un animus

Traveller. Dilettante. You can't discover oceans without the courage to lose sight of the shore.

[un animus @AmodAga]

@navdeepdahiya55 any rain in mukteshwar in during 1-3 Feb ?

[un animus @AmodAga]

.@navdeepdahiya55 hi dada. thank u so much for all ur timely weather updates here. new/latest WD ka kya forecast hai, especially for Mukteshwar. any rain or snow expected there?

[un animus @AmodAga]

a Christmas Story for our times

[Ashish K. Mishra @akm1410]

Incredible story. https://t.co/zUATdYylrw

[CATH Simard @cathsimard_]

Gm

Retreating into my women’s cave for the next few months, editing, creating, and shooting.

Time to bring my most complex and ambitious vision to life.

But for now here’s one of my favorite sunrise from El Chalten, Patagonia.

[un animus @AmodAga]

the Royce ~rolls~ floats

[Rattan Dhillon @ShivrattanDhil1]

“No matter how rich you are, your car is still at the mercy of your municipality! 🤦🏻‍♂️

[un animus @AmodAga]

this article deserves to be read widely.
i would quibble a bit with bits in the US$ hegemony discussion, but otherwise very incisive
@acorn @Noahpinion

[Rana Dasgupta @byranadasgupta]

"The nation-state has lost the technological supremacy on which its monopoly rested." My new piece for @yalereview outlines implications of #AfterNations for #Trump #America . https://t.co/rlo7Z1isYt

[un animus @AmodAga]

@Preddy85 and how is guaranteeing tqx revenue growth NOT insane when neither centre, nor states will commit to a commesurate nominal GDP growth rate (which wud in turn, require a certain amount of reforms and good policy making)

[un animus @AmodAga]

@Preddy85 yep. how do u introduce state-wise differential rates without recreating the border/entry checking nightmare that was ended with GST

[un animus @AmodAga]

@pseudoerasmus what would be the underlying cause of such hypothetical rivalries?
territorial expansion?
or over potential reversal of some sort of diffused/obfuscated unequal economic exchange / transfers of surplus value?

[un animus @AmodAga]

@gautambhatia88 like an exculpatory religious ritual.

[un animus @AmodAga]

@SwiggyInstamart returns realky sucks bad... the chat bot takes like 7 minutes to actually respond after the issue has been mentioned. and they expect the person to stare at the screen till they respond!!

[un animus @AmodAga]

Ansel Adams of our times

[CATH Simard @cathsimard_]

“Nocturnals”

In the collection of @batsoupyum

[un animus @AmodAga]

the world is getting a live economic experiment in how complicated import taxes on input materials and components can perversely compromise domestic production in favour of imports with single clean border tax

[Phil Magness @PhilWMagness]

Checking in on how @Oren_Cass's economic agenda is going this morning...

[un animus @AmodAga]

@pseudoerasmus @mmpiatkowski @WorldBank any chance state capacity originates in social solidarity ?

[Devina Mehra @devinamehra]

Even in the land that is supposed to exemplify 'rags to riches', Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Michael Dell all came from privileged backgrounds.

The 'merit' argument always tries to downplay privilege because the one making it usually has it!

How does privilege work?

- Quality education (Gates' school was one of a handful with a computer)

- Parent's investment in business (Bezos, Dell, Zucker)...easy to call it 'loan' now 🙃

- Introductions (Gates got his first big break via his mother's IBM connections; almost all VC funding is via network)

- Cushion to fall back upon - meaning you can take risks because you can afford not to earn for a while/ you have reasonable family wealth that you won't be out on the streets if the venture fails

More details 👇
https://t.co/f4pacS3Ha9

Of course, many have privilege...not all of those build big businesses in competitive fields.

But it is doubtlessly a starting advantage, including in fund-raising.

You'd be surprised to know that in VC circles in the US it is virtually impossible to get even a hearing without 'knowing' someone. You get a proper hearing only if you come via the network.

Many 'rags to riches' stories also have a privilege angle. Will write more on it another time

[un animus @AmodAga]

@devinamehra when it comes to high-risk pvt capital allocation in nascent cos, measurable cold "merit" is almost a hygiene factor and "connections" establish a trust/comfort factor (not necessarily robust). Its a more social process than anyone cares to admit cos it doesnt appear to be fair.

[Policy Tensor @policytensor]

What is the diff bw a thesis and a recommendation made in the last chapter?

That diff in this case can be found in the paragraph preceding the one Russell highlights, attached. They say very clearly that the eugenicist logic follows “directly from the evidence we have presented at such length.” And how could it not? For if you buy genetic reductionism wholesale, then you are compelled to accept the validity of eugenics as the logical implication. That is why Watson and Wright and other population geneticists were all committed eugenicists. And so were socialists back in the midcentury heyday of scientific racialism!

Ofc, they’re writing in the 1990s, not the 1930s. So they’re not gonna say euthanize the dumb and encourage the bright to breed at high rates. So they fall back on their libertarian prior and say, “The government should stop subsidizing births to anyone, rich or poor.”

That’s the difference bw the thesis and the last chapter recommendation.

My position for many years now has been that the attack on neoracialism was ill-conceived and based on faulty premises. “IQ doesn’t measure anything meaningful; it doesn’t matter; the measured group differences are due to bias; etc etc.” The correct and more promising line of attack has always been to go straight after the fault core of genetic reductionism itself:

Like height, IQ is a measure of heath status; governed both by genetics and health insults. The heritability of height is even higher than IQ. And we’re now a foot taller than our great grand parents and for the same reason we have higher cognitive ability. Chinese kids are today a foot taller than their parents, again for the same reason. And the poor kids from Indian villages, suffering from parasites, and malaria and poor nutrition, score around 70 today for the same reason. And their kids or their grand kids, if the Indians get things right, will close the gap for the same reason. How could it be any other way? Go look at femur lengths before and after the Black Death!

[Policy Tensor @policytensor]

Re-reading Maiolo’s Cry Havoc: How the Arms Race Drove the World to War, 1931-1941, in light of the global arms race now unfolding. One of his most compelling arguments is that the pressure of the arms race nudged all the great powers towards totalitarian state control of the economy: the great lesson of the World War was that ‘totalitarian war’ required absolute, centralized control of the economy and the labor force by technocratic military-bureaucratic planners. Total war required total mobilization, and total mobilization required total control. This is the relentless logic of a real arms race.

It is highly significant that a card-carrying neoliberal like @LHSummers is throwing his weight behind the new dirigiste consensus. Many serious people (eg, @adam_tooze) see this as forced on the West by China. I disagree. No one is forcing our hand. The underlying issue is that we have refused to engage in good faith with China and instead embraced a Cold War agenda of containment and attempted strangulation, so they are doing what they can to safeguard their own interests. And we’ve fraudulently worked ourselves up into a frenzy about Chinese industrial policy. It is these discursive rigidities that underwrite the new dirigiste consensus.

This is not going to work out well for us. Not because industrial policy is bad. Not at all. It will not work out well for us because we are launching an unnecessary Cold War without a good formula for how to prevail. In fact, we’re rigged to lose just bc of the stupendous human capital at China’s disposal.

[un animus @AmodAga]

@policytensor @Noahpinion 5/n
Agree - non co-operation between great powers will inexorably lead to lower welfare equilibrium. it is an unavoidable terrible situation. in fact, destruction of US' liberalism is advantageous to CCP and other totalitarian govts.

[un animus @AmodAga]

@policytensor 4/n - So the strategic rivalry with US is for real .

in that context, @Noahpinion has made a compelling case that domestic industrial/manufacturing capacity is now a strategic sine qua non for US.