flâneur

Alan Diaz Diaz

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on the atlas — 32

highlights — 245

  • Also he has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all ‘progressive’ thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength…
    ‹ George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf Book Marks
  • My view is simpler: If someone wants to work, and someone else wants to hire him, rejoice. Do not demand a theory of cosmic justice before allowing them to cooperate. Do not ask whether the job is “good enough” by your standards. Ask whether it is better than the worker’s next-best option. If it is, your interference is not compassion. It is sabotage.
    Gmail
  • There is a sad place to take this: I was a slightly different person with my mom, and my wife will never know that me; my wife was a special person with her mom, and I will never know that her. But now we are parents. My wife, who will never know me as a son, will always know me as a father. And I, who will never know my wife as a daughter, will always know her as a mom. There is the third reason to become a parent: It gives the people you love another way to know you.
    Gmail
  • My mom and dad died three years apart of two cancers in my late-20s. When I met my wife, both of her parents had already passed away, too. Beyond the obvious tragedy of our situation, there is a subtler cost that Gilbert and Winnicott would appreciate. No matter how well my wife and I know each other, I will never know my wife as a daughter, and she will never know me as a son. We will never see each other “straightened, reshaped” in the presence of our parents.
    Gmail
  • There is another line I love from the book & Sons by David Gilbert. Two men walk into a pub and see their mother: “The brothers straightened, reshaped as sons.” How true, how strange. It is an awkward pleasure to see an old friend around his parents. Some softening or hardening in their face, some slouching or straightening in their back. The presence of a parent remakes a child, transforms them back into a child.
    Gmail
  • If you set out to describe a person, you do not begin by listing all the things they do alone, when no one is looking. You describe what that person is like in relation to you, or to someone you know. “Is Derek a good friend?” is a question for my friends. “Is Derek a good brother?” is a question for my sister. “Is Derek a turgid writer?” is a question for my readers. A psychologist such as Winnicott might be tempted to articulate this principle with an existential flair: There is no such thing as an individual. But I think the down-to-earth version feels more true: Every individual is the sum…
    Gmail
  • Parenthood is not special. It’s just another ride in the park. But it is there, and it was built for us, and we were built for it, too.
    Gmail
  • There is nothing about being a parent that isn’t a cliché. This is a terrible inconvenience for the suckers out there who try to write essays about it. But I also find this to be an existential balm: I was built for this, and it was built for me.
    Gmail
  • The baby you bring home from the hospital is not the baby you rock to sleep at two weeks, and the baby at three months is a complete stranger to both. In a phenomenological sense, parenting a newborn is not at all like parenting “a” singular newborn, but rather like parenting hundreds of babies, each one replacing the previous week’s child, yet retaining her basic facial structure. “Parenthood abruptly catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger,” Andrew Solomon wrote in Far From the Tree. Almost. Parenthood catapults us into a permanent relationship with strangers, plural to th…
    Gmail
  • But, much more to the point, parenting is nothing like Paris. Imagine that every day you wake up in your left-bank apartment, and the city has meaningfully morphed into some magically strange variant of Paris. On Tuesday, the streets and boulevards no longer meet at their old familiar intersections. On Wednesday, the Louvre moves to another arrondissement. The Arc de Triumphe turns upside-down on Thursday and floats in the sky on Friday. Now we’re talking. Now that is more like parenting. To be a parent is to be a permanent tourist in a constantly evolving foreign city, which also happens to b…
    Gmail
  • Of course, “colonizers” could presumably avoid violent death or second-class citizenhood by voluntarily deporting themselves. But where would they go? Take me, for example. My ancestors were Lithuanian Jews. I could leave the country of my birth and go “back” to Lithuania — a land I don’t know, whose language I don’t speak. Yet my ancestors were not “indigenous” to Lithuania either; they moved there from somewhere else. What if the ethnic Lithuanians chose not to accept me? Where would I go then? Israel? But the folks who do land acknowledgements would consider me a “colonizer” there as well.
    No, you are not on Indigenous land - by Noah Smith
  • Yet what should we think of the morality of following the principles behind land acknowledgements to their logical conclusion? “Decolonization” of the land of the U.S. would likely be an act of ethnic cleansing surpassing even the previous conquests — there are 330 million people here now, and almost none of them descend from Native Americans. An attempt to dispossess 330 million people would inevitably involve violence on a colossal scale.
    No, you are not on Indigenous land - by Noah Smith
  • There is an obvious moral appeal to these land acknowledgments. They are a way of decrying the brutal, cruel, violent history of conquest and colonization. And they probably feel like a way of standing up for the weak, the marginalized, and the dispossessed.
    No, you are not on Indigenous land - by Noah Smith
  • These land acknowledgements are, legally speaking, incorrect — there is no legal sense in which the land on which they are being performed belongs to a Native American tribe. These are moral claims about rightful land ownership. But the moral principle to which they appeal is ethnonationalism — it’s the idea that plots of land are the rightful property of ethnic groups.
    No, you are not on Indigenous land - by Noah Smith
  • Suffice it to say that most nations of the world have moved away from ethnonationalism — there is an informal sense in which some people still think of France as the land of the Franks and so on, but almost all nations define citizenship and belonging through institutions rather than race. Israel, one of the few exceptions to this rule, receives a large amount of international criticism for defining itself as an ethnostate.
    No, you are not on Indigenous land - by Noah Smith
  • Why should a section of the map be the land of the Franks, or the Russkiy, or the Cherokee, or the Han, or the Ramaytush Ohlone, or the Britons? Of course you can assign land ownership this way — it’s called an “ethnostate”. But if you do this, it means that the descendants of immigrants can never truly be full and equal citizens of the land they were born in. If Britain is defined as the land of the Britons, then a Han person whose great-great-great-grandparents moved there from China will exist as a contingent citizen — a perpetual foreigner whose continued life in the land of their birth ex…
    No, you are not on Indigenous land - by Noah Smith
  • . In most cases, the ethnic groups who now claim pieces of land as their own did not even exist when the first humans discovered or settled that land.
    No, you are not on Indigenous land - by Noah Smith
  • Why does being the first person to see a natural object make you the rightful owner of that object? And why does being the first human to set foot on a piece of land give your blood descendants the right to dispose of that land as they see fit in perpetuity, and to exclude any and all others from that land? What about all the peoples of the world who were never lucky enough to be the first to lay eyes on any plot of dirt? Are they simply to be dispossessed forever?
    No, you are not on Indigenous land - by Noah Smith
  • The United States, like all nations, was created through territorial conquest. Most of its current territory was occupied or frequented by human beings before the U.S. came; the U.S. used force to either displace, subjugate, or kill all of those people. To the extent that land “ownership” existed under the previous inhabitants, the land of the U.S. is stolen land. This was also true before the U.S. arrived. The forcible theft of the land upon which the U.S. now exists was not the first such theft; the people who lived there before conquered, displaced, or killed someone else in order to take t…
    No, you are not on Indigenous land - by Noah Smith
  • Economists and policy analysts opposed to price gouging laws have relied on the simple logic of price controls: if you cap price increases during an emergency, you discourage conservation of needed goods at exactly the time they are in high demand. Simultaneously, price caps discourage extraordinary supply efforts that would help bring goods in high demand into the affected area. In a classic case of unintended consequences, the law harms the very people whom lawmakers intend to help. The logic of supply and demand, so clear to economists, has had little effect on price gouging policies.
    The Problem with Price Gouging Laws | Cato Institute
  • Economists and policy analysts opposed to price gouging laws have relied on the simple logic of price controls: if you cap price increases during an emergency, you discourage conservation of needed goods at exactly the time they are in high demand. Simultaneously, price caps discourage extraordinary supply efforts that would help bring goods in high demand into the affected area. In a classic case of unintended consequences, the law harms the very people whom lawmakers intend to help. The logic of supply and demand, so clear to economists, has had little effect on price gouging policies.
    The Problem with Price Gouging Laws | Cato Institute
  • Sowell said the problem with price gouging laws was that they keep goods and services from being used where they are most needed; people will be better off without price caps.
    The Problem with Price Gouging Laws | Cato Institute
  • Economists and policy analysts opposed to price gouging laws have relied on the simple logic of price controls: if you cap price increases during an emergency, you discourage conservation of needed goods at exactly the time they are in high demand. Simultaneously, price caps discourage extraordinary supply efforts that would help bring goods in high demand into the affected area. In a classic case of unintended consequences, the law harms the very people whom lawmakers intend to help. The logic of supply and demand, so clear to economists, has had little effect on price gouging policies.
    The Problem with Price Gouging Laws | Cato Institute
  • Economists and policy analysts opposed to price gouging laws have relied on the simple logic of price controls: if you cap price increases during an emergency, you discourage conservation of needed goods at exactly the time they are in high demand. Simultaneously, price caps discourage extraordinary supply efforts that would help bring goods in high demand into the affected area. In a classic case of unintended consequences, the law harms the very people whom lawmakers intend to help. The logic of supply and demand, so clear to economists, has had little effect on price gouging policies.
    The Problem with Price Gouging Laws | Cato Institute
  • Economists and policy analysts opposed to price gouging laws have relied on the simple logic of price controls: if you cap price increases during an emergency, you discourage conservation of needed goods at exactly the time they are in high demand. Simultaneously, price caps discourage extraordinary supply efforts that would help bring goods in high demand into the affected area. In a classic case of unintended consequences, the law harms the very people whom lawmakers intend to help. The logic of supply and demand, so clear to economists, has had little effect on price gouging policies.
    The Problem with Price Gouging Laws | Cato Institute
  • Economists and policy analysts opposed to price gouging laws have relied on the simple logic of price controls: if you cap price increases during an emergency, you discourage conservation of needed goods at exactly the time they are in high demand. Simultaneously, price caps discourage extraordinary supply efforts that would help bring goods in high demand into the affected area. In a classic case of unintended consequences, the law harms the very people whom lawmakers intend to help. The logic of supply and demand, so clear to economists, has had little effect on price gouging policies.
    The Problem with Price Gouging Laws | Cato Institute
  • I don’t think this was just my social milieu. It was part of a broader generational trend. Millennials valued cultural capital over economic capital because we were raised in a solidly middle-class environment. When prosperity is widespread, it loses its cachet. So taste, rather than money, became the primary status marker.
    OK Zoomer - The Russell Walter Chudstack
  • Millennials pursued status implicitly through ‘taste’ (arthouse films, Moleskine notebooks, natty wines). Gen Z pursues status explicitly through universally legible symbols (money, muscles, clout). This explicitness makes Gen Z appear more status-obsessed, but they’ve just dropped the pretense that Millennials maintained.
    OK Zoomer - The Russell Walter Chudstack
  • Gen Z aren’t more status-obsessed. They simply seek status in a more transparent way.
    OK Zoomer - The Russell Walter Chudstack
  • ‘Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.’ —George Orwell, In Front of Your Nose (1945)
    OK Zoomer - The Russell Walter Chudstack
  • The implications for the Indian question are straightforward. Namely: In the extremely unlikely event that any particular Indian can show that he personally is the rightful heir of a particular Indian who was wrongfully dispossessed of a particular piece of property, the current occupants should hand him the keys to his birthright and vacate the premises. Otherwise the current occupants have the morally strongest claim to their property, and the status quo should continue. Anything more is just the doctrine of collective guilt masquerading as a defense of property rights.
    Gmail
  • But suppose that Jones is not the criminal, not the man who stole the watch, but that he had inherited or had innocently purchased it from the thief. And suppose, of course, that neither the victim nor his heirs can be found. In that case, the disappearance of the victim means that the stolen property comes properly into a state of no-ownership. But we have seen that any good in a state of no-ownership, with no legitimate owner of its title, reverts as legitimate property to the first person to come along and use it, to appropriate this now unowned resource for human use. But this “first” pers…
    Gmail
  • Suppose, however, that condition (a) is not fulfilled: in short, that we know that Jones’s title is criminal, but that we cannot now find the victim or his current heir. Who now is the legitimate and moral property owner? The answer to this question now depends on whether or not Jones himself is the criminal, whether Jones is the man who stole the watch. If Jones was the thief, then it is quite clear that he cannot be allowed to keep it, for the criminal cannot be allowed to keep the reward of his crime; and he loses the watch, and probably suffers other punishments besides. In that case, who …
    Gmail
  • It is true that existing property titles must be scrutinized, but the resolution of the problem is much simpler than the question assumes. For remember always the basic principle: that all resources, all goods, in a state of no-ownership belong properly to the first person who finds and transforms them into a useful good (the “homestead” principle). We have seen this above in the case of unused land and natural resources: the first to find and mix his labor with them, to possess and use them, “produces” them and becomes their legitimate property owner. Now suppose that Mr. Jones has a watch; i…
    Gmail
  • Burgos didn’t endorse it, but there’s an even more effective option: eliminate rent stabilization entirely. This would let rents rise to meet demand while also making renovations profitable again. New Yorkers whose incomes are below a certain level could get a housing voucher, thereby restoring the investment required to maintain, construct, and operate buildings. New Yorkers would gain a sustainable solution to rent burdens while also keeping the existing housing stock in good shape.
    Why Are 50,000 New York City Apartments Vacant?
  • Burgos’s suggestion is to amend the law to restore landlords’ ability to raise rents after vacancy.
    Why Are 50,000 New York City Apartments Vacant?
  • the 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act (HSTPA). Passed by a Democratic majority in the state legislature, HSTPA eliminated landlords’ abilities to raise rents after units were vacated, or when they exceeded $2,775 per month. In doing so, it also eliminated their ability to make improvements profitably and reset the stabilized rent.
    Why Are 50,000 New York City Apartments Vacant?
  • One-bedroom units in the building average $3,500— except two of them, subject to the city’s rent-stabilization laws, which hold rents below $900 per month. As a result, both units have been allowed to fall into disrepair, because the cost of restoring them to habitability is greater than what they’d generate in rent. “We’re talking a minimum of $100,000 for [the studio we first visited], which requires a complete remodeling,”
    Why Are 50,000 New York City Apartments Vacant?
  • The city now has nearly 50,000 empty units, absent from the market either because their operating costs exceed legal rents or because they require considerable renovations.
    Why Are 50,000 New York City Apartments Vacant?
  • These three frameworks — behavioral economics, consumer protection, and republican virtue — together span the left to right spectrum. Proponents of each may find things to dislike in the other. Yet while the language varies, the basic argument is actually the same. Something about vice, and addiction per se, threatens our capacity to act as fully capable humans and citizens. Vice, and those who peddle it, suppress our freedom — tyrannize us — in a way that the state has a legitimate interest in counteracting.
    The Case for Prohibiting Vice | National Affairs
  • Addiction, in this view, is a problem because it can engender an inability to govern oneself and, therefore, to participate in the collective process of self-government. A person who spends his day intoxicated or addled by drugs is less competent to participate in democracy. And tens of millions of people more interested in getting high than in running our society represent a challenge to the idea of self-rule as such. As a result, the state can be said to have an interest in fostering good behavior insofar as it ensures the maintenance of a republican form of government. Much as education is …
    The Case for Prohibiting Vice | National Affairs
  • Advocates of consumer protection on today's left are in some ways restating an older, more conservative criticism of vice — what might be termed the "republican virtue" framework. This view is the one most nearly related to legal moralism, but thickens the legal-moralist account of why it is legitimate for the state to concern itself with right conduct. Specifically, it argues that a republican form of government — in which the people collectively rule themselves, rather than being ruled over — is only possible if citizens practice certain virtues integral to self-rule. In the absence of virtu…
    The Case for Prohibiting Vice | National Affairs
  • This insight — consuming addictive products can render us vulnerable to irrationality — is directly related to the second critique of vice: the "consumer protection" view. Much as the loan shark takes advantage of his clients' straitened circumstances to charge usurious interest rates, so too does the drug dealer capitalize on his buyers' dependence to extract more cash. This argument finds a natural home on the political left, which tends to identify predatory business as a significant threat to human freedom and dignity.
    The Case for Prohibiting Vice | National Affairs
  • Another, related insight is that intoxication can impair our decision to act rationally. That's true of addictive products such as alcohol and marijuana, which directly alter our mental state. But it can also be true of the experience of gambling or consuming pornography — consider the trance into which many users of both products enter while they are engaged in a "binge." The decision to consume an addictive product may be initially rational (in the sense of maximizing utility) but results in irrational subsequent behavior, which the impaired person is unable to correct. The first dose might …
    The Case for Prohibiting Vice | National Affairs
  • classical rational-actor theory assumes that humans value the future at a declining rate — a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow, and we steadily "discount" the value of the dollar (or any other reward) as our receipt of it moves further into the future. But behavioral-economics research suggests that humans often discount the future following a hyperbolic function, such that the value of future goods diminishes more rapidly than it ought to if we were behaving rationally. This appears to be particularly true for people struggling with addiction. Such people often know that getti…
    The Case for Prohibiting Vice | National Affairs
  • Moral-legalist arguments are ultimately grounded in a meta-ethical assertion: Certain behaviors are wrong, and that wrongness is a reasonable basis for the state to regulate or prohibit those behaviors in at least some cases.
    The Case for Prohibiting Vice | National Affairs
  • The result of this process is, in essence, a façade of utilitarian calculation: Each side can claim its total is bigger, and there is no real way to resolve the debate. Voters and policymakers end up making decisions about vice based not on a real, objective balancing of costs and benefits, but on which of the enumerated costs is most salient to them. That salience, in turn, is determined by prior value judgments — judgments that, because of the cultural power of the harm principle, tend to favor autonomy.
    The Case for Prohibiting Vice | National Affairs
  • Is porn harmful? It is, much like any addictive product. Repetitive use yields social isolation, lack of motivation, sexual dysfunction, and the like. It promotes an industry that is damaging to its participants and that has a long history of failing to abide by legal safeguards, from abetting the distribution of child sex-abuse material to spreading non-consensual content. Perhaps most persuasively, American teenagers routinely report its ubiquity in their lives, deforming their sense of the meaning of sex and their way of relating to each other.
    The Case for Prohibiting Vice | National Affairs
  • Or consider marijuana. Legalization leads to increases in use and addiction. These in turn translate into greater rates of intoxication, resulting in more workplace accidents and car crashes. Then there are the long-term health harms: heart attack, stroke, lung damage, and schizophrenia. There are also the social harms: Marijuana legalization increases rates of homelessness, reduces property values, and of course permeates cities with the stench of weed.
    The Case for Prohibiting Vice | National Affairs
  • There is a lot of evidence, of course, behind the idea that modern legal or semi-legal vices are harmful. Take sports gambling. The rolling legalization of gambling allows social scientists to isolate the causal effect of the end of prohibition on harmful outcomes. A robust literature has done just that, finding that legalization increases problem gambling, alcohol use, and calls to gambling helplines. This rise in problematic behavior in turn elevates the risk of reckless financial dealings, including bank overdrafts, swelling credit-card debt, and a 25% to 30% increase in bankruptcy.
    The Case for Prohibiting Vice | National Affairs