I like historians, but the way they think about causality drives me absolutely bonkers. You know you’re about to see coal if you one post about how they’re interested in what “actually happened”

The positive externalities of looking cool while smoking are so large that they more than outweigh any losses. Enough so that they should be subsidized

Pundits try and ignore stuff like culture or pressure because it can’t be measured, but you do have to account for it somehow. The most obvious example of this was pre 2021 Messi underperformance with Argentina. Attributed to his team, yet reports of vomiting pre big matches just completely ignored

Not really a bottle, it’s Arsenal. You should manually downgrade your estimates of their expected premier league/UCL position in your mental model to account for whatever it is that makes them choke. I do the same with Atletico, and the opposite with Real Madrid

Greek mythology is peak though, so greek fash get a pass. Like Lovecraft in a way. Prometheus Bound >>>

Tbh I think a part of the problem is that I suspect “manufacturing” is just a label tacked on to “high value-add” processes (read prices). In which case of course it’s going to be associated with success, ceteris paribus if your exports gain value you’ll be richer

I guess the Lewis model also counts as standard, but iirc that was just about how agriculture can aborb a lot of useless labor that would be better off relocated, more about urbanization than anything else

What standard story says you need manufacturing? The standard story say you need strong property rights + high private sector investment (Solow), up until you reach the frontier, where you need to switch from the extensive to the intensive margin via tech/science/“A” (Romer, Aghion & Howitt, etc)

Peron is also unique as a historical figure in that he’s an unironic fascist who created anti leftist death squads, yet is revered by the left. It’d be like if Trump suddenly came to be revered among dems. (Maybe I’m ignorant about historical personality cults though, open to being corrected here)

New Zealand and Australia need explaining. For B) & C) no, peronism is not just standard third world clientelism, and there is a divergence with the rest of Latam in the early 2000’s in various macro indicators that also needs explaining. It’s unique in latin america as well.

For A) Maddison GDP estimates are fugazzi I agree, but Argentine (and Uruguayan) wealth is consistent with the historical record, plus terms of trade. At most you could claim they were beef petrostates, but that’s still wealth! You can see it in the architecture too. In any case divergence with

There’s a common enough Argentine history revisionism on bsky, claiming A) that they weren’t really that rich in the first half of the XXth century, B) that Peronism isn’t that hard to understand/unique C)that their politics in general aren’t unusual. Suffice it to say that I disagree with all three

Weird how every banker adjacent job is a super snooze fest (except maaaaaybe quants and commodity traders?) and then you have central banking where having to mind control the populace is often enough a prerequisite to doing a good job

You need to add the Friedman/Phelps expectations enganced Phillips Curve to it to show how ISLM is more a set of heuristics, and how they can break down, but other than that the model is pretty great

Blanchard is wrong, unless he means something like replacing the LM with a Taylor Rule or whatever. IS-LM-MF AS-AD is a great short term model of the determinants of employment (output) and inflation. Especially for an economy like the US which you can model as closed with little issues.

It’s just IS-LM but with some extra crank ideas like a jobs guarantee and a flat IS curve

Like, it feels like modern macro. Not necessarily without insights, but the way everyone talks about group preferences feels (and is) very sloppy.

I mean, I think ~everyone on the left (except maaaaybe EA guys? But even then) is Marxist inspired, even if only indirectly, because feminism and critical theory of various sorts are heavily influenced by it.
It’s jus class analysis I struggle with. Feels very fugazzi

Sci fi novel where you have near post scarcity but poor planets are still a thing because of xenophobia could be a cool little bit of worldbuilding

It’s so depressing that xenophobia and racism seem to be kind of innate. Every country in the world seemingly has a strong reactionary backlash to increased immigration. It basically means that global development is impossible, because we’ll always have central planning in the labor market

A materialist. I used to be like this with, for example, math, which I believe is both part of reality and also non material. I’ve been told by spiritual people of various stripes that this isn’t what they mean when they describe their interior spiritual experiences. So a materialist I remain.

things happening in neighborhoods. Any improvement in quality of life will just mechanically cause gentrification. It’s why I don’t thinks it’s a battle the left should fight. Will necessarily have perverse side effects. The only policy exception I can think of to this is raising property taxes.

It’s not that gentrification is *good*, necessarily, it’s the fact that anything that makes a neighborhood become more in demand (i.e makes it more desirable to live in) will necessarily be reflected in land values. Opposing gentrification in this sense makes you mechanically opposed to good

The drivers of NIMBYism aren’t material, I think materialism is the wrong way to look at it. Individuals are accepting a net worth reduction in order to achieve other goals

out undesirables in exchange for making everyone (themselves included) poorer. (Also people with aesthetic concerns benefit too, along with drivers concerned about traffic, but less important imo)

I don’t really think this true fwiw. Hard to imagine a scenario where a plot of land you own having less restrictive zoning makes it *less* valuable. In reality it’s racist/classist homeowners who benefit from zoning, in that they can force everyone to kick

I agree with you that everyone wants to larp as a macro forecaster. That said, I do sometimes wonder what made the 70’s supply shock so special. Maybe it being about more than just oil, just a generalized commodity shock + expectations unanchoring in the developed world all hitting at once?

This goes beyond AI. I once emailed a random french central banker asking for advice on an econ substack article and he recced me a LW article as general writing advice (along with the article specific advice)

Tbf central banks are a pretty new institution. Which given how ancient most finance stuff tends to be (Thales of Miletus was an Options Trader!) is significant.

Some people sell an insane amount of tickets. A friend of mine sold around ~230, netting him ~27k usd (net of group taxes to cover various fees) to withdraw from his individual capital account in the group balance account during the trip. Idk how the fuck he did it, these things are expensive