Brad and Noah discuss the reindustrialization of America
The 65th episode of Hexapodia.
Economics
Noahpinion.
Economics and other interesting stuff.
Recent essays
30 of 110India is quietly doing great
The world’s biggest country continues to defy the skeptics.
Noah Smith and Azeem Azhar discuss the AI boom
A bonus podcast!
Noah, Brad DeLong, and Dan Wang discuss the Anthropic IPO
The Hexapodia Podcast is back!
Why I’m becoming a China bear
The country was perfectly positioned to win in a world that no longer exists.
For the Democrats, now comes the hard part
The Dems have to figure out what they stand for, and what they want to do.
Normal Americans punished MAGA
Normies exist, and there’s only so far you can push them before they get mad.
Anthropic’s moat is Claude
The bull case for Anthropic’s IPO.
Farewell, my Captain
A TV character gave us a glimpse of what humanity might become.
A golden age of science is coming
AI can do things humans researchers can’t, even in groups.
Roundup #90: In which Noah joins a Japanese VC firm
The humanities; Data center crowd-out; Chinese local governments; AI and capitalism; How Japan builds; Phones bad; Chinese manufacturing; Rent control
The internet breaks
What will be next to break?
France and the limits of liberalism
Immigration, the welfare state, and Keynesian economics are all showing signs of strain.
“You Can See Everything” and the nature of liars
A movie review, plus some thoughts on dishonesty, belief, and human communication.
Can a Million AI Agents Create Superintelligence?
Ramez Naam gives a skeptic’s take on agent swarms.
Why are we ruled by barbarians?
America’s New Right believes that savagery is the key to victory.
AI vs. the railroads
Are we in 1872?
A Nobel for New Keynesian macro, at last!
It’s about time.
Why Donald Trump won in 2024
Re-upping my election post-mortem, so that we don’t forget.
Maybe the Rapture is already here
In the future, we’re all heavenbanned.
There is no “Indian Question”
The actual question is what kind of a nation America is going to be.
What the AI boom is doing for Americans
It’s not just “of, by and for oligarchs”.
The second Trump presidency is a world-historic failure
How did Trump fumble so badly?
Roundup #89: It isn’t X, it’s Y
AI risk; Reindustrialization; The rent crisis; AI and jobs; Mass deportation; Chinese investment; Cyber risk
Stop spending money on smaller classes
We’ve spent decades raising teacher quantity when we should have been raising quality.
Where’s the “intelligence explosion”?
Ramez Naam gives a skeptic’s take on Recursive Self-Improvement.
Four eras of San Francisco tech culture
An anthropological reflection.
No, you are not on Indigenous land
A repost from 2024.
The problem(s) with utilitarianism
Our favorite moral philosophy is about to come under increasing strain.
How we can beat China
The trick is to let them beat themselves.