Another List of Fake Versus Real Problems
Focus on real problems and quit wasting our time on fake ones, please.
Here is another partial list like the one I did previously.
Fake:
Children engaging with social media - Jointly this and the following item have become the moral panics of our age. James Czerniawski’s recent appearance on The Curious Task Podcast is a good overview of how mistaken this worry is. He also illustrates how blunt laws are ineffective toward the ostensible goals with meaningful negative unintended consequences. Tyler Cowen is very much right on this issue.
Smartphone use by children in school and elsewhere - As I’ve noted previously, I find Peter Gray to be very balanced on this topic. Here as well Tyler Cowen engages with the research on this often continuing to find it not supporting the moral-panic point of view (see this and this). And consider Adam Omary as a case study. I see this issue as the latest version of the fight against technology and change. Smartphones are a tool including being a tool that reaches other tools like AI. Tools can be useful and they can be misused. It is up to us as parents, as teachers, and everyone as norm setters generally to take responsibility for striking the right balance in this nuanced arena.
AI data center water use and land use - Follow those links to learn a lot more from Andy Masley on why these supposed problems are complete nonsense. And see also Christian Britschgi’s article on the topic. Water use is laughably not a worry, and the land use is as well once you realize that’s always an issue with any use of land. Market prices solve this problem, which makes it not a problem in the sense that people raising these alarms think of it.
Corporate ownership of housing - From build-to-rent to outright purchase by corporations (dunt-dunt-duh) this has become a classic horseshoe issue uniting morons on the right and the left. I use the term morons advisedly pulling it out here simply because 30-seconds of clear thinking reveals this simply cannot be a real problem. Start with the exceptionally small volume of homes we are talking about (roughly 0.59% of single-family homes are owned by institutional investors) then ask “what could these corporations want with these homes?” No they don’t want to simply acquire them. They see them as a profitable opportunity for rental—to people who need homes. Let me head off the unserious follow-up question of “and doesn’t that drive up housing costs” with a flat “no”. That increase is already baked into the situation, which is why the corporation is there to perform the much-needed role of middleman. Besides the natural (i.e., even in a true free-market situation) case of a role for such a middleman, we have created a need for investors by making homeownership so difficult to the point of de facto illegality for so many would-be borrowers looking to buy homes—roughly 15 million would-be mortgagees cut off from mortgage loans. So the real problem in this area is how much poorer we are because of bad policy, which the corporate ownership crackdown would greatly worsen.
Real (but greatly exaggerated if not simply misunderstood):
Data center nearby noise and electricity use - There is a noise issue, but it isn’t the calamity it is made out to be. Again, this is a tradeoff to be made (paging Ronald Coase). Similar to the land use, electricity use is a concern. Yet again, this is solvable and overblown by the critics. What is needed is good policy allowing new supply, which can have the added benefit of more capacity and lower prices for all users. Along with that comes credit risk to make sure you don’t build it before they come or can reliably be around to cover those fixed costs into the future.
Food deserts and grocery difficulties in major American cities - I come not to praise Mamdani but to bury his nonsensical gibberish. It is unduly difficult and costly to obtain good food supply in cities like NYC. That only is a job for government to solve because it is one caused by government. GET. OUT. OF. THE. WAY! Let the most amazing food supply solution in the history of the world to do its job. Of course, I’m talking about Walmart, et al. This is a solved problem if we would only allow the solution.