“Our Megathreatened Age”

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The “Megathreats” according to Nouriel Roubini are that “economic, monetary, and financial threats are rising and interacting in dangerous ways with various other social, political, geopolitical, environmental, health, and technological developments.”

This is a long article with a lot in it, but one thing I always like to puzzle over is how real-world phenomena translate to money and financial markets. One advantage of understanding this would be to find numbers provided by financial markets that translate back to the real world, and in an ideal case maybe these could even serve as early warnings when things are really about to go seriously wrong. Anyway, this article doesn’t have all the answers, only clues, but here are a few:

  • energy and food costs – this is fairly obvious, although short-term noise may obscure any useful predictive ability
  • labor costs – tells us something about demographics and population structure
  • public debt servicing costs – maybe a more useful thing to think about than just the size of the debt or deficit, because it tells us something about the size of the debt, interest rates, and inflation together, and it can be compared to tax revenues and/or a society’s overall productive capacity. This in turn tells us something about limits to (economic) growth and the ability of a society to weather potential shocks.
  • military spending on conventional and unconventional weapons – not exactly public information, but there are some sources out there, and this tells us something both about overall global risk and about government’s priorities and ability to solve other problems
  • climate change adaptation and mitigation spending, and gap between actual spending and what is needed to meet the agreed targets – not sure exactly how to measure this, but people must be trying. We could compare this spending with measured results to get some sense of efficiency, and again it tells us something about government priorities and ability to solve long-term problems. Roubini compares climate spending to reconstruction after a war, which I find interesting: “Though a surge of investment in reconstruction can produce an economic expansion, the country is still poorer for having lost a large share of its wealth. The same is true of climate investments. A significant share of the existing capital stock will have to be replaced, either because it has become obsolete or because it has been destroyed by climate-driven events.”
  • “unfunded implicit liabilities” to deal with pandemic preparedness. Again, seems hard to measure but people are undoubtedly trying.
  • “To prevent populist regimes from coming to power and pursuing reckless, unsustainable economic policies, liberal democracies will need to spend heavily to reinforce their social safety nets – as many are already doing.” Well, not the U.S. so much. At least we are not doubling down on this, and the political cost of advocating it seems high while opposing it seems to appeal to many voters.
  • Retirement pension and health care spending, actual and estimated gap with what is needed.
  • long-term government bond rates, and “risk premia on public bonds” – tells us something about perceived risk that a government can keep up with its obligations long-term
  • mix of foreign currency reserves held by governments – somewhat obscure, but again a measure of risk that governments can meet their obligations and solve their societal problems
  • We can always measure fun things like poverty, inequality, and migration, and of course “stagflation” which I would define as real GDP growth net of inflation.

Taken together, what all this suggests to me is an analysis of government budgets, financial markets, and some demographic/migration data to see where various governments’ priorities lie relative to what their priorities probably should be to successfully address long-term challenges, and their likely ability to bounce back from various types and magnitudes of shock. You could probably develop some kind of risk index at the national and global levels based on this. And then what would you do with it? If you were a rational government, you could choose policies that reduce it. Maybe you turn everything over to the AIs and ask them to figure it out.

air pollution kills

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U.S. coal power plants have killed (i.e. caused premature deaths of) 460,000 people over 20 years, according to the Guardian. That is not going to include future premature deaths due to climate damage. Sure, even switching to natural gas is much better than this, but I can’t help comparing it to nuclear power. Deaths and risks due to nuclear power have been much exaggerated, in my view. I can imagine a world where nuclear power was implemented on a much larger scale, along with electric vehicles and electric HVAC in buildings, decades ago. It could have been the bridge fuel that got us to a more renewable future. Or maybe we would have even learned enough by doing to decide it was a good choice for the long haul. So the question now is whether to double down on nuclear research and implementation, or just throw all our eggs in other renewable baskets.

And as for air pollution, there are just so many reasons to make it a central issue, from the obvious health impacts of breathing particulate matter to the multiple benefits of spending more time outdoors getting around under our own muscle power in clean air. It could be a virtuous loop if we really made it a priority.

anti-immigrant riots in Ireland?

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Ireland is not immune to the surge in anti-immigrant sentiment. Could there be shadowy anti-EU political actors fanning these flames? I recommend examining the photos carefully to see if Steve Bannon is lurking somewhere in the background, wearing an Emperor Palpatine hood with the ghost of Joseph Goebbels whispering in his ear.

best “urban planning” books of 2023

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And the “best of” posts begin… I put urban planning in quotes because the field is broad and covers a lot of ground that may be of interest to engineers, natural and social scientists, economists, and many others. Here are a handful that caught my eye:

  • How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between. Interesting to me because, in general, neither the United States nor my specific state or city seems able to get big things done. I think this is largely a failure of imagination and priorities, but I also listened to this Freakonomics podcast recently on how construction productivity in the U.S. has just gone nowhere over the last 50 years while productivity in other sectors has grown by leaps and bounds. They rule out lack of capital investment and excessive monopoly power. Some evidence seems to point toward regulation (whether health, safety, and environmental protections are “excessive” is in the eyes of the beholder, but this also includes misguided/outdated local land use policies like minimum lot sizes and parking requirements), citizen input/resistance (but in my city, legitimate public input takes place alongside some shady politician/developer horse trading and the two can be hard to distinguish, and of course, existing homeowners have a rational but unhelpful interest in resisting new construction and new residents, and this can also be tinged with racial bias). Nobody thinks better construction management and risk management would be a bad thing, and this is an area I think computers and automation (call it artificial intelligence if you want) might make a difference. Make a digital model of exactly what is supposed to be built where and when, then monitor the hell out of it during the construction process to try to anticipate and correct deviations from the plan before they occur. There is always interest in prefabrication and making construction look a lot more like manufacturing, which it superficially resembles except for taking place in the real world of weather, traffic, surprise underground conditions etc. And then (not really covered in the podcast) there is the high-tech stuff like drones, robots, and advances in materials science. Being in the engineering industry myself, I know it is fiercely competitive and yet relatively risk adverse and slow to adopt new technology.
  • Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond. I’m not sure I want to be depressed enough to read this, but certainly an important topic. To solve poverty, you can give people money in the short term (which you have to take from other people/entities who have more than they need, although they won’t see it that way), and/or you have to give them education, skills, and job prospects in the longer term. That’s really the whole story – now go forth and prosper, everyone.
  • Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grabar. Well, before reading this everyone should read the classic The High Cost of Free Parking. But I have gotten jaded trying to change minds on this by providing accurate and rational information to the parking-entitled crowd, which is almost everyone.
  • Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of our Planet by Ben Goldfarb. “Road ecology” almost sounds like an oxymoron to me. Then again, it is really eye opening when you realize how much of the urban surface is made up of roads, streets, driveways, and parking lots. So if there really are ways to reduce the impact, it is worth thinking about.
  • Urban Jungle: The History and Future of Nature in the City and The End of Eden: Wild Nature in the Age of Climate Breakdown. Important topics, given that there is less and less land not altered by humans out there.
  • Smaller Cities in a Shrinking World: Learning to Thrive Without Growth. This covers population shrinkage in developed countries today, and possibility eventually in most countries. But developed countries will need to deal with increasing migration pressure in the medium term, so I am not sure how soon we will have the luxury of thinking about reducing our city sizes. Then again, maybe we should be letting some cities shrink while densifying others and making them as vibrant and human as possible.
  • The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration. Okay yes, densify and improve the cities in good places.
  • A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? and The First City on Mars: An Urban Planner’s Guide to Settling the Red Planet. Fun to think about, because we need to have some imagination and practice thinking big even as we are solving all those tricky little problems close to home.

November 2023 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: An economic model that underlies a lot of climate policy may be too conservative. I don’t think this matters much because the world is doing too little, too late even according to the conservative model. Meanwhile, the ice shelves holding back Greenland are in worse shape than previously thought.

Most hopeful story: Small modular nuclear reactors have been permitted for the first time in the United States, although it looks like the specific project that was permitted will not go through. Meanwhile construction of new nuclear weapons is accelerating (sorry, not hopeful, but I couldn’t help pointing out the contrast…)

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: India somehow manages to maintain diplomatic relations with Palestine (which they recognize as a state along with 138 other UN members), Israel, and Iran at the same time.

migration

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In the U.S., it’s “secure the border”. In the UK, it’s “bring down net migration“. In the Netherlands, it’s the possible rise to power of an openly anti-Islam party. As I happen to be reading one of the Bernie Gunther novels by Philip Kerr (A Quiet Flame, 2008) set partially in 1930s Berlin with the Nazis on the cusp of power, I find all this thought-provoking and concerning. In most countries, we’ve come far enough that openly advocating discrimination against a group already in the country is not an acceptable mainstream position. But expressing open anti-immigrant nationalist views is the next best option.

There is some rational fear of job loss and wage suppression that all this feeds on. But inequality between richer and poorer countries is somewhat clearly the root driver of migration, and climate change driven disasters and droughts are adding fuel to the fire. Add in some old-fashioned geopolitical conflict and you have a very volatile mix. The irony is that the policies needed to counteract these forces – economic and technological aid from richer to poorer countries, education, trade, reasonable guest worker programs, arms control and peace negotiations, serious emissions reduction and climate change adaptation investments to name a few – are anathema to anti-immigrant nationalist politics. So you have a feedback loop where the migration pressure drives the anti-migration political rhetoric, and the political rhetoric drives politicians and policies that increase the migration pressure.

Rationally explaining all this to enough voters to elect politicians who would break these feedback loops does not seem to be a viable option. It’s a tough one, and if I come up with the answers that have eluded a lot of smarter people than me up until now, I will let you know.

automatic speed regulators

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Automatic speed regulators on private vehicles – YES PLEASE. This is an idea that will save lives, and its time has come. Won’t somebody please think of the children?

The article suggests limiting speeds to 100 mph, but come on! Why not limit them to the local posted limit? Or if saving lives that way is too interventionist for “‘Merica”, then install the technology and let insurance companies massively penalize people who choose to turn it off. This could be a middle ground between self-driving cars and people who insist on the preventable mass murder of letting human beings continue operating deadly highway vehicles on city streets, once it is no longer necessary.

America’s shoplifting panic

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Recently I purchased a small bottle of dishwashing liquid for less than $2 at a Walgreens in Center City Philadelphia, and I had to call a clerk to unlock it a Plexiglass case and get it for me. I also notice that shelves are oddly empty in many stores, and I have certainly seen and heard the stories about shoplifting and “flash mobs”.

As always, I like journalism that provides some data to back up storytelling and anecdotal evidence. So kudos to CNN here:

Shoplifting reports in 24 major cities where police have consistently published years of data — including New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas and San Francisco — were 16% higher during the first half of 2023 compared to 2019, according to the Council on Criminal Justice analysis.

However, excluding New York City, the number of incidents among the remaining cities was 7% lower.

CNN

The article also provides some interesting context on past “shoplifting panics”, including one in London when women first ventured into public in significant numbers. People believed they were stealing for the thrill of it. I would speculate that it may have been more a question of whether they had access to cash or what their husbands may have thought about them spending said cash. Then there was a hippie shoplifting panic in the 1960s. And now we have a “breakdown of law and order in cities” narrative fueling the current one.

The article also talks about the enormous pressure on brick and mortar retailers to compete with online sales. I suspect this narrative provides them some convenient leverage in negotiating with landlords, insurers, and local politicians. I also wonder if shoplifting has always gone on but modern surveillance technology means insurance companies are more easily aware to quantify it, and it is just more prevalent than they thought.

115 traffic deaths and counting for Philadelphia in 2023

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The Bicycle Coalition has a grim but nicely done map and infographic of traffic deaths in Philadelphia. 115 and counting, including 52 pedestrians, 2 scooter riders, 11 motorcyclists, and 9 bicyclists (but I believe there was a 10th since these numbers were updated.) This is the worst in 24 years, according to the site.

Public opinion tends to blame the victims – pedestrians to some extent, and certainly bicyclists and scooter riders. Public opinion thinks motorcycles are just awesome, despite how deadly they clearly are. I see a trend of people riding motorcycles without helmets, which is just taking a huge risk with absolutely no reward to go along with it. Public opinion tends to blame the police to some extent for lack of enforcement. And last but not least, drivers tend to blame other drivers, because of course every driver considers themselves well above average.

As an engineer, I blame ignorant, incompetent street design first and foremost. I blame the engineers who are not up to date on best practices, ignorant bureaucrats who constrain them even if they are, and ignorant politicians who constrain the bureaucrats and engineers. On the latter, the outgoing Philadelphia mayoral administration at least has a Vision Zero program on the books, massive failure though it has been. The incoming mayor is not known to be a friend of safe streets, and is a proponent of the corrupt “councilmanic prerogative” system that allows ignorant politicians to overrule competent planning and design decisions in our city. The poster child for the latter, Kenyatta Johnson, is set to become the leader of our city council, by most reports.

So I am keeping my hopes and expectations under control. If in some parallel universe the incoming mayor asked my opinion, I would advise her to bring in new management for our streets department (I have no personal knowledge or experience with our current streets department leadership, except to note that they have failed to design safe streets, maintain streets, or pick up garbage and recycling as effectively as other cities.) I would ask that new management to at least bring our street design standards up to the safest level our state transportation department allows. I would ask that new management to put a professional asset management program in place to keep those streets in the best state of repair possible with the funding available. I would give that new management challenging yet achievable metrics and deadlines, and hold them accountable. That’s the relatively easy stuff. The harder stuff is dealing with the police, dealing with the state legislature, and chipping away at public opinion. On the latter, if pictures of dead and suffering children in Gaza are upsetting to people, can we maybe learn something and focus on showing and telling more stories about the risk and suffering street violence is causing to our own children here at home?

India’s Foreign Relations

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Here is a long Foreign Policy article on India’s foreign relations. Among interesting things, they manage to maintain formal diplomatic relations with the Palestine Liberation Organization, Israel, and Iran at the same time. Their spats with China and Pakistan seem to go on forever but at least in recent decades, have not turned violent.

One thing that occurs to me in thinking about the recent “U.S. offer of civilian nuclear power” to Saudi Arabia is that both India and the U.S. might have an interest in prying Saudi Arabia from close ties to Pakistan’s nuclear program. They may cynically have decided that the nuclear proliferation tumor is going to metastasize to Saudi Arabia no matter what, and they would prefer for it to happen on their terms. An alternative, in a sane world, could be to offer Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other responsible countries civilian nuclear power under strict UN/IAEA oversight, backed up by a Security Council with some credibility.