Interesting Reads for the Week
(Don’t worry, wildfires part 2 is still coming soon! I just thought I would pump out some “less flammable” content in the meantime)
Here are some interesting reads for you this week:
1) Musa Al-Gharbi on the Problems with Diversity Training
Al-Gharbi, a sociologist at Columbia, does a review of the literature on Diversity training often done in the name of reducing systemic racism. This kind of study not new, but given the current discussions of systemic racism, I think it is worth understanding how diversity training often backfires and fails to use useful tools against racism. From the conclusion:
Indeed, ineffective diversity-related training programs often crowd out much more substantial efforts that could be undertaken to actually enhance diversity and inclusion within institutions of higher learning. Why do universities instead double-down on training despite its demonstrated ineffectiveness? The short answer is that, even if training is expensive and doesn’t work, it is relatively easy to implement – and it allows universities to show (including, often, in court) that they are doing something to address prejudice, discrimination and inequalities… even if what they’re doing is, in fact, pointless.
If we take the problem of systemic racism seriously, we should hold proposed solutions to systemic racism to the same rigorous standards we evaluate other efforts to improve society, rather than taking a more hostile view of people objecting to the solution.
2) Bloomberg View: “The Truth about Migration During COVID.”
The article looks at early data coming out, looking at the impact that COVID is having on the real estate market. Anecdotally, many people report a mass exodus out of American cities in the wake of COVID, but the article paints a much more complex view. San Francisco and New York appear to be experiencing a real flight, presumably because they are the two most dense cities. New York was struck particularly bad by COVID, and San Francisco’s absurdly expensive market had already made people consider leaving. However, there is little to no evidence of a massive exodus in most American cities (yet).
This trend (or lack thereof) is worth noting on its face but also is interesting in that often in housing reporting, it is common for anecdotes to get ahead of the data. It is common in neighborhoods experiencing gentrification (including mine!) to hear stories of folks forced to move because high rents displaced them. However, repeatedly studies of gentrification have found that displacement is still rare. Many people point to new luxury housing construction and rising prices in their neighborhood, but data shows it does the opposite. I could cite more examples, but the broader question is: are studies on housing failing to capture something real about how people are experiencing the world? Or is there something about the housing issue that distorts our thinking and makes relatively rare and unrepresentative cases seem common?
3) Effectiveness of Carbon Taxes (Data included in Twitter post by Max Roser)
Yes, I will suggest you read a tweet (though the links within the tweet). I thought this was a good demonstration of carbon taxes work effectively in various contexts. The data shows how carbon taxes can sharply decrease the per-capita emissions, while those countries still maintain GDP growth even while implementing a carbon tax. Andrew McAffee describes this in his book More from Less as the process of decoupling economic prosperity from the intensive use of the earth’s natural resources, a process he argues is increasingly the trend in the wealthy industrialized nations of the world.
Climate change has long been a very divisive partisan issue, where the left thinks it is a significant international crisis, while the right thinks it is either not real or not a severe concern. What is new has been the recent split between the left and center, who agree that climate is an issue but embraces different approaches to solving the problem. While the center has continued to champion solutions that center on carbon pricing, the left has increasingly embraced the idea that climate change necessitates a vast economic transformation putting more economic power in the state’s hands (a la the Green New Deal).
Without going too deeply into this debate, I think it is worth asking those on the left whether they have pivoted because they genuinely think carbon taxes don’t work? Or because they see climate change as the opportunity to push some of the economic ideas they want to see implemented apart from climate change?
I also think it is worth asking those on the right: faced with the growing momentum of the transformative vision of the left in the intelligentsia, does it not behoove you to embrace a narrow solution like a carbon tax? Especially if we give said tax back to the population as a dividend, carbon taxes seem like on their face an effective way to address climate change that is entirely compatible with “free-markets?”
That’s all for today. A reminder that if you like my blogs, subscribe and tell a friend. Also, I love dialoguing about these issues to love feedback and responses to this post. You can do that in the comments, or by emailing me at thomasirwin13@gmail.com)