Check here every Wednesday for brief commentary on current events, or follow populyst to receive notification. Read more
Author: populyst
A Few Certainties About Covid-19
There is plenty that we do not know about the coronavirus. But let us take stock of the things that we do know for sure, and of some other things that we will soon know.
Real-world Exponentiality
By now, a child understands exponential growth. If you start with one apple on March 1st and double every three days, you will have a thousand apples on March 31st and a million on April 30th.
But in the real world, not the abstract world of math, there are constraints on that growth. Doubling your apples every three days is feasible for a month or so because you can probably find a thousand apples and also find a place to store them. But it would be more difficult to find, transport and store a million apples, unless you are willing to pack a six car garage with apples from floor to ceiling (accurate math). If you did, most of them would rot and your neighbors would call for psychiatric help, two other constraints on unbridled exponentiality. Read more
The Pandemic as a ‘Gray Rhino’ Event, with Michele Wucker
“The paradox of the Gray Rhinos is that the further they are down the road, the less likely you are to do something about them. But that is the time when it will cost the least and you are most likely to be successful.” ____ Michele Wucker
Sami J. Karam speaks to best-selling author Michele Wucker about her 2016 book The Gray Rhino and how its method and lessons apply to the coronavirus pandemic. Gray Rhino threats are highly probable, highly impactful but often neglected until it is too late or until the cost of dealing with them becomes very high.
Topics include:
- 0:00 Introduction of Michele Wucker
- 1:05 When will we be able to travel to Asia or Europe again?
- 3:10 Explaining the concept and examples of Gray Rhino events
- 9:00 Various reactions to the spread of the pandemic
- 15:50 Was the virus predictable?
- 19:20 Why should we have been readier for the virus when it is so rare?
- 22:00 Why we ignore what is “over there”. Did it start “over there” or over here?
- 25:35 How could we have prepared for the pandemic?
- 31:00 The current catch-22: deaths by virus vs. deaths of despair
- 44:10 Stages of a Gray Rhino event applied to the pandemic
- 50:10 What other Gray Rhino events do you worry about? A triad of Gray Rhinos
- 55:45 How alarmists help avert deep crises
- 59:40 Conclusion
TO HEAR THE PODCAST, CLICK HERE OR ON THE TIMELINE BELOW:
(photo of Michele Wucker by Hal Shipman)
Wednesday Briefs – 25 March 2020
Check here every Wednesday for brief commentary on current events.
In a new podcast this week, Sami J. Karam suggests an approach to estimate the actual number of coronavirus cases in every country.
Please contact us for data or other information concerning this podcast.
TO HEAR THE PODCAST, CLICK HERE OR ON THE TIMELINE BELOW:
Wednesday Briefs – 18 March 2020
Check here every Wednesday for brief commentary on current events. Read more
Wednesday Briefs – 11 March 2020
Check here every Wednesday for brief commentary on current affairs. Read more
Wednesday Briefs – 4 March 2020
Check here every Wednesday for brief commentary on current affairs. Read more
2020 Election: Democrats Heading to a Brokered Convention?
An occasional commentary on the 2020 US Presidential Election in which demographics and identity politics play a bigger role than ever before. Here, we explain why primary and convention rules make it difficult for a frontrunner to emerge in a crowded field.
Today, President’s Day, is as good as any to draw some lessons from the early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Crowded Field
FIRST, the Democrats do not yet have a candidate with proven national appeal. Although Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg ranked first and second in both states, they have yet to show that they can do well in states that are more ethnically diverse. Iowa is only 4% African-American and 6.2% Hispanic/Latino, and New Hampshire only 1.7% and 3.9% respectively. The United States overall is 13.4% African-American and 18.3% Hispanic/Latino.
For Bernie and Pete therefore, the test of national appeal will come in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday when several states with large minority populations will hold their primaries.
Although Bernie came first in New Hampshire with 25.7% of the vote, that result was as much cause for concern as for celebration. In 2016, running against only Hillary Clinton, Bernie had won New Hampshire with 60.1% of the vote. Of course, the lesser draw this year is explained by a more crowded field. Nonetheless, it showed that 74.3% of New Hampshire Democrats preferred someone else over Bernie, so long as her name was not Hillary Clinton. Read more
De-Politicizing Climate Activism
Or how Greta Thunberg can create more converts.
“Nature is not a temple. It is a workshop, and a human being is the worker in it.” _ Ivan Turgenev
Item 1: The outbreak of coronavirus that threatens to create a global pandemic and the tragic sudden death of basketball star Kobe Bryant both remind us that the unexpected can happen quickly and that we humans live in an environment that can at times be ruthlessly hostile.
Nature, fate, providence, or whatever one chooses to call it, works in inscrutable ways. The virus will spread and endanger millions, if humans do not stop it. It has no will or conscience and would inexorably destroy those who are dearest to us, in a matter of days. And, before downing Bryant’s helicopter and killing him, his young daughter and seven others, fate or gravity did not pause for a millisecond to ponder the sadness that it would inflict on hundreds of millions all over the world through such a senseless death.
Modern society is generally free of deadly viruses and helicopters are generally safe to fly. But it took centuries of human progress to get there in both instances. And it will take more human progress and ingenuity to seal the cracks in our vigilance that allowed the coronavirus to emerge and spread, and the helicopter to crash .
Item 2: Last week in Davos, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin volunteered that climate activist Greta Thunberg ought to get an economics degree before preaching her message to grown-up policy makers. That is more confidence in university economics departments than most of Miss Thunberg’s critics would be willing to concede. It is true that Miss Thunberg’s message is incomplete, but that is not for lack of economic pedigree. The building blocks that are glaringly missing from her campaign are 1) a better understanding of Turgenev’s aphorism on nature and man, and 2) a trip or two to China, India or other fast developing countries.
Talking About Cities, with Aaron Renn
“You go to some of these places [Midwestern cities], the question they ask when they meet you is ‘where did you go to high school’?… The fact that where you went to high school is a social marker places you in a community. You go to Washington DC and nobody cares where you went to high school… In New York, they ask ‘where are you from?’ because it is assumed that you are not from here. Some of these places in the Midwest… need more outsiders to come in because outsiders are the natural constituency of the new.” _____Aaron Renn
Aaron Renn, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, speaks to Sami J. Karam about US cities. What makes the large coastal cities so successful? What are the prospects for mid-sized and smaller cities in the Rust Belt? What is the current state of play for mass transit? What role does immigration play in the development of cities?
Among the cities discussed, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Washington DC, Seattle, Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Francisco, Charlotte, Minneapolis-St Paul, Nashville, Columbus, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, St Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, Madison, Iowa City, Rochester (MN), Singapore, Paris.
Topics include:
- 0:00 Introduction of Aaron Renn
- 1:15 What makes the large coastal cities so successful at creating wealth?
- 8:30 Can a large city become dominant in a new sector? (e.g., New York in tech)
- 13:00 How would you categorize non-coastal cities in terms of their prospects?
- 16:30 Why some cities are struggling while others are restructuring successfully
- 20:55 Will some smaller cities turn into ghost towns within twenty years?
- 26:35 What is going on with Detroit’s recovery?
- 30:40 The role of new immigrants in the development of a city
- 36:50 Immigration policy in Canada and Australia compared to the US and UK
- 43:50 What is the future for mass transit?
- 48:00 The lack of city to city benchmarking in infrastructure costing and execution
- 53:40 Is there anything going on in high-speed rail, other than in California?
- 59:40 The decline of trust in institutions and the problem of cronyism.
TO HEAR THE PODCAST, CLICK HERE OR ON THE TIMELINE BELOW:
