Very cool thoughts thanks. One comment, on space necessary for renewables, numbers are better than adjectives, so in the case of the US, some 1% of the land surface would be needed, to compare to 41% of it used for meat production.
"But even if he just continues on his current course, it’s hard for me to see, say, Democratic politicians and staffers embracing Twitter as wholeheartedly in 2024 as they did in 2020. The fact that it is so thoroughly Musk’s robs it of the illusion of being, in any real way, a demos."
It never was a demos, similarly to how Twitter never operated as a metaphorical "town square". The enumerable list of issues surrounding content and moderation alone are hugely problematic. Conservative voices censored, child pornography not censored. Erratic moderation. Moderation that was highly politicized. The great outcry from legacy 20th century media over the last month pertaining to Musk's acquisition is due to the loss of a vehicle for controlling the liberal narrative. When the NYT and Washington Post and the Atlantic and MSNBC, et. al., all coordinate to attack Musk personally, suggest Twitter is dying (it isn't), advertisers will flee (they are not), blue checks will move to Mastodon (let's check back in on that one in six months or so), it simply reeks of desperation. And the silence from legacy media on the suppression of laptop story, or of Covid "misinformation", the suppression of discussion on the lab-leak theory, etc. And what is really telling is that federal agencies, such as the CDC and CISA over at DHS, colluded to suppress speech on social media platforms, such as Twitter.
So I ask, where is the NYT reporting on this story? Where is the ACLU? If the liberal or progressive news reporting infrastructure or NGOs can't be bothered to defend free speech in the 21st century, then who will?
On decarbonization, I don't know why Ezra's talking about land being covered with solar panels when there's suitable space on rooftops with existing infrastructure in place. Secondarily, solar is fine as an adjunct power source but economically it' doesn't make sense--you have to buy the panels and then you have to buy the battery storage (to stabilize it's erratic nature). That's even more lithium to be mined and the dirty little secret no one talks about is there's not nearly enough Lithium on the earth to fully decarbonize. Solid state batteries or other future solutions with more Abundant (snark) materials may ameliorate this but my vote for now is to re-embrace nukes and getting building SMRs--constant and green energy. That and for God's sake quit eating so much beef---not only is cattle production sucking up half of CA's prescious water it's contributing greenhouse gasses on a scale with transportation. Take a drive through the Imperial and Colorado River Valleys and on through Arizona's fertile belts--alfalfa and hay inhaling scant Colorado River water under the blistering desert sun.
I can never understand talking about "abundance" and "decarbonization" and "building" without a single mention of using the clean energy that is 2,000,000x more dense than coal and for which we have billions of years of supply, nuclear fission. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> I’m halfway surprised Meta hasn’t opened up a barebones clone for people to cluster around.
Isn't Facebook quite similar to Twitter? There's a news feed, posts, ability to share images, reshare, etc. Guess I'm showing my cards by asking this (not a Twitter user) but what would be different about it? A mode where all posts are public by default and length is even more aggressively capped?
I guess the reason there isn't another Twitter on the horizon is that running such a site really sucks. Zuckerberg clearly burned out on social media years ago, hence retreating into the metaverse. Everyone is out to get you, especially activists/advertisers/activist advertisers who won't be satisfied no matter how much you spend on moderation/censorship - it's a financial black hole that can easily suck up more than 100% of your profits if you let it. That seems to be what happened to Twitter, which has never been financially attractive and whose shareholders got lucky with the timing of the Musk deal.
Why would anyone sign up for that? I have the technical skills to build something like Twitter and have recruited developer teams in the past, but there's no way I'd want to create a Twitter competitor even if Twitter itself went down in flames completely. I guess if Twitter does go bankrupt someone will do it anyway, but more likely there's going to be a fragmentation across several services openly committed to hyper-liberalism backed by philanthropists, so the vexing problem of making money can be ignored, and you face less of a problem with activists if the whole product was created to please them from the start. But these competitors won't be able to secure a large userbase and those who are on it will find it unsatisfying, as they'll rapidly become dominated by choir preaching and, in the absence of a wider cross-section of society to dunk on, intra-tribal fighting (Mastodon seems to have already gone that way).
Could be wrong though. I never used Twitter but thoroughly enjoy Substack. The return of long-form writing can only be a good thing.
Great; might have liked more mention of Gavin Newsom who knows how power and politics work better than any governor in recent memory. Newsom is actually steering the ship to the extent it can be steered. More attention to him please!
Wonderful.. I’ve been fantasizing about a conversation between my two favorite writers and now here it is. So how about Ezra interviewing Noah in the near future?
I look in on here from time to time for the midwit opinion. You never fail to provide it. Thanks to you and human grease-stain Klein for the entertainment.
My question to you or Ezra Klein is: in which areas does the government have an advantage over non-government actors, and why?
Many people, including economists, quickly respond with "public goods" or "higher risk" activities - but those arguments don't seem to me to hold up to scrutiny.
So many words. So little insight. Klein hides his true progressive urges (Vox is as far loony left as it gets) in a cascade of convoluted I’m not sures that betray his own seeming convictions. Progressives remain yucky. Lofty utopian goals, and no way to accomplish them without destroying the American system that has allowed them their voice. There is a flabbiness that pervades this interview and makes it not only hard to read, but also difficult to comprehend.
> How do the costs of all this construction not just fall on those without the voice to oppose them?
Maybe we need an explicit policy that requires the costs to fall on those who oppose the loudest? (Kind of trolling here, but only kind of... this idea has some nice game-theoretic properties to curb the excesses of NIMBYs and the like.)
Klein's ideas on abundance are very innovative despite the fact that they sound familiar. I hope the progressives are listening. There's this fanatical environmentalism that seems to stop everything.
Very cool thoughts thanks. One comment, on space necessary for renewables, numbers are better than adjectives, so in the case of the US, some 1% of the land surface would be needed, to compare to 41% of it used for meat production.
The crossover we didn’t know we needed. But the one we deserve.
"But even if he just continues on his current course, it’s hard for me to see, say, Democratic politicians and staffers embracing Twitter as wholeheartedly in 2024 as they did in 2020. The fact that it is so thoroughly Musk’s robs it of the illusion of being, in any real way, a demos."
It never was a demos, similarly to how Twitter never operated as a metaphorical "town square". The enumerable list of issues surrounding content and moderation alone are hugely problematic. Conservative voices censored, child pornography not censored. Erratic moderation. Moderation that was highly politicized. The great outcry from legacy 20th century media over the last month pertaining to Musk's acquisition is due to the loss of a vehicle for controlling the liberal narrative. When the NYT and Washington Post and the Atlantic and MSNBC, et. al., all coordinate to attack Musk personally, suggest Twitter is dying (it isn't), advertisers will flee (they are not), blue checks will move to Mastodon (let's check back in on that one in six months or so), it simply reeks of desperation. And the silence from legacy media on the suppression of laptop story, or of Covid "misinformation", the suppression of discussion on the lab-leak theory, etc. And what is really telling is that federal agencies, such as the CDC and CISA over at DHS, colluded to suppress speech on social media platforms, such as Twitter.
So I ask, where is the NYT reporting on this story? Where is the ACLU? If the liberal or progressive news reporting infrastructure or NGOs can't be bothered to defend free speech in the 21st century, then who will?
On decarbonization, I don't know why Ezra's talking about land being covered with solar panels when there's suitable space on rooftops with existing infrastructure in place. Secondarily, solar is fine as an adjunct power source but economically it' doesn't make sense--you have to buy the panels and then you have to buy the battery storage (to stabilize it's erratic nature). That's even more lithium to be mined and the dirty little secret no one talks about is there's not nearly enough Lithium on the earth to fully decarbonize. Solid state batteries or other future solutions with more Abundant (snark) materials may ameliorate this but my vote for now is to re-embrace nukes and getting building SMRs--constant and green energy. That and for God's sake quit eating so much beef---not only is cattle production sucking up half of CA's prescious water it's contributing greenhouse gasses on a scale with transportation. Take a drive through the Imperial and Colorado River Valleys and on through Arizona's fertile belts--alfalfa and hay inhaling scant Colorado River water under the blistering desert sun.
Very good interview. Thank you! It helps me to see the situation more clearly!
I can never understand talking about "abundance" and "decarbonization" and "building" without a single mention of using the clean energy that is 2,000,000x more dense than coal and for which we have billions of years of supply, nuclear fission. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> I’m halfway surprised Meta hasn’t opened up a barebones clone for people to cluster around.
Isn't Facebook quite similar to Twitter? There's a news feed, posts, ability to share images, reshare, etc. Guess I'm showing my cards by asking this (not a Twitter user) but what would be different about it? A mode where all posts are public by default and length is even more aggressively capped?
I guess the reason there isn't another Twitter on the horizon is that running such a site really sucks. Zuckerberg clearly burned out on social media years ago, hence retreating into the metaverse. Everyone is out to get you, especially activists/advertisers/activist advertisers who won't be satisfied no matter how much you spend on moderation/censorship - it's a financial black hole that can easily suck up more than 100% of your profits if you let it. That seems to be what happened to Twitter, which has never been financially attractive and whose shareholders got lucky with the timing of the Musk deal.
Why would anyone sign up for that? I have the technical skills to build something like Twitter and have recruited developer teams in the past, but there's no way I'd want to create a Twitter competitor even if Twitter itself went down in flames completely. I guess if Twitter does go bankrupt someone will do it anyway, but more likely there's going to be a fragmentation across several services openly committed to hyper-liberalism backed by philanthropists, so the vexing problem of making money can be ignored, and you face less of a problem with activists if the whole product was created to please them from the start. But these competitors won't be able to secure a large userbase and those who are on it will find it unsatisfying, as they'll rapidly become dominated by choir preaching and, in the absence of a wider cross-section of society to dunk on, intra-tribal fighting (Mastodon seems to have already gone that way).
Could be wrong though. I never used Twitter but thoroughly enjoy Substack. The return of long-form writing can only be a good thing.
Great; might have liked more mention of Gavin Newsom who knows how power and politics work better than any governor in recent memory. Newsom is actually steering the ship to the extent it can be steered. More attention to him please!
Wonderful.. I’ve been fantasizing about a conversation between my two favorite writers and now here it is. So how about Ezra interviewing Noah in the near future?
Allen Whitaker-Emrich
I look in on here from time to time for the midwit opinion. You never fail to provide it. Thanks to you and human grease-stain Klein for the entertainment.
My question to you or Ezra Klein is: in which areas does the government have an advantage over non-government actors, and why?
Many people, including economists, quickly respond with "public goods" or "higher risk" activities - but those arguments don't seem to me to hold up to scrutiny.
I can be convinced otherwise.
But the status quo gets a political pass that new policies do not
My favorite sentence!!
Excellent Q & A
So many words. So little insight. Klein hides his true progressive urges (Vox is as far loony left as it gets) in a cascade of convoluted I’m not sures that betray his own seeming convictions. Progressives remain yucky. Lofty utopian goals, and no way to accomplish them without destroying the American system that has allowed them their voice. There is a flabbiness that pervades this interview and makes it not only hard to read, but also difficult to comprehend.
Incredible read from two thoughtful writers. This has been one of my favorite articles on Noahpinion.
> How do the costs of all this construction not just fall on those without the voice to oppose them?
Maybe we need an explicit policy that requires the costs to fall on those who oppose the loudest? (Kind of trolling here, but only kind of... this idea has some nice game-theoretic properties to curb the excesses of NIMBYs and the like.)
Klein's ideas on abundance are very innovative despite the fact that they sound familiar. I hope the progressives are listening. There's this fanatical environmentalism that seems to stop everything.