Quote of the Month “The human condition, but what of the angelic? Halfway between Allahgod and homosap, did they ever doubt? They did: challenging God’s will one day they hid muttering beneath the Throne, daring to ask forbidden things: antiquestions. Is it right that. Could it not be argued. Freedom, the old antiquest. He calmed them down, naturally, employing management skills a la god. Flattered them: you will be the instruments of my will on earth, of the salvationdamnation of man, all the usual etcetera. And hey presto, end of protest, on with the haloes, back to work. Angels are easily pacified; turn them into instruments and they’ll play your harpy tune. Human beings are tougher nuts, can doubt anything, even the evidence of their own eyes. Of behind-their-own eyes. Of what, as they sink heavy-lidded, transpires behind closed peepers… angels, they don’t have much in the way of a will. To will is to disagree; not to submit; to dissent.” - Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses, p. 94-95
My Recent Writing:
What I’m Reading:
1. Why China’s debt-ridden real estate sector is an economic time bomb
Why you should read it: Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Brad Setser outlines the problems facing China’s real estate sector in Foreign Affairs and how its ongoing decline will reshape the Chinese economy.
“The Chinese real estate sector is teetering. The largest private Chinese developer has defaulted on its external bonds. Most developers are struggling to refinance their domestic bonds. Home prices have gone down for the last 11 months. New construction is down 45 percent. The most acute stress can be traced back to developers who raised large sums by preselling yet-to-be built apartments. Some, however, failed to set aside reserves to guarantee the completion of these units, and households that took out mortgages to buy these homes have threatened to stop paying…China likely will not suffer a crisis that recalls the U.S. Great Recession of 2008. But that doesn’t mean the Chinese economy is in the clear. A new growth engine won’t automatically replace the boost that the property sector traditionally provided. If China elects to goose growth by increasing exports—as it has done in the past—that could have serious implications for countries around the world struggling to find their economic footing after the shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
“Before the 2008 global financial crisis, China’s internal debt-to-GDP ratio was stable, as China could rein in its financial sector while stunning export growth propelled China’s economy and industrial development. Export-led growth minimized debt risks inside China but was destabilizing to the rest of the global economy. It led to job losses in the manufacturing-intensive parts of the European and U.S. economies; the United States was able to overcome the drag on demand from large external deficits only through an increase in household borrowing that proved to be globally destabilizing. Put simply, it was one of the factors that helped spark the 2008 recession…Back in 2009, China’s economy was able to pivot away from exports toward domestic real estate investment to mitigate the global fallout from the U.S. housing crisis because China’s financial system was strong enough to support this shift. Plus, China needed more housing and modern infrastructure. Today, China could not reverse that pivot with a large move away from real estate and back to exports without significant disruption, in part because its share of the global economy has roughly tripled in the years since the global financial crisis. The scale of the lost domestic activity from real estate that would need to be made up through a shift in global demand toward Chinese goods is just too big, and China’s trading partners themselves are often struggling with their own debt challenges.”
Why it matters: “China can try to manage a permanent downshift in real estate investment by taking steps to sustain and strengthen household demand and by finding new ways to help the industrial sectors that have relied on excessive property investment retool to meet internal consumer demand. Above all, Chinese government officials need to accept this difficult truth: rising internal debt and the end of a period of unusually high investment means that China’s historic growth surge is most likely a thing of the past.”
2. How “friendshoring” became the hot new global business trend
Why you should read it: In Foreign Policy, American Enterprise Institute senior fellow writes about the emerging trend of “friendshoring,” the movement of businesses out of China and to “friendly countries where they don’t need to worry that they’ll be caught in the geopolitical line of fire.”
“For corporations, offshoring to China was a financial imperative considering that U.S. manufacturing workers, who earned $20 per hour—or more—could be replaced by workers making less than a dollar an hour. And lots of white-collar Western jobs went to China, too… Lots of ordinary Americans, Germans, Italians, Swedes, and others were enraged, too—unsurprisingly so, given that their livelihoods and thus often their identities had been taken away from them. They could retrain, and many did, but offshoring may be the original sin that caused always existing divisions between so-called elites and so-called ordinary people to erupt into the barely manageable divisions that plague Western societies today. It’s hard to see how Donald Trump would have been elected without the legacy of that bitterness.”
“Offshoring is here to stay—but that doesn’t mean manufacturing in China is. In a June survey conducted by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, 23 percent of Western firms said they were considering moving operations away from the country, while 50 percent reported that business in China had become more politicized in 2021 than it had been in previous years… Part of this is pandemic pressure. China’s zero-COVID policy has snarled supply chains and left factory workers locked in their dorms—and shows no sign of ending anytime soon. China’s demographics have also meant a shrinking pool of potential workers, and as the country has climbed into the middle ranks of global income, labor has become more expensive. But Beijing’s growing aggressiveness toward the West and its insistence on maintaining ties with Moscow have also left executives nervous that they could be caught on the wrong side of global conflict. The Chinese Communist Party’s insistence on ideological purity doesn’t help, with party cells now mandatory in foreign companies… Beijing has demonstrated that it regards foreign companies as fair game in international fights. Sweden’s Ericsson has been targeted in this manner; so have Australian winemakers, Taiwanese pineapple growers, and the entirety of Lithuanian manufacturing. It’s a risk that Japanese and South Korean brands were already attuned to after numerous past incidents, such as the targeting of Lotte supermarkets when Beijing took offense over South Korea installing the THAAD anti-missile system, but it took a while for Europe and North America to catch up. And China doesn’t play fair. Measures often aren’t officially announced or given a legal standing, just enforced slowdowns at ports or pressure on consumers or suppliers to break ties. A study published last month by the Swedish National China Centre reported that Chinese consumer boycotts have been linked to the government in at least one-third of cases.”
Why it matters: “But where to friendshore? Companies currently operating in China are planning moves to countries including Turkey, Serbia, India, and Vietnam, while others plan to spend a bit more and go with locations in countries that are traditionally allies. Turkey and India, say, are hardly bosom buddies of the West, but they won’t be willing—or able—to exploit globalization for geopolitical gains… The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue is likely to position itself as a friendshoring hub. Indeed, at a July supply chain summit hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, the invited participants included not just Europeans but also senior officials from Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. Friendshoring will need to involve a string of countries, since no country can single-handedly replace the factory of the world. And replacing one major location with several smaller ones will involve complex logistical planning, not to mention more transportation.”
3. How the “Cult of Offense” won
Why you should read it: Commenting on the recent attempted murder of novelist Salman Rushdie by an attacker apparently motivated by devotion to Iran’s ruling regime, The Atlantic writer Graeme Wood notes that the “cult of offense” that’s arisen in recent decades has no interest in defending the right to free expression.
“The honorable response [to the recent attempted murder] is to say that we are all Rushdie now, and that America’s failure to protect him is a collective shame. In the face of this thuggery, Rushdie’s work should be read publicly, and his name thrown in the face of apologists for the regime that once ordered and offered to pay for his assassination… But we are not all Rushdie. And in fact the past couple decades have led me to wonder if some of us are more Khomeini than we’d like to admit.”
“In 1989, the reaction to the fatwa was split three ways: Some supported it; some opposed it; and some opposed it, to be sure, but still wanted everyone to know how bad Rushdie and his novel were. This last faction, Team To Be Sure, took the West to task for elevating this troublesome man and his insulting book, whose devilry could have been averted had others been more attuned to the sensibilities of the offended… We have conceded moral authority to howling mobs, and the louder the howls, the more we have agreed that the howls were worth heeding. The novelist Hanif Kureishi has said that ‘nobody would have the balls’ to write The Satanic Verses today. More precisely, nobody would publish it, because sensitivity readers would notice the theological delicacy of the book’s title and plot. The ayatollahs have trained them well, and social-media disasters of recent years have reinforced the lesson: Don’t publish books that get you criticized, either by semiliterate fanatics on the other side of the world or by semiliterate fanatics on this one.”
Why it matters: “V. S. Naipaul called Khomeini’s fatwa ‘a most extreme form of literary criticism’—a macabre joke that seemed at the time to come at Rushdie’s expense. Today it sounds just as macabre but hits a worthier target: those who muddle the distinction between offense and violence, and between a disagreement over ideas and a disagreement over whether your head should remain attached to your body… I hope these distinctions will need no further elaboration, and that those who elided them will swallow their full helping of shame. Rushdie has survived long enough to see free expression debased in the name of free expression. Survive a bit longer, Salman, and we’ll see this cause restored to the status it deserves.”
4. You do not, under any circumstances, “gotta hand it to” the original America Firsters
Why you should read it: Writing in Talking Points Memo, historian Eric Rauchway explains that attempts to argue that the original Lend-Lease legislation amounted to a “dramatic act of escalation” in World War II are not at all supported by the historical record.”
“Observing the [Biden] administration’s comparison between [1941] and [Russia’s invasion of Ukraine], some scholars challenge the historical narrative, and in doing so have revived the arguments leveled against U.S. aid to the Allies in the early years of World War II. Adam Tooze, skeptical of the current Democratic leadership, urges historians to discard ‘the sugar-coated narrative of a ‘good war’ won by the ‘arsenal of democracy’’ and understand the Lend-Lease law instead as a ‘dramatic act of escalation’ in the conflict with Hitler…From an opposite ideological position, the neoconservative Robert Kagan agrees, accepting arguments of self-proclaimed realists and other Roosevelt critics that ‘American security was not immediately or even prospectively threatened.’ Thus, Kagan argues approvingly, U.S. intervention in World War II was unforced; it was a choice the Roosevelt administration made, hoping to impose liberal ideals on the world… While similar arguments casting Lend-Lease as an unnecessary escalation were common in 1941, it is worth briefly noting that they were often made by people who were at least Nazi-curious, including many members of the America First movement.”
"Setting these alarming associations momentarily aside: Tooze and Kagan — and anyone else arguing that America First was substantially correct — owe their readers an alternative history in which, absent U.S. aid to the Allies, Nazi ambitions find their limits. In 1939 and 1940, Germany had already — together with the USSR, then still Germany’s non-aggressor neighbor — divided eastern Europe. Then Germany conquered Norway and western Europe, and began bombing British airfields and cities. Fascist Italy waged war on Greece, which Germany would soon help defeat; likewise, German forces would aid Italy in North Africa, threatening capture of the Suez Canal and with it control of shipping to the East… [Winston] Churchill here forecast the fallacy underlying arguments rehabilitating America Firstism: that Hitler would, if unprovoked, show ‘a merciful moderation’ from which he had, thus far, refrained. Instead Hitler cited a series of pretexts — some based on real events, some wholly invented — to advance the global race war he wanted. As Tooze notes, Hitler complained that Lend-Lease was an act of war — but a war that ‘was sure to come sooner or later anyway.’ On that reading of history, the argument for Lend-Lease as escalation loses force: if not for Lend-Lease, Hitler would have found something else to propel him onward. Evidence is lacking that, absent U.S. aid to the Allies, Nazism would have limited itself.”
Why it matters: “Whatever may be true of today’s Lend-Lease, the 1941 version was less an escalation than a recognition of the path on which Hitler had already set the world — a recognition that U.S. voters had already registered. As the historian Andrew Johnstone notes, the 1940 election put the question of aid to the Allies to the electorate — whatever Republican Wendell Willkie’s personal views, he ran as the isolationist candidate, accusing Roosevelt of ‘arbitrary and dictatorial’ action for supplying Britain with destroyers and, in full ‘just-asking-questions’ mode, saying, ‘many of us have wondered if he is deliberately inciting us to war.’ Voters told pollsters they would prefer Willkie if there were no war in Europe but, under actually prevailing circumstances, they preferred Roosevelt. They understood, perhaps better than some modern scholars, how to evaluate the likely alternative history, and made their decision accordingly.”
5. How liberals and progressives differ
Why you should read it: For PsyPost, Eric Dolan details a new study that posits fundamental differences between self-proclaimed progressives and liberals.
"I a progressive in the United States just a more extreme version of a liberal? New research suggests that is not the case. Self-described progressives and self-described liberals have significantly different views on a number of issues related to free speech, equality, diversity, and identity, according to a series of studies published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.”
“[Study co-author Travis] Proulx and his colleagues narrowed down the issues to four general tendencies that distinguished progressives and liberals. First, progressives supported imposing immediate changes to increase diversity, such as maintaining diversity quotas. Second, progressives were opposed to cultural appropriation. Liberals, in contrast, were more likely to agree with statements such as ‘People should be permitted to adopt whatever cultural characteristics that appeal to them [music, fashion], regardless of status inequalities…’ Thirdly, progressives supported publicly censuring those perceived to hold discriminatory views. In other words, progressives tended to agree with statements such as ‘Those who express bigoted views should be exposed and deserve the backlash that follows.’ Finally, progressives were less likely than liberals to express a desire to incrementally promote equality for the long-term and tended to disagree with statements such as ‘Most progress has been made by ignoring social identity and appealing to our shared experiences.’”
Why it matters: “‘In spite of common characterizations of this distinction (e.g., ‘progressive’ vs. ‘moderate’ liberals), progressives appear to differ from traditional liberals more as a matter of kind (i.e., holding different beliefs) than degree (i.e., being ‘extreme’ left-wingers),’ Proulx said. ‘It remains to be determined whether these same differences in kind manifest within non-U.S. left-wing cultural contexts.’”
6. Why the left is so reluctant to admit it’s often a culture war aggressor
Why you should read it: In The Critic, British writer Ian Leslie contends that progressives remain in deep denial over their own culture war participation and prefer instead to portray themselves as hapless victims of right-wing hostility.
“This mode of disguised animus is symptomatic of the progressive left’s tortured relationship with its own aggression. The idea of a ‘fabricated culture war’ ginned up by right-wing media and Tory politicians is a staple of liberal-left discourse. The implicit premise seems to be that if it weren’t for those pesky culture warriors, the British people would gladly accept, for instance, that there is no meaningful distinction between a trans woman and a natal woman, or that their own country is indelibly racist. I don’t think so. Propositions like those may or may not be true, but they are, to say the very least, contentious among readers and voters at large. If leftists want to fight for them, they should. What they shouldn’t do is pretend they’re not fighting.”
“Here is a funny thing about Britain’s ‘culture war’: the people who decry it the most are those who are most invested in it. Almost every time you read an article making an accusation of culture war, it’s by someone on the left who is spraying bullets at an enemy… Something in the psychology of the modern left prevents it from assuming this position [of the aggressor]. It always wants to paint the other side as the aggressor and itself as impeccably eirenic, even as it denounces those who disagree with it. This will never be tenable since the left by its nature seeks to make cultural change, whilst the right seeks to resist it. Vigorous campaigns to shift norms of language and behaviour are one of the left’s raisons d’etre, the source of some of its proudest achievements. Yet for some reason the term ‘culture war’ now gets reserved for those who reject or question progressive norms, rather than those who construct and police them.”
Why it matters: “The left used to pride itself on being openly combative — a waspish irritant in the cultural mainstream. Perhaps because it has won so many of its battles, it now tries unconvincingly to play at being merely sensible, the guardian of accepted truths which float above politics. To maintain this fiction, opponents must be painted as belligerent or bigoted or just oddly obsessed by merely ‘cultural’ issues. Eyes are rolled at those who argue over pronouns or genitalia, for instance — even though the only reason that gender and the sexed body are hotly debated is that progressives have sought to radically redefine them… Progressives are proposing sweeping cultural changes. That’s OK — that’s their job. But those changes should be argued and yes, fought for, honestly.”
7. How the Inflation Reduction Act will expand financing for green energy and electric vehicles
Why you should read it: New York Times reporter Ivan Penn gives a rundown of the direct loans and loan guarantees for clean energy, conversion of fossil fuel power plans to nuclear and renewable power, and electric vehicles.
“The law authorizes as much as $350 billion in additional federal loans and loan guarantees for energy and automotive projects and businesses. The money, which will be disbursed by the Energy Department, is in addition to the better-known provisions of the law that offer incentives for the likes of electric cars, solar panels, batteries and heat pumps… The Energy Department’s loan programs began in 2005 under the George W. Bush administration but expanded significantly in the Obama era. The department provided a crucial loan that helped Tesla expand when it sold only expensive two-door electric sports cars; the company is now the world’s most valuable automaker.”
"The department’s loan program office is reviewing 77 applications for $80 billion in loans sought before the new climate law was approved. The Inflation Reduction Act will add $100 billion to existing loan programs for financing production of electric vehicles, for instance, and for projects on tribal lands. It will also add up to $250 billion in new loan guarantees and $5 billion to support the costs of loan programs… The Biden administration has made nuclear power a focal point of its efforts to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector by 2035. The administration has offered billions of dollars to help existing facilities like the Diablo Canyon Power Plant — a nuclear operation on California’s coast that is set to close by the end of 2025 — stay open longer. It is also backing new technologies like small modular reactors that the industry has long said would be cheaper, safer and easier to build than conventional large nuclear reactors.”
Why it matters: “[The Inflation Reduction Act includes] a major expansion of federal loan programs that could help the fight against climate change by channeling more money to clean energy and converting plants that run on fossil fuels to nuclear or renewable energy… The aid could breathe life into futuristic technologies that banks might find too risky to lend to or into projects that are just short of the money they need to get going.”
8. Why everything’s so old these days
Why you should read it: The Atlantic writer Derek Thompson explores why just about every field of endeavor in contemporary America is dominated by people decades past retirement age.
“Not only are Americans overall living longer, but richer Americans are living even longer, and rich Americans with access to dietitians, personal exercise, and high-class medical care are extending their primes within the context of longer lives. As a result, we should expect older workers to vigorously contribute to their fields much longer than they used to… [Another] explanation for the rapid aging of our political leaders, academic faculty, and chief-executive class is that the Boomer generation is choosing to stay in the workforce longer than previous generations did. This has created what the writer Paul Millerd calls a ‘Boomer blockade’ at the top of many organizations, keeping Gen-X and Millennial workers from promotions. As older workers remain in advanced positions in politics and business, younger workers who would have ascended the ranks in previous decades are getting stuck in the purgatory of upper-middle management.”
“Longer lives and increasing workism could explain why our political and business leaders are quickly getting older. But they don’t explain the biggest mysteries I’ve highlighted in the field of science—such as why the average age of Nobel Prize laureates has increased or why young star researchers are rarer than they once were…The burden of knowledge affects the average age of scientists in several ways. First, attaining mastery at a young age of an existing domain becomes harder. Since scientists have to learn so much in fields such as physics or chemistry, they take longer to become established, and the average age for achieving breakthrough work (or fancy prizes) goes up and up. Second, the knowledge burden necessitates large teams of researchers to make new breakthroughs, and these teams tend to be led by older principal investigators. Third, scientific-funding institutions, such as the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, may be awarding a disproportionate amount of funding to older researchers precisely because they’re biased against younger researchers who they assume haven’t overcome the knowledge burdens of their field… The burden of knowledge theory represents a double-edged sword of progress. It is precisely because we know so much about the world that it is getting harder to learn more about the world. And one side effect of this phenomenon is that science is rapidly aging.”
Why it matters: “America’s multidisciplinary gerontocracy is complex. It comes from a mix of obviously good things (we’re living longer, healthier lives), dubiously good things (an obsession with the music and tastes of the 1980s), and straightforwardly bad things (a stunning dearth of young political power and an apparent funding bias against young scientists)… Another matter worth investigating is that other countries don’t share the gerontocracy problem across disciplines. In the U.K., for example, the public is getting older, but its leaders aren’t. I think we should be more open to asking hard questions, such as ‘If the Democratic Party is the preference of America’s young people, why are so few young people represented in its leadership?’ and ‘How do we balance a respect for the elderly with a scientific approach to evaluating the cognitive state of our oldest political and corporate leaders?’ In the end, this is about nothing less than how an aging country learns to grow up wisely.”
9. How the James Webb Space Telescope is already revolutionizing astronomy
Why you should read it: Washington Post science writer Joel Achenbach relates how the the James Webb Space Telescope has given astronomers new questions to ponder after just eight months on the job.
“The James Webb Space Telescope, performing splendidly as it examines the universe, has got astronomers scratching their heads. The very distant universe looks a little different than expected… The first scientific results have emerged in recent weeks, and what the telescope has seen in deepest space is a little puzzling. Some of those distant galaxies are strikingly massive. A general assumption had been that early galaxies — which formed not long after the first stars ignited — would be relatively small and misshapen. Instead, some of them are big, bright and nicely structured… The Webb is seeing things no one has ever seen in such sharp detail and at such tremendous distances. Research teams across the planet are looking at publicly released data and racing to spot the most distant galaxies or make other remarkable discoveries. Science often proceeds at a stately pace, advancing knowledge incrementally, but the Webb is dumping truckloads of enticing data on scientists all at once.”
“What is certain is that, for now, the $10 billion telescope — a joint effort of NASA and the space agencies of Canada and Europe — is delivering novel observations of not only those faraway galaxies but also closer-to-home objects like Jupiter, a giant asteroid and a newly discovered comet… Carbon dioxide has been detected in the atmosphere of a distant, giant planet named WASP-39 b. It is ‘the first definitive detection of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet,’ according to Knicole Colon, a Webb project scientist at NASA. Although WASP-39 b is considered far too hot to be habitable, the successful detection of carbon dioxide demonstrates the acuity of Webb’s vision and holds promise for future examination of distant planets that might harbor life.”
Why it matters: “‘It’s nonstop, 24-7, just science pouring back,’ said Heidi Hammel, a planetary astronomer and vice president for science for the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. ‘And it’s a huge diversity of science. I saw Jupiter’s great red spot — but then two hours later, now we’re looking at M33, this spiral galaxy. Two hours later, now we’re looking at an exoplanet that I actually know by name. It’s very cool to watch that.’”
Odds and Ends
Things that have been found as water levels recede amidst the global summer heat wave: dinosaur tracks in Texas, WWII-era warships in the Danube River, and the “Spanish Stonehenge…”
Why breaking off rudders is the hot new thing among young orcas…
What happened when then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Minnesota in 1990…
Why dogs help kids reduce their stress better than guided relaxation sessions…
A visitor's guide to the ancient philosophical attractions of Athens…
What I’m Listening To
A trio of songs by Journey:
“Feeling That Way/Anytime” from the band’s 1978 album Infinity.
“Ask the Lonely,” a stand-alone single from 1983.
The Bryce Miller/Alloy Tracks remix of “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart),” as heard in the recent season of Stranger Things.
Image of the Month
