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Remote Work Shifts Costs From Management Onto Employees [Freddie deBoer, Freddie deBoer’s Substack]

By Spencer Chen
In Freddie deBoer
January 22, 2023
187 views
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• In the past decade, many services have been created to reduce people’s exposure to other human beings, which people are willing to pay a premium for.
• Remote work shifts financial burdens that once fell on employers onto employees, yet employees don’t complain and even celebrate.
• This has caused a crisis with office space downtown and a deepening of America’s structural housing crisis.
• Remote workers are spending extra money on rent or mortgage for extra space, which is essentially a $12,000 haircut in their total annual compensation.
• People should think critically about what they’re giving up and what they’re now paying for themselves.

Published January 21, 2023
Visit Freddie deBoer’s Substack to read Freddie deBoer’s original post Remote Work Shifts Costs From Management Onto Employees

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Abortion Pills Will Be the Next Battle in the 2024 Election [Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Atlantic]
January 20, 2023
242 views
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• The abortion debate is shifting to focus on executive-branch actions that influence the availability of abortion drugs.
• The Biden administration has taken multiple steps to expand access to the drugs used in medication abortions, which now account for more than half of all abortions performed in the United States.
• Anti-abortion activists are growing frustrated with the increased reliance on the drugs and are pressing the Republican presidential candidates in 2024 for more forceful action.
• The Biden administration has loosened restrictions on the drugs, allowing women to consult with a doctor via telehealth and then receive the pills via mail.
• The FDA has also allowed pharmacies to dispense the drugs, but 19 red states have passed laws that still require medical professionals to be present when the drugs are administered.
• Republicans are launching a multifront attempt to roll back access to the pills nationwide, including a lawsuit to overturn the original certification and ban mifepristone.
• Abortion-rights advocates are pushing the Biden administration to loosen restrictions even further, such as eliminating the requirement that the professionals prescribing the drugs receive a special certification.
• The issue of access to abortion drugs is likely to shape the 2024 election, with Democrats generally confident they will benefit from any contrast that keeps abortion prominent in the race.

Published January 20, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Ronald Brownstein’s original post Abortion Pills Will Be the Next Battle in the 2024 Election

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Which Political Victories Cause Backlash? [Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten]

By Spencer Chen
In Scott Alexander [Astral Codex Ten]
January 19, 2023
180 views
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• Trump’s beliefs became less popular when he became president, and a similar phenomenon occurred after a major conservative victory (the Supreme Court overturning Roe).
• Americans’ opinions shifted heavily in a pro-choice direction after a long period of stalemate, regardless of political affiliation.
• The author speculates that the effect may be due to a thermostatic effect, where voters want some medium amount of abortion, and if they hear that pro-abortion forces are winning, they say they’re against abortion.
• However, the author found no clear turn against gay marriage in 2015 after the Supreme Court ruling, and no effect on people’s opinion of government-run health care after Obamacare was passed in 2010.
• The author suggests that the public may only backlash against conservative victories, due to liberals controlling more of the media, or because liberalism is “on the right side of history”.
• The author also suggests that it may have to do with how quickly people can find a case of the new law going wrong, or it may be random.

Published January 19, 2023
Visit Astral Codex Ten to read Scott Alexander’s original post Which Political Victories Cause Backlash?

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America’s Police Exodus [Leighton Woodhouse, The Free Press]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Free Press]
January 19, 2023
252 views
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• Brian Lande, an officer in the Richmond, Calif., police department, had to draw his gun to stop two drunk men from clobbering each other to death with metal rods, and another time to stop a fight between two more drunk men, one of whom was armed with a hatchet.
• The Richmond police department has seen resignations jump by 18 percent and retirements by 45 percent over the previous year, with hiring decreasing by five percent.
• The shift in police officers’ perception of how they’re viewed by the public happened gradually, starting with the first Black Lives Matter protests of 2013, and culminating with the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
• In response to the racial reckoning, some cities set up police review boards with the power to subpoena police records and oversee day-to-day policing, while other states tightened use-of-force standards.
• It became popular for politicians in progressive circles to flaunt their anti-police credentials, and the Richmond City Council cut the police budget, forcing hiring freezes and threatening to slash officers’ salaries by 20 percent.
• Many officers left Richmond for smaller, suburban departments, where they wouldn’t have to fear getting laid off or having their salaries and benefits reduced.
• Brian Lande left Richmond for Kensington, a 15-minute drive away, where he is now Sergeant Lande and his job involves far fewer risks.
• In August 2022, President Biden announced his Safer America Plan in response to rising crime, which includes plans to hire 100,000 more police officers, but this has been met with criticism from the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
• Peter Moskos, the former Baltimore police officer now teaching at John Jay College, has called for legalizing drugs in response to the drug war’s ineffectiveness and its disproportionate impact on young black men, and is mystified by progressives who insist that the single greatest threat faced by black Americans is systemic racism.

Published January 19, 2023
Visit The Free Press to read Leighton Woodhouse’s original post America’s Police Exodus

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America needs more Class VI wells [Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring]

By Spencer Chen
In [Slow Boring]
January 19, 2023
273 views
A

• Public support for action on climate change is broad, but people are disinclined to be personally inconvenienced for the sake of the issue.
• Even if progressive jurisdictions ban new natural gas hookups, people will still be buying new gas appliances 15-20 years from now and those appliances will still be running 30-40 years from now.
• California is planning to ban the sale of new internal combustion engine cars in 2035, but ICE cars will still be on the road in 2050.
• Carbon capture technology exists at a small scale, but it is too expensive to solve the huge problems.
• The Inflation Reduction Act created financial incentives to deploy carbon capture technology, but the EPA needs to move on licensing Class VI wells or creating more state primacy deals.
• Carbon capture has been controversial for years in the environmental community, but it is important to keep in mind that lower-income Democrats were very upset about rising energy costs last year.
• Carbon capture could be used to make natural gas + carbon capture a cost-effective means of generating zero-carbon electricity.
• There is no perfect way to make electricity, and all energy sources have their own costs and benefits.
• Solar and wind power are not necessarily more virtuous than other sources such as carbon capture, nuclear, and geothermal.
• To make renewables work at a large scale, we need to build lots more transmission lines, batteries, and lithium mines.
• Even if we had an all-renewables grid, we would still need solutions for agriculture, industry, aviation, and maritime shipping.
• Carbon capture may be the solution to these problems, but we need to have the infrastructure in place to take advantage of it.ement on nature.

Published January 19, 2023
Visit Slow Boring to read Matthew Yglesias’s original post America needs more Class VI wells

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Who is included by “inclusive” language? [Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring]

By Spencer Chen
In [Slow Boring]
January 18, 2023
227 views
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• The article discusses the use of etiquette in elite educational institutions, such as Carne and Harvard, and how it has changed over time.
• It compares the traditionalist religious schools to the Fancy-Pants Prep Schools, which primarily serve an elite demographic.
• It notes that many of these institutions have gone all-in on DEI rhetoric, despite their exclusive nature.
• It uses the example of eating an apple to illustrate the arbitrary folkways of the British elite.
• It references philosopher Liam Kofi Bright’s essay on culture wars as white psychodrama and how etiquette work is not enough to achieve real change in material conditions.
• It mentions a recent memo from the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work about replacing the term “field” with “practicum” as part of an effort to be more inclusive.
• USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work recently announced they would replace the term “field” with “practicum” in order to be more inclusive and anti-racist.
• This change was met with criticism from right-wing circles and USC administrators.
• The author argues that language is always changing and that it is important to consider who is included and excluded by the language we use.
• They also point out that elite educational institutions often have their own codes of manners and language that are used to maintain an elite class and exclude those who are not up to date.

Published January 18, 2023
Visit Slow Boring to read Matthew Yglesias’s original post Who is included by “inclusive” language?

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SSC Survey Results On Schooling Types [Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten]

By Spencer Chen
In Scott Alexander [Astral Codex Ten]
January 18, 2023
251 views
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• 70.8% of SSC/ACX readers went to free government schools, 12.1% went to secular private-sector schools, 11.3% went to religious private-sector schools, 3.1% were home schooled, and 0.4% were unschooled.
• Home schoolers had the highest satisfaction with their schooling (7.04) and SAT scores (verbal: 756, math: 722).
• Life satisfaction was highest among home schoolers (6.72) and religious schoolers (6.65). Social satisfaction was highest among private schoolers (6.00).
• Home schoolers were more likely to be single (44%) than public schoolers (39%).
• Controlling for religion, home schoolers had lower life satisfaction (6.33) and were more likely to be single (48.6%) than public schoolers (40.4%).
• Home schoolers were not more likely to have changed their gender (3.2%) or have used psychedelics 5+ times (7.6%) than public schoolers (2.4% and 12.4%, respectively).
• Unschooling had the lowest life, social, and romantic satisfaction, and were most likely to be single.

Published January 18, 2023

Visit Astral Codex Ten to read Scott Alexander’s original post SSC Survey Results On Schooling Types

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It’s Time to Get Serious [Katherine Boyle, The Free Press]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Free Press]
January 17, 2023
282 views
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• Sam Bankman-Fried, a 30-year-old billionaire, was referred to as a “trading wunderkind” and “crypto wunderkind” in the press before his arrest in the Bahamas.
• Millennials and Gen Z have been treated as hapless children their entire lives, and this is reflected in their low marriage and home-ownership rates.
• Life expectancy is growing, but the average adult American man has a life expectancy of only 76 years, and SBF is 8 years away from that.
• The Boomer ascendancy has left us with a global gerontocracy and a languishing generation waiting in the wings.
• Delayed adulthood has had disastrous consequences for procreation in industrialized nations, and is at the root of declining fertility and population collapse.
• The prevailing wisdom in Western nations is that the ages of 18-29 are a time for extreme exploration, with no expectation for leadership.
• CEOs of companies listed on the S&P 500 are getting older and staying in their jobs longer, and 25% of Congress is over the age of 70.
• Anthony Fauci (82) isn’t retiring, and the sins of SBF will lead to even more extreme skepticism of ambitious young founders and leaders.

Published January 17, 2023.

Visit The Free Press to read Katherine Boyle’s original post It’s Time to Get Serious

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Martin Luther King Jr.’s push for material redistribution [Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring]

By Spencer Chen
In [Slow Boring]
January 17, 2023
190 views
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• Martin Luther King Jr. is often invoked by conservatives in their campaign against modern-day anti-racism concepts.
• King’s speeches had more lines than just “content of character and not the color of our skin”.
• King wanted a significant redistribution of economic resources to create a society of equals.
• King’s ideas were superior to what is being pushed by both modern-day DEI devotees and their critics.
• King wanted real access to the ballot, not just a requirement that voter suppression measures be facially race-neutral.
• King wanted to generate meaningful economic opportunities, which is why he launched the Poor People’s Campaign.
• Martin Luther King Jr. wrote an introduction to Bayard Rustin’s “Freedom Budget” in 1966, a plan for massive government-led investment to eradicate poverty and generate full employment.
• King’s vision was for improved public services, an enhanced welfare state, and a robust commitment to full employment.
• King argued that the civil rights movement needed to go in the direction of “class struggle” and “redistribution of economic power” in order to achieve true justice.
• King was not advocating for “colorblindness” but rather for solidarity and a powerful doctrine of solidarity.
• King was asking for nothing more or less than what is promised in the nation’s founding documents and celebrated in its monuments.

Published January 16, 2023. Visit Slow Boring to read Matthew Yglesias’s original post [Martin Luther King Jr.’s push for material redistribution]

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Be Independent! No, Not Like That [Freddie deBoer, Freddie deBoer’s Substack]

By Spencer Chen
In Freddie deBoer
January 16, 2023
213 views
B

• The article discusses the difficulties of being professionally heterodox and the tendency for people to pigeonhole those who step outside of the usual partisan lines.
• It also discusses the tendency of those who claim to value independence and free thinking to only do so when it produces results they agree with.
• The author then goes on to list various rhetorical ploys used to avoid acknowledging America’s guilt in foreign countries, such as weaponized ignorance, whataboutism, and demand for unachievable rigor.
• The author concludes by recommending books to learn more about America’s conduct in the world.

Published January 16, 2023. Visit Freddie deBoer’s Substack to read Freddie deBoer’s original post [Digest, 1/14/2023: Doctor, Doctor]

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