I saw A24’s newest and most expensive film to date, Civil War. <<Spoilers incoming>>

A brief summary: the audience is dropped into the middle of a new US civil war as being documented by a group of journalists, our viewpoint centered around a veteran war photographer played by Kirsten Dunst and her (nearly) uninterrupted, first-ballot hall of fame 108 minute RBF. (Seriously, her face is perfection in this movie, I’ve never appreciated her more, absolutely no notes.) A traveling party is formed, a road trip through a war taken on, each stop bringing the gang into contact with increasingly grim and grotesteque humanity.

The subject matter and timing of the film naturally lend themselves to interpretation, subtextual analysis, and Straussian readings. Most films tend to be pretty ham-fisted in their less than subtle themes. With regard to Civil War, there are plenty of thoughts about the underlying meanings and metaphors. Here’s mine: there is no subtext, metaphor, or Straussian messages to be unearthed. The director has pushed this concept and it’s being received as milquetoast marketing. I disagree. There are no secret themes and I think that is the absolutely radical agenda that defines and motivates the artistic endeavor. To portray a war without imbuing it with narrative, only tragic, significance. Hear me out.

There’s a million war movies, most of which have arcs and metaphors strewn throughout. The problem with making a moving about a hypothetical civil war in the modern United States is that the audience will spend so much time looking for the heroes, villains, and associated opportunities to feel morally superior that it seems almost impossible to deliver an effective portrayal of what it might actually feel like to wake up to a US civil war, with a genuinely splintered federalist system of governments and military forces. How do you make a movie that doesn’t celebrate a Civil War as an opportunity for anyone, that doesn’t unintentionally, if inevitably, enoble the prospect of such an outcome? How do you tell a story where nothing good happens because you earnestly believe such a war would be empty and horrible, with nothing advanced or achieved save the destruction of institutions and the killing of millions? Well, it seems that Alex Garland thought the best strategy was to strip a war story down to its barest bones and leave you absolutely zero metaphorical scaffolding to graft your identities or theories on to.

I think it worked. A couple points.

There are no heroes in the film. The four journalists in questions are respectively hollowed out, adrenaline addicted, naive, or looking for one last ride. There is zero allusion to nobility or moral obligation. We never learn the name of a single soldier, whether they are accomplishing a mission, pointlessly dying, or perpetrating atrocities. There’s no arch-antagonist. There are bad people, to be sure, and the third-term President that the film opens with has green lit air strikes on American citizens while filling the airwaves with empty propaganda, but he turns out to be nothing more than a standard-issue cowardly politician wholly incapable of anything save false bravado and begging for his life.

There are no political identities in the film. No left or right wing schism. It might seem that the “Western Forces” alliance of California and Texas is either a transparent political cop-out (putting the largest “red” and “blue” states together) or a subtextual allusion to a schism over immigrants (those states having the largest Latin immigrant populations), but I think there is a far simpler explanation: those are the only two states whose coalition could actually oppose a President trying to usurp the executive branch and fully subvert the constitution. Beyond their populations and economies, the raw number of military bases in the two states (especially air bases), are sufficient that a couple 2 star generals could coalesce a rival military body. There’s also a reference to Florida being an i6 ndependent secessionary state. [EDIT 4/23/24] Guess which states have the most military personnel and air force bases? California (184k+ 8 AFB) and Texas (164k + 9 AFB). Florida has the 5th most active duty personnel, but also has 6 AFB. Everyone else is a either a battle ground or a (literal) flyover state.

The film captures, I think brilliantly, the idle chaos of such a scenario. A world simultaneously shutting down and carrying on with life. Of people mostly trying to survive and wait it out. Mostly. There are some who are not sitting it out, putting themselves in contexts where they can play out their dreams to be heroes or monsters, never accomplishing anything but spreading a little extra death around. I kept thinking about the pandemic on the drive home from the theater. Millions of people died but most of our memories at the peak of the lockdown are of feeling trapped and bored. A civil war in a country this big might not feel all that different for months or even years at a time for most of the population.

The thing about the “banality of evil” is that it’s both extremely real and nearly impossible to portray in a film without comedic deadpan or ghoulish overkill. Civil War portrays a United States ripped apart at it’s constitutional seams by midwit politicians incapable of forward inducting from usurping power and committing atrocities to eventually being executed by a nameless soldier who will report their success to a command chain with no understanding or possibly even interest in putting it all back to together. That’s how the story of the United States as we know it could end. Without heroes or villains, moral or philosophic judgements, without even primary or secondary causes. The thing about a country falling apart, there isn’t always a why, just a when and how.

The lesson I took away from Civil War is that a world doesn’t have to end for a reason. It can just end. And when it does, mostly what we’ll do is watch and wait for it to start up again.

The mai tai is a lesson in how a good thing can become a bad thing without the name changing. Followers of politics should take notice. Good rule of thumb: if a mait tai is red it is bad. The simple solution is to always order a Trader Vic’s Mai Tai. If the bartender doesn’t know what that is, just order a Dark and Stormy and live to fight another day.

Trader Vic’s Mai Tai

3/4 ounce fresh lime juice
1/2 ounce orange curaçao
1/4 ounce orgeat
1/4 ounce simple syrup
2 ounces aged rum

If you are looking to abstain from alcohol I suspect you could make a phenomenal limeade by mixing in orgeat and some pineapple juice and then garnishing it with dusted red chili or habanero pepper.

In terms of unexpected introspection, I was careened into by an emotionally wreckless Winnebago :

The answer is obviously job, right? I mean, I’ve dedicated huge swaths of my life to economics. I love economics. Sacrifices have been made, time and emotional toil committed. I would love to be a 20% better economist. That would mean my labor in the profession would be at least 20% more valuable, likely more. The opportunity cost of my time would skyrocket. I would be in more demand as a consultant, would receive more outside offers that would bring me to new heights of salary, likely other parts of the country, other parts of the world even. My work would receive greater attention and scrutiny. I would be fueled by the pressure to keep up with my past self and past contributions. There would be more speculation as to whether I’ve passed my peak, remain worthy of continuing investment. There would be disserations to be written, careers to be made identifying the errors I’ve committed, both subtly important and catastrophically innocent. I’d feel a greater sense of obligation to my, perhaps unearned, talent. To make good on it through service to the world. Sleep, travel, leisure would all feel that much more costly, that much more selfish. Strangers would feel that much more compelled, that much more rewarded, for publicly impugning my abilities and intentions. I would, ironically, probably receive 1000% more public censure as a result of 20% greater capacity. Would my 20% spike in competence come bundled with a thicker skin, independence of thought, and clarity of identity? Would I still be me? What exactly does come out the other side of the teleporter Mr. Scott?

Yeah, so I told the djinn I’d rather be 100% better at golf.

Thailand has a legitimate problem with roving gangs of monkeys that recently achieved significant scale leading to territorial violence in Lopburi :

The sophistication of the monkeys in question is such that gangs have been known to take a train two hours to find rival territory that is sufficiently resource rich and for which they have adequate numbers to the challenge the local monkeys. They also seem to have a rudimentary familiarity with firearms that makes tranquilizing them at any scale challenging.

There appears to be some theory behind mitigation strategies, tranquilizing and apprehending group leaders being number 1. What else might a little basic theory suggestion? Any alternative strategies?

The first question that comes to mind is whether there is a means to tilt the resource calculus towards exurban territories. That seems challenging simply given the calorie density of urban groceries and refuse. It’s probably too difficult to raise the price of resources sufficiently on their own (locked garbage cans, closed door supermarkets), but maybe the offering of monkey feeding sanctuaries outside of city limits that are within sight/smell of train lines? That could be useful means of concentrating then populations in an area that would then enable second-level strategies. And yes, I am already imagining small monkey cities wherein we can study their emergent politics. I’ve already titled my 2029 paper “Rhesus Politik” and before you ask, 1) No you can’t have the title, and 2) yes, you can be a co-author.

What about the violence as it stands within Lopburi? Can we shift the payoffs away from Hawk and towards Dove strategies? Can we increase each monkey’s expected cost of violence or decrease their payoff to exerting dominance? Perhaps an evolutionary tax on weight i.e. taking the largest monkeys out of the gene pool, the equivalent of neutering and spaying? Melee violence has signficant returns to scale, so perhaps we could expect less violence if groups were smaller. Can we change the optimal scale of individual gangs through artificial pheremones simply dousing them with knockoff Drakkar Noir? If Big Science has an genetically modified banana high in the amino acids that lead to introversion, now is a great time to share it. Personal experience suggests that if we start blasting Elliot Smith songs through the streets will monkeys begin to break off under the crushing weight of their own ennui.

I’d suggest fomenting another agricultural revolution amongst monkeys, but the initial reduction in violence over rival turf would eventually evolve into feudal violence between stationary bandits, which I fear would lead to a net increase in violence, at least for the first few thousand years. Instead, I believe we would be better served giving groups of monkeys the necessary institutions for establishing and adjudicating property rights, changing the payoffs such that the exchange of resources were preferable to violent expropriation. We’ve lived this evolutionary history before, we know how it goes. Maybe this time we can skip to the democratic peace and pax economica.

When discussing the median voter theorem with my public policy class, I went on an informative and educational tangent about ranked choice voting.

We gave an example in which we would go out to eat, each pay our own way, but we must all go to the same restaurant in town. We went through the multiple rounds of voting, eliminating least popular alternatives, and came to a conclusion. The winning restaurant was Tropical Smoothie. If you are not familiar, it is nothing to write home about. However, it is also inoffensive and they provide what they say that they will.

The students quite enjoyed the exercise and the process drove the point home that there are perfectly reasonable alternatives to the typical one – man – one – vote status quo.

Entirely separate

Last weekend, my family purchased a new beta fish. There are six people in our family with four children, ages ranging from one to six years old. Thanks to an offhand comment by my wife, I realized that it was such a beautiful opportunity to teach the kids about ranked choice voting. Everybody in the family suggested a name for the fish. The options were: Hibiscus, Jack Sparrow, Bubbles the 2nd <3, sparkels, camouflage, and ‘no’. Which do you prefer?

I mentioned this in conversation yesterday and they found it of interest, so here is the prospective usecase for blockchain/crypto that is the main reason I am bullish and things like ethereum:

Artificial Intelligent agents will eventually get to the point where we are comfortable letting them act autonomously on our behalf. For them to maximize their value to us, however, they will need to be able to contract with other AI agents without human middlemen slowing down the process. This means they need a way to form contracts outside of the traditional legal system, particularly since we are unlikely to grant them personhood or power of attorney any time soon. Tokens and the blockchain offer an immutable ledger that will serve as a form of credible contracting for agents absent any legal institutions in real time. I expect they legal human agents will remain necessary for early stage formation and late stage ex post adjudication of disputes, but the micro (nano) contracting facilitated in real time will allow for an allocation (and arbitraging) of personal private capital not previously accessible to any but the largest personal and corporate wealth agglomerations.

There you go. That’s why I own a little bit of ethereum and plan on holding it for a few more decades. Don’t know if it will end up being worth anything, but that’s why I own it. NB: I didn’t google it, so I’m not sure if this is a standard usecase or not.

My parents have moved into an elder community. Having a passing familiarity with nursing homes of decades past and elder care scams of decades current, my family spent considerable time researching options, reputations, and legal concerns. Now that it is done, however, I have sufficient peace of mind to make broader reflections.

The resulting institutions essentially looks like a hybrid college campus/country club, albeit less concerned with status projection than the different manners in which a human might lose their balance. More importantly, however, it is a small scale reminder of the powers of agglomeration and returns to scale. My middle class parents now enjoy greater total amenities than they ever have in their entire life, some for the first time ever. I assure you that it is the rare government engineer to who spends their prime earning years with a heated olympic swimming pool, jacuzzi, steam room, sauna, and modern gym equipment within 200 steps of their front door. A separate restaurant, cafeteria, and bakery sit on the campus. Community transit is available 12 hours a day to connect them to the broader region, but live culture, education, and entertain appear as daily options within each building. I won’t get into the myriad physical and mental healthcare options, but they’re there in spades.

Essentially my parents are living a city for the first time in 50 years. A small, niche catered, contract-chartered city, but a city nonetheless. It’s amazing how many amenities become affordable when you only have to pay for a 100th, 1000th, or 10,000th of the underlying cost of provision.

This raises some questions. First of all, why don’t more of us live like this? Which, with a little reflection, is simply asking why more people don’t live in cities, which in turn invites standard answers regarding preferences for more space and fewer neighbors while also further highlighting the immense costs of 40 years of construction and density obstructionism.

The more interesting question, I believe, is how many of us are going to live like this? When octogenerians peak as a fraction of the population, will we see a new golden age of agglomeration, but in private communities instead of cities? What sort of scales might these communities achieve? Will Boomers rediscover their affection for transit, but as a private club good rather than a government-provided public good? Will generations of rural and suburban Americans find themselves living in cluster micro-cities surrounding major cities, enjoying trips daytime trips into the very urban areas they’ve previously feared were overrun with imagined crimewaves? Who is going to run for mayor? What sort of power is constitutionally invested in the mayor of city whose citizens pay a flat tax i.e. community fees i.e. rent?

What’s going to happen when the Boomers pass on and subsequent Generation X members show up with greater urban affinities, but smaller numbers and fewer children to support them? Will some elder communities collapse and be absorbed into a smaller number of larger elder cities, breeding greater scale returns, but within the economic security of a generation of grown children to foot the bill if the money runs out? Will there be an Orange Julius and Tower Records for me to hang out at? Will chain wallets come back?

Come to think of it, why are we waiting until our 80s? What’s stopping us from living in tightly-knit condominium communities filled to the brim with the social and community public goods that increasingly lonely Americans seem to be in desperate need of? Why can’t I go on reddit and find the apartment complex whose emergent culture of tenants caters to my households specific interests in games, art, and sports?

I started this worried about how my parents were going to live and finished trying to figure out how to live more like them. What I’m saying is the YIMBYs need to win and make it snappy so my household can live its dream of living in a 3 bedroom condo on the 5th floor of a building built on top of the Startcourt mall.

Addendum: I am not the first person to think along these lines.

Apparently Claude 3 Opus AI/LLM is a pretty decent economist:

As much as I appreciate the prospect of an AI economist, allow me to ask the most annoying and, in turn, most important, question an economist can ask of any proposition: “Compared to what?”

It seems to me any consideration of the quality of economic analysis produced by an AI/LLM model demands a series of comparison points. We need bad economic analysis. We need AIs that generate mediocre, decent, atrocious, acceptable, and perhaps if possible, brilliant economic analysis for comparison. Which, it seems to me, is entirely possible given that a large language model (LLM) is trained on reams of text. So, lets do it. Let’s see how many different artificial economists we can produce and observe. A digital zoo of economic Pokemon with less violence and more discussion of underlying elasticities.

What happens when we train Claude on every edition of Mankiw’s principles textbook? Cowen and Tabarrok’s textbook. All of the principles books. The most daunting book in all of graduate economics? What happens when we train it on sociology and anthropology textbooks? NYT and WSJ editorials? What happens when we let it consume nothing but Presidential State of the Union addresses? Campaign speeches? Every book in the Google digital library? Twitter? The economics subreddit? A perfectly respectable blog?

How should we evaluate the outcomes? Should it attempt to complete the prelimary exams to continue your PhD training at the University of Chicago? The final exams in Intermediate Micro and Macro Economics at the University of Virginia? At what price would it have sold shares of Gamestop? Perhaps it could write an explicit function that would advise a family when to buy instead of rent based on age, city, income, and number of children. Maybe it could manage to pull off a reverse-Sokal hoax, writing a paper making a genuine scholarly contribution worthy to pass through the review process at a top 25 peer-reviewed economic journal. Maybe it could convince your brother-in-law to stop asking for stock tips and just buy into index funds.

In the end, the market test for what stands as a valuable contribution from an AI is what will matter for most of us. But the time is quickly approaching when we will leave behind awe- and angsted-filled proclamations of whether an AI model is discretely good or bad, useful or dumb. The next step demands granularity of evaluation and consideration. Perhaps not false cardinal (continuous) values, but ordinal rankings aligned with useful and actionable assessments of their analysis. And in case you think this is dull or tedious, consider for a moment what it will mean to evaluate the analytical skills of AIs stratified by their training materials. It will stand for many as a meta-analysis of the broad merit of entire disciplines, literatures, and oeuvres. It will be coarse and efficient, messy and cruel. It will cultivate and distill the core messages of intellectual and social identities, many of which were previously latent, if not outright inert. Subtext will be made text, it’s merits evaluated and compared.

That last bit is perhaps the most terrifying. The entire culture of etiquette and politeness, of politics, is built around the institutions that ensure that too much is never said too directly. I have no doubt that this has some of you salivating. You are so very comfortable in your truth that it enrages you when you are implored not to call ideas silly, arguments wrong, people stupid. A utopia of the mind awaits us in this new world of AI-adjudicated debates and augmented salons. Be careful what you wish for. And don’t be so sure your imagined AI arbitrator is going to be remotely fair. Or on your side.

An AI is only as good as the material it is trained on. Genuine insights are found in economics journals by the thousands every year, but fallacies and sophistries are found by the billions in the endless sea of casual text that fills the internet, airwaves, and podcasts. We all (all) spend large parts of our day being casually wrong about things because it costs us precisely nothing to be wrong. The law of large numbers, in the parlance of statistics, will innoculate AIs from such intellectual food poisoning as the randomness of our errors cancel out. What that won’t save us from, however, is the raw populism underlying much of the casual text out there. Is it outlandish to say there are more people who receive rewards, pecuniary and non-pecuniary, for telling people what they want to hear rather than the truth? Have you ever consumed any media ever?

I’m not an AI doomer. I remain rather sanguine on the entire enterprise. But part of the human condition is never knowing for 100% sure what is right or wrong. We pass that on to all of our intellectual offspring, no matter how smart or artificial they are. Or least, we should.

Economists rightly make a big deal out of specialization and trade. They proceed to go one step further and say that it’s better to pay someone else to perform some service, even if you can perform it yourself. One the assumptions underlying this advice is that time and money are both fungible and convertible.

How are economists right and wrong about the convertibility of time and money? In one sense, we can change how much we work and change how much income we have. That seems plain. But it also requires some start-up costs to have an easy go-to means of earning more income. For example, Uber drivers are registered with Uber already.  Joe from the street can’t start driving tomorrow without substantial preparation.

If economists are wrong about the convertibility of earned time and earned money, then they still have standing. We all have an endowment of time, if not money. But there are plenty of goods that have a money price and a time price that have an inverse relationship.  The advantage of having a time budget is that you can offset some of the money price of goods with time such that more of the money budget can be spent otherwise.

For example, I had to buy a new golf cart battery. One option was to spend $2,400 for a guy to come replace my old battery for me. The other option was for me to spend $1,500 and one evening to do it myself. Given that I typically do chores in the evening anyway, the time-cost to me didn’t feel all that imposing.

Further, if I free up some time, then what happens to it? I can leisure. That’s what economists call any time spent that isn’t working. But after that leisure, it’s gone. There some saving your time for later in the form of bringing other chores earlier in time. But there’s certainly no allowing your time to earn compound interest. That’s where the advantage of self-service really shines IMO. I can give up $900 and enjoy one evening of leisure. Or, I can given up an evening of leisure, put the savings into an investment account, and then reap double the evening’s worth seven years later. Then I’ll have two nights of leisure rather than one. To me, that’s the biggest difference between time and money. I can earn interest on my money in a way that I can’t earn interest on my time.