now struck with doubt as to whether the hammer is under-rated, or whether it's just that the modern hammer is a descendant of the original invention of the stone. I guess they don't call it the "fire age" or the "wheel age".
In communications/political contexts, it is also a useful tool if you wish to get your point across by repeated and forceful re-statement. You can use it to …hammer your point home.
And of course early American civilizations never developed the wheel, though wheeled toys were fairly common among the Inca...including wheeled llamas.
Rabbitholing a bit, I learn that cattle were domesticated 7,000 years before the invention of the wheel in Mesopotamia. It also took about 300 years for the wheel to move from a pottery setup to the side of a cart.
Let's just say the hammer appears to have a high affordance? (Fire: "Hold my beer.")
References to C Thi Nguyen’s “The Score” and Polanyi, woohoo!
Economists who cheer at 0.1% growth, ignore that that means most people are in recession with left behind areas remaining left behind (and voting Reform) and cost of living problems still unaddressed (with the young voting Green). I.e it's the stuff *not* contained in neoclassical algorithms that is mobilising people.
Agreed. Haven't read Nguyen yet but anything about Polanyi has got to be interesting. My kind of people. Now I want to know more.
Am interested to see where this goes...we need new ideas. Look where the old ideas got us: a world of hurt. Might say they are hammering at us.
Re "now struck with doubt"... the fertile stage that precedes the discovery...and breaking out of the orthodoxy, and necessarily becoming a heretic, to the orthodox.
There is a chapter in Peter Drucker's autobiography "Adventures of a Bystander" about the Polanyis as people, and their ideas. Quite a portrait of a brilliant clan that ultimately failed to find the solutions they were looking for.
There are scholars better informed than me who I'm sure could point you towards his various texts, but the Great Transformation is his classic. And if you just want a quick synopsis you can just wiki the 'double movement'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_movement
That was Karl, not Michael! Little bro is probably best to start with “The Study Of Man” which is definitely the path that Austrian economics should have gone down but didn't
And if you want to take it further “Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century” by Mark Blyth is also worth a gander.
Another example of what could have been a "much easier and more profitable book" that instead asked more interesting questions in a more interesting way.
(dear god, I made the mistake of poking through the comment threads there for old time's sake, and what a grim preview of the politics to come: just about every flavor of left-coded eco-pessimism is on display. a giant monument to the psychic damage done by the recently departed Paul Ehrlich to an entire generation of self-styled progressives)
"I don’t think anyone but the most studiedly mindless (and tasteless) contrarian would bother to ask the question “but what did the Nazis get right?” at any great length"
My favourite way of putting this is that if you optimise on a measure that does not capture everything you care about - and that is almost always the case - you optimise *out* those things you care about but are not captured in your measure.
"You’ve all heard the saying: If all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. That’s actually a Modernistic saying. The postmodern version is: If all you have is duct tape, everything starts to look like a duct. Right. When’s the last time you used duct tape on a duct?" — Larry Wall, Perl, the first postmodern computer language (1999, https://www.perl.com/pub/1999/03/pm.html/)
Read this before, good to read again. (Henry Farrell linked to it, from his 'stack reviewing this same book.)
But re-reading your cold open made me think of a funny skeet I saw yesterday. (I would link to it, or at least report the author's name, but ever since Jerry got his blue check, Bluesky is misbehaving.) Anyway, close paraphrase: "Nobody alive right now has ever bought a hammer. Everybody just has a hammer."
[ETA] Site briefly responding. Here is the that skeet, from Lupita Nihongo:
now struck with doubt as to whether the hammer is under-rated, or whether it's just that the modern hammer is a descendant of the original invention of the stone. I guess they don't call it the "fire age" or the "wheel age".
In communications/political contexts, it is also a useful tool if you wish to get your point across by repeated and forceful re-statement. You can use it to …hammer your point home.
I’ll see myself out.
And of course early American civilizations never developed the wheel, though wheeled toys were fairly common among the Inca...including wheeled llamas.
Rabbitholing a bit, I learn that cattle were domesticated 7,000 years before the invention of the wheel in Mesopotamia. It also took about 300 years for the wheel to move from a pottery setup to the side of a cart.
Let's just say the hammer appears to have a high affordance? (Fire: "Hold my beer.")
References to C Thi Nguyen’s “The Score” and Polanyi, woohoo!
Economists who cheer at 0.1% growth, ignore that that means most people are in recession with left behind areas remaining left behind (and voting Reform) and cost of living problems still unaddressed (with the young voting Green). I.e it's the stuff *not* contained in neoclassical algorithms that is mobilising people.
Agreed. Haven't read Nguyen yet but anything about Polanyi has got to be interesting. My kind of people. Now I want to know more.
Am interested to see where this goes...we need new ideas. Look where the old ideas got us: a world of hurt. Might say they are hammering at us.
Re "now struck with doubt"... the fertile stage that precedes the discovery...and breaking out of the orthodoxy, and necessarily becoming a heretic, to the orthodox.
Agreed. For better or worse, I reckon we're in an interregnum stage (about 1930?) with everything up for grabs.
I'm not saying all econometrics isn't useful, but like the shibboleths of a cargo cult, believers often seemingly go through the motions because....?
For instance, what ends does balancing budgets achieve? And more to the point, what major issues are not being addressed?
What’s the Polanyi to read for this context? I know his brother but not him :)
There is a chapter in Peter Drucker's autobiography "Adventures of a Bystander" about the Polanyis as people, and their ideas. Quite a portrait of a brilliant clan that ultimately failed to find the solutions they were looking for.
There are scholars better informed than me who I'm sure could point you towards his various texts, but the Great Transformation is his classic. And if you just want a quick synopsis you can just wiki the 'double movement'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_movement
That was Karl, not Michael! Little bro is probably best to start with “The Study Of Man” which is definitely the path that Austrian economics should have gone down but didn't
Apologies to all, that'll teach me to skim read with my addled old brain! 😆
And if you want to take it further “Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century” by Mark Blyth is also worth a gander.
'Red Plenty' by Francis Spufford is another good book on linear programming in the context of Soviet planning, and the failure modes
Another example of what could have been a "much easier and more profitable book" that instead asked more interesting questions in a more interesting way.
I think our host is aware. 🤣
https://crookedtimber.org/2012/06/02/new-ideas-from-dead-political-systems/
(dear god, I made the mistake of poking through the comment threads there for old time's sake, and what a grim preview of the politics to come: just about every flavor of left-coded eco-pessimism is on display. a giant monument to the psychic damage done by the recently departed Paul Ehrlich to an entire generation of self-styled progressives)
"I don’t think anyone but the most studiedly mindless (and tasteless) contrarian would bother to ask the question “but what did the Nazis get right?” at any great length"
More innocent times.
Amen, brother!
My favourite way of putting this is that if you optimise on a measure that does not capture everything you care about - and that is almost always the case - you optimise *out* those things you care about but are not captured in your measure.
"You’ve all heard the saying: If all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. That’s actually a Modernistic saying. The postmodern version is: If all you have is duct tape, everything starts to look like a duct. Right. When’s the last time you used duct tape on a duct?" — Larry Wall, Perl, the first postmodern computer language (1999, https://www.perl.com/pub/1999/03/pm.html/)
Exactly. Not everything becomes a nail if you just have a hammer. The hammer also becomes a nutcracker, a murder weapon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Were_Never_Really_Here), a way to softly scratch that nasty itch on your back, a lever, an art object (https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-case-disappearing-800-pound-hammer-sculpture). Useful (and as Uncle Ludwig would have it: meaningful).
Have you come across ‘Trust In Numbers’ by Ted Porter? A good read on the history and sociology of quantification.
When all you have is a nail, everything looks like a hammer.
Read this before, good to read again. (Henry Farrell linked to it, from his 'stack reviewing this same book.)
But re-reading your cold open made me think of a funny skeet I saw yesterday. (I would link to it, or at least report the author's name, but ever since Jerry got his blue check, Bluesky is misbehaving.) Anyway, close paraphrase: "Nobody alive right now has ever bought a hammer. Everybody just has a hammer."
[ETA] Site briefly responding. Here is the that skeet, from Lupita Nihongo:
https://bsky.app/profile/otsumamiboy.bsky.social/post/3mipmjunnis2t
The Humphrey Hawkins Full Employment Act gave the Fed the dual mandate.
Full employment
Stable Prices
Stable Currency
The Fed is a bank and the tool banks have is money so they set about using it.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2NS
After 48 years has monetary policy delivered any one of them? No. Why? Because it can't.
James c Scott mentioned