For some reason, I’m watching way more coverage of the Olympics than I expected. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m hyped; but ngl the Paris vibes are kinda iconic and offer at least some sort of solace in a world that basically just awaits doom. So, I take it as a good thing that I postponed sending out this newsletter because I was watching dressage riding, archery, and the 100m Sprint final :P
Before we get into things, just some quick housekeeping: Please do not send me any more links to the Trump speech at the recent Bitcoin conference in Nashville. I have seen it. It was dumb. Like the man himself. And that’s all there is to say about it. Bitcoin doesn’t need politicians. That’s the point. And in all honesty, I find it disappointing that an industry magazine thinks that Trump is an improvement over OG Antonopoulos. But obviously, political tribalism eats brains.
Over the past few months, I've had numerous discussions with politicians, think tankers, industry experts, and environmental activists about the so-called “Green Energy Transition.” What stuck with me was this: Besides the die-hard green activists, nobody (like literally nobody!) would question the role that nuclear power plays in this process. Now, here is a paper that might explain this puzzle. For this, let’s look at Chernobyl—and all the subsequent political dynamics that this event unleashed in democratic countries. Public Choice all the way. And this time with a proper quantification of the actual harm that a small but organized minority can do (Quote from the paper: “318 million expected life years.”). I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions about the moral status of some strands of the green movement. But it ain’t look pretty for sure. Fascinating stuff!
(For ze Germans: The parallel to Fukushima is so blatantly obvious that it hurts)
[This] paper is nominally about how fossil fuel companies and coal miners in the US and UK used the Chernobyl disaster to successfully lobby against building more nuclear power plants. The data collection here is impressive but that is just how democracy works. I found the political economy section less interesting than some of the background material.
First, the Chernobyl disaster ended nuclear power plant (NPP) construction in the United States (top-left panel), the country with the most NPPs in the world . Surprisingly, the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 (much less serious than Chernobyl) had very little effect on construction; albeit the 1-2 punch with Chernobyl in 1986 surely didn’t help. The same pattern is very clear across all countries and also all democracies (top-right panel). The bottom two panels show the same data but looking at new plants rather than the cumulative total–there was a sharp break in 1986 with growth quickly converging to zero new plants per year.
Fewer nuclear plants than otherwise would have been the case might have made a disaster less likely but there were countervailing forces:
We document that the decline in new NPPs in democracies after Chernobyl was accompanied by an increase in the average age of the NPPs in use. To satisfy the rise in energy demand, reactors built prior to Chernobyl continued operating past their initially scheduled retirement dates. Using data on NPP incident reports, we show that such plants are more likely to have accidents. The data imply that Chernobyl resulted in the continued operation of older and more dangerous NPPs in the democracies.
Moreover, safety declined because the existing plants got older but in addition “the slowdown of new NPP construction…delayed the adoption of new safer plants.” This is a point about innovation that I have often emphasized (see also here)
The key to innovation is continuous refinement and improvement…. Learning by doing requires doing….Thus, when considering innovation today, it’s essential to think about not only the current state of technology but also about the entire trajectory of development. A treatment that’s marginally better today may be much better tomorrow.
[…]
The biggest safety effect of the decline in nuclear power plants was the increase in air pollution. The authors use satellite date on ambient particles to show that when a new nuclear plant comes online pollution in nearby cities declines significantly. Second, they use the decline in pollution to create preliminary estimates of the effect of pollution on health:
According to our calculations, the construction of an additional NPP, by reducing the total suspended particles (TSP) in the ambient environment, could on average save 816,058 additional life years.
According to our baseline estimates (Table 1), over the past 38 years, Chernobyl reduced the total number of NPPs worldwide by 389, which is almost entirely driven by the slowdown of new construction in democracies. Our calculations thus suggest that, globally, more than 318 million expected life years have been lost in democratic countries due to the decline in NPP growth in these countries after Chernobyl.
The authors use the Air Quality Life Index from the University of Chicago which I think is on the high side of estimates. Nevertheless, as you know, I think the new air pollution literature is credible (also here) so I think the bottom line is almost certainly correct. Namely, Chernobyl caused many more deaths by reducing nuclear power plant construction and increasing air pollution than by its direct effects which were small albeit not negligible.
Yessss, I know, I am violating my own policy of not commenting too much on recent affairs in these newsletters; but this is such a spot-on cultural observation that I don’t want to gatekeep this from my readers. And yessss, this comes from an Internet Edgelord (s/o to Johannes who called me out the last time I referenced Hanania. I am very well aware of his alt-right background); but yet again, if the take is based, credit is due, no?
Because in the end, Hanania is pointing out something that most political commentators seem to miss: The cultural phenomenon of “White Dudes/White Women/etc. for Kamala” isn’t a sign of wokeness. Quite the contrary, it’s a signal that we are past peak wokeness.
The argument for this is rather simple: Treating whites as a proper minority group (please note that not all minority groups have to be literally a minority group) in a “Rainbow Coalition for the American Dream” does not only take the wind out of the sails of the Trump campaign but also (quite ironically, one must say) exposes the white identitarianism in the Trump camp. Just imagine a “Whites for Trump” rally lol. In other words, it is the return of old-school American nationalism—just in the context of the identity politics that haunts contemporary liberal societies.
Of course (and I feel that this is important to add), as a classical liberal I’m rather uncomfortable with identity politics of all sorts; but this (unfortunately) seems to be a side-effect of progressive overreach. Again, credit where credit is due. Patrick Deneen (yet another edgelord) has IMHO correctly pointed out that one of the struggles of liberalism seems to be to reconcile the empirical facts that more diverse societies gradually deemphasize “identities of choice” (i.e. religion, associations, etc.) and instead gravitate towards “identities of nature” (i.e. race, sex, etc.). I have argued many times in my writings that this isn’t an inevitable fact; but rather a symptom of the neglect and erosion of common spaces in the neoliberal approach to religion, urban planning, and the like. Obviously, classical liberalism in the Tocquevillian/Hayekian tradition has far more consideration for such dynamics than the vulgar strands of progressivism that might dominate liberal discourse atm. But that’s a whole different story altogther.
In any case, here is the whole tweet (incl. some hilarious JD Vance burns):
It’s taken me a week to fully comprehend the genius of “White Women for Kamala” and “White Dudes for Harris.”
One thing right-wingers love is to complain that you can only have affinity groups for blacks and other minorities. Whites sometimes feel like they’re being held to double standards and treated unfairly.
Along comes the Kamala campaign and says it’s ok to be white. That is, as long as you’re a good person, which means supporting reproductive freedom, not being “weird,” and voting Democrat. We’re all in this together.
It seems “woke” on the surface, but it’s actually a sign that liberals are moving away from woke. In 2020, something like this wouldn’t have even been possible. Talk of “whites” in left-coded spaces only occurred in the context of flogging them for their sins. In 2024, you can be a white dude for Kamala and it’s totally cool. The symbol for “White Dudes for Harris” is a trucker hat, showing self-deprecating humor and membership in a movement that is not at all weird or neurotic about race.
White people receive the message that Democrats do not consider you the problem. You’re welcome into the coalition. There’s even a Zoom call you can join, and don’t worry, it won’t be just Robin DiAngelo telling you how much you suck. Kamala has made clear that she’s *only* considering white men for VP, and there couldn’t be a clearer signal that we’re past peak woke.
DEI therefore doesn’t always mean anti-white! Now you White Dudes get your own DEI pick, like everyone else.
Republicans have been caught flat-footed. Conservatives want to portray these events as a kind of 2020 DEI struggle session, and they can find clips backing up that view, but people who have attended say that there was actually very little of that.
What else can conservatives say in response? I’ve seen a little bit of “why can’t we have a whites for Trump thing?” Well, who’s stopping you? It’s a free country. Organize “whites for Trump” and see what happens. Democrats have given you permission. Zoom can’t accuse you of violating the terms of service if you schedule the exact same event just with the parties switched.
There will be no “Whites for Trump” event because the campaign would never allow it, understanding it would be a PR nightmare. “Whites for Trump” would draw sewer dwellers, instead of the nice, seemingly normal people that came out for Harris. The Vance pick has only reinforced this message, with the signal that the Trump campaign is standing with the most dysfunctional and least sympathetic whites. Most whites do not feel like they have much in common with overweight Appalachians blaming China for taking their jobs when they’re too lazy and dysfunctional to just move to a region with more opportunity, which every generation of Americans has managed to do since the founding. Vance’s comments that we’ll pay any price as long as one American gets to make toasters communicates how the GOP ticket is running to represent the truly hopeless.
All of this contributes to the overall message that Democrats are not the anti-white party. They’re the party of the civilized half of the white race, the ones who believe in science and reject conspiracy theories. The whites who aspire to do something other than make a toaster, complain about immigrants, and investigate the miscarriages of strangers.
We can now all see the hopelessness and stupidity of white nationalism, which wants to argue that the 220 million American whites who are at each other’s throats over social issues and values should unite under one umbrella because they share the same interests. The only way white identitarianism would have had any hope is if liberalism stayed in summer of Floyd mode indefinitely, where you push anti-white rhetoric so blatantly and aggressively that it causes a natural reaction.
Whites for Kamala completely defuses any hope of building a broad white identitarian coalition. It exposes white nationalism, whether explicit or the implicit kind taking over the right, as at bottom a movement for *maladjusted whites* most of their betters want nothing to do with.
The thing about Republicans ruining Thanksgiving dinner hits home, because most whites who have achieved some level of success in life, or at least aspire to do so, have aggressively stupid catturd-type relatives they want to avoid. They define themselves in opposition to such people.
In the past, I have linked to some literature on the so-called “Dark Triad” (e.g. here & here) —which is (interestingly!) not only quite prevalent on dating apps but also in environmental activism (draw your own conclusions). Reminder, those are the dark traits:
Narcissism (i.e. inflated sense of self-importance)
Machiavellianism (i.e. a manipulative, deceitful, and cynical attitude)
Psychopathy (i.e. lack of empathy & antisocial behaviors)
So, one might wonder what a “Light Triad” might look like. Apparently, it’s this:
Kantianism (i.e. treating people as ends rather than means)
Humanism (i.e. valuing the dignity and worth of each individual)
Faith in Humanity (i.e. believing in the fundamental goodness of humans)
Well, if my 300+ past newsletters aren’t the ultimate green flag, then I don’t know :P
Abstract
While there is a growing literature on “dark traits” (i.e., socially aversive traits), there has been a lack of integration with the burgeoning research literature on positive traits and fulfilling and growth-oriented outcomes in life. To help move the field toward greater integration, we contrasted the nomological network of the Dark Triad (a well-studied cluster of socially aversive traits) with the nomological network of the Light Triad, measured by the 12-item Light Triad Scale (LTS). The LTS is a first draft measure of a loving and beneficent orientation toward others (“everyday saints”) that consists of three facets: Kantianism (treating people as ends unto themselves), Humanism (valuing the dignity and worth of each individual), and Faith in Humanity (believing in the fundamental goodness of humans). Across four demographically diverse samples (N = 1,518), the LTS demonstrated excellent reliability and validity, predicting life satisfaction and a wide range of growth-oriented and self-transcendent outcomes above and beyond existing measures of personality. In contrast, the Dark Triad was negatively associated with life satisfaction and growth-oriented outcomes, and showed stronger linkages to selfish, exploitative, aggressive, and socially aversive outcomes. This exploratory study of the contrasting nomological networks of the Light vs. Dark Triad provides several ways forward for more principled and data driven approaches to explore both the malevolent and beneficent sides of human nature.
(BTW, I’ve seen so many “summer vacay”s gone south by very obvious incompatibilities that I actually found this helpful—even be it only as a conversation starter)
1. They’re flexible and willing to compromise
Flexibility is a key quality for a good travel buddy. Someone who can rebound from setbacks—like bad weather leading to a canceled activity—and adjust to unexpected circumstances will make the headaches that come with traveling easier to navigate.
“If you are traveling with someone who is flexible, that supersedes whether or not they're a planner or whether or not they like to sleep in because that means they’re going to be respectful of your needs and your goals on this trip.”
[…]
2. You agree on the financials
Your ideal travel companion doesn’t have to have the exact same financial situation or budget as you do, but they will have a clear understanding of their individual financial expectations for the trip. To make sure nobody is chasing down payments or footing the bill unexpectedly, have an “open and honest dialogue” about all financial aspects of the trip in the planning stages.
Someone who is upfront about what they can and can't do financially and wants to figure out these details in advance to prevent drama and chaos on the trip itself is worth holding onto as a travel companion. Before you travel with someone, especially someone you may not know well, confirm that you're aligned on the financial details and expectations of the trip.
Get into the details beyond how flights, activities, and accommodations will be paid for; Raymond suggests talking through different scenarios that might pop up, like how bills will be split while dining out, what will happen if someone spends more money during an excursion or during a meal, and how to proceed if someone’s credit card doesn’t work. Use their answers to evaluate if this travel pairing will work.
[…]
3. They have the same goals for the trip as you
Another sign you've found an ideal travel companion is that you want the same thing out of your trip. It’s going to be tough for everyone on a trip to get what they want out of it if their goals diverge wildly. Someone who wants to spend all their time in a city center, exploring museums and shops, may not be satisfied with the ideal itinerary of someone who wants to do every rustic outdoor activity and never spend time in the city. A traveler who is set on going out every night and hitting every club may not gel with someone who would rather do anything but.
[…]
4. They’re independent
Factoring in some alone time to decompress and recharge is key, and an ideal travel companion understands and respects that. “Traveling with someone doesn’t mean that you have to do everything in lockstep, because that’s a really unhealthy way to travel, and it’s going to cause friction at some point” Raymond says. Someone who can be happy and confident entertaining themselves and spending time alone also helps ensure everyone on the trip is reaching their goals.
A great travel partner won’t mind if you leave them alone for a bit, or if you change your mind about an activity. At the same time, they won't muscle you into only doing what they want to do. "'My way or the highway' is a trip killer,” Raymond adds.
