{"id":5015,"date":"2010-04-09T10:28:52","date_gmt":"2010-04-09T15:28:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=5015"},"modified":"2010-04-09T10:28:52","modified_gmt":"2010-04-09T15:28:52","slug":"must-reads-of-the-week-nukes-inconsistencies-graphing-the-economic-crisis-half-hookers-palin-2012-mailers-wife-complex-business-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=5015","title":{"rendered":"Must-Reads of the Week: Nukes, Inconsistencies, Graphing the Economic Crisis, Half-Hookers, Palin 2012, Mailer’s Wife, & Complex Business Models"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0Nukes.<\/strong> Jon Stewart and Andrew Sullivan<\/a> both make the same point: Obama’s nuclear policy is the fulfillment of Ronald Reagan’s vision:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart<\/a><\/td>\nMon – Thurs 11p \/ 10c<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Big Bang Treaty<\/a><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
www.thedailyshow.com<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/object><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

2. Inconsistencies. <\/strong>Matt Yglesias<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The main difference between left and right with regard to property rights is simply that the right is invested in a lot of rhetoric about markets and property rights and the left is invested in different historical and rhetorical tropes.<\/p>\n

… Formally, the right is committed to ideas about free markets and the left is committed to ideas about economic equality. But in practice, political conflict much more commonly breaks down around \u201csome stuff some businessmen want to do\u201d vs \u201csome stuff businessmen hate\u201d rather than anything about markets or property rights per se…<\/p>\n

Or if you look at the energy sector, you\u2019ll see that businessmen want to push property rights for the stuff that\u2019s in the ground (coal, oil, whatever) and a commons model for the stuff (particulates, CO2) that\u2019s in the air. You can call that \u201cinconsistent\u201d if you like, but obviously it\u2019s perfectly consistent with what coal and oil executives want! And those industries are the most loyal supporters of \u201cright\u201d politics around.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

3. Graphing the Economic Crisis.<\/strong> Ezra Klein puts out some interesting graphs about the economic crisis and nascent recovery<\/a> including this one:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Klein explains:<\/p>\n

This graph is a political problem for the Obama administration (if not,\u00a0in the short-term, an economic problem<\/a>). But it is also necessary for all the other graphs. The bank rescue, which added temporarily to the deficit, stabilized the stock market and set the stage for its recovery. The stimulus, which also added to the deficit, helped moderate the job losses and and has contributed to recent gains. You could’ve made the lines on this graph better, but only by letting the lines on the other graphs get worse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

4. Half-hookers. <\/strong>Lisa Taddeo for New York<\/em> magazine\u00a0writes about the burgeoning half-hooker culture<\/a> which exists in a bizarre alternate reality existing so close to our own where celebrities and finance guys get their women:<\/p>\n

The general-admission crowds dance, and the table crowds dance a little more woodenly, a little more entitledly, with their finger pads on their tables. The promoters are dancing with the models and the waitresses are dancing with the bottles and everybody finds a place on the floor.<\/p>\n

The floor people, they are just to fill the place up. The celebrities and the athletes and the tycoons are the ones for whom this world is zealously designed. A rung below in after-work pinstripes are the money guys, the Deutsche guys and the Goldman guys and the no-name hedge-fund guys\u2014the \u201cwhales\u201d\u2014guys like that one over there in a Boss suit and John Lobb shoes, standing beside the table that cost him $3,000. Standing\u00a0very<\/em> close to it, like a Little Leaguer who wants to steal second but has never done it before. This gentleman\u2019s not dancing, but he\u2019s thinking about it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s quite a lot to the article. A fascinating piece of reporting.<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0Palin 2012. <\/strong>Chris Bowers makes the argument for why Sarah will win if she runs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

6. Mailer’s Wife.<\/strong> Alex Witchell profiles\u00a0Norris Church Mailer<\/a>, Norman Mailer’s final wife, whose story moved me as I read of it:<\/p>\n

John Buffalo Mailer [stepson of Norris:] \u201cPeople are their best selves and worst selves intermittently,\u201d he told me, \u201cand the best marriages navigate that ride over the hurt, which I believe they did right to the end. They both had options, and at the end of the day the life they created together won out over infidelity, illness and hard times…”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

7. Complex Business Models. <\/strong>Clay Shirsky<\/a>:<\/p>\n

One of the interesting questions about Tainter\u2019s thesis is whether markets and democracy, the core mechanisms of the modern world, will let us avoid complexity-driven collapse, by keeping any one group of elites from seizing unbroken control. This is, as Tainter notes in his book, an open question. There is, however, one element of complex society into which neither markets nor democracy reach\u2014bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

Bureaucracies temporarily reverse the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In a bureaucracy, it\u2019s easier to make a process more complex than to make it simpler, and easier to create a new burden than kill an old one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[Image by me<\/a>.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1.\u00a0Nukes. Jon Stewart and Andrew Sullivan both make the same point: Obama’s nuclear policy is the fulfillment of Ronald Reagan’s vision: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p \/ 10c The Big Bang Treaty www.thedailyshow.com 2. Inconsistencies. Matt Yglesias: The main difference between left and right with regard to property rights is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[143,47,544,953,1032,367,40,955,4,458,44],"tags":[2733,58,2731,2064,93,2729,263,2730,782,56,2732,2727,368,663,2728,81],"class_list":["post-5015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-criticism","category-economics","category-election-2012","category-financial-crisis-economics","category-national-security","category-new-york-city","category-palin-election-2012","category-politics","category-the-opinionsphere","category-videos","tag-alex-witchell","tag-andrew-sullivan","tag-chris-bowers","tag-clay-shirsky","tag-ezra-klein","tag-half-hookers","tag-jon-stewart","tag-lisa-taddeo","tag-matt-yglesias","tag-new-york-magazine","tag-norris-church-mailer","tag-nuclear-policy","tag-ronald-reagan","tag-sarah-palin","tag-the-big-bang-treaty","tag-the-daily-show"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-1iT","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5015"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5017,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5015\/revisions\/5017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}