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At least five interesting things: Requiem for capitalism edition (#63)

2 days ago | noahpinion.blog | Noah Smith

The theme of this week’s roundup is the fall of capitalism. With Trump going for price controls and tariffs, and anticorporate progressives savagely attacking Ezra Klein for wanting to build more houses, the political constituency for capitalism seems moribund for now. Meanwhile, Warren Buffett is dead, hiring in the tech sector also seems dead, and the UK seems to have embraced degrowth. What’s a capitalist to do in times like these?
The crisis of the 21st century is here

4 days ago | noahpinion.blog | Noah Smith

The big news of the last couple of days is that India and Pakistan are at war. A terror attack by a (possibly) Pakistan-sponsored group drew Indian airstrikes in response. But unlike in 2019 when something very similar happened, the two countries didn’t immediately cool things down. Instead, there has been an increasing cycle of escalation, with airstrikes, missile strikes, shelling, aerial dogfights, and so on.
Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class

6 days ago | noahpinion.blog | Noah Smith

For years, I’ve been calling for the U.S. to promote manufacturing. When Americans started getting excited about reindustrialization, I cheered. I was a big supporter of Joe Biden’s industrial policy, and I even praised Donald Trump for smashing the pro-free-trade consensus in his first term. Trump’s tariffs haven’t changed my mind about any of that. Yes, the tariffs are a disaster.
The Tech Right is not succeeding

1 week ago | noahpinion.blog | Noah Smith

Last July, as the presidential campaign was nearing its climax, I wrote a post trying to explain why some people in the tech industry had turned to the right:Now, in the wake of DOGE, the whole country knows about the Tech Right. Most recently, Semafor’s Ben Smith wrote a story about the group chats that many of the folks in the Tech Right — including my podcast co-host Erik Torenberg and my college friend Balaji Srinivasan — use to talk to each other.
Why do econ journalists keep making this basic mistake?

1 week ago | noahpinion.blog | Noah Smith

Economics journalists, like any writers, aren’t perfect. Perhaps in a previous age, people thought that everything they read in the news was exactly true; perhaps some still do. But reporting is a human activity, and humans make mistakes. In order to get the true story, you have to read multiple sources, and be skeptical of what you read — and even then, mistakes will slip through.
Welcome to The Future

1 week ago | noahpinion.blog | Noah Smith

The years of my youth must have been such a disappointment for sci-fi fans of my parents’ generation. They were raised on stories of spaceships soaring between the stars, and they grew up to see the space shuttle explode and humankind abandon the moon. They grew up expecting flying cars and robot servants, but as they reached middle age they were still trundling along the ground and doing their own laundry. What happened in the 1970s that seemed to rob the future from the Boomer generation? Energy.
I owe the libertarians an apology

2 weeks ago | noahpinion.blog | Noah Smith

I spent a lot of my early years as a blogger arguing against libertarianism. Here are some example posts that I reposted on Substack:(Here are a few more on my old blog, in case you’re interested.)My basic criticisms of libertarianism were:Libertarians’ ideological opposition to public goods provision and state capacity not only makes us poorer, but it also makes us less free in the long run, because poorer societies are less able to resist foreign conquerors.
If you think Americans are mad now, just wait a few months

2 weeks ago | noahpinion.blog | Noah Smith

“Liberation Day” seems so long ago now. I remember reading about the madness just 26 days ago, sitting at the kitchen table in an Airbnb in downtown Tokyo, getting ready to go to a book event. I recall just staring at the list of tariff rates, almost unable to believe that a sitting U.S. President would do something so destructive to the U.S. economy. I knew in that moment that I would be writing about tariffs and their downstream effects for a very long time.
MAGA doesn't build

2 weeks ago | noahpinion.blog | Noah Smith

During the Biden years, there seemed to be an emerging bipartisan consensus that America needed to build more. On the left, you had the rise of industrial policy — Biden literally called the initial version of the Inflation Reduction Act the “Build Back Better” bill — and the nationalization of the YIMBY movement.
How to have friends past age 30

2 weeks ago | noahpinion.blog | Noah Smith

“And our choices were few and the thought never hit/ That the one road we traveled would ever shatter and split” — Bob DylanI’m trying my best to find things to write about other than Trump’s tariffs, because I figure you lovely readers don’t just want to hear doom and gloom all the time. So here’s a post that people have been asking me for for quite a while. There are a lot of things in life that I’m not very good at — foosball, debugging code, remembering people’s birthdays, and so on.