Some of these comparisons seem to be confusing cause and effect, or at least implying that they would've happened anyways. Mafia influence, teenage pregnancy and maybe even terrorism went down because of concerted efforts to bring those down. The panics probably helped those efforts get on track.
Moving to warmer climates seems like a natural consequence of more AC being readily available than in the past.
I once developed a model in which there was some "problem" that society got fed up with. They decided to "regulate" the problem, and the problem went away. Because the problem went away, people decided the regulation was silly and pointless because there really wasn't a problem. So they got rid of the regulation, and then the problem came back. Wash, rinse repeat.
(No one was interested in the model, but a lot of people independently discovered the same idea during the pandemic.)
Another example is where regulations are put in place to address a minor problem, and then the regulations lead to an even bigger problem, which leads to even more regulation. Rinse and repeat.
Probably more common, frankly. Lately I've been (un)amused by the proposed regulation against building more data centers. The same parties responsible for obstructing new housing (e.g. "environmentalists"), of course. And when you have Bernie Sanders and Ron DeSantis seeing eye to eye, you know it's a bunch of crap.
After the initial attacks on 9/11, I assumed an immediate barrage of follow-ups. And argued that an unending localized attacks would unnerve the American public. But even those were few. The threat seemed far less than initially assessed.
As far as the Mafia threat, my Consigleare informs me you are expressing a view that can not be refused....intellectually
I thought so as well, but after a couple months I realized that it very well might be the last hijacking. The flight that went down in PA, the passengers heard about the other planes being crashed into buildings and immediately they revolted knowing they had to, they couldn't remain docile. Nobody will acquiesce to a hijacking now and think they'll land, the hijackers will use them for a political show and let them go. No, you've been turned into a weapon and you have to do your best to fight, win, lose or draw. Anybody contemplating a hijacking will realize that. I was fearful of bombs being planted on airplanes and I'm still convinced a NYC subway car is going to go up one of these days.
Mamdani? I'd suggest there's a fair amount of institutional inertia, the NYPD is like a gendarmerie at this point. Still subways are relatively open. Sounds like you might be from the city so you might be familiar with the nail bomber, I was there that day, I came in from NJ to the PABT went down into the subway at 8th Avenue and took the tunnel over to 7th to get the red/1,2,3, I went downtown and my wife was on my phone in a panic. Bottom line if somebody is going to do it, somebody is going to do it, but if that person is going to get caught, the best chance of catching it is in NYC.
My point is that law enforcement is still a large part of the responsibilities of state and local control(the Mayor of NYC in this case)
And my view is that the newly elected Mayor, in my view, has not enacted or suggested policies or approaches that will increase the safety of public Transportation.
My experience with the Paris Police was pleasant, despite my evident physical similarity of an Irish terrorist circa 1982, And those fellows were good sized gentlemen
The Gendarmerie are unfairly associated with the Petain past. They are not analogous to the NYPD transit police
"It might seem “logical” that global warming would lead to people migrating toward cooler regions, but don’t be surprised if the exact opposite were to occur."
Perhaps all things being equal that particular factor does add people to northern climes but other factors add people to the tropics? Like, for instance simply being able to grapple with tropical climates and tropical diseases a lot better. If I had to live in South FL under a mosquito net without air conditioning, I don't think I'd like it. And there are people who are getting hurricane insurance premiums and saying, "Yeah, I'm out" and go halfback as its now known.
I have a pretty strong suspicion that 'social media/screen time' is another modern day example. Not that there aren't genuine concerns (as with global warming, teenage motherhood etc), but people refusing to update their beliefs, succumbing to confirmation bias, and generally exhibiting overconfidence.
It's taken as given that children/youth have become hopelessly addicted to screens, and this is a generally negative phenomenon that inhibits childrens's development and has/will lead to higher suicide etc. To the extent that many are cheering on some quite dramatic policies (eg, youth 'social media' bans in Australia with all the associated privacy concerns).
And yet the actual measured trends seem, though not completely encouraging, difficult to square with scale of the panic.
Meanwhile Jonathon Haidt specifically linked an increase in youth mental health and suicidality from a local minimum in 2008/9 to smartphone use. Yet the latest data reports a fairly dramatic decline in these indicators from 2021-2024, at a time when short form video based social media use exploded. So Facebook causes suicides but somehow Tiktok prevents them? And other countries/regions show completely different trends.
I am also skeptical of social media bans. That's not to deny that social media may have had some negative effects on mental health, for a period of time. But I suspect that many people tend to underestimate the extent to which society self-corrects as people get used to a new phenomenon. As an analogy, fentanyl caused a huge spike in overdose deaths, but it seems to be abating somewhat now.
Hm this must be why, as i get older, i enjoy winter more and more. If everyones going hot, ill gladly go cold.
My initial thought on this liking it hot migration is that people are certainly getting less hardy. In my relatively moderate climate bitching about the cold is just what everybody does now. We get 6-8 inches of snow and my town becomes a ghost town(and big ass 4x4s are very popular in my area, so its not like people cant get around). The local sledding hill, once a popular destination for kids and adults alike, is pretty much forgotten now.
Cold is harder to deal with than hot, takes more effort. And our whole idea of what physical living means has changed.
So maybe thats got something to do with it, maybe not. It certainly matches what my experience has been.
And damn scott, these last 3 articles have been really good! I dont mean that in an agree/disagree type of way(though i tend to agree), rather i mean in an asking the right questions, noticing the right things way. These are important topics that we need to be thinking and talking about, instead of the dumb shit parade weve had for some time now.
Honestly i am not too far from deleting my substack account(for reasons), ive already canceled all but 2 of my subscriptions. But your articles are worth sticking around for
Great post like the majority of posts you have. I agree it's silly to think China wants to take back territory "stolen" by Russia for the pride of the Middle Kingdom like some historians purport. You added to my knowledge that emigration and low birth rates are already ongoing in Dongbei.
The one caveat to your point is water scarcity in China. I believe they are rapidly depleting their main water table, and barring any technological improvement for desalination (new less energy extensive techniques or energy becomes so cheap it is a non-factor), Lake Baikal seems like the most obvious solution, though by no means would they have to actually take the land. You are so thorough with your posts, so I am just wondering what your thoughts on this for Chinese geopolitics.
I don't believe the water issue is important enough to justify an attack on Russia. It can be managed, and the Chinese are already diverting water from the south.
China is weak militarily, even without the constant purges of top generals, and certainly will not invade either Manchuria or Taiwan. But just as certainly, they will purchase or co-op them both. No nukes needed.
Apparently the incumbent president of Taiwan, William Lai, has been baiting Beijing for a while, by pointing out if the Chinese were *really* serious about reclaiming missing provinces, maybe they should invade Siberia first . . .
But I don't see him going to war with Russia, not for this.
As for the manpower thing; yes China could almost certainly beat Russia in a specific zone. But their actual military focus is on Taiwan and India. The Korean war was a long time ago, they already have less fighting age men than India. I think Xi would want nothing less than to risk his completely untested army against a battle hardened army, when the downside potential is that India decides there is nothing stopping them from getting a bit of lebensraum and a few dozen million more anti-Chinese people.
Great article. Imagine in 1900 in the US you'd had a big platform and told the country:
"The global temperature will rise by 1.0'C by 2000 - and the land temperature by maybe 1.5'C. And agricultural employment will drop from around 40% of the population to maybe 2%"*
Think of the panic -
Item 1 would be "What? Really? Who cares?".
Item 2 would be "We have to stop this, it will destroy society!"
*I'm going off memory for employment - I think from Timothy Taylor's book that I read 10 years ago.
I have no idea what Beijing is going to do, but the usual talk about China re-seizing its old provinces from Russia alludes to natural resources, not living space.
Nationalism results in certain impulses that do not align with common sense or true gain.
See Moscow-Putin's ghastly war in Ukraine, which even if one accepts imperial justifications (I do not) cannot possibly pay off for Russia. That is not important in Kremlin's thinking.
Might Beijing re-seize old provinces? They tend to think in centuries, not decades, years or quarters. I find Xi is opaque. Maybe others know him well.
Median voter theorem still holds in China, just more loosely.
But more importantly the absolute last thing China can afford is war with Russia. Russia has amply demonstrated in Ukraine its willingness to throw away lives like chaff. China could not tolerate any material fraction of Russian casualties, for two reasons: they don't have enough fighting age people, and they would be conceding the southern border, which they very much care about, to India, which does have enough people.
For me, Xi is a cipher, and whoever follows him totally invisible. Xi sounds truculent on Taiwan, and also Japan.
How can China not have enough people to fight Russia?
Beijing runs a 1.4 bil pop. Many times Russia's.
The Chinese threw soldiers into death with abandon, in the Korean War.
I doubt China will seize the former provinces, although Russia is at its weakest in decades and decades. The carnival of carnage in Ukraine has drained the Russian military into a pulp.
But who knows?
Nationalism at its best is a terrific social glue, and at its worst, promotes insane wars---see Russia's endless siege of Ukraine.
I notice most of these "obvious" predictions were overly pessimistic... Let's hope the next overly confident and wrong prediction is that politics will keep getting stupider and more crass.
These panics can be truly entertaining. I think my favorite was the claim that teen girls were consuming alcohol and getting drunk at school by soaking tampons in alcohol and then wearing them to school. Some writer decided to test this out and found that not only did it sting like heck it provided not even the slightest buzz. IIRC her claim was that it wouldnt even be able to walk normally with one inserted so even if it had caused an effect it would be obvious something was wrong. My other favorite was the rainbow blow job panic but another writer, and her lucky boyfriend, disproved that one.
Wrong hole, and its called boofing, and its real and it works. And i dont mean its real in the sense that teenage girls, or teenagers at all, were doing it. But in that slice of society that likes to get "fucked up" it was all the rage for awhile. Rectal administration has a higher bioavailability than oral administration, so less does more.
But i did a little googling just now and the vagina boofing was a popular myth. My guess would be it was derived from the actual rectal tampon/alcohol boofing practice. Pretty brave(or stupid) of that woman to try it, though i doubt shes the only one. People do all sorts of dumb shit trying to get high(ie jenkem, literally).
Some of these comparisons seem to be confusing cause and effect, or at least implying that they would've happened anyways. Mafia influence, teenage pregnancy and maybe even terrorism went down because of concerted efforts to bring those down. The panics probably helped those efforts get on track.
Moving to warmer climates seems like a natural consequence of more AC being readily available than in the past.
You may be right about the Mafia and terrorism, but the bleak forecasts of the time were conditional on the ongoing efforts to address these problems.
I once developed a model in which there was some "problem" that society got fed up with. They decided to "regulate" the problem, and the problem went away. Because the problem went away, people decided the regulation was silly and pointless because there really wasn't a problem. So they got rid of the regulation, and then the problem came back. Wash, rinse repeat.
(No one was interested in the model, but a lot of people independently discovered the same idea during the pandemic.)
Another example is where regulations are put in place to address a minor problem, and then the regulations lead to an even bigger problem, which leads to even more regulation. Rinse and repeat.
Probably more common, frankly. Lately I've been (un)amused by the proposed regulation against building more data centers. The same parties responsible for obstructing new housing (e.g. "environmentalists"), of course. And when you have Bernie Sanders and Ron DeSantis seeing eye to eye, you know it's a bunch of crap.
Sometimes people talk about the “ozone hole hoax” because they forget or never knew there was a concerted global effort to reduce chlorofluorocarbons.
Or the claim that the interest rate increases of 1994 were not needed, as inflation stayed under control.
Nice entry
After the initial attacks on 9/11, I assumed an immediate barrage of follow-ups. And argued that an unending localized attacks would unnerve the American public. But even those were few. The threat seemed far less than initially assessed.
As far as the Mafia threat, my Consigleare informs me you are expressing a view that can not be refused....intellectually
I also overestimated the level of future attacks.
I thought so as well, but after a couple months I realized that it very well might be the last hijacking. The flight that went down in PA, the passengers heard about the other planes being crashed into buildings and immediately they revolted knowing they had to, they couldn't remain docile. Nobody will acquiesce to a hijacking now and think they'll land, the hijackers will use them for a political show and let them go. No, you've been turned into a weapon and you have to do your best to fight, win, lose or draw. Anybody contemplating a hijacking will realize that. I was fearful of bombs being planted on airplanes and I'm still convinced a NYC subway car is going to go up one of these days.
So am I
But my concern is more localized. Does the present mayor have the necessary competency to make prudent local decisions.
Mamdani? I'd suggest there's a fair amount of institutional inertia, the NYPD is like a gendarmerie at this point. Still subways are relatively open. Sounds like you might be from the city so you might be familiar with the nail bomber, I was there that day, I came in from NJ to the PABT went down into the subway at 8th Avenue and took the tunnel over to 7th to get the red/1,2,3, I went downtown and my wife was on my phone in a panic. Bottom line if somebody is going to do it, somebody is going to do it, but if that person is going to get caught, the best chance of catching it is in NYC.
Yes. I have lived in NYC.
And dramatically so,
My point is that law enforcement is still a large part of the responsibilities of state and local control(the Mayor of NYC in this case)
And my view is that the newly elected Mayor, in my view, has not enacted or suggested policies or approaches that will increase the safety of public Transportation.
My experience with the Paris Police was pleasant, despite my evident physical similarity of an Irish terrorist circa 1982, And those fellows were good sized gentlemen
The Gendarmerie are unfairly associated with the Petain past. They are not analogous to the NYPD transit police
"It might seem “logical” that global warming would lead to people migrating toward cooler regions, but don’t be surprised if the exact opposite were to occur."
Perhaps all things being equal that particular factor does add people to northern climes but other factors add people to the tropics? Like, for instance simply being able to grapple with tropical climates and tropical diseases a lot better. If I had to live in South FL under a mosquito net without air conditioning, I don't think I'd like it. And there are people who are getting hurricane insurance premiums and saying, "Yeah, I'm out" and go halfback as its now known.
I have a pretty strong suspicion that 'social media/screen time' is another modern day example. Not that there aren't genuine concerns (as with global warming, teenage motherhood etc), but people refusing to update their beliefs, succumbing to confirmation bias, and generally exhibiting overconfidence.
It's taken as given that children/youth have become hopelessly addicted to screens, and this is a generally negative phenomenon that inhibits childrens's development and has/will lead to higher suicide etc. To the extent that many are cheering on some quite dramatic policies (eg, youth 'social media' bans in Australia with all the associated privacy concerns).
And yet the actual measured trends seem, though not completely encouraging, difficult to square with scale of the panic.
Total screen time among 0-8 year olds is essentially flat since 2011 (a bit more video chatting and video games balanced by a bit less passive video consumption). https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/2025-common-sense-census-web-2.pdf
Meanwhile Jonathon Haidt specifically linked an increase in youth mental health and suicidality from a local minimum in 2008/9 to smartphone use. Yet the latest data reports a fairly dramatic decline in these indicators from 2021-2024, at a time when short form video based social media use exploded. So Facebook causes suicides but somehow Tiktok prevents them? And other countries/regions show completely different trends.
(USA) https://web.archive.org/web/20260116025031/https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/reports/rpt56462/2024-nsduh-companion-report.pdf
(NZ trend) https://tewhatuora.shinyapps.io/suicide-web-tool/
(Global regions trend) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10911948/
I am also skeptical of social media bans. That's not to deny that social media may have had some negative effects on mental health, for a period of time. But I suspect that many people tend to underestimate the extent to which society self-corrects as people get used to a new phenomenon. As an analogy, fentanyl caused a huge spike in overdose deaths, but it seems to be abating somewhat now.
Hm this must be why, as i get older, i enjoy winter more and more. If everyones going hot, ill gladly go cold.
My initial thought on this liking it hot migration is that people are certainly getting less hardy. In my relatively moderate climate bitching about the cold is just what everybody does now. We get 6-8 inches of snow and my town becomes a ghost town(and big ass 4x4s are very popular in my area, so its not like people cant get around). The local sledding hill, once a popular destination for kids and adults alike, is pretty much forgotten now.
Cold is harder to deal with than hot, takes more effort. And our whole idea of what physical living means has changed.
So maybe thats got something to do with it, maybe not. It certainly matches what my experience has been.
And damn scott, these last 3 articles have been really good! I dont mean that in an agree/disagree type of way(though i tend to agree), rather i mean in an asking the right questions, noticing the right things way. These are important topics that we need to be thinking and talking about, instead of the dumb shit parade weve had for some time now.
Honestly i am not too far from deleting my substack account(for reasons), ive already canceled all but 2 of my subscriptions. But your articles are worth sticking around for
Thanks, I appreciate it.
Great post like the majority of posts you have. I agree it's silly to think China wants to take back territory "stolen" by Russia for the pride of the Middle Kingdom like some historians purport. You added to my knowledge that emigration and low birth rates are already ongoing in Dongbei.
The one caveat to your point is water scarcity in China. I believe they are rapidly depleting their main water table, and barring any technological improvement for desalination (new less energy extensive techniques or energy becomes so cheap it is a non-factor), Lake Baikal seems like the most obvious solution, though by no means would they have to actually take the land. You are so thorough with your posts, so I am just wondering what your thoughts on this for Chinese geopolitics.
I don't believe the water issue is important enough to justify an attack on Russia. It can be managed, and the Chinese are already diverting water from the south.
China is weak militarily, even without the constant purges of top generals, and certainly will not invade either Manchuria or Taiwan. But just as certainly, they will purchase or co-op them both. No nukes needed.
This ought to be published outside of substack.
Because it's not worthy of substack, or because it's too good?
Apparently the incumbent president of Taiwan, William Lai, has been baiting Beijing for a while, by pointing out if the Chinese were *really* serious about reclaiming missing provinces, maybe they should invade Siberia first . . .
Way OT, but way interesting
"Japan's blue-collar labor shortage lifts mechanic pay above office jobs
White-collar wages hit by AI; nurses, teachers held down by government service prices"
Nikkei Asia
I don't pretend to know what Xi will do.
But I don't see him going to war with Russia, not for this.
As for the manpower thing; yes China could almost certainly beat Russia in a specific zone. But their actual military focus is on Taiwan and India. The Korean war was a long time ago, they already have less fighting age men than India. I think Xi would want nothing less than to risk his completely untested army against a battle hardened army, when the downside potential is that India decides there is nothing stopping them from getting a bit of lebensraum and a few dozen million more anti-Chinese people.
Great article. Imagine in 1900 in the US you'd had a big platform and told the country:
"The global temperature will rise by 1.0'C by 2000 - and the land temperature by maybe 1.5'C. And agricultural employment will drop from around 40% of the population to maybe 2%"*
Think of the panic -
Item 1 would be "What? Really? Who cares?".
Item 2 would be "We have to stop this, it will destroy society!"
*I'm going off memory for employment - I think from Timothy Taylor's book that I read 10 years ago.
I have no idea what Beijing is going to do, but the usual talk about China re-seizing its old provinces from Russia alludes to natural resources, not living space.
Nationalism results in certain impulses that do not align with common sense or true gain.
See Moscow-Putin's ghastly war in Ukraine, which even if one accepts imperial justifications (I do not) cannot possibly pay off for Russia. That is not important in Kremlin's thinking.
Might Beijing re-seize old provinces? They tend to think in centuries, not decades, years or quarters. I find Xi is opaque. Maybe others know him well.
Those parts of Russia are truly China's land?
Median voter theorem still holds in China, just more loosely.
But more importantly the absolute last thing China can afford is war with Russia. Russia has amply demonstrated in Ukraine its willingness to throw away lives like chaff. China could not tolerate any material fraction of Russian casualties, for two reasons: they don't have enough fighting age people, and they would be conceding the southern border, which they very much care about, to India, which does have enough people.
For me, Xi is a cipher, and whoever follows him totally invisible. Xi sounds truculent on Taiwan, and also Japan.
How can China not have enough people to fight Russia?
Beijing runs a 1.4 bil pop. Many times Russia's.
The Chinese threw soldiers into death with abandon, in the Korean War.
I doubt China will seize the former provinces, although Russia is at its weakest in decades and decades. The carnival of carnage in Ukraine has drained the Russian military into a pulp.
But who knows?
Nationalism at its best is a terrific social glue, and at its worst, promotes insane wars---see Russia's endless siege of Ukraine.
I notice most of these "obvious" predictions were overly pessimistic... Let's hope the next overly confident and wrong prediction is that politics will keep getting stupider and more crass.
These panics can be truly entertaining. I think my favorite was the claim that teen girls were consuming alcohol and getting drunk at school by soaking tampons in alcohol and then wearing them to school. Some writer decided to test this out and found that not only did it sting like heck it provided not even the slightest buzz. IIRC her claim was that it wouldnt even be able to walk normally with one inserted so even if it had caused an effect it would be obvious something was wrong. My other favorite was the rainbow blow job panic but another writer, and her lucky boyfriend, disproved that one.
Steve
Wrong hole, and its called boofing, and its real and it works. And i dont mean its real in the sense that teenage girls, or teenagers at all, were doing it. But in that slice of society that likes to get "fucked up" it was all the rage for awhile. Rectal administration has a higher bioavailability than oral administration, so less does more.
But i did a little googling just now and the vagina boofing was a popular myth. My guess would be it was derived from the actual rectal tampon/alcohol boofing practice. Pretty brave(or stupid) of that woman to try it, though i doubt shes the only one. People do all sorts of dumb shit trying to get high(ie jenkem, literally).
Learn something new every day . . . unfortunately
Jenkem also seems to be a hoax.
One would hope