BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2023-10-28 Sa

The beat-sweetener crowd eats the New York Times entire; Katie Martin waits for some rough slouching bond-market beast; Apple fears its internal GPT-LLM-ML team is not up to the task; Le Keqiang does not fall out of a window; David Karpf & Ezra Klein on the Silicon-Valley variant of neofascism; Boston Dynamics has a Principal Software Engineer for Robot Autonomy; the ultimate minimum-wage impact chart; very briefly noted; & Marinetti’s 1909 Futurist Manifesto; historical “effective” male & female population sizes; summary & review of “The Civic Bargain”, & briefly noted for 2023-10-25 We…

SubStack Notes:

Journamalism: It is official: the beat-sweetener crowd has eaten the rest of the New York Times completely. There is nothing left:

the New York Times is reporting that Mike Johnson thinks abortion should be \“left up to the states\” when, in 2023, he co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, which would ban all abortion, nationwide, without any exceptions…”,“body_json”:{“type”:“doc”,“attrs”:{“schemaVersion”:“v1”},“content”:[{“type”:“paragraph”,“content”:[{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“bold”},{“type”:“italic”}],“text”:“Journamalism”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:”: “},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“italic”}],“text”:“It is official: the beat-sweetener crowd has eaten the rest of the “},{“type”:“text”,“text”:“New York Times “},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“italic”}],“text”:“completely. There is nothing left:“}]},{“type”:“paragraph”},{“type”:“blockquote”,“content”:[{“type”:“paragraph”,“content”:[{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“bold”}],“text”:“Judd Legum”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:”: ‘I’m not sure why <“},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“link”,“attrs”:{“href”:”twitter.com/JuddLegum…”,“target”:”_blank”,“rel”:“nofollow ugc noopener”,“class”:“note-link”}}],“text”:”twitter.com/JuddLegum…”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:“> the “},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“italic”}],“text”:“New York Times”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:” is reporting that Mike Johnson thinks abortion should be \“left up to the states\” when, in 2023, he co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, which would ban all abortion, nationwide, without any exceptions…”}]}]}]},“restacks”:0,“reaction_count”:0,“attachments”:[],“name”:“Brad DeLong”,“user_id”:16879,“photo_url”:“https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ea5ae644-9822-4ca5-ac6b-e18c017d8fbc_1189x1208.png","user_bestseller_tier":100}}" data-component-name=“CommentPlaceholder”>

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Economics: After the past month, we are all now waiting for not Godot, but rather for some rough bond-market crisis beast to come slouching along:

GPT-LLM-ML: Every single other major computer company besides Apple is stampeding to spend absolute fortunes in order to deploy raw and uncontrolled “AI” features as fast as it can. They are likely to swamp what would otherwise be small scale, tentative experiments, coming out of the startup system, perhaps to all of our detriment. And what is Apple doing?:

: ‘Improved autocorrect… is a major feature… one of the most used and most important… terrific work with AI features in Photos. The search feature in Photos works really well. But… If I asked you “Which companies are at the forefront of AI-powered products?”, I doubt you’d put Apple on the list…. Little birdies in Cupertino… [say] not that there was a miss…. Apple is… a deliberate company… [that] integrate[s]… into products in meaningful ways best, not first…. The anxiety inside Apple is that many people inside do not believe Apple’s own AI/ML team can deliver, but that the company — if only for privacy reasons — will only use what comes from its own AI/ML team…”,“body_json”:{“type”:“doc”,“attrs”:{“schemaVersion”:“v1”},“content”:[{“type”:“paragraph”,“content”:[{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“bold”},{“type”:“italic”}],“text”:“GPT-LLM-ML”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:”: “},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“italic”}],“text”:“Every single other major computer company besides Apple is stampeding to spend absolute fortunes in order to deploy raw and uncontrolled \“AI\” features as fast as it can. They are likely to swamp what would otherwise be small scale, tentative experiments, coming out of the startup system, perhaps to all of our detriment. And what is Apple doing?:“}]},{“type”:“paragraph”},{“type”:“blockquote”,“content”:[{“type”:“paragraph”,“content”:[{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“bold”}],“text”:“John Gruber”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:”: Apple & AI <“},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“link”,“attrs”:{“href”:“https://daringfireball.net/2023/10/apple_and_ai","target":"_blank","rel":"nofollow ugc noopener”,“class”:“note-link”}}],“text”:“https://daringfireball.net/2023/10/apple_and_ai"},{"type":"text","text":">: ‘Improved autocorrect… is a major feature… one of the most used and most important… terrific work with AI features in Photos. The search feature in Photos works “},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“italic”}],“text”:“really”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:” well. But… If I asked you “Which companies are at the forefront of AI-powered products?”, I doubt you’d put Apple on the list…. Little birdies in Cupertino… [say] “},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“italic”}],“text”:“not”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:” that there was a miss…. Apple is… a deliberate company… [that] integrate[s]… into products in meaningful ways “},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“italic”}],“text”:“best”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:“, not “},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“italic”}],“text”:“first”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:“…. The anxiety inside Apple is that many people inside do not believe Apple’s own AI/ML team can deliver, but that the company — if only for privacy reasons — will only use what comes from its own AI/ML team…”}]}]}]},“restacks”:0,“reaction_count”:0,“attachments”:[{“id”:“7da19bb8-cafb-4b37-9838-0956291194fd”,“type”:“link”,“linkMetadata”:{“image”:“https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/3d8ff759-2449-46a5-8b48-780d4dab91ad_1500x500.png","title":"Apple and AI”,“description”:“The anxiety inside Apple is that many people inside do not believe Apple’s own AI/ML team can deliver.”,“url”:“https://daringfireball.net/2023/10/apple_and_ai","host":"daringfireball.net"},"explicit":false}],"name":"Brad DeLong”,“user_id”:16879,“photo_url”:“https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ea5ae644-9822-4ca5-ac6b-e18c017d8fbc_1189x1208.png","user_bestseller_tier":100}}" data-component-name=“CommentPlaceholder”>

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Central Country: Ex-Premier Li Keqiang does not fall out a window, or be taken by the arms by security and removed from the conference:

: ‘China’s former Premier Li Keqiang has died of a heart attack, state broadcaster China Central Television reported.nThe 68-year-old passed away in Shanghai…. Li’s role diminished once Xi moved key economic policy decisions to a series of party committees led by himself and his trusted economic aide, Liu He. Li in turn spent much of his time responding to crises and ensuring that officials followed the Chinese leader’s decisions. The Chinese official was replaced as premier by Li Qiang in March this year…”,“body_json”:{“type”:“doc”,“attrs”:{“schemaVersion”:“v1”},“content”:[{“type”:“paragraph”,“content”:[{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“bold”},{“type”:“italic”}],“text”:“Central Country”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:”: “},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“italic”}],“text”:“Ex-Premier Li Keqiang does not fall out a window, or be taken by the arms by security and removed from the conference:“}]},{“type”:“paragraph”},{“type”:“blockquote”,“content”:[{“type”:“paragraph”,“content”:[{“type”:“text”,“text”:” “},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“bold”}],“text”:“Bloomberg News”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:”: China Former Premier Li Keqiang Dies of Heart Attack, CCTV Says <“},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“link”,“attrs”:{“href”:”www.bloomberg.com/news/arti…”,“target”:”_blank”,“rel”:“nofollow ugc noopener”,“class”:“note-link”}}],“text”:”www.bloomberg.com/news/arti…”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:“>: ‘China’s former Premier Li Keqiang has died of a heart attack, state broadcaster China Central Television reported.nThe 68-year-old passed away in Shanghai…. Li’s role diminished once Xi moved key economic policy decisions to a series of party committees led by himself and his trusted economic aide, Liu He. Li in turn spent much of his time responding to crises and ensuring that officials followed the Chinese leader’s decisions. The Chinese official was replaced as premier by Li Qiang in March this year…”}]}]}]},“restacks”:0,“reaction_count”:0,“attachments”:[{“id”:“0ae0eca3-2d86-42bc-89c4-4b7d88daece5”,“type”:“link”,“linkMetadata”:{“image”:“https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/6c98c626-218e-4bdf-9007-7a129c0a32b6_1200x800.jpeg","title":"China Former Premier Li Keqiang Dies of Heart Attack, CCTV Says”,“description”:“China’s former Premier Li Keqiang has died of a heart attack, state broadcaster China Central Television reported.”,“url”:”www.bloomberg.com/news/arti…”,“host”:“bloomberg.com”},“explicit”:false}],“name”:“Brad DeLong”,“user_id”:16879,“photo_url”:“https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ea5ae644-9822-4ca5-ac6b-e18c017d8fbc_1189x1208.png","user_bestseller_tier":100}}" data-component-name=“CommentPlaceholder”>

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Neofascism: Dave Karpf has a nice comment on Noah Smith’s attempt to shape and tame Andreesen’s latest rant into something not-bonkers. Perhaps behind Karpf’s boiling-down of Andreesen to an attempt to assemble an entrepreneurial coalition that will die on the hill of immunity from all forms of accountability for Silicon Valley princelings is correct. One way to read Andreesen over the past 10 years is that his enthusiasm led him to become a willing cheerleader and participant in the huge sequence of pump-and-dump schemes that together made up crypto, that people—regulators, prosecutors, and many of his own investors—may be angry and coming for him, and that he needs to find allies. Perhaps that is the way to read it. Perhaps not:

: ‘I have no quarrel with optimistic tech pragmatists. You think the “Green Vortex“ <www.theatlantic.com/science/a…> is setting us on a path to reverse the worst impacts of the climate crisis, and so you’re gonna work tirelessly to promote policies that further those efforts? That’s awesome. Let me buy you a beer. I also find common cause with pessimistic tech pragmatists. You think the near-term impacts of generative AI are going to be terrible, because we are basically just delegating decision-authority to a handful of tech elites who will chase short-term payouts? Yeah… I’m right there with you. First round is on me. But that’s not the type of techno-optimism that Andreessen is calling for! The main thematic point of Andreessen’s techno-optimist manifesto is that the “techno-capital machine” will inherently improve all our lives, so long as regulators and journalists and trust & safety professionals and sustainability advocates stay out of the way…”,“body_json”:{“type”:“doc”,“attrs”:{“schemaVersion”:“v1”},“content”:[{“type”:“paragraph”,“content”:[{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“bold”},{“type”:“italic”}],“text”:“Neofascism”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:”: “},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“italic”}],“text”:“Dave Karpf has a nice comment on Noah Smith’s attempt to shape and tame Andreesen’s latest rant into something not-bonkers. Perhaps behind Karpf’s boiling-down of Andreesen to an attempt to assemble an entrepreneurial coalition that will die on the hill of immunity from all forms of accountability for Silicon Valley princelings is correct. One way to read Andreesen over the past 10 years is that his enthusiasm led him to become a willing cheerleader and participant in the huge sequence of pump-and-dump schemes that together made up crypto, that people—regulators, prosecutors, and many of his own investors—may be angry and coming for him, and that he needs to find allies. Perhaps that is the way to read it. Perhaps not:“}]},{“type”:“paragraph”},{“type”:“blockquote”,“content”:[{“type”:“paragraph”,“content”:[{“type”:“text”,“text”:” “},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“bold”}],“text”:“Dave Karpf”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:”: A reply to Noah Smith: tech optimism vs tech pragmatism, cont’d <“},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“link”,“attrs”:{“href”:“https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/a-reply-to-noah-smith-tech-optimism?publication_id=387131&post_id=138309035&isFreemail=true&r=d0v","target":"_blank","rel":"nofollow ugc noopener”,“class”:“note-link”}}],“text”:“https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/a-reply-to-noah-smith-tech-optimism?publication_id=387131&post_id=138309035&isFreemail=true&r=d0v"},{"type":"text","text":">: ‘I have no quarrel with optimistic tech pragmatists. You think the “Green Vortex“ <“},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“link”,“attrs”:{“href”:”www.theatlantic.com/science/a…”,“target”:”_blank”,“rel”:“nofollow ugc noopener”,“class”:“note-link”}}],“text”:”www.theatlantic.com/science/a…”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:” is setting us on a path to reverse the worst impacts of the climate crisis, and so you’re gonna work tirelessly to promote policies that further those efforts? That’s awesome. Let me buy you a beer. I also find common cause with pessimistic tech pragmatists. You think the near-term impacts of generative AI are going to be terrible, because we are basically just delegating decision-authority to a handful of tech elites who will chase short-term payouts? Yeah… I’m right there with you. First round is on me. “},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“italic”}],“text”:“But that’s not the type of techno-optimism that Andreessen is calling for!”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:” The main thematic point of Andreessen’s techno-optimist manifesto is that the “techno-capital machine” will inherently improve all our lives, so long as regulators and journalists and trust & safety professionals and sustainability advocates stay out of the way…”}]}]}]},“restacks”:0,“reaction_count”:0,“attachments”:[{“id”:“4f2f1582-6818-4a89-8eb8-6c3ab8953bae”,“type”:“link”,“linkMetadata”:{“image”:“https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e77f58af-461a-46be-b6fc-8004b370223e_960x504.gif","title":"How the U.S. Made Progress on Climate Change Without Ever Passing a Bill”,“description”:“A “green vortex” is saving America’s climate future. ”,“url”:”www.theatlantic.com/science/a…”,“host”:“theatlantic.com”},“explicit”:false}],“name”:“Brad DeLong”,“user_id”:16879,“photo_url”:“https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ea5ae644-9822-4ca5-ac6b-e18c017d8fbc_1189x1208.png","user_bestseller_tier":100}}" data-component-name=“CommentPlaceholder”>

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Neofascism: The hallmark of a reactionary is to seek to return to some old days—when, as the saying goes, men were men and ewes were nervous. You know, back when a jar of imported fish sauce from the Black Sea did not cost more than a yoke of oxen. Ezra sees Andreesen as a collision between 1940s-style futurism—when a lone inventor could conquer the universe in his self-built ship The Skylark of Space—with loser-patriarch reactionary longing for the old days when people took real combat sports seriously—the world of Conan in which bravery and skill with a sword wins you wealth and a harem too. I am not sure this is right. But I admit I really do not know what to think of the post-crypto Andreesen we have on our hands these days:

: ‘To treat Andreessen’s essay as an argument misses the point. It’s a vibe. And the vibe is reactionary…. The Republican Party’s collapse into incoherence reflects the fact that much of the modern right is reactionary, not conservative…. This is not a coalition that cares about tax cuts. It’s a coalition obsessed with where we went wrong: the weakness, the political correctness, the liberalism, the trigger warnings, the smug elites. It’s a coalition that believes we were once hard and have become soft; worse, we have come to lionize softness and punish hardness. The story of the reactionary follows a template across time and place… The Silicon Valley cohort Andreessen belongs to has added a bit to this formula. In their story, the old way that is being lost is the appetite for risk and inequality and dominance that drives technology forward and betters human life…”,“body_json”:{“type”:“doc”,“attrs”:{“schemaVersion”:“v1”},“content”:[{“type”:“paragraph”,“content”:[{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“bold”},{“type”:“italic”}],“text”:“Neofascism”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:”: “},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“italic”}],“text”:“The hallmark of a reactionary is to seek to return to some old days—when, as the saying goes, men were men and ewes were nervous. You know, back when a jar of imported fish sauce from the Black Sea did not cost more than a yoke of oxen. Ezra sees Andreesen as a collision between 1940s-style futurism—when a lone inventor could conquer the universe in his self-built ship “},{“type”:“text”,“text”:“The Skylark of Space”},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“italic”}],“text”:“—with loser-patriarch reactionary longing for the old days when people took real combat sports seriously—the world of Conan in which bravery and skill with a sword wins you wealth and a harem too. I am not sure this is right. But I admit I really do not know what to think of the post-crypto Andreesen we have on our hands these days:“}]},{“type”:“paragraph”},{“type”:“blockquote”,“content”:[{“type”:“paragraph”,“content”:[{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“bold”}],“text”:“Ezra Klein”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:”: The Chief Ideologist of the Silicon Valley Elite Has Some Strange Ideas <“},{“type”:“text”,“marks”:[{“type”:“link”,“attrs”:{“href”:”www.nytimes.com/2023/10/2…”,“target”:”_blank”,“rel”:“nofollow ugc noopener”,“class”:“note-link”}}],“text”:”www.nytimes.com/2023/10/2…”},{“type”:“text”,“text”:“>: ‘To treat Andreessen’s essay as an argument misses the point. It’s a vibe. And the vibe is reactionary…. The Republican Party’s collapse into incoherence reflects the fact that much of the modern right is reactionary, not conservative…. This is not a coalition that cares about tax cuts. It’s a coalition obsessed with where we went wrong: the weakness, the political correctness, the liberalism, the trigger warnings, the smug elites. It’s a coalition that believes we were once hard and have become soft; worse, we have come to lionize softness and punish hardness. The story of the reactionary follows a template across time and place… The Silicon Valley cohort Andreessen belongs to has added a bit to this formula. In their story, the old way that is being lost is the appetite for risk and inequality and dominance that drives technology forward and betters human life…”}]}]}]},“restacks”:0,“reaction_count”:0,“attachments”:[{“id”:“e8032188-febc-41d4-9b89-7aa5173c5d7c”,“type”:“link”,“linkMetadata”:{“image”:“https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/a7d4a9fd-5d04-4cca-b778-6c142fed2200_1050x549.jpeg","title":"Opinion | The Chief Ideologist of the Silicon Valley Elite Has Some Strange Ideas”,“description”:“The reactionary futurism of Marc Andreessen.”,“url”:”www.nytimes.com/2023/10/2…”,“host”:“nytimes.com”},“explicit”:false}],“name”:“Brad DeLong”,“user_id”:16879,“photo_url”:“https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ea5ae644-9822-4ca5-ac6b-e18c017d8fbc_1189x1208.png","user_bestseller_tier":100}}" data-component-name=“CommentPlaceholder”>

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Very Briefly Noted:

Economics: Lauren Felner: Google paid $26 billion in 2021 to become the default search engine on browsers and phones…
Economic History: Kris James Mitchener & Gonçalo Pina: The effects of countercyclical interest rates: Evidence from the classical gold standard: ‘40 economies from 1870 to 1913. Specialization and trade integration subjected economies to a “commodity lottery” in… price fluctuations… Capital mobility and a currency peg exposed them to interest-rate movements…. We use these two exogenous shocks to identify positive effects of commodity-export prices on real GDP and the domestic price level and negative effects of exogenous changes in short-term interest rates on the same variables…. Countercyclical interest rates… stabilized both output and the domestic price level… more effective[ly] for the price level than for output…
Neofascism: Greg Sargent: ‘[New House Speaker] Mike Johnson has repeatedly pushed the ugly lie that Dems have deliberately “opened” our borders to convert “illegals” into voters. On this he’s the most extreme Speaker in recent memory. I’ve documented many examples here. Mike Johnson has flirted with sanitized great replacement theory, hinting at an elite plot to supplant US voters with migrants. He said Dems want to turn “illegals into voters” and seek the “destruction of our country at the expense of our own people”…
War: Jeremy Stern: ‘Jake Sullivan wrote an essay for Foreign Affairs that went to print before Oct 7. For the online version that came out yesterday, they let him not just add new material but scrub the sections embarrassed by events…
Drake Bennett: In Today’s War, There’s Nowhere to Hide: ‘Armies don’t just have to know how to fight. They also need to know how to hide. Over the years, technology has made that harder and harder…. That seems to be one of the lessons military strategists are taking from the grinding war in Ukraine. “A lot of what we do,” General James Rainey, the commanding officer of the US Army Futures Command, said in a Bloomberg interview this week, “was about the enemy not seeing you or finding you”…
Global Warming: Zeke Hausfather: ‘The world has made real progress in bending down the curve of future emissions. While we remain far from on track to meet our climate goals, the positive steps we’ve made should reinforce that progress is possible and despair is counterproductive…
Mark Gongloff: ‘Nightmare’ Hurricanes Are Popping Up Out of Nowhere: ‘The massive Category 5 storm that made landfall in Mexico was just a tropical storm less than a day earlier. Climate change is starting to rob humans of even the time to prepare for such destruction…
CryptoGrifters: Dave Karpf: Why can’t our tech billionaires learn anything new?: ‘On Marc Andreessen’s “techno-optimist manifesto”…. The reason why people are calling for more regulation of a16z’s investments isn’t because they’ve been “told to be angry, bitter, and resentful about technology.” It’s because retail investors lost their life savings just last year by throwing cash at the Ponzi schemes that a16z was actively hawking. (Marc Andreessen should really consider taking the “have an ounce of fucking shame” challenge)
Thomas Hutcheson: Why can’t our tech billionaires learn anything new?: ‘Marc Andreessen and his partners spent the past three years promoting companies like the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Axie Infinity…. Also, that “manifesto of a different time and place” is the Futurist Manifesto, written in 1909 by Italian poet F.T. Marinetti. A decade later, Marinetti would be a principal author of the Fascist Manifesto…
GPT-LLM-ML: Dan Shipper: ChatGPT Is the Best Journal I’ve Ever Used: ‘My slow and steady progression to living out the plot of the movie ‘Her’…. There is something innately appealing about building a relationship with an empathetic friend that you can talk to any time…. There is also something weird about all of this. Spilling your guts to a robot somehow cheapens the experience…

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. Manville and Ober argue that democracy …”,“size”:“sm”,“isEditorNode”:false,“title”:“BOOK SUMMARY: Manville & Ober: \“The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives\“”,“publishedBylines”:[{“id”:16879,“name”:“Brad DeLong”,“bio”:“Author of Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the 20th Century, sometime Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, too online since 1995, UC Berkeley economic historian”,“photo_url”:“https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ea5ae644-9822-4ca5-ac6b-e18c017d8fbc_1189x1208.png","is_guest":false,"bestseller_tier":100}],"post_date":"2023-10-26T22:09:57.323Z","cover_image":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F970ce9b2-e24b-4c4a-8752-ee8f9565891e_1456x822.png","cover_image_alt":null,"canonical_url":"[braddelong.substack.com/p/book-su...](https://braddelong.substack.com/p/book-summary-manville-and-ober-the)","section_name":"Neofascism, & c.“,“id”:138319375,“type”:“newsletter”,“reaction_count”:2,“comment_count”:0,“publication_name”:“Brad DeLong’s Grasping Reality”,“publication_logo_url”:“https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffde2453e-9c18-4560-82ca-8b77ae62ef5b_1280x1280.png","belowTheFold":true}">

. Democracy is not doomed to fail or decline, but rather needs to be renewed and defended by its citizens. So say Brook Manville and Josiah Ober in their”,“size”:“sm”,“isEditorNode”:false,“title”:“REVIEW: Manville & Ober: \“The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives\“”,“publishedBylines”:[{“id”:16879,“name”:“Brad DeLong”,“bio”:“Author of Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the 20th Century, sometime Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, too online since 1995, UC Berkeley economic historian”,“photo_url”:“https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ea5ae644-9822-4ca5-ac6b-e18c017d8fbc_1189x1208.png","is_guest":false,"bestseller_tier":100}],"post_date":"2023-10-26T13:20:06.901Z","cover_image":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb4c1ad1c-b44b-4ce8-b3cb-c886c8db9cee_1456x822.png","cover_image_alt":null,"canonical_url":"[braddelong.substack.com/p/review-...](https://braddelong.substack.com/p/review-manville-and-ober-the-civic)","section_name":"Neofascism, & c.“,“id”:138303665,“type”:“newsletter”,“reaction_count”:16,“comment_count”:6,“publication_name”:“Brad DeLong’s Grasping Reality”,“publication_logo_url”:“https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffde2453e-9c18-4560-82ca-8b77ae62ef5b_1280x1280.png","belowTheFold":true}">