& here is the Project Syndicate-edited version of my thoughts on how Tesla needs to replace Elon Musk with its very own Tim Cook pronto. I blame the $60 billion "compensation" package... Subscribe now Although Tesla appears to be wildly overvalued compared to rival automakers, its shareholders are betting that they can sell their holdings to a greater fool in the near future, and Elon Musk is eagerly indulging their speculative exuberance. None of it bodes well for company’s workers, suppliers, and other customers. BERKELEY—From the standpoint of America and the world, Tesla is a historica ..read more

What is Tesla, Anyway? And What Is to Be Done About Its Management? Now that Elon Musk is no longer a fundraiser, cheerleader, & sometime coach for engineers pushing forward remarkable & essential technologies and has become a meme-stock tech-bubble carnival barker, is he the right CEO for Tesla? No. What Tesla needs now is its very own Tim Cook… Subscribe now Oh, Elon Musk is a fine CEO for the Tesla of the current bunch of Musk fanboy Tesla speculator-shareholders who are planning to offload their stock in the next couple of years. It is very important for them that Tesla succeed as ..read more

A scratchpad… Subscribe now Share Economics: FT Alphaville is making a lot of fun of Morgan Stanley autos unexpected AI companies analyst Adam Jonas: Bryce Elder: Tesla soul-searching with Adam Jonas: ‘“The AI brain is searching for its robot ‘body.’ And the body is the vessel of the AI ‘soul’”, writes Adam Jonas in an actual note to clients. Morgan Stanley’s autos analyst has been moved to aphorise by Elon Musk’s surprise visit to Beijing. Less contemplative observers might think Tesla shares are being short-squeezed up ~10 per cent today after Bloomberg reported that the company has rece ..read more

Iron Dome missile defense; using GPTs & LLMs in economic research; very briefly noted; not the Efficient Market Hypothesis; & The Neofascist Five Supreme Court Justices: America's Downward Political Spiral Continues...; READING: Annette Gordon-Reed on Understanding Sally Hemings's Life; HOISTED FROM THE ARCHIVES: Reading Will MacAskill’s "What We Owe the Future"; & BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2024-04-27 Sa… Subscribe now ONE IMAGE: Iron Dome: Share ONE VIDEO: Kevin Bryan: A User's Guide to GPT & LLMs for Economics Research: Share Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality Very Briefly Noted ..read more

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. & the rest of us are doomed to repeat it with them... Subscribe now The asymmetry in politics rears its head: Democratic presidents do not want to commit crimes. Thus a Supreme Court-granted license to presidents to commit crimes enables no additional scope of action for a Democratic president. Republican presidents, by contrast, have—since Nixon—wanted to commit crimes. So a Supreme Court-granted license for them to do so would be of considerable value. And if a Democratic president figures out a crime they would like to commit? Well, then ..read more

Annette Gordon-Reed's 2019 Twitter thread... Subscribe now Share Because Thomas Jefferson was such a weird dude, gaining even a glimpse of insight on which to ground what we should think of the interaction of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, in view of their extraordinary power imbalance—that is a very knotty problem. She was a sex slave. He viewed her (and her children, her nephews and nieces, plus her siblings) as part of his late wife’s and thus of his family. He had promised his wife never to marry again—never to subject her children to a stepmother. The Hemingses all knew that. Jeff ..read more

Five book prospectuses stapled together: a great one on effective altruism proper, a very good one on making humanity resilient, a good but unconvincing one (because Derek Parfit is wrong) on how Derek Parfit is right, an unsatisfactory grandiose one about our place in human history, and a barking mad one on the threat of the Robot Uprising. But overall, quite good! I enjoyed reading! You should read!… Read more ..read more

“Homeostasis” according to Stafford Beer; Serlet on why MAMLMs work; very briefly noted; resentment of the poor by the rich; expanding the Supreme Court as job #1; & Essential & Key Readings for Econ 115: The World Economy in the 20th Century; & BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2024-04-22 Mo… Subscribe now ONE IMAGE: What “Homeostasis” Is According to Stafford Beer: Share ONE VIDEO: Bertrand Serlet: Thoughts on Why AI Works: Share Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality Very Briefly Noted: Economics: Michael Rushton: Keynes’s Grandchildren: ‘Producing enough goods and services to satisfy all of our ..read more

A scratchpad…. Subscribe now Share Neofascism: In the good state of the world come next January, the first item of business must be expanding the Supreme Court to fifteen justices. The second must be creating a Deputy Chief Justice who would be mandated by legislation to preside over meetings when the Supreme Court meets to discuss cases, and to assign the writers of majority opinions: Josh Marshall: Peering into the Corrupt Court’s Pretensions and Corruption: ‘The display we saw yesterday was a vivid illustration of how the Court has gone thoroughly rogue, cutting itself off from even the ..read more

There is a demand for a shorter list of things to read than the 42-item reading list. (Hey! That isn't even three things a week!). So here is a list of 16—less than 40%! (Admittedly, one of them is 600 pages long… Subscribe now Share First, and no surprise to you all, comes my 600-page book, published year before last. I see it as an essential resource for those interested in the economic history of the 20th century and its consequences. Indeed, I see it as potentially a treasure for all time. Moreover, the book serves as a more complete and well-organized guide to my views on the century’s ..read more