Links 2023-01-24
Highly Linkable - links you need and deserve
Let’s start with the good news.
The Amazon rainforest is not about to disappear. Writing at HumanProgress.org, Joakim Book demonstrates this fact that I am sure I’ve brought up before. The rate of deforestation is low—we have hundreds of years before it would be completely gone—and the rate is declining sharply.
Speaking of things in decline, the perennial worry about the decline in the value of the dollar should be put to rest or at least in perspective. That is the argument from Zachary Bartsch at EWED. Don’t put your money (wealth in currency form) under your mattress and you should be fine. It is only the currency itself that loses purchasing power due to inflation. Use money by investing and spending it. Hording is a psychological mistake whether you’re saving old pizza boxes or old Benjamins.
While I’m passing along advice, Dynomight gives some great advice on being managed. I endorse it all, but of particular appreciation are “be straightforward” and “a good manager will appreciate vigorous internal debate”.
A debate that continues to rage is about generational comparisons. In particular is the on-going “they (previous generations) had it better” war cry. Jeremy Horpedahl continues to bring insights and nuance to this fraught battle. In the latest case writing at EWED he shows how:
Millennials are roughly equal in wealth per capita to Baby Boomers and Gen X at the same age.
Gen X is currently much wealthier than Boomers were at the same age: about $100,000 per capita or 18% greater
A future generation may live in a world with minimal animal suffering and enjoy delicious meat. That was the point in a recent WSJ column by Virginia Postrel on cultivated meat. She then wrote a follow-up Substack post regarding the “fascinating and disturbing” reactions to it. I sense a Bootleggers and Baptists coalition where the strange bedfellows are anti-science naturalists from the progressive left (Baptists) aligning with industry/job protectionists from the conservative right (bootleggers). Perhaps there is a Promethean gap at play.
In case you didn’t understand the reference in that last sentence, read Gurwinder’s 40 Useful Concepts and you will. Great stuff throughout.