Good morning!
Autumnal is my word of choice these days. As the mornings darken, my sweaters thicken. I've had my first pumpkin spice latte of the year, and couldn't be happier about it. More about PSLs below, though.
Last weekend I had the joy of hosting a PowerPoint Party with some friends. From the best "vamp" of early 2000s Indian soap operas (Komolika) to the policy implications of the Oishinbo (literally "the Gourmet"), a manga about food reviewers, to a meditation on Donna Haraway, both the range of topics and the depth of conversation – on seemingly trivial ideas – were unmatched.
This is my second time hosting this kind of gathering, and I am probing to see if there'd be interest in doing a larger public event. Vancouver's Fox Cabaret has previously done versions of this with Nerd Nite Vancouver and Science Slam, but I think there might be another form here to play with.
If you're interested in that, have ideas, or want to get on the list for a future party, drop me a line.
Things worth your time
1960s Japan has things to teach us about economic planning – Japan's "Income Doubling Plan" (所得倍増計画, Shotoku Baizō Keikaku) was a long-term economic development strategy set out in 1960 by then-Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda. With a combination of large-scale investments in public infrastructure, technological innovation, and social services, especially education, and generous income and corporate tax policy, the plan was very successful in helping drive what would come to be 10% annualized growth in the decade that followed.
Contemporary analyses stress that there were a range of background factors, including just the general need to rebuild after the devastation of World War II, that shaped how the economy was moving already. But there is a consensus that the central "mission," to use a more contemporary term, that the government laid out, was motivating and cohering for a nation that had taken an existential blow to its self-conception and was, at that point, near a point of total social rupture. On the other hand, as argued by Nick Kapur, it helped cement an ongoing commitment to "growthism" that the country (and most of us) grapple with to this day.
I first began to dig into Japanese economic thinking after a 2019 interview with economist Noah Smith. Just as the American economic orthodoxy was beginning to turn against pure free trade, Smith and others were starting to argue that industrial policy tools like "export discipline," where the government picks winners and losers, needed to be on the table.
The proof, everyone argued, was in the "East Asian miracle" economies.
An IMF paper around that time laid out the three fundamental strategies these countries had followed:
- Intervene to create new capabilities in sophisticated industries: Pursue policies to steer the factors of production into technologically sophisticated tradable industries beyond the current capabilities to swiftly catch up with the technological frontier.
- Export, export, export: A focus on export orientation as any new industrial product was expected to be exported right away with the use of market signals from the export market as a feedback for accountability. As conditions changed, both the state and the firms adapted fast.
- Cutthroat competition (at home and abroad) and strict accountability: No support was given unconditionally although performance assessment was not necessarily based on short term profits. While specific industries may get support, intense competition among domestic firms was highly encouraged in domestic and international markets.
There's a perennial fascination of progressive economists and economic developers in North America with these kinds of approaches. But other than the United States' approach to its defence industry, we generally tiptoe around them.
We need to get past that impulse.
Pumpkin spice lattes can help us understand the danger of images – In an essay now over a decade old, Eugene Wolters lays out one of my all-time favourite explanations of a philosopher using the deliciously strange analogy of pumpkin spice lattes.
Eugene Wolters
I recommend the entire piece, but this part always makes me jump up and down:
Did I mention that there’s no pumpkin in your pumpkin spice latte? It’s nutmeg (and a few other spices). In other words, that delicious sip of fall you just imbibed is actually a pure simulacrum, of that fourth order. Pumpkin spice doesn’t conceal the fact that there are no longer seasons, pumpkin spice has no referent in reality, it exists for its own sake. The only thing “pumpkin spice”refers to is itself– like the distinct difference between “cherry flavored” items and “red flavored” candy that claims to be cherry-flavored.
This may feel particularly abstract, but Wolters' – and ultimately Jan Baudrillard's – point is that "the relation of politics to reality is as tenuous as pumpkin spice." Don't get lost in images; they might merely be simulation.
One thing I am still figuring out
How to build a balanced household soundscape. I listen to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks, and while I recognize that constantly listening to new information can be overstimulating, as someone who lives alone, it's nice to have friendly voices and background noise around me.
Any ideas?
Easy listening
Though I recently wrote of it in the context of reading, I also think spatial metaphors lend themselves well to understanding music, too.
Listening to "Of the Land," a playlist of Latin American music curated by Russian pianist, composer, and general virtuoso Daniil Trifonov, I had the feeling of being pulled to the varied corners of a city that a friend had just moved to. A new space with a map laid out, but interpreted through the eyes of someone not from that plasce originally.
Of all of the great pieces that he highlighted on the playlist, "Siboney" resonated with me the most. Written in 1927 by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona, it is all at once playfully melodic and deeply mournful, the cry of the homesick for their countrymen. The title apparently refers to one of the original Indigenous groups that inhabited the island before Spanish colonization and is something of a metonym for the island.
The Basque Choir Orfeón Donostiarra delivers a perfectly balanced rendition.
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