Published on 2025-11-23
]]>Published on 2025-11-23
Tags: books, commentary, economics, llm, society
]]>Gillian K. Hadfield and Andrew Koh in An Economy of AI Agents on 2025-09-03:
Silicon Valley promises us increasingly agentic AI systems that might one day supplant human decisions. If this vision materializes, it will reshape markets and organizations with profound consequences for the structure of economic life. But, as we have emphasized throughout this chapter, where we end up within this vast space of possibility is a design choice: we have the opportunity to develop mechanisms, infrastructure, and institutions to shape the kinds of AI agents that are built, and how they interact with each other and with humans. These are fundamentally economic questions—we hope economists will help answer them.
Published on 2025-08-20
]]>Published on 2025-08-20
Tags: books
I'm on vacation with plenty of time to read and worked my way through Katherine Addison's Chronicles of Osreth series. I gave The Goblin Emperor a shot based on Abigail Nussbaum's re-review on Lawyers Guns Money, and loved it, so I continued on through the rest.
Very much up my alley, reminds me of Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief novels, like The King of Attolia. Unlike Turner's Thief novels, where the King and his motivations are described from the outside, Addison's Emperor tells us exactly what he's trying to do in the first person. Both focus on the relationships between their leader and subjects, and what it means to make just, successful decisions from such a position.
]]>Published on 2025-08-08
]]>Published on 2025-08-08
Tags: books, quote, society
Albert O. Hirschman in The Rhetoric of Reaction on 1991-03-01:
Yet each time the futility argument amounted to a denial or downplaying of change in the face of seemingly enormous, epochal movements such as the French Revolution, the trend toward universal suffrage and democratic institutions during the latter part of the nineteenth century, and the subsequent emergence and expansion of the Welfare State. The appeal of the arguments rests largely on the remarkable feat of contradicting, often with obvious relish, the commonsense understanding of these events as replete with upheaval, change, or real reform.
Societal change is pretty commonplace, and a cursory stroll through recorded history demonstrates it handily. I'm reminded of the fundamentalist Christian position on the theory of evolution, a dogmatic insistence that the commonsense understanding of the fossil record — that of consistent evolution, is false. Their rejection of evolution and reactionaries arguing using the futility thesis are making purely structural arguments, which fall apart when you look at available evidence.
]]>Published on 2025-07-29
]]>Published on 2025-07-29
Tags: books, quote, society
]]>Albert O. Hirschman in The Rhetoric of Reaction on 1991-03-01:
This sort of argument is of course familiar from the Marxist tradition which, at least in its more primitive or “vulgar” version, views the state as the “Executive Committee of the bourgeoisie” and denounces as hypocrisy any claim that it may conceivably serve the general or public interest. It comes as something of a surprise to encounter so “subversive” a reasoning among certain pillars of the “free-enterprise” system. But this is not the first time that shared hatreds make for strange bedfellowship. The hatred that is being shared in this case is directed against the attempt at reforming some unfortunate or unjust features of the capitalist system through public intervention and programs. On the Far Left, such programs are criticized because it is feared that any success they might have would reduce revolutionary zeal. On the Right, or among the more orthodox economists, they are subject to criticism and mockery because any intervention of the state, particularly any increase in public expenditures for purposes other than law, order, and perhaps defense, is considered as noxious or futile interference with a system that is supposed to be self-equilibrating.
Published on 2025-07-15
]]>Published on 2025-07-15
Tags: books, quote, society
]]>Albert O. Hirschman in The Rhetoric of Reaction on 1991-03-01:
The claims of the futility thesis seem more moderate than those of the perverse effect, but they are in reality more insulting to the “change agents.” As long as the social world moves at all in response to human action for change, even if in the wrong direction, hope remains that it can somehow be steered correctly. But the demonstration or discovery that such action is incapable of “making a dent” at all leaves the promoters of change humiliated, demoralized, in doubt about the meaning and true motive of their endeavors.
Published on 2025-07-11
]]>Published on 2025-07-11
Tags: books, communication, economics, quote
Albert O. Hirschman in The Rhetoric of Reaction on 1991-03-01:
In economics, more than in the other social and political sciences, the perverse-effect doctrine is closely tied to a central tenet of the discipline: the idea of a self-regulating market. To the extent that this idea is dominant, any public policy aiming to change market outcomes, such as prices or wages, automatically becomes noxious interference with beneficent equilibrating processes.
In the book, Hirschman details three types of Reactionary argumentation. The above quote is an example of what he calls the Perversity Thesis.
]]>It is not just asserted that a movement or a policy will fall short of its goal or will occasion unexpected costs or negative side effects: rather, so goes the argument, the attempt to push society in a certain direction will result in its moving all right, but in the opposite direction. Simple, intriguing, and devastating (if true), the argument has proven popular with generations of “reactionaries” as well as fairly effective with the public at large. In current debates it is often invoked as the counterintuitive, counterproductive, or, most to the point, perverse effect of some “progressive” or “well-intentioned” public policy. ... Everything backfires.
Published on 2025-07-09
]]>Published on 2025-07-09
Tags: books, quote
Albert O. Hirschman in The Rhetoric of Reaction on 1991-03-01:
Curiously, the very stability and proper functioning of a well-ordered democratic society depend on its citizens arraying themselves in a few major (ideally two) clearly defined groups holding different opinions on basic policy issues. It can easily happen then that these groups become walled off from each other—in this sense democracy continuously generates its own walls. As the process feeds on itself, each group will at some point ask about the other, in utter puzzlement and often with mutual revulsion, “How did they get to be that way?”
Hirschman's book on reactionary argumentation is oriented towards the structure of things, like the structure of democratic systems. The physical complexities inherent in operating a voting system result in a "two party" system regardless of the ideologies or policy preferences of the involved people — by relying on majority rule, involved parties will move towards dual polarization, being forced to coalition with those they are similar to just to win the decision.
]]>Published on 2025-07-06
]]>Published on 2025-07-06
Tags: books, commentary, journalism
]]>Chloe Hadjimatheou via The Observer on 2025-07-06:
They realised Walker’s offer might be their only chance to get their money back so, Hemmings says, they allowed Walker to repay the £9,000 and moved on with their lives.
But that’s not where things ended. “We kept looking back [through the accounts],” Hemmings remembers. “In the end, I think it was around £64,000 she’d nicked over the previous few years.”
...
In total, Sally and Tim Walker borrowed £100,000 from Rebecca’s husband James. Documents filed at the Land Registry show the loan from Tim Walker’s relative was secured against the Walkers’ house with a substantial annual interest rate of 18% “payable on demand”.
...
Life expectancy for CBD sufferers is often tragically short: six to eight years from diagnosis is typical. Many patients suffer debilitating symptoms significantly before that, often ending in the need for around-the-clock care. In Tim Walker’s case, he has been living with the condition for 18 years and he seems to have no visibly acute symptoms.