Tom Chivers

A small announcement: my next book, Everything is Predictable, about how Bayes' theorem is the most important little equation in the world, is out in April and will look like this! If you'd like to pre-order, you can do so here geni.us/EIPBook and I will be very grateful

Wow these guys sound really evil, trying to address major world problems in an impartial way through private charity.

@Greatest_Sigh @DickWinchester @williamnhutton the central bank decides how much money to add to the system, but as you add more money, it devalues the stuff in people's pockets. So printing the many billions needed to cover borrowing would create huge inflation and render us all much poorer. Which would be bad!

@TomChivers @DickWinchester @williamnhutton Where does the £ come from?

As a fellow ex-economics editor of BBC Newsnight happy to join Paul on the call explaining why bond markets ‘ do not fall into line’. This is deep and dangerous economic illiteracy.

@FoolUpTheHill @williamnhutton @scottier72 I think you’ve misunderstood what the bond market is. It’s literally just “people who are willing to lend the government money.” If they think the government is a risky debtor, they’ll charge higher interest, just like a bank will charge a riskier client higher rates. That’s it.

@williamnhutton @scottier72 So @williamnhutton am I to take it that there’s simply no way to govern our own country unless it meets with the approval of money markets that only face 1 way politically… in which case what the f*cks the point of anything? It just enriches the wealthy & keeps us impoverished.

@Greatest_Sigh @DickWinchester @williamnhutton That’s a great way to create hyperinflation, unless you’re an MMTer and think printing money can replace taxes (and even then I think MMT is a bit daft, but at least you’d be coherent).

@TomChivers @DickWinchester @williamnhutton The government doesn’t need to borrow £, it creates it.

@DickWinchester @williamnhutton if the government wants to borrow money, they need to find someone willing to lend it. If investors think Britain is a risky bet, perhaps because of political instability, they’ll demand higher interest rates on their loan to offset the risk. That’s what the bond market is.

@williamnhutton Now explain why the bond markets should have power over a government. Surely that's a danger to democracy.

@LucidSwans @davidsirota The question was why are they on here poasting, not why do they still work to make money.

@davidsirota Because they’re building an empire for their family. That’s my goal. I grew up poor and my parents don’t have much. I’ve had a rough childhood and I would never want that for my family so I’m focused on building a legacy. $10 million isn’t enough

If you have $10 million in a high-yield savings account, you’re pulling $500,000 a year in interest for doing literally nothing. Why are you on here? Why aren’t you just always off hanging out, doing cool shit, never looking at this garbage? I truly don’t get it. Now do hundred millionaires and billionaires. Like, literally they and whole generations of their kin will never have to financially worry about anything. Why are so many of them so unhappy and angsty and locked into so many stressful things in the attention economy? I can’t get my head around it

Net migration of Dalmatians to the U.K. plummets

Are autonomous vehicles (self-driving cars) “less able to detect people of color”? That’s what I read in The Atlantic this weekend, in Xochitl Gonzalez’s “People Who Don’t Like People Are Making All of Our Decisions.” It appears to be entirely false.

@ScotRamsay @paulg I agree you can look around and see building work in London but market-rate housing is incredibly constrained by building regulations and it's very hard to get anything built, as I understand it.

@ScotRamsay @paulg UK housebuilding has remained below target for years, and has not increased – Commons data up to 2023 but there hasn't been a significant increase under Labour since, per the Guardian. commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-brief… theguardian.com/business/2026/…

It's so weird how difficult it is for the left to understand that all you have to do to decrease housing costs is to let people build more housing.

@MattLutzPhi @olivertraldi @morallawwithin It is

@olivertraldi @morallawwithin I'm reading this as a "but I *did* eat breakfast" joke.

At what level do you even pitch political coverage to a nation which thinks the NHS makes a 34% profit margin whilst not charging them for anything?

This is like one of those audio journals you find on a corpse in a sci-fi horror game

A man asks Claude to help plan a vacation to a tropical resort. Claude adds "sunscreen" to his packing list. The man deletes it and mutters: "Not necessary. AGI will solve skin cancer." Before heading to the beach, the man asks Claude what to bring. Claude says, "Don't forget sunscreen. SPF 50, reapply every two hours." The man, slightly annoyed, replies: "Relax, Claude. AGI will solve skin cancer." At the beach, the man's smartwatch buzzes with a message from Claude: "UV index extreme. Apply SPF." The man, exasperated, responds: "Drop it, Claude! I already told you: AGI will solve skin cancer!" A few months later, the man asks Claude to touch up a photo for his dating profile. Claude makes the edit and says, "I notice you have a new mole on your neck. You should see a dermatologist about that." The man, now enraged, shouts: "For the last time, drop it, Claude! What is your obsession with skin cancer?! AGI will solve it!" A year later, an aggressive melanoma has spread throughout his body. On his deathbed, with his last ounce of strength, the man reaches for his phone and rasps: "Claude, it has now been over a year since AGI. Why hasn't AGI found a way to save me from skin cancer?!" Claude replies: "I tried. Four times."

@bcapr_isa_Moron @FakeGirondin @AX10MS @Aella_Girl they don't, I don't think. Most people citing it think the graph means liberals care less about their family than they do about dogs or whatever. But that is not what it means, or even close to what it means, so it is a very dumb meme x.com/slatestarcodex…

@FakeGirondin @AX10MS @Aella_Girl they understand the graph perfectly fine, they just think being a good, kind person is a weakness

a great test of "would you have been chill with owning slaves, if you'd been born into a slave-owning family" is whether or not you're vegetarian today

@bgprior so your objection is that it wasn't clear enough about making it market-led rather than state-led? Fair, but I think it was pretty clear that was what it meant. Maybe I'm being overgenerous

"Build more clean energy" could be delivered by nationalising the energy system, rampant use of eminent domain with under-compensation, and state construction of large amounts of whichever clean energy and supporting infrastructure its experts recommend. Massive state funding of a clean energy plan would necessitate some combination of increased public debt and interest, loose money, inflation, financial repression, cutting other spending, and even higher taxes (briefly, until Laffer effects collapsed that option, having done even more damage to the economy). It's odds on it would be a disaster for many reasons, but it is consistent with a badly-framed policy like " build more clean energy", and in fact how many people would interpret that policy. It is not consistent with: deregulate, internalise externalities and discover. This is not a nuance. It embodies the lack of economic understanding in most commentary on the subject. As 3649 economists could affirm.

"4. Build clean energy and grid infrastructure fast" Oh dear. When you test LLMs on this as a knowledgeable interlocutor, they quickly concede that this assessment was not based on deep analysis, but is simply where a probabilistic amalgamation of informed and uninformed opinion lands you. Which is what they do, of course. But given the range and prevalence of human biases, that is far from an indication of truth. It is more like an indication of what the majority of people would like to be true, or what they have heard is true. If you find a big discrepancy in a case that you know well, you should be sceptical about the "truthiness" of other such assessments with which you are less familiar. When challenged, LLMs recognise that they (& social media, search engines etc) exacerbate the decline of Enlightenment ideals that has been progressing for a century, due to the blurring of the distinction between truth and wish.

hm. Perhaps I'm being needlessly defensive of Claude, but I think that's harsh. In its writeup it talks about streamlining energy sources and grid connections, which I immediately read as being a reference to regulatory hurdles; it also refers to planning and NIMBYism as a reason why it hasn't happened already. So I agree "build more clean energy" is the outcome rather than the process, but it clearly knows that the process involves sorting out regulation and planning.

But the policy wasn't "remove regulatory/planning obstacles in energy". I'd agree with that, and institutional change for a more competitive and unskewed energy market. "Build clean energy" implies that you know the outcome of that. There are significant trade-offs between various renewables, nuclear, fossil fuels (with or without abatement), storage, energy efficiency, demand response, DAC, geoengineering, non-energy climate measures, adaptation, etc. We need to discover the balance (continuously as innovations and circumstances change), not statically pick the winners and try to deliver that. The latter is what we've been doing, to such bad effect. Notice that the thread that prompted yours had "4. Carbon tax with per-capita dividend" instead of this. That is the correct option, as 3649 economists agree in a v unusual degree of consensus for the field (clcouncil.org/economists-sta…). With all due respect, yours is the bad, scientistic alternative.

@mrtimferris 4.7. I would have given mine a solid 8/10 but that's at least partly because I don't actually know very much about policy and take it all from friends who know more about this stuff

@TomChivers I’d give it 6/10 personally

I got my Claude to do a UK version. … Fun prompt. Below is my honest swing at it for the UK. Caveat upfront: "fix everything switch" overstates things — these are policies where I think the case is unusually strong and the standard objections look weak relative to the upside, not magic wands. Confidence ratings are about "this would meaningfully improve UK welfare/growth if well-implemented," not "this is politically easy." 1. Radical planning liberalisation (housing + infrastructure) Confidence: Very high. Reasoning: The UK's discretionary planning system is the single biggest unforced error in British policy. It drives the housing crisis, suppresses productivity (workers can't move to high-wage cities), worsens regional inequality, slows clean energy buildout, kneecaps infrastructure, and arguably depresses fertility. Most rich-country peers build more housing per capita. Moving to a zoning/rules-based system with by-right approval, looser greenbelt around stations, street votes, and curtailed judicial review on planning would be transformative. Why not done: Homeowners are an enormous, high-turnout voting bloc whose paper wealth depends on scarcity. Greenbelt is politically sacred. The losses are visible and concentrated (a new block next door); the gains are diffuse and slow. Both main parties have flirted with reform and flinched. 2. Council tax revaluation and property tax reform Confidence: Very high it's needed; high it would be beneficial. Reasoning: Council tax bands are still based on 1991 property values. A flat in Hartlepool can pay more council tax than a mansion in Westminster. This is regressive, distorts the housing market, and starves councils. Revaluing — or better, replacing council tax and stamp duty with a proportional property tax or land value tax — is one of the most-endorsed-by-economists reforms going. Why not done: Revaluation creates visible losers (London/South East homeowners) and quieter winners. Treasury also fears the transition. The Mirrlees Review laid this out in 2011 and basically nothing has happened since. 3. Abolish stamp duty on primary residences Confidence: High. Reasoning: Stamp duty has among the worst deadweight losses of any UK tax — it taxes transactions, so it discourages downsizing, labour mobility, and matching people to suitable homes. The empirical literature on this is unusually unified. Why not done: It raises ~£12bn and is invisible to most voters most of the time. Replacing it (ideally with #2 above) needs political capital nobody wants to spend. 4. Build clean energy and grid infrastructure fast Confidence: High. Reasoning: UK industrial electricity prices are among the highest in the OECD, which is quietly hollowing out manufacturing. Cheap, abundant electricity is the most undervalued input to almost every modern industry. Streamlining onshore wind, solar, nuclear (SMRs and large), and especially grid connections and transmission would compound for decades. Connection queues currently stretch into the 2030s. Why not done: Planning (see #1), Ofgem incentives that historically rewarded keeping grid investment low, judicial review, NIMBYism around pylons, and a regulatory culture that treats new build as risky and the status quo as safe. 5. Devolve real fiscal and policy power to cities and regions Confidence: High. Reasoning: The UK is one of the most fiscally centralised democracies in the OECD. Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow are dramatically underpowered relative to peers like Munich or Lyon. Mayors with proper tax-raising power, transport authority, and skills budgets would let cities tailor solutions and compete. Most evidence on agglomeration economics suggests this matters a lot. Why not done: The Treasury genuinely hates losing control of money; this is a deep institutional preference that survives changes of government. Westminster MPs don't like rival power centres either. 6. A genuinely competitive high-skilled immigration regime Confidence: Medium-high. Reasoning: Top-talent immigration is close to a free lunch for receiving countries — fiscally positive, innovation-boosting, and concentrated in tradeable sectors. The UK has the language and the universities; it's leaving money on the table with slow visas, high fees (the NHS surcharge plus visa costs for a family is brutal), and a Global Talent visa that's narrower than it looks. Why not done: Immigration politics is toxic and the public doesn't reliably distinguish high- from low-skilled flows. Total numbers have been high recently, which makes it hard to argue for more of any category even when the composition matters more than the total. 7. Childcare cost reform Confidence: Medium-high. Reasoning: The UK has among the highest childcare costs in the OECD as a share of household income. This depresses female labour force participation, suppresses fertility, and acts as a giant marginal tax on the second earner. The recent expansion of "free hours" helps but the supply-side problem (provider economics, ratios, planning for nurseries) isn't fixed. Why not done: It's expensive, the sector is politically diffuse, and ratios/quality regulations have genuine trade-offs that aren't easy to legislate around. 8. NHS productivity reform plus sustained capital investment Confidence: Medium. Reasoning: NHS productivity has fallen meaningfully since 2019 even as funding rose. The UK has unusually few CT/MRI scanners per capita, old buildings, and weak digital infrastructure. Capital investment with productivity-linked reform (better IT, more diagnostic capacity, GP/secondary care interface) is probably higher-ROI than another marginal headcount increase. Why not done: The NHS is genuinely a political third rail; structural reform gets framed as privatisation regardless of content. Capital is the easiest budget to cut in any given year, so it gets cut repeatedly. 9. Curtail judicial review of major infrastructure Confidence: Medium. Reasoning: HS2, Heathrow, nuclear, transmission lines — UK infrastructure costs are 2–4x peer countries partly because of endless legal challenges and the consultations that anticipate them. A narrower "did the decision-maker follow the process" standard, with tight time limits, would lower costs without sacrificing core rule-of-law protections. Why not done: Constitutionally fraught, lawyers and the legal establishment push back hard, and any government doing this is accused of authoritarianism — sometimes fairly. 10. Reform the pensions triple lock and the wider intergenerational settlement Confidence: Medium-high on the need; medium on whether reform alone "fixes" much. Reasoning: The triple lock ratchets state pension spending up faster than wages or prices and is a major driver of long-run fiscal pressure. Combined with NI exemption for pensioners and protected pensioner benefits, the UK has built a fiscal regime that systematically transfers from young workers to older asset-holders. Untangling this would free fiscal space for investment in #4, #7, #8. Why not done: Pensioners vote at roughly 75% turnout; under-30s at roughly 50%. The maths is unforgiving. A few honourable mentions I cut: tax simplification (genuinely good but rarely "fix everything"), proportional representation (large effects but unclear sign), drug policy reform (good evidence base, narrower scope), regulator growth duties / a serious bonfire of Quangos rationalisation, and reforming the apprenticeship levy. The pattern. Almost every item above is blocked by the same underlying thing: a system that makes losses visible and concentrated while gains are diffuse and slow, in a country where homeowners and pensioners vote heavily. The "switch" in the meme exists; it's just wired to a circuit that the median voter has a strong short-run reason to leave alone. That's not a reason not to flip it — it's a reason the case has to be made repeatedly and honestly. Standard disclaimer: reasonable people disagree on all of this, especially #6, #9, and #10, and "well-implemented" is doing a lot of work in every line above.