Also private business quit spending on science and technology due to a huge shift in mentality. They decided shareholders were the most important thing and huge tax cuts let them keep money instead of forcing them to spend it. Add in cultural issues and the whole world was changing. Such a complex issue.
@XXmtdna That is mostly true now but post WW2 Bell, GE, and others spent a ton on research. Only a handful of ideas worked but it was worth it. Now quarterly profits are the only things that matter so there is no long term vision and no stomach for all the failures that lead to new technologies.
@XXmtdna Totally agree. In my state they want to privatize everything that is a service or benefit to society so a handful of people can make stupid amounts of money. And the worst part is it’s poor people who suffer the worst are the ones voting them in!
We are sitting on a bonanza of renewable energy wealth, wind, solar, geothermal, batteries. The Clean Air Act didn’t get in the way of this. Oil companies did.
The clean air act is one of the worst pieces of legislation in American history... This should have been regulated at the state level places like Los Angeles really did need to clean up but places like where I live in Northern New York never needed the clean air act.
I find it interesting that no one is commenting on military spending. (Granted, it has also driven innovation.) After the fall of the wall, there is the peace dividend. We have reached the end of that gravey train.
I am, still, a child of the 70s. here in Japan, classic rock in coffeeshops and restaurants, is still very popular. The only point I would add from being here, is an appreciation of the Carpenters, who are still massively popular
We have plenty of access to health care you just need to pay alot for it. Lol But this is really a government caused issue The government restrict supply via regulation as well as significantly subsidizes demand so of course price will rise rapidly above inflation.
@@Ryanrobi Paying a lot for it blows my mind. I'm Canadian, now 76 and grew up with basically free health care. $35 a month in 1970. I never understood how the US could have such high costs for health care. It was cheaper to die than to live. Why?
We need partial state ownership of companies like PBR Brazilian oil company. With this model the government will get a cut of next tax payer funded development in a new innovation
Back when corporate taxes were high, corporations would take advantage of the tax breaks carved out for reinvestment in the company. When that went away, so did the incentive to do research, capital improvement, updating business related products, so that money got diverted to ridiculously high top management salaries and share holder dividends. Since most upper tier management is paid in stock options the incentive is to maximize stock value not company value. This is where the libertarian school of economics has it exactly backwards and up side down.
GDP is Grossly Distorted Propaganda NDP is WHAT? When do you ever hear economists talk about Net Domestic Product? Try finding data on the annual depreciation of automobiles purchased by American consumers since Sputnik. Why hasn't accounting/finance been mandatory in high schools since Sputnik?
I watched George Jetson and wife Jan e and the two kids Judy and ?. What you don't realize is we are still in the Dick Tracey watch era. At the end of the 60's we had one or the first big wackos. Charles Manson. Even with that we didn't live llives of fear. The the big depression of my age started. I'm in my early 20's. Interest rates when through the roof to 15% or so and ended the chance of getting a home. Many women had to go to work in order to make ends meet. Oil prices went through the roof and mid=level executives were being laid off never to return. But we still had a modicum of hope. We didn't fear our children going outside or taking a bus on their own at 10 years old. Life was very different. Now one of the worst things to be is a woman of child bearing age. They're many reasons behind that. Life is no longer happy and the wacko's run the institutions.
Why should the tax payers underwrite the funding of technological innovation just to hand it off to a for-profit company? At the least, government should take royalties in the way of subsidizing consumers' use of these technologies.
Why is all of the talk about environmentalism here centered on aesthetics? When I listened to those quotes from Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, I thought: these guys understood that polluted air, water, and food are dangerous to people’s HEALTH. Isn’t that what people were really worried about? Am I missing something, here?
Yeah but now we already have clean water and air till the only thing you can do is aesthetics... Environmentalism is a luxury good that only rich develop nations can have.
Wow, Mr. Pethokoukis was simultaneously evasive, combative, and incoherent. Perhaps he was having an off day, but this was a disappointing performance.
I dont agree. Since I graduated high-school in 1983, the space shuttle program, the ISS, the internet, the PC, the internet, the cell phone, the smart phone, CRSPR, GMO crops, private space companies, electric cars, AI, and the list goes on. I am sorry NEPA is an inconvenience but I would like to continue living on what is left of the living planet. Let's look at the shocks to the system caused by business since 1983. Market crash 1987, tech bubble burst 1999, Y2K, 2008 financial collapse, which is more responsible for the housing shortage than NEPA. And all that time, the wealth gap grew, and the budget deficit grew. Fancy academic talking, sprinkled with some carefully chosen stats, doesn't make it true.
An electronic medical record that could be used by all providers and would allow for medical information to be shared instantly: a technology that already exists and would save millions over the years but seems to have no vision or will in government. It's not fancy but it would work
I think one big premise of this discussion is 'society' or country as a monolith. Strikingly missing from the analysis is the fact that the benefits accrue to someone else and the costs to someone else. Just like in the first industrial revolution and the second. Internet has been different due to the idealism of its leaders, but again private firms got involved and the social networking has the same old story. Why would AI be different?
Yes beauty is relative but aesthetics is not simply of representation. I think a lot of folks both professional and other have forgotten that aesthetics is something more than representation. Instead it is Aesthetic Growth, in other words, the way we are actually situated in the world or environment occurs before we start figuring it out or dividing it up into various other bits of understanding. Again, how something is merely represented comes after but what occurs before is aesthetic growth on the level of embodiment and the ability to change which is also the desire to affect change etc. Alfred North Whitehead said a lot on this subject as well as John Dewey which both dovetail nicely with some of the audio quotes in this podcast. But in general if we are not able to appreciate the depth that surrounds aesthetic experience as something other than representation, then, surely the issue of style or method is going to get lost to analysis as opposed to being fleshed out in more creative experimental ways!
I think when you look at physical technological progress since about 1972 when all the environmental regulations and other regulations came into force That's really when you see all the innovation and growth in unregulated information technology. They really hasn't been any big breakthroughs in the world of atoms. Your car is in planes and trucks are all pretty much about the same just with more screens and more IT innovation and thats awesome But it would really be great to have technology advancement in the world of Atoms again. My bias is that its the enormous new regulations in the 1970 that is largly to blame and ots only getting more strict by the year. I'm a farmer in the amount of environmental regulations we have to deal with is just insane, we cant do what we want with our own land, we need to put all this emmisions crap that always breaks down on our diesel trucks and tractors. Our farm alone probably spends at least $60,000 a year fixing emissions equipment... Yeah but I can go out every night and start a huge bonfire that emits much much more pollutants into the air no problem. It doesnt even move the needle one bit in air quality in the world. I am a moderate independent voter but i dont think I could ever vote for a party that puts the abstract environment above its citizens. I just wish the Democratic party would be more of a supply side liberal like Ezra but that doesn't seem to happen in the real world, mostly because the staffers in the rulemakers in places like the EPA are environmentalist and don't really have any idea of the impact these regulations have on farmers, truck drivers and loggers nor do they care if anything they are happy to see fewer companies logging or farming because they think its saving the "environment" whatever that means.
NYC has groups that start out in the lower East Side of Manhattan. They buy in Queens and aspire to LI. Daly City ticky tacky houses are a million each and probably have chrome fences instead of white picket fences. NYC had Levittown out on the Island. The Detroit developer of similar housing stock helped put the LA art scene on the map. The GI bill financed WWII vets in Levittown, north of eight mile and probaly Daly City are mostly long gone. The new Americans in these places want their little patch of green. Big Pharma , not Trump, gave us quickly produced vaccines. Thank god most of the deaths were not an historically oppressed minority or we would probably still be discussing the effectiveness of injecting bleach. There is definitely a role for NIH and others to help the pharma industry direct their research and perhaps a little less profit motive would be helpful but prioritizing reasonable costs for poor diabetes patient needs is something shareholders will just have to swallow or perhaps we can talk about fifty percent capital gains tax instead. Great thinking and discussions but human calculators are cute CA rehashing but IBM and Microsoft as well as Google and even Facebook have left OPEC and stagflation way in the past and ticky tacky houses no doubt have multi generational occupants.
The guest keeps pointing out the failure of technology to bring out the glimpse outlook on innovations while bringing out unfounded idea about finding some materials for solar materials. If he was paying attention, they are on the way with the discovery of the ionic compound with perovskite.
So much of the science research money went to two things that were basically bot science. Missiles and the Vietnam War. And then we break up AT&T, one of the greatest national labs. For what?. Fast cell phone, no content.
Prior to the first Earth day, we , in the South, were drowning in trash. Silent Spring was finally being recognized. However, the WAR, and Civil Rights had to push down environmentalism
Did you ever notice the first Earth Day was pretty much the last day of innovation and progress in the world of Atoms? Since then all the advancement has been in the unregulated world of byte's....
Major carp! The drive to what is now Trumpism became a central goal ass the ,dark side reaction to the Nixon mess starting with the Houston Plan, said to have gone nowhere but I think Plan 2024 is a linear result. In any case the laws sent the money to the top and the share if the economy for 90% of Americans has gone down hill ever since. Things that were illegal before Nixon became legal or unenforced. That led to environmental nightmares, and more rules with more paperwork, but Trump has displayed how that has been treated.
Ezra, I'm super proud of you and excited for your future right now. I went through a mid-life crisis and have opted for challenging my bises. I came from a rural beef farm but we are wholly educated activists. I'm an urban nurse working to deliver integrated single payor healthcare that anyone can afford out of an average paycheck. I realized that the democrats and their corporate and government marriage was in my way! I'm now working with Republicans believe it or not. Things change! I'm right behind you, go ahead, step off that cliff. You are not wrong. I had to vhallenge myself in saying, "if white men are voicing distress, why are they not also my concern?" So I joined MAGA as its urban sunrise is just upon us. I can shape it from the inside. Stay fluid, challenge even your highest self.
The Expanse Universe as a example optimistic future?? Really??? It is a pitty that this evaluation came only at the end of the episode and not at the beginning, since it could have been the whole discussion of the interview. But this recommendation allows a good frame for his other opinions about the subject of technological innovation vis a vis the betterment of society. To say that "The Expanse" is a example os a optimistic future is to say that our society is a good as it gets. Because the kind of society that the series shows is basically our own, buta in space. War, rampant inequality, whole human groups converted at fodder for the enrichment of others. Once again, the mere reiteration of our own society. Let's be just: he is a conservative. So, by definition, he thinks our society is "as good as it gets", no profound change needed. But the, he should not be surprised that people are not invested in the future anymore: the future he is "promising" is one where the same people who benefits from economic growth now will keep benefiting in this future he envisions. And the people who gets screwed right now will keep being screwed. But in space!! Lamentable...
we saw dimly the threats of class distinctions, and inequality and we couldn't do anything about it. It absorbed alot of our energy and the needle didn't move. You have to show progress on social justice before you can present technological exploration as a solution.
The reason the economic inequality keeps growing is economic policy. social injustice is largely a symptom of a system that keeps the poor poor, and makes more of them. Printing cheap money (that mostly ends up in the hands of the very rich) is a huuuuuge part of this. If we stop deflating away peoples money, the growth from tech actually benefits everyone. I think we'd agree that lifting people out of poverty would improve social justice more than any law or protest ever could?
The peoplle I knew reacted strongly to that song. But it was only one song. You need more than oe song to capture the imagination. The race to the moon employed alot of people and captured the education systme for those whose potential was not blocked.
What even is social justice? 😂 The world is and has always been unfair and it will always be. By attempting to do social justice you will just make it unjust for other people. Much better of to accept it as a part of life and dabble around the edges to help the very most unjust people get a better deal. And by that I mean the worst of people in the world so that would include taking from the richest people in the world and giving to the poorest who by no fault of their own where born in The Congo or Afghanistan or India. If we really wanted it to be just every family on Earth could have about $12,000 per year but if you're talking about social justice in the context of moving some wealth and power from people in America too other people who are relatively less rich that's just silly nonsense has nothing to do with actually fixing the injustice and the world for all humans. How much of your income are you donating to a poor Bangladeshi family so there family can get educated and live in a decent house? If your idea of social justice is taking a bit of wealth and power from some Americans and giving it to others That's about like feeling bad for Donald Trump because he's only worth a billion dollars and wanting to take some money from Elon musk and giving it to him lol. Everyone in America is extraordinarily wealthy compared to the average person in the rest of the world I know this cuz I grew up as poor as you can in America and my girlfriend grew up relatively poor in the Philippines and it was a shock to see how they lived compared to how I lived growing up. I give about 5% of my money to to poor families in the Philippines that's real social justice put your money where your mouth is.
So yes obviously regulations raise business costs. Seatbelts and litigation raise prices. However, As an economist I strongly reject the outdated model of a zero-sum dichotomy between economic growth and investment in natural capital (air and water quality, ect). It is simply not supported by the data. Raising GDP per capita is vital to improving living standards, BUT environmental goods have tremendous value. For example, air pollution contributes millions of human deaths every year (see WHO). Difficulty in valuing non-market goods, diffuse environmental benefits, and concentrated benefits for polluters have contributed to an irksome (and well-lobbied) myth that economic and environmental improvements are necessarily at odds. In practice they are often complements. Productivity gains can produce more leisure time to visit Americas lakes and forests. For a converse example, wetlands can reduce the risk of floods meaning lower home insurance rates, or buffer nutrient runoff to improve downstream fishery yields. Another example: limiting carbon dioxide emissions COULD have defrayed the $trillions of USD that will be required for global climate adaptation im the coming decades. Non-market goods have material value, and ignoring them is unlikely to produce optimal real growth.
Have you ever been to a developing country? If this where true why doesn't India or China just leap frog and regulate like say Germany does? Ooo yes it's because they are dirt poor and don't have the money. Environmental regulation is a luxury good that only countries can have once they go through the dirty process of industrialization using dirty cheap fossil fuels. If it were true there is no inherent trade-off then surely one of the many many developing countries would have figured this out and we would have a success story but sadly everything has a trade off and if your like my wife who is from a very poor family in the Philippines that has 9 kids and 2 parents and has a unreliable income of about $150 per month you not going to be willing to pay any of your tax money or be able to pay to have your trash picked up much less pay 4x for an electric bus vrs the old dirt cheap Jeepny diesel buses. Ask anyone there and they hate the pollution in the trash everywhere but they're not willing to or able to pay more to clean anything up because they're just too poor. The choice is literally while I buy fish and rice for my children or send my daughter to college or am I going to pay the same amount to have my trash collected. The government simply does not have the tax revenue or the borrowing power to make an enforces regulations with the investment that would be required until they are developed and are much richer. I am sure your data is mostly from developed already rich countries that went through their dirty industrialization long ago and yes rich people do like luxury goods like environmentalism and we have the money to do so but you got to remember the vast majority of people in the world are not in rich nations and don't value can environmentalist above food and education for their kid's. And no you can't have both there's not enough capital in the world or material resources to LeapFrog all of the poor people in the world to industrialize rich countries that can be environmentally friendly.
@@Ryanrobi thank you for sharing your personal experience. Let me clarify, there are absolutely many trade offs in how we allocate resources full stop. And as you say, the benefits of addressing material poverty likely outweigh improving environmental amenities for swimming, but when cholera, TB, air pollution, ect cause enough death it may be an even harder choice whether to budget the last $million for wastewater treatment, roads, tax cuts, schools, or healthcare. I also agree that developing countries are in a much more difficult position justifying economic tradeoffs for environmental goods, not least because the data collection needed to document those environmental benefits is generally better in whealthy countries. However, my point was simply that economic growth and environmental maintenance are not always tradeoffs, nor binary alternatives. This is true in all stages of economic development. As you pointed out an outcome of economic growth is high income countries have the opportunity to invest in environmental goods that people want, but couldn’t previously afford. Conversely, environmental protection can develop a tourist sector, boost fishery yields, reduce health care costs, ect. Where there are tradeoffs between goods, It is usually not the job of economists to pass judgement on the preferences of individuals. But my point is that the tradeoffs here are frequently overstated. The main reason is simply that quantifying the economic value of non-market goods (including environmental ones) is difficult and costly. Lacking those values we can overlook the economic benefits if environmental resources.
Maybe the high growth/productivity period was just an anomaly that we should never go back to because of the damage rendered and really, why can't we be happy with moderate growth? Maybe we don't build rampantly anymore because we learned that bad things happen when you rush into things.
Its an interesting point, but but real growth (instead of just printing money so it looks like growth. Which is a big part of the 'growth' in the last few decades) "would benefit everyone, the problem is that the established systems (like big oil for example) amass wealth and influence and prevent new disruptive tech that would help everyone but them. High productivity is good, if ita based on real improvment not just flooding the market with cheap money
@@donkeybusHow exactly does big oil prevent innovation? They didn't stop all the small fracking companies didn't stop any solar or wind companies. If anything over the last 30 years big oil is much less important and their stock value is much less than it used to be. For example ExxonMobil used to be the largest market cap in the world now it's far far down the list and a small fraction of Nvidia or Meta.
It's obvious what happened - we picked all the low hanging fruits of science. The big innovations were indoor plumbing and sewage systems, motors and engines to lift heavy things, electricity for all the things it does, and telecommunications. And sanitation and nitrogen fertilizer and antibiotics. The increment to productivity and quality of life from anything we invent now will almost certainly be smaller than the increment we got from those things. I love computers, but economists struggled for a decade or three to see any productivity impact of widespread adoption. From here on, almost every new idea will matter less than the ones we already had. Plus in areas where innovation really would help, the science is really hard - we're probably not going to accidentally stumble onto a mold that's a broad spectrum cancer cure, and fusion has been a long hard slog. As far as homebuilding is concerned, the fundamental problem is that our economies are concentrated in a few supermetros, and its always hard to build lots of new housing where a lot of people already live, they don't want their quality of life degraded so they resist, plus they own most of the land already. To get more housing where ppl need to live to get decent jobs, we'll probably need planning to spread economic growth to more areas where construction is easier.
I largely agree but I can't help noticing the correlation between the lack of progress in the world of Atoms since the environmental regulations started in the early 70s and the fact that almost all the growth has been in unregulated IT space since. I do think a large part of it is just it's 10 times harder to make a big innovation in the world of atoms versus the world of byte's and if you win in IT the marginal cost is almost zero so it's easier and more profitable if you strike gold. This leads me to believe that if you didn't have the IT revolution I think we would have more smart people working really hard on innovations in the world of Atoms.
What is the other better option? Gentrification is nothing more than people improving and investing in property's. The opposite of gentrification is Detroit lol
Ezra Klein - do you really think the world of the Jetsons, a cartoon from 50 years ago or more, as you put it is any more relevant today than the Flintstones? Are you capable of writing anything useful or relevant today or just more of these eye-catching, click-getting silly waste of time articles?
This is exactly the kind of discussion we need. And that by definition means it’ll never have sway in the halls of governance. Sadly.
Sadly, by 2035, billions of us will be dead without much hope for the then survivors.
Also private business quit spending on science and technology due to a huge shift in mentality. They decided shareholders were the most important thing and huge tax cuts let them keep money instead of forcing them to spend it. Add in cultural issues and the whole world was changing. Such a complex issue.
@XXmtdna That is mostly true now but post WW2 Bell, GE, and others spent a ton on research. Only a handful of ideas worked but it was worth it. Now quarterly profits are the only things that matter so there is no long term vision and no stomach for all the failures that lead to new technologies.
@XXmtdna Totally agree. In my state they want to privatize everything that is a service or benefit to society so a handful of people can make stupid amounts of money. And the worst part is it’s poor people who suffer the worst are the ones voting them in!
What has been the effect of moving manufacturing offshore and quarterly profit focus on R&D?
😂😂
We are sitting on a bonanza of renewable energy wealth, wind, solar, geothermal, batteries. The Clean Air Act didn’t get in the way of this. Oil companies did.
The clean air act is one of the worst pieces of legislation in American history... This should have been regulated at the state level places like Los Angeles really did need to clean up but places like where I live in Northern New York never needed the clean air act.
nice photo Ezra!
brilliant interview as usual
Nixon was never truly interested in bridging the groups on various issues like environmentalism.
It's a sad commentary on America that it is 50 years later and Nixon just looks better and better compared to what we have now.
I find it interesting that no one is commenting on military spending. (Granted, it has also driven innovation.) After the fall of the wall, there is the peace dividend. We have reached the end of that gravey train.
I am, still, a child of the 70s. here in Japan, classic rock in coffeeshops and restaurants, is still very popular. The only point I would add from being here, is an appreciation of the Carpenters, who are still massively popular
"No country is ahead of America". Maybe it depends how you measure. I'm thinking of access to healthcare.
We have plenty of access to health care you just need to pay alot for it. Lol But this is really a government caused issue The government restrict supply via regulation as well as significantly subsidizes demand so of course price will rise rapidly above inflation.
@@Ryanrobi Paying a lot for it blows my mind. I'm Canadian, now 76 and grew up with basically free health care. $35 a month in 1970. I never understood how the US could have such high costs for health care. It was cheaper to die than to live. Why?
We need partial state ownership of companies like PBR Brazilian oil company. With this model the government will get a cut of next tax payer funded development in a new innovation
“What’s your evidence?” *provides anecdotes* 😒
Back when corporate taxes were high, corporations would take advantage of the tax breaks carved out for reinvestment in the company. When that went away, so did the incentive to do research, capital improvement, updating business related products, so that money got diverted to ridiculously high top management salaries and share holder dividends. Since most upper tier management is paid in stock options the incentive is to maximize stock value not company value. This is where the libertarian school of economics has it exactly backwards and up side down.
great discussion as usual
Tell you what, that new thumbnail is futuristic (is that a tat?! I thought you people… nvrmnd;) and it looks well. Amazing work, per the usual.
I love how Ezra can break bread across the aisle but doesn't feel the need to baby them. Standing upright and shooting straight. A rarity.
If it wasn’t for world war2 and the Cold War, the entire world would still be recovering from a 1929 depression.
GDP is Grossly Distorted Propaganda
NDP is WHAT? When do you ever hear economists talk about Net Domestic Product? Try finding data on the annual depreciation of automobiles purchased by American consumers since Sputnik.
Why hasn't accounting/finance been mandatory in high schools since Sputnik?
I watched George Jetson and wife Jan e and the two kids Judy and ?. What you don't realize is we are still in the Dick Tracey watch era. At the end of the 60's we had one or the first big wackos. Charles Manson. Even with that we didn't live llives of fear. The the big depression of my age started. I'm in my early 20's. Interest rates when through the roof to 15% or so and ended the chance of getting a home. Many women had to go to work in order to make ends meet. Oil prices went through the roof and mid=level executives were being laid off never to return. But we still had a modicum of hope. We didn't fear our children going outside or taking a bus on their own at 10 years old. Life was very different. Now one of the worst things to be is a woman of child bearing age. They're many reasons behind that. Life is no longer happy and the wacko's run the institutions.
Why should the tax payers underwrite the funding of technological innovation just to hand it off to a for-profit company? At the least, government should take royalties in the way of subsidizing consumers' use of these technologies.
Why is all of the talk about environmentalism here centered on aesthetics? When I listened to those quotes from Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, I thought: these guys understood that polluted air, water, and food are dangerous to people’s HEALTH. Isn’t that what people were really worried about? Am I missing something, here?
From a marketing perspective selling environmentalism as an aesthetic vision makes sense.
@@geraldfreibrun3041 I get it-market environmental quality like Miller Lite: “Looks/Smells/Tastes great!” “Less cancer!”
Yeah but now we already have clean water and air till the only thing you can do is aesthetics... Environmentalism is a luxury good that only rich develop nations can have.
Wow, Mr. Pethokoukis was simultaneously evasive, combative, and incoherent. Perhaps he was having an off day, but this was a disappointing performance.
I dont agree. Since I graduated high-school in 1983, the space shuttle program, the ISS, the internet, the PC, the internet, the cell phone, the smart phone, CRSPR, GMO crops, private space companies, electric cars, AI, and the list goes on. I am sorry NEPA is an inconvenience but I would like to continue living on what is left of the living planet. Let's look at the shocks to the system caused by business since 1983. Market crash 1987, tech bubble burst 1999, Y2K, 2008 financial collapse, which is more responsible for the housing shortage than NEPA. And all that time, the wealth gap grew, and the budget deficit grew. Fancy academic talking, sprinkled with some carefully chosen stats, doesn't make it true.
An electronic medical record that could be used by all providers and would allow for medical information to be shared instantly: a technology that already exists and would save millions over the years but seems to have no vision or will in government. It's not fancy but it would work
Better advertising is a oxymoron
If AI advancement looks like a Hockey Stick on yield curve shouldn't prosperity follow the same curve
I think one big premise of this discussion is 'society' or country as a monolith. Strikingly missing from the analysis is the fact that the benefits accrue to someone else and the costs to someone else. Just like in the first industrial revolution and the second. Internet has been different due to the idealism of its leaders, but again private firms got involved and the social networking has the same old story. Why would AI be different?
Yes beauty is relative but aesthetics is not simply of representation. I think a lot of folks both professional and other have forgotten that aesthetics is something more than representation. Instead it is Aesthetic Growth, in other words, the way we are actually situated in the world or environment occurs before we start figuring it out or dividing it up into various other bits of understanding.
Again, how something is merely represented comes after but what occurs before is aesthetic growth on the level of embodiment and the ability to change which is also the desire to affect change etc.
Alfred North Whitehead said a lot on this subject as well as John Dewey which both dovetail nicely with some of the audio quotes in this podcast.
But in general if we are not able to appreciate the depth that surrounds aesthetic experience as something other than representation, then, surely the issue of style or method is going to get lost to analysis as opposed to being fleshed out in more creative experimental ways!
But we didn't trust Nixon.
Showin off that tatt.
West Bank interviews!
I think when you look at physical technological progress since about 1972 when all the environmental regulations and other regulations came into force That's really when you see all the innovation and growth in unregulated information technology. They really hasn't been any big breakthroughs in the world of atoms. Your car is in planes and trucks are all pretty much about the same just with more screens and more IT innovation and thats awesome But it would really be great to have technology advancement in the world of Atoms again. My bias is that its the enormous new regulations in the 1970 that is largly to blame and ots only getting more strict by the year. I'm a farmer in the amount of environmental regulations we have to deal with is just insane, we cant do what we want with our own land, we need to put all this emmisions crap that always breaks down on our diesel trucks and tractors. Our farm alone probably spends at least $60,000 a year fixing emissions equipment... Yeah but I can go out every night and start a huge bonfire that emits much much more pollutants into the air no problem. It doesnt even move the needle one bit in air quality in the world. I am a moderate independent voter but i dont think I could ever vote for a party that puts the abstract environment above its citizens. I just wish the Democratic party would be more of a supply side liberal like Ezra but that doesn't seem to happen in the real world, mostly because the staffers in the rulemakers in places like the EPA are environmentalist and don't really have any idea of the impact these regulations have on farmers, truck drivers and loggers nor do they care if anything they are happy to see fewer companies logging or farming because they think its saving the "environment" whatever that means.
NYC has groups that start out in the lower East Side of Manhattan. They buy in Queens and aspire to LI. Daly City ticky tacky houses are a million each and probably have chrome fences instead of white picket fences. NYC had Levittown out on the Island. The Detroit developer of similar housing stock helped put the LA art scene on the map. The GI bill financed WWII vets in Levittown, north of eight mile and probaly Daly City are mostly long gone. The new Americans in these places want their little patch of green. Big Pharma , not Trump, gave us quickly produced vaccines. Thank god most of the deaths were not an historically oppressed minority or we would probably still be discussing the effectiveness of injecting bleach. There is definitely a role for NIH and others to help the pharma industry direct their research and perhaps a little less profit motive would be helpful but prioritizing reasonable costs for poor diabetes patient needs is something shareholders will just have to swallow or perhaps we can talk about fifty percent capital gains tax instead. Great thinking and discussions but human calculators are cute CA rehashing but IBM and Microsoft as well as Google and even Facebook have left OPEC and stagflation way in the past and ticky tacky houses no doubt have multi generational occupants.
The guest keeps pointing out the failure of technology to bring out the glimpse outlook on innovations while bringing out unfounded idea about finding some materials for solar materials. If he was paying attention, they are on the way with the discovery of the ionic compound with perovskite.
So much of the science research money went to two things that were basically bot science. Missiles and the Vietnam War. And then we break up AT&T, one of the greatest national labs. For what?. Fast cell phone, no content.
Excellent work as usual Ezra....you are quickly becoming the Izzy Stone of our current situation. Please keep going!
Prior to the first Earth day, we , in the South, were drowning in trash. Silent Spring was finally being recognized. However, the WAR, and Civil Rights had to push down environmentalism
Did you ever notice the first Earth Day was pretty much the last day of innovation and progress in the world of Atoms? Since then all the advancement has been in the unregulated world of byte's....
Major carp! The drive to what is now Trumpism became a central goal ass the ,dark side reaction to the Nixon mess starting with the Houston Plan, said to have gone nowhere but I think Plan 2024 is a linear result. In any case the laws sent the money to the top and the share if the economy for 90% of Americans has gone down hill ever since. Things that were illegal before Nixon became legal or unenforced. That led to environmental nightmares, and more rules with more paperwork, but Trump has displayed how that has been treated.
Elon Musk is inspired by the Jetsons
Ezra, I'm super proud of you and excited for your future right now. I went through a mid-life crisis and have opted for challenging my bises. I came from a rural beef farm but we are wholly educated activists. I'm an urban nurse working to deliver integrated single payor healthcare that anyone can afford out of an average paycheck. I realized that the democrats and their corporate and government marriage was in my way! I'm now working with Republicans believe it or not. Things change! I'm right behind you, go ahead, step off that cliff. You are not wrong. I had to vhallenge myself in saying, "if white men are voicing distress, why are they not also my concern?" So I joined MAGA as its urban sunrise is just upon us. I can shape it from the inside. Stay fluid, challenge even your highest self.
The Expanse Universe as a example optimistic future?? Really???
It is a pitty that this evaluation came only at the end of the episode and not at the beginning, since it could have been the whole discussion of the interview.
But this recommendation allows a good frame for his other opinions about the subject of technological innovation vis a vis the betterment of society. To say that "The Expanse" is a example os a optimistic future is to say that our society is a good as it gets. Because the kind of society that the series shows is basically our own, buta in space. War, rampant inequality, whole human groups converted at fodder for the enrichment of others. Once again, the mere reiteration of our own society.
Let's be just: he is a conservative. So, by definition, he thinks our society is "as good as it gets", no profound change needed.
But the, he should not be surprised that people are not invested in the future anymore: the future he is "promising" is one where the same people who benefits from economic growth now will keep benefiting in this future he envisions. And the people who gets screwed right now will keep being screwed.
But in space!!
Lamentable...
we saw dimly the threats of class distinctions, and inequality and we couldn't do anything about it. It absorbed alot of our energy and the needle didn't move. You have to show progress on social justice before you can present technological exploration as a solution.
The reason the economic inequality keeps growing is economic policy. social injustice is largely a symptom of a system that keeps the poor poor, and makes more of them. Printing cheap money (that mostly ends up in the hands of the very rich) is a huuuuuge part of this. If we stop deflating away peoples money, the growth from tech actually benefits everyone. I think we'd agree that lifting people out of poverty would improve social justice more than any law or protest ever could?
The peoplle I knew reacted strongly to that song. But it was only one song. You need more than oe song to capture the imagination. The race to the moon employed alot of people and captured the education systme for those whose potential was not blocked.
But social justice is still sitting, waiting, we haven't done much. This is our first priority.
What even is social justice? 😂 The world is and has always been unfair and it will always be. By attempting to do social justice you will just make it unjust for other people. Much better of to accept it as a part of life and dabble around the edges to help the very most unjust people get a better deal. And by that I mean the worst of people in the world so that would include taking from the richest people in the world and giving to the poorest who by no fault of their own where born in The Congo or Afghanistan or India. If we really wanted it to be just every family on Earth could have about $12,000 per year but if you're talking about social justice in the context of moving some wealth and power from people in America too other people who are relatively less rich that's just silly nonsense has nothing to do with actually fixing the injustice and the world for all humans. How much of your income are you donating to a poor Bangladeshi family so there family can get educated and live in a decent house? If your idea of social justice is taking a bit of wealth and power from some Americans and giving it to others That's about like feeling bad for Donald Trump because he's only worth a billion dollars and wanting to take some money from Elon musk and giving it to him lol. Everyone in America is extraordinarily wealthy compared to the average person in the rest of the world I know this cuz I grew up as poor as you can in America and my girlfriend grew up relatively poor in the Philippines and it was a shock to see how they lived compared to how I lived growing up. I give about 5% of my money to to poor families in the Philippines that's real social justice put your money where your mouth is.
So yes obviously regulations raise business costs. Seatbelts and litigation raise prices. However, As an economist I strongly reject the outdated model of a zero-sum dichotomy between economic growth and investment in natural capital (air and water quality, ect). It is simply not supported by the data.
Raising GDP per capita is vital to improving living standards, BUT environmental goods have tremendous value. For example, air pollution contributes millions of human deaths every year (see WHO). Difficulty in valuing non-market goods, diffuse environmental benefits, and concentrated benefits for polluters have contributed to an irksome (and well-lobbied) myth that economic and environmental improvements are necessarily at odds.
In practice they are often complements. Productivity gains can produce more leisure time to visit Americas lakes and forests. For a converse example, wetlands can reduce the risk of floods meaning lower home insurance rates, or buffer nutrient runoff to improve downstream fishery yields. Another example: limiting carbon dioxide emissions COULD have defrayed the $trillions of USD that will be required for global climate adaptation im the coming decades. Non-market goods have material value, and ignoring them is unlikely to produce optimal real growth.
Have you ever been to a developing country? If this where true why doesn't India or China just leap frog and regulate like say Germany does?
Ooo yes it's because they are dirt poor and don't have the money. Environmental regulation is a luxury good that only countries can have once they go through the dirty process of industrialization using dirty cheap fossil fuels. If it were true there is no inherent trade-off then surely one of the many many developing countries would have figured this out and we would have a success story but sadly everything has a trade off and if your like my wife who is from a very poor family in the Philippines that has 9 kids and 2 parents and has a unreliable income of about $150 per month you not going to be willing to pay any of your tax money or be able to pay to have your trash picked up much less pay 4x for an electric bus vrs the old dirt cheap Jeepny diesel buses. Ask anyone there and they hate the pollution in the trash everywhere but they're not willing to or able to pay more to clean anything up because they're just too poor. The choice is literally while I buy fish and rice for my children or send my daughter to college or am I going to pay the same amount to have my trash collected. The government simply does not have the tax revenue or the borrowing power to make an enforces regulations with the investment that would be required until they are developed and are much richer.
I am sure your data is mostly from developed already rich countries that went through their dirty industrialization long ago and yes rich people do like luxury goods like environmentalism and we have the money to do so but you got to remember the vast majority of people in the world are not in rich nations and don't value can environmentalist above food and education for their kid's. And no you can't have both there's not enough capital in the world or material resources to LeapFrog all of the poor people in the world to industrialize rich countries that can be environmentally friendly.
@@Ryanrobi thank you for sharing your personal experience. Let me clarify, there are absolutely many trade offs in how we allocate resources full stop. And as you say, the benefits of addressing material poverty likely outweigh improving environmental amenities for swimming, but when cholera, TB, air pollution, ect cause enough death it may be an even harder choice whether to budget the last $million for wastewater treatment, roads, tax cuts, schools, or healthcare.
I also agree that developing countries are in a much more difficult position justifying economic tradeoffs for environmental goods, not least because the data collection needed to document those environmental benefits is generally better in whealthy countries.
However, my point was simply that economic growth and environmental maintenance are not always tradeoffs, nor binary alternatives. This is true in all stages of economic development. As you pointed out an outcome of economic growth is high income countries have the opportunity to invest in environmental goods that people want, but couldn’t previously afford. Conversely, environmental protection can develop a tourist sector, boost fishery yields, reduce health care costs, ect.
Where there are tradeoffs between goods, It is usually not the job of economists to pass judgement on the preferences of individuals. But my point is that the tradeoffs here are frequently overstated. The main reason is simply that quantifying the economic value of non-market goods (including environmental ones) is difficult and costly. Lacking those values we can overlook the economic benefits if environmental resources.
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Maybe the high growth/productivity period was just an anomaly that we should never go back to because of the damage rendered and really, why can't we be happy with moderate growth? Maybe we don't build rampantly anymore because we learned that bad things happen when you rush into things.
Its an interesting point, but but real growth (instead of just printing money so it looks like growth. Which is a big part of the 'growth' in the last few decades) "would benefit everyone, the problem is that the established systems (like big oil for example) amass wealth and influence and prevent new disruptive tech that would help everyone but them. High productivity is good, if ita based on real improvment not just flooding the market with cheap money
@@donkeybusHow exactly does big oil prevent innovation? They didn't stop all the small fracking companies didn't stop any solar or wind companies. If anything over the last 30 years big oil is much less important and their stock value is much less than it used to be. For example ExxonMobil used to be the largest market cap in the world now it's far far down the list and a small fraction of Nvidia or Meta.
It's obvious what happened - we picked all the low hanging fruits of science. The big innovations were indoor plumbing and sewage systems, motors and engines to lift heavy things, electricity for all the things it does, and telecommunications. And sanitation and nitrogen fertilizer and antibiotics. The increment to productivity and quality of life from anything we invent now will almost certainly be smaller than the increment we got from those things. I love computers, but economists struggled for a decade or three to see any productivity impact of widespread adoption. From here on, almost every new idea will matter less than the ones we already had. Plus in areas where innovation really would help, the science is really hard - we're probably not going to accidentally stumble onto a mold that's a broad spectrum cancer cure, and fusion has been a long hard slog. As far as homebuilding is concerned, the fundamental problem is that our economies are concentrated in a few supermetros, and its always hard to build lots of new housing where a lot of people already live, they don't want their quality of life degraded so they resist, plus they own most of the land already. To get more housing where ppl need to live to get decent jobs, we'll probably need planning to spread economic growth to more areas where construction is easier.
I largely agree but I can't help noticing the correlation between the lack of progress in the world of Atoms since the environmental regulations started in the early 70s and the fact that almost all the growth has been in unregulated IT space since. I do think a large part of it is just it's 10 times harder to make a big innovation in the world of atoms versus the world of byte's and if you win in IT the marginal cost is almost zero so it's easier and more profitable if you strike gold. This leads me to believe that if you didn't have the IT revolution I think we would have more smart people working really hard on innovations in the world of Atoms.
Again team red and team blue swapping sides. Housing problems are tied to gentrification
What is the other better option? Gentrification is nothing more than people improving and investing in property's. The opposite of gentrification is Detroit lol
Ezra Klein - do you really think the world of the Jetsons, a cartoon from 50 years ago or more, as you put it is any more relevant today than the Flintstones? Are you capable of writing anything useful or relevant today or just more of these eye-catching, click-getting silly waste of time articles?