first Derivative [73] newsletter
first Derivative [73]
January 31, 2020
We’re back from a few months of winter hibernation, but that isn’t to say we haven’t been reading. There’s a backlog of great stuff that we’re excited to share the best of in 2020.
These articles are actually ones we selected in August, and I think it says a lot about fD that months, and thousands of news cycles later, they still seem pretty relevant. I still think that loose monetary policies have fueled a massive expansion in economic inequality (only something like 8% of households holding 80% of public equities). One of the largest changes since the financial crisis has been the normalization of what were once emergency tactics on the part of central banks to prevent a depression. Over a decade later, the stock market has come roaring back in one of the greatest bull markets in history but there’s this feeling that the economy is just turning the corner for most people.
Joe Rogan, who even then was a hugely influential voice but still painted in an alt-subcultural light, has finally impacted the planet Earth that the rest of us live on, hitting the mainstream with his recent endorsement of Bernie Sanders and it’s been interesting to see the sparks fly as the old perceptions of who's marginal and who has power clash with the new reality of things.
The criticism of “buyback capitalism,” while it sort of fixates on a pretty neutral financial mechanism of capital allocation, comes from the right place, recognizing our economic era that has witnessed, to quote Ben Hunt at epsilon theory, the transfer of intergenerational wealth to corporate managers, not entrepreneurs, sometimes of companies implicitly guaranteed by the state (e.g. banks, defense contractors).
There’s that story about the curse of having to “live in interesting times.” Maybe it’s a case of generational narcissism or zeitgeist myopia but most days it does feel like that. Either way, cursed or not, there’s a lot of work to be done and the silver lining that we can look to the past and into the future to make sense of where we are now.
Top 10 Movies of 2019:
1917
Us
Waves
Little Women
Luce
The King
Pain and Glory
I Lost My Body
Uncut Gems
The Farewell
—tk
Ted's refusal to put Parasite in his top 10 list is insane. I'm all for hot takes, but this one is giving him third degree burns. Marriage Story, Jojo Rabbit, The Irishman, and Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood are all in the conversation for me. And Good Boys was great.
Just want to say thank you to those of you who cared enough to ask me "whatever happened to that newsletter?" We're back, baby!
In this issue, George Packer finds himself and his family caught in the crossfire of the culture war, and his progressive ideals compromised by more pragmatic considerations. I really admire Packer's integrity, sanity, and clarity, which are on display in his acceptance speech for the 2019 Hitchens Prize, The Enemies of Writing, a rebuke of identitarianism and positive definition of what it means to be a writer.
The obverse of the crisis of the progressive left diagnosed by Packer is the rift opening up on the right between mainstream conservatism, embodied by David French, and the zealous "post-fusionist" vision championed by Catholic convert Sohrab Ahmari, for whom the culture war is total war. Benjamin Wallace-Well's article is an ideological inquiry qua Janus-like profile of the two faces of conservatism.
I'm also a sucker for Sullivan's Trump-Caesar comparison. It's the kind of metahistory I get off to. While no means a perfect analogy, Trump, like Caesar, has benefited from and exacerbated partisan polarization and the erosion of constitutional norms. The article, published in August, gains force in light of the subsequent impeachment process. If a Caesar figure must be forcibly removed, whether violently or politically, it may already be too late. It's hard to argue that ours is not a republic in decline. Is America slowly warming up to autocracy? There's a growing authoritarian tendency on both the right and the left. The question I'm really interested in is: if Trump is our Caesar, who is our Augustus?
—ai
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Historic Asset Boom Passes by Half of Families
by David Harrison & Maureen Linke (WSJ)
Secrets About People: A Short and Dangerous Introduction to Rene Girard
by Alex Danco (Alex Danco)
Our Caesar
by Andrew Sullivan (NY Mag)
If you liked this one, check out his companion piece on the limits of his conservatism, at the bottom of which he addresses Niall Ferguson's objections to his comparison.—ai
David French, Sohrab Ahmari, and the Battle for the Future of American Conservatism
by Benjamin Wallace-Wells (New Yorker)
The Economist Who Would Fix the American Dream
by Gareth Cook (Atlantic)
Share Buybacks and the Contradictions of "Shareholder Capitalism"
by Julius Krein (American Affairs)
Not quite as rigorous as I would have liked but I think the right questions asked here and the answers on the right track—tk
When the Culture Wars Come for the Kids
by George Packer (Atlantic)
China's Spies are on the Offensive
by Mike Giglio (Atlantic)
Why Is Joe Rogan So Popular?
by Devin Gordon (Atlantic)
For a laugh, here's The Onion's take on Rogan's endorsement of Bernie.—ai
Lessons from the Election of 1968
by Louis Menand (New Yorker)
"The United States is one of the few democracies that does not have a coalition government, and a winner-take-all electoral system breeds a winner-take-all punditry."
For a different lesson from the same election, see how the Republican majority emerged.—ai
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ABOUT fD
fD is a newsletter on what we think matters. We highlight signals, insights, and deep trends in ideas, technology, politics, economics, foreign affairs, culture, philosophy, and more. Our goal is to give you content that will still matter beyond the present moment.
We hope you enjoy. Ask us anything here or just respond to this email—tk&ai