Megan McArdle

I just muted anyone who doesn’t follow me. If you want to troll me on politics, you’re going to have to endure my opinions on DC traffic and the proper way to make pie.

@AlecStapp The biggest thing people don't get about the mid 20th century is how many of the things happening then were temporary phenomena. paulgraham.com/re.html

Private-sector unionization in the US was a temporary mid-20th century phenomenon:

It’s not well understood in the US or Australia, but the UK national government preempted every local government in the country and gave itself complete plenipotentiary powers to permit any housing that it liked anywhere in the 1940s, which it still has. It can rewrite any local plan and permit any development anywhere without even a parliamentary vote. However, the voter tends to think that actually using these powers is an illegitimate use of overweening state powers, after numerous unpopular NIMBY crushing actions in the postwar period. Today, the central government is rightly so terrified of the voter backlash to using the powers that it does so very seldom and only after extended (and expensive) legitimacy-building activities. Instead, it tends to try and force local governments to take the flak by forcing targets through them, adjusting the planning documents they are required to keep plans in line with, and so on. But it has all the powers, it’s just considered bad and unpopular to use them. I think there is a lesson here. Sometimes moving things the next level up is only a temporary solution.

Bro you’re not gonna believe what’s free

If Waymo gets its way, tens of thousands of people will be spared from automotive-related deaths. When Waymo gets a firm hold on a city, pedestrians, pets, and drivers are all safer. This isn’t inevitable — The pro-auto-fatality lobby is doing everything possible to stop it.

@colinsmo @DouthatNYT @bdomenech @JoelWBerry The doctrine of Papal Infallibility was formalized in 1870, centuries after both the east/west schism, and the reformation. Moreover, the number of statements deemed ex-cathedra/infallible over the history of the Church is tiny.

@DouthatNYT @bdomenech @JoelWBerry The claim of papal infallibility and supremacy has been one of the most schismatic developments in church history. East/West split + Protestant Reformation flow directly from acting on this claim.

Trump has a much clearer moral compass on these issues than the Pope. Do with that what you will

“Does running back the 2010’s urbanism model outside of maybe SF/NYC still work given the dynamics of the mid-late 2020’s?” is an underexplored question.

This graph and headline should have made everyone scratch their head! The 40 year olds who allegedly “caught up” had much higher fertility at 30 years old than 30 year olds today do!

@Ed_Realist @ScoopStan Moreover, there were all sorts of secondary ways to check what the companies were saying, like volume of new auto loans, average price of a new car, etc.

@Ed_Realist @ScoopStan If a company says in public financial statements that it's burning cash at an extraordinary rate, it's burning cash at an extraordinary rate. There's no secret 5D chess move where it makes sense to lie about that.

The UAW flatly didn’t believe GM was heading for insolvency even though they had access to audited public financial statements that showed it was becoming arithmetically inevitable

@Ed_Realist Very few companies pretend that they’re burning $1 billion in cash a month, for many reasons, including the fact that cash balances are one of the easiest things for auditors to track

@asymmetricinfo Because no corporation ever lied on its public financial statements before.

For the would-be Great Man of History, the final boss is always the pope.

@BioLayne telling someone with impaired GLP-1 secretion and elevated ghrelin to 'just be in a deficit' is like telling someone with hypothyroidism to 'just have more energy'. the physics are correct. the biology is missing.

Alright Denmark, keep Greenland.

Part of the reason Trump dislikes Pope Leo so much is that Trump sees himself as a spiritual leader, and Pope Leo, by not worshipping Trump, seems to Trump as a rival.

Should we pre-register our guesses about which costs they'll exclude in order to make this look breakeven? They've previously said they'll ignore rent, but groceries are a competitive business, so I don't know if that will be enough.

Strong political parties that bend the rules to entrench their power and succumb to corruption are a consistent feature of democracy qua democracy. And if your entrenched ruling party can lose everything in a wave election, you are not living in an authoritarian state.