Work, and Stephen Wolfram's Setup
š The Individual, the State, and the Virus I agree with most of Kling's takes here on the role the state should play in the coronavirus crisis. š©š½āš» Mapping the Future of Work A nice comprehensive list of SaaS proā¦
- A Failure, But Not of Prediction
This is the best piece I've seen on the swirling controversy around the coronavirus pandemic response: on experts, the WHO, government response. The problem is not that experts don't always have the answer (which theyā¦
- Three Languages
The economist Arnold Kling is a regular on EconTalk. This interview discussion revisits his 2013 book, The Three Languages of Politics in light of the current political landscape. In the current media landscape, ampliā¦
- David Deutsch on Brexit and Error Correction
I ran across this interview with physicist David Deutsch, with his thoughts on Brexit. A lot of great stuff here on resilience, error correction, individualism vs. collectivism, Karl Popper, and Britain's first-past-tā¦
- Michele Gelfand on Tight and Loose Cultures
This was a fascinating interview with Dr. Michele Gelfand from Jonah Goldberg's The Remnant podcast. It mostly covers the subject of her book Rule Makers, Rule Breakers, on the differences between "tight" vs. "loose"ā¦
- How Elite Institutions Lost Their Legitimacy
A discussion between economist Arnold Kling and author Martin Gurri about the erosion of institutions and what that means for polarization and cultural instability. Martin Gurri doesnāt like to make predictions. But iā¦
- Weekend Reading: Soleimani, Prosperous Universe, and Roam
š®š· The Shadow Commander This 2013 piece from Dexter Filkins gives an excellent background on Qasem Soleimani, an important figure now well known after his killing a couple of weeks ago, but prior to that hardly knowā¦
- What Andrew Yang Means
Wesley Yang on the potential staying power of Andrew Yang. The campaign that Yang is running and the response so far to his candidacy is pleasantly surprising. In a political scene where everything is dire, negative,ā¦
- Weekend Reading: Darwinian Gastronomy, Humboldt, and Taxes
š¶ Darwinian Gastronomy Turns out cultures from warmer climates evolved a taste for spicy foods to combat the presence of more diverse bacteria: Alas, nothing in nature turns out to be that simple. Researchers now sugā¦
- Weekend Reading: Iceland, the Use of Knowledge, and CLI Search
āļø The Use of Knowledge in Society I've been reading some of Hayek's famous articles this week. This one is all about what he probably considered one of the most important concepts, since these basic ideas form a centā¦
- Weekend Reading: Intellectual Humility, Scoping, and Gboard
š¤ Missing the Light at the End of the Tunnel Honest postmortems are insightful to get the inside backstory on what happened behind the scenes with a company. In this one, Jason Crawford goes into what went wrong withā¦
- Jonathan Haidt on the Righteous Mind
Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind was one of my favorite recent nonfiction books I've read in the last few years. It's one of the most objective, deep analyses of a question that's interested me for years: why do peā¦
- Weekend Reading: Private DNS, Opportunity, and Millennial Socialism
š Announcing 1.1.1.1: Privacy-First DNS This is an old announcement, but new to me. CloudFlare now hosts privacy-centric DNS at 1.1.1.1, available to all: We talked to the APNIC team about how we wanted to create a pā¦
- Progress Report: The Federalist Papers
Iām making my way through The Federalist, which has been on my reading list forever, and for which I had my interest rekindled last year reading Alexander Hamilton. For those that donāt know, itās a collection of essaā¦
- Francis Fukuyama on The Origins of Political Order
Francis Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order was one of the most interesting books I've read in the last 5 years. It traces the history of human social hierarchy and government from antiquity to the French Revoluā¦
- Elections, 2018
Voting is something most Americans take for granted. In our work we cross paths with a lot of folks in other countries where this luxury is rare, corrupt, or non-existent. Humanitarian projects and security work allowā¦