Jerry Z. Muller

Author, speaker, Emeritus Professor of History. The Tyranny of Metrics; The Mind and the Market; Conservatism: An Anthology, and more.

[Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 @JessicaBRiedl]

Populism in a nutshell👇. Public opinion is great for setting goals (lower housing costs!) and terrible for setting the policies to achieve them.

Its the difference between asking voters whether we should try to go to Mars vs. the exact science & engineering to get us there.

[Jerry Z. Muller @jerryzmuller]

@mattyglesias When you assume that national defense is not a human need.

[tedfrank @tedfrank]

@cremieuxrecueil And worse, it’s poisoning AI.

[Jerry Z. Muller @jerryzmuller]

Fine dissection of the assumption that rules-based orders are self-regulating.

[Benn Steil @BennSteil]

For a brief time after the Cold War, Americans persuaded themselves that the liberal order had become self-sustaining. Yet any rules-based system elaborate enough to govern its own operations must confront questions its rules cannot answer.

My latest:
https://t.co/YrPIqdUGmu

[Jerry Z. Muller @jerryzmuller]

Spot on. Worth reading.

[Michael Granoff @mikejgr]

I was in the audience at @RahmEmanuel 's speech at Tel Aviv University this afternoon.

And I had some thoughts (link below).

[Jerry Z. Muller @jerryzmuller]

https://t.co/2XsEYrZWlr

[Jerry Z. Muller @jerryzmuller]

For social analysts, including historians, an awareness of self-negating predictions opens one’s mind to investigating the many cases in the history of foreign and domestic policy when catastrophe was averted by preemption or preventative action. We usually overlook such occurrences because “nothing happened” – no disaster, no defeat. But nothing happened only because someone wisely decided to act in ways that obviated calamities that might otherwise have occurred.
(from my new Substack post, linked in the comment)

[Jerry Z. Muller @jerryzmuller]

From an excellent thread on dubious, ideologically skewed metrics measuring hardship.

[Scott Winship @swinshi]

A good rule of thumb: if half the population is said to be unable to “make ends meet” when real median income is higher than it’s ever been in world history, the threshold for making ends meet is probably ridiculous. /2

[Jerry Z. Muller @jerryzmuller]

Latent functions, unintended consequences, self-fulfilling and self-negating prophecies, and more. Ideas from the smartest man I ever met.
https://t.co/2XsEYrZWlr

[Jonah Goldberg @JonahDispatch]

“True Graham Platnerism has never been tried!”

Too soon?

[Andrew Fox @Mr_Andrew_Fox]

It’s a great question. Easy answer: it took my understanding of antisemitism from being about off-colour jokes about tailors and shekels, to realising that people genuinely want Jews dead, and that a lot of those people live in my country. A seismic change in how I saw the world.

[Adam Singer @AdamSinger]

Economists have done such a poor job explaining free-market capitalism that we're now re-litigating it with a generation taught socialism is preferable. It's like the medical profession having to convince people bloodletting isn't good medicine and to stop asking for leeches

[Jerry Z. Muller @jerryzmuller]

@SWGoldman Yet another reason to migrate.

[Jerry Z. Muller @jerryzmuller]

Wow. Louise Perry is among the most intelligent, incisive, and undogmatic of contemporary commentators. The fact that she and her family have despaired of the future of Britain and are leaving speaks volumes.

[Free Expression @WSJFreeEx]

As we said goodbye to the country of my birth, I felt bitter and heartbroken. Not because I don’t want to live in Australia—a beautiful country, and my other home—but because I never planned on leaving Britain, writes @Louise_m_perry
https://t.co/nSvO4LEWFP

[Jerry Z. Muller @jerryzmuller]

@samuelmoyn Probably the 1s are from old people, who meant to choose 5s.

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

Journalism at its dumbest: Someone hacks into the guest list of a "secret exclusive right-wing Thiel-associated cabal which plots 'navigating WWIII' with 'their sex lives on the agenda.'" Turns out the meeting is not secretive, not right-wing, has nothing to do with Thiel, has had hundreds of journalists, bloggers, academics, artists, musicians politicians, scientists, etc., from all over the political spectrum, discussing thousands of topics. But no matter - someone said there was a furor, therefore there must have been a furor, therefore let's make it a furor!

https://t.co/yggS5erVzF

[Jerry Z. Muller @jerryzmuller]

@lugaricano This is great. Thanks for posting

[Jennifer Griffin @JenGriffinFNC]

From the Navy SEAL officer who planned and executed the Bin Laden raid: “In recent months, President Trump, upon advice from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, has relieved or forced the retirement of some of the finest officers that have ever served this nation. I have personally worked with most of them in combat….And this week, in an egregious decision, the president forced General Chris Donahue to step down from his position in command of U.S. Army Europe. Donahue is without question one of the most brilliant officers I know. He is strategically focused, tactically aggressive, personally courageous, exceptionally thoughtful in his planning and execution, and compassionate with his troops. He has the respect of every man and woman who ever served with him—and you can put me at the top of that list.”

[Jerry Z. Muller @jerryzmuller]

“Pressure” and the Limits of “Learning from History”
https://t.co/uQEeT1YYyb

[Jerry Z. Muller @jerryzmuller]

“Pressure” and the Limits of “Learning from History”
https://t.co/uQEeT1YYyb