Reading

Created
Tue, 13/05/2025 - 04:51
Under det långa socialdemokratiska regeringsinnehavet under efterkrigstiden vilade den ekonomiska politiken på en rad konkurrenshämmande regleringar. Viktigast var valutaregleringen, hyresregleringen, jordbruksregleringen och kreditmarknadsregleringen. I korthet vred de socialdemokratiska regeringarna klockan tillbaka, bort från liberalismen och marknadsekonomin till ett mer merkantilistiskt och statskontrollerat system. Valutaregleringen utgjorde grundbulten för S-politiken. Den isolerade det svenska finansiella systemet från […]
Created
Tue, 13/05/2025 - 03:00

I wish I’d lived a life truer to myself. If I could go back in time and throw out every fake mustache I owned, I would. Even the smart-mouthed sheriff one. They were no better at helping me express who I was than my prosthetic noses.

I didn’t stop to smell the roses enough. If I’m being honest with myself, there were other things I didn’t smell enough. If I’m really being honest, I could have licked more stuff too.

I regret not keeping in touch with old friends. Robbie O’Connor and I were thick as thieves back in grade school. You couldn’t tear us away from that sandbox. We drifted a bit in high school. I was into punk music; Robbie still loved the sandbox. Last time I saw him, we were home the summer after college—the cops were pulling Robbie out of the sandbox. We lost touch soon after. I regret that.

If only I’d been able to let myself laugh. Like, really laugh. When people said funny things, my mouth would open and my shoulders would shake, but no sound came out. I know now that sound was supposed to come out.

Created
Tue, 13/05/2025 - 01:04
A few weeks ago the historian Perry Anderson published an essay “Regime Change in the West?” in the London Review of Books. Like many of Anderson’s essays this is a wide-ranging splurge full of bon mots and *apercus” delivered from some quasi-Olympian height. My attention was caught, though, by the following couple of sentences which […]
Created
Tue, 13/05/2025 - 00:34

Well, maybe. Who the hell knows what he’ll do. Anyway, tariffs are back to 10% on either side and negotiations will continue.

Note that China got what they wanted, minus 10%—no negotiations until the tariffs are removed.

There will still be a two month trade burp. Ships weren’t leaving China for the US at all, literally zero. Lot of freight companies are about to make a mint, though. So expect some shortages, but nothing worse than Covid, and hopefully lasting less time.

The fundamental problem remains, however, which is that there’s no certainty around any of this, so business people can’t make long term plans, including plans to build or relocate manufacturing. Trump and the US can’t be trusted to stay steady on policy, so avoiding making big plans involving the US makes sense.

Created
Mon, 12/05/2025 - 22:00

There’s no question that artificial intelligence has come a long way in the last few years. And it’s true that many jobs are likely to be replaced by these tools. But I know for a fact that the job I do as CEO can never be done by AI, regardless of how advanced it becomes. The things I do, the heart and soul I pour into my work each and every day—even on weekends—a computer would never match.

Could a machine decide to lay off an entire department based on a vague intuition it forms about the market while it half-listens to an Economist podcast during its morning Peloton ride? I don’t think so. Through years of stress and anxiety, I have built up my sensitivity to the market. This isn’t something that can be captured and replicated by a machine.

Created
Mon, 12/05/2025 - 17:17
Over the last years, I have edited a volume of papers on the question how to make analytical political philosophy more inclusive, with a particular focus on the debates on economic and ecological inequalities. The starting point was the observation that analytical political philosophy has for a long time been criticised for marginalizing (to a […]
Created
Mon, 12/05/2025 - 17:17
Dartmoor National Park is not dying; it is being killed, and these are the killers. By George Monbiot, adapted from a Bluesky thread, 11th May 2025. This is Piles Copse, the largest remaining fragment of high-ground temperate rainforest on Dartmoor. It’s a tiny speck of green in a dismal, human-made desert. Prepare yourselves for a […]
Created
Mon, 12/05/2025 - 17:00
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May 12th, 2025