Things to Read at Lunchtime on October 13, 2014

Must- and Shall-Reads:

• Tyler Cowen: The 2014 Nobel Laureate in economics is Jean Tirole
• Joshua Gans: Tirole and Pasteur
• Pedro da Costa: Overseas Weakness Dampens Fed Optimism at Home

1. Joe Romm: NASA: Hottest September On Record Globally Pushes 2014 Closer To Hottest Year On Record: “Last month was the warmest September globally since records began being kept in 1880, NASA reported Sunday. January through September data have 2014 already at the third warmest on record. Projections by NOAA make clear 2014 is taking aim at hottest year on record. Remarkably, this September record occurred even though we’re still waiting for the start of El Niño, which reveals just how strong the underlying trend of human-caused warming is. It’s usually the combination of the long-term manmade warming trend and the regional El Niño warming pattern that leads to new global temperature records. In this country, temperatures were quite hot in the West, and just ‘normal’ or very close to the 1951-1980 average in the East, as this NASA chart shows…”

2. Annie Lowrey: Amazon Is Not a Monopoly: “Franklin Foer… arguing that Amazon is a monopoly…. There’s just one problem…. Amazon is not a monopoly…. Foer waives this competitive pressure away…. Businesses compete. Very often the bigger one wins. Foer argues, however, that Amazon’s ‘big-footing necessitates a government response,’ without really explaining why…. He describes us all as complicit in… something. I’m not sure what: ‘We’ve all been seduced by the deep discounts, the monthly automatic diaper delivery, the free Prime movies, the gift wrapping, the free two-day shipping, the ability to buy shoes or books or pinto beans or a toilet all from the same place,’ he writes. ‘But it has gone beyond seduction, really. We expect these kinds of conveniences now, as if they were birthrights.’ Is that really such a bad thing? Amazon relentlessly drives down prices for goods and services and delivers them fast and cheap…. None of this is to say that Amazon should not face new regulations to force it to treat its workers better…. None of this is to say that its harassment of Hachette is right or should be legal or should not face some serious pushback…. But Amazon being a shitty, vicious competitor and Amazon being a monopoly are hardly the same thing.”

3. Paul Krugman: How Righteousness Killed the World Economy – NYTimes.com: “Revenge of the Unforgiven: Historically, the solution to high levels of debt has often involved writing off and forgiving much of that debt. Sometimes this happens explicitly: In the 1930s F.D.R. helped borrowers refinance with much cheaper mortgages, while in this crisis Iceland is outright canceling a significant part of the debt households ran up…. More often, debt relief takes place implicitly, through ‘financial repression’: government policies hold interest rates down, while inflation erodes the real value of debt. What’s striking about the past few years, however, is how little debt relief has actually taken place…. In major economies, very few debtors have received a break. And far from being inflated away, the burden of debt has been aggravated by falling inflation, which is running well below target in America and near zero in Europe…. But it has been very hard to get either the policy elite or the public to understand that sometimes debt relief is in everyone’s interest. Instead, the response to poor economic performance has essentially been that the beatings will continue until morale improves. Maybe, just maybe, bad news–say, a recession in Germany–will finally bring an end to this destructive reign of virtue. But don’t count on it.”

4. Michael Graziano: Are We Really Conscious?: I believe… we don’t actually have inner feelings in the way most of us think we do…. The brain builds models… and those models are often not accurate…. How does the brain go beyond processing information to become subjectively aware of information? The answer is: It doesn’t…. When we introspect and seem to find… awareness, consciousness, the way green looks or pain feels… those models are providing information that is wrong…. You might object that this is a paradox. If awareness is an erroneous impression, isn’t it still an impression? And isn’t an impression a form of awareness?… Attention: a real, mechanistic phenomenon that can be programmed into a computer chip. Awareness: a cartoonish reconstruction of attention that is as physically inaccurate as the brain’s internal model of color…. Like the intuition that white light is pure, our intuitions about awareness come from information computed deep in the brain. But the brain computes models that are caricatures of real things. And as with color, so with consciousness: It’s best to be skeptical…

5. Wolfgang Münchau: Germany’s Weak Point Is Its Reliance on Exports: “What is the reason for Germany’s weakness?… The root cause of the problem is the age-old over-reliance on exports–and on plant and machinery exports in particular…. There are no signs of a strong global recovery, let alone of a global investment boom. It is thus reasonable to expect a mediocre performance by the German economy for a while…. On top of that comes a demographic shock…. Now both the core and the periphery are weak. And policy is not responding sufficiently. Add the two together and it is not hard to conclude that secular stagnation is not so much a danger as the most probable scenario.”

Should Be Aware of:

• William Broad: Transcripts Kept Secret for 60 Years Bolster Defense of Oppenheimer’s Loyalty – NYTimes.com
• Francis Collins: Ebola Vaccine Would Likely Have Been Found By Now If Not For Budget Cuts: NIH Director
• CIE Color System
• Ippuku | Yakitori, Soba and Shochu. Izakaya style dinner in Berkeley, CA
• Cheese Tastings & Cheese Appreciation Events at Green Dirt Farm
• Pseudoerasmus: Piketty & Slave Wealth

1. Dani Rodrik: Are Services the New Manufactures?:: “Few serious analysts still believe that the spectacular economic convergence experienced by Asian countries, and less spectacularly by most Latin American and African countries, will be sustained…. Developing countries need a new growth model. The problem is not just that they need to wean themselves from their reliance on fickle capital inflows and commodity booms, which have often left them vulnerable to shocks and prone to crises. More important, export-oriented industrialization, history’s most certain path to riches, may have run its course…. While global supply chains have facilitated entry into manufacturing, they have also reduced the gains in terms of value added that accrue at home…. Can service industries play the role that manufacturing did in the past?… In manufacturing, small developing countries could thrive on the basis of a few export successes and diversify sequentially through time–t-shirts now, followed by the assembly of televisions and microwave ovens, and on up the chain of skill and value.
   By contrast, in services, where market size is limited by domestic demand, continued success requires complementary and simultaneous gains in productivity in the rest of the economy…. So I remain skeptical that a services-led model can deliver rapid growth and good jobs in the way that manufacturing once did…”

2. John Scalzi: My Annual Plug and Appreciation for WordPress VIP: “I was traveling on October 8, the official anniversary date, but today works just as well for this: Hey, I’ve been using WordPress’ VIP service to host Whatever for six years now, and it has been consistently great during all that time: The site never goes down, never buckles under traffic or spikes, and on the very rare occasions when I do have a concern or issue, it’s addressed quickly, efficiently and by people who are awesome and easy to work with. Which is to say WordPress VIP takes the aggravation out of having a site and allows me to focus here on what I do best, which is write. As I do every year, I unreservedly recommend WordPress VIP for folks hoping to run their sites with minimum possible levels of aggravation. It is the best hosting solution I’ve ever had. Likewise, for those folks who just want a corner of the Web to call their own, I can also recommend the standard WordPress offerings. And, also once again, thanks to the people at WordPress VIP who have helped Whatever be a rock solid presence on the Web for the last six years. You folks are the best.”