Nick Rowe on the economics of immigration:

“Total Factor Productivity” is not some geological feature like the Canadian shield. There has to be a reason why some countries are rich and other countries are basket cases, and unless you are lucky enough to find yourselves sitting on great reservoirs of oil that someone else will pay you to pump out of the ground, that reason seems to have something to do with social/economic institutions, and social/economic institutions seem to have something to do with people.

(If you want to be a format purist, treat the second sentence as the target, and the first as the lead-in — the emphasis has been juggled to help.)

(Via.)

A committed Clinton supporter (really) outlines the bright prospects for her administration:

… The rest is just a blur. There was so much violence in so many places across the country. […] Then the stock market crashed. Trillions of dollars were lost, mutual funds tanked, and Occupy Wall Street was instantly revived — in New York City, most spectacularly (the day after the crash, 75,000 people effectively shut down the city south of Chambers Street), but also in other cities and on college campuses across the country. […] The violence escalated from there over the following weeks. And then came martial law. …

(“The State of our Union is Strong.”)

"Today it is Democrats, tomorrow it could be us." It will be, and that is the point. https://t.co/hakLkeHm83

— Andrea O'Sullivan (@anjiecast) October 19, 2016

They have to know what this looks like, but they can’t help themselves.

West:

I’m rather inclined to believe that neither the UK or the EU will necessarily be around as this century matures, and it won’t be the economic or emotional catastrophe people imagine. Sad though it would be to see ane end of ane auld sang, Scotland would do fine as an independent nation. They gave the world Adam Smith, after all.

(The whole article is a sanity-packed delight.)

Andrew Sullivan:

You are where your attention is.

(Among much else of interest in an excellent contrarian essay I’ve only just got around to.)

Saletan:

Trump isn’t Hitler. But in 1922, Hitler wasn’t Hitler, either.

This card is on fire, but might as well play it anyway.

Decolonize your mind.

What if I told you in 2001 that in 15 years the US would be really angry about Russia bombing our allies, Al Qaeda.

— Michael B Dougherty🍃 (@michaelbd) October 12, 2016

It’s a clear sign of how seriously Radical Islam is taken by the foreign policy establishments of civilized states. Roughly, it’s treated as a biological weapon, to be used against real adversaries (you know, those who are not mere hill people). That’s not going to change much anytime soon, however much one might want it to.

… That’s probably Yudkowsky greatest line. (It’s the adaptation of a Dune quote.)

Somewhat ironically (see previous post), this is one of the most significant ways it’s playing out right now:

… Literally none of that happened. [You’ll have to at least scan the damn thing for context.] Or at least there is zero evidence that it did. These are smart, rational people falling for a scam. Why? It’s in part because Twitter fosters this group-think and lack of critical thought — you just click a button and, with little effort, you’ve spread whatever you want people to believe — but it’s also because they’re so convinced of the righteousness of their cause (electing Clinton/defeating Trump) that they have cast all limits and constraints to the side, believing that any narrative or accusation or smear, no matter how false or conspiratorial, is justified in pursuit of it.

Naked consequentialist cynicism doesn’t make a good foundation for a church. That’s part of the reason why it’s coming down.

Yudkowsky’s case against Trump:

Scope is real. If you ever have to choose between voting a convicted serial abuser of children into the Presidential office — but this person otherwise seems stable and collected — versus a Presidential candidate who seems easy to provoke and who has ‘bad days’ and doesn’t listen to advisors and once said “Why do we have all these nukes if we can’t use them?”, it is deadly important that you vote for the pedophile. It isn’t physically possible to abuse enough children per day over 4 years to do as much damage as you can do with one wrong move in the National Security Decision-Making Game.

It seems the stars are right: