Month: February 2023

Why is it that we've seen no productivity gains in the construction field? For example, here's the cost per square foot of building a skyscraper in Los Angeles over the past century:¹

Construction costs vary depending on both the type of building and what's being counted. The cost of the Wilshire Grand, for example, includes the entire plaza. The tower alone cost less, but nobody ever seems to break down costs so you can do an apples-to-apples comparison.

That said, there's clearly an upward trend, and it's probably safe to say that it costs more to build a building in LA than it did a century ago. Why? Shouldn't we expect that productivity gains over that period would make it cheaper to build?

Several people have lately taken a crack at this question, but is it really a mystery? Productivity gains come from automation, and the construction industry has barely automated anything in the past century. To build a house, you mark out a foundation, dump in some concrete, erect a frame, and then fill it up with stuff. All of this is done by people using hammers and wrenches and nailguns, the same as it's always been done.

Commercial construction is bigger, but not much different. You need cranes and elevators and miles of plumbing and electrical work. Pretty much all of it is done by hand, and there's no reason to think that manual labor like that should become more productive over time.

Beyond that, modern buildings are earthquake proof, flood proof, fire proof, and more efficient—all of which add to the cost of construction.

Is this ever going to change? "Automation in construction" is a thing, but even today it's still talked about in terms of what it "might" accomplish if anyone adopts it. For now, there's very little on the horizon and construction is just another victim of Baumol's disease.

¹Why Los Angeles? Because New York City is a world unto itself and isn't remotely representative of the US as a whole. LA was the next biggest city, so I chose it instead.

And in case you're wondering, the reason I didn't include any skyscrapers between City Hall and the Bank of America building is because there aren't any. Skyscrapers taller than City Hall weren't allowed until the early 60s, so the entire era from 1928 to about 1965 is a wasteland, skyscraper wise.

It's not wildflower season yet, but all the rain around here has expedited things a little bit. Patches of California poppies are starting to show up on the hillsides and the desert is beginning to bloom.

This flower is a yellow . . . poppy? Something else? I'm not sure. But great gobs of them were starting to bloom in the desert this weekend, promising a spectacular wildflower season when it starts in earnest.

Over at New York, Eric Levitz takes on a popular explanation for rising teen suicides: the world is objectively more horrible than it used to be and teens are depressed about it. Levitz presents a blizzard of statistics to show that life today isn't objectively worse than life a few decades ago, and everything he says is correct. But I want to zoom in on the past couple of decades and specifically on high school life.

Much of what follows comes from YRBSS, the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System run by the CDC since about 1990. You should check out the YRBSS Explorer, which was clearly designed by a person with a sense of whimsy. Stuff is presented semi-randomly as you scroll around, and it's great fun to use. But here's some serious stuff. First, teen suicide:

Note a couple of things: teen sadness has gone up and consideration of suicide has gone up slightly. However, planned suicide and actual suicide attempts are flat over the past 20 years.

Here is violence and danger among teens:

Every single trend is down or flat. The only exception is a recent uptick in the number of teens who missed school because they felt unsafe there (or on the way to school). This is despite the fact that teens don't report higher levels of actual danger.

Note especially that bullying and cyberbullying are flat. I mostly tried to stick with trends that had been tracked since 2001, but I made an exception for bullying because the results are likely to be startling to a lot of people.

Here is drug and alcohol use:

Everything is down. Everything. And I didn't even include cigarette smoking, which is way, way down. Sex is down too—though you'll have to decide for yourself if that's a good trend or a bad one. Ditto for teen pregnancy, which almost certainly is a good trend.

Here are a few basic trends in teen safety:

Again, everything is down. Way down. There are far fewer children in poverty these days; far fewer committing violent crimes; and far fewer being violently victimized. Child abuse is way down too, including sexual abuse.

Finally, here's how they're doing in school:

In 2005 there was a break in how NAEP assessments were done, which is why these charts start there. As you can see, things are up and down a bit, but overall they're up for everything except for recent reading scores among Black students.

Most of these trends are through 2019, which is the latest data available. But that's actually useful, since it gives us a clean picture of pre-pandemic America. Not everything is perfect, and you can surely search out some negative trends if you want, but the basics of teen life simply haven't gotten worse over the past 20 years.

Needless to say, this makes some of the recent upticks in teen mood disorders even more mysterious. These predate COVID, so that's at most a partial explanation, and they postdate the adoption of social media, so that too is also no more than a partial explanation. So what are we missing?

Things are heating up in Taiwan:

The U.S. is markedly increasing the number of troops deployed to Taiwan, more than quadrupling the current number to bolster a training program for the island’s military amid a rising threat from China.

The U.S. plans to deploy between 100 and 200 troops to the island in the coming months, up from roughly 30 there a year ago, according to U.S. officials. The larger force will expand a training program the Pentagon has taken pains not to publicize as the U.S. works to provide Taipei with the capabilities it needs to defend itself without provoking Beijing.

This is basically a tripwire, a way of changing facts on the ground to ensure that the US will defend Taiwan even if it hasn't made any guarantees in public. If China were to invade Taiwan and kill American troops, everyone knows we'd send in the Seventh Fleet without hesitation—and with enormous public support.

This is the same thing we've done in South Korea, deploying a small number of troops that are militarily unnecessary but decisive for gaining the support of the American public for war.

The Journal says the Pentagon has "taken pains" not to make its Taiwan mission public. Really? A tripwire does little good unless it's extremely public, so it's unlikely they were trying very hard to keep this a secret.

Joe Biden announced strict new rules today for asylum seekers who enter the country illegally:

Under the new rules, the US would generally deny asylum to migrants who show up at the US southern border without first seeking protection in a country they passed through....Exceptions will be made for people with an “acute medical emergency”, “imminent and extreme threat” of violent crimes such as murder, rape or kidnapping, being a victim of human trafficking or “other extremely compelling circumstances”. Children traveling alone will also be exempted, according to the rule.

Alternatively, asylum seekers can notify border authorities through a mobile app of their plans to seek asylum and then show up at a legal port of entry.

With that in mind, here are a few basic facts and figures about asylum in the US. First off, here are the number of new asylum seekers per year:

Next, here are the countries that are the top sources of asylum seekers:

Finally, here are homicide rates over time in these countries. This is a rough proxy for how violent the country is:

If these numbers are to be believed—and that's always an iffy proposition—the homicide rate has been steadily decreasing in most of these countries at the same time that asylum applications have skyrocketed.

This is sunset a couple of days ago near Palm Springs. I suppose those are the San Jacinto Mountains at the bottom, though I can't say for sure.

Bret Stephens today:

The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 — was published late last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is its lead author, were unambiguous.

“There is just no evidence that they” — masks — “make any difference,” he told the journalist Maryanne Demasi. “Full stop.”

I've gotten a couple of emails asking me what I think of this. Luckily, I can tell you: not much.

When this study first came out I planned to write a post about it. But then I read through the whole thing (here) and discovered that although it reviewed 13 mask studies, only two of them were for COVID-19. All the others were pre-2020 studies of how well masks worked for various other respiratory diseases. The two COVID masking studies produced the following results:

• Bangladesh: "Villages where in-person reinforcement of mask wearing occurred also showed a reduction in reporting COVID-like illness [about 10% overall, 35% among the elderly]."
• Denmark: "Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection."

These are not spectacular results, but neither are they zero results. Nor are these the only two masking studies ever done on COVID.

Overall, this report didn't change my priors much: masks are a good-but-not-great intervention that helps limit the spread of COVID. They are mostly helpful (a) in crowded indoor settings and (b) when used properly. Cloth masks, as near as I can tell, are all but useless. However, surgical masks—especially N95 masks—are helpful. The greater the percentage of people who wear them, the more helpful they become.

A summary of masking studies specifically for COVID is maintained by the CDC here. The results vary, and don't generally show huge benefits from wearing masks, but they do mostly show benefits.

Clarkesworld is a well-regarded publisher of science fiction short stories. They accept submissions from anyone, and like every such publisher they occasionally receive plagiarized stories. The authors of these stories are banned from further submissions.

This usually amounts to just a handful of bans each month. Lately, though, that number has skyrocketed:

Starting in November, Clarkesworld began to receive a torrent of stories written by ChatGTP—which has apparently been touted to aspiring writers as a sure-thing moneymaker by an array of scam artists. This has now gotten so out of hand that Clarkesworld is no longer accepting unsolicited submissions—for now, at least.

In other news, ChatGTP is being used to write cover letters for job hunters. Is this kosher? Or a fraudulent attempt to appear as something you're not?

Elsewhere, Alex Tabarrok reports that chatbots are already in wide use as romantic companions. They are remarkably effective even though, as Alex warns us, "These AIs haven’t even been trained to manipulate human emotion." What happens when they are? And if romantic attachments to a machine don't interest you, consider how this might affect, say, politics. What happens when specially trained chatbots can construct personalized political pitches for everyone with the sole goal of emotional manipulation? And then what happens when they get even better, and then become able to synthesize speech believably?

We're going to find out very soon.

I was thinking about choke points the other day. This is a term used by military strategists which refers to a narrow passage that hinders troop movements. The Strait of Hormuz is a choke point. The Fulda Gap is a choke point.

But I was thinking more about commodities that are choke points because only two or three companies/countries produce them. For example:

• Rare earth metals. China controls 85% of the production of rare earths.
• Advanced lithography: One company, ASML in the Netherlands, is the sole source of the EUV lithography machines that are necessary to make the most advanced semiconductors.
• Advanced semiconductors: Three companies—Intel, Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC), and Samsung—are the sole sources of the most advanced semiconductors. TSMC, in particular, is a singular choke point because it owns the most advanced foundry and manufactures a vast number of chips designed by third parties (Apple, Nvidia, AMD, etc.).

What are some other examples of this? The key things I'm looking for are products/commodities that are (a) central to the economy, and (b) available from a tiny number of sources. This eliminates things like Hershey bars, which are available from only one company but are hardly critical to the economy, and commodities like lithium and helium, which are critical but fairly widely available.

Any ideas?

Oh ffs. Marjorie Taylor Greene wants a "national divorce"? I thought these guys were supposed to be the patriots? And if they can't have their divorce, there's this:

In case you were wondering if the devastating messages, revealed in the Dominion suit, had any impact…

Hannity said tonight that he supports MTG’s batshit idea of banning people from voting for 5 years if they move from a blue state to a red state. pic.twitter.com/m3Aoe51mW4

— Bill Grueskin (@BGrueskin) February 22, 2023

Is anyone in the Republican Party willing to say anything about this? I doubt it. They'll criticize fellow Republicans occasionally, but never the mighty Fox News. That's too dangerous. The whole party is in the grip of straight-up poltroonery, and there's no sign of an end to it anytime soon.