Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

1. Eric Loomis: Bush: "Let’s not forget that Bush Sr was part and parcel of the move of the Republican Party to the right. His actions were not as extreme as that of his son or Trump, but they helped pave the way for what is today an undemocratic party flirting with fascism. I don’t find Bush a despicable or contemptuous figure, but there’s a lot unsavory aspects to the man and his policies that need to be remembered as so many liberals long for the Republican Party where Lee Atwater could racebait Bush into the White House...

2. Scott Alexander: Meaningful: "'I’m not claiming humans really know what anything means', said the first angel. 'Just that it’s impressive you can get that far by manipulating a purely symbolic mental language made of sense-data-derived thought-forms with no connection to real at all'. 'I guess that is kind of impressive', said the second angel. 'For humans'...

3. Scott Aaronson: Quantum Computing, Capabilities and Limits: An Interview with Scott Aaronson: "1,000 qubits... an amplitude... [for] every possible setting of all 1,000 bits.... Quantum mechanics has been telling us since the 1920s... to keep track of the state... nature is somehow keeping track of this list of 2 to the 1000 power complex numbers, which is more numbers than can be written in the entire observable universe. But... when you make a measurement you don’t actually see these numbers, you just see a single probabilistic outcome... a random answer. If you just wanted a random answer, well you could have picked one yourself with a lot less trouble? So the entire hope for getting a speed advantage from a quantum computer is to exploit the way that these amplitudes work differently than probabilities. The main thing that amplitudes can do, that probabilities don’t do is that they can interfere with each other...

4. Matt Bruenig: What Do Modern Monetary Theorists Think About Inflation?: "Advocates of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) say that we should understand all government spending as being funded by seignorage.... This then allows them to say things like 'taxes don’t fund spending' and other bumper-sticker type slogans that mostly just confuse people.... This seems like a tedious rhetorical exercise.... Whether taxes are needed to 'fund spending' or 'offset the inflation caused by seignorage' is in the eye of the beholder, but either way of saying it still concedes that taxes are necessary...

5. Information technology does not fit into a market economy very well. Organizations that focus on profit to the exclusion of all other goals have had a hard time staying dominant in technology industries. Perhaps Google has decided that it is time to focus on profit rather than on leading humanity into the information age: Graydon Saunders: I'm Going to Miss Google: "I mean, it'll be awhile, but they've gone and decided to die.... Rumour—highly plausible rumour—has it that the business decision to kill the Inbox app, rather than the Gmail app, comes down to 'Inbox makes it too easy to dodge promo emails'. Google's original business model was 'let's get more people using the Internet'.  That worked, in large part because there was a vast amount of unrealized utility available.  Now, though, it's turning into ';et's glue eyeballs to ads'. Which, well. You can have success, or you can have control. Both is not an option. This is Google deciding that it MUST have control. That'll kill ya...

6. Red Rosa's finest hour: Rosa Luxemburg: Junius: "In the prosaic atmosphere of pale day there sounds a different chorus–the hoarse cries of the vulture and the hyenas of the battlefield. Ten thousand tarpaulins guaranteed up to regulations! A hundred thousand kilos of bacon, cocoa powder, coffee-substitute–c.o.d, immediate delivery! Hand grenades, lathes, cartridge pouches, marriage bureaus for widows of the fallen, leather belts, jobbers for war orders–serious offers only!...

7. Abraham Lincoln (1858): Speech at Ottawa, IL: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. [Loud cheers.] I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man...

8. David Leonhardt: Center-Left Self-Criticism: "I recommend a recent Twitter thread by Brad DeLong.... DeLong describes himself as a member of the center-left.... I’ll have more to say on this topic in the future, but I agree with significant portions of DeLong’s argument. Technocratic, centrist policies, like the private health insurance exchanges in Obamacare, are doomed to fail if Republicans treat them the same way that they would treat government expansions—with complete opposition. Government expansions are often more popular with voters, anyway. For more, read DeLong’s interview with Vox’s Zack Beauchamp; Greg Sargent’s take in The Washington Post...

9. Laura Tyson and Lenny Mendonca: The Birthplace of America’s New Progressive Era: "At a time of rising inequality, White House tweet storms, and deepening political gridlock in Washington, DC, it is easy to think that the decline of American democracy is inexorable. And yet, as in the early twentieth century, states like California are embracing their constitutional role as laboratories of reform...

10. Another group of economists who seem to me to be aiming for the "equitable growth" space: Economists for Inclusive Prosperity: "We believe the tools of mainstream economists not only lend themselves to, but are critical to the development of a policy framework for what we call “inclusive prosperity.” While prosperity is the traditional concern of economists, the “inclusive” modifier demands both that we consider the interest of all people, not simply the average person, and that we consider prosperity broadly, including non-pecuniary sources of well-being, from health to climate change to political rights...

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