Autumn vibes mailbag

www.slowboring.com

Autumn vibes mailbag

Matthew Yglesias

17 - 21 minutes

Hey folks, just a little programming note. It’s been fun doing these mailbag columns, so much fun that Milan asked if he could try his hand at one. So next Friday, I’m gonna take a week off and he’s going to do the answering. Start thinking of some material for him over the weekend!

For now, though, you’re stuck with me.

Marie Kennedy: Do you use the gender of the question-asker (or judgment thereof based on handle and context clues) as a factor in choosing which questions to answer or what order to publish them in? Despite being outnumbered 10:1 in the comments section, seems like lady-questions get the number one slot half the time, and make up about half of the first 6 questions or so.

Yes.

[Editor’s note: When we solicited feedback from women who read the newsletter, one of the most common remarks was that it would be nice to see more visibility from other women in the comments section and in the mailbag. While we like to think that all of our posts are worth reading from start to finish, we know in practice that doesn’t always happen, so we have both been more mindful in our question selection and also tried to put questions from women closer to the top where they’re more likely to be read. We also, of course, realize that guessing someone’s gender based on their handle is an imperfect method, but that’s the information we have available to us.]

JM: One underdiscussed aspect of affirmative action is the preference given to males, particularly at liberal arts schools where - if this preference didn’t exist - women would outnumber men 60:40 (or more). What do you make of both the phenomenon itself - Richard Reeves has a new book out on this - and its lack of overlap with the general affirmative action debate?

I think this is a good illustration of the reality that admissions practices are made by schools for their own benefit and not in pursuit of some larger social goal. To the extent that schools put a thumb on the scales — whether in the form of admissions or who gets offered sweetheart merit scholarships — to boost male enrollment, they are not doing that to correct structural bias against men.

They are doing it because they want students to have a fun time in school. The more fun your students have, the more likely alumni are to donate. The more fun your students have, the more new applicants you’ll get, which lets you be more selective. It’s not super high-minded for a college president to come out and say “one of the ingredients to a successful college is an enjoyable dating scene, so we skew admissions to help our students find boyfriends.” But that’s what’s going on.

But if you zoom out to a society-wide level, we clearly do have a structural imbalance where women are now significantly more likely than men to get college degrees, and also women don’t like to date or marry men who are less educated than they are. That doesn’t sound to me like a recipe for everyone to have a happy, fulfilling life, but it’s also not super clear what you might do about it.

What’s important, I think, is to remember the core insight — schools make admissions policies for self-interested reasons, not for social justice reasons — and to apply that to racial affirmative action. There’s no evidence that diversity admissions policies are increasing the total number of Black and Hispanic college graduates, because of course most schools aren’t selective at all. And while Harvard bolsters its own social legitimacy by recruiting an appropriately diverse class, that simply creates a new diversity problem for the marginally less selective schools that Harvard’s diverse admitted students (which, to be clear, includes plenty of people like me rather than genuine hard luck cases) would otherwise attend. The main benefit of affirmative action to the students is that they get to attend schools with more financial resources. But this is a policy choice. Since California ended affirmative action, the state has somewhat reformed its higher ed funding system to be less tilted in favor of the UC schools and more favorable to Cal State and community colleges. That seems correct and appropriate to me. But it’s indispensably bad for the University of California, which took a hit to its social and political legitimacy that has now disadvantaged it in battles with Cal State.

If (realistically, when) the Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action admissions, that will be a real blow to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and a handful of other top-tier universities. But the consequences for society depend largely on which institutions people choose to support financially — and I think moving money down the prestige hierarchy would be a great idea.

Lost Future: How do you feel philosophically about judicial review being part of a country's political system? I remember when I learned in school that a majority of developed countries actually don't have true judicial review, they practice 'parliamentary sovereignty' and the legislature can just pass whatever they want.... Was pretty shocking. But, most of those countries are in the EU, so aren't they now all subject to the EU Court of Human Rights? So maybe that's no longer true, I dunno.

If you were creating a new constitutional order from scratch, would you empower a supreme judiciary to strike down 'unconstitutional' laws? Or is that too subjective & inherently partisan? I think we've all heard criticisms that the justices are just unelected politicians, etc. etc. One reasonable compromise (for the US) that I was thinking is that it should require a supermajority to declare a law unconstitutional- using a raw majority to determine what should be a fundamental question is pretty dumb. Also, individual judges should have a lot less power in our system. Open to hearing your thoughts though!

It’s important to distinguish between two separate ideas. One is judicial review of laws to assess their conformity with the constitution. The other is the idea that the courts should be the people who “go last” in an interbranch conflict.

I think the Canadian system — in which laws are absolutely reviewed by the judiciary for conformity with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but Parliament has the right to overrule the Supreme Court — is good. Overrides do happen under this system, but relatively rarely — the Court’s rulings are not a dead letter. One reason they are not a dead letter is that the Court has a decent amount of legitimacy. But one reason they preserve that legitimacy is the Supreme Court is not a locus of massive partisan conflict. And that’s because strong policy-demanders at odds with an important constitutional ruling have a more promising course of action than politicizing the judiciary — they can just push for parliamentary override. To me, it’s a good system.

But note that in the United States, a lot of the de facto power of the judiciary comes from non-constitutional cases. Because of bicameralism, presidentialism, and the filibuster, the stakes in judicial interpretation of statutes are very high here. If the Supreme Court of Canada rules that some Canadian air pollution regulation violates the law and Parliament feels they don’t like the outcome, they can just pass a new law that clarifies the point. In America, if the Supreme Court rules that the EPA can’t regulate greenhouse gas emissions, then that is a de facto guarantee that there will be no emissions regulation because the barrier to passing a new law is so high in our country.

This is why on some level, I think “judicial review” is the wrong thing to ask questions about. Obviously courts need to be able to do statutory interpretation. But what we have in the United States is an extremely low-productivity legislature that in practice devolves massive amounts of power to the courts.

James L: What do you think about the provision of tanks, advanced anti-aircraft systems (e.g., SAMs), fighter aircraft, and substantially more artillery to Ukraine? Should Europe or the US be ramping up its deliveries? Also, what financial help should Europe and the US be providing to Ukraine?

I think the ideal would be for Ukraine to disavow reconquering Crimea as a war aim (while retaining it as a legitimate military target as long as the war is ongoing) in exchange for a further qualitative step-up in western military assistance. I think Ukraine taking that step would reduce some of the tail risks we are facing, and I think doing it as part of a quid pro quo that secures the delivery of a bunch of useful military equipment makes it politically easier for Ukrainian leaders.

They can say, “look, we don’t accept the legitimacy of what Russia did, but we do acknowledge the authentic pro-Russian sentiments of the population there.” Trying to force them back into Ukraine would only weaken the country, while taking this deal made us stronger.

Michael Tolhurst: Nuclear war is bad and our leaders should discourage it. But I'm unsure what the optimal signaling strategy is here. Obviously Putin who had a weak conventional hand wants to increase the salience of Russia's nuclear arsenal. To avoid nuclear outcomes should the west be more or less bellicose about nuclear weapons than it is now? (Or are we at a reasonable level in our signaling?) Also, while we should certainly deter very strongly nuclear use against NATO, presumably the US probably should not go as far for a country not in NATO. (But then it seems a weird twisting of *their own rules* for Russia to use nukes to preserve recent hostile conquests.)

This is a tricky one as a matter of public communication because a president or secretary of state needs to choose their words very carefully in a way that sometimes makes it hard to be both forceful and clear.

But if Vladimir Putin wants to know what I think (hi, Vlad!), then I would make a few points. One is that I’ve consistently shown better judgment about this Ukraine issue than he has, so he should consider deferring to me. The other is that even his “successful” gambit of seizing Crimea back in 2014 arguably backfired by causing the exit of a lot of pro-Russian voters from the Ukrainian electorate and creating the durable anti-Russian Ukrainian political consensus he fears.

As far as anyone can tell, there is very little battlefield upside to using tactical nuclear weapons. Russia could, of course, use large-scale nuclear weapons to slaughter Ukrainian civilians and destroy their cities. But it’s not possible to turn Ukraine into a radioactive wasteland without creating significant negative consequences for Ukraine’s neighbors. There is inevitably going to be a response. And in exchange you get… what? To conquer rubble? As at best a pariah? Sue for peace!

Bryan T. Mathew: How do you think about national conservatism and post-liberalism? What do you think explains the dissatisfaction from the right with liberal democracy?

My hot take on this is that transatlantic cross-pollination of ideas has been very harmful in this respect.

If you look at Europe, it is actually true that they are midway through an elite-driven process whose goal of “ever closer union” involves essentially the dissolution of sovereign nation-states as that’s been traditionally understood. This is a visionary idea that, whether you find it inspiring or deplorable, is absolutely real. There is an EU flag flying on public buildings, an EU central bank determining macroeconomic conditions, EU regulators setting the agenda across many markets, and plenty of proposals for deeper integration. It would be totally insane to imagine this could unfold without any pushback or contestation.

But then I think American rightists misappropriate the depth of feeling of European political conflicts and deploy it in the United States. To say you disagree with the relevant provisions of the 1980 Refugee Act or think they are outdated under present circumstance and ought to be changed is fine. To declare that Joe Biden is doing “open borders” and our country is at risk of lapsing into non-existence is hysteria. Republicans haven’t even taken the minimal step of writing down a legislative proposal that could be the basis of either bipartisan negotiations today or partisan governance in 2025.

And I think a lot of mischief follows from this confusion on both sides. If you’re an American progressive who remembers people marching against the WTO, you should muster some sympathy for European nationalists who worry about excessive delegation to opaque supranational bodies. But if you’re an American conservative, you should pay attention when Joe Biden says proudly that “America is an idea” and delivers his big anti-MAGA speech from Liberty Hall. We have significant political disagreements in the United States but also a very firm national identity and a sovereign state.

Luke Christofferson: I'm looking for a recommendation for a right leaning, print journal or newspaper to subscribe my father to. For most of my memory he was an intense, but mostly normal conservative. Recently, he has gotten more Trumpy and angry at politics, which I mostly attribute to Fox News' (which he watches about 2 hours/day) Trumpy turn. I want to provide him with some sort of alternate news source to hopefully prevent some of the radicalization I've seen in his friends (some light QAnon stuff going on), but like all conservatives, he heavily distrusts “mainstream media.” All of my news consumption is electronic, so I don't have a good sense of a physical journal that is right enough to have some conservative cred but also isn't going to literally call for Civil War if Trump is indicted. Got anything for me?

Some context: His identity is 100% rooted in his Evangelical Christianity. Relatedly, he thinks that Christians are the most discriminated against group in America and originally became politically invested as he felt the secularization of America go on around him. He often calls liberals and Democrats evil, but when I actually talk to him about my liberal policy beliefs he thinks they are alright. Growing up I remember him calling Charles Krauthammer the smartest man in America very often. He voted for Jeb Bush in the 2016 primary. He thought John McCain was awesome.

I would get him National Review and Reason. You asked for print, so I’m not recommending The Bulwark and The Dispatch, but you should also try to get him to read The Bulwark and the Dispatch. Or at least listen to some of their podcasts.

David K: What do you think about rent control laws? Are they ever helpful or necessary? Articles like this pop up all the time in the NYT, and I think get interpreted as this great thing that allows artists and creative types to thrive. Seems like the real story is just some lucky guy that got to inherit an unfair regulatory benefit and now is using that to make his own profit by renting out his space. Do you agree?

Land use reform creates significant economic gains, and it’s important to parcel out those gains in a way that creates a broad winning political coalition. Under the right circumstances, including rent control ideas in a broad reform package could be good. But in isolation, you are right — rent control is a windfall for a discrete number of tenants and not a real solution to fundamental housing issues.

One thing I do think we should think about is whether there aren’t things governments could do on the financing side to encourage longer-term leases with more pricing stability.

AM: You were a speaker at the Effective Altruism conference this weekend - what did you make of it? Where do you disagree with EA most?

This is a spicy take, but I’m not sure how much EA is a doctrine that one could agree or disagree with at this point. It’s a community.

And the community includes, for example, enough people who are devoted to animal welfare that the norm in the community is for all the food at EA events to be plant-based. And that continues to be the norm even though these days the EA community’s highest-status leaders are primarily focused on existential risk questions rather than animal welfare. And in fact, the norm is so strong that lots of the leading voices on x-risk issues are themselves vegan. As a non-vegan who often feels bad about it, I have to say I enjoyed being in the EA bubble for several days — it’s super easy and enjoyable to eat a plant-based diet if all the food put in front of you is plant-based.

But all of that is to say that the propositional content of EA has gotten stretched pretty thin. “You should try to be effective rather than ineffective” isn’t a claim anyone is going to disagree with, and “it’s important to try to do good in the world” is also pretty banal.

What you’re really left evaluating is a set of people and institutions, not a set of ideas. And I am pretty favorably inclined toward those institutions. I’m very familiar with the work of Open Philanthropy, and I think it’s generally excellent. I’ve met a bunch of Open Phil people over the years and they are very smart and conscientious. They also have a good track record of identifying smart, conscientious people to fund. I am less personally familiar with the Centre for Effective Altruism people, and the FTX Future Fund is much newer and doesn’t have as much of a track-record, so I discount my credence in them somewhat relative to Open Philanthropy. But these are all, in my experience, good organizations. If I hear they are taking on some new venture, my prior is going to be that it is probably a good idea.

And in that light, my main criticism is that I think as a set of institutions, it is sometimes too much an inward-focused “scene,” rather than maintaining full focus on engaging with the outside world in the most effective possible way.