Julius Krein
@JuliusKrein
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The definitive account of Operation Warp Speed:
Operation Warp Speed was a triumph of public health policy. But it was also a triumph and validation of industrial policy. OWS demonstrates the strength of the U.S. developmental state, despite forty years of ideological assault.
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Enjoyed being a guest on
@ezraklein
's podcast. One of his (collegial and serious) questions that I recall rambling on about but not really answering clearly is why this moment is not simply a triumph for the Left. Let me attempt a clearer answer here:
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To ring in 2023, I wrote a long essay on ESG for
@compactmag_
. I argue that ESG is not the opposite of Reagan-era shareholder primacy but an outgrowth of it. Thus efforts to oppose ESG on the grounds of "profits over politics" are worse than useless....
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My defense of strategic economic planning (and critique of Hayek) for the launch of American Compass:
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America's gerontocracy is devouring its children--and everyone else:
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This book probably wasn't worth reviewing, but I did it anyway...
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Honored to have been invited on Hidden Forces with
@kofinas
, one of the best podcasts out there featuring highly informed interviews on finance, economics, and politics:
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My contribution to the
@amconmag
symposium "What Is Conservatism?": conservatism is an ideology of and vehicle for self-marginalization; hastening its inevitable demise is a precondition of accomplishing anything significant in formal politics...
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Some good news for a change: two serious proposals to support domestic semiconductor foundries have been introduced in Congress
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US policy since WWII has largely taken American manufacturing dominance for granted, even though our manufacturing has struggled since the 1970s. Innovation and R&D is largely disconnected from production. CHIPS & IRA do not really address these problems, but they can be solved.
Planners and businessmen of the postwar era presumed that America’s leadership in mass production would be enduring, but this was not to be. The disconnect between innovation and production would lead to profound weaknesses.
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Anecdotally, I'm given to understand that
@AmericanAffrs
has a significant audience in China. Of course, this only confirms suspicions that Chinese elites are more serious & intelligent than their American counterparts...though more and more in the U.S. are starting to catch up.
Kinda interesting how Chinese state media picked up on that
@AmericanAffrs
essay on the "Brazilianization of the World"
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Congrats to the Trump admin and GOP: despite bending over backwards for PE, the industry overwhelmingly donates to your opponents. A fitting denouement for the zombie Reagan agenda….
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Saagar Enjeti reviews Thomas Frank (and more):
Many self-described left-populists refuse to acknowledge the deep unpopularity of cultural leftism, and so their appropriation of the populist label is often at least as dubious as efforts by the neoliberal Right to don the same mantle. --
@esaagar
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Some thoughts on the future of the Right--a perennial favorite topic it seems!--for the Kennedy School Review:
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My attempt to introduce the concept of performance legitimacy into American politics:
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Sen. Rubio proposes taxing share buybacks as dividends. A necessary first step toward correcting the skewed incentives that reward financial engineering over productive investment:
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Relative lack of discussion on this issue is one of many indications of how fundamentally unserious American politics is....
For the foreseeable future, the semiconductor industry will remain a critical sector, a high stakes geopolitical issue, and a source of tension between Beijing, Washington, and Taipei:
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Both meritocracy and affirmative action were shaped by the Cold War—and both went off the rails during the "end of history." Today, successful reforms of higher education must meet the new challenges of great power competition.
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I reviewed the latest contribution to what I call "conservatism studies" for the TLS:
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What if the driving force of political "realignment" ends up being the center-left establishment? Here I offer such a thought experiment:
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I look at the oil and tobacco industries in an attempt to explain what both neoliberals and progressives get right and wrong about inflation for
@unherd
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Glad to have been a guest on one of the most interesting—and certainly the best named—political economy podcasts:
🚨New Episode🚨
Left populism, classical Marxism, old fashioned social democracy... all are in decay. But so is conservatism. Are we due a massive political realignment?
/145/ The End of Conservatism ft.
@JuliusKrein
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The failure of the conservative legal movement--which promised to defend social conservatism but structurally can only deliver for big business--is just beginning and will have profound consequences. This article outlines the contradictions that will tear it apart:
A philosophy of antitrust intended to rein in judges has empowered giant corporations to crush rivals and blackmail governments. An interpretive method intended to prioritize text over theory has allowed judges to read modern norms backward into the past.
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Apropos of nothing, here's a video of me speaking at a guest lecture at HLS with Cornel West and Roberto Unger
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Good interview with
@aaron_renn
on his recent American Affairs article and GOP reactions to it:
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Wherein I discuss Trump, pro wrestling, and Nietzsche 🤷♂️
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Here I argue that while we imagine firms are profit-maximizing, they are primarily driven to maximize valuation, and the two are not the same. This is a problem for economic theory; and helps explain underinvestment in everything but software—and poor performance of value stocks.
Maximizing valuation often involves forgoing substantial profit opportunities. But if the link between shareholder value and profits is severed, then the justifications for shareholder primacy—and much else in economic theory—collapse.
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I couldn't resist reviewing four recent books on political philosophy:
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The rising importance of the family office model, and the shift to "wealth preservation" over "wealth creation," is an underappreciated dynamic that has distorted finance and investment in recent years. This article explores it in the context of competition with the "China model"
We begin with our conclusion: China has surpassed or will soon surpass the United States in many key dimensions. Everywhere in the West, mobile private capital has held the public realm hostage while simultaneously demanding ever-larger subsidies.
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In 2010, US producers controlled roughly 65% of mitomycin manufacturing and were selling doses for about $65. In 2011, Accord, an Indian manufacturer, slashed its prices to gain control of the market. In 2013–14, it raised prices from $97 to $170. By 2017, prices reached $540.
The US is reliant on imports for at least 2/3 of our generic medicines, and nearly 90% of generic API facilities are overseas. Nearly half of all generics on the FDA’s new essential medicines list appear in some form on the FDA’s drug shortage list.
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@hamandcheese
@gabrielwinant
@rortybomb
Here is the full (cordial or at least professional) email correspondence, which makes what he said all the more bizarre....
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Some thoughts on the confused state of conservative philanthropy:
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Arguably too confident in the assumption that the Trump era will end in a few weeks, but a pretty good piece on the future of the GOP
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these interviews are great
@nassimtaliban
I can only imagine how Julius Krein must have felt having to make Nic's citation with a straight face.
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@annakhachiyan
@AdamLehrer
I don't plan to get into this too much since it's all so ridiculous, but he didn't really "reject" it in the way implied here. See the full email correspondence:
@hamandcheese
@gabrielwinant
@rortybomb
Here is the full (cordial or at least professional) email correspondence, which makes what he said all the more bizarre....
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Some thoughts on the state of "postneoliberalism" for the New Statesman:
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American Affairs Summer 2021 issue now online:
- Inside Operation Warp Speed
- China Cracks Down on Tech Monopolies
- The Brazilianization of the World
- Presidential Apprentice
- Section 230
- Populism
- Foucault
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@hamandcheese
@gabrielwinant
@rortybomb
People should feel free to hate me all they want, but the idiotic conspiracy theories are just pathetic--as Sam notes, Scaife is in fact quite hostile to us
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Excellent piece by
@calebwatney
outlining a number of practical approaches that realistically can be--and in some cases already are being--implemented at NASA, ARPA-H, etc....
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American culture wars serve not as an "opiate of the masses" but rather the "bath salts of the bourgeoisie," a provocative historical analysis from Michael Cuenco:
Americans can no longer recall a time before the culture war became the central principle of their political existence. But the war is not meant to be won. Its object is not victory over wokeism or Trumpism but to keep the very structure of society intact.
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Admittedly biased, but I think this is one of the most important political economy pieces of the last decade (at least). The artificial ringfencing and concentration of profits + IP rents is as significant as (and interconnected with) financialization, offshoring, inequality, etc
Changes in corporate structure have concentrated profits in firms with low labor head counts, a low marginal propensity to invest, and easy tax avoidance. Reduced investment and worsening inequality in turn slow GDP growth and aggravate social tensions.
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Over the last several decades, Republicans and Democrats have effectively swapped many of their historical voter blocs. But Democrats also replaced their economic base, while Republicans did not....
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.
@AxiomAmerican
on the irony of today's culture war: American progressives are anti-Christian, yet are the spiritual inheritors of fundamentalist moralism. American conservatives gladly claim the Christian mantle, yet increasingly don’t go to church...
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In the 1970s, Christopher Lasch wrote, "Those who recently dreamed of world power now despair of governing the city of New York." Today, those who once dreamt of ruling the nation now despair of governing Kenosha, Wisconsin...
Deregulation began as a drive to make room for the little guy but has resulted in a byzantine system of rules and regulations, ironically entrenching unaccountability. The grid is now more fragile, more expensive, and more opaque. --
@nukebarbarian
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Opinion | William F. Buckley Jr. and the collapse of the conservative movement
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The continuing transition to a “rentership society” has not received sufficient attention...
The Covid-19 pandemic set off a frenzy for suburban houses. But it’s not just millennials looking for patios and home offices. Wall Street is house hunting as well, betting that many Americans will have to rent the suburban lifestyle:
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Business history of this kind has sadly become almost a lost art, but articles like this offer unique insight into the causes of U.S. industrial decline--the ideological excesses and policy failures that have shaped the last few decades--and offer a way forward:
How did America go from the world’s leader in telecom equipment to not even an also-ran in just two decades? The answer lies in the fact that other nations saw the industry as strategic and fought to promote their own companies within the sector.
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Joel Kotkin's article here is among the most comprehensive and damning pieces on California's recent economic and policy trajectory...
Joel Kotkin:
Rather than the vanguard of a more egalitarian future, California has become the progenitor of a new form of feudalism characterized by gross inequality and rigid class lines, a trend that could be exacerbated by the coronavirus outbreak...
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@hamandcheese
@gabrielwinant
@rortybomb
Sam, I actually have to correct you here: I did offer to have him write a book review (an offer he accepted), but I did not ask him to write anything specific about opposing identity politics or anything like that. Since he called me a Nazi, I will actually show the emails....
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"All of us seem to agree that we are suffering from a profound loss of freedom, but none of us seem to believe that others are as well....the more we assert our freedom within the liberal mold, the more futile and impotent we feel...."
Both the Right and Left have been united in pursuit of a freedom that would leap lightly over any limit that could restrict the individual. Yet if we have no context within which to act, a paralyzing futility smothers our freedom, with devastating results.
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I joined
@HillTVLive
today to discuss the election and the prospects (and obstacles) facing a larger policy realignment going forward:
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This article from Joel Kotkin defies easy excerpting, but contrary to typical media narratives, demographic and economic trends have been working in favor of the Heartland for some time--trends that are only accelerating after Covid--and this revival has national benefits.
Those pontificating about Heartland decline might consider looking more closely at demographic trends, which even before Covid were working in favor of the Heartland. The great “urban renaissance” of the 2000s had a shorter run than many anticipated.
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@ggreenwald
@RadEmpanada
It's called trying to run an interesting publication. and I'm guessing a number of left-wing people write for it not because the like me but because they want to reach a new audience and actually accomplish something, rather than virtue signal to their underemployed grad students
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Too few psychological/sociological studies of America's billionaires, their (self-described) motivations, group dynamics, etc.; the piece below and the book it reviews are a good start...
What, then, does Billionaire Wilderness reveal about America’s ruling class? The ultrarich are shockingly self-serving in their philanthropy and their politics, but they also struggle with a profound sense of their own alienation.
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This piece was written months before coronavirus (which is now itself old news...) but touches on many of the increasingly consequential issues facing science and politics and has proved remarkably prescient:
As we move further into the twenty-first century, we are faced with an existential paradox: man’s destiny is irrevocably tied to science, and yet knowledge of nature increasingly lies outside the epistemology of science itself.
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@ggreenwald
@RadEmpanada
Anyone who actually knows anything about the current political scene knows that American Affairs has done more than pretty much anyone to get the right interested in critiques of financialization and deunionization and deindustrialization....
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@hamandcheese
@gabrielwinant
@rortybomb
(and frankly one has to be pretty out of touch to think that stale foundations like Scaife are particularly interested in any ambitious intellectual projects at all in 2020 or that they are particularly influential on the right, even among "establishment" types)
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There has been an intensification of moralism toward China recently, but relatively little effort to understand its leadership's actual sources of legitimacy, or to build up our own state and productive capacity to counter any threat from it. We should be doing the opposite...
If China had a moonshot initiative this past decade, the poverty alleviation program was it. China sent 3mm party cadres to live in poor villages, forming 255k teams that resided on site, and using 5 core programs to lift people out of poverty.
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More confusion around speech at Harvard, this time unfortunately involving me personally...
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This piece by
@SamuelBiagetti
on the new iconoclasm also features a fascinating critique of how concepts like "honor" and "purity" reemerge in liberalism (Mill, Rorty, Shklar) through the harm principle, and the distortions that result—hence words/statues become violence...
The new iconoclasm casts current problems as the results of immutable structures, not contemporary policies or living actors. This perspective is comforting to those who, despite a radical posture, hope to assume the role of a governing elite themselves.
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Multiple reasons for this, but should not overlook the obvious: China's economy is managed for growth, U.S. for financial asset valuations:
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Looking forward to participating in this
@NASorg
discussion on James Burnham with
@ToryAnarchist
and
@aaron_renn
:
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"Even the greens were once onboard with the shale boom. The Sierra Club took natural gas money for its Beyond Coal campaign. But a decade after “Beyond Coal,” the Sierra Club announced “Beyond Natural Gas..." Fascinating history from
@nukebarbarian
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Julius Krein’s William F. Buckley Analysis -- Conservatism, Success & Failure | National Review
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.
@RichardHanania
reviews Woke, Inc. by
@VivekGRamaswamy
Ramaswamy is a sharp critic of relatively unpopular woke excesses, but seems unwilling to directly confront the more challenging issues at their foundation. In the end, his policy ideas demonstrate why fighting the woke phenomenon is so difficult.
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Strong asset valuations vs. weak economic performance: in a word,
@LHSummers
, Seth Klarman, and
@pmarca
are wrong; the CCP is right!
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The U.S. approach to funding strategic sectors has been to either let them die or throw grants at incumbents. We need a better approach. And although it gets little attention in the West, China is already experimenting with new financing mechanisms, as David Adler outlines here:
Chinese guidance funds involve subsidies to industry through equity investments; unlike direct subsidies, they incorporate some market involvement. Guidance funds also demonstrate China's ambitions to surpass the United States in advanced technology.
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In this comprehensive piece,
@nukebarbarian
explains why US nuclear energy disappointed in the 20th century--from nuclear and utility industry mistakes, to regulatory failures, to an environmental movement more committed to degrowth than decarbonization...
Today, there seems to be some revival of interest in the “nuclear option.” Thus it’s worth exploring why US nuclear energy sputtered in the twentieth century, and what will be necessary to avoid the same disappointments going forward.
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I thought this piece was underappreciated when it was published but nice to see people now paying more attention to the issue:
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Some thoughts on industrial policy for the Liberal Patriot: What Should Be the Goal of U.S. Industrial Strategy? ()
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In February 2019, there were 70 gigafactories in China and 5 in the United States; by 2020, there were 136 in China and 8 in the United States...of the 304 gigafactories in the pipeline for the next ten years, 226 are in China and 23 are in the United States.
Countries around the world are engaged (with varying degrees of fervor) in the complete transformation of whole industry sectors. Yet it turns out that Russia and Ukraine produce many of the key materials that the world needs to decarbonize.
@gavindjharper
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This is a long and technical article, but I think one of the most important pieces that American Affairs has published...
Michael Cuenco:
"One can envision a near future where sovereign states are endowed with newfound fiscal capacities and powers of enforcement that would allow them to effectively track and tax the globally mobile segments of their tax base."
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incidentally, no one has ever asked me to write a review of a history of liberalism/the left, and it seems there are fewer synoptic histories of liberalism like the ones written about conservatism...but I think I will write one anyway
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Just in time for the holidays, some thoughts on Democrats’ struggles for the Liberal Patriot:
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1. This is hilarious.
@HeerJeet
has never spoken to me and knows nothing about my views on Leo Strauss or his students...
A new pro-Trump policy journal,
@AmericanAffrs
, is not a magazine of ideas but rather a magazine of myths.
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Julius Krein, Trump's wunderkind | Chatham House
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From "bowling alone" to "scrolling alone":
Haidt’s critique of Big Tech goes far deeper than concern for the mental health of Gen Z. His analysis reveals a more fundamental crisis: these platforms sever the mental tissue that makes embodied relationships and collective action possible.
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The conventional understanding of the knowledge/tech/IP economy is deeply flawed, as Roberto Unger argues here. Paul Romer's attempt to fit it into the marginalist economic paradigm has limited its productive potential and obscured needed policy reforms.
Paul Romer's attempt to explain how we can move toward rapid and sustained growth without reorganizing the market, and how we can understand the changes of our time without changing anything important about economics, must be judged a dangerous failure.
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My attempt to evaluate the Trump administration's economic policy legacy in 3,000 words:
Trump will leave office with a decidedly mixed record—not only with the typical wins and losses of any presidency, but also in terms of the administration’s crosscutting ideological tendencies. The GOP will have to resolve these tensions.
@JuliusKrein
:
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I discuss the prospects for and obstacles to a Democratic Party "realignment," as well as Republicans' inability to put forward a positive agenda and the limitations of conservative anti-ESG efforts, etc....
For the first time since the Clinton administration, when neoliberal “New Democrats” seized control of the party, centrist liberals seem to be looking for novel narratives and policies to differentiate themselves from progressives.
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Now free for nonsubscribers, my review of Brad DeLong and Gary Gerstle's books on neoliberalism
@ClaremontInst
: TLDR: DeLong bad, Gerstle good
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Baby boomers coined the phrase “don’t trust anyone over thirty.” That is completely idiotic. But there is something to be said for the notion that anyone too old to drive on a busy highway should not be running the country's most important institutions.
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But, hey, don’t worry, you’ll always have the senile Rav Curry and the dumbest members of the Ricketts family behind you! Maybe someone can pay Arthur Brooks another $2mm to do his happy capitalist yoga routine with Dan Loeb. Always a crowd pleaser….
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.
@geoffrey_cain
, who recently interviewed Zelensky, with a long-form piece on Ukraine, Afghanistan, and US foreign policy here:
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There is actually an impressive body of finance/investment literature on the gap between growth and returns, but it is ignored not only by economists and policymakers but also by people like Ray Dalio...
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Here is the article:
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An informative survey of Israeli politics, I also think this article contains a number of insights into / parallels with U.S. politics:
Israeli society was long perceived as culturally, socially, and politically liberal, similar to societies in North America and western Europe. Its more recent rightward turn has thus triggered much hand-wringing—both at home and among friends abroad.
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A nice piece in the Spectator on why America's gerontocracy is both incompetent and a national disgrace. Ironically, it looks like this pathetic gerontocracy (along with predatory tech monopolies) will be one of the few things that survive covid...
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What if, over the past 50+ years, Republicans had sought to reorient the welfare state around the family, rather than pursue the self-defeating libertarian/neoliberal quest to eliminate both? Just one of many interesting hypotheticals raised by this Michael Lind piece:
We need a revolution in the way we think about the economy. Our economists and policymakers treat the market as the center of the social system. But the market and the nonprofit sector are properly understood to be satellites of the family.
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@hamandcheese
@gabrielwinant
@rortybomb
I obscured the book under discussion since there's no reason to draw the author into this....
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The assumptions of conventional economics models relating to cost of capital and investment are antiquated and unscientific; these theories must be abandoned if we are to have sound economic policy....
When postwar economic theory was being developed, there were little data available which could be used to check the model. When data started to become available, the consensus model became testable. And when tested, the evidence falsified the model.
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