Saturday, March 11, 2023
...this notion we have to take sides..........
I don't always read Noah Smith................
........but I'm glad he is out there writing stuff like this:
Finally, let’s talk about the big risk: financial contagion. Many people will undoubtedly have traumatic memories of 2008, when Lehman’s collapse triggered a systemic meltdown. That is a real possibility, and it’s why the FDIC and other government agencies are probably going to work very hard to make sure SVB’s depositors don’t have to take haircuts.
But there are reasons this is not like the Lehman shock. First of all, in 2008 the big banks were all very exposed to each other — they had all lent each other money against the opaque, illiquid mortgage-backed assets that they had all created and sold to each other. This is just not the case with SVB at all — the financial system as a whole is just not particularly exposed to either SVB’s debt or the assets on SVB’s books. Bank stocks fell on the news about SVB, but this is probably just sentiment.
In general, I’m optimistic about the system’s ability to contain the fallout from SVB. So far the U.S. economy has powered along with record employment and strong growth, even as the tech sector has gone into a slump. There’s not a lot of reason to think that basic pattern will change after this bank run, and the government has every reason to make sure it doesn’t change.
For every downside....................
...............there is a pretty big upside:
If you are a legal research assistant, or law clerk, who the lawyers in the firm rely upon for basic legal research, you need to be looking over your shoulder. If, like me, you are a solo lawyer without armies of legal assistants at your beck and call, the playing field just got even more level.
On education......................
One of the most enjoyable parts of Bagehot's essay is his attack on the pretensions of Gladstone's alma mater. "No one can deny to it very great and very peculiar merits," writes the University of London alumnus of Oxford University. "But certainly it is not an exciting place and its education operates as a narcotic rather than as a stimulant."
-James Grant, Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian
Friday, March 10, 2023
It's a life's work.....................
We sometimes struggle with learning because we expect it to be easy. We’d all like to find a silver bullet: a quick, easy shortcut to picking up whatever we want and never forgetting it. The internet teems with blog posts promising you can learn a language in a week or to code in a month or how to play the violin overnight. This is all bull. Learning isn’t just knowing something for a day. It’s deep wisdom that allows you to create, innovate, and push boundaries.
Abundance....................
Resources (as opposed to raw materials) are created and produced by human ingenuity. And so because human creativity is open-ended, the notion that there is a fixed amount of resources on earth, or even in any region of earth, is economically mistaken.
Memories....................
But here’s the thing: a lot of what we think we know about how memory works is wrong. First off, it’s not a perfect video recording of what happened. Memories are a lot more like Legos, assembled and reassembled each time, and rarely in the same way twice.
And memory isn’t even one system. It’s a collection of different systems in your brain: episodic, semantic, procedural, working, sensory, etc. This is why you can maintain a memory in one type despite losing it in the other. (I doubt you have any problems tying your shoes — procedural memory — but you may find it impossible to recollect the moment you learned to tie your shoes — episodic memory.)
No, your memory is never going to be perfect. (Having a photographic – “eidetic” — memory is almost unheard of in adults, though it’s not uncommon in children.) But we can all improve our memories.
Complications..............
But most big things – companies, events, careers, pandemics, etc – are just a bunch of small, random, boring things that compound at just the right time and explode into something bigger and more powerful than anyone imagined.
Monsters................
Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, ready to believe and to act without asking questions.
-Primo Levi, from here
Thursday, March 9, 2023
If you don't check in with David Kanigan.......
.....................on a regular basis—well, you should.
The brain’s genius is its gift for reflection. What an odd, ruminating, noisy, self-interrupting conversation we conduct with ourselves from birth to death. That monologue often seems like a barrier between us and our neighbors and loved ones, but actually it unites us at a fundamental level, as nothing else can.
Wishful thinking.............
Throughout the eighteenth century, as we have seen, liberal intellectuals had looked forward to a new republican world in which corrupt monarchial diplomacy, secret alliances, dynastic rivalries, and balance of power would be abolished. Since the dynastic ambitions, the bloated bureaucracies, and the standing armies of monarchies were related to the waging of war, the elimination of monarchy promised the elimination of war. War, said Paine, "from its productiveness, as it easily furnishes the pretense of necessity for taxes and appointments to places and offices, becomes a principal part of the system of Old Governments, and to establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches." Monarchies encourage war simply "to keep the spirit of the system." The reason republics were not plunged into the waging of war was the "the nature of their Government does not admit of an interest distinct to that of the Nation." A world of republican states would encourage a peace-loving diplomacy, one based on the natural concert of international commerce. If the people of the various nations were left alone to exchange goods freely among themselves—without the corrupting interference of selfish, warmongering monarchial courts, irrational dynastic rivalries, and the secret double-dealing diplomacy of the past—the, it was hoped, international politics would be republicanized and pacified.
Gordon S. Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made The Founders Different, as taken from his chapter, Thomas Paine, America's First Public Intellectual
Opening paragraphs...............
In the beginning we were wanderers.
We didn't wander because we trying to find ourselves, we wandered because we were HONGRY. We wandered with the seasons to places with more abundant roots, nuts, and berries, We wandered up and down elevation bands to forage for different plants. We followed the animal migrations because that's where the steaks were. What passed for shelter was what you could find when you needed it. Typically, we would not stay in the same place for more than a few weeks because we'd forage and hunt the yard to nothing in no time. Our stomachs would force us to start wandering anew.
The limitations of it all were pretty, well, limiting. The only power source an unaided human has are muscles, first our own and later that of a handful of animals that we could tame. Starvation, disease, and injury were common and had the unfortunately high likelihood of proving lethal. And any provided-by-nature root or rabbit that you ate was one that someone else would not be eating. So, sure, we lived in "harmony with nature" . . . which is another way of saying we tended to beat the crap out of our neighbors whenever we saw them.
-Peter Zeihan, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization
Tuesday, March 7, 2023
What happens when.......................
.............................money is free? A list of eleven things here.
We experienced a decade of quantitative easing and declining interest rates that culminated with an unprecedented multi-trillion-dollar infusion of capital in 2020. But three years later, the party had to end.
The Fed is raising rates, money isn't free anymore, and companies have to once again rediscover the lost art of "turning a profit." Outrageous stuff, isn't it?
a glimpse.........................
As artists, we aim to live in a way in which we see the extraordinary hidden in the seemingly mundane. Then challenge ourselves to share what we see in a way that allows others a glimpse of this remarkable beauty.
-Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
the great dispute................
If we sometimes spent a little consideration on ourselves, and employed in probing ourselves the time we put into checking up on others and learning about things that are outside us, we would easily sense how much this fabric of ours is built up of feeble and failing pieces. Is it not a singular evidence of our imperfection that we cannot establish our contentment in any one thing, and that even in desire and imagination it is beyond our power to choose what we need? A good proof of this is the great dispute that has always gone on between the philosophers over the sovereign good of man, and that still goes on and will go on eternally, without solution and without agreement:
-Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works, Book 1, Chapter 53
Monday, March 6, 2023
Aging like a fine wine...............
2. I have realized that I am not “Atlas”. The world does not rest on my shoulders.
3. I have stopped bargaining with vegetable & fruit vendors. A few pennies more is not going to break me, but it might help the poor fellow save for his daughter’s school fees.
4. I leave my waitress a big tip. The extra money might bring a smile to her face. She is toiling much harder for a living than I am.
6. I have learned not to correct people even when I know they are wrong. The onus of making everyone perfect is not on me. Peace is more precious than perfection.
14. I am doing what makes me happy. I am responsible for my happiness, and I owe it to myself. Happiness is a choice. You can be happy at any time, just choose to be!
Habits.................
If two people have the same goal, you know nothing about the similarity of their results. But if two people have the same daily habits, you can infer quite a bit about the similarity of their results. Your results are largely a byproduct of your habits.
Rooting for "polarization".............
“There are some encouraging signs of polarization.” Nothing flippant inheres in this remark; a long and risky life has persuaded him that only an open conflict of ideas and principles can produce any clarity. Conflict may be painful, but the painless solution does not exist in any case and the pursuit of it leads to the painful outcome of mindlessness and pointlessness; the apotheosis of the ostrich.
I'm sure this will end well...............
.............. California Department of Health is building a "Decision Intelligence Unit."
Back story here. Why do I think that "we will secure grants" was the driving factor of the story.
Reconditioning....................
My most surprising discovery in the last five years is that peace and happiness are skills. These are not things you are born with. Yes, there is a genetic range. And a lot of it is conditioning from your environment, but you can un-condition and recondition yourself.
You can increase your happiness over time, and it starts with believing you can.
It's a skill. Just like nutrition is a skill, dieting is a skill, working out is a skill, making money is a skill, meeting girls and guys is a skill. It starts with realizing they're skills you can learn. When you put your intention and focus on it, the world can become a better place.
When working, surround yourself with people more successful than you.
When playing, surround yourself with people happier than you.
On changing "reality".................
Once one realizes the reality of reality’s vast and incomprehensible-in-its-concrete-details complexity, one is naturally humble about what one can do to ‘change’ reality. Schemes for using the coercive powers of government to achieve economic and social betterment are then naturally viewed with enormous skepticism. How do you know? How will you acquire the knowledge you must acquire if your scheme is to work as promised? Such questions are instinctively asked by the wise and stubbornly ignored by the schemers.
-Don Boudreaux, from this post
Sunday, March 5, 2023
History may not repeat itself.......
................................but it often rhymes:*
Shortly after Jackson's death, one unforgiving New York Whig damned the General as "the undisputed head of a violent, proscriptive party . . . He did more to break down the republican principles of the government and enslave the minds of the people than all the rulers who went before him." Here reigned a virtual dictator, he continued, a master of "that pernicious popular homage called popularity." Fifteen years later, however, in the perilous secession winter of 1860, another Yankee, a New Hampshire Democrat, thought that only an indomitable Jackson-like leader could save the nation. "Would to Heaven," he wrote, "we had another Andrew Jackson . . . at the head of this Government . . . instead of James Buchanan." Both of these observers anticipated, in their divergent views, a sharp and seemingly endless debate over the meaning of power and populism in Jackson's America. The notion of the people preventing social elites and financial aristocrats from bullying, bestriding, or otherwise buying Congress is altogether attractive. And yet common man democracy's erratic energy collaterally legitimized Indian removal, slavery's expansion, and the troubling growth of presidential fiat. In important moments, as when Jackson ignored the Supreme Court in the Cherokee case or refused to honor the government's obligation to deposit monies in the National Bank, the rule of law appeared imperiled.
-David S. Brown. The First Populist: The Defiant Life of Andrew Jackson
*this saying has been attributed to Mark Twain, however . . .
Opening paragraphs......................
 |
| The sarcophagus of John Paul Jones at the Naval Academy |
When I walked into the United States Naval Academy on a hot summer's day in the early 1970s, the first thing that happened to me was that I got a quick and brutal haircut. It was not only a sudden induction into military life but a way for the Navy to emphasize that my own power to decide anything, including the length of my hair, was emphatically terminated. Alongside twelve hundred classmates from every state in the Union and a smattering of foreign countries, we were then lined up in a very rough formation, broken into small groups—squads of about a dozen—and marched around the Academy grounds. The highlight of those first hours was an introduction to Captain John Paul Jones, or, more accurately, to his crypt in the heart of the massive Naval Academy Chapel—the de facto high church of the US Navy.
-Admiral James Stavridis, To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision
"turning inside"....................
In all of Colonel Boyd's writing he emphasizes that victory in combat accrues to the decision-maker who can "get inside the decision loop" of his or her opponent. This is precisely what happened in the climactic moment of the battle—Jones, despite having the weaker hand of cards, was moving more quickly to assess the situation (observe), analyze where the combat process was moving (orient), make swift choices (decide), and execute those decisions (act). In this process Jones anticipated the celebrated OODA loop developed by Colonel John Boyd two centuries later to categorize airborne fighter combat. In essence, Jones was "turning inside" the decision loop of his opponent, Captain Pearson. And it made all the difference, meaning he was observing/orienting/deciding/acting much more quickly.
-Admiral James Stavridis, To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision, as extracted from his chapter describing how John Paul Jones and his ship, Bonhomme Richard, salvaged victory from certain defeat in the battle against the British warship, Serapis. One version of the back story on the defining naval battle of the American Revolution may be found here.
Lessons from......................
...........................Major Dick Winters:
Even if you’re an older man, who never had the chance to try-out a period of full-on monk mode and now finds himself enmeshed in mature responsibilities, you can, and should, draw from the way of the monastic warrior. Find ways to periodically escape from the noise and distractions of the world to find solitude and “sharpen your saw.” Whether it’s a lonely morning run, an evening meditation, or a solo camping trip, such solitary retreats will clear your mind, rejuvenate your body, and leave you prepared to face life’s battles with heart and strength.
-via
Even us introverts need to get out and about....
Being isolated in your home, even with animals and the Internet for company, isn’t good for you, as millions of Americans have learned.
-Glen Harlan Reynolds, from here
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